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August 2008 It’s going to be a very different Christmas this year. A while ago, we learned that Parveen is expecting our first baby, with an estimated delivery date of 17th December. To say I’m over the moon is the understatement of the millennium! A few people we’ve mentioned it to have commented on how difficult it’s going to be juggling a DJ lifestyle with looking after a young baby. I’d argue completely to the contrary. Baby will already be in bed by the time I leave for gigs. My sleep ‘patterns’ are already all over the place, so there won’t be any difference there. And the fact that I work at night means that I can be at home during the day to share nappy changing (great) and all the rest of it with Mrs. D. As a result, I’m having to limit my travel for the rest of this year to quick Europe hops only, putting my annual visit to Australia on ice. But it’s a small price to pay for such great news. The best Christmas present yet!
There’s a highly entertaining chat group on Facebook called ‘Things You Should Never Say To A DJ’, which reads very much like an extension of the DJ requests chapter in my book. It’s grown prodigiously with regular posts from jocks all over the world, and many nights after coming in from an exasperating gig, I’ve drawn great inspiration, calming vodka in hand, from perusing the comments and realising that this sh*t really does happen to everyone and not just me! I recommend doing a search for it and joining. I was inspired to make a contribution by my latest experience at G’s in Bicester, which went as follows: Chav girl: Oi DJ, sort it out. Play some decent tunes. On to more sane matters… I love the buzz of doing my weekly radio show live, and only pre-record when there’s no other option. On Wednesday 6th August there wasn’t, as Parveen and myself headed up to The Lake District for a short break, tagged on to my latest Block Party gig in Windermere. The show was the one containing my interview feature on RZA, aka Bobby Digital, which will go down as one of the most memorable in my career. We spent Wednesday and Thursday around Windermere, Grasmere and Keswick, many of the locals joking that the region would be more suitably named The Rain District. The roadsides were lined with ramblers and campers resiliently looking like they were bloody well going to have a good time whatever the weather.
Block Party, The Wheelhouse, Windermere. Parveen’s not in heavy party mode right now, so she stayed at our guest house on Thursday night as I headed down to The Wheelhouse on the shores of Lake Windermere for the August instalment of The Block Party, loyally hosted by DJ Bligeness and MC Master P. This gig is one of my most consistent, and the atmosphere never disappoints. As ever, many of the off-duty Jamaican hotel workers were in attendance, ensuring things stayed lively. There’s a great set of pictures that go some way to capturing the atmosphere, posted now in the Pics section of my Myspace. Do check them out.
MD with MC Master P at The Wheelhouse. It’s frustrating that I always score DJ bookings on nights directly after holidays, making for a mad dash back, when the diary remains empty on other nights where a gig could have been easily accommodated. That’s the way it goes though, so on Friday 8th, we ploughed through heavy traffic for the five-hour drive home, before setting off for the evening at Que Pasa in Watford. We took advantage of the kind offer of a feed before I settled down to the night’s DJing. The combination of mid-month, rain, the holiday season and the credit crunch led to a less-busy-than-usual Friday, but we made the best of it. The following night, I found myself in the rare situation of spinning at G’s on a Saturday, having swapped that week with Cecil, the usual Saturday resident. The night drew an entirely different profile of crowd to my Thursday sessions … and I didn’t mind at all. Normally I avoid TV programmes like ‘Wife Swap’ like the plague. But on Sunday 10th, Mrs. D just happened to be watching the latest celeb version of the show featuring none other than the dude Alexander O’ Neal. There was one section where he was getting vexed because he was late for a magazine interview and photo session with … Blues & Soul. Shows how long ago they filmed it, as the mag’s now been out of business for over a year. It was an entertaining glimpse into what the Big Man’s up to these days, and I couldn’t help feeling a painful pang of nostalgia when they showed a B&S front cover. A few hours later came the sad news that soul legend Isaac Hayes had passed away, only 48 hours after we lost the comedy genius of Bernie Mac. What a tragic weekend for the entertainment world.
MD at Maraschoino Bar, Zadar. They say you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. In the case of my Apple iBook, that’s certainly the case. Until a few weeks ago, I’d developed some highly efficient ways of working that would have made any time management guru proud, by taking as much work as possible away with me on flights. Earlier in the Summer, the machine suddenly failed to go beyond the login stage, and consultation of a few geeky on-line forums revealed that this has become a common problem with the entire batch of iBooks that Apple put out in 2005/ 06, all to do with a connection beneath the keypad working itself loose. Until I can find a permanent fix, I’m now back to the prehistoric days of passing airport time by nothing more comprehensive than reading. I’ve polished off a few good books, however, the latest being Dave Haslam’s ‘Not Abba’, the real story of the harshness of British life in the 1970s, and highly recommended for anyone that grew up in that decade. I got stuck into it while travelling to my latest Summer hotspot gig on Monday 11th. The destination was Zadar, an increasingly popular resort on Croatia’s Adriatic Coast, but served by a small airport with very few international flights. The restrictions made it necessary to travel with three separate airlines and spend only 11 hours on Croatian soil, one of my more insane schedules. The outward leg was straightforward – Ryanair from Stansted, and thankfully there were no nightmare experiences this time. No club could ever operate on a permanently open-air basis in Britain. In Southern Europe, there are no such worries, and Croatia had been basking in intense heat for many weeks. As such, two thirds of Maraschino Bar, overlooking Zadar’s estuary and flanked by boats, is outside, with a covered part for those that prefer to stay indoors. The venue attracts mainly Italians – Zadar’s just across the sea from towns like Rimini and Ancona. I played from midnight til closing at 4, and it was 2 before cats showed themselves to be in the mood for dancing. But from there on it was kicking, and I doubt I’ll enjoy a more lively Monday night for a very long time.
