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Tag Archives | The Warehouse

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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Northern Renaissance

By on November 21, 2013 in Dance, DJ / Club Culture, Film, General, Records, The Seventies, The Sixties

The Northern Soul movement has marked 2 significant anniversaries this year – the launch of the weekly All-Nighters at the scene’s most famous venue, Wigan Casino, in 1973, as well as the opening of its foundation club, Manchester’s Twisted Wheel, 10 years earlier. A new book, ‘Northern Soul – An Illustrated History’ was recently published by Virgin Books, its co-author, Bury-born Elaine Constantine, also the director of the upcoming film ‘Northern Soul’. The book has been well received by Northern aficionados, Constantine (and Gareth Sweeney) congratulated for their insightful overview of the movement, which is enhanced by the anecdotal offerings of some of the DJs, dancers and collectors who epitomized Northern Soul. Alongside the music and the clubs in which it featured, the book also highlights the drug culture that played such a major role, amphetamines fuelling its development.

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From Garrard To Technics – How British DJs Began To Mix

By on August 8, 2013 in Black Culture, Disco, DJ / Club Culture, The Eighties, The Seventies

From Garrard to Technics

In 2009 I wrote an article on the history of mixing in this country called ‘How The Talking Stopped’. It was the most in depth piece I’d ever written, the research alone had taken many months, including a couple of trips to the British Library in London to comb through the copies of Record Mirror they have archived there, for it was within this magazine that the person who I’d certainly argue did more to promote UK DJ culture than any other human being, connected (via his essential weekly dance column) with fellow DJs in every corner of the country. This was the literally larger than life James Hamilton (1942-1996), and if you’re a British DJ, whether you’ve heard of him or not, you can’t have escaped his influence, for he’s part of the very fabric of our DJ / club heritage.

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Love Saves The Day

By on May 9, 2013 in Black Culture, Books, Disco, DJ / Club Culture, The Seventies

Love Saves The Day by Tim Lawrence

Given the current fascination with Disco, and a fresh wave of interest in its history, I thought it would be good time to flag up what many would regard as the must read book on the subject, outlining the development of the movement in downtown New York during the ’70s. Here’s my review for Grandslam magazine back in 2003, when Tim Lawrence’s epic ‘Love Saves The Day – A History Of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979’ was first published:

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