Not long till Saturday now....pure chompin at the bit mysel like.....and Justin Robertson hits Dundee spinning the finest, bespoke, classics at his disposal....this is one not to be missed .....
Here's a selection of links all Robbo related......
In July 1981, producer Shep Pettibone asked Tony for a mastermix show tape to fill in for a no show on his KISS-FM NY radio show. A vacancy left by Pettibone at the station opened the door for his own permanent mix show. Simultaneously, schooled under the “I’ll-leave-you-in-the-booth-and-see-what-happens” antics of resident DJ Larry Patterson of NJ’s Club Zanzibar fame, resulted in him gaining “THE” residency in 1982.
Developing his creative experiences behind the recording studio’s control board only enhanced his style and magic. Artists like Mtume (Tony’s first gold record “Juicy Fruit”), Chaka Khan, Karen White, Regina Belle, Donna Summer, Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and The Cover Girls were all governed by the “Humphries handicraft”.
By the mid to late 80’s, Tony became the sole helmsman weaving the tunes three nights a week, thus making dance music superstars out of local talent embedded in the heartland of Newark and her surrounding areas. Summoned across the Atlantic by the British in 1987. The “Jersey Sound” was coined by their press. In addition to traveling, remix projects mounting, pumping out a weekly radio mix show, and holding down the fort at the club, Tony was in his prime making the world of dance music exciting, hip, and refreshing.
By November 1990, his 8 year tenure ended with a tearful refrain, but this didn’t discourage Tony as he became in demand worldwide and relocated to London, England. In January of 1993, Tony took up the offer to be the resident jock at the Ministry of Sound club. That year was rounded off with a residency at “Echoes” in Rimini, Italy. This Italian residency continued for 4 years while simultaneously relocating back in NJ to launch his Yellorange Production Co.
It can be said that Tony Humphries has left an inerasable impression on the global dance music industry. To date over 300 venues he has gigged worldwide, done over 200 studio remixes, the latest being Janet Jackson’s hit “Together Again”. Throughout tremendous recognition, tons of awards and accolades from his peers, he has remained humble.
Indeed, the man... the music... the legend, Tony Humphries.
Gonna be droppin a Robbo tune until Saturday on the blog just to get you in the mood for the man himself on Saturday night at The Reading Rooms....tickets are gettin scarce for this one and get in touch via Craig or Dean or thru gbtor@live.co.uk
Right here's Robbo's 1991 remix of Edinburgh's Finitribe with Ace Love Deux......lets rock....in a Mike Smash stylee......
In their own words........the label that spawned The Chemical Brothers,Underworld,X Press 2,Outrage,Ballastic Brothers.....their tunes were always an essential addition to any dj's box from 92 onwards....
The world's first superclub promoter, one of the Ibiza Famous 4, Nicky Holloway tells all...
As I recall, you started your DJ skills by waiting for your mum to go to work so you could borrow her hi-fi and hook it up to yours where you would practice your early sets.
"I was the original bedroom DJ, I invented it. We are talking 1975/6, I would hide in the bushes in the garden and wait for my mum to go to work and then slip back in and unplug her music centre from the living room and join it up with mine, so what you had was two hi-fi's (as they were known then) next to each other on a wallpaper table with two sets of speakers and in the middle an upright Hoover thing (the 70's equivalent to a Dust Devil) with a little square microphone selotaped to it that recorded onto a separate cassette machine. I think I was severely scarred by the fact that for six months I thought my parents were going to get me a set of FAL double decks and a rope light. In the end they bought my sister some skiing equipment for her school trip. I still hate them both for it."
Your 'Special Branch' parties in paved the way for clubland London... Pete Tong spinning hip hop, rare groove and early house alongside Gilles Peterson mixing up, simply, an eclectic mix of all things jazzy. Cool huh?
"I have managed to keep all my diaries and all the flyers for everything I have started to put together a book - and I honestly had forgotten how many gigs we did before Acid House came along. Some of them were really groundbreaking and it was all so innocent. We hated the high street - it was proper underground, We did 16 parties in London Zoo, Thorpe Park, Chislehurst Caves, the Natural History Museum and took 300 people to Ibiza in 1985. I was fearless back then. The company name was 'Starship Enterprises' and our motto was to boldly promote where no man has promoted before - myself, Gilles Peterson and Tongy, we were kids getting paid for playing music, we loved it - there was no game plan."
Your weekenders were legendary. I remember one particular event where you sang the Crystal Water anthem on the mic to 5000 people on stage. What were your best weekenders?
"The five Kaos weekenders we did between 89-92 where brilliant, you have to remember that back in those days 3000 people was regarded a a big deal - more by luck than judgment. Crystal Water 'Gypsy Woman' came out on import the weekend of one of the Kaos events and just became the anthem of the weekend. But we had been doing weekenders at Rockley Sands in Dorset through the 80's, in fact the leisure company we used (Bourne Leisure) rang me up and asked if I fancied doing one at their Berwick on Tweed site. I said no but hooked them up with Alex Lowes who was from Newcastle and that's where the first UpNorth Weekenders came about later moving to Southport."
Tell us about that first trip to Ibiza...
"Every year I get all these requests to talk about Ibiza - here are two answers - make your own mind up which one you think is true...
Answer A:
There's something magical about the place, where else can you go to such fabulous clubs and enjoy the freedom and that Balearic feeling and listen to music you have never heard before? It's so spiritual. Have you been to the Atlantis rocks?"
Or
Answer B:
It's turned into the Tesco's of clubland. there is no freedom, getting into Space is like going through customs, you pay £15 a drink and £40 to get in a club that shuts three hours later. We used to come back from Ibiza with inspiration - someone please tell what was the big tune in Ibiza this year - as I haven't a clue.
So, I can't help thinking we have turned a load of farmers into yuppies and now they no longer need the hand that fed them. I think I'm entitled to have an opinion bearing in mind I have been going there since 1982 and had a Milk Bar in Pacha 16 years ago long before any UK promoters turned up. I put the Z in Ibiza - Alex Gold stuck a poster up outside the airport."
Trip at The Astoria - I had to call Lisa Loud to ask you for a guest list because your night was the biggest in the UK and I sort of shitted myself. What a night! Memories...
"Again, the thing about those day's was that none of it was planned, there was no marketing plan, no sponsorship money, we were all just 23-26 year old kids doing something that we loved - any financial gain was a byproduct. Imagine it, there I was at 24 promoting the biggest night in London, completely twated on little fellas, DJing and walking out the door with six grand in readies in my pocket - what the fuck did I know about VAT? I just wanted the big house the big car and at 24 you never think it will end. Of course it did and I paid a heavy price. I have just dug out a load of old video footage and have got a ton of stories to tell about The Astoria that I'm saving them for my book."
Okay, here we go. Oaky and Rampling obviously saw their pot at the end of the rainbow as DJs - you saw that you could be locking up your own nightclubs at the end of a night with a bulging pocket of cash by being a promoter/club owner. Why did you want to go down this route?
"Never really had a choice, Paul is one of the smartest guy's I know. He parties but he also knows when it is time to go home. Danny caught / created a wave that I don't think anyone else since has ever managed with 'Shoom' which in turn lead him to the Radio One show. Given a choice, I would much sooner just have been just a DJ than a promoter, but it just fell that way."
Did you ever see house music exploding around the world when you were starting these nights?
"Absolutely, it was like a tidal wave."
What record do you dance around in your kitchen to that you probably wouldn't want us to know about?
"'So You Wanna Be A Boxer?' - Bugsy Malone."
The Milk Bar. Coolest EVER nightclub London has seen?
"At the tiime yes we had a line up like this...
Mondays : Myself and Darren Emerson
Wednesday : Danny Rampling
Thursday : Live bands, highlights were Jamiroquai, The Brand New Heavies and The Farm
Friday : Myself and Paul Oakenfold
Saturday : Pete Tong and Dave Dorrell
Sunday : Brandon Block and Lisa Loud"
What's your favorite ever record?
"Too many to mention, but if I had to nail three albums off all time, Marvin Gaye - 'What's Going On', Stevie Wonder 'Songs In The Key Of Life' and Pink Floyd 'Dark Side Of The Moon'."
Ibiza - maddest party you've ever been to on the White Isle?
"My 'Kaos' party in a quarry just outside San Antonio in1992 with 808 State, Rozalla, Sasha, NJoi etc. Cost me my car and my house as everyone just bunked in without paying - but what the fuck, it was a good party! Mad, because I must have been mad to do it in the first place..."
What are you up to at the moment...?
"Desert Island Disco - www.desertislanddiscos.com . By this time next year it will be a household name."
Factory boss Anthony Wilson, Rob Gretton and New Order in the early 1980's decided that there was no club in Manchester that catered for their tastes. So the Hacienda was dreamed up. It opened on Friday May 21st 1982.
The Hacienda was designed to be a slap in the face for established night clubs. The stark industrial design from Ben Kelly was utterly unlike anything club goers had seen before. The first experience was unforgettable.
You entered through large metal doors into a vast interior space supported on steel girders of black with yellow safety stripes. It was functional, hard, almost overwhelming, like a set from the yet to be released movie ALIEN. The music was rolling out and here we were , a thousand or more poor clubbers trapped in the hold of the mothership of an Intergalactic fleet. To continue the theme of difference and subversion, below the dancefloors lurked the Traitors bar celebrating Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, the homosexual Brits who betrayed their country to spy for the Soviet Union.
The name itself was wierd, coming from an a fifties book nobody ever read called The Situationalist International Handbook, the "hacienda" being an idealised co-operative community. Even the flyers and the posters set new standards in design for other clubs( by the way some of the early promotional material is now very collectible).
The Hacienda
The Hacienda
The sheer originality of the concept and its design meant that it took almost ten years for other clubs to follow but now the basic ingredients of the Hacienda's steel, iron, glass and wood interior can be seen all around Europe - and everybody now takes great care over their flyers.
