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March
2007
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My new ’07 lifestyle had started to settle into a regular-ish pattern by the beginning of March. Generally speaking, I now spend the first three days of the week in London in my new daytime role on Blues & Soul magazine, returning to handle my radio show on Wednesday night, leaving Thursday, Friday and Saturday free for DJing business, and Sunday as a cherished day off. A regrettable spin-off of this is that there looks like being less overseas travel than in recent years, but I guess you can’t have it all! Following a week’s sensible reprieve, things were back on entertaining form at G’s Bicester on Thursday 1st. This week’s it-would-be-unbelievable-if-it-weren’t-Bicester request moment was, ‘got anything by that Akorn?’(sic) And sick. The night was also notable for the fact that one of the club’s Numark CD players had developed an error, which only came to light as I was about to start playing. The only way round this was to hastily hook up the conventional CD player situated behind the bar as a substitute. Pure drama.
After an afternoon promoting my book to a local paper, (which included a photoshoot mock-up on a fire escape stairwell next to a brick well to create a ‘ghetto’feel,) I enjoyed Friday night off, and some catch-up time with my missus. We’ve not really seen much of each other since I started my B&S job, so it was time well-spent. Plus it was her birthday weekend, so it was only right. I was back at G’s on Saturday, though, having swapped with the regular Saturday DJ Cecil to accommodate my upcoming Leicester gig on Thursday. This night’s classic piece of dialogue went along the lines of: Dodgy bird: ‘Have you got Akon?’Me: ‘I Wanna Fuck You?’Dodgy bird: ‘Do ya?’ I walked right into that one, didn’t I?
On Thursday 8th, I headed to Leicester for the Sweet As Taboo night at the recently refurbed Club Eden, (formerly known as Club Blaze.) During the day, promoter Mike had called to say that they’d been due to have Ne-Yo performing on the night, which would have been a great look. The Finesse promoters at Liquid, just a few doors along the road, clearly thought the same thing as they’d poached him that day, evidently offering his management more money to have him come and perform at their spot. Although they offered Mike compensation, it’s a pretty unprofessional move on the part of the artist management. When somebody is gracious enough to book your artist, you should stick to the agreement instead of then greedily sniffing out a better deal. Unfortunately, the Eden night was quiet, but so, apparently, were the other clubs in town. The rainy weather may have kept people away. The club closed early, so I was home and in bed by 4 - much earlier than I’d anticipated.
'Mark & Parveen at Arch Angel' To round off Parveen’s birthday week, we went for a meal at Arch Angel in Kensington High Street on Friday night. The venue is a club and bar as well as a restaurant, and I’m due to be spinning there in a few weeks. I took the opportunity to case out the joint. It’s a cool, intimate spot with a diverse music policy. The Saturdays have a ‘best of British’theme, with legendary trailblazers like Aitch B and Femi Fem dropping soul, funk, hip hop and soulful dance nuggets. The food’s pretty good, too! I did my second Saturday of cover at G's in Bicester the following night. The evening was fairly uneventful, except for another request for Akon and Snoop. This time, another girl, slightly more presentable than the first, asked me what the title of the track was. When I replied, she couldn't wait to run off and tell her friends that "the DJ just said to me 'I want to fuck you'!" Oh dear.
'MD with Joy Denalane'
I made the relatively short journey to Reading on Thursday 15th to play for the first time at Bar Mango. I knew the night, Fresh Solid Vibe, involved urban sounds throughout, but I wasn’t prepared for just how heavy this event is! As I walked through the front door, the air was bristling with intensity as the residents ploughed through some red hot reggae dancehall, playing to a hardcore crowd who clearly knew their stuff. To switch up the mood, I came on at about 1am and dropped some slamming hip hop, before the bashment reins were taken up again by 1Xtra’s dancehall master Robbo Ranx, who absolutely ripped it. Hats off to promoter Omar for building up such a highly impressive night over the past couple of years. I look forward to getting back to this one at the earliest possible opportunity.
