Electro1 Blog

I am in the process of moving these posts and consolidating with my newer blog www.electro1.co.uk

Renegades Of Funk Canvas

I've just recently produced this canvas for an Electro Empire member. The sleeve was scanned, retouched and printed onto canvas. It was then stretched on to a 1.75" hard woood frame.

Greg Wilson Article in Sleaze Nation 1989

sleeze cover March 1998
Originally uploaded by sixeight_76.

I've started to put together the article published in Sleaze Nation in March 1989

In this time of communication saturation, the world is truly closing in - Yet there are some who retain their exclusive anonymity - whilst remaining key players in the sociomuso infrastructure and knowing every bugger on the planet.

Cue Greg Wilson, master of the understatement. An unassuming chap with a blend-in barnet and definitely unlabelled record bag. Friend of the stars. Electro pioneer. And the first DJ to mix live on TV. Not that he'd tell you that.

"Yeah Liam Gallagher came to the Monastery night we did at Microdots on Mars," he shrugs, "and got accosted by a load of scouse girls who kept asking him where Patsy was. But it was just a night out for him. He's just a music lover like anyone else."

It would be easy to cynically condemn this nonchalance as the psuedocoolness of the secretly impressed, but Wilson has had years of this bullshit, with a line of A-list achievements spanning two decades - yet retains a modesty almost bordering on idiocy. While lesser mortals brag and shout he quietly goes about his business. Yes, he was a major protagonist in the aforementioned Monastery; yes he was mixing when today's kingpin DJ's were happily mushing their excrement; and yes, he is the original Hacienda Alternative Dance night resident that even YTS archivists can't trace. He also looks a lot younger than his age. Has he sold his soul to the devil? The story begins when I was three years old. I went on holiday to France and fell off a wall, leaving a permanent reminder on my right knee. At the same time greg Wilson was a fifteen year old schoolboy seeking solace, like so many others, in the contents of his record collection, playing all night in Brighton clubs and getting home just in time to put his school uniform on. The year was 1975 - the music soul, funk and chart stuff. "Though definitely no Abba or anything," grimace Wilson. "Whenever people think about the seventies they always hook onto the arse end of the decade and go on about the BeeGees and platform shoes, but totally overlook the fact that the seventies were one of the greatest times ever for black music. And that really pisses me off."

Ten years on and I was blagging into clubs for the first time, wearing electric blue eye liner and ballet shoes, while Wilson, having established himself as 'The Archdeacon of Superior Electro', had already hung up his record bag.

"I packed it in because I'd reached the point where I had done everything I wanted to do," he says matter-of-factly. Abd he had - beginning with leaving the "fifteen quid a night and shitty disco decks" of Britain for the new technology of the continent before he was out of his teens - "But then I came home to Wigan Pier and couldn't believe it," he enthuses. "Neon, lasers, an amazing sound system - and with three sets of Technics to boot. I really wanted to play there."



As you will see is often the case, Wilson got what he wanted. By 1982 he was established at Wigan Pier, thrilling all and sundry with his brew of electronica and soul. He was given a dying Wednesday at Legend, "Manchester's most influential black music venue" and blew enough life into it to spread queues round the block and gain punters countrywide. Forget the Hacienda, where Wilson began the first full-on dance night - Legend was the start of it all. His secret? The dastardly mixing techniques he'd picked up in Europe plus the weird and wonderful new form of music seeping slowly across from New York...

"Mixing had been tried in the UK in the late seventies, but we didn't have vari-speed turntables until much later, it was all very random," he explains. "So when I got my hands on a pair of SL1200's in Germany it was like a dream come true - and naturally, I started mixing. Then I heard this music, and I can't explain how different it was. By some strange twist of fate, kids in the Bronx had started listening to Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa started playing it out at house parties and suddenly everyone wanted to try it for themselves."

The music, of course was electro. "For the first time Black kids in New York had access to technology and it became the catalyst for everything," Greg explains, "from Techno to Breakdance - even hip hop, although that predates it. at the same time mixing was just coming in and it was the ideal music for that because it went off drum machines, not real time drums. But a lot of the purist DJ's objected to that, claiming that it had no soul and was mindless machine music that would destroy the black music scene rather than revive it - and I was seen as a heretic for playing it."

So much so that the local record shop expressed their derision by putting up an electro shit list in their window. Blues and Soul Magazine, who later wrote of Wilson being a major player in musical culture were so disgusted that they couldn't bring themselves to metally utter the classification, preferring instead to use EL*C*RO as and when required, All a bit Bible-Belt, Burn-your-Death-Metal - and not very visionary either. By 1983 Malcolm MacLaren's Buffalo Gals had brought the movement to mass attention, and electro was finally unavoidable. The heretic turnred golden boy.

"When I first got hold of the white label of Buffalo Gals it was still considered a risk to play a tune by someone who a few years previously had actively been involved in the punk scene. A few weeks later I had a promo of the video on me when i played at a club called the Star Bar in Huddersfield - near where one of the Yorkshir Rippers murders took place - and it just so happened that they had a video screen, so I put it on. The audience were stunned. People were just standing there cramming in to see this shot of a guy spinning on his head. In the end I played it over and over again until the club closed as they all sat on the floor watching. It gave a new meaning to the term 'culture shock'

More later...

Session 2 Electro Funk & Old School Hip Hop Podcast

Electro Funk & Hip Hop Podcast Session 2

1. Infinity & Grandmixer DST
Grandmixer CIU
2. Shango
Shango Message (Edit / Instrumental)
3. Afrika Bambaataa & Family
Bambaata's Theme
4. Joyce Simms
All and All (Take Twelve)
5. The 2 Live Crew
2 Live
6. Rockers Revenge featuring Donnie Calvin
Walking On Sunshine
7. Mantronix
Bassline (Stretched)
8. Mantronix
Ladies (Revived)
9. Original Concept
Knowledge Me
10. Warp 9
Light Years (Dub)
11. Colonel Abrahams
Trapped (Dub/Accapella)
12. Change
Oh What a Feeling (Paul Hardcastle Remix)
13. Paul Hardcastle
Rainforest (Remix)

AD2006

Ageing Gloucester BBoys Skelly, Speedy & SAS are set to host the sequel to AD2005. Last year saw a 10 hour old school fest with the very first UK appearance of Cozmo D of Newcleus. The venue and line-up is yet to be confirmed but the date has been set for the 14th October 2006. Watch this space. More info at www.electroutopia.co.uk

Electro 1 camo Canvas

Electro 1 camo Canvas
Originally uploaded by sixeight_76.

I have some Electro 1 artwork camo business going on ebay. Click here

Session 1 Electro Funk & Old School Hip Hop podcast

The first in a series. Session 1 includes:- TLA Rock & Jazzy Jay, Mantronix, Spoonie Gee, Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force, Project Future, Hashim, Paul Hardcastle, Fonda Rae, The Bang gang + more

session1_www.electro1.co.uk.mp3