As anyone who might have been around for a while now will understand, I have been (and will continue) to use Serato as my preferred method of DJ’ing. I get asked all sorts of stupid questions about it when I use it, mostly by vinyl purists (because of course, I never buy vinyl)…and I have to admit sometimes it grates a little. I dont see how it makes me a worse or better DJ whatever method I use. DJ’ing is about the selection of tracks – not the format, and I am happy to use vinyl, CD or Digital. But thats only my opinion. Some people care passionately that you can only really play properly from original vinyl – and who am I to say they are wrong.

You see, using Serato has its problems – in fact – in the three years of using it, I have encountered many in situations were I really could of done without it, and its caused me to stress out and not enjoy myself. Yet, still, I persevere - as when it gets it right, it offers me a freedom and readiness to handle a situation that surpasses everything else.

What I thought I would share here, and this is by no means a definitive list – is what to do to solve problems that might arise. This is a collection of things that have happened to me in situations many times, and what to have in your DJ bag to counteract should you need to. I guess at the end of the day im trying to share experience.

Just as a precursor, before I give any solutions to things…I would say that you always need a backup music source. Sometimes, sadly, problems are unfixable. You just cant get the unit / laptop working, or something is stopping you from using Serato (it could be something as simple as there is no time to setup before you are supposed to be on). Always, ALWAYS take a backup source. I didn’t once, and guess what. Learning the hard way is not fun.

NB: this article refers to Serato SL3 – not the SL1, which to be honest I had so many problems with I couldn’t have written an article like this in a month.

Problem 1 – I dont have the right stuff…

Yes this is probably the worst one. Using any digital system requires leads – lots of leads, cables, sometimes power supplies…control Vinyl or CD…everything. And the problem with this is that its very easy to forget something that you absolutely need to have, to enable you to use the system. I have turned up without the correct cable, or forgot my control CD’s before and its a nightmare – in some cases it means there is nothing you can do, you just can’t play (with Serato at least). There are things you can do to be prepared better though.

The first thing is make sure you have 2 of each lead. None of the leads we use are expensive – or at the very least, backup options needn’t be even if your preferred leads are. Taking 4 phono leads instead of 2 doesn’t take much effort, taking 2 USB leads instead of 2 doesn’t take much effort. Taking 2 or even 3 different sets of control CD or Vinyl doesn’t take much – you can burn your own control CD’s (explained below) and the vinyl you can get for £10 each if you look around the net (and there is a secondary reason for taking more than just 2 control records of which I will mention later). If you always have two of everything the odds that something wont work or has been left at home are going to br shortened.

The other thing here is to make sure you empty and re-pack your bag the night before. Dont expect something to be in the bag just because it was the last time that you played. Things get left behind, lost, or broken. If you empty your bag the night before you should be playing and re-pack it, you can make sure that you have everything, and give yourself time to get anything that is missing should you need to.

Problem 2 – The computer crash…

This has not happened to me before until very recently. I thought, as I use a Macbook, I would be immune to such nasty things happening. But sadly, I found out the hard way that I am not. Wether it be your macbook shutting down completely (or your PC), or Serato freezing…the music stopping mid set is pretty soul destroying (in more ways than one). There is no magic answer for this – there is nothing you can do to make your computer fail safe no matter how hard you try. What you can do though is have some simple things in place just in case it does happen.

First things first, your SL3 unit comes with a power adaptor as standard. The SL1 you had to buy the power adaptor seperately so not many people did – but it can really help – hence they included it with the newer model. The reason its so important is that many people power the Serato unit from USB power only, and the USB power only works when the laptop is turned on. If the laptop crashes and shuts down – so does the Serato unit. if your motherboard fries on the laptop from a surge or something – again – the unit is powerless. If the unit is powerless,  you cant even use it in “through”mode (as in, you cant run normal CD’s or vinyl because it wont pass through).

If you have the unit plugged in, as soon as the computer crashes or shuts down, it will still have power and will automatically jump to through mode. This means that you can still get some kind of sound out of the mixer, without having to have a laptop powered on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What it doesn’t do however, is keep the music playing – if the laptop or Serato crash then this is for you to deal with. The best way to do it is to have a backup CD or record ready and waiting. If you use CD’s in fact, there is a super fast solution. You can burn your own control CD’s – and they are only one track long. So you burn standard get out of jail music into tracks 2, 3, 4 etc. and then if Serato stops, your unit goes into through mode, and you just hit the next button on the CDJ and play. It will then play that track as normal music. Here’s a quick step by step guide on how to do it…

1. Download the Serato control CD as a WAV file that you can burn yourself
2. Use your normal CD burner to burn this file to track 1, as a normal audio CD
3. Add some tracks of the kind of stuff you play as track 2, 3, 4, 5…etc. until the CD is full.
4. Test the newly burned control CD to ensure it controls your serato correctly

This CD will now control your Serato on Track 1 just as your control CD’s do…but the rest of the tracks are normal music. Meaning if theres a crash, you dont even have to change CD’s. (You can find out more about this at serato).

If you dont have CD’s, and are using control vinyl, make sure you have some spare records handy that you can just flip on immediately. There will be a pause why you switch over, but it will be a small pause and shouldn’t cause too many problems. Of course, as I mentioned before –  it goes without saying (and I mentioned it earlier) that you should always take some form of backup in case of crash – be it a small bag of records or a wallet full of CD’s.