'MD with Robbo Ranx at Bar Mango, Reading'
The diary involves relatively few Friday night bookings over the next few weeks which, on reflection, is probably a good thing, as it allows me to spend at least one evening with the wife, and an opportunity to catch up on at least some of the sleep woefully lacking in my life. Unfortunately, I hadn’t bargained for having to pre-record my ‘Just Buggin’show on Friday 16th ready for the following week, so I headed off to the Oxford studios to take care of it. It was good to catch up with presenters Danny Rose and Joe O’Neill, both of whom I used to work alongside at a previous station. Although we’re al now on 107.9, this was the first time I’d seen them since I started in January. Still didn’t manage to flog them a copy of the book, though! The road journey to distant Newcastle was made hazardous on Saturday evening by what felt like a Force Ten gale, and at times I felt it was going to lift my Beemer off the road. If not that, then one of the countless articulated lorries that were veering dangerously from lane to lane. On this occasion, my hotel was at Scotch Corner which, although more than 40 miles away from Newcastle, was at least on the way back home, so saved a bit of journey time in the morning. Scotch Corner holds the distinction of appearing on signposts up to 50 miles away, despite the fact that it is in fact nothing more than a roundabout!
'Happy clubbers at Hucci, Newcastle' Newcastle clubbers are a hardy lot, and it takes more than a hurricane to keep them in, so The Attic, site of the night’s Hucci gig, was suitably busy. I took over from resident Udo, and got away with a heavy set of non-obvious tunes. Being 17th March, there was a large Irish contingent inside celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. On a whim, I dropped House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ with predictably manic results. I was happy to see Redman’s new banger ‘Put It Down’ tear up the spot, too. After a mere five hours’sleep, I was back on the A1 home. The weather varied from thick snow, to violent hale to bright sunshine in the course of three hours. Not sure about global warming, but it certainly suggests our weather is completely f*cked up one way or the other! Business as usual the following week –four days at B&S HQ in London, followed by G’s in Bicester on Thursday night and another radio show pre-record on Friday. Having said that, though, the big changes happening on B&S this month are worth shouting about. New design, new format, new regional versions …it’s big! Check out the story on the news page. And be sure to get involved with the new-look website at www.bluesandsoul.com, which includes a new exclusive Podcast download service.
'MD at Sleepers, Basingstoke' My Saturday night outing on 24th was the intimate Sleepers, right next to the train station in Basingstoke. I was covering for long-time B&S scribe and DJ Stelly Stel, whose musical brief was ‘play absolutely anything you want.’This sounded like my kind of night. Despite a bunch of drunks lurching around the DJ booth insisting I ‘chuck on some ‘ouse, mate –‘ouse!’, I got away with a far-reaching set entirely of my own judgement. To get to play the likes of Prince’s ‘Pop Life’ and Grandmaster Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines’ to good reaction on a Saturday is a worthwhile thing! I’m sorry to say there’s nothing particularly riveting to report for the final week of the month, which was fairly routine. The weekend’s outings started at G’s in Bicester on Thursday, where I did at least get a surprisingly good reaction to Redman’s ‘Put It Down’. I then shortened my life by another few weeks by spending Saturday 31st in the lung cancer factory that is The Bridge in Oxford, with the accumulated clubbers’ fag smoke blown into my face by the air con unit again. Although Wales has just achieved its public smoking ban, we have to wait until July for the English one, but at least it won’t be happening again beyond that. This time I road-tested the new joint by Melissa Jimenez, ‘Untouchable’, which is as poppy as you like, but will be massive with the Beyonce/ Christina Milian crowd when it drops. Hardly a wild reaction on Saturday. I’ll give it a few weeks until Trevor Nelson and MTV have got hold of it, then I’ll be getting fifteen requests an hour. Lots of good stuff lined up for April,
kicking off with Easter weekend, so be sure to check back
soon. In the meantime … that was March.
Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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