Leo Stanley

From RedCafe.net

An eclectic Manchester DJ and one of the founding journalists for reknowned dance music magazine Mixmag in the early 1980s who along with Les Cokell published a monthly column on the gay disco scene entitled The Castro Connection. Leo had grown up in the northern soul movement around Wigan Casino in the late '70s and was at the forefront of creating the High-Energy scene in the UK which had a similar effect on the '80s dancefloors of Manchester as the northern soul movement did in the '70s. Leo is credited with actually coming up for the name High-Energy, in a conversation with mixmag founder and editor Tony Prince, for the mostly imported disco dancefloor fillers.

The exposure of the gay disco scene to a wider audience took High-Energy music to another level making it a mainstay of the UK charts once the likes of Stock Aitken and Waterman adopted the sound and topped the charts with Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round". While Stock Aitken and Waterman concentrated on the pop charts Leo Stanley moved into the clothing industry, another traditional northern staple, when he opened his shop Identity in Afflecks Palace as well as working with Denton hat manufacturers Goldgem in producing the Mas-if range of skate and snowboard headwear. He continued to DJ around Manchester particularly as resident DJ at The Venue on Whitworth Street during the Madchester era and is a regular music reviewer for independent music database AMG.

Leo's most famous contribution to the Manchester scene was undoubtedly the range of Manchester T-shirts he produced and sold from Afflecks Palace which became synonymous with the Madchester music scene. Plain white T-shirts with a bold black typeface proclaimed phrases such as:

• Born In The North, Return To The North, Exist In The North, Die In The North
• My England has a rose, wherein my heart it grows, Manchester my heartland
• On The Seventh Day God Chilled Out
• On The Sixth Day God Created MANchester

The final one being Leo's lasting legacy to the Manchester scene having been recreated in perpetuity in a ceramic mural laid into the redbrick walls outside Afflecks Palace.