Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is DJIT Big Clubs on Stage on
Speaker 1: the Radio, d M entrepreneur Pete Tom Hi, Bob okay, Pete,
Speaker 1: thank you. You're now doing these stage shows. You even
Speaker 1: sold out two old two's with Abisa Classics. Tell me
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, basically, it's um It's started by me
Speaker 1: getting invited to curate a prom The Proms are a
Speaker 1: series of very famous season of classical concerts that have
Speaker 1: been running in the UK for well over a hundred
Speaker 1: years at the Royal Albert Hall, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: do something a bit more contemporary. They were worried about
Speaker 1: their audience kind of getting older and older and older,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to kind of engage with the younger demographics.
Speaker 1: So they reached out to BBC Radio One, where obvious
Speaker 1: I've obviously been forever, and they said, you know, how
Speaker 1: about you guys curating you know, coming up with an
Speaker 1: idea that might work as a classical concert. So they
Speaker 1: asked me as a bit of a kind of veteran
Speaker 1: broadcaster there, and it happened to be an anniversary of
Speaker 1: of me taking Radio One down to a b through.
Speaker 1: It was like the twentieth anniversary, I think, in so
Speaker 1: we came up with this idea of um, you know, curate,
Speaker 1: you know, putting together a seventy minutes show. That was
Speaker 1: the slot we were given. UM. And I thought, because
Speaker 1: I've been there but not exactly that exact time here,
Speaker 1: I thought the proms were outside of the problems inside
Speaker 1: or the proms are predominantly inside the Royal Album Hall.
Speaker 1: And they happened over the course of a month actually,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much every night, two shows a night,
Speaker 1: and they might have done some think standalone things outside.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I've never done anything like this before. This
Speaker 1: was definitely outside my skill set. UM. But I was
Speaker 1: introduced to Jules Buckley, who was a kind of contemporary
Speaker 1: UM you know, UM orchestrator and conductor, and he worked
Speaker 1: hand in hand with a with a kind of forward
Speaker 1: thinking you know symphony orchestra called the Heritage Orchestra, and
Speaker 1: they'd work with like the likes of the Basement Jackson
Speaker 1: Goldie UM, someone that I was quite close to. So
Speaker 1: you know, we we you know, we had this blind
Speaker 1: date on the phone and we talked about the idea
Speaker 1: and I I kind of got into it with him
Speaker 1: how how it would work, and then I this, just
Speaker 1: how long ago this was. This was January of the
Speaker 1: year we did it, and we had six months to
Speaker 1: plan it. And I basically thought, you know, why don't
Speaker 1: we play a minute of each one of like all
Speaker 1: the greatest records of all time and you know, dance
Speaker 1: records and the Betha classics. And he said that would
Speaker 1: take me like five years to to not take for
Speaker 1: the sixty five players in the orchestra. So we cut it.
Speaker 1: I cut it down to like twenty tracks. I mixed
Speaker 1: it together in my studio and I gave it to
Speaker 1: him and he started to, um, basically take these tracks
Speaker 1: from the original form and then work out how an
Speaker 1: orchestra would play them, and um. The interesting thing was
Speaker 1: what was quite groundbreaking is I was able to get
Speaker 1: him to mix tracks together, so we were going to
Speaker 1: play everything live on stage, nothing on tape. Nothing. He
Speaker 1: wasn't following any records I was playing or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But we were able to do these segments, like fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes segments where we worked through like five tunes, but
Speaker 1: it would be seamless, and even with tempo changes and
Speaker 1: everything like that. So we did this show on the
Speaker 1: thirty first of July, I think it was twenty nine,
Speaker 1: did July UM at the Royal Albert Hall. It was
Speaker 1: an appointment. It was a one off thing that we
Speaker 1: were going to do. But within about halfway through the
Speaker 1: first song, five thousand people in the Royal Albert Hall
Speaker 1: stood up started going crazy clapping and we looked around
Speaker 1: at each other, went some some magics going on here.
Speaker 1: So we got to end at the show, went backstage.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh my god, what just happened there
Speaker 1: because literally the entire audience didn't sit down for seventy minutes.
Speaker 1: They just went mad, and we had we had kind
Speaker 1: of down tempo, chill out moments in there as well,
Speaker 1: but they still stood up. Just to be clear, if
Speaker 1: you only had seventeen minutes seventy seventy, excuse me. So
Speaker 1: we got backstage and was like, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: like this was amazing. We've got to do it again.
Speaker 1: But everything in terms of the proms and the BBC,
Speaker 1: it was all kind of funded and underwritten, so it
Speaker 1: was like no nobody really ever got a bill um.
Speaker 1: But so it took a while to plan how to
Speaker 1: take this show out on the road and it took
Speaker 1: about eighteen months UM. But we announced some shows the
Speaker 1: following March and we sold them out in a day
Speaker 1: and we had one oh two on sale and we
Speaker 1: worked out there as people don't know that's essentially yes,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like the big arenas here, like Staples
Speaker 1: Center or something like that, and we worked out there.
Speaker 1: If we sold the lower bowl, we didn't know, like
Speaker 1: eighteen months later what the demand would be like. UM,
Speaker 1: but we sold it out. We sold the whole place
Speaker 1: out in a day, and then we were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we got to do another one, but I
Speaker 1: think Justin Bieber was playing the next day and like
Speaker 1: someone else the day before, so we couldn't get a
Speaker 1: string of dates. But we ended up at the end
Speaker 1: of sixteen with a with a show in Birmingham the
Speaker 1: O two and then one match to all all arenas,
Speaker 1: sold them all out. UM made a record that year
Speaker 1: UM basically going back in the student into the Happy
Speaker 1: Road studios actually, which was amazing, and we recorded the orchestra.
Speaker 1: We recorded that set with you know, we redid it,
Speaker 1: UM did it as a proper record. UM. The album
Speaker 1: came out went to number one went gold on the
Speaker 1: pop chart. It was so we were off to an
Speaker 1: amazing start and here we are UM at the end
Speaker 1: of we just did nine arena shows in the UK,
Speaker 1: including to two sold out oh two. So it's um,
Speaker 1: it's it's me up on stage with with sixty five
Speaker 1: incredible musicians and Jules Buckley playing a selection of you know,
Speaker 1: electronic music, dance music that spans back years UM. And
Speaker 1: for me, it adds. It was it was really about
Speaker 1: adding gravitas to these compositions. I think in the in
Speaker 1: the annals of musical history, you know, dance music producers, DJs,
Speaker 1: we have a bit of a chip on our shoulder
Speaker 1: because we're not taken seriously like the Rock and Roll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame and all that stuff. MS and and
Speaker 1: it to me it was like, well, this music that
Speaker 1: was made in Chicago, New York, Detroit, you know, in Berlin,
Speaker 1: in London, all all over the world, you know wherever,
Speaker 1: um we can show that you know this one finger
Speaker 1: wizardry that was done by these Detroit guys back in
Speaker 1: the late eighties where they had a button on one
Speaker 1: of the early Roland keyboards that says strings and they
Speaker 1: played you know this incredible string part that we to
Speaker 1: actually be able to go and do it with a
Speaker 1: you know, a massive orchestra. Um. It just lifted people
Speaker 1: and I think that's that was the magic of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So since there are no nothing on a hard drive,
Speaker 1: we used to see tea what do you actually do
Speaker 1: on stage? So basically um on the light. On the
Speaker 1: live performance side, I'm I'm actually also playing along with him,
Speaker 1: so you'll see me up there with with a bunch
Speaker 1: of turntables and sheen and some drum pads and basically
Speaker 1: there there are elements like weighty kind of wishes and
Speaker 1: bangs and electronica in a lot of these productions that
Speaker 1: an orchestra can't play. So I'm often spinning in a
Speaker 1: like a stem um of of some electronics that actually
Speaker 1: the that they can't provide that kind of adds euphor
Speaker 1: I'm adding kind of euphoria, and occasionally I'm adding um
Speaker 1: extra um percussion hits and stuff like that, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of clapping. Okay, So what's the press? And
Speaker 1: I'm kind of playing like the m M right right,
Speaker 1: what's the press been like? Because you know there's so
Speaker 1: much press in the UK and it can be vicious.
Speaker 1: Now it's been it's been incredible. I mean I would say, um,
Speaker 1: touch would um, it's been great. It's it it's I
Speaker 1: tell you, I'll tell you what it is. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's experiential. It's it's the orchestra. Is there a
Speaker 1: back up? Is there? You know? Lee? Are there leasers?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Yeah? So on the there's a
Speaker 1: two versions of the show, the A list version, which
Speaker 1: is the one we've just done through the arenas. Um,
Speaker 1: we've built a pretty big production. It's it's it's the
Speaker 1: idea is we take people to a Betha for one night.
Speaker 1: You know, we either taken them back because they've got
Speaker 1: great memories of it, or we're taking them there for
Speaker 1: the first time because they've never been there. So, um,
Speaker 1: we've built, it's evolved over the five years and it's
Speaker 1: got a little bit more dense and layered as we've
Speaker 1: picked up material um and worked out what ideas work
Speaker 1: and what ideas don't. So um, yeah, we what's going
Speaker 1: on up on screen on on screen um compliments what
Speaker 1: we're doing on stage. And as I said, not not
Speaker 1: this year, but the year before. It starts with a plane,
Speaker 1: you know, flying over the audience and we take you
Speaker 1: to a bether for one night. And we've we've had
Speaker 1: you know, departure boards up from the airport. We've done
Speaker 1: all sorts of tricks and and and the show climax
Speaker 1: is by this pretty special journey, um through the night
Speaker 1: through a beether and then a bit and and dealt villa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the classic shot in a bee the old town um
Speaker 1: rises up behind the orchestra and like it gives me
Speaker 1: goose bumps talking about it. But that's like the emotional
Speaker 1: like punch um. But we're always I'm always looking at
Speaker 1: I mean for the first you know here, I am
Speaker 1: like in my sixtieth year. I've been deejaying pretty much
Speaker 1: since I was fourteen years old, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to do this, I mean this, I
Speaker 1: just didn't see this coming. You know, this was not
Speaker 1: written in the book. You know. I always had a
Speaker 1: day job to kind of compensate for my you know,
Speaker 1: the way my DJ was going. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: been fascinating so be able to be able to do
Speaker 1: this stuff on that scale. Um, I'm learning a lot
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of fun. And you know, you
Speaker 1: see you you see the technology on stage that you know,
Speaker 1: Metallic could take out or you know you two or
Speaker 1: Coldplay or Kanye or someone um where as deviling and
Speaker 1: we I can, like a couple of years later after
Speaker 1: they've done it, I can kind of afford it, so
Speaker 1: we can get a little bit of that. So we're
Speaker 1: always like looking to push the envelope a bit in
Speaker 1: terms of every year as the as the show goes on,
Speaker 1: we we get a little bit more funding and we
Speaker 1: can add another trick. Okay, so you are the driving
Speaker 1: business force. It's basically your show. Well it's it's it's
Speaker 1: my name at the top of the poster, but it's
Speaker 1: a collaborative effort. It's I'm actually I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: quick and I'm talking about the business end. I mean,
Speaker 1: does everybody else you know the orchestra, They basically show
Speaker 1: up when it's booked, But in terms of talking to
Speaker 1: an agent, manager, etcetera. Picking out dates, is that all
Speaker 1: fall on your head pretty much? I mean, um, there
Speaker 1: there is a there is a little We formed the
Speaker 1: company as a partnership which is me and Jules Buckley
Speaker 1: and um Chris Wheeler, who's the principle of the Heritage
Speaker 1: Orchestra and my management company actually, so a lot of
Speaker 1: the everything else apart from the show tends to all
Speaker 1: on me and my management um. And when it gets
Speaker 1: to actually doing the show then and all making making
Speaker 1: the records, it's very much me and jewels um and
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, the orchestra turn up to play at
Speaker 1: certain sessions. When it comes to actually doing the show,
Speaker 1: obviously the orchestra part increases because we couldn't do it
Speaker 1: without them. So and we have guests, you know, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of guests come on. So we'll take guests, vocalists,
Speaker 1: We've had, I mean, we've had um everyone from you know,
Speaker 1: John like what I wanted to do because it's because
Speaker 1: it's just it appealed initially to the kind of relapsed raver.
Speaker 1: So it was it was quite that way if you
Speaker 1: were an eight, if you were eight in the eighties
Speaker 1: and you were going to like the clubs for the
Speaker 1: first time in the raves, you know, all through the
Speaker 1: kind of rise of the big clubs in the super
Speaker 1: clubs in the nineties in the UK. You know, you
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is by two, you know, the late um,
Speaker 1: you never stopped loving the music. You you didn't really
Speaker 1: want to grow older, but you've got families, you've got jobs,
Speaker 1: you have got older. You don't want to go out
Speaker 1: till four in the morning anymore, but you do come
Speaker 1: and see peakes On and relive this this thing. Um so.
