October 2007

It's been a highly productive time on the mix front lately. By the first week of October I'd produced the Swizz Beatz, Just Blaze and Rodney 'Darkchild' Jerkins instalments of the Beatmasters mix series, mashing up the biggest beats and productions of each producer respectively. Although the production process itself is fairly hefty, by far the most time-consuming task is locating the tracks I want to use in the first place. Those held on alphabetically-filed CD aren't a problem; such a vigilant system isn't possible with my many thousands of vinyl records, and it took several hours of digging around in the house, garage and loft and blowing away of cobwebs to pull out everything I needed. Once done, it was a strangely satisfying experience to be mixing with vinyl again after quite a while away!

Into the vaults.

To work out what to use in the Swizz, Just and Darkchild mixes I used their production discographies as listed helpfully on wikipedia.com. For some reason, there isn't one for Marley Marl, who's the next producer in line for the treatment, so I've had to rely on my personal knowledge of his joints. Not too much of a struggle in Marley's case. Anyway, the latest three mixes are now available to listen to - check the alternative blog for the download links - and Marley will be completed soon.

It’s virtually unheard of for any major trends in UK urban music styles to emerge from anywhere but London. The glaring exception over the past year or so has been the genre known as bassline or ‘Niche’ house, (apparently named after the venue in Sheffield where it’s said to have originated.) This fusion of UK garage, drum & bass and funky house elements has been a massive movement in the Midlands and the North for several months, but has passed completely un-noticed by anyone South of Leicester. It’s only now that promoters in London appear to have picked up on it, and I had my first experience of seeing its dancefloor effects at Bar Rumba in London on Friday 5th.

Dancefloor action at Bar Rumba.

This marked my latest appearance for Get Down, the Urban Music Award-winning mash-up night, where resident/ promoter Sharma was dropping some bassline rhythms to a crowd who certainly knew how to respond. (Watch out for T2’s ‘Heartbroken’, which has been adopted as an unofficial anthem of the movement. Dude N Nem’s new ‘Watch My Feet’ also tore it up.) Like UK garage and grime before it, ‘bassline’ won’t be to every hip hop head’s taste, but there’s certainly an energy to the sound. The rest of the night was as strong as ever; I got imaginative with some 90s revivals as MC Scandal blessed the mic. This was the penultimate session of Get Down. After three years, the night is changing identity to Bump N Hustle, now to be run in-house by the venue, but with Sharma and crew still promoting.

The following night saw my second dose of G's in Bicester, covering for Saturday resident Cecil, who in turn was covering my shift the following Thursday to enable me to play in Cardiff. Saturday's session yielded the unhappy site of a punter closely resembling Olive from 'On The Buses' attempting to whine up in front of the booth. Except she didn't just look like Olive when she was in 'On The Buses', more like how Olive looks now. Oh dear.

There are a few characters that go by the name of JP in the urban music world. First off is the veteran London DJ who specialises in old-school soul/ swing sets. Then there's JP Esquire of the MVP Productions/ Bon Garcon camp. Another JP recently emerged, (and confusingly, his real name is Chris Lock,) this one a South London producer-turned-artist who specialises in jazzy-flavoured laid-back hip hop. I've been feeling his sounds lately, so I got him into Just Buggin as my live studio guest on Wednesday 10th. Also in was his co-producer Face, and DJ Maurice, who many DJs will be familiar with as the guy that runs the Soul 2 Streets promotions company. During the first minute of the show, one of the studio CDs jammed on me, and it was clear that it was going to be out of action for the rest of the evening. Fortunately, Maurice had come armed with bags of vinyl to throw down a live mix, so I let him spin for a significant proportion of the show to ease the stress before chatting to JP.

Maurice, Face & JP @ FM107.9.

During the period 1997 to 2000, I played at the legendary Forum in Cardiff every Saturday. Most weeks this involved driving from Oxford to Cardiff and back alongside my MC Kid Fury, and some weeks I did this as often as three times – that's three round trips of 240 miles! On Thursday 11th I had a chance to relive the experience, as I trekked back to Wales to play MC/ promoter Jasper's Squeeze night at Cardiff's Iota. The journey was enough of a strain on this solitary occasion, which made me wonder how the hell I used to manage it so often.
As if the criminal charge of £5.10 to cross the Severn Bridge isn't taking the piss enough, on Thursday there was only one toll booth open, resulting in a slow-moving queue of about 30 vehicles. This caused me to be ten minutes late for the gig, giving a quick greeting to Cardiff DJs Bibs and Tom Le Bree who'd popped their heads round the door. In the event, though, the venue wasn't busy, as it turned out to be a quiet night all over town. The night finished early and we agreed to try it again in a few weeks when numbers would have hopefully picked up. My journey back was plagued by thick fog all along the M4. On the one hand, I always want to get home to my bed in as little time as possible; on the other, I'm too young to die, so my speed home had to reflect a compromise between the two!