Prague, Czech Republic I felt less lively at 7am. After only two hours’ sleep at an apartment, I was driven, red-eyed, straight back to the airport. The only way to make it home had been to take an early Sky Europe flight to Prague, spend six and a half hours there, then return to Stansted with Easyjet at 5pm. I had no desire to stay in the airport that long, so I used the time to head into town. Prague’s one of my favourite and most visited European cities so this was no hardship. Although the stifling muggy heat was. First port of call was the legendary club/ bar/ restaurant Radost FX, where I linked with Rico, long-standing promoter and DJ at Soul Train for a spot of lunch and a catch-up chat. Next, I was on a weary mission to track down a witch marionnette for Mrs. D. Prague specialises in creepy-ass macabre puppets of the Chucky variety, and Parveen has adorned our living room with a couple. I find them deeply unsettling. The b*stards look they’re about to come alive any second. By my return flight, I’d dispensed with the book and was on to the crossword and the Sun Dial in the back of The Sun to pass the time. Now that’s boredom!
Rico & MD in Radost FX, Prague July 2008The first weekend of July was a fairly routine affair, consisting of gigs in Bicester, Oxford and Ealing, West London. The Ealing was a last-minute booking, only coming in on the afternoon on Friday 4th. This was at The Town House, a popular bar venue close to Ealing Broadway station. Musically, it was a general-purpose, commercially-orientated session, my time made easier by the fact that my brother-in-law Shamim and his mate Aaron had come down to keep me company, serving the additional purpose of fielding some of the more patience-challenging requests. Aaron works as a chef, and I asked him to consider parallels between some of the things people say to me in my profession, and how that could be applied to his. For instance, you would never go up to the kitchen in a restaurant and say to the chef, ‘bruv, I’m a chef myself, yeah? Trust me, you should prepare this dish with cayenne pepper, not cumin. I’ve tried it myself, yeah, and it really works.’ So why do you always get the guy in the club who claims he’s a DJ himself, and if you play such-and-such a tune, he guarantees the place will go mad because he’s tried it himself? Aaron saw the point.
Parveen entertains at The Regal. I’ve played a fair few under 18s events over the years, and I always appreciate the opportunity. The repressed energy levels brought about by teenagers’ frustration that they’re not allowed into proper clubs always make for a highly-charged party. On Saturday 5th, I played to a group of 16-year-olds from a public school in Oxford at The Regal, and the atmosphere was every bit as fun as I’d expected. Parveen came with me, and we both reflected on how well behaved and civilised the kids were. If the event had been for either of the schools we went to, the session would have been plagued by spiteful bitchiness, petty squabbles and clique—ish politics throughout. In reality, these values probably still rule in schools. We were just fortunate enough to be entertaining kids from a particularly well-cultured one! Upon finishing, the main club was shaping up for a DJing appearance from The Freemasons, but we were happy to take advantage of the very rare luxury of an 11pm finish on a Saturday night and headed straight home.
Despite having worked there for over 18 months, there are still many other presenters on FM107.9 that I’ve never met. Because most of the specialist shows go out late at night, the DJs often find themselves alone in the building. You see other shows and names on the schedule, but never cross paths. On Tuesday 8th, we had the first of two link-ups of the specialist jocks, mainly as a training exercise on certain studio procedures, but with an equally important social occasion down the pub afterwards. The conversation got a bit anoracky, covering the sort of subject matter that would have my wife yawning and looking at her watch, but I guess that’s unavoidable on a jocks’ night out. The following evening I went in to present that week’s ‘Just Buggin’ live, but also to pre-record the following week’s show. I love live radio and only pre-record when there’s no other option. On this occasion, I’d be in Spain the following Wednesday, so it was unavoidable. G's Bicester punter comments for Thursday 10th, (I know you love 'em.) 1. "Can you play that 'Low' by Flo Rida?" (Punter whilst ''Low' by Flo Rida was playing in the background.) 2. "Can you play something urban?" (Punter whilst Sean Paul was playing in the background.) I feel nothing more needs to be said. The second radio station social gathering of the week happened on Saturday afternoon, as the FM 107.9 bosses threw a barbecue for all staff, freelancers and their partners. The weather had shown its usual British Summer characteristics by tipping down all week, but somehow, we were afforded a reprise for the event, (which was still held in a marquee for safe measure.) Later in the evening, I set off for my monthly session at The Second Bridge in Bath, which had attracted a livelier-than-usual crowd for the second month running.
Ibiza – ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go. A few days earlier my Apple iBook laptop had given up the ghost by refusing to go beyond the log in stage, an engineer’s best guess being that it needed a new logic board. As so much of my work gets done on the move, this screwed me up neatly for my week of Mediterranean Euro-hopping from Tuesday 15th, so the flight and airport time was spent old-school style, with magazines, books and a pen and pad. On the cards were visits to Ibiza, Barcelona and Lisbon. On this occasion, I’d selected Easyjet’s late night flight to Ibiza from Luton. Big mistake. The plane became entirely populated with apes, Neanderthals, Cro-magnons, beasts and savages of every variety … and that was just the girls. The stewardesses, who looked more like librarians, were entirely out of their depth handling such a rowdy crowd, the lobotomised prehistoric chants of ‘Oi oiiiiiii!’, ‘’ere we go’, ‘oggy oggy oggy’ and ‘get your tits out for the lads’ filling the air as we took off. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British?
MD and fans at Soul City, Ibiza I was seated behind a group of meatheads who were already pissed before boarding, and pushing each other around playfully. A few Jack Daniels’ later and the playfulness had turned to proper aggression, and it looked like a full-scale fight would break out. Then, the smell of smoke filled the cabin and it became clear that some complete cock had locked themselves in the toilet to have a cigarette. At this point, the cabin crew threatened that we would have to divert and land so the police could board and arrest the fool. Mercifully, we didn’t, and we eventually arrived into Ibiza at 1.30am. As I disembarked, I vowed never again to take the same flight. Next time it has to be BA from Gatwick. Surely a better class of clientele? Thank f*ck Ryanair doesn’t do flights to Ibiza! Soul City, located right in the heart of San Antonio’s garish West End, remains the only venue on the island to deal with R&B, hip hop, dancehall and garage seven nights a week, and has long been the venue of choice for urban music fans visiting the island. I recounted the flight tales to Julian, Soul City’s owner/ proprietor as we drove across to San An, passing the giant Amnesia and Privilege venues on the way. I also queried why it is that all direct flights from the UK to Ibiza either depart at the crack of dawn, or very late at night. His view was that the civilised slot times are all occupied by the Spanish and German airlines, who pay the airport authorities considerably more than the likes of Easyjet, Monarch and the rest to secure them. Sounds plausible.