Speaker 1: But I but being with my A and R head On,
Speaker 1: it was like, I've never really looked backwards and done
Speaker 1: celebratory greatest hits things, so I've always been trying to
Speaker 1: push the envelope forward. So for me it was very important.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll have classic artists back, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to have young contemporary artists performing these old songs. So
Speaker 1: from the get go we had John Newman, Um, we
Speaker 1: had Air Maginade hartnett Um, you know, but I have
Speaker 1: had Candy Statin, I have had Seal. We just had
Speaker 1: Maxi Jazz from Faith Fus come out and join us
Speaker 1: performing his own song, which was kind of took the
Speaker 1: thing to a whole new level where you start having
Speaker 1: the original artists whose music we are playing then come
Speaker 1: back and perform with us. So um so it's a
Speaker 1: it's a mix, you know, okay some of this so
Speaker 1: but we had but you know, Becky Hills almost joint.
Speaker 1: You know, she's a massive kind of contemporary singer in
Speaker 1: the UK and she's done every tour. Beverley Night is
Speaker 1: a veteran of you know who went on to be
Speaker 1: a big star in the theater. Actually she's she's come
Speaker 1: back and done it with us. But but then there's
Speaker 1: always be the young ones as well. So okay, so
Speaker 1: any shows booked for the future, well, the next UK
Speaker 1: tour is already on sale, so that's. Um, We've got
Speaker 1: one big date at the isle A White Festival next
Speaker 1: year talking about glaston Read that might or might not happen,
Speaker 1: and then what our arena run again, He's already on
Speaker 1: sale for December. We did do it at the Hollywood
Speaker 1: Bowl here a few years ago. Um, it was very
Speaker 1: expensive thing to do. Um, and we haven't quite yet
Speaker 1: worked out the model of how to bring it back
Speaker 1: to America. That's challenge. But let's just say forgetting the economics,
Speaker 1: working out the below the line stuff. Just talking about
Speaker 1: the audience, do you think there is an arena audience
Speaker 1: other than in Los Angeles and New York for this show?
Speaker 1: We're we're were were working on it now, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I my gut feels it's more like an installation that
Speaker 1: maybe it's a celebration of the American electronics story from
Speaker 1: the late nineties all the way through to two now,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's home is more like something like Vegas.
Speaker 1: That's having said that, you know, there is this um
Speaker 1: you know, like k CRW do at the Bowl, you
Speaker 1: know where they do that kind of it's funded by
Speaker 1: that kind of season ticket model where people bring their picnics.
Speaker 1: I mean I got educated to this a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago that there is actually a circuit of those
Speaker 1: places like the Hollywood Bowl. You know. Mark Geiger was
Speaker 1: telling me, um that you can do that. You know,
Speaker 1: probably could do nine, ten, twelve of those around the country.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at that as well. Well. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm asking is most people agree that this sound
Speaker 1: started in Detroit, but it is never once it was
Speaker 1: picked up by the UK and Europe, it is never
Speaker 1: really faded. We're here, it's going up and down. So today,
Speaker 1: if you because you're a world wide guy, what is
Speaker 1: the level of the music in the varying territories? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I think it went from zero to a hundred over
Speaker 1: the course of these the you know from from the
Speaker 1: late eighties. Obviously in the the UK it peaked quickest.
Speaker 1: It became mainstream, it moved the needle um in the charts,
Speaker 1: in the pop charts, it moved the needle in the
Speaker 1: major label business, and then it kind of started to
Speaker 1: kind of collapse in the two thousand's and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world started to pick up on it. You know,
Speaker 1: the French got stronger, the Swedes got stronger, the Germans
Speaker 1: got stronger, and Low and Behold by coming into two
Speaker 1: you know, mid two thousand, five, six, seven eight e
Speaker 1: d M. You know, the roots of DUM kicked in
Speaker 1: the US and then the whole financial value moved over here.
Speaker 1: So you know that again in major labels had hits
Speaker 1: with Vichy and David Gettum Vegascot on board and paid
Speaker 1: money that was astronomical. It was bigger than any fee
Speaker 1: anyone had ever seen before, anyone in the world. So
Speaker 1: we've gone through and that's peaked now but and and
Speaker 1: and Vegas is still there, but it's not all consuming
Speaker 1: like it was between two thousand and eight and two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve thirteen. So UM, you know, only the
Speaker 1: strong survive now in Vegas, Like the biggest pop stars
Speaker 1: are the most current pop stars in the electronic world.
Speaker 1: But the and but the other right, the the other
Speaker 1: rising value right now is um all the underground guys
Speaker 1: that kind of that became superstars in a Betha are
Speaker 1: now traveling around the world and they've got a slightly
Speaker 1: different model. They're not really having hits, um, but they
Speaker 1: are bringing huge value to their live shows from an
Speaker 1: experiential point of view, and especially on the V I
Speaker 1: P and the table scene. So that's all moved from
Speaker 1: gathering around, you know, kind of David Getter to two
Speaker 1: starting to gather around like Tail of Us and Solomon
Speaker 1: and Black Coffee and people like that. So that's quite interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think the general thing with my record company
Speaker 1: hat on and my agency hat on is that, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually on the rise again. It's actually the
Speaker 1: the the the economic value around electronic dance music is
Speaker 1: going back up again and on a global level, and
Speaker 1: it's time for a new generation. And it's some it's
Speaker 1: pretty positive. Okay, So you're the major labels by the
Speaker 1: way back into dance music big time, you know, rightly
Speaker 1: or wrong. The the investment is flying back into dance
Speaker 1: music because for the for the first time now the
Speaker 1: obviously the streaming numbers are actually getting to a significant
Speaker 1: level where you know, the pouts are bigger again. So I,
Speaker 1: you know, you know my history with Roger Ane's London
Speaker 1: Records f r R, I was, I was there at
Speaker 1: the beginning and where you know where we were having
Speaker 1: bidding wars in the nineties, you know, a hundred grand
Speaker 1: for this, two hundred ground for that. It went crazy
Speaker 1: and that, and you're seeing that again now in the
Speaker 1: last twelve to eighteen months that those numbers are back out.
Speaker 1: There are again major labels are battling each other to
Speaker 1: get the rights to you know, the MEDUSA record or
Speaker 1: you know, okay originally from the UK, but you live
Speaker 1: in l A now, yeah, how long? Um, numerous reasons.
Speaker 1: One one, I already always had too many jobs and
Speaker 1: there was never a good time. You know, there's never
Speaker 1: a good time to emmigrade. I think when I was
Speaker 1: at London Records, UM, I had my first number one
Speaker 1: record in America because I had signed Shakespeare's sister. We
Speaker 1: had a record called Stay Um. London Records US had
Speaker 1: opened guy called Peter Copkey and it's still run by
Speaker 1: Roger Rams, right, Roger was running the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: Copy was the head of the US and Osman was
Speaker 1: in the mix as well with him, and they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're the future of the label. Come.
Speaker 1: You know, now is the time to come to America
Speaker 1: and you've got a number one records. That would never
Speaker 1: be a better time. But I got onto Radio one.
Speaker 1: I had my first child in so that kind of
Speaker 1: kai bosh that UM, and then I I got basically
Speaker 1: my my I got remarried. My my second wife used
Speaker 1: to live in l A. UM so she always wanted
Speaker 1: to be American or that she's Brazilian, but she she
Speaker 1: was in that she lived in l A when I
Speaker 1: met her and UM, and then got deeper into this
Speaker 1: WMME relationship, and you know, the center WM at least
Speaker 1: back then was Los Angeles, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: with the d M blowing up in America, and it's like,
Speaker 1: if I was going to make the most of the opportunity,
Speaker 1: now was the time. So it was. We went through it.
Speaker 1: We only I told my mom I was coming for
Speaker 1: a year. How many kids? How many kids do you have?
Speaker 1: I've got four and two step kids, so six between us, okay,
Speaker 1: and how many were the first wife family of the
Speaker 1: second wife. They're only two ways to only two lives, okay.
Speaker 1: So the first wife three kids, okay, So the first
Speaker 1: three three kids. In the second one you have one
Speaker 1: together and you have two step kids. So what you
Speaker 1: know if you had your first kid in What are
Speaker 1: your kids up to? They're all in music actually amazingly
Speaker 1: and I never really pushed them into it. Um, they've
Speaker 1: kind of done it by their own designs. And my eldest,
Speaker 1: Joe um, goes by an name of Joe Hurts as
Speaker 1: an artist, didn't take my name, which I quite thinks
Speaker 1: quite cool. And he is kind of making futuristic kind
Speaker 1: of R and B soulful bit of electronic influence. Um,
Speaker 1: he's doing pretty well. He's got good Spotify numbers, good
Speaker 1: Apple numbers, and so he's he's doing that. He's writing,
Speaker 1: producing for other people and being an artist himself. And
Speaker 1: he lives where he lives in London, and he is
Speaker 1: now here's the interesting. But he's managed by his sister
Speaker 1: who's a couple of years younger. So my daughter as
Speaker 1: a manager, and she she got an intern job at
Speaker 1: a sony label years ago and then just grew and
Speaker 1: grew and grew on her and another guy from the
Speaker 1: label ended up leaving and forming their own um label
Speaker 1: and management company and plugging company actually called Juice Box,
Speaker 1: and they run events. So she's doing that. She DJs
Speaker 1: as well, and they've employed my younger he's twenty one,
Speaker 1: and now he's like running like training under her and
Speaker 1: doing loads of stuff as well. The three of them
Speaker 1: work together. That's quite And does everybody get along? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean the first wife said the first wave ever
Speaker 1: get remarried. No, that's okay. So uh, let's ask a
Speaker 1: general question for the uninformed. The uninformed looks at dance
Speaker 1: music and they hear all the different genres house, chill,
Speaker 1: I could go on and on. Can you do your
Speaker 1: best to explain those different genres? Yeah, how she can
Speaker 1: dance to chill? You can chill to have about that?
Speaker 1: Bob okay, I go that. But there are obviously a
Speaker 1: mob where there's deep house, there's a million other genres
Speaker 1: and subjects I got. I was always a little bit
Speaker 1: um spiky about genres because they get they get mishandled,
Speaker 1: you know. So I don't know if it's if it's good,
Speaker 1: it's good. If you like it, you like it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, so, I mean, I guess you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, label stuff, but I don't like the next
Speaker 1: question is going to be what's what's happening next? No? No,
Speaker 1: actually that was not going to be the next question.
Speaker 1: If anything, I was going to go backward, and I
Speaker 1: ultimately will, but I guess I will ask a question
Speaker 1: a different way. Amongst our fans, are fans into the
Speaker 1: different genres? Where do you find that certain people are
Speaker 1: only into you know, drum and bass or chill or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: drum and bass tends to be a more of a
Speaker 1: narrow thing. Um. Back in the day, you didn't used
Speaker 1: to um the drummer bassed crew were very locked into
Speaker 1: a certain thing. I mean, I I think things are
Speaker 1: changing now. I think um. I mean I come from
Speaker 1: time late eighties in the rave era and like going
Speaker 1: into the early nineties, we played a bit of everything
Speaker 1: and we're all our eyes all all the guys back then.
Speaker 1: Eyes were opened by those trips, early trips to a
Speaker 1: Betha where we saw a guy called Alfredo play all
Speaker 1: you know, Chicago House, Detroit House, Italio House, German house
Speaker 1: and Techno, and then he'd play in excess you know,
Speaker 1: need you tonight. It fights six in the morning with
Speaker 1: the sun rising, and everyone you know, like off their
Speaker 1: trolley and I was like, this is amazing. They used
Speaker 1: to play he'd played like the coolest most obscure underground record,
Speaker 1: and then he'd play Stockaching and Wortman's production of Mandy Smith,
Speaker 1: who was Bill Wyman's underage girlfriend. And we again it
Speaker 1: was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And Chris,
Speaker 1: you know, get another good example, you know, five underground
Speaker 1: records and then m Josephing Chris Rear. It's like and
Speaker 1: that was the blair E spirit. So we and we
Speaker 1: all came back to London and Manchester back then, and
Speaker 1: we also opened these clubs and we started doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, we get to the end of
Speaker 1: the night and played depeche Mode or Chris Rear and
Speaker 1: it would be ironic, but it was really cool. So
Speaker 1: I like, you know, and we used to play a
Speaker 1: bit of jungle, and we used to play a bit
Speaker 1: of everything. And then something happened where everyone's got in
Speaker 1: their lanes and if you ever stepped out of your lane,
Speaker 1: you got smacked. Over the head. So, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to think now with a younger audience that have kind
Speaker 1: of grown up on Spotify and Apple streaming services, as
Speaker 1: they start to step into clubs for the first time
Speaker 1: because they're old enough and if they're curious to come
Speaker 1: that they are actually they're a little bit more all
Speaker 1: over the place because they've had because they didn't have
Speaker 1: to buy the records exactly. I'm more I'm more concerned
Speaker 1: about when I was thinking coming up here. My pet
Speaker 1: subject really at the moment is like everyone's talking about
Speaker 1: monetization and music, and like, you know, especially in the
Speaker 1: electronic area, there's there's been a couple of great podcasts
Speaker 1: on Resident Advisor about, um, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: the you know, these super these underground DJs or commercial
Speaker 1: DJs are getting you know, tens of thousands, some cases
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars and pounds and euros to play,
Speaker 1: but the music they're playing, the musicians whose music they're
Speaker 1: playing are getting nothing, you know. Um, And that's there's
Speaker 1: a real disparity there. Um. So that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: a big issue out there in the electronic world. But
Speaker 1: also and something that we're going to talk about big
Speaker 1: time at I MS this year here. But I think, um,
Speaker 1: the other thing for me is like, where is the
Speaker 1: future of the curators? You know, I come from you.