The Hacienda Throughout its existence, the club put on live concerts featuring a who's who of leftfield stars including The Smiths, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Echo and the Bunnymen, an unknown Madonna (1984), the Happy Mondays, James, Oasis, Blur and many many others .But its prime, its heyday, came in the mid and late 1980's when it popularised the new dance craze, "House", and, partially fuelled by ecstasy, became the most famous club on the planet. DJ's such as Mike Pickering (later of M-People), Graeme Park and Dave Haslam played to a packed house and had great fun experimenting; for instance, some memorable evenings included a swimming pool in the main room.
The rhythms in the club appealed to the city's indie bands and resulted in the phenomena of "Madchester", the rolling guitars flying out over beats you could dance to. Manchester even developed its own, Hacienda inspired, look of flares and floppy hats. It was the summer of love all over again. You had to be there. The staid American news magazine Newsweek picked up on the fantastic buzz in the city and put the club on its cover. The secret was simple: the Hacienda made people happy and it made them feel part of something special.
The Hacienda
But in 1990 the mood started to change, the drug gangs moved in occupying their own areas of the club and intimidating staff and public alike. Then in 1991 a young club goer from Stoke died from ecstasy poisoning. Soon after security staff were threatened with a machine gun and the police closed the club with the tacit approval of a shocked management. The club opened again in 1992 but the heights were rarely reached again.
The
The end came shortly after the fifteenth birthday celebration in the summer of 1997. Police looking into the night time economy and its malign and benign effects were sitting in their car near the Hacienda one evening accompanied by local magistrates. As the club was closing a gang of thugs almost beat to death some innocent individual who they thought had insulted them inside the Hacienda.The club became convinced it would have its license revoked and did not have the finances to support a lengthy closure. Thus the Hacienda died its final death. End
It was probably financial reasons - not the dark reputation of the club for attracting violent gangs - that lay behind the permanent closure. Despite the undoubted success of its later years, the club appears to have been run in a naive business manner. Spectacular tricks and appearance fees swallowed any potential investment money. It is said that US DJ Knucklesplayed the Hacienda on New Year's Eve 1996 and was paid £15000 plus flight, plus accommodation, plus hotel, plus limo. Even with an entrance price of £46 per head this kind of excess was unsustainable. The debts mounted.
Now, the company that bought the building wants to convert it into offices or apartments. This would mean the end of the glorious Ben Kelly interior. Manchester Civic Society has shown a modern sensibility in opposing the conversion because of the club's pop culture importance. But people who were involved with the club, such as Anthony Wilson, deplore making the Hacienda a trendy heritage centre.
They say, the Hacienda might be dead but Manchester music goes on. That's the nature of the thing. Outside the club the graffitti splashed on the walls reads "the Hacienda must be built" or just "rewind". But the enigimatic nameplate - FAC51 THE HACIENDA - next to which thousands queued to gain access to the club, has been chiselled away and a plain replacement brick slipped into its place...
Think of a classic house record and nine times out of ten you'll think of Trax, although you may not realise it. 'Move Your Body'? 'Baby Wants To Ride'? 'Washing Machine'? 'Can U Feel It'? All Trax releases. 'House Nation'? 'Acid Trax'? 'Your Love'? 'We Are Phuture'? 'U Used To Hold Me'? Yup, those too. What's more they introduced the world to producers who've become immortalised as some of house music's greatest innovators - Larry Heard, Marshall Jefferson, Larry Levan - and have provided an outlet for many more of Chicago's house artists over the years, such as Armando, Liddell Townsend, Robert Owens, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Mr Lee, Adonis, Fast Eddie, Ralphie Rosario, DJ Rush, Steve Poindexter, Terry Baldwin, DJ Skull... the list goes on. And they did it all by releasing crappy-looking rec
ords that sounded like they'd been pressed on sandpaper. Now there's a story worth telling.
House music's roots lie in the spontaneous combustion that was a handful of Chicago clubs in the early 1980s. In the days when clubs only needed one DJ, that DJ was in a position to make waves. And in a city where the clubs were usually soundtracked by jukeboxes, those waves could become a storm. Larry Levan came to take up the residency of Chicago's Warehouse in 1977, bringing a style and technique pioneered in, and previously only known to, New York's disco clubs and loft parties, such as mixing and programming a set and the use of reel to reel tapes. Word spread about Knuckles' disco, soul and funk phenomenon and The Warehouse quickly became the place to be for a party-hungry gay crowd. This, it is commonly accepted, is where the term 'house' originates. Knuckles himself has denied 'inventing' house, so what we are talking about here is more a style of playing music based on the idea of a musical flow and transition - for all Walter Gibbons & co's remixes, no-one had yet made A House Record.
Knuckles moved to another new venture in 1983, The Power Plant, which is situated on the north side of the city, and already a scene was beginning to emerge. Shortly after the opening of The Power Plant, Ron Hardy, who had begun DJing at Den One in 1974 then moved to LA for a spell, took over the decks at The Music Box on the south side. He pioneered a different sound to Knuckles; Hardy's mix of disco, European electronica, industrial and alternative sounds was spiced with tape edits which he would manipulate and pause by hand. The Music Box became known as a rougher, wilder and more hedonistic alternative to Knuckles' sophisticated mixes and it was here that the straight black crowds from the south side caught the bug.
Hardy is credited by some as the ultimate creative DJ, an innovator in the way he read the dancefloor, made it his own and defined a style of music into the bargain. He was certainly dedicated - a true party animal, he was known to live his life from his DJ booth, sleeping there and spending the days practising his craft.
As the friendly rivalry between Knuckles and Hardy developed, other DJs began to push the sound, like Wayne Williams, Steve Hurley and Farley Keith Williams. Then there was Jesse Saunders, who spun at Chicago's other major house club, The Playground. Jesse, who had musical training, was constantly searching for gimmicks with which to further his name as a DJ and had taken to creating his own drum machine tracks to play from tape. He went into the studio with the idea of recreating an obscure disco bootleg, the name of which he says escapes him. But which also turned out to be the first House record...
Jessie Saunders: "So I'm looking for someone to help me make a record, and it so happened that Vince [Lawrence] had come in the club looking for me to play a record that he had, this way-out avant, garde thing, 'cause at the time I would play Devo and the B52s. He'd talked to me about how his father had this label and where they would press records, so the first person I thought of was Vince. He took me down there and that's where I met Larry Sherman. And that's when the nightmare began! [laughs]"
A former musician, Larry Sherman bought Musical Products, Chicago's only pressing plant, in 1983. This was the vital link in the chain: access to the means of production. Jessie and Vince made a track called 'On And On', came up with Jes Say Records as a label and persuaded Sherman to press them it up for them at $4 a throw.
JS: "We had five hundred records made and took 'em to the stores. We promoted the records like we promoted the parties, with posters and flyers and whatnot. On the first day the record sold 150 copies and by the third day it had sold out. And we went back to Larry, three or four days after picking up the first records, and ordered a thousand more. Now, he's got a pressing plant in Chicago, and a small plant at that, and he'd do a little jazz thing or a little blues thing here or there, and they usually ordered a couple of hundred copies and gave 'em to their friends and wouldn't come back. And we showed up and we say, 'oh, we sold out in a couple of days'. He's like, 'Really? Where?' So Larry's thinking to himself 'Wow, I got these two young kids that can sell records. I'm gonna see if I can get in on this.' Basically what he offered me was to press all the records for free and just cut him in for a percentage, which at the time I thought was a great idea. So we expanded our distribution to other stores, and the next thing I knew we had sold nine thousand records, just around Chicago."
Sherman had set up a label called Precision to make the most of his new venture, but when he saw what Jessie and Vince had achieved and had subsequently visited Hardy's Music Box, he realised something was brewing. He wanted to get more involved, yet neither he nor Saunders wanted to use their own labels for joint projects, so they set up Trax. Vince Lawrence came up with the name.
Jessie Saunders provided the first Trax release, 'Wanna Dance/Certainly' by Le Noiz and Larry and Vince took care of shifting them. In fact, several other Trax artists also worked for the label, with Wayne Williams, Rachael Cain (alias Screamin' Rachael) and Ron Hardy all pitching in. A group of creative people had found themselves the ideal outlet.
Rachael remembers it thus: "Vince Lawrence was such a go-getter, he used to just shop the records out of the trunk of his car! In one day, you could go to the studio, make a track, take it out to the club, because Ron Hardy was very co-operative, and he would play it, and you could figure out then and there, 'is this gonna work?' And at one time Larry even had his own lathe, so he could cut an acetate, and we could do it all in one day. So I think it was that Larry basically had everything we needed. But Vince and Jesse, god, they were just visionaries. And I think that they don't get enough credit for what they have done." "I always wondered what made Vince and Jesse want to go to vinyl, but I guess it was just the fact that they met Larry, Larry had the pressing plant, and they saw an opportunity to go directly into the medium, y'know? And I guess that's pretty much how it started, because we, due to our association with Larry, could move faster than anyone else. And then of course things followed, 'cause Jamie Principle came right after that."
Other house artists began to come out of the woodwork, inspired by Saunders and Farley's first releases.