MD & Master I at Soul City, Ibiza After checking briefly into my apartment accommodation, I arrived at a heaving Simple, home of Soul City, shortly after 2am. The atmosphere has never disappointed on any of my six visits, and the almost-entirely-English crowd was on top form as I thrashed out tunes for two hours and the vodka flowed, (and Spanish measures are large, trust me!) It was worth bearing the appalling flight conditions for such a stunning gig. I filmed a few bits from the night, including an East London crew losing their minds to Lethal Bizzle’s ‘Pow’, as dropped by resident Master I. The videos, along with the pics, are all available to view now via my Myspace page – www.myspace.com/therealmarkdevlin I’d discovered the previous year that the hours from 6 to 10am are probably the best opportunity to grab any kind of sleep in an apartment complex in the middle of San An. By this time even the most insane caner is just about dropping, and I heard the shouting and hollering from reception diminish around this time allowing me to get a small amount of rest. By lunchtime I was back at the airport, having spent only 11 hours on the island. People who save up all year for their cherished two weeks would doubtless consider this insane, but when it comes to ‘beefa’, a straight-in-do-the-job-straight-out-again approach is the one that works for me!
Muly at Bikini, Barcelona Next on the agenda was Barcelona for my first ever gig in mainland Spain. My Air Europa flight was delayed by an hour, but in Spain, in the middle of the Summer season, this is nothing to get concerned about! Transferring to the nicely air-conditioned Spa Senator business hotel, I grabbed a few more hours of rest before venturing out into the hot Spanish night. Prior to the gig I hooked up with Daniella, aka Spaniella, who was the work experience girl at the Blues & Soul office in London before the mag went tits-up a year ago. She’s now resident in Barc, and her fluent Spanish helped me get past the bouncers on the door of Bikini with no hassle.
MD & Daniella at Bikini, Barcelona. The Spanish party late, and by 1am, the venue was still quiet. Then, all of a sudden, a mass influx of clubbers turned the dancefloor into a heaving mass of bodies. Bikini is the the city’s number one spot for urban music, with DJ Muly’s Wednesday Black Box session the key night of the week. I alternated sets with Muly, and the place was on fire throughout. Another top night, and possibly the liveliest midweek night I’ve ever played. The only downer came when a clodhopping clubber on the stage above kicked a drink all over my CD wallet, soaking the sleeves. To add insult to injury, it was my drink! Earlier in the day, I’d managed to put the same wallet down on to a lump of stringy discarded chewing gum. All part of the occupational hazards, I guess. My Easyjet return to Luton on Thursday morning was a far more civilised affair without an ape in sight. It was on time, too.
Chocolate City in effect at Lux, Lisbon. The third instalment in the week’s Euro-hopping trilogy involved another country debut. Although I’d visited as a kid with my folks a scary 26 years earlier, Saturday 19th marked the first time I’d DJ-ed in Lisbon, Portugal. The BBC and Yahoo weather sites revealed the city was sweltering in 91-degree heat, a far cry from the Autumn-like weather back in Blighty. On this occasion I flew BMI Baby from Birmingham, and, aside from a couple of Welsh football hooligans boasting about the many happy times that they’d kicked the police’s heads in at terraces over the years, the flight was a fairly civilised affair. If the Spanish party late, the Portuguese make an art form of it. Promoter Yen Sung, whose Chocolate City event I was playing at, informed me that the venue only opened its doors at 1am, and it was often 4 before the club had reached its peak. The venue, Lux Fragil, is world class, and impeccably well run. It’s situated on a dockside, well away from any residential neighbours. The downstairs room, very reminiscent of the main room at London’s Ministry Of Sound, was dealing with deep house. Up above was a large loungy area with plentiful dancing space and an overhead DJ booth, an open-air terrace completing the layout. My set was thoroughly enjoyable as I took the music in many different directions, complementing Yen’s more funky, disco-infused approach. As with Spain, Portugal has yet to receive the ban on smoking in public places. It’s now a year since this hit the UK, and I’m so used to it that it’s a real shock the system to see people sparking up in clubs. Thankfully the Lux air conditioning is very efficient. Another top night, and a fitting end to a stunning week.
MD with Yen Sung at Lux, Lisbon. Portuguese clubbing times being what they are, it was 7am before I was installed back in my industrial-strength-air-conditioned hotel room, but there was no rush to be up again as the only available return flight didn’t leave til 8.25pm. I used the time to do some extensive Lisbon sightseeing. It’s a large, imposing city, very colonial in feel, and with a small stretch of the imagination, the many monuments and palm trees could make you believe you were somewhere in South America. Meal-wise, I probably should have sampled some Portuguese cuisine. I was very predictable and ate in an Italian instead.
Lisbon On Monday 21st, I got the opportunity to meet and interview a true legend and a personal musical hero. RZA, founder member and prolific producer for the Wu Tang Clan was in London for one night, at the tail end of Wu’s recent European tour. Linking at his Covent Garden hotel, I chatted to the dude about the legacy of the Wu, his secondary musical role in scoring Hollywood movies such as the ‘Kill Bill’ films, his move into acting, (he was most recently seen in ‘American Gangster’), and his new musical project, the revival of his Bobby Digital alter-ego for the new ‘Digisnax’ album this Summer. RZA was the model interviewee – incisive, witty, friendly, and seeming like he genuinely wanted to be there. I’d managed to find my Wu Tang T-shirt with the distinctive yellow W, which went down well – RZA himself was wearing one almost exactly the same. Plus he gave me a stunning Wu Wear padded jacket that makes me look at least five stone heavier, and which I’ll be rocking big time in the Winter months. I’ll be broadcasting the interview on my ‘Just Buggin’ show next week. In the meantime, I just posted a couple of clips of our chat in my Myspace videos section and on Youtube.