Speaker 1: My hero was John Peel. Um my my um my role.
Speaker 1: I guess some you know, five plus years at Radio
Speaker 1: one has been as you know, that's been an amazing
Speaker 1: platform to be a curator. But in the world of
Speaker 1: streaming and where the streaming services are basically the curators
Speaker 1: and they seem to run popularity contest is where did
Speaker 1: where does a curator in the next decade find his voice,
Speaker 1: you know, to move the needles. There's so many questions
Speaker 1: and streaming and we can address us. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. So you're in your sixtieth year, so
Speaker 1: you're born in nineteen sixty. Where they grow up? Um,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Kent. I was born at the
Speaker 1: same hospital as Mick Jagger a few years later. Not yeah,
Speaker 1: a few years later, but he reckons we're related by
Speaker 1: the way. I finally bumped into him after all these years. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in Kent. How many kids in the family,
Speaker 1: just me and my brother, So it was too boys, um,
Speaker 1: and we grew up in a We were born in Dartford,
Speaker 1: which is a town where we grew up in a
Speaker 1: village in the countryside. Um, and we I went to
Speaker 1: boarding school and I was super young. Um, my dad
Speaker 1: was busy, My mom was stressed. What did your father
Speaker 1: do for a living? He was a well in English,
Speaker 1: it's a funny name for it, called a turf accountant.
Speaker 1: But he was a bookie, so he was in the
Speaker 1: betting business. So he was have to ask because when
Speaker 1: I first encountered your name, I thought it was a
Speaker 1: stage name. But it's really your name, it's really my
Speaker 1: name tongue, and it's not I'm not My dad didn't
Speaker 1: run Chinese laundries. Would you have any idea where the
Speaker 1: derivation is? Yeah, he he um. He did a search
Speaker 1: and he's passed away now, but he told me that
Speaker 1: it was actually it was all down to Saxon Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon Viking blood and there was a lot of tongs
Speaker 1: in Scandinavia with like spelt like tongue or with a
Speaker 1: name on the end, and it wasn't really Chinese at all. So, um,
Speaker 1: with all these adverts you see now, like for DNA
Speaker 1: and like the family tree or should My wife said
Speaker 1: to me the other night we should do it again.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do it. I don't want to
Speaker 1: find out that I'm gonna die. Never mind all the
Speaker 1: crazy relatives. But your brother is older or younger? Younger
Speaker 1: four years younger? And what is he up to now?
Speaker 1: He's he's in the UK still and he Um, he
Speaker 1: works for a cable company putting cables under the ocean,
Speaker 1: keeping us connected. Okay. And how close are you to him? Um?
Speaker 1: Not that close? I mean, but close because we've always
Speaker 1: come together, but it's not like we speak every day
Speaker 1: now okay. And does he ever ask you for money?
Speaker 1: Personal question? Um? I can answer you because he hasn't. No, No,
Speaker 1: he has. And have you just given him money because
Speaker 1: you were successful? No? Okay? How about your kids? Your
Speaker 1: kids will sounding like they're doing. Are you the type
Speaker 1: who says, hey, they have to find their own way?
Speaker 1: Are you going to support them till they find the
Speaker 1: wrong way? Or how does that work? A bit of both.
Speaker 1: I think I've done a lot of learning in life, um.
Speaker 1: And I've done a lot of work on myself on that.
Speaker 1: And I think you're going through divorces really really tough,
Speaker 1: and as the man who leaves the house. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: you're torn all over the place in terms of doing
Speaker 1: the right thing and the kind of guilt trip and
Speaker 1: then you know, what do you do when you're with them?
Speaker 1: You know, and you you kind of over you definitely
Speaker 1: overcompensate at the start. But we've got a really good
Speaker 1: balance now and there and they are growing ups now,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, okay, but are they still on
Speaker 1: the pay roll? Um no, No, one of them actually
Speaker 1: actually does work for me a bit. So my oldest
Speaker 1: does actually great that they find the wrong way I stop. No,
Speaker 1: they don't know, they all, especially my daughter, Um, she's
Speaker 1: quite entrepreneurial. But my son actually does work for the
Speaker 1: BBC a year. He helps actually behind the scenes on
Speaker 1: my show in terms of some of the engineering and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So so you go away to school
Speaker 1: what they call on the UK public school? How old
Speaker 1: are you when you go super young? Like ridiculously was
Speaker 1: I was like seven or eight or something and I
Speaker 1: went to boarding school and I can't I kind of
Speaker 1: blanked out a lot of it. I have fond memories
Speaker 1: of some of it, and then apparently I was very unhappy.
Speaker 1: And how long did you stay there UM till I
Speaker 1: was old enough to get the train on my own.
Speaker 1: And then so I think till I was about thirteen. Well,
Speaker 1: then I was old enough to get I could there
Speaker 1: was because it actually wasn't that far away. Some kids
Speaker 1: bored because you know, they board in Scotland because they
Speaker 1: live on the south coast. But I actually lived very closely,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty miles from the school, maybe not even
Speaker 1: that UM. So I was a weekend border so I
Speaker 1: would board during the week and go home at weekends
Speaker 1: most of the time. But I was so when I
Speaker 1: got to twelve or thirteen, I was I was old
Speaker 1: enough to do the train journey on my own. Until
Speaker 1: did you stay at that school? Yeah, all the way
Speaker 1: through till um what they called a levels eighteen. Then
Speaker 1: I never went to UNI. I was straight into UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I was a pretty studious student until I
Speaker 1: was sixteen. I got all my exams, and then I
Speaker 1: was definitely a more distracted UM student in the last
Speaker 1: two years because my music thing was starting to happen. Okay,
Speaker 1: your father was a terrific account you were, I know,
Speaker 1: I like terrif ac count I've read before, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't been able to pull out my reran. Were you
Speaker 1: were aware of that? Yeah? I mean I was actually
Speaker 1: my best subject at school was maths. So he I
Speaker 1: would work in the back office of his bookmakers, which
Speaker 1: is all legal in the UK, well as long as
Speaker 1: I wasn't out front. Yeah, so I was being a
Speaker 1: bookie in the UK legal where you had you had
Speaker 1: tracked bookies and you had shot books. You have to
Speaker 1: have different licenses, so you could be a bookie at
Speaker 1: the track for the dogs or the horses. Um, and
Speaker 1: that was a certain type of license. And my dad
Speaker 1: didn't do that. He didn't he didn't do it for horses.
Speaker 1: He did do it a little bit for dogs racing
Speaker 1: gray hounds, but um, I I would go so on
Speaker 1: the big race days like the Derby and the Grand National,
Speaker 1: um and the Choltenham Gold Club, I would often go
Speaker 1: in and work at the back office, probably when I
Speaker 1: was thirteen fourteen, and I'd have to you know, work
Speaker 1: out you know, someone bet fifty quid at five to
Speaker 1: four and I do the bet calculations. So really, well,
Speaker 1: how many people were working for him, I don't know,
Speaker 1: five or six. Yeah, he had like three shops and
Speaker 1: but it put me off gambling forever for like the
Speaker 1: next question, it did because it was it did him
Speaker 1: in basically, I mean he was There was an era
Speaker 1: in the in um so we're talking about the late
Speaker 1: seventies where the independent bookmaker could still make a good living.
Speaker 1: But um, the the the chains or the conglomerates started
Speaker 1: to rise. So there was there was two big companies.
Speaker 1: One was called lab Brooks and the other one was
Speaker 1: Joe Coral. And the fact that they had, you know,
Speaker 1: once you start having thirty shops, forty shops, a hundred
Speaker 1: shops in the UK, you could just offset your you know,
Speaker 1: you just balanced the box where it's really really hard
Speaker 1: for a guy with three shops to have a bad. Um.
Speaker 1: Grand National where the favorite one, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was always it was red There was his famous horse
Speaker 1: called red Rum. And my mom will always and she's
Speaker 1: still alive, um and whenever it gets the Grand National
Speaker 1: Day and I call her from here and say what
Speaker 1: we're gonna it was it's the one time I'll still
Speaker 1: have a bet because I wanted to get my daughter
Speaker 1: into it just to see, just to show her what
Speaker 1: we used to do. And I rang her this year
Speaker 1: just before the race started and she's still you know,
Speaker 1: she's nine now, um, but she's still. I can't do that,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like it's that's that's what he brought
Speaker 1: your dad to his knees, that bloody race. Okay, so
Speaker 1: he literally set the yards himself. I guess so. I
Speaker 1: mean I think there was some kind I don't know,
Speaker 1: I forgot now it worked. There was some kind of
Speaker 1: correlation with what was going on on the track because
Speaker 1: back then on TV you'd see the odds at the
Speaker 1: course and I think, you know, they it was literally
Speaker 1: people going around going, you know, has this horse got
Speaker 1: all its shoes on? Is this one got his tail on?
Speaker 1: You know? Is the jockey drunk? Is you know? Is
Speaker 1: there information? You know that when we're not knowing? And
Speaker 1: that would that would how someone would go around and
Speaker 1: right the odds and then he would have to look
Speaker 1: at those odds that were on TV because it was
Speaker 1: before betfair or internet or anything like that, and he would, Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, he could. He could give an extra
Speaker 1: point or take a point away. Here they all do
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. So how did he do it?
Speaker 1: In the end? It ended horribly. It was some he's
Speaker 1: started having to bet. He was a gambler as well,
Speaker 1: so he would he would take a load of bets
Speaker 1: on and then have to kind of bet against the
Speaker 1: book to books, and it just it started to unravel.
Speaker 1: In the end, he was a very proud man and
Speaker 1: he sold he sold out to um two lab Brooks
Speaker 1: or Joke Corals, I think it was Labrook's, and then
Speaker 1: he went um. He never really recovered from that. Actually
Speaker 1: he went into he then him and my mom bought
Speaker 1: a hotel and they went into the hotel business. Just
Speaker 1: one big, big, quite big hotel in the town Gravesend,
Speaker 1: and um, but the idea of serving other people and
Speaker 1: just he just got very depressed about it, and he
Speaker 1: was he was drinking too much. So okay, did he
Speaker 1: sell out whichever one of the two couples it was
Speaker 1: because he saw the future coming or because he'd lost
Speaker 1: so much Okay, but there was enough money to buy
Speaker 1: this hotel. Yeah yeah. And how long did they own
Speaker 1: the hotel? Um? He he died in nineties three, so
Speaker 1: um we probably had another year like we were winding,
Speaker 1: had to wind it all up, so from from yeah,
Speaker 1: late seventies to four probably and other than him disliking it,
Speaker 1: was a good business. I think it was good for
Speaker 1: a while. And he's grand his father did it and
Speaker 1: it was so I think from the you know, after
Speaker 1: the Second World War there was probably twenty years where
Speaker 1: that was a very good business to be in. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what exactly put you off gambling? It's just it's weird.
Speaker 1: I just there's not I could. I mean, I've worked
Speaker 1: in Vegas so often I've gotten it's just weird, you know,
Speaker 1: like people talk about addiction or like, you know, people
Speaker 1: always want to drink. It's just weird. It's it's not
Speaker 1: it's gambling to me. It's just like I don't it's
Speaker 1: like in my DNA that there's fear. There's somewhere I might.
Speaker 1: I might. I'm quite curious about blackjack, and I might
Speaker 1: occasionally go and throw, you know, you know, throw something
Speaker 1: on a roulette table, just for a laugh, like I'm
Speaker 1: talking about like once every ten years. But I got no,
Speaker 1: I just don't have any. The only time I ever
Speaker 1: bet is when I go to football matches in the UK,
Speaker 1: and if I'm lucky enough to be invited to someone's box,
Speaker 1: they bring when you're having dinner, they bring around a
Speaker 1: sheet and you actually bet on the result. So I
Speaker 1: actually do that because it's football and I'm mad. I'm
Speaker 1: mad about football. Um, but there's no I just don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just I think watching my dad obviously when from
Speaker 1: when I was very young at seeing what it did
Speaker 1: to him. Um, it's obviously just closed off that door.
Speaker 1: And what about alcohol and drugs, Um, well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I've I've had periods of um of drinking not drinking.
Speaker 1: So I think I think everything in you know, moderation
Speaker 1: really Okay, So it's not that well I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: It's not that you don't have an addictive personality. It's
Speaker 1: like gambling is the thing too itself. Push that aside. Okay.
Speaker 1: So if you are going to school and it's late
Speaker 1: seventies from the US perspective, this is pub rock, Graham
Speaker 1: Parker in the Room or whatever. Okay, wretch a little earlier,
Speaker 1: like ninety two. Okay, So when did you get into music?
Speaker 1: Very early age? I was My dad did get a
Speaker 1: lot of albums and single and um, so I just
Speaker 1: he was there was always records around the house and
Speaker 1: I just became So he did get a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was into music, so he bought a lot of albums,
Speaker 1: and he had quite an eclectic taste. There would be
Speaker 1: the Beatles and the Stones, but there would be um,
Speaker 1: then there'd be the crooners like Dean Martin and Frank Snatcher.
