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September 2007 My first outing of September also marked my first time playing in a Yates’ venue. This one was in Poole, Dorset on Saturday 1st, a location which offered some stunning sunset views over the harbour as I hit town. The mainstream nature of these venues caused me to anticipate a difficult crowd giving me a hard time and only responding to the most commercial of tunes. Happily, I was wrong. It was a well-behaved and generally quite sensible gathering, and the night could have turned out to be far more painful than it was. An entertaining sight on the way back to the car was a couple of drunken nutters who’d challenged each other to climb on to the arched roof of a public toilet building. One of them made it. The fact that he didn’t break his neck was truly a modern-day miracle. Although it only broadcasts to Oxford and surrounds by conventional means, my radio show on FM107.9 has been picking up enthusiastic response from overseas thanks to the Listen Live facility on the website, (www.fm1079.com) I’ve been getting a lot of love from Denmark recently, in particular from the talented and distinctive vocalist Lene Riebau, whose tracks I’ve been playing, and from producer Frank Ryle of the Soul Portal website, (www.soulportal.dk - there’s a Q&A interview session with me running on there currently.) As fortune would have it, I had an opportunity to meet both of them with a nicely-timed DJing double-bill to Denmark across the weekend of Friday 7th/ Saturday 8th.
Copenhagen. I flew with SAS Airlines to Copenhagen on Friday night. It’s a beautiful city which I’d only visited once before for about two hours while in transit to Norway. The club, Emma, is of the plush, upmarket variety, and just like its London counterparts, had attracted a number of off-duty Danish celebs in party mode. (I’d never heard of any of them, of course.) Seemingly as a result, the clientele was of a more mature variety than the usual Friday turn-out, which called for a highly varied set. This is never a problem: I carry enough tuneage in my finely-honed CD wallet to get me out of any tricky situation, and I found myself flitting in many different musical directions at Emma. I played alongside Copenhagen legend Tommy Scott, who ended up as one of only a handful of DJs whose performances have had me spellbound this year. At one point, I joked that he should complete his set without using headphones. He did, and you’d never have known the difference! Frank and Lene were both in the house, and it was good to put faces to names.
MD at Club Nine, Aarhus. On Saturday lunchtime, I took one of the shortest flights ever to the city of Aarhus – only 20 minutes in the air. It was only after booking that I was told I could have taken a train. This hadn’t seemed possible when I’d consulted a map, as the two cities are on separate Danish islands. It turns out, however, that a rail/ road bridge, (the Storebaelt,) was constructed to link the two about twenty years ago; there’s another, (the Oresund Bridge,) connecting Copenhagen with Malmo on the Swedish mainland. My visit to Aarhus coincided with the city’s annual festival, where folk take to the streets to drink in beer tents, and party day and night, seemingly for no other reason than to celebrate where they live. I linked with local DJ Thomas S, whose full name, despite having known him for two years, I can never remember! (Thomas was intrigued to hear the backwards edits on swear words on my mix CD, incidentally, having never heard this editing practice before. In Denmark, as in most of Europe, there’s no censorship of swear words required on radio broadcasts, unlike at home in the UK!) Prior to our gig we attended a concert at the Government-funded Voxhall live music venue from a funk outfit called SlowTrainSoul. They’re fronted by one of the most charismatic and over-statedly bizarre lead performers in the shape of the Afro-headed Lady Z, and the show was highly impressive to absorb.
Jeppe & friend at Club Nine. From Voxhall, we moved on to Club Nine, where my appearance had been enthusiastically marketed by promoter Jeppe. Thomas kicked things off at 11pm, and I stepped on at 1, as the place was buzzing with clubbers fired up from a full day of drinking. The clientele was much younger than in Copenhagen, and the energy levels were high, helped no end by a troupe of breakers called Ground Element, who wowed the crowd with their moves while I played some old-school electro hip hop. It was a great night, but by 4am I had to call it a day in order to get just a small amount of sleep. I was up by 9.30am on Sunday, headed back via SAS to Copenhagen, then back home to London Heathrow. After getting home, Jeppe informed me of the highly unsettling news that there had been a Danish air crash that day, wanting to check that it wasn't mine. I'm very happy to say it wasn't!
Linnea & friend at Club Nine. As regular readers of these Diaries will be aware, the amazing comments and requests I get at the DJ booth during my Thursday residency at G’s in Bicester are a constant source of entertainment. You either have to appreciate the funny side or blow your brains out, so I tend to take the former option. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve recounted any, but an occurrence on Thursday 13th just had to make it on to this page. I spied a group of girls dancing to Timbaland’s ‘The Way I Are’. Immediately after the track ended, one of the group came up to the booth and asked ‘can you play that new one by Timbaland? It’s called ‘The Way I Are’ or something?’ How do these people make it through life? (For more of the same, incidentally, check out the discussion group titled ‘A DJs Life It Will Be’ on my Facebook page. It’s good to know I’m not alone!) Saturday 15th saw me spinning in London for the joint promotion between the Pure and Play brands, run by Impact Ventures’ Rachael B. The venue was the recently-opened Studio 4 in Covent Garden, just along the road from the New Connaught Rooms where the very first MOBO Awards took place in 1996. I well remember that year the organisers virtually begging radio DJs to come and attend as it was a new venture with an unsure future – a far cry from the situation today where only soap stars and Z-list footballers seem able to get tickets, and bona-fide tastemaker DJs have no hope of a look-in! Anyway, I digress. The Studio 4 night bubbled nicely.
Tenby, Wales. The following morning, Parveen and myself set off on a few days’ holiday to the Pembrokeshire area of West Wales. Although I’ve enjoyed a few DJing trips away, poor old Mrs. D hasn’t been away all Summer, so it was a much-needed short break from the daily drudge. The weather in mid-September is always a gamble, but thankfully, it was on our side throughout our stay. As well as some great sightseeing in Tenby and surrounds, the break was also notable for allowing me to get three consecutive nights of at least eight hours’ unbroken sleep – something that never happens at home! We arrived back on Wednesday 19th, just in time for me to head off and present my radio show.
Ask any DJ and they’ll always tell you the same. It’s a great feeling when you come across an act whose sound and overall vibe you’re really feeling, and you get the opportunity to help push their music and name to audiences who might otherwise never get to hear them. The last group I felt so enthusiastic about was Royal Priesthood.The latest are Bold and Wariyah, part of the same Zion Noiz collective/ clique out of London. Their sound is probably best described as hip hop with a soulful, uplifting edge, and I’ve been hammering their Tom Browne-sampling track ‘Brighter Tomorrow’ for some time. On Wednesday 26th, I had the crew pass through the radio studio to guest on ‘Just Buggin’. The session resulted in another classic freestyle to be added to the vaults. It’s what live radio was made for! On to the last weekend of the month, which consisted of a handful of gigs I do on a semi-regular basis – G’s in Bicester on Thursday, a return to Sleepers in Basingstoke on Friday, and my monthly spot at The Bridge in Oxford on Saturday. I’m aiming to include a dumb request/ comment received at the DJ booth at G’s on each occasion now, and the crowd looks likely to ensure there’ll never be a shortage of these. This week’s gem: ‘ere mate, you got Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of ’69?’ This comment was made following two hours of R&B/ urban on a night which is clearly marketed that way. … and that was September. Just as well!
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Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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