MD with Wu Tang Clan’s RZA, aka Bobby Digital. A couple of nights later, I welcomed that week’s live guest on to the show. Breis is a South London MC with a refreshingly different, conscious style, (check out myspace.com/breisuk for more info.) I first came across him in 1999 when he came into Joints & Jams, the radio show I used to co-present with Kid Fury, alongside fellow MCs Ty and Cyrus The Virus. The resulting three-way freestyle was classic material, and it was the first time Breis had heard it in nine years when I played it to him live on the radio on Wednesday night to a priceless reaction. More spontaneous lyrics followed.
MD with Breis in FM107.9 As I’d discovered a while back, DJing to a roomful of 18-year-olds for an entire night is no easy task. I took a late booking on Friday 25th at Mosaic in Sutton, Surrey. What I only found out when I got there was that it was for a private 18th birthday, playing to an almost exclusively black crowd. It certainly looked like being a fun gig – but I’d under-estimated the wilfulness of teenage girls, as gradually the approaches to the DJ booth came, along with classic attempted strategies such as telling me that a particular crowd wanted to hear bashment right now, or they’d be leaving. So I’d play a couple of bashment tunes only to have another crew approach and ask ‘how long’s this bashment sh*t going on? Everyone wants to hear bassline. They’re starting to leave because you’re not playing it.’ Despite the duplicity I did my level best to keep everyone happy, and there were some great moments, such as during the Lil Wayne/ Rick Ross Southern roller sequence where the guys in the room lost their minds. I don’t remember being this fussy about my music when I was 18, though.
Mosaic, Sutton. There was a classic moment in the street after the party. One particular girl had taken off her shoes because they were hurting – you know, the way girls do - and drunkenly staggered barefoot right into a pool of sick. Absolutely disgusting, but hilarious at the same time. If you walk the streets barefoot at 2am, that’s what you can expect! The weekend finished with The Bridge in Oxford on Saturday night. After seven years of doing the gig, I’m running very short on new things to say about it. Suffice to say it was an entirely routine night. … and that was July.
June 2008 Something which my years compiling the club listings for Blues & Soul mag taught me, is that you should always look beyond the obvious locations for the hottest club nights. Often, the most unlikely settings host the heaviest parties on a kind of best-kept-secret basis, and this is certainly the case with the monthly Block Party events in The Lake District. The gigs have long been put on by local dude Clyde, aka DJ Bligeness. One of the main secrets to their success is the large number of Jamaicans working in the hotels in the area and - as you might expect - there are few places for them to go clubbing on their nights off where they can hear reggae dancehall and hip hop. The nights also attract visitors from other parts of the North West, disappointed at the lack of decent nights on in the larger towns and cities.
The Block Party, The Lake District. Clyde’s always promoted me well, to the point that I’ve become very well-received at The Block Party, so I headed off on the four-hour drive to Cumbria on Thursday 5th full of anticipation. The Wheelhouse had enjoyed a slight refurb since my previous visit, and, thankfully, the sound levels have been turned up. Previously, regulations had caused these to be kept ludicrously low. The venue is right on the shores of Lake Windermere, and had been plagued with complaints from rich yacht owners trying to sleep on their boats outside. Somehow the issue seems to have been resolved. The place was on fire, and I received a hero’s send-off as I finished my set at 3am. A highly fulfilling night, and hats off to Clyde for keeping it strong for so long.
MD, Bligeness & Master P at The Wheelhouse. The Lakes area was full of tourists as I stopped to get the obligatory Kendal Mint Cake on the way home. The following day, I was due to head off for a long-awaited week’s holiday, but before that, I was holding down the spot for 1Xtra’s Ronnie Herel, who was guesting that night at The Regal in Oxford. This is the city’s newest nightspot, a converted ballroom/ bingo hall on Cowley Road, and the venue had decided to try a series of urban music events on Fridays following the success of the previous weekend’s Trevor Nelson gig. I played before and after Ronnie. The night wasn’t nearly as busy as the Trevor gig, but we still had fun with the crowd and made the best of it. 6th June is actually my wedding anniversary and I mentioned this to Ronnie, who was amazed that my wife hadn’t thrown a serious moody fit at me working on such a date. I mentioned that I’d got away with it due to the fact that we were about to go on holiday. That, combined with the fact that I’m lucky enough to have a highly supportive and understanding missus, of course!
MD with Ronnie Herel. It was 4am by the time I got home, and frankly, I could have done without such a late finish. For our break we’d hired a cottage on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, and we were joined by Parveen’s mum. Granted, going on holiday with your mother-in-law is many peoples’ idea of hell, but mine is very undemanding and good fun, so it was no great hardship! Only a short while after settling in, I was back on the road again. If I’d been pushing it by working the previous night, I was really taking it further by interrupting the first night of our holiday to do another gig. But this was my monthly spot at The Second Bridge in Bath and couldn’t be missed. So I headed back up the M5, arriving in time to throw down my usual set in the low-ceilinged Vaults area. Unusually, there were a bunch of over-25s in the place who were begging me for 90s R&B revivals and early 2000s UK garage, I spent the last hour dropping ‘Flowers’, ‘I’m Sorry’, ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’ and all the rest of it to a hugely animated response. All good stuff. I blazed back down the motorway to Devon immediately upon finishing, finally climbing into bed beside Parveen at 4.30am.
The next five days were pure holiday with no interruptions. We explored pretty much the whole of Devon, including Dartmoor, Torquay and Barnstaple, along with a foray into North Cornwall for Bude. We were blessed with glorious sunshine throughout and, with the exception of a couple of half-hours at the local library to check for urgent messages, I didn’t go near a computer screen for five days, which is the longest I think I’ve managed in about the last decade. A highly relaxing, battery-charging few days. We headed back on Friday 13th via a stop at Cheddar in Somerset to stock up on cider and some particularly strong cheese. I’d been due to have the night off ahead of leaving for Slovenia at the crack of dawn on Saturday, but had been recruited during the week to hold down The Regal again for a hastily-arranged gig involving the producer-turned-DJ Jaimeson. So with just enough time to unload the suitcases, I headed off to do my thing. The night was quieter still than the Ronnie gig, and management took the decision to close prior to 1am, which afforded me around four hours sleep instead of the mere two I’d been expecting. At six, the alarm clock was ringing, and shortly afterwards I was bombing it to Gatwick Airport.