Speaker 1: But then there'd be Santana and like more exotic kind
Speaker 1: of music, and like a lot of he'd buy like
Speaker 1: a lot of like African drumming albums and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So he was always had these mad gatefold sleeves. Um
Speaker 1: so I and I've still got some of them actually.
Speaker 1: So there was music always around. I was always banging
Speaker 1: things as a kid apparently, and then um, you know,
Speaker 1: I had my piano lessons and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: rum drums is what I settled on. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: long did you play the piano? Well, on and off
Speaker 1: a few years, but but it never really stuck with
Speaker 1: which I gratefully greatly with regret lessons. How long did
Speaker 1: you take drum lessons or played drums? Probably from eleven
Speaker 1: or twelve till till DJing really kicked in, which was
Speaker 1: about fourteen fifteen. So I had a drum kit, a
Speaker 1: Ludwig drum kit that you got me, and I used
Speaker 1: to sit in our front room with the headphones on,
Speaker 1: trying to play, trying to follow along with Keith Moon
Speaker 1: and John Bonham. Okay, did you ever the first thing
Speaker 1: I could ever play when we formed a school band
Speaker 1: and we used to do Smoke in the Water by
Speaker 1: Deep Purple and we could do hold your Head Up
Speaker 1: by Argent. Of course, Um, I could play. I could
Speaker 1: play almost every instrument on that song, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was fun times. And we used to
Speaker 1: we did some school concerts and we did a like
Speaker 1: village hall concert and but one day I saw a
Speaker 1: DJ at a school disco for the first time with
Speaker 1: two belt drive turntables a little old at the time.
Speaker 1: This is like, okay, so that's nineteen seventy five. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was not happening in the US and the early
Speaker 1: seventies we had a DJ. Well, this was not cool.
Speaker 1: This was like wedding. So we had to turn tables
Speaker 1: just so he didn't have to worry about a break
Speaker 1: or was he mixing the two together and I'm mixing it?
Speaker 1: Just just two turntables and like what looked like a house,
Speaker 1: you know, a lampphraids taken from his house, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a microphone. He was like, now and now
Speaker 1: this is number two in the charts. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: and this was like a school dance. Was your school
Speaker 1: boys only or girls too? It was boys only at
Speaker 1: that stage, and just when I left in the sixth
Speaker 1: form they started to introduce girls finally. So um, this
Speaker 1: would have been just in the in the middle school
Speaker 1: that what we called the O level years the GCSC
Speaker 1: is so um, I can't remember exactly. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: see the guy with the two belt driven turn tables,
Speaker 1: and then I just thought, well, my dad's got loads
Speaker 1: of records. This makes a much better noise than I'm
Speaker 1: making with my band. I see much more in control
Speaker 1: with that. So firstly it was me and a friend
Speaker 1: of mine and my school friend. So we did a
Speaker 1: bit of a double act of like what what what
Speaker 1: you decide you're going to do it? There's no rehearsal
Speaker 1: because you think you know everything kind of yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So then when do you say, I'm gonna go out
Speaker 1: and get gigs? Well, then I took over the school
Speaker 1: this go so I can't remember. We had one at
Speaker 1: the end of every term. So what do you said?
Speaker 1: It said hiring somebody you know? Volunteer yourself, because I
Speaker 1: think there was a student's union school something like are
Speaker 1: you that type of person? Entrepreneurial like that. I would
Speaker 1: never have used that word at the time, but I
Speaker 1: clearly was more than I give myself credit for so.
Speaker 1: And back then being a DJ meant having the gear,
Speaker 1: so like you could be a DJ if you had
Speaker 1: the gear. So it was all about getting the gear.
Speaker 1: So with a bit of money that my dad gave
Speaker 1: me and like scrapping together stuff, I managed to get.
Speaker 1: You know, you get the two speakers, you get an amplifier,
Speaker 1: you get the turn tables and it and it went
Speaker 1: from there and my my formative years as a DJ
Speaker 1: was all about being a mobile DJ, because which meant
Speaker 1: you had the gear. And then I had I had
Speaker 1: the transit van quite early. But you said it was
Speaker 1: a duo, a guy called Nigel Burns, and I lost
Speaker 1: track with him thirty four years ago, but he at
Speaker 1: the beginning there was two of us, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember quite why, but it's probably to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that he probably put some money and got one
Speaker 1: of the speakers and I got the other one, and
Speaker 1: we had we had the boxes like with the flashing
Speaker 1: three lights and it was total you know, classic kind
Speaker 1: of cliche stuff. Um and it was you know school
Speaker 1: dis Guy's where we play t Rex. But then I'd
Speaker 1: learned I, you know, play funkadelic, you know one colation
Speaker 1: under a groove or get up, you know Casey and
Speaker 1: a Sunshine Band disco text and the sex Alex James Brown,
Speaker 1: and I realized that these this music made the dance
Speaker 1: for move more than me playing Mark bolan Um and
Speaker 1: I kind of that's where my formative my taste starts
Speaker 1: to come together. There's a fifteen sixteen year old that
Speaker 1: really sould music was my thing. Um. And I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time around Gravesend, even though we lived
Speaker 1: in this village. A few miles outside there was a
Speaker 1: record shopping grays And called Chris's Records, and I got
Speaker 1: myself a weekend job there and I just loved the
Speaker 1: idea of like, you know, filing the records away in
Speaker 1: plastic covers, like obviously the covers in the shop were empty,
Speaker 1: and then you'd take them to there and they and
Speaker 1: this this shop had quite unlike the unlike the US,
Speaker 1: the records were not shrink wrapped, no, no, everything was
Speaker 1: like it was in self. It was in an open
Speaker 1: plastic cover. But but this because this this town I
Speaker 1: grew up around had a strong West Indian community, an
Speaker 1: Indian community and England you know white community, and they
Speaker 1: like reggae and they like soul, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the kids were going up to London to like early
Speaker 1: kind of underground from London. It was it was an
Speaker 1: hour on the train miles outside London on the Thames
Speaker 1: South Thames coast um and so I started hanging around
Speaker 1: with a load of pop at like music like like
Speaker 1: music that wasn't the music that was top forty UM.
Speaker 1: And back then growing up even then, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of specialist radios, state programs. On Radio one UM,
Speaker 1: there was a very eccentric American guy called Roscoe Emperor
Speaker 1: Roscoe w n Work. So he used to play you know,
Speaker 1: white boys soul records that the first time I've heard
Speaker 1: anything like the average white band or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And then there was the guy called Tony Prince who
Speaker 1: was on Radio Luxembourg. And then eventually Robbie Vincent and
Speaker 1: Greg was they were my you know, and it was
Speaker 1: like it was like the window to another world hearing
Speaker 1: this music and everything was very rare and like you
Speaker 1: have to really hunt around. Yeah, complete opposite, and I'd
Speaker 1: have to go up you know, I've would send people
Speaker 1: up to London. I'd I'd start going to London on
Speaker 1: the train and going into Soho or to Holburn and
Speaker 1: then finding these records in these record stores, and then
Speaker 1: you have to build your relationship with the person behind
Speaker 1: the counter because there'd only be five copies and if
Speaker 1: you weren't cool enough, you weren't going to get one
Speaker 1: of the five copies. So it's all this thing of
Speaker 1: searching music. And then when I get it back home
Speaker 1: and i'd play it in Kent, you know, around these
Speaker 1: shows that I started doing, I'd cover up the labels
Speaker 1: so that other people couldn't steal it off me or
Speaker 1: find out what it was. So it was all very
Speaker 1: um it was. It was cool. Okay. So you're in
Speaker 1: what we would call high school. How many nights a
Speaker 1: week or how many nights a month are you're working? Um, well,
Speaker 1: once it left school eighteen before you left school, because
Speaker 1: you did at school, it wasn't I mean, how you know,
Speaker 1: like once I can't even remember, like once or twice
Speaker 1: a month probably and we did did yeah, okay, and
Speaker 1: then no I did what I was doing mobile, No,
Speaker 1: I was getting hired to do weddings and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And okay, so you're you're making decent money. I'll start
Speaker 1: making decent money. What are you quickly? What do your
Speaker 1: parents say about you're not going to university? Initially they were, Um,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of resistance, and initially they
Speaker 1: were pushing me, but um, they saw it was my
Speaker 1: passion and didn't really stand in my way. I think
Speaker 1: they kept thinking it would wear itself out and just
Speaker 1: be careful that you don't get too old and it's
Speaker 1: too late that if you want to go to university
Speaker 1: or you want to do this stuff. But my dad
Speaker 1: didn't really go to UNI, um and my mom didn't
Speaker 1: go to UNI, so it wasn't a UNI tradition in
Speaker 1: our family. So that probably helped. Okay, some things started
Speaker 1: to happen quite quickly, but I always, um, you know
Speaker 1: DJ's didn't no one dj for a living back then.
Speaker 1: This is the big point to make. So you even
Speaker 1: you know, mobile DJs had day jobs. You know club DJs,
Speaker 1: the early ones that I first heard about, they had
Speaker 1: day jobs. Um, unless you were literally the breakfast show
Speaker 1: DJ on the BBC or Radio one or something like that,
Speaker 1: which I didn't ever want to be. I'd worked out
Speaker 1: quite early on that I didn't want to play other
Speaker 1: people's music choices. If I was going to be on
Speaker 1: the radio, I wanted to play what I wanted to play. Um,
Speaker 1: So I got day job. So nine nine, Um, what
Speaker 1: was your day job? I joined a music magazine called
Speaker 1: Blues and Soul, which was the mixed you know, the
Speaker 1: dance magazine of the day, although it was Could you
Speaker 1: make any money working from Yeah, I got a salary,
Speaker 1: I got a car. Really yeah, it had so as
Speaker 1: you know, and I and I I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember in the UK, they used to be a
Speaker 1: Pauli Yates was a writer for Record Mirror and she
Speaker 1: was the first one that ever wrote about like pop culture,
Speaker 1: stroke gossip. So I I was obsessed by what she wrote,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I want to write something. I want
Speaker 1: to write about the scene and the gossip in a
Speaker 1: cool way and the music, and so that was what
Speaker 1: I thought my job was going to be at Blues
Speaker 1: and Soul magazine. The day I got there, the publisher
Speaker 1: said to me, yeah, that's just that's just laughing. You know,
Speaker 1: your real job, you're gonna have to go and sell advertary.
Speaker 1: So if you want to do that, you can do that.
Speaker 1: But you've got to go and sell some ads. So
Speaker 1: they gave me a car to go around and sell advertising.
Speaker 1: So I would have to go around all the record shops,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day. So the record shop ads,
Speaker 1: they used to list a hundred titles, um, and then
Speaker 1: you put them in the back of the magazine with
Speaker 1: a hundred titles mail order, you know. Um. And with
Speaker 1: the reggae shops, it got a bit tricky because if
Speaker 1: you made a spelling mistake, they try and not pay
Speaker 1: your bill. So you know, I had guns pulled on
Speaker 1: me and like all sorts of things back in the day.
Speaker 1: So um, but it was it was it was rites
Speaker 1: of passage. It was a massive experience and it was
Speaker 1: I started to meet more people in the industry because
Speaker 1: I was writing this column. So it's kind of the
Speaker 1: making of me working at Blues and Soul Made and
Speaker 1: you're living were at the time. I was commuting from
Speaker 1: Kent into London. Um. I know, I actually got a
Speaker 1: house really young as well. I got I managed through
Speaker 1: bits of money from DJing. Houses were super cheap back then.
Speaker 1: My first house was I got mortgage obviously, but it
Speaker 1: was like twenty grand or something. I got like three
Speaker 1: bedroom terraced house. Yeah. Boy, my godmother was quite healthy
Speaker 1: and she left me a bit of money. And you're
Speaker 1: talking about like even if you had five grand, you
Speaker 1: could get because it on a proper house. It was
Speaker 1: opposite a cemetery, but it was actually quite cool. And
Speaker 1: so how long you would I left the house. So
Speaker 1: so the magazine I was three, And then the record
Speaker 1: companies were starting to kind of, you know, get more
Speaker 1: and more interested in dance music. And Roger Rames was
Speaker 1: working at what was called Phonogram, and there was a
Speaker 1: guy called Tracy Bennett working at a place called Decca,
Speaker 1: and Tracy had signed Banana Rama to Decca, and Roger
Speaker 1: had signed you know, Tainted, Soft Cell Dex's Midnight Runners.
Speaker 1: Roger was killing it and and they to keep him happy,
Speaker 1: they gave him his own label. So they gave him
Speaker 1: the Redundant London label which was sitting on a shelf
Speaker 1: um and said well why don't you reinvent London And
Speaker 1: that he came together with Tracy and they formed London Records,
Speaker 1: and then there was a club promotions A and R
Speaker 1: man Phonogram at the time called Jeff Young who also
Speaker 1: happened to be a DJ that was a bit older
Speaker 1: than me and my buddy, and you know, I was
Speaker 1: almost his protege and he was also on the radio,
Speaker 1: so I was kind of following his path. And he
Speaker 1: they assumed he was going to go with them to
Speaker 1: start this new venture, and he said no, he wanted
Speaker 1: to stay at phonogram Um and he wanted to retire.
