One of the defining moments of my DJ career took place exactly 30 years ago, on Monday May 10th 1982, when my first radio mix was broadcast on Mike Shaft’s show, ‘T.C.O.B’ (Taking Care Of Business), on Manchester’s hugely influential Piccadilly Radio, which played a major part in bringing black / dance music to wider attention during the 70’s and ‘80’s - from Soul, Funk and Disco, through Jazz-Funk and Electro, and on into Hip Hop, House and Techno.
When the crew behind Manchester’s Electric Chair brought their monthly club night to an end at the beginning of 2008, they’d decided their next move would be from club to pub, opening a bar a few miles outside of the city centre in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, which they called Electrik... I was invited to play there on Sunday April 1st, a suitable date for such an endeavour I thought – if anyone turned up expecting a normal type DJ slot from me at least I had a valid April Fools get out clause. Ahead of the night Electrik announced ‘Greg Wilson...no reel to reel...1 record deck...no mixing...mind the gap’.
I started writing this before I headed off on my travels to Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and back to Australia again (concluded on my return home, having made notes along the way). I’ve been very preoccupied with time, or, to be more precise, the lack of it – this is where my head was at:
I’m absolutely delighted to be finally able to announce that the revitalized Electrofunkroots website is now live and kicking, having undergone a complete overhaul, with loads of new content added. Originally launched back in August 2003, Electrofunkroots is absolutely central to my work, providing the foundation from which my DJ career was rejuvenated, and the catalyst for all my subsequent documentation of UK dance culture, and popular culture in general (without Electrofunkroots it’s doubtful that I’d have set up this blog, 7 years later down the line).
Congratulations to Northern dance institution Back To Basics, which is 20 years old this week! To commemorate this pretty momentous occasion for what is the longest running club night in the world, Ralph Lawson, resident there since day one, has launched a blog, Basic Vision, in which he’ll be sharing his memories, most notably via a series of lovingly constructed mixes that document the music he’s played there down the years, which will come complete with Ralph’s accompanying track-by-track text.
Just dug out a copy of the Music Is Better CD, a limited edition of 500 that followed my DJ comeback on December 20th 2003 at the Music Is Better night in The Attic, Manchester. It’s now been made available on my SoundCloud as exclusive content (which means you can’t see the waveform to stream/download unless you’re signed in).
Something a bit different - Mixmag asked me to put together a ‘minimix’ of twenty minutes duration for their podcast. Given the limited length, I suppose I approached it more as an advert than a mix in the usual sense – a sixty truncated into twenty minute taster, providing the opportunity for me to highlight, to an audience that aren’t generally exposed to this approach, the type of stuff I play in the parties, clubs and festivals.
I’m back in London this weekend for the 2020 birthday party at Village Underground in Shoreditch. Sadly, given the events of recent days, I’m anticipating a very different London to the city I was in at the end of July for the Vintage Festival at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. I don’t think the capital will ever be quite the same again after what happened (I say happened in the hope that we’ve seen the worst of it now).
Made my Glastonbury debut last Friday – a double-header kicking off with an evening appearance on the Wow! stage, before heading across to NYC Downlow for a late slot. Mixes from both have just been added to my SoundCloud page and are now available to download. The first is the full two hour recording from the Wow!, the second is the majority of my appearance at the NYC Downlow (missed the opening 15 minutes because I was trying to sort out a problem with my reel-to-reel).
Festival season is about to hit full swing with Glastonbury next week. My schedule between now and the end of July is as follows:
Recent Comments