"I heard Jesse Saunders on the radio and said 'Boy, I can do that'." "I was working at the Post Office at the time. That's like a pretty good job in America. I was making a little bit over thirty thousand dollars a year, which at that time was a lot of money. I knew I wanted to put out records like Jesse Saunders but I didn't know exactly how. So I went to this music store with a friend, and the salesman was telling us about this sequencer. And he said, 'You know, with this sequencer somebody who can't even play can play like a real keyboard player'. And I thought, 'This is great', but my friend wouldn't believe him. He's like, 'That's bullshit, you gotta take lessons for years and years'. But the guy was explaining it to me and I was like 'I believe him, I'm gonna make records'. So I bought the sequencer, the guy gave me credit on the spot, and then the guy goes, 'You don't wanna have this sequencer and not have a keyboard to play, do you?' I said, 'Oh... no', so I bought the keyboard. And the guy says, 'You don't wanna have this sequencer and this keyboard and not have a drum machine to play, do you?' I said, 'Ah yeah, you're right..' So he says, 'You don't wanna have this sequencer and this keyboard and drum machine and not have something to play it all on, do you?' I said, 'Ah, yeah, you're right..'. So he says, 'you don't wanna have this sequencer and this keyboard and drum machine and this mixer and not have something to record it all on, do you?' So with the recorder and all, I spent about seven or eight thousand! My friends are all laughing at me, going, 'Stupid mo'fo', all that money and he don't even know how to play shit!' [laughs] And that kinda pumped me up, 'cause I didn't want my friends to think I was stupid, so I wrote my first song two days later - you know, stayed up all night trying to figure out how to use all this stuff - and that's how I got started."
Astonishingly, Jefferson says he had to pay Sherman for what actually became Trax's 14th release, the 'Virgo EP'. "I looked on the label and found out where Jesse Saunders got his records pressed up, 'cause Jesse had his own label. I thought I might as well go to the same place, so I went there and the guy [Larry Sherman] says 'Sure, I'll press up all your records, just give me the money'. So I gave him the money and he pressed up the record. I paid about $1500 to get that record pressed and to this day I haven't seen any money from it. Larry sold... just loads of that, but I've never seen any money."
Ron Hardy's club became the perfect testing ground for Trax material. If a record worked for Ron Hardy, most likely it would work, period. Other attempts at A&R were less successful, according to Marshall.
"Larry didn't know nothing. [laughs] I remember he didn't want to put out 'Can U Feel It' by Mr Fingers, he thought it was boring, but I said, 'No man, you gotta put it out'. He's like [adopts Sherman voice] 'There's no words on it! I don't get it'!" [more laughs]
But Trax was no longer alone on the Chicago scene - many artists worked for Trax and Rocky Jones' DJ International imprint. DJ International has itself provided a fair slice of house music's early standards, such as Sterling Void 'Its Alright' and JM Silk (Steve Hurley) 'Music Is The Key'. There was rivalry between the two - Trax's 30th release was Boris Badenough's 'Hey Rocky' - but where The Power Plant's more soulful style had contrasted with the rawer sound of The Music Box, so did DJ International lead the way with the vocal releases as opposed to Trax's, er, trax. And it was DJ International which made house's first breakthrough into the mainstream with Farley Jackmaster Funk's 'Love Can't Turn Around', reaching the UK Top 10 in August 1986 via a deal with FFRR. The same year in the UK, the first house clubs opened in Manchester and London. Steve Silk Hurley's 'Jack Your Body' followed early 1987 and house had its first number one.
Trax's glory years were the mid-to-late 1980s. In 1987 they gave the world its second gift when Phuture released 'Acid Trax'. Written by Herbert J, DJ Pierre and Spanky and produced by Marshall Jefferson, it was the first acid record.
The label's parting shot was, in effect, the Jamie Principle-penned (but credited to Larry Levan) 'Your Love', a hit in 1989. By now things were beginning to take a turn for the worse.
In short, it seems that the Chicago scene began to disintegrate. There are plenty of theories as to why, but the truth is more likely that there were several things to blame.
One is the outbreak of backbiting and infighting which followed the relatively rapid expansion of the scene in a matter of just a few years - indeed Jesse Saunders left Chicago to pursue his Jesse's Gang project with Warners after disagreements surrounding 'Love Can't Turn Around', first between Farley and Steve Hurley, then regarding the licensing of the track for its UK release. Radio, too, was important, far more so than it ever has been over here. In house's nascent days radio DJs had played a vital role in bringing the music to the straight black community, most notably the famed Hot Mix Five - Farley, Hurley, Mickey Oliver, Kenny Jason and Ralphie Rosario. Chris Westbrook aka Bam Bam was running his own Westbrook label at the time and two years ago told MF:
"I was getting support from local radio and the DJs and everything, until the DJs started up their own labels. That's what killed the scene in Chicago! I don't care what nobody says! What killed the scene in Chicago was when the radio DJs, who were initially playing our music and helping us, started their own labels and started competing against us! And they was only playing the records they were putting out or that their partners were putting out."
Rachael Cain agrees. "In the beginning that didn't happen. At first it was great because people were really helping one another. And then I guess it was because everybody was starting to say, 'Hey, look what's happening, these records are breaking. I'll just do my own thing, push my own music.' So yeah, I think that's right. Right now, there are a few DJs in Chicago that are just playing their own stuff." "When I think of the fact that here in Chicago, right now, there's not a dance station - why not? If ever anybody should just herald their own music..? It wasn't that long ago that the Chicago Tribune ran a story about House music being an 'orphan at home'. Our support for the house music scene has basically been from England!"
And Trax had its problems as well, says Rachael. "What a lot of people don't know is that when Larry was at his peak, around '88, '89, and was selling a lot of copies, Landmark, which was the biggest independent distributor in America, closed its doors and Larry had to declare bankruptcy. He's since gotten out of that, but at one time Trax was bankrupt."
Larry Sherman is a peculiar but vital figure in the history of house music. As you may already know, or just have guessed from Saunders and Jefferson's earlier comments, his business practices are the stuff of legend.
MJ: "Larry's in this circle of Jewish guys, right, and all of them own each others' businesses. So you come to sue Larry or bring up something about Trax records, and some guy in Japan owns the company. Larry's like 'oh, I don't own this pressing plant, this guy in Japan owns it and he's not here'. [laughs] So they could never pin him down, man!"
It seems that Sherman was not averse to the odd shortcut here and there - he was only too willing to press onto old LPs and poor quality second-hand vinyl, which explains why most Trax releases sound like they were recorded outdoors. In the rain. Bootlegs, too, were on the agenda for Larry, says Saunders: "He knows what he's doing. He even had a label called Bootleg Records, he just... did it."
Frankie Bones released 'Bone Up' on Trax in 1996. He tells a similar story.
"Larry's a very eccentric type of guy. He's gotta be the most eccentric person I've ever met in the music industry. They buy, like, scrap records and he doesn't mind throwing records in, like, other companies jackets, Motown jackets, and shrinkwrapping them. It's really bizarre. I think the only reason I wanted a record on Trax was because of the whole bizarre background Trax has, y'know?"
Remember though, that Trax was a loose outfit full stop. Nobody cared too much about acting like a major label at first. Jesse Saunders description of Trax's contractual arrangements makes the point:
"There was never any paperwork. You gotta remember, back in those days he owned the pressing plant, I made the music. It was easy for us to make something and put it out, and it didn't really matter. So there was no paperwork or any of that stuff, we just did it, made the money and moved on."
But according to Rachael, Sherman has been unfairly labelled a crook. "Like, I saw the contract for 'Can U Feel It'. And what happened with that was that Larry Heard wanted to write his own contract, and wanted a bigger advance than Larry would normally give. So he gave away all of his rights!" Rachael also states that Sherman isn't as well off as some would have it.
"See, in the beginning we were all these young kids, and there weren't many other house labels, it was a very closed market. So what happened was you made these tracks and you sold them, you got your advance. And I think that some people thought that records were bigger than they actually were. 'Cause I know that though the numbers were there they were not as great as people think. That's a fact. People think Larry is loaded but he's not, he's practically broke. Also, I think that what happened in a lot of cases was that people gave us their best music. Now they look back and they're disappointed, because they haven't made a better one since. They're riding on that record and they're not getting the money they would like."
This contrasts sharply with Marshall Jefferson's version, however.
"Larry just... took shit, man! [laughs] Just took it. And Larry's got the pressing plant right there, man, and he just keeps pressing it up, pressing it up, year after year. And people would phone up saying, 'We were looking for some of those old Trax Records classics, like Mr Fingers and 'Move Your Body' and he'd be like [adopts Sherman voice] 'Well, you know what, luckily we still have some left..' [more laughs]"
Yet as Jefferson also points out, at the time, money wasn't the priority.
"It wasn't really important to actually make money off of it. It's like, we were making records, man. Nobody really cared about making money, that's why we kept on doing it. Nobody really brought money up unless bills had to be paid or something like that. I had a good job, right, so money was really secondary. We just wanted to put out records, man. We were putting out records that were different from anything else in the world. And then once we got into it, we kinda realised we were like, startin' something, y'know? I'm really fond of that."
As the nineties arrived, acid house blossomed and Europe began to create its own version of the house sound. Some Trax artists moved away from Chicago to further their careers, or moved into other areas of production. Others simply gave up and disappeared from view. Larry Sherman had personal problems, but maintained Trax on and off, mainly through its Saber subsidiary. Ron Hardy had left the Music Box around 1987 and died in 1991.
Some Trax artists have successfully progressed into the wider dance scene of the nineties: Farley Jackmaster Funk and Marshall Jefferson are regulars on the DJ circuit. Jesse Saunders thinks he knows why:
"Marshall told me that when he went over there [the UK] people started asking him to DJ, and he said, 'I ain't no DJ'. And they said, 'We'll pay you $1500, $2000', so he said, 'Alright, I'm a DJ!'" [laughs]
But there is no doubt that plenty more artists who, despite (unwittingly) making valuable contributions to the development of house, now live in obscurity, unrecognised by the millions who now live their lives to the soundtrack these people helped create. And that is a great shame.