Speaker 1: Eventually packed up djaying as well. He just wanted to
Speaker 1: do radio, not club djaying. And they said, well, who
Speaker 1: else are we going to call? And they said, did
Speaker 1: you call this guy? Pete Tong? So I had a
Speaker 1: meeting with them and it was it was amazing those two,
Speaker 1: you know, rogers, very thoughtful and sensible, and you know
Speaker 1: Tracy was quite wild and flamboyant and the sexy guy
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to sign to kind of thing with with
Speaker 1: great spiel and amazing years. And I worked for the
Speaker 1: joined them and it was it was, you know, a
Speaker 1: ride that took I went. I worked with them for
Speaker 1: eighteen years until early two thousand's, until the label got
Speaker 1: sold and it was it was an incredible time, incredible period,
Speaker 1: and um we hit the ground running and the first
Speaker 1: day ever went into work, UM we were number one
Speaker 1: in the chart with Candy Girl with new Addition, which
Speaker 1: Roger and traced licensed off of street Wise off Arthur Baker.
Speaker 1: And I was given the tapes to the next single,
Speaker 1: like big half inch tapes, so you're a DJ, go
Speaker 1: and edit the next single and yet and I was like,
Speaker 1: and I was walking out the door and like, I'd
Speaker 1: never cut tape with a razor before, But I went.
Speaker 1: I went to a studio in Marble Arch which actually
Speaker 1: eventually became Paul Weller studio called Solid Bond, and there
Speaker 1: was a lovely old guy in there called Carlos and
Speaker 1: he he took me under his wing and he said,
Speaker 1: don't worry, We're going to work it out. Like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? You know, It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to cut like eight bars out the interest
Speaker 1: he showed me, like with the razor. And I had
Speaker 1: cut tape at home, but nothing like on a master.
Speaker 1: Did you cut the master? The master? But I guess
Speaker 1: it was a copy of what they'd sent us from America.
Speaker 1: Back then. Um so you can't. I started editing literally
Speaker 1: my first day at work. It was quite funny, so
Speaker 1: it was a it real writes a passage. But and
Speaker 1: then you know, I started They started sending me to
Speaker 1: America very regularly. And it was the days when you
Speaker 1: you know, walked down the street and bumped into someone
Speaker 1: and licensed a record off and a bit like I
Speaker 1: remembering Hurtigan m Urtigan's book he says that about the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones, like you know, it was a fantastic tile
Speaker 1: down the street and I bumped into mid Jagger and
Speaker 1: I signed him. It was a bit like that with
Speaker 1: dance music back then. And I signed Rundy m C
Speaker 1: licensed them from Profile from Corey Robbins for the for
Speaker 1: the world outside of America, and that got me straight
Speaker 1: in with with Russell and Leo um And and and
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin and m I met those three very early
Speaker 1: on and um And that we and we did and
Speaker 1: that was the Raising Hell album, you know, so that
Speaker 1: was hugely successful. En off the back of that, I
Speaker 1: managed to sign Salt and Pepper from Eddio Lachlan the
Speaker 1: next Plateau Records in but tween signing like the odd
Speaker 1: early like Paradise Garage house record or the early house
Speaker 1: records that were coming through from Chicago, and I was
Speaker 1: I was on a roll as any and our man.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just we sounded push It and that
Speaker 1: was like a massive, massive hit. UM and eventually Salt
Speaker 1: and Pepper we stuck with them UM and we ended
Speaker 1: up becoming the label in America eventually as well, during
Speaker 1: the kind of the en vogue what are man at times?
Speaker 1: So it was it was it was great fun. And
Speaker 1: then they gave me my own label. So dance music
Speaker 1: was like blowing up. So in six eighty seven, just
Speaker 1: as house music was starting, we started f I started
Speaker 1: ffr R, which was actually a little symbol on the
Speaker 1: top of the old London logo that just stood for
Speaker 1: full frequency Range Recording, so it was like a mono
Speaker 1: stereo Dolby. It was an old symbol from the deca
Speaker 1: days about the quality of a recording. I thought it
Speaker 1: would be quite nice because we were obsessed by deaf
Speaker 1: jam so like Black Silver wanted something like death jams,
Speaker 1: so FRR looked quite good. Okay, so you're working London records,
Speaker 1: you were successful. Sounds like you're making a good paycheck. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and and then I was still all the way doing
Speaker 1: that's my question. How much were you DJing? Well then,
Speaker 1: like every week it was some you know the club scene. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's start there. Okay. There's a lot on how
Speaker 1: it did it. It's a long tradition of the Brits
Speaker 1: going to a Betha. But when did it turn into
Speaker 1: a whole dance stay up all night environment Betha. Well,
Speaker 1: it was that from the very beginning. We just weren't
Speaker 1: welcome as Brits in the late eighties, so um, you know,
Speaker 1: we the Britgs used to go there is like a
Speaker 1: cheap tourist package holiday destination in the early eighties. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't till the late eighties, like specifically where I
Speaker 1: kind of discovered Alfredo and Amnesia and Passia and started
Speaker 1: seeing these parties that went through the night and then
Speaker 1: carried on going when the sun came up. And that
Speaker 1: was totally unique because we had the licensing laws of
Speaker 1: the UK um and that's when everything started to really
Speaker 1: really change. But I mean, so Betha um from I've
Speaker 1: been there every year every ever since. But the yeah,
Speaker 1: the nineties, you know, it started to really kind of
Speaker 1: shape itself that it really really blew up in probably
Speaker 1: the two thousand's is when Oka. But the clubs there
Speaker 1: were they existing or did the Spianiards have a vision?
Speaker 1: They had a vision for sure. It just by accident
Speaker 1: or design or this vision. Um, it happened to be
Speaker 1: this small island you've been, you've been and it you know,
Speaker 1: there happened to be there for four or five clubs,
Speaker 1: all very close to each other. That happened then went
Speaker 1: on to become some of the most famous clubs in
Speaker 1: the world. And I think it was the mix of
Speaker 1: the audience and then the liberalism of the licensing laws
Speaker 1: that enable about to happen. So obviously it's changed a
Speaker 1: lot over the years because that that idea of going
Speaker 1: through to the morning and carrying on, that's kind of stopped,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of the big superclubs like Amnesia
Speaker 1: Um and Passia in particular, going on until they wanted
Speaker 1: to like ten in the morning. That that's gone, you
Speaker 1: know that. So in the last ten years it's been
Speaker 1: much stricter about you must finish it six, when you
Speaker 1: must finish at seven, or you must finish it eight
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then often the after and then there's
Speaker 1: no carry on like officially the after party seen often
Speaker 1: starts after lunch and it's actually a bit more organized
Speaker 1: and you know, so, but the the idea of going
Speaker 1: through the night get a long answer to your question,
Speaker 1: but actually it's it's probably been more curtailed. It was
Speaker 1: like that where it was like twenty four hours, you know,
Speaker 1: and now it isn't. It's okay, you can, but you
Speaker 1: can find somewhere to dance pretty much twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: It's not in the same place. To what degree do
Speaker 1: you believe it was fueled by drugs? Um, Well, clearly
Speaker 1: really had a massive influence on it. Um that's that's okay.
Speaker 1: I mean it was at a combination of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so it's easy from a tabloid non you know, educate.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you don't know anything about
Speaker 1: the music and you just want to write a certain
Speaker 1: type of history about it, you could you could lean
Speaker 1: in it that way. But to but to think that
Speaker 1: it wasn't artistic and it wasn't about the music, you'd
Speaker 1: you'd be completely missing the point, which comes right back
Speaker 1: to the beginning of our conversation, which is why a
Speaker 1: beether classics works because the music was great, and maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily get the the props it deserved back
Speaker 1: in the day, because that's what a lot of people thought.
Speaker 1: You know. The very reason we started the I M
Speaker 1: s was because people thought all that happens in a
Speaker 1: Beth was it was a party. Okay, So how important
Speaker 1: is me and Chester of the hut Yanda and the
Speaker 1: acts there? Hugely important? Um, you know, that's a whole
Speaker 1: another thing. I was. I was an observer and occasional visitor.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't part of that because I was I
Speaker 1: was a London guy. Um, but you know, phenomenal apportment.
Speaker 1: And you've got to remember back in the late eighties
Speaker 1: when that started, you know, the country was much more disconnected.
Speaker 1: You know, just the idea of like, you know, having
Speaker 1: these things and the way we all travel now, you know,
Speaker 1: being in London and like making a trip to Manchester,
Speaker 1: it was a massive thing. You know. It's like this
Speaker 1: did not happen on a regular basis, you know. And
Speaker 1: it was before DJs even traveled up and down the country.
Speaker 1: So I was a big DJ in in the southeast
Speaker 1: and I was virtually unknown in the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: But what was the night worth to you back then?
Speaker 1: Probably um, but in the eighties I don't know there was.
Speaker 1: It definitely starts with hundreds and then it becomes thousands.
Speaker 1: So in any event, but you're aware of the scene
Speaker 1: in the Anchester totally. By then I was in the
Speaker 1: record company and Mike Pickering quite a grand part, quite
Speaker 1: rapidly became rival A and r Men as well. I
Speaker 1: mean Pickering went close in with Deconstruction, and Deconstruction became
Speaker 1: the label of the North. Even though it was run
Speaker 1: by one guy from Liverpool, it was actually always seen
Speaker 1: as it was, you know. And then obviously Factory was
Speaker 1: most of those Factory acts, I mean Joy Division had
Speaker 1: purchase here and has maintained as bigger than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: But the Happy Mondays a lot of those acts never
Speaker 1: made it here. How big were they in the UK?
Speaker 1: Absolutely massive and more than massive, they were hugely um
Speaker 1: you know, they carried an awful lot of gravitas, particularly
Speaker 1: new Order obviously coming from coming out of Joy Division
Speaker 1: less so something like Orchestral maneuvers in the darkest that
Speaker 1: the fact Factory was an amazing thing, you know, and
Speaker 1: I was I got deeply involved with them towards the
Speaker 1: end because London one kind of started to bail him out.
Speaker 1: You know. We started by licensing the Happy Mondays and
Speaker 1: having their records around the rest of the world. And
Speaker 1: then as the financial troubles got worse, Um, we got
Speaker 1: we got further and further into factory to the point
Speaker 1: where we bought it. Yeah. So, and then I used
Speaker 1: to work a lot with Tony in the city and
Speaker 1: um Tony Wilson and um them. From an A and
Speaker 1: R perspective, I actually ended up looking after New Order
Speaker 1: and became their A and R man when they came
Speaker 1: over to London, and so I worked very closely with
Speaker 1: you know, with Bernard and with Rob Grettan. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're a DJ, at what point do you start playing
Speaker 1: individual records and start mixing the records together. Um, late
Speaker 1: late I'm just think this, but through probably early eighties,
Speaker 1: what was basically what happened is, um, you know, when
Speaker 1: the soul scene was blowing up, the underground soul scene,
Speaker 1: and it was a northern soul scene in in in
Speaker 1: the North. Um. One of the guys in our gang,
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest, one of the biggest DJs of
Speaker 1: that time, was a guy called Froggy, and he was
Speaker 1: my mentor when it came to DJ equipment, So he
Speaker 1: was always the geek with the DJ equipment. Had this
Speaker 1: Orange sound system which was incredible, and I bought decks
Speaker 1: off him when he was re upp into the to
Speaker 1: the newest model. So I got all his old equipment
Speaker 1: and became like an understudy to Froggy almost, But he
Speaker 1: started going to New York before and you know, one
Speaker 1: of the first guys to ever go to New York
Speaker 1: and see Larry Levan. Um. There was a very famous writer,
Speaker 1: a beautiful guy called James Hamilton as well that was
Speaker 1: like that used to review all the music for Record Mirror,
Speaker 1: and he was the first one to actually issue bpms,
Speaker 1: so he every review came with a bpms per minute.
Speaker 1: And then and Froggy went over and like saw the
Speaker 1: early um you know, David Mancuso, and saw Larry Levan
Speaker 1: in action. And so when he came back from New York,
Speaker 1: like it was like he had two copies of everything.
Speaker 1: It's like what you know, what you're doing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can make I can extend this. And he literally
Speaker 1: came back. He literally it was like, you know Moses
Speaker 1: coming down from the mountain. It's like I've been to
Speaker 1: New York, I've seen Larry Leavan, and I've bought two
Speaker 1: copies of this from the vinyl factory or whatever. And
Speaker 1: now I can play this record and make it like
Speaker 1: twice as long. And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And and that's because you work out what tempo it
Speaker 1: is and you match the tempo. And it was it
Speaker 1: was just it was before you know, it's just just
Speaker 1: as very speed turntables were coming in that in fact,
Speaker 1: you could even do that. So he opened He was
Speaker 1: definitely the gateway to open everybody's eyes to mixing, and
Speaker 1: we were we were edging towards smooth segways. I mean.
