Singing In Strange Places: Part I

DJ Mix - Wrap My Heart in Tissues

... compiled by Jitwam Sinha

Tracklisting
1. Jon Brion - Little Person
2. King Pleasure - Parker's Mood
3. Marva Josie - He Does it Better
4. Moody - Desire
5. Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah
6. Wilco - Jesus etc.
7. The Velvet Underground - I Found a Reason
8. Animal Collective - Leaf House
9. The Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go?
10. The Shirelles - Baby It's You
11. Devendra Banhart - So Long Old Bean
12. David Bowie - Sorrow
13. Timmy Thomas - Why Can't We Live Together?
14. The Beatles - Goodnight

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And We All Fall Down

Ring around the rosy,
A pocket full of posies;
a'tissue, a'tissue
we all fall down!

Dark Matter and Freedom Drums EP

Tracklisting
1. There's No Other Place
2. Guys and Girls (it's all the same)
3. Yeah, You're Ordinary
4. Bit 8

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DAILY.Routine EP

Tracklisting
1. Lifting the Roof
2. Lord Cant You See

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DJ Mix - A Collection of Dusty Memories

Tracklisting
1. Vashti Bunyan - Diamond Day
2. Devendra Banhart - My Dearest Friend
3. Arthur Russel - Walking on the Moon
4. Nico - These Days
5. Dionne Warwick - Walk on By
6. D'Angelo - the Root
7. Idris Muhammad - Could Heaven Ever Be Like This
8. Andre 3000 - the Prototype
9. Julie London - Laura
10. Jay Electronica - Voodoo Man
11. Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra - Some Velvet Morning
12. The Beach Boys - Still Believe in Me
13. The Velvet Underground - Ride into the Sun

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Greg Wilson Interview

Today/Tonight we have a very special interview with DJ Greg Wilson from the UK.

Greg was the first UK DJ to mix live on TV with a young, young Jools Holland.



He is widely known amongst disco lovers as one of the finest purveyors of Electro-Funk, a sound he championed long ago to the dismay of the unitiated. (Hence his efforts to give this inimitable sound the recognition it deserves.)

If you haven't heard his critically acclaimed 'Credit to the Edit' series... do yourself a favour and check it out. A highly danceable, yet informative insight into the art of the 'edit' and boogie music...

Thanks for taking the time out to talk to us Greg. How have you been and what have you been upto?
Been busy with DJ dates, plus various remix and edit projects - including the 2020 mix that's due out at the end of June.

I want to get a little bit into the huge popularity with edits of late.
What is your philosophy with the edits you make?
I basically make them to play out whilst I’m deejaying. I wouldn’t bother editing something if I couldn’t play myself. There’s no set way – each edit is approached separately. Some tracks might only need a simple extension, it’s often the simple things that work best, whilst others can be more involved.

Obviously, back in the day you didn't have the convenience of computers and the like...
do you still cut your edits by hand?
There’s no point – I can work so much quicker via computer. I used to love tape editing, found it really meditative, but it’s a pretty basic method given the way in which technology has advanced.

What are the differences between the two?
On tape you’re working with a rigid stereo track, whereas a computer can provide a whole range of additional options. For example, you can crossfade to make the edit point smoother, or overdub other sounds, add fx etc. If you wanted to repeat a single bar section for say 16 bars, you’d have to record it 16 times to tape and then methodically edit all the bars together one at a time, whereas with a computer you just need to record the once, find the start and end points, press copy loop and type in 15, then bobs your uncle, in seconds you have a fully edited 16 bar section!

The fact that you can multi-track edit on computer blurs the lines between a traditional re-edit and a remix. Much of my own work sits between the two.

And what are your thoughts on the influence music software has on the ‘editing’ art?
To quote my Credit To The Edit sleevenotes – “Suffice to say that editing has been a major part of my life. Nowadays my work is computer based and I can do things that would once have taken me hours in just a matter of minutes. Many tape edit effects, which used to be highly complex and time consuming back in those distant days, are now made relatively simple by modern technology. That's not to say that the craft has gone out of editing, you still have to come up with the ideas and that's always the most important thing, no amount of technological expertise can make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. However, the precision and speed of computers undoubtedly makes life a lot easier, allowing so many more possibilities than I could have imagined during those countless hours sat over my Revox, blade in hand. There are also things that were impossible when I started out editing, like changing the tempo of a track without changing the pitch. The tools I had at my disposal back then were undoubtedly primitive when compared to what's available now.”

So how did you guys get access to the party scene that was happening over in New York and Chicago?
Chicago wasn’t really at the races when I was deejaying in the early 80’s – it was all about New York. We didn’t have masses of info, like now, but found out bits here and there. It wasn’t until later that the full picture came into focus. More than anything, I was simply responding to the great underground dance music coming over to the UK on import via labels like Prelude, West End, Streetwise, Tommy Boy, Emergency and others. I picked up on the names of the people producing and remixing the tracks – Tee Scott, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Francois Kevorkian, Arthur Baker, Eric Matthew and Darryl Payne etc – but didn’t know too much about them at first. It’s not like now when you can instantly google them online and get the full in-depth lowdown.

