Trash the system!

Like The Roxy and The Blitz, club night Trash changed the UK's musical landscape. As it bows out in style, Trash regular Leonie Cooper looks back on the decade's hippest rave up.

Clicking her sparkly heels together, a wise, drug-addicted gay icon uttered the immortal words "There's no place like home". She was, of course, talking about Kansas, but could just as easily have been referring to Trash, the indie clubbing phenomenon that changed the way alternative music and its fans were viewed the world over. Either way, in those shoes and in that gingham dress, Dorothy would have waltzed past the club's staunch dress code.

For the past 10 years, to fashion reprobates and new music obsessives, myself included, home was Trash, a rammed, genre-smashing sweatbox that made Monday nights in London the biggest night of the week. It was The Roxy, it was Studio 54, it was The Blitz, it was Club freakin' Tropicana; the place to see and be seen, whether you were a checkout girl from Romford, a German art student with shaved eyebrows or an indie celebrity in a vintage Stooges T-shirt. Now, after a glorious decade of pushing boundaries and setting scenes, Trash is bowing out. "I just don't want it to be shit before it ends," explains Erol Alkan, the night's founder and ever-present DJ who, in all of Trash's 10 years, only ever missed one night, to go on his honeymoon with his wife, the club's door girl.

Back in 1997, things were different for 22-year-old north London boy Alkan. Dance was massive, whereas indie clubs were sloppy, messy places you went to with the express purpose of vomiting over her flared cords to the strains of Ocean Colour Scene. So from his bedroom, Alkan set the Trash wheels in motion - he called promoters, faxed listings from the newsagents and photocopied flyers at the library. "There was never any real kind of vision behind it - just the necessity of playing music and not being limited." Hitting a nerve with likeminded people across the capital, the night moved from Plastic People on Oxford Street to Soho's Annex before finding itself homeless. After visiting every major venue in central London, Erol happened upon an unheard of plan; he'd take the indie club to the dance club, specifically The End - the club opened by The Shamen's Mr C in 1996. Again the club was packed every week: "Every time we moved, more people came, but it always seemed like the right people, we weren't watering it down."

With the 2000 move, the press started picking up on the night; The Face voted it their Club Of The Year and Erol was rarely out of the pages of the style mags. Trash became a catalyst of cool, spawning a generation of clubs across the country that took on Trash's glam indie ethic. In Nottingham, Ricky Haley set up Liars Club, a night referred to by i-D magazine as "Nottingham's answer to Trash". "When I started visiting London, it was a real eye opener to see all these crazy people with half a haircut. You didn't do that in Nottingham lest you should want a beating," says Ricky. Other famed discos which took their lead from Trash were Southend's now-deceased Junk club (which spawned The Horrors), London's White Heat, Leeds' PIGS (run by Kaiser Chiefs) and pretty much anywhere that plays indie and electro to well-dressed kids.

Groups of Trash regulars also started forming bands; Bloc Party could be found on the dancefloor every week until they found fame and even ended up dedicating a song during Glastonbury 2005 to the Trash crowd. Electro-folk wunderkid Patrick Wolf was often flouncing around, as was Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell, whilst the most recent Trash-graduates, Klaxons, had been going to the night since the start. "There were members of Ash wearing flowery Caribbean shirts and dancing to The Stone Roses," says bassist Jamie Reynolds. "It just had this continual party atmosphere."

To protect the night from an influx of fly-by-night fans, the club's legendary dress code was strictly enforced, with a succession of door-bitches checking over the snaking queue. "I was quite worried we'd get a lot of social tourism, where people will dip in and out of something because it's trendy," says Erol. "We had to show that we believed in the people that made the club special. I'll always stand by the dress code, it was ambiguous, yes, and at times it was unfair, but it was one of the most important factors in the survival of the club." Work suits and casual clothes were turned away, whilst vintage fashion was in - net veils covered the kohl smudged eyes of the boys and razorsharp fringes, Elizabeth Duke jewellery and fishnet stockings adorned the girls. I regularly braved the bus from pub to club in shimmering postwar evening wear and my secondhand 1980s ra-ra dresses saw more fun on the dancefloor of Trash than they ever did in 1986.

Trash soon became a celeb hangout to rival any chi-chi West London private members club and anyone who was anyone in rock'n'roll could be seen mingling with the masses. The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Libertines, Arthur Baker, Jarvis Cocker, Muse, Lily Allen, Kooks, Razorlight and Grace Jones were just the tip of the starry iceberg, and once Marilyn Manson turned on his heels and left after he was told there was no VIP area. Courtney Love turned up one night, and was subsequently asked to leave. "She was being an arse," says Erol, "falling over and grabbing at people, just really embarrassing."

Throughout the night's history, the eclectic playlist (anything from ESG to AC/DC) evolved. The club pioneered the trend for mash-ups (under his Kurtis Rush alias, Erol's George Gets His Freak On was one of the first bootleg anthems). Trash was also one of the driving forces behind the electroclash movement, spearheaded the return of UK guitar music, and even had its finger in the pie that is "new rave".

They began booking bands - the busiest when Yeah Yeah Yeahs played and 1,100 people made it into the club (although how many could actually see is a different matter). There were also live spots from Jarvis Cocker's Relaxed Muscle, one of The Scissor Sisters' first UK gigs, a scene defining performance from a hot-panted Peaches, and, most memorably, a hushed solo piano set from self-styled Canadian "Entertainist" Chilly Gonzales. "It was such a ridiculous idea," says Erol, remembering the night he carted a baby grand down the steep stairs.

Everyone who went has their own Trash memories. I'll remember spending my 21st birthday dancing on the side of the DJ booth, bumming fags off The Strokes, being chatted up by the Kings of Leon (but who wasn't?) and sitting on the sofas squashed between Carl Barat and Pete Doherty the week The Libertines had their first NME cover. And how does Erol want people to look back on the night that changed so many lives? "When we moved to The End, clubs that played guitar music were frowned upon," he says. "Dance clubs had all the cred. Trash made it so that alternative club culture was just as well-respected as dance culture. I think Trash deserves that."

Getting trashed

What you might have seen on a typical Trash night out ...

FLASHING!

August, 2003

When Grace Jones flashed all and sundry her knickers (big and black, rather appropriately), before running off into a corner and gossiping with Billy Zane all night.

VIP RAVES!

December, 2001-2006

The clubs yearly invite-only mailing list parties - messy nights of gratis booze, homemade punch and free-for-all DJ sets from the extended Trash family.

FIRST PLAYS!

May, 1997

The night The Verve's manager came down to the club with the first pressing of Bittersweet Symphony and gifted it to Erol with the immortal words "You're the only club who has this. It's going to be massive, man".

NEW GENRES!

June, 2000

When Erol began the bootleg craze by cutting up of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time and fusing it with Primal Scream's epic Loaded. The dancefloor, it has to be said, went apeshit. In a good way, mind.

SUPERSTAR DJS!

March, 2005

When Bloc Party returned as heroes to the club that spawned them and DJed in the main room as Kings of Boyz.

· Trash bows out on Mon at The End