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April
2006
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As April dawned, I was midway through my latest DJing trip to Africa, and Saturday 1st saw me making the 7am flight from Maputo back to Johannesburg by just a whisker. There was nothing more glamorous than sleep in my hotel room on the agenda for the rest of the day, before returning to the airport again for me evening SAA flight down to Cape Town. I’ve played 169 on Long, the city’s pioneering R&B club, for the past five years. As owner/ resident DJ Ricky picked me up from the airport, he explained how they’re now facing competition from handfuls of other venues eager to have a piece of the musical market 169 created. Added pressure has come from the fact that club attendances have fallen throughout CT as a whole, and nights are peaking earlier – a reversal of the situation in the UK. With this in mind, I played my set from 12 to 2, slightly earlier than on previous occasions. I didn’t notice any change in numbers or quality of the crowd, however, and the night ended up being highly enjoyable. SA kingpin Nic Regisford passed through briefly, and it was good to meet a few holidaying cats from the UK in there.
'Clubbers at 169, Cape Town' I spent Sunday hanging out in the Sea Point district, trying various health drinks and smoothies in an attempt to offset all the crap food I’d been eating, before Ricky dropped me back at the airport for the long and tedious 17-hour slog home – CT to JHB to Amsterdam to Heathrow – the aviation world’s equivalent to a prison sentence. Since the new UK licencing laws, G’s in Bicester has cemented a reputation as the late-night venue of choice in town. This makes for a lively final 1-2am, but a very boring run-up to the watershed point. So I used my time wisely on Thursday 6th, listening to the new MP3 tracks that had been sent over in the week by DJ Drastic in New York, and generating my responses while waiting for the crowds to arrive! By the time they were all in, they were congregating around the bar area, making it very difficult for me to make my way through to the toilets to take a leak. So I returned to booth, flung on Pussycat Dolls ‘Don’t Cha’, and enjoyed a trouble-free path as the masses flocked away and on to the dancefloor. Nice to know the tune still has its uses! The ban on smoking in public places came into force in Scotland in late March, and my my first visit North of the border on Friday 7th gave an opportunity to see how it was affecting clubland. I’d flown to Aberdeen to play DJ David Craig’s new Friday nighter at Tiger Tiger, and the horde of smokers standing in a haze outside the front door was reminiscent of similar scenes in Ireland. Apparently, the transition been smooth so far, and any initial resistance to the new laws is likely to soon wane. The night wasn’t overly busy, but the venue already houses an ultra-popular R&B night on Mondays in the form of Vodka Island, so the Friday offering will take some time to establish. Dave casually revealed that he was off to the airport directly after the gig ready to fly to a holiday in Trinidad at 6am. Like you do.
'MD with David Craig at Tiger Tiger, Aberdeen'
Bar gigs make a welcome change from the full-on intensity of clubs. Because they’re not so dancefloor-dependant, it allows you to take musical chances that would normally be impossible. My mate Brad/ Bobby Speed had lined up his one for me, and his musical briefing was that I could play ‘anything, as long as it’s old. And good.’ This resulted in a wildly far-reaching set consisting of such 80s gems as Prince, Alexander O’ Neal, SOS Band, Oran ‘Juice’ Jones, reggae revivals from Sister Nancy, Tenor Saw and Wayne Smith, and many other great gems besides. Being able to play Sheila E’s ‘A Love Bizarre’ at 1am on a Saturday night is not something that happens often, and I absorbed the opportunity fully.
Whilst it represents a break for most people, for DJs, the extended Easter weekend is generally one of the busiest of the year. I had five consecutive nights of DJing on the cards … but this very quickly got reduced to four when the ‘management’ behind Play in Swansea called on Thursday 13th to cancel that night’s gig for the second time in two months. Needless to say, there won’t be a third. To be honest, many clubs and promoters are so untrustworthy that it’s a miracle if five different gigs all go off without a hitch, so I was expecting some kind of bullshit at some point over the weekend. This left me to pick up the trail on Good Friday, which involved another excursion to Bristol to play at the stylish Romeo Browns venue on Corn Street. As they are every year, the news reports had been full of the traffic chaos caused by the millions heading off for the Easter break, which made me glad I do most of my motorway miles in the middle of the night. As a concession, however, the Department of Transport had removed hundreds of roadworks temporarily to ease the flow, including the interminable ones on the A34 and M4 that had plagued my previous weekend’s trip. Just goes to show, they can do it if they want. They just don’t want to very often!
