Mega mega mega, going back to Romford! How an outer London suburb became a metropolis for 90s dance music

When 17-year-0ld Danny Donelly got a bank loan to open a record shop and sell dancefloor-filling electronic music, he little knew how he would help revolutionise his town and dance music at large In the early 1990s, the suburban town of Romford was known for three things. It was

When 17-year-0ld Danny Donelly got a bank loan to open a record shop and sell dancefloor-filling electronic music, he little knew how he would help revolutionise his town and dance music at large In the early 1990s, the suburban town of Romford was known for three things. It was the home of the world’s best snooker player, Steve Davis. It was where people placed bets at Romford dog track, over a dinner of chicken in a basket.

And for those in the know, it was where the UK’s best underground dance music was bought and sold. That pedigree was immortalised by Romford’s most famous musical act, Underworld, with frontman Karl Hyde shouting the words “mega mega mega, going back to Romford” at the climax of 1995’s Born Slippy. Those words now form the title of a new exhibition in the town, Mega Mega: Romford’s Suburban Sound Revolution , which charts how this unglamorous but party-spirited backwater became an upstart rival to great dance music cities such as Manchester or Detroit.

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