MD with Jasper at Iota, Cardiff.

There was more déjà vu over the weekend. The management team of The Bridge, my regular spot in Oxford, recently bought up a venue in Bath, and have now refurbed and relaunched it under the identity of The Second Bridge. I'm familiar with the venue from its many other guises, however. First off I remember it as Roxberry's, where I played one of my first gigs outside of Oxford in my early days of DJing. I then span there over the years as it changed to Blu, then Asylum, and latterly Babylon. (On a sombre note, it was at Babylon three years ago where I last saw local hero DJ Truss, shortly before he was tragically killed in a car accident.)
On Saturday 13th, I got to play the venue under a fifth identity, which must surely constitute some sort of record? The club had only been open for two weekends, and the previous Saturdays had shown the crowd to favour house, so the night ended up being one of the two or three times a year that I deviate from my usual urban style to play dance music. Playing outside of your usual style is a test of your all-round sharpness as a DJ, but although I'd been armed with all the big room tunes during the week by my DJ friend Ussherman, and I appeared to rock it, I still felt a little uncomfortable knowing that most of the crowd probably knew the structure of these tunes better than me. Either way, it turned out to be a very uplifting night, my only complaint being that the dancefloor stank to high heaven of rancid garlic farts for most of the night, an unfortunate side-effect of smoke-free clubs. There are a few parallels between Oxford and Bath, notably the student population, and management had done a great job of making the club look cool and very much like a smaller version of its counterpart.

MD at The Second Bridge.

My sleep 'patterns' give cause for concern at the best of times, and I can't remember the last time I enjoyed eight hours of unbroken slumber. My missus despairs of me getting up at 4 in the morning and going down to make a cup of tea as she turns over and goes back to sleep. But my body clock had been so knocked out of synch the following week that by the time of my radio show on Wednesday 17th, I was so drained with exhaustion I could barely stand. Curiously though, a complete transformation took place as I entered the studio. The tiredness disappeared - for two hours at least - and I ended up delivering one of my sharpest shows of recent weeks. Another great example of the sustaining power of adrenalin brought on by enthusiasm for the music which continually helps DJs out of such sleep-starved situations!

My next gig involved one of the longest road trips I undertake – just under 300 miles to Newcastle to spin at the popular Hucci R&B night. The event formerly ran at The Attic on Saturday nights, but recently moved to Fridays at Beyond, a venue housed within The Gate, a complex full of assorted bars and eateries that's guaranteed to be heaving every weekend. I span alongside North East DJ hero Devon, who's one of the best regional DJs I've encountered; a few years ago he impressed me with his skills on the CDJ1000s; naturally these days he's progressed to Serato. My set was a good buzz and seemed to go down well, aided by some strong MCing input from resident mic master Kenrick.

Devon & Kenrick.

The Newcastle gig had fallen the night before I was due to fly to Hungary for a three-day break with Parveen and my mother-in-law, so the timing wasn't ideal, but that's the way dates so often fall in this game. (Going on holiday with your mother-in-law might sound like a nightmare, but mine is a lot of fun and comes across as a couple of decades younger than she is!) So by 9am I was bombing it back South, grabbing a quick 45 minutes to pack at home, before we all headed off to Luton Airport.

Budapest.

Me and the missus had touched Budapest as part of our Honeymoon three years ago, and were keen to visit again. Our '04 visit had come just before Hungary joined the EU. We noticed the difference straight away in the prices; food, drink, transport and entertainment costs had all shot up. The city was bitterly cold compared to the mild UK, but we braved the elements to see as much of the twin cities of Buda and Pest, separated neatly by the River Danube, as possible. Readers of my book, 'Tales From The Flipside' might recall a story about a small dance club set inside one of the underground train stations, which I was naturally keen to experience anew. We spent our last day killing time in our hotel waiting for our return flight, not having realised that 23rd October is a national holiday in Hungary, when most shops and businesses close. It marks the anniversary of the 1956 uprising in Budapest's Parliament Square against the Communist regime of the era.

I went on a total nostalgia trip for my end-of-month Saturday session at The Bridge. DJing for the whole night always gives scope to drop a fair few throwbacks alongside the upfront staff, and I find myself delving deep into my selection every month to pull out some imaginative stuff. On this occasion, spontaneity led me to draw some mid 90s soulful jungle, and the goosebumps were rising as I was transported straight back to that era. We're talking Sharon Forrester's 'Love Inside', Elizabeth Troy's 'A Greater Love', Goldie's 'Inner City Life', all that good stuff. Then I let rip with the rowdy madness of Code Red's 'Conquering Lion', which had the place jumping. A strong track is a strong track forever, and sounds especially great when you've not heard it for ten years or more!

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