MC Kustur on the mic at Jupiter, Ljubljana. For a city that’s rapidly becoming as popular as Prague or Bratislava, there’s an annoying lack of convenient flights from London to Ljubljana, hence having to fly at 9.45am with the Slovenian flag carrier Adria Airways. I’d flown to the city twice before as the cheapest way of getting to neighbouring Croatia, but this marked the first time I would get to see and play in the city itself. DJ/ promoter Kustur was at the airport to pick me up, and I gleaned lots of info about Slovenia from him on the way in. The country has only two million people overall – about a quarter of the population of Greater London – and while the other former-Yugoslavian states of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia share the same language, Slovenia retains its own. I was concerned that it was p*ssing down with rain on my arrival, but Kustur explained that on fine days, many Slovenians head to the Croatian coast, and rain is actually a good way of ensuring people stay in the city and hit the clubs. After recovering from my sleep deprivation at my hotel, we linked again in the evening and headed to the venue, Jupiter, situated in a big out-of-town retail park. Things took a while to get started, but sure enough, by 1am the place was kicking in. I took to the decks and had so much fun I continued to blaze until 4am, flitting through styles. I recorded the set and it’s now available to listen to as an mp3 download via the homepage of this site. The crowd, which included a few American marines stationed in the area, were highly responsive, and we ended the night drunk and satisfied.
Ljubljana, Slovenia. My Sunday flight home wasn’t until the evening, which gave time for some sightseeing during the day. The rain had given way to bright sunshine, which saw hordes of people lining the bars and cafes on the riverside. Ljubljana’s a beautiful city, (there are some photos in the Pics section of the Myspace page,) and well worth a visit – particularly now if it soon catches on as a stag night destination for rowdy Brits chasing cheap beer. The drive back to the airport incorporated stunning scenery, including snow-capped alps, reminiscent of a scene from Switzerland. Back at the airport I was mortified to see my return flight had been delayed two and a half hours to 9pm – yet again, the only flight on the departures board to be affected. I truly am the unluckiest traveller. Fortunately I found a wireless network on my laptop to pass the time. By 12.30am I was finally home. Regular readers of this column will have seen infinite accounts of the dumb DJ requests/ comments that I’ve received during my weekly Thursdays at G’s in Bicester. These are either hilariously entertaining or mind-numbingly stupefying depending on your outlook; I find it’s always best to view them as the former. Here’s the latest; clueless middle-aged guy approaches the booth and says, ‘can you play something a bit more …’ (pulls silly face and starts wavering hand.) That’s it. Nothing more was said and I’m supposed to know what he means. Another priceless one for the archives!
MD and Marcus of The Pesky Kidz I’d been forewarned by resident DJ Marcus of The Pesky Kidz ahead of my appearance at Babble in Mayfair, London, that it was a smart-dress-only joint, and that rolling up in jeans and a T-shirt would most likely bar me from entry – even if I was the DJ. So I dusted off a (relatively) smart shirt from the wardrobe and compromised with dark jeans and shiny black Reebok trainers that could pass for ‘shoes’ if it came to an argument, and set off on Friday 20th. In the event, there was no grief at all on the door, and I joined Marcus on the CDJs at midnight. A glance around the room suggested that this might be a difficult one, the clientele consisting of champagne-guzzling city stockbroker/ rich tourist types of at least 20 different nationalities who were already the worse for wear. I pulled all my best tricks and tunes out of the bag and managed to hold attention spans for my 90-minute set. By the time Marcus returned, however, a different approach was called for, and the likes of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living On A Prayer’, Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of 69’ and Guns N Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ all got dropped, to rapturous hugging and leg-kicking response. Alcohol is a very powerful thing. Especially at Mayfair bar prices. I passed through Paddington on the way home, looking up at the windows of the former Blues & Soul mag offices and reflecting on how tragic it was that such a 40-year-strong black music institution was allowed to wither and die the way it did last year. But then I do have tendencies to be a nostalgic old fool…!
MD outside Radost FX, Prague. On Saturday lunchtime, Parveen and myself set off for Luton Airport on the latest stage of my Euro-hopping. The destination was a scorchingly hot Prague, Czech Republic, a favourite city which we’d already visited twice together, and where I now play annually for the Soul Train night at Radost FX. We nearly didn’t make it all; roadworks on the M1 and on the approach road to the airport saw us panting and sweating our way to check-in literally seconds before we’d have been refused boarding. Soul Train is a superb night with an amazingly impressive track record; promoter/ DJ Rico and his crew have been running it every weekend for the past ten years. I challenge anyone to nominate any other black music party that’s been maintained so consistently. Rico and DJ/ MC Big J, a larger-than-life American dude, drop proper, heavy tunes every week, with frequent guest PAs and DJs, and the night caters for Czech black music fans, tourists, and British stag night crowds (of which there are always plenty) alike.
Parveen and friend at Radost FX. Radost is also a café/ bar/ vegetarian restaurant, and we arrived early for a meal prior to my set, the spinach-burger going down particularly well. As ever, my set was hugely enjoyable with another lively crowd in the place, and the bar hospitality faultless. It wasn’t until after he’d left that I learned hip hop legend Jeru Tha Damaja had passed through the club and been drinking in the bar. His ‘Wrath Of The Math’ is one of my all-time favourite albums and I’d have dearly loved to meet him. Damn! I ended up chatting drunkenly with some Asians from Leeds about the merits of the bassline house scene back in the UK. We finally emerged into full daylight at 5am.
