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August
2005
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There are benefits and drawbacks to not being based in London. On the plus side, you’re free of the congestion, overcrowding, security fears, expense and general hectic-ness of life in The Big Smoke. On the other, about 95 per cent of the music/ media industries are based in the capital, and you’re often not taken seriously if you’re not among them. (Not that access has ever been a problem. From my home near Oxford I’m only 50 minutes away from West London by the M40 motorway, or just over an hour from Paddington by train. Oxfordshire is not the distant wilderness a lot of Londoners blindly assume it to be!) For practical reasons, therefore, whenever I’ve got people to see in London I try and tie several appointments together into one beneficial visit, and the latest of these was on Tuesday 2nd/ Wednesday 3rd August. Most were connected to Volume Two of my imminent promotional DVD, and first off was an evening visit to the guy that puts it all together, my producer Sean Douglas in Sudbury. We’re taking a different approach with this one; whereas Volume One was all about me as a DJ, with club footage from around the world, this one focuses more on my activities as a journalist, and we spent a couple of hours downloading camcorder footage from some of the artist interviews and drops I’ve collected over the months. It’ll be entertaining stuff when it appears, trust me! I then spent the night at the in-laws’ house in Middlesex, conveniently located for London stopovers. And free! I spent most of Wednesday based at the Blues & Soul Magazine HQ in Paddington, firstly chatting to Editor Bob Killbourn about my book, ‘Tales From The Flipside’, for which the long search now begins to try and secure a publisher, then linking with my webmaster Lee, to film a sequence on the site for the DVD, followed by Jay from the Black Moth Connection crew. This was an interview with a difference. I got him to ask me the questions to introduce the whole concept. In between, I slipped out to Oxford Street for a swift link with UK hip hop artist Daniel Azure, and to quickly drop in on Ronnie Herel at Uptown Records. Overall, it was a pretty productive day. The month’s first weekend kicked off with G’s in Bicester on Thursday, now open til 2am. The main appeal of G’s over the last 18 months has always been the relatively early 1am finish, which has prevented me from getting too worn out too early in the weekend. The extra hour is really creating a strain! Friday saw the long trek to Swansea, (360 miles return!) for my new residency at Crobar. The club was less busy than the previous week, largely due to a monthly hip hop night operating just around the corner, but the crowd still allowed me to road-test some new sounds. Tuneage from Sean Paul, Kanye West, Elephant Man, Capleton/ Rihanna/ Fatman Scoop, Teairra Mari, Mashonda and Bashy all got felt. Swansea urban don Evo, resident over the road at The Escape Club, also called in for a chat.
'MD at The Bridge' Saturday 6th saw my third consecutive week at The Bridge in Oxford, a result of providing some holiday cover for fellow DJ Danny Love. As with the previous week, the technical dramas were in full effect. This time, the styluses for the downstairs turntables had mysteriously gone missing … although the cleaners forgetting to lock the club’s front door when they left that morning may have had something to do with it! This led to a frantic 90-minute search for replacements before I could finally get going. Once underway, I busted another fairly upfront set, at least a third of what I played being brand new. This is just the way it should be. If I only ever got to play the same tired old hits over and over again, I don’t think I’d be able to bear carrying on with this job! With my writing commitments out of the way for a few days, and my scheduled gig at Booti Call in Athens cancelled for the fourth time, (!) the following week allowed me to charge headlong into mixing Volume 19 in my mix CD series, titled ’05 To Infinity.’ There’s a hell of a lot of good music that’s got me gassed at the moment, and I’ve managed to cram most of it into the mix, including lots of reggae dancehall, and a fair bit of crunk and Reggaeton. It’s gonna be special! The Beatmasters Mix on the bonus disk this time covers all the classic beats and productions of the Wu Tang Clan artists, courtesy of producer RZA. Watch out for the finished product, dropping mid-month.