Speaker 1: The other biggest DJ of the day was a guy
Speaker 1: called Chris Hill. I actually used to run Ensign Records
Speaker 1: with Nigel Lucy and Granger's brother and and they say
Speaker 1: of Boomtown Rats and shined O'Connor and and so Chris
Speaker 1: had a day job, but he was the biggest DJ
Speaker 1: at the time, and he used to sing over the
Speaker 1: records and talk across the segway, so it would like
Speaker 1: blurred everything together. Um and Froggy kind of brought in
Speaker 1: this more like modern way of doing it. Obviously we
Speaker 1: were aware as well as like Africa Bambarto and the
Speaker 1: hip hop guys and what they were doing in terms
Speaker 1: of turntable ism. So it kind of that's when it
Speaker 1: all changed. And then suddenly, I don't know, there must
Speaker 1: have been one day where it just wasn't cool not
Speaker 1: to mix. You know, you just had you just you
Speaker 1: just assumed you had to mix. And by the time
Speaker 1: the house music kicked in, um, you know, like you
Speaker 1: just you just had to be doing that. It was
Speaker 1: just the thing to do. Okay, did you practice or
Speaker 1: did you practice? No, definitely practiced. I had the whole
Speaker 1: set up at home and it um. And then and
Speaker 1: then they became people that were the best at mixing,
Speaker 1: you know. But there was melodic mixing, mixing and key mixing,
Speaker 1: beautiful transitions, you know, taking people on journeys, and I
Speaker 1: was you know, so it just raised the game. There
Speaker 1: was a guy called Sasha you know still around today,
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine that really it was another
Speaker 1: one that really raised that. There was another real you know,
Speaker 1: raising the bar moment, like when he came on because
Speaker 1: he could just do it in his sleep, and he
Speaker 1: just everything always seemed to being key, and it just
Speaker 1: you know, not just about mixing out of the drum
Speaker 1: break of one into the drum break of the other,
Speaker 1: but actually thinking about, well, now this baseline is going here,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this baseline to go there. And
Speaker 1: that was yet. So its just the whole skill set
Speaker 1: around it and the the learning curve just increased hugely
Speaker 1: in the late eighties. Okay, so London record has assolted
Speaker 1: around the turn of the century. Where does that leave you? Um,
Speaker 1: weirdly at forty plus years old and sitting around going, um,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you know, for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, even though I've done it my whole life,
Speaker 1: I'm i am a full time PJ. So um and
Speaker 1: I went. There was no thought of adding another record
Speaker 1: company job. I was kind of over it by then.
Speaker 1: It got if you remember the naps to you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand one, I mean, the dance music
Speaker 1: bubble had burst, you know, we all the way through
Speaker 1: the nineties, like the ecosystem, the economic value of dance
Speaker 1: music every year just kept going up like a stock
Speaker 1: price out of control. So everything you know, and the
Speaker 1: infrastructure about dance music got fatter and fatter and fatter,
Speaker 1: and inevitably, after ten years of like fattening this giant
Speaker 1: cow bull um, people start to take their eyes off
Speaker 1: the ball. Things definitely aren't as good as they used
Speaker 1: to be, but everyone's making loads of money. And and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that it didn't pop around the millennium,
Speaker 1: but it got punctured somewhere along the way. And as
Speaker 1: we came into the new decade after a couple of years,
Speaker 1: like the tires are deflating, um, you know, magazines are closing,
Speaker 1: major record companies are starting to either you know, make
Speaker 1: people redundant or tighten up. Budge. It's you know, doing doing,
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of stuff to dance labels. And by
Speaker 1: then my career at London, I was kind of head
Speaker 1: of a and r of the whole thing. So I've
Speaker 1: kind of outgrown the dance bit and I've replaced myself
Speaker 1: with people, you know, many great people worked with me,
Speaker 1: and John Niven wrote the book about us with you
Speaker 1: know Killy your friends, but you know people like Nick
Speaker 1: Raphael who's very senior now at Capital, signed Sam Smith,
Speaker 1: you know, Christian tatters Field, and you're well aware of.
Speaker 1: UM used to work for us at London Records. UM.
Speaker 1: Even Patrick Moxley worked at London Records. You know, there
Speaker 1: was like there was loads of people UM that have
Speaker 1: gone on to Paul McDonald. Funny enough, he was a
Speaker 1: manager of you know, James Bay and George George ezra Um.
Speaker 1: He was a London Records. You know, there was amazing
Speaker 1: It's sold basically, but I'd become head of an R
Speaker 1: and it was like the game. I remember that signing
Speaker 1: some kind of pop things because everyone you start sign
Speaker 1: you end up signing things because you think they're going
Speaker 1: to be hugely successful economically and you kind of but
Speaker 1: you don't really love them. But like I remember there
Speaker 1: was one I can't remember the name of it. UM.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I remember being involved in signing this pop
Speaker 1: act and it was only Smallman and Dennis Inglesby were
Speaker 1: the managers, and I and UM and and every you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those ones where like Roger was sure,
Speaker 1: everyone was sure, Like the dorman of the building was sure,
Speaker 1: everyone at Radio one was sure. Like I've made it
Speaker 1: about as sure as you could possibly making. It was
Speaker 1: hugely expensive and UM and we spent about a year
Speaker 1: doing this deal and six months making the record and
Speaker 1: then it was like and then we took it to
Speaker 1: Radio one one day and it was Alex Jones. Donnelly
Speaker 1: was the head of programming at that time. It was
Speaker 1: like and it's like literally within about a month they
Speaker 1: were dropped. You know, we wrote off like half a
Speaker 1: million quid and um, you know, people would get you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like, no, I don't like this anymore. It
Speaker 1: was so and then so I started my full time role,
Speaker 1: started to be a bit of a consultant, and I
Speaker 1: remember when it got sold out and if you remember,
Speaker 1: Roger went into the kind of heavens like working with
Speaker 1: Dick Parsons at Warners. You know, John Reid took over
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis. We moved to Kensington.
Speaker 1: You know, me and Tracy were like, everything from our
Speaker 1: kind of indie beginnings have changed so much. We kind
Speaker 1: of lost a bit of interest and I got more
Speaker 1: and more distracted by DJ and my DJing in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands. As as what happened to a lot
Speaker 1: of DJs. Then this is the economic value from recorded
Speaker 1: music collapsed. All the value went into live suddenly. Though
Speaker 1: with the Internet, we were getting calls from Peru and
Speaker 1: Chile and Australia for the first time, and you know,
Speaker 1: we could start traveling and migrating like birds to where
Speaker 1: the money was. So two thousands to probably two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, I just did an awful lot of touring.
Speaker 1: So you at what point do you start working as
Speaker 1: a record executive. Well, two thousand one, two tho two
Speaker 1: starts to kind of filter out. There was a little
Speaker 1: flirtation with Universal Um where I was going to I
Speaker 1: kind of did a deal to do some compilations, and
Speaker 1: I was going to consult with a dance label and
Speaker 1: some ex staff from London Records were working there and
Speaker 1: funny enough, six months ago to negotiating that, and um,
Speaker 1: the guy that did the deal I did. I signed
Speaker 1: a deal on a Friday, and then on the Monday
Speaker 1: he got pulled out and it was it was it
Speaker 1: was Matt Jagger and and that Jason ially came in
Speaker 1: to take over and we got on fine. He said,
Speaker 1: it's just not my vision, you know, It's like I've
Speaker 1: got I've got enough things to fix here. That's not
Speaker 1: going to work. And um, so I went back out
Speaker 1: and did other things. I was doing radio and I
Speaker 1: had a radio production company and stuff different to buses
Speaker 1: and pieces, and then um, around that same time I
Speaker 1: changed managers and then w m ME for the and
Speaker 1: I knew Tiger because Geiger was our agent for New Order,
Speaker 1: and so w ME opened in London, if you remember,
Speaker 1: it was Ed Bicknell, strangely stret manager, David Levy, Solomon
Speaker 1: Parker and they were the three that's opened and it
Speaker 1: was that was their first office. And my manager was
Speaker 1: Gary Blackburn, who was the manager of Fact Boy Slim,
Speaker 1: who's David Levy's long term client. And Gary said, you
Speaker 1: should be with David. He's the best guy. And David
Speaker 1: was the first ever DJ agent anyway, literally in the world.
Speaker 1: He was the first, you know, dedicated agent for a
Speaker 1: DJ and that was Paul Oakenfold, so I knew about him. Um,
Speaker 1: so I moved to w m ME. And at the
Speaker 1: same time Geiger was like, you know, well, he knew
Speaker 1: I was an out of work record company guy and
Speaker 1: he always saw me as that. He said, why don't
Speaker 1: you come and do an n R for an agency?
Speaker 1: So it was quite visionary thinking and I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean, how's that going to work? So we'll
Speaker 1: just tell us what we should sign, you know, help
Speaker 1: us introduce us. You know, you know I love dancing music,
Speaker 1: love electronic music. He always did. He was obsessed by
Speaker 1: Moby Um, obsessed by factory, and he said, why don't
Speaker 1: you come and do it here? So that's how that
Speaker 1: relationship started. And I'm still with him, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now when you're on your own, how many nights
Speaker 1: a week or how many nights a month are you
Speaker 1: working back then? I mean, because I don't know like
Speaker 1: the average gigs is. I think my averages have gone.
Speaker 1: I think the peak was like a hundred gigs a year.
Speaker 1: I was never like a dead mouse or you know,
Speaker 1: so you're never one because I was never. I was
Speaker 1: never two hundred gigs here. I mean, funny I've I've
Speaker 1: always had, you know, you know, I've gone through that divorce.
Speaker 1: I've gone you know that I'm definitely deejaying didn't help um,
Speaker 1: and that that early period of the two thousands where
Speaker 1: it all fell apart and me traveling, you know, more
Speaker 1: away from home. Insecurities probably, I mean all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: and then um, but I've always cherished this other. I've
Speaker 1: never I think the reason I'm still dejaying to this day.
Speaker 1: Is simply because I never could do burnout because I
Speaker 1: always had you know, I see it as an artistic thing,
Speaker 1: and I definitely do do it for the money as well.
Speaker 1: But um, I've always managed to never have to do
Speaker 1: it as much as everyone else has had to do
Speaker 1: it because you've had other income streams. But assuming you
Speaker 1: did want to do it, there's enough workout there for
Speaker 1: you to work do hundred nights a year. Not now,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think, not unless I want to do some
Speaker 1: really rubbishy things that um that wouldn't enjoy. So I
Speaker 1: try and try, and I mean it's there's always this
Speaker 1: thing of and it's it's the same for if you're,
Speaker 1: you know, a musician in any genre of music doing
Speaker 1: it as long as I've done it, you have to.
Speaker 1: There's a certain amount of reinvention you have to go through.
Speaker 1: But I think I've been lucky that my curiosity for
Speaker 1: the new and the next, and the fidgit nous of
Speaker 1: always thinking looking around the corner um has kept me
Speaker 1: current like that. It's just it's just the way I am,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So have you been one of those
Speaker 1: DJs you know, I travel with a USBs Dick, I
Speaker 1: get on the private jet. I'm going somewhere else. Has
Speaker 1: that been your Have you lived that lifestyle a little bit? Nothing?
Speaker 1: I was a bit like um my, my era of
Speaker 1: true superstardom came a time where the money was still
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, but the travel wasn't. I was just before that,
Speaker 1: like so I'm talking about like mid two mid nineties
Speaker 1: to mid two thousand's was probably the purple patch for me,
Speaker 1: when I was like number one on poles and all
Speaker 1: sorts of things, and then the money. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: the money was still good, but we weren't doing what
Speaker 1: they It's a bit like football, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: George Best, you know it's amazing, right until like twenty
Speaker 1: years later there's David Beckham and you realize that you're
Speaker 1: earning like a tenth or a hundredth of what they're earning.
Speaker 1: And it's been a bit like that for me. So
Speaker 1: I still, you know, you still do well out of it,
Speaker 1: and yes, I've used I used private jets when I
Speaker 1: have to do. But for me, you know, there was
Speaker 1: there was some times in a beef during the residency
Speaker 1: period when I before I moved to America. Um, there
Speaker 1: was one year, two years actually where I I was
Speaker 1: given a private jet every week for eighteen weeks for
Speaker 1: two years, like to do the whole season. So they
Speaker 1: would would be on Radio one until at nine o'clock
Speaker 1: at night on a Friday, and then I would we
Speaker 1: drive to the the airport and get a plane, do
Speaker 1: the gig, and then yeah, come back the next day.
Speaker 1: So UM, that was how when did you get and
Speaker 1: how did you get the BBC gig? The BBC gig
Speaker 1: was so we're going back to We're wind back to
Speaker 1: the eighties again. So again I didn't use that word
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial at the time, but I guess looking back I
Speaker 1: was because it was like, well, how am I going
Speaker 1: to get involved in this music? I don't want to
Speaker 1: be UM, I don't want to be a breakfast show
Speaker 1: DJ playing pop records. But I love this music. So
Speaker 1: I just want to share this music with as many
Speaker 1: people as possible. And the people are in for It's
Speaker 1: me the most in terms of shaping who I was
Speaker 1: as a DJ. With these guys, I was hearing on
Speaker 1: the radio playing specialist music, so it was a natural
Speaker 1: thing for me to like, well, I I want to
Speaker 1: do that. I used to sit at home listening to
Speaker 1: the radio, writing down what people said, writing down their names,
Speaker 1: of all the records, and I just got obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: So I got when I was at the magazine, I
Speaker 1: was already I was dabbling with like local radio, pirate radio, UM,
Speaker 1: anything I could do to get on UM and a
Speaker 1: weird twist of luck fate. Whatever is This guy Froggy
Speaker 1: I told you about, had the equipment he used to do.