'Romeo Browns crowd, Bristol' The Romeo Browns crowd were a little tepid for the first half hour of my set, but once they were warmed up, things rocked nicely. Management were concerned at the lack of numbers; apparently, most venues were suffering from a drop, including one which was hosting Ace and Invisible from 1Xtra. It still felt respectably busy to me, though, and it ended up a really good night. On Saturday, Parveen, her brother, his girlfriend and myself trekked to Fleet, just off the M3 in Hampshire, for a B&S mag presentation at The Emporium, a centrally located bar/ club/ pub. Veteran DJ/ promoter Mr. Jay, (who I recently profiled in B&S’s Spin Doctors section,) has been running Saturdays here for a couple of years, injecting a dose of R&B and soul old and new, varied according to what type of crowd comes through the door. It’s not often I feel young in a club these days, but with an average punter age of maybe 38, on this occasion I did! The most hilarious aspect of the night came when a bouncer tried to turf us all out at the end, and I politely explained that I was the DJ. ‘You’re not the DJ,’, he exclaimed after ten seconds with his mouth open. ‘The DJ’s a big black fella!’. A priceless doorman moment.
'MD & DJ Mr Jay at The Emporium, Fleet' Wifey and myself hit the road on Easter Sunday evening for a couple of nights up North, starting with my debut session at RB’s nightclub in Chester. The place was rammed, with over a thousand people assembled throughout the club’s three levels. I was on the middle tier, playing alongside resident DJ Bonez. The schedule was also to feature Bonez’ live act, Mancy Movements from Manchester, but despite two attempts to bring them on, the feedback from the four radio mics was so intense that they had to be abandoned. Having undergone similar disappointments on a DJ level myself, I felt their pain. The crowd were highly responsive to my two-hour set, and it ended up pretty much the perfect night. It’s a great club with a lot of energy, and I’m looking forward to another opportunity to play there.
'RB's, Chester' We had a bit of time to look around Chester and grab a meal just over the border into North Wales on Monday, before heading across to Manchester for an afternoon kip at our hotel. At 11pm, we headed to Paparazzi for my I Love R&B set there. The club’s in The Printworks, a trendy leisure complex that’s full of nothing but bars, clubs and restaurants. It was a little difficult to read the crowd from the DJ booth, which was situated way up on an isolated balcony – never the best. But the night was well-attended and reasonably lively, and it rounded off a varied and enjoyable extended weekend.
'Seema & Amo at Paparazzi' I developed a symptom at G’s in Bicester on Thursday 20th which will be familiar to many jocks, and is probably best described as ‘DJ finger.’ I’ve taken to playing all my G’s sets off CD, (the only venue where I’ve made a total switch-over from vinyl,) and the constant act of punching the start button on the players has made the tip of my index finger red and sore. An occupational hazard, I guess! When you DJ in as many different places as I do, you tend to amass a pretty impressive list of excuses when it comes to gigs not going ahead. I have so many I could write a book on the subject, (I have, actually), and I truly thought I’d heard every one going. Until Friday 21st April. This was the night my first appearance at Butterfly High in London got cancelled two hours beforehand owing to the venue apparently ‘not being able to get the sound system to work.’ At all. In any way. As excuses go, it’s a pretty watertight one when you think about it. It just wasn’t too welcome considering I’d already driven to London by the time I’d got the news. So, after a quick social visit to the in-laws, I drove straight back home again, hit the bottle and hit the sack, my Friday night consigned firmly to the scrap-heap. What more can I say?
'MD greeting a promoter' Thankfully, Saturday offered far brighter prospects. This marked my first appearance for Saturday Soul, at The Ritz in Preston. Like my River Bar gig in Bristol a couple of weeks earlier, this was all about quality soulful revivals, and I got another chance to bang out 80s and early 90s gems to an appreciative crowd without getting mindless requests for Pussycat Dolls or ‘something a bit newer’ every five minutes! Rick Star was in the place, hustling hard to promote his Truth jam in Preston the following weekend. The night was a little quiet, but resident Des Grant put this down to the big soulful event happening at King George’s Hall in nearby Blackburn that night, plus the date being midway between Bank Holidays. It was still a great experience; getting to play Prince and Cameo in a club these days is an achievement in itself. My next spot there is in just a couple of weeks, and I look forward to being a regular part of the DJ fixtures from then on.
