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October
2005
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'MD not in South Africa ' Saturday 1st October should
have seen me playing in Johannesburg, South
Africa, but as explained at the end of September’s
Diary, I opted to pull the trip a couple of weeks before due to
bad vibes from the overseas venues. Instead, I hastily re-arranged
a weekend of UK gigs to compensate, and Saturday saw me joining
Midlands heavyweight DJ One Step at Club
Release in Coventry.
'MD & DJ One Step '
I’d last played with One Step a couple of years before, and as our styles are quite similar, it’s always a gas. Saturday was a heavy session made good by an energised and knowledgeable crowd, and was just the sort of gig that gives me the most satisfaction at the end of the night. Parveen took some really great photos to be posted in in the Gallery section shortly, if they’re not already. Of all the nights of the week, Tuesdays are the ones I virtually never play. There’s a school of thought to suggest that it’s an even drier night than Monday! Despite this, Flirt at Creation in Cardiff on 4th October was respectably buzzing. This is a new student-aimed promotion from the Sugar & Spice crew, and the fact that it was Freshers’ Week clearly helped. I was joined on the mic by DJ-turned-MC Bibs for my set, in which I gave a first airing to a remix of Ciara’s ‘Oh’ that I’d thrown together the previous day blending the beats from the Coolie Dance rhythm and Ying Yang Twins’ ‘Shake’, which happily appeared to go down well.
'MD with James Ice Cold at Bad Apple '
The return of the students to Bristol was ideally timed with my fortnightly appearance at Bad Apple on Thursday 6th. On previous occasions, I’ve stuck rigidly to the event’s policy of showcasing the urban sound of New York by playing tracks only by artists actually from New York. On this occasion, I conceded that this really was too restrictive, so expanded the selection to bring in artists from Chicago, Atlanta, LA, etc, the rationale being that it’s all still music that gets played in New York, and is still therefore representative of the NY sound! The following night saw me with a rare Friday off following the demise of Crobar. Typical bad timing meant Wifey was actually working herself, so I hooked up with her brother, (who’d also been abandoned by his missus for the night), and we headed to the cinema to check out David Cronenberg’s ‘A History Of Violence.’ It’s kinda misleading, turning out not to be the film you thought it was, but it certainly keeps you watching, and comes recommended! The following night, I absorbed my third outstanding Saturday gig experience in a row – something to be grateful for in a game where such good fortunes are never guaranteed! This one was my first time at Milkshake, the monthly urban music presentation staged at The Showbar, right on the main pier in Bournemouth. From the name, I’d assumed the venue to be literally a bar, and was surprised to find a full-size bona-fide club. Despite heavy competition, including a Hed Kandi night at The Opera House in Boscombe, Milkshake was impressively attended.
'Milkshake, Bournemouth ' More importantly, the crowd were enthusiastic and responsive, and everyone seemed to leave uplifted – myself included. Once again, Parveen did us proud with a great selection of pics for the Gallery, which will also appearing in B&S mag. My Thursdays have now settled into alternating between Bad Apple in Bristol and G’s in Bicester. Bad Apple is the clear preference on pretty much all grounds, the one single benefit of G’s being that it’s five minutes from my front door, making it the closest-to-home of any of the gigs I play. When it comes to record label street teams, Sony BMG, Atlantic/ Warner and Def Jam are the ones in the UK with the most clout, and a place in any of these tends to hold infinite benefits for any urban DJ. Of these, Sony BMG is currently on a highly ambitious tour of UK clubs, looking to take in something like 70 spots between now and Christmas. I’m covering some of the action in B&S mag, and on Friday 14th, I hooked up with Reggie Styles, Redz, and local face DJ Flash for a stop-off at The White Rooms in Southampton.
'Reggie Styles & homies at White House, Southampton ' On the drive down, I managed to get a bit of grit in my eye; in reality it was just a speck, but it felt the size of a housebrick. I spent the entire drive scratching and rubbing at my eye trying to get it out, to the extent that when I arrived, I looked like an extra from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video, my eyeball bloodshot and scratched to bits, which didn’t do wonders for effective socialising. The event was actually the opening night for The White House, (formerly known as The Polar Bar,) and the refurb had only been finished that afternoon. The DJ box was freshly built, the smell of sawdust still in the air. Unfortunately, there were major teething problems with the sound system. Two of the amps had overheated and blown just before I arrived, resulting in distorted and muffled sound. It was a bit of a downer, but everyone there still seemed to enjoy themselves regardless. The grit had gone by Saturday morning, but my eyes were still red – this time from lack of sleep, as Wifey and I left the house early to head to Heathrow Airport. One of the aspects of my job that I love is the chance to travel to far-flung spots, and I’ve become something of a specialist in locating gigs in unusual locations – not always easy when you spin R&B and hip hop! On this occasion, I was headed to the Shetland Islands, way off the North East coast of Scotland, and as far north in the UK as I’d ever ventured. There are no direct flights from London, so I had to route via Aberdeen, and a two-hour delay didn’t really help, leaving me with literally minutes to run to my next plane, a small 24-seater up to Sumburgh, on Shetland’s Southern tip. I’d left home at 9.30am, and it was 5pm by the time promoter Alan had driven me the 25 miles to Lerwick, the capital. Shetland has a population of around 22,000, 10,000 of them in Lerwick. The oil industry provides the main income, followed by tourism – but you don’t see much of that in October! It’s a pretty beautiful island, if a little remote.