Rico & Big J Rico had put us in the new boutique-style Hotel Josef, a very cool and fashionable spot, where one of the highlights was the great spread at breakfast, served until the highly civilised and DJ-friendly time of 11.30 on Sunday morning. Our flight home was stress-free, and, incredibly, on time! During the week I received the grim news that Touch magazine had been forced to call it a day and cease publication with immediate effect, almost a year after Blues & Soul faced the same fate. Another UK black music institution down the toilet, leaving Echoes as the last mag standing. I see Touch’s demise as being caused by three things - the fact that record companies have been brought to their knees by illegal downloading, totally eroding the advertising budgets they used to set aside for print media; the tough economic situation being faced by UK businesses generally; and the fact that reading now seems to have gone completely out of fashion as a direct result of technology – young people are far more interested in iPods, iPhones, gaming, etc, than in magazines or books. It’s hard to imagine any new black/ urban music magazine ever being able to make a go of things again, and sad to think that the next generation of DJs will grow up entirely unfamiliar with both the vinyl format, and with the concept of reading all about your favourite music and artists in a professionally presented magazine. But I guess it’s easy to get nostalgic about such things so I won’t dwell on it any further. Big up to Touch for staying strong for so many years, anyway, and always fully committed to the music it represented.
MD with Stylah & homeboy. My latest studio guest for my ‘Just Buggin’ show was the London MC Stylah, whose tracks ‘Free’ and ‘The Girl Is Mine’ I’ve been busting, on Wednesday 25th. Arriving with a crew, Stylah proceeded to drop a very active live freestyle session. I normally plan my radio shows down to the last detail, but on this occasion, the running order got shot to pieces and quickly discarded as the studio became more and more hectic. It was a crazy show, with the download links currently available via my Myspace page – www.myspace.com/therealmarkdevlin - and some footage of the show now posted on my Youtube page – www.youtube.com/markdevlintv The final stage in my Euro-hopping trilogy for June came on Friday 27th with a gig at Bar Rouge, in Basel, Switzerland. It was a night that ticked every box going in terms of satisfying criteria, and it more than justified the travel time and the obligatory 90-minute Easyjet delay from Luton. At the end of May, DJ Soulchild, aka ‘Switzerland’s Official R&B King’, had come over to England to guest alongside me at The Bridge. This was the reciprocal stage of the deal, involving me guesting at Soulchild’s fortnightly Black Fridays jam. The venue was quite something; it was situated on the top floor of a 31-storey sliver of a building next to the city’s Messe exhibition hall, and surrounded by glass, giving a panoramic view not only of Basel, but into neighbouring France and Germany. While I chatted to his girlfriend, vocalist Faye B, Soulchild warmed the crowd up with some cool neo-soul. The flyer cracked me up. At the bottom were the dress code rules – ‘keine baggy hosen, keine gangster look’. Priceless. Although I suspect the door staff may have had some trouble enforcing a rule as open to misinterpretation.
Bar Rouge, Basel – it’s on the very top floor! By midnight, we were ready to launch into a full assault of mainly 90s R&B/ street soul/ new jack swing revivals. The gig highlighted so many of the shortcomings with club nights back in the UK, and served as another reminder of just how much I love playing in other European cities as a result. Unlike British crowds, who feel it’s their duty to order the DJ what to play and when, the Bar Rouge crowd let us get on with doing our thing, and responded enthusiastically to everything that was dropped. I think we received about four requests all night. Again, there’s a recording of my set available to download via my Myspace page – www.markdevlin.co.uk. Only one aspect of the whole night was disappointing; Switzerland has yet to adopt the public smoking ban in place in most other European countries – a surprise considering what a clean and efficient country it is otherwise. As a result we emerged at 4am smelling like ashtrays. This used to be the case with every night back home, of course, but following a year of the British ban it’s something I’d forgotten all about.
The Black Fridays crew, Switzerland. Basel was in the grip of blazing sunshine on Saturday daytime, and I spent a few hours wandering along the Rhine, taking in the atmosphere and watching nutters dive in the (immaculately clean) river to cool down. Try that in The Thames and you’d almost certainly die of disease within the hour! The city was the setting for one of the Euro 2008 games just a few days before, and the fan stands were still in place along the riverside. I met Soulchild and Faye at the airport later. They were travelling on a flight to Stansted so Soulchild could DJ in London that night, while my flight left ten minutes later for Luton. I managed an hour at home before setting off for that night’s session at The Bridge in Oxford. As the night wore on, the requests started flooding in, highlighting a major contrast with the previous night’s scenario. I spent a short while chatting to the house room resident Justin Winks about this, and I was surprised to hear him complain that even as a dance music DJ he gets the same thing; I’d always assumed this to be a problem limited to the R&B/ urban scene, but it’s seemingly much more widespread. It was all summed up nicely on this month’s flyer for the On The Real event at London’s Bar Rumba ‘ – requests will not be entertained, but you will’! … and that was June.
May 2008 I'll be honest. May could have got off to a better start. For a day that's been spiritually revered since Pagan times, and as a public holiday across much of Europe, my May 1st was a miserable experience, and was even more of a downer given that it came directly after the elation of the fantastic Dance Summit gig in Latvia the night before. One word will be enough to put everything into appropriate context - Ryanair. If the airline's Customer Charter were to read something along the lines of 'Ryanair undertakes, at all times, to treat its customers like a bunch of cunts', then they would succeed unfailingly. I was booked on the 11am flight back to Stansted. DJ Ai-va and his girlfriend Merita were also due to travel and spend a few days' holiday in London, as well as legendary house DJ Danny Rampling, with whom I'd shared a lift to the airport. We weren't filled with confidence when we saw a team of engineers pacing around inspecting the incoming aircraft, and soon afterwards came the news that the flight had been 'postponed' owing to a bird striking one of the outer engines in-flight, causing considerable damage.