My luck when it comes to hotels is similar to my luck on flights. Having gone to the trouble of specifically requesting a room on ‘the quiet side of the hotel’, I got woken by a screaming wailing brat in the adjoining room at 6am. So conceding to defeat, I got up, threw the bag in the car and drove home there and then. The joys of life on the road. I can’t remember the last time I DJed six nights on the trot, but that’s what was on the cards for the period beginning Wednesday 26th April. I know there are many jocks who spin this number of times weekly as a matter of course, but this tends to be in the same town or city. My schedule involved a motley selection of locations spread around the UK. What makes six late nights so gruelling is the fact that I’ve lost the capacity to sleep beyond about 9 or 10 in the morning. In my days of occupying my bachelor flat, I’d regularly snore on past noon, but since getting married, my entire body clock has shifted - mainly out of consideration to the wife so she gets to spend some time with me while I’m actually awake!
'MD at Thompsons, Belfast' First off was a trip to Northern Ireland to play Funkarama at Thompsons in Belfast. This is my fourth or fifth time at the venue, and it’s never anything less than busy. The venue should consider renaming itself ‘Thompsons Turkish Baths’, however, as the heat is always stifling. The over-enthusiasm towards dry ice makes it difficult to see more than three feet in front of you, too! Minor gripes aside, it was another enjoyable night, and the turnout was highly impressive for a midweek affair. Staying in a hotel after a gig always presents a dilemma. Whether to get up in time for breakfast, or whether to go hungry and enjoy an hour or two more of sleep? Tricky. I tend to alternate between the two, but went for the second option at Belfast’s Holiday Inn. After clogging up reception for a few hours to catch up with the B&S singles reviews on my iBook, I flew back into Birmingham airport, setting off down the road for my regular session at G’s a few hours later. All the best clubs in Brighton are situated under the King’s Road Arches, right adjacent to the seafront. The last time I played the club called The Beach was about six or seven years ago, alongside my MC Kid Fury, and my enduring memory is of the ceiling of the ladies toilets collapsing under the weight of the main road at the end of the night, filling them with blocks of concrete. It’s a miracle no-one was hurt! Thankfully, the place looked quite a bit safer as I arrived on Friday 28th, to play the big Obsession jam.
'MD and Treble T at The Beach ' The night’s run by Michelle Hunter, former promoter of Smoove at Ministry of Sound, and on the bill were Heartless Crew, Rampage, Brighton DJ Outbreak and myself. I played prior to Treble T of Rampage, who ripped into his set like a man possessed, putting in one of the most energetic and impressive performances I’ve seen, and dropping old garage classics like Azido De Bass and Wookie in the mix. We had a quick chat about formats beforehand. Having had hours to practice on the CDJ1000s in the BBC 1Xtra studios, Treble’s now taken to playing his entire sets off CD. It’s a move he thought he’d never make, but as he observed, ‘you have to move with the times.’ Maybe I’ll get there yet; I’m currently about 50/50 vinyl/ CD. For whatever reason, Heartless Crew hadn’t shown up by their allotted time, so Outbreak went back on to entertain the thriving masses as I departed. In all, an enjoyable and packed session, and surely one of the most happening urban music nights in the UK.
'Bridge girls' It’s become very difficult to predict crowd trends at The Bridge in Oxford, where I play the last Saturday of each month – particularly on a bank holiday weekend. Saturday 29th ended up being a breath of fresh air. My floor was packed with a good quality crowd of urban heads, and I spent the last hour dropping crunk, snap and bashment sounds to a sea of waving hands and pumping fists. I began the night having another DJ conversation about music formats. Dance DJ Ussherman has not only left vinyl, he’s bypassed CDs and gone straight to DJing directly off a laptop interface. Old soul boy Danny Love still swears by his vinyl, meanwhile. Two opposing views, but all food for thought. At lunchtime on Sunday, Parveen, her brother, his girlfriend and myself enjoyed a complimentary meal out courtesy of Parveen’s status as a newspaper reporter – one of the many perks of the job! Afterwards, I set off for another two-night excursion up north.
'MD with Ronnie Herel at Truth, Preston'
DJ/ MC/ promoter Rick Star has been doing his thing in Preston for years, and is pretty legendary in the city. In his frustration at the commercialisation of the R&B market, and his determination to bring ‘real’ black music to Preston, he’d put together an all-star DJ cast for his Splash event at Truth nightclub. This consisted of BBC 1Xtra’s Ronnie Herel, Galaxy Radio’s Wayne McDonald, (who, despite now living and working in Newcastle, hails from Preston), myself, Rick and Preston DJ Russi P. With so many DJs, there was only time for me to play an hour, but I hung out for the rest of the night, absorbing the vibes. Each DJ dropped a very different set to the last, making for a varied and inspiring session, and certainly staying true to Rick’s original ethos. There was one more night of my six-night stint, but that fell in May. … and that was April! Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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