It’s a special night tonight, when we look back to one of Manchester’s great clubs, Legend, which was my Wednesday night home circa 1981-84. I’ve previously written about my much-treasured time there in a blog piece called ‘Legend – Manchester’s Other Club’:
//blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2011/08/legend-manchesters-other-club
Bostonian John Luongo is someone who seemed to have slipped through the cracks of dance history – his legacy largely obscured, whilst that of his contemporaries, Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons, has served to inspire a new generation of Disco enthusiasts.
Just come across a few paragraphs I wrote as part of my Time Capsule series, where month by month I compiled a selection of the tracks I was playing back in the ‘70s when I started out as a DJ, writing accompanying text about the music featured and my own progression within the local club scene on Merseyside, and more specifically my hometown of New Brighton. I managed to cover the period January 1976 (December 1975 if the prequel, ‘First Impressions’, is included) to September 1977 (each edition originally put together exactly 30 years on, between Jan ‘06 – Sept ‘07) but the process became too time-consuming to maintain, at a point when my DJ trajectory had really built momentum.
In January 2012 I received an email from Lee Perry. My first thought was ‘surely not’, but it wasn’t – this was the other Lee Perry, not Scratch but Wolverhampton’s very own Peza.
This weekend Colin Curtis celebrates his 50th anniversary as a DJ with a special event at The Exchange in his home city of Stoke-On-Trent. Colin started out in his mid-teens at Newcastle-Under-Lyme’s Crystal Ballroom, before making his all-nighter debut at Stoke’s hallowed Golden Torch, one of Northern Soul’s foundation venues, eventually becoming one of the scene’s leading figures as a result of his legendary ‘70’s partnership with Ian Levine at the Blackpool Mecca. Info about the anniversary date here:
//www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Stoke-On-Trent/The-Exchange/50-years-of-DJing-with-Legend-Colin-Curtis–Guest-Pete-Bromley/12932290/
Here’s a short overview I wrote for DJ Mag’s Disco edition last year, outlining some of the musical threads that resulted in the evolving Disco movement’s expansion from the underground into the eye of mainstream attention as the ‘70s unfurled.
I’ve written / adapted some sleeve notes for the new Joey Negro / Z Records compilation, which I’ve reproduced below. The album is available now on CD and digital, whilst there’s also a vinyl double-pack available, featuring 8 of the tracks, 2 per side. You can purchase the various formats here:
//www.zrecords.ltd.uk/product-detail///Z+Records/Various+Artists/Electro+compiled+by+Joey+Negro/cd/387
Back in 1966, The Beatles’ record producer, George Martin, executed my favourite singular edit of all time. John Lennon had been working on the now iconic ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ – he’d recorded 2 versions, and was faced with the dilemma of wanting to use the first section of one recording, but take the rest of the track from a completely different and more progressive version. His comment to George Martin, when the producer pointed out the difficulties of matching pitch and tempo, was ‘you can fix it’. The fixed version is the definitive one that we all know, two recordings perfectly merged together by one decisive splice. You can hear it, if you listen carefully, at just before the minute mark, on ‘going to’:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UQK-UcRezE
Just uploaded the 6th digital edition of the Discotheque Archives series I’ve been putting together for DJ Mag with the help of Josh Ray. Each month it focuses on a classic DJ, a classic club, a classic record and a classic record label – these are generally a combination of US and UK, with the odd European inclusion, each concerned with aspects of pre-Rave club culture.
I’m in London this evening for Tim Lawrence’s ‘Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor 1980-1983’ book launch at The Institute Of Light, which is hosted by Pages Of Hackney. I’ll be talking to Tim about his hugely impressive, highly informative, often deeply emotional excavation of New York nightlife in the early ’80s. I blogged about it recently:
//blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2016/08/tim-lawrence-life-death-new-york-dance-floor/
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