Ryanair loves to boast about its on-time flights, and seeks any opportunity to screw extra money out of its customers in criminally imaginative ways. But when anything goes wrong, their policy is to give as little information as possible, and hide away in the background lest they actually have to face anyone. (Similarly, the Complaints procedure on their website – undoubtedly the most-viewed page - only gives fax numbers, so they don’t have to deal with phone calls, letters or e-mails. Who the hell uses fax these days?) After much confusion, it emerged that the replacement flight wouldn't get going until 9.30pm or later. This meant Ai-va and Merita's tickets for a concert at the Royal Albert Hall that night were useless, and I was in severe danger of not making it back in time for my gig that night at The Wheelhouse in The Lake District, a four-hour drive from Stansted. In reality, the bird strike could have affected any airline. The difference is that a reputable one would have tried to assist and support its inconvenienced passengers as far as possible. Ryanair used it as an opportunity to try and extort some more money. It emerged that I could have been put on a flight to Stockholm, then a separate one to Stansted which would have got me back at 6.40pm, with ample time to get to Windermere. Ryanair wanted to charge me £400 for it, and refused to budge. In the end, I spent a brain-meltingly, spirit-drainingly tedious 13 hours in the airport, and inevitably missed my gig.
MD with Danny Rampling I passed a lot of the time chatting with a similarly-marooned Danny Rampling. The supposed departure time changed to 1.30am, by which time we admitted defeat and managed to book ourselves the last two seats on the following morning’s departure. Danny then headed back into the city to get a hotel room for the night. Earlier, he’d also booked a room at one of the airport hotels which he was no longer using, so he kindly allowed me to take it, where I slept for ten hours straight. We finally got going on the 11am Friday flight, getting back 24 hours later than scheduled. I dearly wish Ryanair would go out of business and their deeply unpleasant and morally corrupt boss, (ie, cunt) Michael O' Leary would lose his fortune. Sadly, for as long as people want to fly Europe for peanuts, I can't see it happening. The Bank Holiday weekend was a relatively relaxed one, involving lots of catch-up time with Parveen and family. My only gig was at The Second Bridge in Bath on Saturday night, where folk in my Vaults area all seemed so drunk they could barely stand. Not entirely sure if that’s a formula for a great night’s clubbing. If it is, everyone would have headed/ staggered/ crawled home entirely satisfied. Friday 9th saw my latest throwdown at the Slug & Lettuce in Aylesbury, for another event under the Reminisce promotional banner. This saw me digging deep for some 80s gems like Soul II Soul, Loose Ends and Alexander O’ Neal, fused with classic 90s moments from the likes of Zhane, R Kelly and Lauryn Hill. I’m happy for any opportunity to stay away from the usual commercial/ mainstream glut, and the Slug nights rarely disappoint. I finished at 1am, and headed immediately for the North West, ready to spend the rest of the weekend at the legendary Southport Weekender, where I had press tickets to represent for Touch Magazine. Past experience had taught me that the long road to the North West is best taken at night when a high-speed motorway blaze free of obstructions can be achieved. I reached my Travelodge on the M65 near Blackburn at 4am, and crashed straight out.
The Powerhouse, Southport. As with my last visit two years previous, I linked with North West kingpin and good DJ buddy Rick Star to attend Southport, and after picking him up in Preston on Saturday lunchtime, we headed across to check out the afternoon session. It’s easy to criticise any such event, and Southport’s strong points well outweigh any negative elements. Notably, it’s a credit to its reputation that so many Southerners are prepared to put in the long journey, because Southport’s a proper bitch to get to! Similarly, the event consistently sells out several months in advance. But a recurring observation is that the DJ line-up pretty much stays exactly the same from event to event, with any new names only being added long after they’ve proven themselves elsewhere. As such, we smiled at the same old characters cropping up as we glanced at the schedule. The best option for our afternoon session was to catch the familiar threesome of Ronnie Herel, Steve Wren and Bigger in The Funkbase, dropping a wild assortment that varied from Adeva’s ‘Respect’ to Bobby Byrd’s ‘I Know You Got Soul.’ The live acts and PAs were fairly disappointing this time, too. We caught five minutes of The Blackbyrds, knowing we’d have to wait another hour to hear ‘Rock Creek Park’ before leaving the site for a few hours’ rest.
Kerri Chandler in the Southport Powerhouse. I picked up Rick again at midnight and we headed back for the nightime session. The set-up in The Powerhouse is never short of impressive, and we caught snippets of soulful house from Joey Negro and Quentin Harris. In The Funkbase, we were just in time to sample DJ Swerve followed by Steve Sutherland with DJ Skinz on the mic, then Jazzie B/ Soul II Soul. Southport’s always strong on networking value, and sure enough we bumped into a few DJ acquaintances such as Vince and Dale from The Apartment in Swindon, former B&S scribe Pete Haigh, promoter Ron Chales and Lyrical Compact member D Fresh from Liverpool. After a few anorackish DJ chats, the consensus emerged that, at an event as prolific as Southport, punters should be able to expect all DJs to deliver their very best performances, and that most of this year’s sets had been a little disappointing on that front. This may well be down to the fact that Southport DJs don’t generally have to earn their next appearance – it’s just assumed that they’ll be back next time, so there’s no real competitive incentive to give it 110 per cent. I spent the drive back on Sunday assembling my ideal Southport line-up in my mind, and giving some thought as to what I’d put into my set if I were ever asked back! 12th May was my birthday, and the fact that it fell on a Monday was more than compensated for by the glorious weather. A quick look on the web has just revealed that I share my birthday with such a motley crew as Florence Nightingale, Burt Bacharach, Katharine Hepburn, Steve Winwood, Emilio Estevez, Steven Baldwin and Ving Rhames! One of the aspects of doing a radio show that I love the most is the exciting spontaneity brought about by having guests in the studio, chatting, then freestyling live. It's what radio was made for. It had been a long while since I'd had a group in live, but on Wednesday 14th, I welcomed Oxford's own Chima and Ineffible, aka the GTA crew into 'Just Buggin'. They laid down a long-running freestyle that was pure jokes, and all the more impressive given that it was totally off the top of the dome. I filmed bits of it, which are now available to view on my Myspace Videos page, or on Youtube, (just enter GTA, Oxford, Just Buggin.)
MD with GTA at FM107.9 I'd been making full use of Facebook during the week to get in touch with characters I knew back in the glory days of The Forum in Cardiff. I visit the city rarely these days, and I figured my impending Flawless gig at Iota on Thursday 15th would be an opportunity to link up with a few old faces. Several said they'd attend. Sadly, only Jasper, JD and Blighty showed up - hardly surprising considering they were the night's promoter and resident DJs respectively. I made allowances for the fact that the following morning was a work day, however, which probably also accounted for the light numbers. Nevertheless, I still had fun with my set.