I know a lot of the Italo-Disco artists like Klien & MBO were huge records in the UK...
Klein & MBO’s ‘Dirty Talk’ was a major tune on the black scene, but not that well known outside of the underground clubs. I started playing it in ’82, having picked it up on Italian import (Zanza label) – it was a record I was very much associated with, so it was nice to be asked to re-edit it recently (out pretty soon). There was no such category as Italo Disco back then (the term wasn’t coined until a German compilation of Italian club tracks was released in late ’83 on ZYX). ‘Dirty Talk’ was very much regarded as Electro back then - it was one of the biggest tracks of ’82 at my venues, Legend in Manchester and Wigan Pier, before Hewan Clarke, then the DJ at a new club called The Hacienda, picked up on it and began to play it there. It was as a result of this that New Order, who co-owned The Hacienda, heard it and borrowed it from Hewan. It would help inspire the track they were working on in the studio at the time, which is now World renowned as ‘Blue Monday’.

A number of Italian tracks were played on the Jazz-Funk scene, and later during the Electro-Funk era – stuff like Harry Thumann ‘Underwater’, KID ‘Hupendi Muziki Wangu’, Advance ‘Take Me To The Top’, Kasso ‘Walkman’, Firefly ‘Love (Is Gonna Be On Your Side)’, Electra ‘Feels Good’ and Klein & MBO’s follow-up to ‘Dirty Talk’, ‘Wonderful’. It wasn’t because they were Italian, but because they fitted in alongside the US releases that dominated the playlists of the black music specialists. The gay clubs would generally go for the cheesier Italian tracks, whilst the black scene went for the funkier ones.

How in the world did obscure European genres like Italo-Disco get so well received in America and the UK?
I think that records, back then, were taken more on their own individual merit, rather than by genre. As I said, there was no such category as Italo Disco, so Italian records were just a part of the overall Eurodisco thing, rather than being viewed as a separate entity. The gay clubs were more Euro based, but the black clubs would cherry pick the tracks that fitted into their vibe. The fact that most of these twelves were either instrumental, or included an instrumental version made them more accessible to the black crowd. I would never have dreamed of playing the vocal version of ‘Dirty Talk’ – it was far too white sounding, if you understand what I’m saying. In a similar way, I would never have played the vocal of Madonna’s ‘Everybody’, which featured as an import on the black scene when she was a complete unknown, but the dub version fitted the criteria.

In your article ‘On the Tube’ you mention:

“I must admit that it was greatly frustrating that so many people believed that what was going on during the late 80’s was something totally new when, in reality, it was a direct continuation of what had been happening on an underground level earlier in the decade.”

... Can you explain a little bit about the era before Manchester blew up?

Manchester clubs had a black music lineage that went back to the 60’s. The Twisted Wheel was regarded as one of the greatest clubs of its era during the Mod period – a truly cutting-edge Soul venue. It would later become the catalyst for the whole Northern Soul phenomenon, but prior to that it had a more contemporary edge to its music. It was this deep love of Soul that inspired the DJ’s there to dig out increasingly obscure records, discovered retrospectively, which provided the DNA for the Northern Soul scene to flourish during the 70’s.

However, it wasn’t Northern Soul that the black kids, generally speaking, were interested in, but the contemporary black music of the 70’s. Clubs like Rafters, which was where the Music Box (home of the Electric Chair RIP) is now, catered for this audience with DJ’s John Grant and Colin Curtis leading the way during the late 70’s, playing Soul,Funk, Disco and Jazz-Funk, along with Mike Shaft, who’d taken over the hugely influential Piccadilly Radio Soul show from Andy Peebles (Stu Allan would later take over from Mike Shaft, championing House and Hip Hop during the mid-80’s).

By the early 80’s, my Wednesday nights at Legend became the big underground dance night with Electro-Funk, in its various guises, pushing at the boundries and laying the foundations for the subsequent Hip Hop, House and Techno directions. It was because of my success at Legend that The Hacienda approached me about their Friday night, which I took over, playing the type of stuff I played at Legend, but to an audience who were more Indie / Alternative based. This led to an exchange between this crowd and the black crowd that would provide the catalyst for what happened at the club later in the decade with the Big Bang that was House.

Without the black scene leading the way, it could never have happened in Manchester the way it did, but it’s only now that this is finally being acknowledged and people are realising that the dance movement in Manchester, and elsewhere for that matter, didn’t begin in Ibiza in ’87. This myth became so strong that the pivotal contribution of black people in this country, when it came to shaping the destiny of dance culture, had been completely obscured.

What were the parties like?

Intense is the best word to describe them. There’s nothing before or since that compares. To use the word ‘party’ would be wrong - they were a weekly ritual of sound and dance. The historical context needs to be taken into account, for this happened during the years following the race riots in the UK, at a time when tensions in the black community were really high. People needed a way of letting of steam and the club scene was essential to this. For many people, the whole week revolved around going to Legend on a Wednesday or Wigan Pier on a Tuesday. They might be unemployed and only have enough money to get into town and pay the entrance fee (a lot of people who came to Legend would only drink tap water, having spent all the money they had just coming out), but they could temporarily escape all the day to day stresses of life on the dancefloor. I’m often asked what drugs the people were taking, but, at the bottom line, the greatest drug was the music itself – that’s what took them outside of themselves. This certainly wasn’t a chemically induced high.