Speaker 1: He used to provide the equipment for Radio one road shows,
Speaker 1: so when Radio one did an outside broadcast, he'd be
Speaker 1: the guy that would do the equipment. He then got
Speaker 1: to know some of the producers there and some of
Speaker 1: the DJs there, And there was this DJ called Peter
Speaker 1: Powell who was the drive time DJ, and he was
Speaker 1: very progressive with the music policy, very curious about you know.
Speaker 1: He was the one that broke Spandel Ballet and Duran
Speaker 1: ju around and Malcolm McLaren all these things. And he
Speaker 1: wanted to have a proper street DJ come onto his
Speaker 1: show on a weekly basis and give them some tips.
Speaker 1: That was a feature he was doing. And it turned
Speaker 1: out that UM Froggy was was very technical and he
Speaker 1: was very good with with with mixing records together, so technical,
Speaker 1: but the content like sometimes he didn't have the time
Speaker 1: to find the records. So who did he call me?
Speaker 1: So I was at the magazine getting all this music
Speaker 1: and going around all the shops. So his feed fun
Speaker 1: froggy music. But lo and behold, what quickly happened is
Speaker 1: that they start inviting me as well to go up
Speaker 1: to Radio one. So there I am at night and
Speaker 1: I'm going on to primetime BBC Radio one, giving them
Speaker 1: tips of my records. And I thought, this is like,
Speaker 1: literally I've literally gone from zero to and I literally
Speaker 1: after a couple of years of that, it was like,
Speaker 1: will give me a job, giving me my own show?
Speaker 1: It's like no, tap me on the head. So you've
Speaker 1: got to go away and get some more experienced son.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't just jump to the you know
Speaker 1: the Manchester United, Real Madrid, you know l A, you
Speaker 1: know the forty nine. The biggest football club is um
Speaker 1: and so I I went back out and I U
Speaker 1: but I used that calling card of having been on
Speaker 1: Radio one. It's kind as leverage to get onto commercial
Speaker 1: radio and Kent and then I was on Radio London
Speaker 1: which is a BBC station. And I got into Capital
Speaker 1: with Richard park Um just as house music and the
Speaker 1: rave scene exploded. So I was the Saturday night dance
Speaker 1: guy on the biggest radio station in London and I
Speaker 1: was there for four years um and then I was
Speaker 1: like the number one draft choice when that guy Jeff
Speaker 1: Young I told you about, retired and I then got
Speaker 1: moved to Radio one. So I joined Radio one in
Speaker 1: one and been there ever since. Now in America, nothing
Speaker 1: likes a lot. Is that the age? Is that you?
Speaker 1: Or is that BBC? I think it's a bit of both.
Speaker 1: I think, um, there's nothing like the BBC globally unfortunately. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just public service radio that wants to be
Speaker 1: popular is an unusual thing. You know, you've got these
Speaker 1: Triple j's in Australia and things like that, but and
Speaker 1: you've got an MPR here, but nothing nothing like what
Speaker 1: the Radio one have done, you know, from and they
Speaker 1: get battered, you know, they get battered on a annual
Speaker 1: monthly basis by the conservative press that they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: there on across all disciplines of the BBC, from you know, news, sports, drama,
Speaker 1: everything but radio. Thank god, it's been there and it's
Speaker 1: been you know, it's still it's brilliant, but it's still
Speaker 1: saddens me a little bit. I mean in terms of
Speaker 1: moving the needle in in UM, especially for dance music,
Speaker 1: electronic music. It's still does it better than anything in
Speaker 1: the world, which is great but actually also kind of
Speaker 1: a bit weird. But you also have a show on iHeart,
Speaker 1: right what I did actually that ended, that ended, and
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was enjoyable. I got introduced
Speaker 1: to UM that I met all the senior people in
Speaker 1: Bob Pittman, right, and in a bether actually through Pino Sagliocca,
Speaker 1: remember there doing a very famous live Nation promoter and
Speaker 1: they and they would you know, I think Bob's sun
Speaker 1: was enjoying a beether and everything like that is anyway
Speaker 1: that Pete Songs, your guy like Pete Songs should do
Speaker 1: a dance show. And I did it for a while,
Speaker 1: but it was a bit it was, you know, good
Speaker 1: people around me, but it was a little bit soulless.
Speaker 1: I just found it. I don't know, no disrespect to
Speaker 1: our heart, but it's that it's just that thing of
Speaker 1: like it's a commercial radio station, commercial model, and it's
Speaker 1: the commercial model for music. It's always been a struggle
Speaker 1: in this country to do specialist dance radio. And I
Speaker 1: want to point out the read and the simple thing being.
Speaker 1: You know, I used to go to New York City,
Speaker 1: as I said, it's a sitting hotel rooms and I
Speaker 1: would listen to Frankie Crocker, w b Less, Timmy Registered,
Speaker 1: Massive Respect, Merlin Bob. You know, these guys trained me,
Speaker 1: taught me so much when I was a kid about
Speaker 1: dance radio and mixed radio, and I wouldn't be here
Speaker 1: without them, and they were. They were on American stations,
Speaker 1: but um sat sadly most outside of obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: the metropolis of New York City being so big, no
Speaker 1: no other you know, mixed show radios on the American
Speaker 1: radio tend to happen after midnight or super you know.
Speaker 1: The whole power of Radio One was like Pete Tong
Speaker 1: was on at six pm on a Friday night, you know,
Speaker 1: and they and he stayed there for you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still on a Friday night. I'm on a bit later now.
Speaker 1: I start at nine and two hours for my show
Speaker 1: and two hours hosting the essential mix later in the night,
Speaker 1: and it's all gone to like listen again and BBC
Speaker 1: sounds and you know it's like it's a different model now.
Speaker 1: But to be on basically at six o'clock at night
Speaker 1: for twenty years at least, Um, that's what made it
Speaker 1: so powerful. That's why it moved. You're living in l
Speaker 1: a oh that's prerecorded now now it's I do it
Speaker 1: at home. You know, it's smoke and mirrors and technology,
Speaker 1: thank god. And when I'm in London, I do it live.
Speaker 1: So I'd still got back quite regular. Okay, best gig
Speaker 1: you've ever had foo Probably Love Parade um was one
Speaker 1: of them, doing in Berlin when it still happened, you know,
Speaker 1: being I was one of the first ever Brits to
Speaker 1: be invited to play at the monument Um and there
Speaker 1: was a million people on the streets. So that would
Speaker 1: Love Paraders where they had the accident all the people
Speaker 1: died right um in Germany where they were ultimately going
Speaker 1: through the tunnel. I don't know if it was still
Speaker 1: the Love Parade then, but maybe okay parade was an
Speaker 1: open street in what year was that, um? That must
Speaker 1: have been early nineties. Um, So what made it a
Speaker 1: great well being playing to so many people and it
Speaker 1: being a kind of historic thing and we did we
Speaker 1: we we recorded it for Radio One as well. Um
Speaker 1: so it's just I just obviously one of those things
Speaker 1: that will never happen again. And we tried to replicate
Speaker 1: it in UK. We did a UK Love Parade and
Speaker 1: there was one in Leads in a place called round
Speaker 1: Hay Park and that we got two fifty people and
Speaker 1: it was me and Sasha and Darren Emerson from Underworld
Speaker 1: on stage at the end. That was that was truly special,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately a lot of people's gardens got trampled and
Speaker 1: like people were and then We've Got We've Got moved
Speaker 1: to Newcastle the next year and it was a very
Speaker 1: toned down version and it never quite worked. Um Space
Speaker 1: a beefing, you know, all those beef clubs, having got
Speaker 1: to play them, all of them at some point, will
Speaker 1: always be special. South America is really good. Argentina in
Speaker 1: particular in my wife's Brazilian but Argentina is probably the
Speaker 1: most the true natural home to kind of electronic music.
Speaker 1: You know, it's I've played some pretty special shows in
Speaker 1: Chilean and Brazil, but Argentina is something about that the
Speaker 1: kind of mentality down there and then America. You know,
Speaker 1: the US has been pretty amazing as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: Miami might as well be another country as that's it's
Speaker 1: that's you know, so mixed down there, especially during conference time,
Speaker 1: you know, in that Miami Music Week. That's that. You've
Speaker 1: got some great memories there. And Space in Miami is
Speaker 1: probably the closest. Who was the first club to ever
Speaker 1: be remotely like a beether And to this day, funny enough,
Speaker 1: it's more like a beether and the bether is now
Speaker 1: because Space Miami does go pretty much twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: So okay, most exotic place you've ever played, um Borakai
Speaker 1: maybe in the Philippines. Um you got to look it
Speaker 1: up and yeah, I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: That's like a very long plane ride but followed by
Speaker 1: two small planes in a boat, so you get to
Speaker 1: like desert island. And I did this party in the
Speaker 1: days when cigarette companies were still allowed in some corner
Speaker 1: of the world to sponsor parties. And it was me
Speaker 1: and Almond van Helden Todd Terry funny enough, and it
Speaker 1: was on a beach, sand in your shoes, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was that was pretty exotic. So what's the
Speaker 1: biggest p day you've had for a d G gig
Speaker 1: Um New Year's Eve, Um probably seven figures. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think back then it was it was six figures,
Speaker 1: but it was, which is still pretty big. But um, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm not Yeah. I mean does the music excite
Speaker 1: you as much today as it did back in your
Speaker 1: formative years in hey day? Hard to yes, yes and no. Um,
Speaker 1: I worry something, you know. I was talking to the
Speaker 1: guys that Splice about this this morning about how, you know,
Speaker 1: the ultimate you know, electronic music probably more than any
Speaker 1: other form of music. It's been so democratized, you know,
Speaker 1: every you know, the barriers to entry and completely removed
Speaker 1: so everyone can make music. It's amazing. Everyone can publish
Speaker 1: their music on SoundCloud and obviously we talked about all
Speaker 1: the streaming services um and the keys have been handed
Speaker 1: over of the asylum as they used to say. But
Speaker 1: the downside of it is it almost seems harder and
Speaker 1: you know, to get to the Triple A list at
Speaker 1: the very top. That that worries me a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very easy to make a very good
Speaker 1: record now you know, it's it's it's almost impossible to
Speaker 1: make a genius record, you know that dance music with
Speaker 1: the sample packs and like if you know you can
Speaker 1: make you can make that something sound pretty convincing forgetting
Speaker 1: the people who get in at the bottom, you know,
Speaker 1: the semi pros. Uh, if you are at the top tier,
Speaker 1: are there fewer genius records than before? I think so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean there's no disrespect to some
Speaker 1: you know I did. Yeah, we haven't had you know
Speaker 1: that that era of the Prodigy and Underworld and you
Speaker 1: know Orbital and um, you know we staft punk even
Speaker 1: now is a long time ago. Um, so I think
Speaker 1: the yeah that you know, I'm I'm kind of waiting,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all you know, the fishing nets are
Speaker 1: out in all stripes of music. I would use a
Speaker 1: similar description. And uh, and what I would label popular
Speaker 1: music the Spotify top fifty especially certainly a narrow genre.
Speaker 1: So who do you believe are the most artistically successful
Speaker 1: DJs working today? It's a big question board. Um whoa
Speaker 1: that that there's a there was a fork in the
Speaker 1: road somewhere during the E d M era where the
Speaker 1: the what the ranking system from success it was was
Speaker 1: two different paths. So you've got the music makers, you know,
Speaker 1: the pop producer writers, so and whether you like their
Speaker 1: music or not, you have to give them credit. And
Speaker 1: you know, from David is a good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: even you know, Marshmallow as well to Sathing did come
Speaker 1: from our world and gone and gone into the stratosphere
Speaker 1: of another world. And I think, you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly a Marshmallow fan at the start of what is music,
Speaker 1: but I'm a big fan of what he's achieved in
Speaker 1: terms of the impact and influence and consistency that he's
Speaker 1: been able to have at the very kind of top
Speaker 1: tier of the pop table. So I think that's worth
Speaker 1: the props. Um. On the underground electronic side, there's there's
Speaker 1: some amazing you know, the highest paid, I should say,
Speaker 1: and that's because they sell the most tickets. Um are
Speaker 1: people like Solomon and Black Coffee and Tail of Us
Speaker 1: and Marco Corolla, UM and the and the Rise of
Speaker 1: the Girls. You know, it's it's amazing to see you know,
Speaker 1: Peggy Goo, Charlotte de Witter, Emily Lens, Nina Kravitz, Um.
Speaker 1: We've probably seen the biggest game change in the underground
Speaker 1: world in the last five years, you know, truly the
Speaker 1: the the key, you know, the batons being moved on
Speaker 1: to a new generation and a new and a new
Speaker 1: and a new look, you know. And the fact that
Speaker 1: female DJs and and female electronic musicians are having such
Speaker 1: a massive impact is is great. Now do you equate
Speaker 1: those people who are getting the big paychecks, are those
Speaker 1: also the people pushing the envelope artistically? Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean with the underground, you don't get there by.