The latest chapter in the Trax saga is the recent spate of crackle-free re-releases from the Trax back catalogue thanks to a licensing deal with a London company. Whether or not any of the artists were consulted about this is unclear, but those concerns aside the re-releases provide a great opportunity for today's spoon-fed dance music generation raised on the myriad of styles that house music has spawned (including, to a large extent, techno) to listen to the records which started it all. Timeless records created on the barest of equipment in an era where there were no rules or expectations about how a certain record should sound. It was genuine, it was fresh and but it's gone forever. Only the music remains. Rachael Cain:
"I think the spirit was what was so important about the house music scene. When you think about a whole bunch of young kids who had no money, all knew each other, that whole group of people made a legendary style of music. Maybe other people made more money than us by taking over our sound, and maybe people in our own town might think that this is from England, but the people who really know, know."
Frankie Bones, too, is not bitter.
"In the end, although I didn't get paid, I do still hold that label in regard. I think the whole entire movement wouldn't be where it is without Trax, y'know?"
But the last word goes to Jesse Saunders, a true unsung hero of house.
"When I did my first record, I just did it because I was bored and needed something to do, to be honest. I didn't think that anything would come out of it..."
Max Renn
Ten classic Trax
Marshall Jefferson: Move Your Body (The House Music Anthem)
Jungle Wonz: Bird In a Gilded Cage
Adonis: No Way Back
Mr Fingers: Can U Feel It
Fingers Inc: Washing Machine
Phuture: Acid Trax
Phuture: We Are Phuture
Larry Levan: Your Love
House Master Boyz: House Nation
Ralphie Rosario: U Used To Hold Me
Bubbling under
Ron Hardy: Liquid Love
Sleazy D: I've Lost Control
Steve Poindexter: Work That Motherfucker
Beltram: Flash Cube
Mr Lee: Pump Up Chicago
Maurice: I Got A Big Dick/This Is Acid
Jackmaster D: Sensual Woman
Adonis: Rocking Down The House
Marshall Jefferson: Virgo EP
Farley Keith: Funkin With The Drummer
Five not-so-classic Trax
Fat Albert: Beat Me Til I Jack
Willi Wanka: What Is House
Bart Starr: Way To Go Homer
Gotham City: Bat Trax
Farm Boy: Jackin Me Around
--Tom Robbins aka Max Renn is author of the above article. He was publisher and editor of Magic Feet magazine from which the article is lifted.
We found this disco @ http://www.geocities.com/jahsonic/Trax.html, Great!
A short history of the Stress decade:
90/91
Stress stumbles enthusiastically into existence with two instant northern rave anthems courtesy of PKA, 'Let Me Hear You Say Yeah' and 'Temperature Rising'. Upcoming DJ Sasha gets cooped up in DMC's box-like studio 3 to work on his second ever remix, the now legendary 'MFI' version of the Brothers in Rhythm-produced 'Nasty Rhythm' by Creative Thieves. Our distribution company Spartan goes bust - over to SRD for the release of PKA's 'Powergen'.
1992
Refreshed, revitalised, and finding a spiritual home amongst the new wave of van-based distribution companies, Stress comes of age with DJs and clubbers of all shades salivating over the likes of 'Mighty Ming' by Brothers Loves Dubs, 'Last Rhythm' by Last Rhythm, 'Uncle Bob's Burly House', Sasha's mix of Rusty 'Everything's Gonna Change', and the first of the Hustlers Convention disco cut-up EPs.
1993
Things are getting serious, Digweed and Muir create the classic 'For What You Dream Of as Bedrock. Tracks by the likes of Reefa, All Boxed In, Mindwarp, along with new fare from Brothers Love Dubs and the Hustlers puts the label firmly in the dance indie vanguard. The year ends with the ground breaking 'DJ Culture' compilation release, available in both unmixed and mixed formats. The latter being relatively unheard of at the time, and featuring the talents of Sasha and Dave Seaman.
1994
Two of the year's biggest vocal anthems are released: Kathy Brown's 'Turn Me Out' (with the mighty Delorme mix) and Brothers In Rhythm's 'Forever and a Day' featuring Charvoni raising hands nationwide. Chris & James announce themselves big time with 'Club For Life' and 'Calm Down'. Two more compilations follow: 'Club Culture', whose mixed version features the talents of Sure is Pure and John Digweed and utilises the club logos of Golden and Renaissance and 'Remix Culture', with Chris & James and Johnny Vicious doing the honours.
1995
A year where the balance between credibility and accessibility is struck perfectly through keynote releases such as Greed's 'Pump Up The Volume', Anthony White's 'Love Me Tonight', the Tenaglia-produced 'Change' by Daphne, Desert's sublime 'Moods', and Chris & James' Pulp Fiction inspired 'Fox Force Five'. Seaman, Warren and Whitehead produce an inspirational CD set. We make Mixmag's 'Best 50 Dance Labels in the World' list, and are dubbed "no. 1 dominators of the UK club scene." by Jockey Slut.
1996
The Top 40 is stormed three times in eight weeks with the Trainspotting-fuelled reissue of Bedrock, Full Intention's contemporary classic 'America', and Chameleon's 'The Way It Is'. We nail our colours firmly to the mast named artist development and introduce critically acclaimed new acts such as New York one-offs Superstars of Rock, Jersey's epic house icons Sunday Club, Scott Bond's Q:Dos project, and progressive pounders Palefield Mountain. Only black spot is the realisation, despite a well crafted internationally flavoured CD set from Gordon Kaye (UK), Anthony Pappa (Australia) and Tom & Jerry Bouthier (France), we're being muscled out of the compilation market.
1997
A host of quality, critically acclaimed singles include the Brothers In Rhythm / Sasha remixed 'Careful' by Horse, Chris & James' take on Japan's 'Ghosts' with A Man Called Adam's Sally Rogers on vocals, Full Intention's chartbusting revision of 'Shake Your Body', Sunday Club's Paul Van Dyk remixed 'Healing Dream' and the launch of our leftfield sister label Related (geddit? - sorry). We change tack on the compilation front with the release of the much-lauded, lavishly packaged, ahead of it's time 'Zeitgeist: New Wave Club Culture'.
1998
Full Intention go from strength to strength with tracks such as 'You Are Somebody' and the storming remix of Salsoul Orchestra's Ooh I Love It', and we celebrate by expanding their Sugar Daddy imprint into a fully fledged label where Fl are flanked by the likes of Dave Lee, Superstars of Rock and new id on the block DJ Phats. Stress goes into overdrive with Chris & James' humungous revamp of 'Club for Life' and the Anthony Pappa / Alan Bremner produced debut stunner as Freefall 'Skydive".
1999
And so our tale decades out. DMC has decided to leave the label in the decade it belonged to and move the DJ World into 21st Century music pastures.
DMC has always been motorised by DJs. Many of its employees are or have been DJs and the inspiration and the direction the company has provided to the DJ society is legend.
Almost every major DJ has been given a leg-up their career ladder by DMC. We, after all were the first company to put the Club DJ on the front page! DMC was first to recognise the artistic value of mixing. The company was formed in February 1983 as a DJ Only mixing subscription record club and from the monthly releases, which only pro club DJs could subscribe to, came world-wide inspiration. From 1983 onwards club DJs put down their microphones, placed their left hand to the headphone and their right hand on the vinyl.
It was a revolution which flourished as DMC pushed more and more initiative into Mixmag and Update, (now 7 Magazine). Stress was launched to help DJs advance their talents as producers. Every release was produced by or featured a DJ.
Now DMC has closed their main recording studio and exchanged the recording equipment for computers as the company commits itself and the DJs who support DMC, to Cyber-DJs @ dmcworld.com, a site that once again demonstrates the passion DMC maintains for the world-wide DJ population.
”Like most of the best things in life, Stress started out as a bit of fun. Back in 1990, our parent company DMC were publishing Mixmag (which you may just have heard of). Editor at the time was one Dave Seaman (he of trance-fuelled deck heroics rather than the 'tache-fuelled goal keeping feats), aided and abetted by yours truly. DMC pioneered the whole DJ producer thing, so commonplace now it's hard to recall how novel it was then, not to mention how frowned upon it was by the tired old rock industry's would-be cognoscenti.
But I digress. DMC had recording studios with DJs wandering in and out at will with boxes full of tunes and heads filled with ideas, which, if I may paraphrase Bob Dylan (pioneering speed rapper), were driving them insane. Teamed up with the right studio bods with the requisite dancefloor savvy, that insanity was channelled into a slew of rather good house records. The corporate record companies being the lumbering behemoths that they are, some of said tunes were failing to find a deserved home. So we created a label to give them one (a deserved home, that is).
So there it was - the good ship Stress, run by clubbers and DJs for clubbers and DJs (in those far off innocent days you could say things like that without being sniggered at). And looking at our catalogue of 100+ releases, I'd venture to suggest it was a damn good label. For many we were seen as prog house central, thanks to the likes of Desert, Sunday Club, Coyote, Palefield Mountain and Messrs Digweed and Muir in their mighty Bedrock guise. Top bods all, but we also pioneered quality disco house with Full Intention (aka Hustlers Convention), found room for productions and mixes from the likes of Tenaglia, Slam, Claudio Coccoluto and Fathers Of Sound, and put a host of DJ favourites onto vinyl (Chris & James, Gordon Kaye, Anthony Pappa, Jerry Bouthier and his sorely missed brother Tom). Twas a veritable global family of like-minded individuals.
Few UK dance labels have lasted throughout the 90s. In fact, you could probably count them on the fingers of one hand - certainly independents. Stress, however, survived and thrived throughout the decade. This compilation album celebrates that fact and goes a long way towards explaining it.”
