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Tag Archives: Soul

It Was Back In ’82

by on 10. May, 2012 in CD’s / Digital, DJ / Club Culture, Hear, Manchester, Mixes, Radio, Records, Tape, The Eighties

One of the defining moments of my DJ career took place exactly 30 years ago, on Monday May 10th 1982, when my first radio mix was broadcast on Mike Shaft’s show, ‘T.C.O.B’ (Taking Care Of Business), on Manchester’s hugely influential Piccadilly Radio, which played a major part in bringing black / dance music to wider attention during the 70’s and ‘80’s - from Soul, Funk and Disco, through Jazz-Funk and Electro, and on into Hip Hop, House and Techno.

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One Deck Session Vinyl Selection

by on 12. Apr, 2012 in Black Culture, CD’s / Digital, DJ / Club Culture, DJ Appearances, Hear, Manchester, Mixes, Random Influences, Records, The Eighties, The Seventies

When the crew behind Manchester’s Electric Chair brought their monthly club night to an end at the beginning of 2008, they’d decided their next move would be from club to pub, opening a bar a few miles outside of the city centre in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, which they called Electrik... I was invited to play there on Sunday April 1st, a suitable date for such an endeavour I thought – if anyone turned up expecting a normal type DJ slot from me at least I had a valid April Fools get out clause. Ahead of the night Electrik announced ‘Greg Wilson...no reel to reel...1 record deck...no mixing...mind the gap’.

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Living To Music – Portishead ‘Dummy’

by on 27. Mar, 2012 in CD’s / Digital, Hear, Living To Music, Records, The Nineties

This Sunday (April 1st) at 9pm, you’re invited to share a listening session with some likeminded souls, wherever you might be. This can be experienced either alone or communally, and you don’t need to leave the comfort of your own home to participate. Portishead are part of a Bristolian bass lineage that also includes Massive Attack, Tricky, The Wild Bunch and Smith & Mighty, who, between them, stirred up groove cauldrons of Hip Hop, Funk, Electro, Soul, Jazz, Dub and Lovers Rock, with a pinch of Punk thrown in for good measure, distilling a unique British flavour that could only have come from this city.

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Slowing Down Time

by on 13. Mar, 2012 in Books, DJ Appearances, Mixes, Radio, Read

I started writing this before I headed off on my travels to Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and back to Australia again (concluded on my return home, having made notes along the way). I’ve been very preoccupied with time, or, to be more precise, the lack of it – this is where my head was at:

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Don Cornelius

by on 01. Feb, 2012 in Black Culture, Hear, Records, RIP, The Eighties, The Seventies, TV, Video

As host of US TV’s quintessential black / dance music show, Soul Train, Don Cornelius, who died today, aged 75, was an iconic black music figure. Everyone who was anyone in the Soul and Funk world appeared on the programme during its 70’s heyday. Film director Spike Lee would aptly describe it as an “urban music time capsule."

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Jimmy Castor

by on 17. Jan, 2012 in Black Culture, DJ / Club Culture, Hear, Magazines, Records, RIP, The Eighties, The Seventies

Just heard the news that New York born 70’s Funk master Jimmy Castor died yesterday. Recording as The Jimmy Castor Bunch, I first came across them back in 1975 when I picked up a copy of their single ‘The Bertha Butt Boogie’, regarded by many at the time as the quintessential ‘bump’ record. It was a big club tune in the UK at the time (as was the follow-up ‘E Man Boogie’), although, as with most Funk tracks, it received no radio support, apart from the more underground specialist Soul shows peppered up and down the country, and completely missed the chart as a result:

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Time Capsule

by on 10. Nov, 2011 in Black Culture, CD’s / Digital, DJ / Club Culture, Magazines, Records, The Seventies

In December 2005 I wanted to do something to mark the 30th anniversary of when I made my club debut, on December 6th 1975 at the Chelsea Reach in New Brighton, and I came up with the idea of compiling a selection of 25 singles that I was carrying in my record crates at the time (we used to use old wooden drinks crates, which were the perfect size for 7” singles – the 12” not making its appearance until the following year).

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Original Soulboy – Dave Godin

by on 23. Mar, 2011 in Black Culture, Hear, Read, Records, The Fifties, The Sixties

Dug out my copies of ‘Deep Soul Treasures’, the four volume series compiled by Dave Godin, for a recent road trip. Got me thinking about Godin’s role at the very roots of black music appreciation here in the UK.

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Five Tunes

by on 24. Jun, 2010 in Articles, Black Culture, Read, Records

I was asked earlier this year by the Australian based blog Spank! to write about five tracks that had inspired me and, with the proviso that "it could have been many others, but I decided to go with these five”, I spread my selections over a sequence of black music styles spanning a two decade period, from Soul through to House:

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