MD with Blighty at Iota, Cardiff Next on the agenda was my latest Euro-hop to Bratislava, Slovakia a couple of nights later. My flight didn't land until after 10pm, leaving just enough time to check in to my hotel and head straight off for the venue. Bratislava is very close to Vienna, which is situated just across the Danube River, and many passengers treat the airport as a convenient way of getting there. Three of the four buses departing directly after our flight arrived were for Vienna, rather than Bratislava itself. Nu Spirit is an intimate underground spot with a left-field music policy and guests most nights. The public smoking ban clearly hasn't hit in Slovakia, as a thick grey haze was hanging in the air as I entered. Having not played in any smoking venue for almost a year, this came as a real shock, and a reminder of how things used to be every weekend not so long ago. I recoiled in horror when I reached the booth to find the resident DJ playing on vinyl turntables with no CD machine in sight, and management looked at me like I was mad when I mentioned that I needed to play off CD. Somehow, however, they managed to conjure up a pair of Pioneer CDJ100s from somewhere. Something that Parveen and myself had noticed when we visited Bratislava for the Christmas market a couple of years previous, was that Slovakians don't seem to like smiling when greeting people. This was reinforced when I offered a friendly smile to several of the punters in Nu Spirit, only to have it returned with a scowl. I don't think they mean to be off-key; it's just part of the culture.
Bratislava I played from 1 to 4am. By request, my set was very funk-based, and I played tracks I don't think I've ever dropped in a club at peak-time Saturday night before. These included The Blackbyrds' 'Rock Creek Park', Bobby Womack's 'Across 110th Street', Gil Scott Heron's 'The Bottle' and Average White Band's 'Picking Up The Pieces.' Funk is the order of the day in Nu Spirit. If the hordes of London/ Essex beer boys on my Sunday flight home were anything to go by, Bratislava has now taken over from Prague as the number one European destination for cheep stag weekends away! There was more live guest studio action on my radio show the following Wednesday, and it was more talent from Oxford, aka ‘Roxford’ City. This time the artist known as DVS, aka Deo Favente, (‘God’s favourite’ in Latin, because any MC worth their salt has at least one pseudonym!) was in to chat and freestyle live and spontaneous over a selection of beats. It was blazing, and you can catch excerpts from it in the Videos section of my Myspace page if you want to relive some of the wordplay.
MD with DVS in FM107.9 Fate and timing work by strange rules, and at the weekend, I found myself playing more heavy soul, funk and old school hip hop just as I had in Bratislava seven nights before. It made for a highly refreshing change from pop-orientated contemporary R&B. Not only that, but I didn’t have one dumb request all night! But then, visits to The Apartment in Swindon rarely disappoint, and this one had been arranged as a three-way throwdown between residents Vince Mancari and Dale Colsell and myself, when we discovered that all three of us have our birthdays in May. It was a quiet night, which made it all the more annoying that my friend Souad and her fiance weren’t admitted by the door staff over some trumped-up excuse or other. The session didn’t lack energy, however, with a bunch of soul steppers and jazz dancers keeping the floor ignited. Given the choice between playing to 30 knowledgeable music heads, or 1,000 clueless mainstream punters, I’d choose the former any day any day. I alternated with Dale, and artists ranging from James Brown to Tom Tom Club to Supercat to to Chubb Rock got played. Another highly rewarding Apartment session.
On Thursday 29th I headed off to Luton Airport to pick up DJ Soulchild, aka ‘Switzerland’s Official R&B King’, who was visiting the UK on an exchange basis similar to the ones we used to have in French class at school. Soulchild was spending a few nights being hosted by me in Oxford, ahead of me going out to his hometown of Basel in June for the reciprocal leg. After dropping him off at his hotel I headed back to Bicester. Being a Thursday, the night involved my regular spot at G’s, a place which is never short of a story to tell. During the week, G’s hosts a pole dancing night, and directly before I start on a Thursday is a salsa dancing class. The guy who runs it always carries the pole away to make adequate room for his people. This week, I noticed he was wearing plastic gloves while doing it, and I asked him why. “I just found out those pole dancers dance naked,” he replied, screwing up his face. “God only knows what’s on this pole.” Absolutely priceless.
Soulchild in FM107.9 Soulchild’s schedule meant he was unable to pass through my radio show live the following Wednesday, so on Friday 30th, after a quick ‘hood tour of Oxford, we hit the FM107.9 studios to record a double-header version of ‘Just Buggin’ for later broadcast. The trick when vibing with a fellow passionate music head is to recognise when to hold back from the enthusiasms before they start to reach the point of ramblings, and then to shut the F up and let the music do the talking. Hopefully we achieved this.
Ayo at The Regal, Oxford The last night of the month was a busy one. It marked my regular session at The Bridge, and on this occasion, I was splitting the night with Soulchild. It turned out to be quite fortuitous to have him around, as I installed him in place for the first part of the night, enabling me to dive off to The Regal, Oxford’s newest venue, where I’d been booked to drop an early set ahead of the night’s headliner, Trevor Nelson. The Regal is a converted ballroom and former Bingo Hall, and following a series of house music nights, this marked the first time they’d tried an R&B event in the impressive and vast main arena. Despite the challenges of filling such a large space, by the time I’d finished my set the place was nicely buzzing with long queues at the front door. I’d played largely 90s revivals to a very receptive crowd of girls in skimpy Moulin Rouge-style get up.
MD with DJ Soulchild at The Bridge I never crossed paths with Trevor as he arrived after I’d left to dash back across town to The Bridge. I finished the night alternating with Soulchild. I’ve always maintained that it’s good for venues to put on a variety of DJs on a consistent basis, as the different musical perspectives makes for a far more entertaining night on the part of the punter. On Sunday, Soulchild headed to London to spend a couple of days in the company of DJ Swerve, while me and Parveen hit the cinema to see if the new Indiana Jones movie justified all its hype. It didn’t. … and that was May!
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