"The beat won't stop with the JM Jock. If he jacks the box and the partyrocks. The clock tick tocks and the place gets hot. So ease your mind and set yourself free. To that mystifying music they call the key". -Music Is The Key, JM Silk, 1985 House is as new as the microchip and as old as the hills. It first came to widespread attention in the summer of 1986 when a rash of records imported directly from Chicago began to dominate the playlist of Europe's most influential DJs. Within a matter of months, with virtually no support from the national radio networks, Britain's club scene voted with its feet, three house records forced their way into the top ten. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk "Love Can't Turn Around", Raze's "Jack The Groove", and Steve "Silk" Hurley "Jack Your Body", gave the club scene a new buzz-word, jacking, the term used by Chicago dancers to describe the frantic body pace of the House Sound. Whole litany of Jack Attacks beseiged the music scene. Bad Boy Bill's "Jack It All Night Long", Femme Fion's "Jack The House", Chip E's "Time To Jack", and Julian "Jumpin" Perez "Jack Me Till I Scream".
House music takes its name from an old Chicago night club called The Warehouse, where the resident DJ, Frankie Knuckles, mixed old disco classics, new Eurobeat pop and synthesised beats into a frantic high- energy amalgamation of recycled soul. Frankie is more than a DJ, he's an architect of sound, who has taken the art of mixing to new heights. Regulars at the Warehouse remember it as the most atmospheric place in Chicago, the pioneering nerve-center of a thriving dance music scene where old Philly classics by Harold Melvin, Billy Paul and The O'Jays were mixed with upfront disco hits like Martin Circus' "Disco Circus" and imported European pop music by synthesiser groups like Kraftwerk and Telex.
One of the club's regular faces was a mysterious young black teenager who styled himself on the eccentric funk star George Clinton. Calling himself Professor Funk, he would dress to shock, and stay at the Warehouse through the night, until the very last record was back in Frankie's box. Professor Funk is now a recording artist. He appears on stage dressed in the full regalaia of an old world English King singing weird acidic house records like "Work your Body" and "Visions". The Professor believes that the excitement of house music can be traced back to the creativity of The Warehouse. The Professor's memories carry a hidden truth.
The decadent beat of Chicago House, a relentless sound designed to take dancers to a new high, it has its origins in the gospel and its future in spaced out simulation(techno). In the mid 1970's, when disco was still an underground phenomeon, sin and salvation were willfully mixed together to create a sound which somehow managed to be decadent and devout. New York based disco labels, like Prelude, West End, Salsoul, and TK Disco, literally pioneered a form of orgasmic gospel, which merged the sweeping strings of Philadelphia dance music with the tortured vocals of soul singers like Loleatta Holloway. Her most famous releases, "Love Sensation" and "Hit and Run" became working models for modern house records. After an eventful career which began in Atlanta and the southren gospel belt, Loleatta joined Salsoul Records during the height of the metropolitan disco boom, before returning to her hometown of Chicago.
According to Frankie Knuckles, house is not a break with the black music of the past, but an extreme re-invention of the dance music of yesterday. He sees House music with a very clear tradition, a kind of two-way love affair with the city of New York and the sound of disco. If he were to list his favorite records, they would be a reader's guide to disco, including Colonel Abrams "Trapped", Sharon Redd's "Can You Handle It", Fat Lerry's "Act Like You Know", Positive Force "You Got The Funk" Jimmy Bo Horn "Spank", D-Train "You're The One". But most of all he relishes the sound where the church and the dancefloor are thrown together with a willful disregard for religious propriety. Religion weaves its way through the house sound in ways that would confound the disbelievers.
Most Chicago DJ's admit a debt to the underground 1970's underground club scene in New York and particulary the original disco-mixer Walter Gibbons, a white DJ who popularised the basic techniques of disco-mixing, then graduated to Salsoul Records where he turned otherwise unremarkable dance records into monumental sculptures of sound. It was Gibbons who paved the way for the disc-jockey's historical shift from the twin-decks to the production studio. But ironically, at the height of his cult popularity, he drifted away from the decadent heat of disco to become a "Born Again Christian", having created a space which was ultimately filled by subsequent DJ Producers like Jellybean Benitez, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Arthur Baker, Francois Kervorkian, The Latin Rascals, and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk.
Most people believed that Walter Gibbons was a fading legend in the early history of disco, then in 1984 he resurfaced, and had a new and immediate impact on the development of Chicago House Sound. Gibbons released an independent 12" record called "Set It Off" which started to create a stir at Paradise Garage, the black gay club in New York, where Larry LeVan presided over the wheels of steel. Within weeks a "Set It Off" craze spread through the club scene, including new versions by C.Sharp, Masquerade, and answer versions like Import Number 1's "Set It Off(Party Rock)". The original record had been "mixed with love by Walter Gibbons" and was released on the Jus Born label, a tongue in cheek reference to Walter's christianity. Gibbons had set the tone again, the "Set It Off" sound was primitive House, haunting, repetitive beats ideal for mixing and extending. It immediately became an underground club anthem, finding a natural home in Chicago, where a whole generation of DJ's including Farley and Frankie Knuckles, rocked the clubs and regularly played on local radio stations.
For major house stars like Frankie Knuckles, the disco consul is a pulpit and the DJ is a high priest. The dancers are a fanatical congreation who will dance until dawn, and in some cases demand that the music goes on in an unbroken surge for over 18 hours. Mixing is a religion. Old records like First Choice's "Let No Man Put Asunder" and Candido's "Jingo" , Shirley Lites "Heat You Up(Melt You Down)", Eurobeat dance records by Depeche Mode, The Human League, BEF, Telex, and New Order, the speeches of Martin Luther King, and the sound effects of speeding express trains were all used when Frankie Knuckles controlled the decks. And the high priest of house had many desciples.
On the southside of Chicago, a young teenager called Tyree Cooper, was intrigued by Frankie's use of the speeches of Martin Luther King. He raided his mother's record collection and discovered a record by local preacher, The Rev. T.L. Barrett Jr. whose choir at the Chicago Church of Universal Awareness were the pride of the city. Tyree began using the record at local House parties and within a few months, sermon mixing, the art of splicing short gospel speeches over frantic dance music, became an established part of the Chicago DJ's art. It didn't end there.Tyree Cooper joined DJ International Records, ultimately releasing "I Fear The Night", and back home at his mother's church, the choir were beginning to excited about one of their featured vocalists
. A gigantic college trained vocalist, Darryl Pandy was boasting about his new record. He had left the choir a few weeks before to sing lead vocals on Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around", which against all odds was racing to the number 1 spot on British charts. House had its roots in gospel and its future mapped out. The international success of House came against all known odds. New York and Los Angeles were firmly established as the music capitals of the USA and there was virtually no room for small regional records to make a national impact. According to Keith Nunnally of JM Silk, Chicago turned their limitations into an advantage, turning the poverty of resources into a richness of musical experiment.
Despite technical drawbacks, a whole wave of new independent dance labels sprung up in Chicago. The declaration of independence was led by Rocky Jones DJ International label, a relatively small company which grew out of a DJ Record distribution pool spreading from a small warehouse near Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, to become one of the trans- national dance scene's most influential labels. At the 1986 New Music seminar in New York, DJ International roster of artists stole the show, as every major label made frantic bids to buy a piece of the house action. Within a matter of a few days, records by the diminutive House DJ Chip E, the sophisticated gospel singer Shawn Christopher and the outrageous Daryl Pandy were sold round the world.
At the height of the bidding, JM Silk signed to RCA records for an undisclosed fortune. The commercial evidence of tracks like "Music Is The Key" and "Shadows of Your Love" proved that House music had the energy and excellence to move from being a regional cult to a modern international success. Within a matter of months every music paper in the world was praying at the feet of Chicago House. Although the first wave of interest focused on the DJ International label and particulary the unlikely duo of Farley, a legendary Chicago DJ, and his opera trained vocalist Daryl Pandy, it soon became apparent that their hit "Love Can't Turn Around" was only the peak of mid-Western iceberg. Chicago was alive with musicians. Local radio stations like WGCI and WBMX rocked to the music of the "Hot Mix 5", a group of DJ's who mixed whole nights of dance music without uttering a word and clubs like The Power Plant stayed open all-night carrying the torch once held by The Warehouse.
Locked in local competition with DJ International were a hundred other labels. The most important was Trax on North Clark Street, a label which ultimately went on to release some of house music's recognised classics. Marshall Jefferson gave Trax two of its most important records, the hectic 120 BPM "Move Your Body" and the follow up "Ride The Rhythm". His reputation was rivalled by Adonis, who released "No Way Back". The second biggest selling record Trax has ever issued, a record which reportedly sold over 120,000 copies, a staggering number for an independent record which received very little air play.
Behind the visible success story of DJ International, Underground, Trax, were countless smaller labels like Jes Say, Chicago Connectinon, Bright Star, Dance Mania, Sunset, House Records, Hot Mix 5, State Street, and Sound Pak. And behind the stars like Farley and Frankie Knuckles are numerous other musicians, like Full House, Ricky Dillard, Fingers Inc. and Farm Boy. House music has spread throughout the world. It has spread to Detroit where Transmat Records released Derrick May's Rhythim Is Rhythim record at the Metroplex Studio laying down post-Kraftwerk tracks like "Nude Photo" and "Strings".
It has spread to New York, where the respected club producer Arthur Baker has been given a new lease on life, recording unapologetic dance records like Criminal Elements "Put The Needle To The Record" and Jack E. Makossa. It has spread to London where a gang of renegade funk boys called M/A/R/R/S took the British charts by storm, climbing to Number 1 with the brillant collage record "Pump Up The Volume". It has spread into the very heart of pop music, encouraging Phil Fearon, Kissing The Pink, Beatmasters and Mel and Kim to turn the beat around. And it has infilitrated into already dynamic cultures like the Latin and Hispanic dance scene creating new possibilites for Kenny "Jammin'" Jason, Ralphi Rosario, Mario Diaz, Julian "Jumpin" Perez, Mario Reyes and Two Puerto Ricans, A Blackman, and A Dominican.