'North Star, Shetland ' The gig was at North Star, a 100-year-old former cinema. It mainly stages live music gigs, and Alan told me I was the first urban music DJ to ever guest on the island. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, so I’d brought a wide selection, figuring I’d either be forced to play commercial R&B tosh all night, or could get away with some proper heavy tunes. By the time of my set, I gauged the look of the crowd and figured the heavy tune option could work. And happily it did, the crowd clearly lapping up the chance to hear something a bit different. I ended the night drunk and happy, with the invitation to come back soon. After my two flights home on Sunday, I picked up a finished batch of ‘Whirlwind Through Cities’, my second promotional DVD from my producer Sean. This one’s a little different from the first, focusing more on me as a journalist than a DJ, but still with plenty of footage from clubs around the world. Watch out for more about this on the site soon!
'MD with Westwood ' Despite the appeal of a restful night in, it wasn’t to be. Westwood and Goldfinger were guesting at The Park End Club in Oxford, and it was only right that I hooked up with resident Junior J and artist De Marvlest to represent. The night could have done without three fights on the dancefloor, but that’s pretty much par for the course at a Westwood gig! When I exited from the Goldfinger night at the same club three weeks earlier, the street was teeming with flyer kids. This time, it was teeming with police. Not much exitement on Thursday and Friday. Thursday 20th saw another week at G’s in Bicester, my scheduled appearance at Bad Apple in Bristol having been forward to the following week. Friday 21st was to have involved an appearance at Met Parties’ Def Jam night at 10 Rooms in London, but after the gig was booked, then cancelled, then re-booked, then re-cancelled, I swiftly lost interest and enjoyed a night with Wifey at the in-laws’ place in Middlesex instead! This was ideal placing for my flight out of Heathrow the following day, at least. My roaming DJ bookings rarely follow any kind of consistency, so while it would have made good sense to either travel on direct from my previous weekend’s outing in Shetland, or otherwise space the two trips out with a reasonable gap in between, I ended up heading off to a remote Scottish isle for the second Saturday in a row. This time the destination was Kirkwall, the principal harbour town on the main island of Orkney. Again, travel necessitated a BA flight to Aberdeen, then a transfer to a smaller Loganair-operated craft up to Kirkwall, where I was met by Mark, new owner of the Fusion ‘superclub’. Geologically, Orkney struck me as very similar to Shetland. The population is slightly less, at around 22,000, with 6-7,000 of those concentrated in Kirkwall. The Orkneys actually comprise around 70 islands, but only 16 of them are inhabited by anything other than sea birds. It’s much closer to the Scottish mainland than Shetland, itself around 100 miles to the North, but flight prices still take the piss. My return ticket from London came in at around the £260 mark, which apparently is nothing unusual!
'Fusion, Orkney ' Fusion was a major contrast to North Star. It’s a former fish factory converted to club status at a cost of around £2 million, and the smart and spacious results are impressive by anyone’s standards. When judging likely crowd tastes, it’s generally a case of absorbing both the venue type and the look of the punters, and from this, I’d expected a more mainstream and less adventurous crowd than the previous weekend, which turned out to be the case. This called for some hard work, but fortunately, everyone seemed happy enough with the results. It was an entirely Caucasian affair; Orkney is actually closer to Bergen, Norway, (where I was the previous month,) than it is to mainland Scotland, and many Orcadians are apparently of Norwegian descent. Incredibly, my Sunday route home involved stops in both Inverness and Edinburgh, (incorporating a one-hour delay – is there any other way?), before I finally got back to a waiting Mrs. D pick-up at London Heathrow. Plenty of time to put in some B&S mag work on the laptop, at least… I was dumbfounded to read on Trevor Nelson’s website this week that he’s received a six-month driving ban for speeding. It’s not the ban that was so surprising, it’s the fact that someone of Trevor’s stature and salary still drives himself to his own gigs rather than employ a driver, (which I’d certainly do if I could afford it!) Anyway, his comments help highlight the general perils that we DJs face racing around in the middle of the night. The temptation to bomb it home as quickly as possible after a gig is clearly a strong one. This was on my mind on my return trip to Bristol on Thursday 27th – just over 200 miles in total. Doubtless, some would consider this a little much, but to someone who’s regularly driven 360 miles or more in a night, this was no biggie at all!
'MD Bad Apple poster '
This was my residency for Bad Apple at Three in Bristol, where I’m now back on track with my fortnightly appearances. My old DJ mate Pete B from Bath passed through briefly to hand me his latest mix CD, for which I’ve voiced the intro. You’ll see we’ve included a section of it to listen to in the left-hand side menu bar. It’s jokes! (Incidentally, I was also interested in Trevor’s comments that in-car listening is the only opportunity he gets to catch up with the vast horde of CDs he receives every week – it’s exactly the same for me!) The month finished with my marathon session at The Bridge in Oxford on Saturday 29th, with an extra hour of sleep to follow due to the clocks going back – always welcome! … and that was October. Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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