Manchester-born DJ Dave Booth died on Saturday – at time of writing there’s been no announcement regarding cause of death, although it appears to be sudden. Dave was 61.
Singer / songwriter / record producer, Scott Walker, real name Noel Scott Engel, died on March 22nd, aged 76. Although born in Ohio, USA in 1943, he became a British citizen in 1970. His unique enigmatic career would span ‘60s Pop through to the Avant-Garde direction of his later recordings. In 2006 a documentary film about Walker, ’30 Century Man’, captured this extraordinary artistic journey.
This Saturday I’m back on my home patch at The Underground in Liverpool for a Freeze event playing alongside Belgian brothers Steven and David Dewaele, aka 2ManyDJs, who also make up two thirds of the band Soulwax. All the info here:
https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Liverpool/Underground-Liverpool/Freeze-presents-2manydjs-Greg-Wilson-plus-more/13081545/
Technology is often a double-edged sword, announcing on the one hand exciting new possibilities, but on the other a break from a tradition you once thought was always.
Minnepolis born music icon Prince Rogers Nelson, better known as simply Prince, died today at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota aged 57. The cause of his death is still undetermined as I write this, but last week he was taken into hospital for a few days with flu-like symptoms, following an emergency plane landing in Illinois after he’d performed in Atlanta.
I wanted to write in greater personal detail about David Bowie and the depth of impact his music and words had on me during my formative teenage years – this occurring when I was between the ages of 12 and 15. I’d uploaded a blog post once I’d heard about his death, but I’ve found myself needing to revisit what was a magical mystical part of my musical / life initiation, as much for myself as anyone else, both by listening through the records I loved, and still love, whilst getting it all into words somehow. Once I started writing this I couldn’t contain it – it was bursting out of all sides. So please excuse me for the tangents I go off on and the jumping about – there’s no easy coherent way for me to express this. For a period following his 6th July 1972 ‘Starman’ performance on Top Of The Pops, until 1975, when I began to disengage, Bowie ruled ok in my world.
Woke up to the news this morning that David Bowie had died from cancer, aged 69, just a few days on from his birthday last Friday when his latest album, ‘Blackstar’, was released.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of my first club appearance. Last night I played for 5 hours at The Garage and tonight I’m at The Jacaranda to conclude a celebratory weekend in my home city of Liverpool with a talk about what it was like to be a DJ back in those proto-Disco days.
Been meaning to get this amended article onto the blog. It’s something I originally wrote back in 2003 for Grandslam magazine as a feature revolving around the release of 2 No Wave compilations at the time, one on the re-activated ZE label, the other on Soul Jazz. The piece was originally published under the title ‘When Punk Met Funk’.
About 6 months ago I received an email from the extravagantly named Baron Von Luxxury, who’s based in Los Angeles. He told me he was launching a series of ‘dubby edits’, 3 of which he’d linked me to. There was a somewhat spaced-out version of ‘Hotel California’, which I really liked, so I asked for a wav and the Baron obliged.
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