Chicago house has become everyones House. House music is a universal language. Given the undoubted international popularity of the Chicago sound, it would have been easy for the producers of House music to rest on their laurels and continually reproduce more of the same. For a while the city stuck firmly to its identifiable beat - hardcore on the one - but the experimentation which gave birth to House inevitably wanted to change it. By 1987 a new style of House music began to escape from Chicago's recording studios. It was a "deep", highly sophisticated sound, which evoked strange, almost drug-induced images.
The second generation House sound probably began with the international success of Phutures's "Acid Tracks" a hugely influential record, which captured the extreme spirit of the House scene's most ardent adherents, the hardcore dancer in Chicago, who variously experimented with LSD, acid psychedelia and new designer drugs like Ectasy. Frankie Knuckles has been careful not to sensationalise the influence of drugs. "Today there is more psychedlic sound. Acid is probably the most prevelant drug on the scene, but House is no druggier than any other scene".
None of House music's prominent performers have advocated drug abuse nor set out to glorify chemical stimulation, but an increasing number of Chicago records have controversially referred to acid tracking, the estranged synthesiser sound you can hear on several house releases. These Acid Tracks have taken house music into a new phuturism, a modern uptempo psychedelia that London club DJ's call Trance Dance. The roots of Trance Dance are not to be found in the more established traditions of 60's psychedelic rock but ironically in 1970's Europe, through highly synthesised records like Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers".
The trance-dance sound is only beginning to establish on the Chicago Scene but it has already been adopted in British Clubs and will undoubtedly shape the new phuture of house. But beneath the abstract surface of acid-track house records is the same compulsive dance command. Frankie Knuckles is sure of that. "When people hear house rhythms they go freak out. It's an instant dance reaction. If you can't dance to House you're already dead" -Stuart Cosgrove for The History of House Sound of Chicago 12 record set on BCM records, Germany, Out of Print Inevitably, it was the restless London club scene and the illegal pirate radio stations of urban Britain that seized on the real potential of house.
The relatively cheap and do-it-yourself ethics which governed house production meant that young DJ's with inexpensive equipment could make records that were fresher and faster than the more institutionalized major labels. A series of sampled and stolen sounds, released on small scale British independent labels took the popcharts by storm, suprising the record industry and demonstrating that the house sound had a commercial appeal beyond even the wild imagination of the London club scene. In the spring of 1988 a small group of London based DJ's traded their turntables for the recording studios. Tim Simenon, working under the club pseudonym Bomb The Bass and Mark Moore using the band name S-Express had unexpected pop hits with sampled house rhythms. "Beat Dis" and "The Theme From S-Express" were charateristic of the sound that creative theft and sampling could achieve.
DJ's with huge record collections and a catalogue knowledge of breaks, beats, bits and pieces could string together an entirely new record concocted out of barely rememberal records. The masters of the London sampling scene were two unlikely DJ's, Jonathan Moore and Matt Black, who played under the name DJ Coldcut and devastated London's pirate airwaves with imaginative record choices, crazy mixes and a wilful disregard for what made musical sense.
When Coldcut's remix of Eric B and Ra-Kim rap hit "I Know You Got Soul" took the ungrateful New Yorkers to Number 1 in the pop charts in Europe it became obvious that sampling and the spirit of "Pump Up The Volume" was here to stay. The Coldcut rap mix was closely followed by the more house orientated "Doctorin The House" which featured Yazz and The Plastic People, than a cover version of Otis Clay's "The Only Way Is Up", an obscure soul sound which was big on Britain's esoteric northern soul scene. By a strange twist of history, and old Chicago soul singer from the 60's had his career momentarily revitalised by the fallout of the modern Chicago house sound.
By the summer of 1988, the British charts and teh over zealous tabloid press were over-run with acid. The music had clearly touched a raw pop nerve as one by one underground acid-house records stormed into the pop press. But their unexpected commercial success was pursued by controversy and daily press reports that the acid-house scene was a dangerous focus for drug abuse. Each new day brought increased public panic about the abuse of the synthetically compounded Ecstasy drug and by October 1988, acid house and its casual catch phrases "get on one matey", "can you feel it", and "we call it acieeeeed" were in everyday conversation.
The controversy reached its head in the autumn of press overkill when "We Call It Acieed" by D. Mob reached number 1 on the British pop charts. Radio stations were reluctant to play the record, BBC's phone in program, "daytime" had a nationwide debate on the acceptability of the song, and in a fit of moral outrage, the Burton's clothes chain withdrew smiley tee-shirts from their stores and refused to participate in the acid epidemic. Behind the hype and the press hostility the music continued its journey of unparalled progress.
If acid house had troubled the mainstream press it had also advanced the creativity of music introducing the remarkable and prodigious talent of Brooklyn's Todd Terry to the forefront of the underground dance music scene. Todd Terry is a child of house. His whole life spent buried in club culture and experimenting with the extremes of hi-tech music. Under the pseudonym Swan Lake, Martin Luther King's spiritual dream is turned into a dance floor drama, as Royal House's "Can You Party" and The Todd Terry Project "Just wanna Dance" catches the garage spirit of modern house.
-Stuart Cosgrove for The History of House Sound of Chicago The Story Continues... BCM Records, Germany Out OF Print
With the popularity of traditional deep house sounds seemingly the latest trend in the ever-changing kaleidoscope of electronic music, we went back in time to Paradise Garage
Larry Levan and the Paradise Garage, the DJ and club that changed everything and shaped the next 20 years of dance music culture.
Levan was born Lawrence Philpot in Brooklyn 1954 and was influenced by contemporaries like Nicky Siano and particularly David Mancuso, one time partner and host of the seminal parties at 'The Loft'. Then at the Paradise Garage from 1976 to 1987, Larry was resident DJ, a tag that in the modern sense does no justice to Levan's immense contribution to the club.
Not only did he help design and assemble what is regarded as the most legendary club sound system to have existed, but he spent immeasurable time testing it, fine tuning it and improving it, even if the changes seemed trivial or minute. That was Larry Levan. The music and the Garage were his life; an addiction.
Sadly, it was the other addiction in his life, heroin, which would eventually indirectly lead to his death in November 1992 at just 38. Enjoying somewhat of a revival in his fortunes since the low of the Garage's closure in 1987, and death of owner Michael Brody shortly after, it was a devastating loss. This compilation of words from Levan's friends, contemporaries and devotees form our tribute to a legend.
Larry the Music man:
Mel Cheren
"Everyone has certain talents, natural abilities, some people are born with the talent to paint; some people are born with the talent to write. Larry had the talent for music and he could take 2,000 people and make them feel like they were at a house party. He yearned for more than technical perfection, he wanted inspiration. Ecstasy. He wanted to spin the way he lived – in inspired anarchy."
David Piccioni
"He was THE reason I devoted my life and work to dance music. I was DJing in the UK before I moved to New York, but I had not really taken it seriously till I heard him play. Once I heard him I realized that DJing was not just a question of playing records but was a real creative art form in itself."
François K
"Larry was able to use songs - songs with lyrics - and he used those lyrics to talk to people, it was very common for people on the dancefloor to feel like he was talking to him directly through the record. He built sets that were built on stories that went into each other."
"Larry would spend all these hours after the club was closed moving speakers around, changing amplifier levels and trying out different cartridges and other different things. It's not just about building it, it's about maintaining it, improving it, tweaking it and taking care of it. No one does that now."
Marshall Jefferson (Legendary Chicago DJ and producer)
"Larry Levan was one of the best two DJs I've ever seen breaking new records, the other was Ron Hardy. Both of these men had extremely similar styles: go with the feeling. Both had every DJ in a 500-mile radius and beyond asking what they played while simultaneously blasting their mixing technique. I think American DJs as a whole can learn a lot from these two, because with all the hot mixing going on now, it takes ten or more jocks to do the job of one Larry Levan."
Joe Claussell
"Larry himself was a wizard when it came to DJing, but I don't think many DJs today understand his philosophy. Everyone is still with the pretty mixes, making sure that it's all on-beat but they don't have a clue what it takes to present their music to a crowd. It was his combination of different music and the fact that he knew how to read a crowd, he knew what record to play at what time; he knew the crowd intimately and what record would move what part of the dancefloor. It was magical to watch."
Paradise Garage Neon LightDanny Tenaglia
"No club is ever going to come close to the Paradise Garage because, for everybody involved, that room was their passion. From Larry to the person that owned it to security. And the sound system was so professionally maintained. On a weekly basis he would check every speaker with audio gear, alter speakers that were wobbling or move them an inch if it was necessary. I have so many great memories of that place. It's been a major influence on me and my career."
DJ Harvey (who brought Levan to play his night 'Moist' at the Gardening Club in London in 1991)
"He kind of lived up to being Larry Levan, you know what I mean? He lived up to the legend. Whether it was to do with drugs, music, DJ-ing, or whatever. He was quite full-on in a lot of ways and passionate about stuff. The actual control of the sound was a great thing for him because it wasn't like he was a great mixer particularly but the records came on in the right order. And the way that he would just use the volume knob, for instance, to accentuate certain parts of the song or lyrics or whatever was incredible. Working the record using the volume, bass, mild and treble. He was a master at that for sure."
David Morales
"He could be shit for seven hours and he could take 15 minutes and kick the shit out of you, and that made your night! That's what it was about. There was nobody that was able to do that."
David Depino
"He was wild. There was no holding him back. There was no norm for Larry at the Garage. It was his home and he didn't follow no book. The freedom he had and the nonchalance he had up there sometimes made 2,000 people come together as one. He made them feel like they were at a house party. And I never saw to this day a DJ do that. Ever."
Frankie Knuckles (New Yorker and friend of Levan, who became resident after him at The Continental Baths. It represents the starting point of both their DJ careers.)
