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Classic Albums By Women

By on November 29, 2019 in Books

It’s been great to see Classic Album Sundays, the brainchild of DJ and radio presenter Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, grow from strength to strength since its inception in 2010. In July that year I launched the monthly Living To Music series on my blog, with a classic album selected for the first Sunday of each month and the listeners subsequently sharing their impressions online. On hearing about this, a mutual friend had told me that Colleen was doing something similar in a more intimate manner, sitting down after Sunday dinner to listen to favourite LPs with family and friends – these gatherings evolving the name Classic Album Sundays. Living To Music would inspire Colleen to take a more direct approach, putting on audiophile listening events, the first of these held that October at the Hanbury Arms in North London, initially following the same albums I was featuring on Living To Music, but subsequently branching out on its own direction.

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Mister Good Times

By on October 30, 2019 in Black Culture, Books, DJ / Club Culture, The Eighties

Norman Jay MBE is no less than a UK DJ icon. A first generation Black Briton born into a Notting Hill-based Caribbean family, Norman first came to wider attention via London’s mid-‘80s Rare Groove scene, underpinned by his ‘Original Rare Groove Show’ on the city’s then pirate dance music station Kiss FM, having initially set out his stall via annual appearances at the Notting Hill Carnival, where his brother, Joey, re-branded his Great Tribulation Reggae sound system to the Funk / Disco / Soul-geared Good Times Roadshow.

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The Future Starts Here

By on May 16, 2019 in Books

The Future Starts Here

There’s not much more I can say about John Higgs. He’s been a constant source of cerebral nourishment and emotional resonance during these past 5 years, since I read his cult-classic ‘The KLF: Chaos, Magic & The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds’ (2013). I’ve since been enlightened and entertained by his subsequent books, ‘Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense Of The Twentieth Century’ (2015) and ‘Watling Street: Travels Through Britain And Its Ever-Present Past’ (2017). John has a wonderful way of viewing history and culture, making many connections generally missed – I wrote more in depth about this in a piece about John and his work, when ‘Stranger Than We Can Imagine’ was published, called ‘Culture Reconstructor’:
https://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2015/09/john-higgs-culture-reconstructor/

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Memoir Of A Manchester DJ

By on June 5, 2018 in Books, Manchester, Read, The Eighties, The Nineties

Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor

Dave Haslam’s new book, ‘Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor’ has just been published by Constable. It’s an ode to his time in Manchester, from 1980 when he arrived in the city from his Birmingham home to study English Literature, right through until what he’s been up to in more recent times, but as you’d expect given Dave’s Haçienda legacy, particular emphasis is placed on his time as DJ at the much-hallowed venue, and the clubs that orbited around it.

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Tom Wolfe

By on May 15, 2018 in Books, Psychedelia, RIP, The Sixties

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe, the famous American author and journalist, died yesterday, aged 88. He wrote the countercultural classic, ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’, published in 1968, which documented the exploits of Ken Kesey’s Californian LSD evangelists, The Merry Pranksters, who played a leading role in the emergence of the psychedelic era during the 1960s – their ‘Acid Test’ gatherings, originally at Kesey’s La Honda farm, unleashing psychedelic light shows, whilst providing the launchpad for the band The Grateful Dead.

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Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor 1980-1983

By on August 30, 2016 in Books, Dance, Disco, DJ / Club Culture, The Eighties

Life And Death On The New York Dancefloor

Back in the early 2000s, when I began to explore the internet properly, discovering a number of DJ forums discussing dance culture and its history, it was clear that the early ’80s had been largely obscured. This was the period that followed the supposed death of Disco in 1979 (prompted by the vitriolic racist / homophobic ‘’Disco Sucks’ campaign fronted by WLUP Chicago shock jock Steve Dahl), and preceded the emergence of House music during the mid-’80s.

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