Speaker 1: You get there because you earn the right to be there.
Speaker 1: It's like so it's like being in the trenches. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like being a stage actor. Um, you have to
Speaker 1: go and press the flesh, tread the boards, do the work,
Speaker 1: and you get to the top of the tree because
Speaker 1: people think you're really really good and you and you
Speaker 1: continue to innovate with your sets. They've all got their
Speaker 1: own labels, they're all championing another generation of musicians. They've
Speaker 1: all got their own sound. Um. So I think that's
Speaker 1: a very healthy ecosystem, except for the actual person doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard. It's it's frontline, you know, in
Speaker 1: the trenches work and and the underground is not, Um,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not turning up and playing an hour
Speaker 1: at E d C. It's often playing you know for
Speaker 1: ten hours, um, seven hours, six hours, you know, the
Speaker 1: big long sets and after parties, and you know, the
Speaker 1: legends around those guys is almost dude down to their endurance.
Speaker 1: You know. I was interloom Um a couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: because that's become early January has become a time when
Speaker 1: all of the underground guys flocked there and there's all
Speaker 1: these big parties um. And as I was leaving, Solomon
Speaker 1: played his party the night before we left. And then
Speaker 1: when I got back here, I heard the guy at
Speaker 1: my hotel said, old Solomon's doing his after party today.
Speaker 1: And when I got back, and then two days later
Speaker 1: someone said it just finished. So it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's heavy, you know, and it's some but I guess
Speaker 1: it's about as rock and roll, you know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the punk end of if you want to
Speaker 1: use that analogy, it's like the punk end of of
Speaker 1: our world. Um. And you know, I hope rather than
Speaker 1: just headonism, good stuff comes out of it, you know. So, okay,
Speaker 1: how about this hasn't been something reading about recently, the
Speaker 1: concept that people are just standing on stage pushing buttons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean some some of them are and they push
Speaker 1: a lot of buttons in the right order and it's great.
Speaker 1: So I think, um, you know that Analogy was all
Speaker 1: about pre pre organized sets. But you know I was
Speaker 1: being you know, having obviously being behind the scenes, I
Speaker 1: can clearly see you know, this was about music makers
Speaker 1: playing their own music and getting booked at bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger events and having more and more responsibility
Speaker 1: to kind of blow everybody's mind. And in the case
Speaker 1: of Swedish House Matthew who definitely wrote the book on
Speaker 1: it first, um, it starts to get into choreograph shows,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're spending you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars on a visual experience. They took it to
Speaker 1: another level, you know, they bought that kind of you
Speaker 1: two level of production into the electronic world. And I
Speaker 1: always say hats off to him because they were the first.
Speaker 1: I mean, Tiesto was going around, you know, Paul Oakenfoll
Speaker 1: was doing it first, you know, to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Tiesto took it to a whole another level. Arm and
Speaker 1: Vambera and all these guys. But you know, and the
Speaker 1: show has got bigger and bigger and bigger, and and
Speaker 1: they were still essentially djaying and there still was, um
Speaker 1: a sense of Tiesto didn't know what he was going
Speaker 1: to play in what order. You know. He had a box,
Speaker 1: you know, and he had a selection and he had
Speaker 1: his favorites, and he was a smart DJ, so he
Speaker 1: knew how to make the crowd go crazy and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But but there still was an element of
Speaker 1: free willing what he could do, and he could make
Speaker 1: a last minute decision and change something. And then the
Speaker 1: Swedish House Mafia era where they start doing Milton Keene's Bowl,
Speaker 1: which was unheard of in the UK for a bunch
Speaker 1: of DJs playing to you know, eighty thousand people or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, then you've got to have a U two
Speaker 1: type rolling Stones stage and you've got to put films
Speaker 1: on and they've got to tie in with the with
Speaker 1: the music you're playing and the lights and the explosions.
Speaker 1: We've got a golf at the right time. So you
Speaker 1: get into that thing that you can't change the order.
Speaker 1: You know, you can change the order maybe before the
Speaker 1: show starts, you know, a couple of days to tell
Speaker 1: the visuals guy but you can't just change the order.
Speaker 1: And that's where that comes from, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think Dead Mouse, to a certain extent, you know, fueled
Speaker 1: that as well, because he clearly was never really playing records.
Speaker 1: But you know, the guy was playing back his own
Speaker 1: music and reinterpreting it in different ways. So okay, when
Speaker 1: you played, you playing it advance? How do you do it?
Speaker 1: You spin records. I've come through the full cycle of
Speaker 1: like vinyl into CDs, into playing off the laptop with
Speaker 1: all of the software when it all started, like Ableton
Speaker 1: and Tractor and Serato and stuff like that, and and
Speaker 1: I've gone full circle back to um. Yeah, I carry
Speaker 1: around a couple of big drives like that, and I
Speaker 1: plug him into CD players and I don't have pre
Speaker 1: planned sets. No, I'll do some sets that will be
Speaker 1: quite similar, you know, two or three days in a row,
Speaker 1: but I'll change things around. So I'm still doing it
Speaker 1: old school. It's with the orchestra that I've got into
Speaker 1: that hole. And we you know, the orchestra week we
Speaker 1: can we can change a few things. We changed songs
Speaker 1: night by night, but we have um that that's more
Speaker 1: like it's not pressing buttons, but its well as they
Speaker 1: has to be, you know, all the York rib so
Speaker 1: so I've you know, so I'm still djening old school
Speaker 1: in that sense. Yeah, all gone thumbs up, thumbs down,
Speaker 1: what the film thumbs up? Okay, But the concept using it,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, we talked about Howard Stern and
Speaker 1: they have hit him with a high and I know
Speaker 1: John Hind heats it. So I always loved it. It
Speaker 1: was it was a it was meant to be. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a fanzine in the UK called Boys Zone
Speaker 1: who were made some mine actually, but they were very stroppy,
Speaker 1: kind of like angry men, and they started this fanzine
Speaker 1: and the whole point of the fanzine was basically like
Speaker 1: fuck it, you know, it was to get in there
Speaker 1: and like stir of shipped up and so they'd be
Speaker 1: rude about everybody and that. And I was djaying with
Speaker 1: these guys and they were that's the way they were
Speaker 1: rude about me. And it was meant to be a
Speaker 1: way of winding me up at the start because I
Speaker 1: was you know, there was a thing in the UK
Speaker 1: with if you were around before the year zero, which
Speaker 1: was basically when house music started, then you were a
Speaker 1: Dinosaur and the fact that I was in the soul
Speaker 1: boy era before and a bit of the hip hop era.
Speaker 1: They they were like, what are you doing? Is it's
Speaker 1: all gone pizza on? So it was like it was
Speaker 1: this and then it caught on. It became later on
Speaker 1: like cockney rhyming slang and in the Penguin Dictionary and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and then you know, it's notoriety. It
Speaker 1: was like, you know, it was. It was fantastic. And
Speaker 1: then to end up having a movie made of that
Speaker 1: name was that just took it to another level. So
Speaker 1: now we are now I have my own parties. You know,
Speaker 1: we would call it you know, we do it in
Speaker 1: Miami and we do it around the world. It's all
Speaker 1: on Pete songs. It was good. Okay, So what is
Speaker 1: the future hall for you? What is the dream that's
Speaker 1: like you've obviously achieved so much and unexpected, like you
Speaker 1: know with the BBC at age nineteen, What what would
Speaker 1: you like to achieve or do in the future, whether
Speaker 1: it be music oriented or not. Well, for me, it's
Speaker 1: always come to music discovery and curation. So it's it's
Speaker 1: finding a way, I guess of moving into this next
Speaker 1: decade gracefully and still being out the work. I'm blessed
Speaker 1: with that and be healthy, um and just I guess
Speaker 1: try and use my whole life's worth of experience in
Speaker 1: A in a positive way. UM and hopefully still try
Speaker 1: and not. I'm back into like the A and R
Speaker 1: gig again. I just joined three zero with Mark Llespie.
Speaker 1: It's Calvin Harris's manager, um, and we've rebooted his label
Speaker 1: through Sony. So I was, I was. I did go
Speaker 1: back into the Warner system for a few years. UM,
Speaker 1: but my curiosity is back again about A and R,
Speaker 1: about being act more hands on. I think funny recording
Speaker 1: the albums with the orchestra and being back in the
Speaker 1: studio hands on. I mean, I had this great education
Speaker 1: and met all these amazing people. You know, I was
Speaker 1: at the end of the you know, Tommy Mottola, water
Speaker 1: yet Ni Cough, you know Berry Gordy, you know with
Speaker 1: I've met so many people in my time. You know,
Speaker 1: I worked with Chris Morris as Chris Thomas in the
Speaker 1: studio making records, you know, Um, and I kind of
Speaker 1: missed it. So I think, you know, if I if
Speaker 1: I can help nurture the next generation and champion their
Speaker 1: cause then that I would be happy. But there's no
Speaker 1: intermounting flame or destination something that you would like to
Speaker 1: achieve that you know, stratospheric. I still think this is
Speaker 1: have end endless conversations with people like saying low about
Speaker 1: this of you know, where it's all going. I think
Speaker 1: I worry about music discovery and curation, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's completely broke it. Yeah, I mean there could be
Speaker 1: great stuff that doesn't rise to the time I think.
Speaker 1: I think on a very basic level, on a really
Speaker 1: really basic level. You know, the DJs I talk about,
Speaker 1: especially the underground ones, are still in a sense, um,
Speaker 1: the greatest curators in the electronic world anyway. Um. And
Speaker 1: I was just thinking on the way up here actually
Speaker 1: that um quite. I don't know. Maybe maybe a few,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe if you have the DJ to spend
Speaker 1: less time taking photos of themselves on beaches and actually
Speaker 1: tell us what music they're playing, that's an interesting way
Speaker 1: to put it. I don't know. I just think the
Speaker 1: future curation is it's still up. It's it's still up.
Speaker 1: For the obvious thing that people talk about playlists, I
Speaker 1: never believe I'm trying playlists and streaming services but as
Speaker 1: I say, yes, if you want to listen to the
Speaker 1: pop hip hop, you know, pop songs already on a
Speaker 1: grandde you can find that very easily. Other genres of music.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you go through the genre
Speaker 1: playlists on Spotify, which is the big hood, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't listen to that music, never mind that much
Speaker 1: bad music. But somethin's personality lists. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as that sounds old school coming from someone
Speaker 1: like me, I just think, you know, it's it's ultimately
Speaker 1: will come down to personalities. You know, Virgil Aublaw does
Speaker 1: a pretty good job turning people onto fashion, and there's
Speaker 1: been certain people, you know, certain musician, you know, certain
Speaker 1: hip hop people back in the day that have turned
Speaker 1: people onto I believe, I think, I think, but I
Speaker 1: believe the culture is totally changed. The culture is purely
Speaker 1: about money, and there's really no money in curation, at
Speaker 1: least as we can see the short way done. There
Speaker 1: never was that at the beginning for the you know,
Speaker 1: not for me, not for John Peele, not but John
Speaker 1: Peel he got they say, and yet she got the
Speaker 1: narcis whatever. He got the great adulation, so without the money.
Speaker 1: But in today's society, where it's bottom line money, everybody
Speaker 1: is driving in another direction, even though it's the artist
Speaker 1: who's honest who ultimately has the most impact. So it
Speaker 1: either takes some one where money is not the number
Speaker 1: one thing, where just as a dream to to fix this.
Speaker 1: And I think we're, you know, across the world, certainly
Speaker 1: in America, we're moving towards that era, income, inequality, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean you you spent a lot
Speaker 1: of your blokes that I've read, you know, and you
Speaker 1: know loyally, I mean all the star I mean all
Speaker 1: the style of Apple music was based on the same frustration,
Speaker 1: right from Jimmy and um from Trent to try to
Speaker 1: actually get skeet curation salted. That was kind of right,
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, I don't want to make
Speaker 1: it about Jimmy specifically. I just didn't think they had
Speaker 1: it right. I didn't think, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: playlist company for you least to hype me all the time.
Speaker 1: We would know as active listeners, we like to pick
Speaker 1: the tracks we're listening to, but we certainly know the past,
Speaker 1: We know that people we know, with the great unknown,
Speaker 1: we have no way to go through and certainly listening
Speaker 1: to radio. None of the radio DJ it's like Apple
Speaker 1: Beach Radio. They announced that I haven't heard a person
Speaker 1: talking about Beach radio Beach one radio and years. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's just not how people listen. But I like, I
Speaker 1: have a guy in Nashville happens to work for w
Speaker 1: m A, and he sends me what to listen to,
Speaker 1: and I always listens to everything and he's always right
Speaker 1: like like it, But I like someone who could do it.
Speaker 1: In general, I think, you know, one of the problems
Speaker 1: is we give everybody a break where in reality is
Speaker 1: we discussed most of the stuff is ship. Just tell
Speaker 1: me what's great and I and I have an unlimited
Speaker 1: don't give me a hundred tracks to listen to, give
Speaker 1: me three. Okay, in any event, that's a different discussion. Beat.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the illumination. Thank you great, great to have you.
Speaker 1: Until next time, It's Bob left Sense