"He showed us how to work the equipment and taught us an appreciation of the music, how to put it together and what a song is supposed to do. Nicky [Siano] was the first DJ at that particular time that came remotely close to making beats match, and what happened was that Larry pretty much perfected it after that."
Larry the Music man
Robert Owens (Chicago producer and vocalist)
"The first time I walked into the Paradise Garage back in 1980, I knew that this was unlike any club I'd seen before. For that matter, any club since. The spirit and energy in the room, which seemed to pour out of the DJ, was overwhelming. From that Saturday, and almost every Saturday till it closed, Larry Levan would make records that I had heard hundreds of times before sound brand-new and expose me to so much new music. He changed the way I felt about DJs and the way I played records, because it wasn't just about playing records, it was about communication. When he played tapes of mixes he was working on or had finished, I would be amazed to hear what he had done. He inspired me to get into the studio and create. He had a vision and took his music to the limit. Like his DJing, Larry was truly unique. When the Garage closed its doors, Saturday nights were never the same. The Garage was like a family and I feel grateful to have been able to experience it."
Levan explained his technique in Collusion magazine:
"Out of all the records you have, maybe five or six of them make sense together. There is actually a message in the dance, the way you feel, the muscles you use, but only certain records have that. Say I was playing songs about music - 'I Love Music' by The O'Jays, 'Music' by Al Hudson and the next record is Phreek's 'Weekend', that's about getting laid, a whole other thing. If I was dancing and truly into the words and the feeling and it came on, it might be a good record, but it makes no sense because it doesn't have anything to do with the others. So a slight pause, a sound effect, something else to let you know it's a new paragraph rather than one continuous sentence."
The Ministry of Sound connection (Justin Berkmann - Ministry of Sound Founder)
"I invited Larry Levan to come to London to DJ at the club in October 1991. Larry arrived 8 days late and without any music. He had come over to play along with Victor Rosado, (who did arrive on time), and was supposed to stay for just a week, instead he stayed 3 months. I brought him over because Ministry of Sound had been more or less conceptualized by me at Paradise Garage in New York, and being a core member and devotee of the club and Larry, I wanted to have the 'Levan Stamp of Authority' on my creation in London."
"Larry had no input into the initial sound system design or installation; Austen Derek, the system creator, designed, installed and tuned it. But once Larry had arrived, he wanted to 'fine tune' it and set to work with me making it as close to perfection as possible. Changing the angle of the speaker stacks 1 or 2 degrees left/right, moving them minute distances around, they slowly got the speakers into their best position to eliminate any cancellation and after a month or so, by Xmas/NYE 1991, had got it pretty close to perfection. Larry was a natural teacher, keen to pass on his experience to whoever wanted to learn, and made many friends in the process. Larry played at MoS 4 times, I also introduced him to Paul Oakenfold do some studio work for Perfecto, and sent him to do a couple of gigs in Munich, Germany. Larry was very happy during his stay in London."
The Paradise Garage:
Mel Cheren (Financial backer of Paradise Garage and former partner of owner, Michael Brody and whom Levan used to call his stepfather.)
"There was no attitude here, no cliques defined by their muscles, no fashion victims, no A-list. These people were dancers.’ And this is what made the atmosphere at the Garage so electrifying – it was driven by the energetic input of its clubbers. ‘The intensity of the disco pyrotechnics was unlike anything anywhere. Venturing onto the dance floor was like swimming into an undertow – you were sucked into the vortex, and you surrendered, for hours at a time."
"It was the one place that truly reflected the rainbow that had produced disco’s pot of gold. The potent intersection of rhythm, race and realness that had produced disco in the first place – black as it was gay, gay as it was black – all came together here."
François K (New York resident since the 1975 and one of only a few other DJs to have played at the Paradise Garage)
"It was a place where everyone would mingle together - whether you were a superstar or whether you just happened to have a regular job. No heavy door scene. There is no alcohol for sale. The point of the club is dancing."
"The Paradise Garage was open for so long and it was so obviously and blatantly superior to anything else going on, you had the best sound-system around, the most talented DJ you can imagine, with amazing records that no one else could get: things he'd made himself and things others had made exclusively for him."
David Depino (one of Levan's closest friends and one of the few other DJs to have played at the Garage)
"The Garage was underground. There was no advertising. We were not an off-the-street club - it was a private, 100 per cent membership thing, but so many people would line up at the door, there'd be a line round the corner twice. They could have made a fortune but there was never money greedy. The party was first."
David Piccioni (New York resident in the 1980s and now Azuli Records boss)
"My memories are a general really. Firstly, it was a real 'club' in the true sense of the word, in that the members (you had to be a member to get in) were all likeminded people and there for the love and appreciation of music. There was a real sense of identity and history with the music, the black gay dance music scene was almost like a large family and people came together united by the music. I would often meet people in their day jobs and they would immediately say 'hey you are a member of the Garage right I saw you there?' and you would have an immediate connection. It's rare to feel that vibe in modern clubs, it happens sometimes but rarely."
Danny Tenaglia (native New Yorker and close friend of Levan)
"You felt special, you felt like you were an elite group, with people who were on the same level of understanding about music as you. In a drab district in south west Manhattan, it created a private world based on disco's original ethos of loving equality. In stark contrast to the harsh city lights outside, the Garage offered freedom, compassion and brotherhood."
Joe Claussell (who ran Body & Soul, the New York club based on the Paradise Garage)
"You entered the Garage along a long darkened runway lit by tiny flickering egg-strobes. I don't think I've ever looked forward to going up a ramp [the club's entrance] as much. At the top was 'The Garage' logo in neon. It was like going to church. Once you got up that ramp and paid your money, you were in heaven. Paradise."
Not long now before our first party of the year, and as always we're busy with the preparations for the big night. Having met some of you recently for tickets, we know you're looking forward to this one as much as we are, so we're well chuffed to have landed Justin Robertson and can't wait to hear him rock the Roots dancefloor.
In the run up to each Roots, this is one of the most enjoyable parts - everyones starting to dig for tunes - something which always throws up a few wee gems in the process - and things are moving rapidly behind the scenes. Countdown is on!
We hope you're enjoying the blog which we'll keep constantly updated, we'd love you to get involved so feel free to join in - our house is your house...
As far as i'm concerned, 20 years ago this place was one of the wonders of the world - or rather a wonderfully different world. By cleverly exploiting a loophole in the licensing laws at a time when all the establishment wanted to do was shut us down, Eclipse became the first ever 'legal' all night rave.
Every weekend thrill seekers from all over the country would converge on this unique night held in an ex bingo hall, complete with balcony and a raised DJ box. The laser show even by todays standards was breathtaking, and the 25k turbo sound system was graced by the finest of the time, the most notable probably being Sasha followed by the likes of Stu Allan, Grooverider etc.
Our wee jaunts generally consisted of a transit type van filled with matress, quilts, sounds and other 'creature comforts'....it took forever to get there but the journeys there and back are some of the funniest experiences in my life.....if I had the chance to do it all again I would gladly travel double the distance to get there.......it was just that good......
“There was some music played when I was young, by my parents in my formative years. It was quite... looking back on it, it was quite inspirational, like the first time I ever heard Barry White. That was probably when I was about ten or eleven years old. My parents had this album called ‘Stone Gon’’ which is still one of my favourites. But in general, it was a little bit middle of the road. They had classic early seventies tastes, Neil Diamond, that sort of thing, which never really got me. I think most of my musical discoveries I made entirely myself. The biggest inspiration on me was probably when I was ten or eleven, I saw a trailer on TV for ‘That’ll Be the Day’, the David Essex film about rock ‘n’ roll and working on a fairground. It was the first time I realised there was this mystical world. It wasn’t just about the music, it was the clothes as well. I think that’s the moment I felt a tingle. The first two records I ever bought were T-Rex and Wizzard. And then when punk rock came along, that really scared them, you know, I wasn’t allowed to have punk records in the house, wasn’t allowed to have ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’. That was smuggled in, I hid it under my bed!
So you know, the parents were lovely people but they weren’t…there was no real…I don’t know where my musical…where it came from, I mean apart from just saying when you’re eleven or twelve years old, it’s very formative in all areas of your life and when you see shots of Teddy Boys and rock ‘n’ roll artists at that age, it turns your world upside down.Then the other thing was the David Bowie album ‘Pin Ups’. It had a brilliant picture of him on the back, in a blue suit with an eye patch and, you know, when you’re living in the suburbs… It wasn’t a horrible childhood but it was a little bit boring. And you see stuff like that and it makes you realise there’s a whole other life, it opens up worlds, not just musically, but facts and literature and everything… Teddy Boys, David Bowie, glam rock… I found it all off my own back. I didn’t have a mentor, or anyone that I looked up to or whose musical tastes I admired. I’m always looking and the search is sometimes more interesting than the actual finding of people’s music, or making the discovery.”
You weren’t getting into current things, by going to see a gig or hearing a band on the radio or seeing something on telly.
“No. And it wasn’t just the music either. It was the whole package, the whole pop package. It was the look, you know, it was kind of… I don’t know if you can think about glamour when you’re eleven or twelve years old, but I kind of did. To me, the music and the fashion, the music and the clothes were always together. Lots of bands I didn’t like – whose music I didn’t mind but the way they looked was rubbish - I kind of dismissed them. (laughs) Call me shallow, but it was just that introduction at an early age to the combination of music and clothes being able to shock people, especially with punk rock. In sort of lower-middle class suburbia, it really was like someone had let the devil out of the box, and the whole of civilization was gonna come crashing down. But to me, it was just great, short songs about girls, drugs, and hating everything like you do when you’re twelve, thirteen, fourteen. And that’s always been the package I’ve looked for in any sort of music.”
What were your very first projects? When did music stop being a hobby and start being a career, a full time occupation?