’05 TO INFINITY. VOLUME 19 To listen to a sample click
here (Requires RealPlayer)
As with The Lake District, (where I’m playing again in September,) the Shakespearian town of Stratford On Avon isn’t the first place you think of when it comes to heavy urban clubbing. I had a good feeling about Sweet As Taboo at Bureau nightclub as me and Wifey rolled up there on Friday 12th, however, and my instincts were right. The place was packed. Sadly, a sizeable proportion of the crowd were idiot beer boys who’d stumbled into the wrong spot, but they were well-balanced out by what was clearly a dedicated R&B and hip hop contingent. The night’s fortunes were as mixed as the crowd; the club was such a sweatbox that one of the amps had blown, the booth was barely big enough to turn around in, and the floor seemed to be a sea of spilt alcohol and broken glass. The atmosphere was great, though, aided by some top-class party hosting by DJ Roffie, and we got some great pictures for both B&S Magazine and the Gallery section of this site. (Check ‘em.)
'MD with Chris Tempo at The Apartment' The Apartment in Swindon is always a spot I look forward to; because the open-minded attitude of both the management and the clientele allows me to play some of the most diverse sets I ever get the chance to drop. On Saturday 13th, my two-hour turn ranged from upfront sounds like Noelle and Kanye West, through revivals from Cheryl Lynn, In Deep and Lyn Collins, some reggaeton, a small piece of dancehall, and even Dee-lite’s ‘Groove Is In The Heart’. There aren’t many joints in the UK where you can get away with that type of selection at peak time on on a Saturday night! Even a drunken arsehole falling into the decks mid-set didn’t marr what was an all-round good session, I finished the night chatting to Swindon DJ Chris Tempo. This isn’t easy as Chris is about seven foot tall. At 5’10, I’m practically a dwarf by comparison. The only solution is to either stand on a crate, or get a crick in the neck. I got the latter. I’ve already received well in excess of a thousand promo CDs to listen to this year. With that kind of volume, leave it more than a few days, and the pile starts to get totally out of hand. Often, the only time I get to listen properly is in the midst of a long car journey, and my Friday return treks to Swansea are proving highly useful in that regard. In between dodging speed cameras and downing Red Bull, I managed to polish off the week’s pile. The night itself, at Crobar, was moderately busy. The most entertaining aspect was watching two drunk girls emulating stripper moves in the middle of the dancefloor for the entire duration of my two-and-a-half hour set.
'Crobar girls' I rolled in shortly before 6am to find the wife had considerately relocated to the spare room to enable me to get a few hours of undisturbed sleep. In the Summer months, things get so noisy so early that the chances of sleep any time after 8am is pretty much touch and go! The schedule for Saturday 20th had involved Vibin’ at Club Basic in Bournemouth, but that got mangled a few days before when the promoter called to cancel, (Convincing Excuses I Have Known, Volume 687b. “The toilets got flooded” Yeah, right.) Fortunately, I managed to secure a cool last-minute replacement at the upmarket Elysium in London’s Regent Street, so Parveen and myself headed there instead, using the in-laws’ house in Middlesex as a convenient overnight stop.
'Parveen at Elysium' Midway through my set, an extremely attractive black girl and her friend approached the DJ booth and asked Parveen if the DJ was single. “He’s married,” she replied. “To me!” ‘Oh, sorry!”, she replied, “You’re really lucky”, and they scuttled off sheepishly. Now, in all the years I was actually single and would have been able to take advantage of such a situation, do you think it ever happened?! Course not. A jarring reminder of how deeply cruel and unfair life can be!
'Punters at The Bridge'
Things were rounded off on Sunday with my first excursion to Jack’s Nightclub, formerly known as Mist in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. It’s a town I’d never visited before, and I took the booking assuming it to be near to Cambridge itself, and therefore a relatively easy run. A later glance at the map revealed it to be much further North, and actually closer to Norfolk! So I excused myself from our evening family get-together to give myself ample time to make the trek. Again, the night wasn’t rammed, but this was understandable considering it was the first Sunday the club had been open, having just attained its licence. I was getting Carnival withdrawal symptoms on Monday, but resisted going for another year. The spirit and the atmosphere of the event is fantastic, but the hassle and stress of getting there often outweighs it. Maybe next year. Instead, I settled for a quick look at the Reading Festival. … and that was August. Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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