Last year, Isaac Ferry, who runs Gouranga, which has hosted some of my live mixes on SoundCloud, asked if I’d be up for doing something more bespoke, suggesting I focus in on Chic, given both their history and more recent renaissance as one of the must-see live feelgood experiences of the festival calendar.
Sheffield-born Peter Stringfellow who died yesterday, aged 77, was Britain’s most famous nightclub entrepreneur. The glitzy London club that bore his name a magnet for celebrities during the ‘80s, epitomising the glamourous world he always sought, in contrast to his cash-strapped working class roots.
I received a copy of the new Late Nite Tuff Guy remix 12” through the post recently. Issued by Salsoul, the classic New York label that unleashed numerous dancefloor gems between 1974-84, including the very first commercially available 12”, ‘Ten Percent’ by Double Exposure (1976). LNTG’s 12” included another Double Exposure favourite, ‘Everyman’, plus ‘Dr Love’ by First Choice, both of which have been huge for me, having received digital copies in the last couple of years – ‘Everyman’ topping my ’20 Choice Edits & Reworks’ selection for 2017, whilst ‘Dr Love’ featured on the 2016 list:
https://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2017/12/20-choice-edits-reworks-2017/
In December 2003, when I made my comeback after a 2-decade hiatus at the Music Is Better night in Manchester club The Attic, one of the tracks I featured that night was the 1982 Electro-Funk cult-classic ‘The Voice Of Q’ by Q. I also played it the following month in London, when I appeared at Ouch! @ The Key in Kings Cross.
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’:
https://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:
https://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.
Recent Comments