What was the crowd like and what were the main influences on the scene?
They were, quite simply, the most cutting-edge crowd, who were into the most cutting-edge tunes. They were way ahead of the game when it came to music and dancing. We used to use the term ‘upfront’ in connection with these nights, relating to the music you’d hear, which was nearly all either import or UK promo – some of which might become chart hits a few months down the line having broken on the black scene. Once they’d crossed-over to the more mainstream clubs and people thought they were ‘discovering’ something new, the black crowd had already moved on to a whole new set of tunes. They led the way and the rest followed.

Going back a little… what sort of records were you spinning before you embraced the electro-funk sound?
When I started out in the clubs, in 1975, I was playing Soul, Funk and some of the Pop tracks that worked on the dancefloor. The normal type of stuff that was played in most UK clubs and Discotheques at the time. Back then Disco music was music played in Disco’s, rather than being regarded as a specific genre - this only happened later. Soul and Funk was Disco music and, although I wouldn’t regard myself as a fully fledged black music specialist until a few more years down the line, this was certainly something I aspired to be from the off.

Jazz-Funk was a big underground scene at the end of the 70’s and the start of the 80’s and, in a specialist sense, it was as a ‘Jazz-Funk DJ’ that I first made my name. Your status was based on the amount of All-Dayers you played at. These were events held on Sundays, or Bank Holiday Mondays, when the most popular DJ’s on the scene were booked to appear on the same bill, with live bands often being an additional feature. Having made a success of my Tuesday Jazz-Funk night at Wigan Pier, I began to be booked on the All-Dayer circuit, appearing at venues throughout the North (there was very much a separation between the scenes in the North and the South back then, although we were obviously aware of each other, mainly via the pages of Blues & Soul). The reason that things became pretty controversial for me later down the line was because I was an established Jazz-Funk DJ who started to play this new electronic sound at a time when most of the other DJ’s on the scene completely rejected it. It was because I held some power, via my club nights at Wigan Pier and Legend, that my decision to take this new direction caused a schism within the scene, with the purists up in arms about me playing this ‘Electro shit’.

Just to clarify, even though it was called the Jazz-Funk scene, this only related to the predominant music played, for we featured a whole spectrum of black music - Funk, Soul, Disco (especially the side of Disco that would later be termed Boogie). It was the same when Electro came along – even though this was the music I became associated with, I never played it exclusively. At clubs like Legend and the Pier you’d hear the best black music available, be it Electro, Boogie, Street Soul, Jazz-Funk and Fusion, with, as we previously discussed, the odd Italian or European release adding to the overall stew.

In your interview with Fatboy Slim he points out there were only a handful of UK records that you could play out in clubs.

Why was this?
It was a quality issue – US black music was of such a high standard that it was difficult for the UK acts to gain a foothold. Having said that, Norman was talking more about the mid-80’s, rather than the Jazz-Funk period when there were some British releases that were absolutely massive on the black scene. For example:

Atmosfear ‘Dancing In Outer Space’

David Joseph ‘You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me)’

Freeez ‘Southern Freeez’

Inversions ‘Loco-moto’

Level 42 ‘(Flying On The) Wings Of Love’

Linda Taylor ‘You And Me Just Started’

Linx ‘You’re Lying’

Powerline ‘Double Journey’

Touchdown ‘Ease Your Mind’

TW Funk Masters ‘Love Money’

Hardly a bad list of 10 tunes!

Any DJ Mix you recommend that faithfully pays tribute to the Electro-Funk scene in the 80s?
My Best Of 82 and Best Of 83 mixes document the music of this period. Also the ‘No Sell Out Electrospective’, which I put together a few years back for A Guy Called Gerald’s Samurai FM show. This is probably, for a variety of reasons, the most involved mix I’ve ever done, and is pretty definitive when it comes to the biggest Electro tunes played at Legend and Wigan Pier between the golden era (May ’82 – January ’84).

All the info is here:

www.electrofunkroots.co.uk

I Met The Walrus: John Lennon Interview

Jay Electronica - Act II Preview

Ooooooh!

One of my fav rappers is back with a new mixtape in tow;

Act II: Preview
1. When The Levees Broke
2. Extra Extra
3. Not A Disturbance
4. Departure
5. Are You Watching
6. A Prayer For Michael Vick & T.I.

Also in the works for Jay this year is collaborations with Guilty Simpson (Stones Throw) and 9th Wonder as well as his debut album 'Abracadabra: Let There Be Light' out through Eyrkah Badu's newly formed label 'Control FreaQ'.

Click on the pic for the DownLowd.

The Rip Ripped

Fresh off the tube is Radiohead doing a cover of my favourite song of the new Portishead album...





thank god for the internet...