“Well, I never got to that point. It still strikes me as a hobby, I still feel like I’m the luckiest person around. I had knowledge, but I was also…in the early years I always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. And I know you can’t make a career on that, you gotta have something to back it up. But when I started, it’s different than it is now. Since I started buying records I would always kind of… corral people, like ‘come round and listen to this new track’. To me, DJing in a big club always has been just an extension of that, just wanting to play music and seeing that look on someone’s face, and sharing that enjoyment of hearing something for the first time that you had when you first got that record, even if it’s only three people in a bedroom. When I first started DJing it was the classic bag of records ‘round a friend’s house…then when I started playing at Shoom I still had a plastic record case out of Woolworths, which fell apart one evening at one of their outside gigs. It was only over the last five years that I considered myself a DJ, ‘cos when I first started, I just played records. I never saw it as a career, because I dunno… I thought of it as a job, but I never thought of it as a career. When you start thinking career, you start thinking ‘game plans’, and ‘I’ve gotta be at a certain stage’, and ‘oh, why am I still doing this’ if, you know, ‘my career should be here’. I’ve never thought of it as a career.”
So when you were doing clubs, promoting as well, it was more for the social aspect?
“Yeah, yeah, it was just that, it was just for the love of it. It was just that I didn’t want to do anything else. I’d done every rubbish job known to mankind and all of a sudden, people wanted to come and hear me play records or come to my parties. And that’s all it ever was and all it still is. You know what I mean? Call me an underachiever but I never… I think if you start thinking of it as a career, you start thinking you’ve gotta be here at a certain time, then you start taking shortcuts and start making the wrong kind of decisions, really. For a long time I put myself down and said it wasn’t a proper job. But it is, because I do…you know, at the moment, and for the last six years, I do twelve-hour days in the studio and then drive two hours and do a gig. That’s six days a week, sometimes seven. So it’s a job, but I’ve never thought of it as a career. I think there is a big distinction between the two, really…I’ve never been interested in careers, and music, to me, was always something that was about discretion, not about careers.”
Would you like to signpost anything from your production past? A few things that you feel people should have, especially for the newer converts?
“I think I had a stage two years back of really hating everything I did early on, ‘cos it was so naïve and I could see everything that was wrong with it. But then I was listening to some stuff the other night - I listened to some old tape when I used to play music on Kiss - and I was playing a lot of my
productions. I’m actually beginning to like their naivety and roughness. It’s really weird ‘cos all my favourite music is really rough and badly played and usually badly recorded…so why shouldn’t I get the same enjoyment from my own rough, badly recorded, badly played music? You know what I mean? So yeah, I really like the My Bloody Valentine ‘Glider’ EP that I did, that’s quite a good early one. Any of the work with Primal Scream, obviously, has gotta be up there. And ‘Dexter’, the Villalobos remix on the CD, is one of my favourite things I’ve done in the last few years, ‘cos its not actually a remix. We couldn’t get the parts from him, so it’s us doing a cover version, taking a slightly different angle on things. We did it as a band, just kept playing the riffs over and over. I thought the bassline was pure Joy Division. So yeah, I’d say My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and then the Villalobos cover are three things people should hear to get a grip on what I do.”
Labels and Production is the next one. Of course there’s Warp…
“Yeah, we’re on Warp, and most of our output up until the last album has been pretty electronic based. But for the last album we decided to change it. We didn’t get rid of the electronics, it’s all written electronically then recreated live in the studio. It was just…I think what we do now it’s not…a step back but everyone has said that it sounds like Sabres [of Paradise, Andrew’s previous band]. It does, but I just think…I mean, it’s still rough and ready, and still sloppy, but I just think the production and the music quality and the skill behind it… In fifteen years I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned how to make things rough and how to make things sloppy and how to make things immediate. I’m making music now that I was trying to make fifteen years ago, and I’ve actually reached a place where I’m probably the happiest I’ve been making music since I started. But that’s not to say that I’m satisfied, I’m never satisfied. Even the stuff I really like, I can still go back and pick holes in it. But I think that’s what drives people on. If you’re satisfied and slightly happy with what you’ve done, you’d - well I know I would - get up and do something else. But the fact remains that there’s still more music to be made and there’s still so much more work to be done. It’s the same with DJing, I’m never totally happy. I can have a thousand people screaming but I can always get back home and go, ‘well that mix was a bit shit’, you know what I mean? I think the fact that I pick holes and the fact that I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, works mainly to my disadvantage (laughs), but sometimes to my advantage, you know what I mean? It was funny: for years I did have a reputation for being rather unpleasant. And I probably was. But it was just a defence mechanism. I think if you go on the attack, you’re always slightly unhappy with yourself and what you’re doing…I use my curmudgeonliness for artistic reasons now, rather than just to upset people and make girls cry.”
You never want to stop DJing?
“Yeah, I do actually, usually at about six on Saturday when I’ve just got up, six in the evening, and I’ve got to get a really banging techno set together (laughs) although all I want to listen to is dub or something, or something a little more laid back. But even then it doesn’t…once I’ve passed that sort of barrier…I mean, it is hard work, but I never lose interest because if you have a good weekend DJing, you go into the studio on Monday full of really good ideas, rhythmic ideas. And you have a good week in the studio, which means you have a good week in general. It’s kind of like a train that keeps rolling, I couldn’t do one without the other. To be honest with you, the last couple of years I have thought, in the back of my mind, ‘what would happen if I gave up DJing or cut it right down?’ And then I thought ‘no, I can’t do it!’ As hard work as it is sometimes, it’s so helpful to the studio side of things to hear other people’s music, play it, kind of deconstruct it, and be blown away. You’ve gotta have that - people constantly raising the bar – and that’s what I like about playing other people’s music. When you get back to the studio in the week, you know you’ve got to exercise really high standards and high quality control. All the time, when I first started, I kind of…the quality control wasn’t all it should be. You know, I was a little bit arrogant. I was thrown into it, a young kid in the suburbs, and in a matter of months there’s these people telling you you’re the best thing since sliced bread. It can go to your head a little bit, so the quality control suffered. But as I got older and a little bit wiser, I realised I had to be on my game and not slack, and not be self-centred. I got to sit there and think ‘is what I’m doing (whether it’s playing records or making them), is it as good as what other people are doing?’ It’s a constant process of looking at yourself, whether you’re DJing or making music.”
What do you think of Fabric?
“To be honest, without sounding too cheesy, it’s one of my favourite places to play in Europe because it’s run well, everyone’s really helpful, and everyone’s got a love of music. Judy [Griffith]’s love of music is what makes the club so good. I don’t want to use the word ‘commercial’…but it is quite a commercial club, ‘cos it’s big, it has to have the commercial sensibility in the way it is run. But that never overshadows the artistic input that everyone puts into it, I mean it’s the perfect combination really, it’s good business and good artistic taste.
Are we the third way?
“Yeah, basically! And it’s a good blend of people that go down there, y’ know, everyone from like, sort of extreme trainspotting techno heads through to people that may have passed by and gone in on the off chance. And what you put on is just of such high quality. I mean, we get in e-mails all the time from people going ‘I just passed into Fabric to see whatever’, ‘cos they were tech house fans or something… ‘We wandered into your room… and what the fuck is that music?’ It’s a really good, open-minded crowd, listening to good music on a good system. You know, you can’t be more perfect than that, really.”
The last topic is ‘The Future’. Which, imminently, means you singing!
“Yeah, can you spot the weak link in the Two Lone Swordsmen setup? (laughs) I’ve always wanted to do live stuff, but live electronic music is usually really tedious. If I see another man hunched over a laptop, there’s going to be ultra-violence, I’m telling ya! You know, there’s very little physicality in live dance music, and obviously with our last album being very live, there was no danger of it being two blokes hunched over a laptop. So we decided to get a band together, and thankfully we’ve all known each other ten or fifteen years, it’s not like I’ve booked in session musicians and played the record to them. I think what can happen if people go down the live route with live musicians, is lose the band dynamic. All they’re doing is recreating. I won’t name names, but I’ve seen certain acts and they’re good, they’re all right, but you just know exactly where...there’s no dynamic. The best groups, the best live groups…like Primal Scream, when you watch them, you think the whole thing is gonna fall apart around your ears any minute, but it never does, it always keeps you on the edge. So hopefully that’s what we’ll achieve when we play live, it’s that kind of tension that you don’t get with preset, laptop, live music. But it’s always nerve-wracking singing. I’ve not sung for twenty years. I was in bands when I was a kid but…look forward to seeing me being pushed on stage, with a big pole or something, to get me up there. Then again, that kind of nervousness and that kind of tension will hopefully contribute to the music. I get nervous and I get scared every time I’m about to play records, but I think that edge is what… I dunno, it’s what being alive is about, is it not? Once things start getting easy, I always get a little bit bored and want to do something, anything else. So hopefully, I’ll remain petrified for the entire tour, with people thinking ‘Fuck, this is gonna collapse at any minute’, and it never will. I think that’s what we’re going for.”
Anything else to mention? Any projects?
“No, not really, like I say, again, it’s back to not treating it like a career. I’m quite happy, you know, if in ten years people like you still want to take me into a bar and ask me dumb-ass questions (laughs). I’d be quite happy if people are still that interested. I find it quite flattering that people are interested. I did go through a stage of being a bit, again, a bit arrogant and I didn’t want to talk. And then I thought ‘I’m not really ashamed of my past’ and I just want to keep on doing this. Yeah, I just want to be sat around somewhere talking about myself (laughs). Enough about me, let’s talk about me! Did I say my arrogance has subsided? Oh, I’m sorry!”
We shall be hosting Old Skool Parties @ The Reading Rooms in Dundee on a regular basis ...Next up is our 3rd Birthday Party @ The Reading Rooms on the 6th of August ....tickets are £10 and available thru the Dj's .....get on it