Problem 3 – The Dirty Control Records…

When you let the control records get very dirty, they no longer control Serato correctly. You see, the control record sends a signal to the Serato box, and if this signal is in any way corrupt (be it from very poor needles, or very scratched / dirty records) then your in trouble. I found this out much to my dismay in Poland, and it was pretty embarrassing. Playing two gigs one after the other on different nights whilst away, the Serato control records were pretty heavily soiled after the first night, as we were playing back to back with other people – they got left on the side (or the floor) by all of us as the next person went on. This meant that shit collected on them each time…but that first night it didnt cause too much of a problem.

The next night, when I came to play, was a different story. The records were now caked in rubbish that had dried into the grooves over night in my record case. The needles in the next club were really well tracked and very sensitive, and picked up all the garbage straight away. I spent an hour trying to use neat vodka to clean the records at the bar, to ensure that they played smoothly. Sadly, it didnt really work.

Solution? Simple really. There are three things I now do when I use control vinyl. Firstly, make sure that you look after the vinyl as it comes off and back onto the record. This might sound pretty obvious to some, but I am mostly an idiot. Secondly – always take record cleaner out with you. I have two different kinds of cleaner in my bag now, a liquid solution and also one of these roller bad boys. The liquid solution is great but some airports will take it off you and bin it (even though I have a small bottle) thanks to the current liquid restrictions (certainly in the UK – dont know about anywhere else). This means that if it happens again, I dont have to waste perfectly good Vodka – I have everything I need to give the records a very good clean.

The third thing, and probably most important, is take a spare pair of control records with you. What do they cost – £22? I’ve spent more than that in Macdonalds. Its nothing, and for peace of mind…lets say one record gets an almighty scratch, or even worse – gets snapped – you have a spare pair in your bag to carry on.

Problem 4 – The sound is fucked…

When you have little time to get setup its easy to make mistakes. If everything is plugged in but the sound is coming through distorted, there are a number of things that you need to check for. As with any digital solution, Serato requires that you have all the leads plugged into the exact place, calibration is correct, and needles and equipment are at a decent level. Below is a list of things to run through when the sound is garbage…

1. Check that you have all the right leads plugged in to the Serato unit and mixer. The sound will come out very distorted if you have any of them the wrong way round, or sometimes the control record will play the track backwards (this is the classic sign of leads in the wrong place). If you are having trouble go through each lead to see which one it might be, one deck at a time.
2. Make sure your Serato is calibrated correctly. Serato recommend that you re-calibrate the system every time you get to a new club. This means calibrating for new needles, background sound, etc. I used to forget to do this alot but it only takes two minutes so if you have the time before you are on, I would recommend it also. It can make that 10% difference between Serato sounding good and being responsive. You can see a video of how to calibrate serato below.
   

   Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Background noise can come from your laptop. I have only had this a couple of times, but what I do now before I am about to go on is reboot the laptop just before I plug everything in, this means that any programs that might be eating up CPU and having the fan running at full blast are shut down (they could be stuck running in the background).
4. As well as calibrating the needles (step 2), you should also make sure they are clean and no sheep has built up on them from the previous DJ, or throughout use of your own records. if the needles that you are using in the club are sensitive and better tracked compared to the ones you use at home, then the needle might dig further into the groove and let crap build up over time. This will massively distort the signal from the control record and will cause problems.
5. If you are using control CD’s – check that they are not scratched or damaged. A good scratch on the cd can cause the signal to pause or skip, and this will make the sound jump or distort. I take 3 pairs of control CD’s out with me as you do not need to buy them, you can just make your own…so there is no excuse for not having good cd’s.
6. Finally – always make sure that your Serato is set to the right mode. If your using CD or Turntable there are two different modes. You can even set the decks independently in SL3 to use Line and Phono input at the same time (eg. left deck CD, right deck turntable). I use turntable at home but very often when i get into a club I use CD, so the first thing I do is make sure my Serato is set to the correct feed. if you don’t, rest assured your Serato will distort.

Problem 5 – I only have one working turntable…

Another one that happened to me in Poland – and sadly at he time I didn’t know about this solution. Wether it is one of your serato channels has broken on the unit, or you only have one deck working because of needle or deck problems – Serato is capable of handling it. My friend with me at the time tried to show me how to do it, but I was stressing too much to listen. I got back and looked into it, and found that its very easy. You can follow this tutorial on the official Serato site, or you can watch the easy to follow tutorial on Youtube below. It really could get you out of a sticky situation, and just requires a bit more concentration than usual (so maybe lay off the Jack Daniels for a while).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Further Help…

This article doesn’t cover everything that can go wrong, just the stuff that has happened to me in the past, and how to deal with it. If you want more information – type the word “Serato” into youtube, and watch one of the thousands of tutorials on how to do things properly. Alternatively, you could always RTFM, or check out the Serato Forums and How-To’s.

I am hopeful that as more read this they will also add tips in the feedback below, because the internet is a lovely place full of friendly, helpful  people.

Cosmic Boogie isn’t always about dubby percussion, having disco drinks in the park, or me spouting bollocks. No sir, one of the things that still brings many people to the site are the tutorials I wrote a while ago about how to use Serato and so on. I need to update these, as all my methods have changed now (I am 100% committed to my Macbook and iTunes these days), but that’s for another article. This one concentrates on something I found mixed information on everywhere I looked, but nothing that cohesive; ripping vinyl.

When I say ripping vinyl, I don’t mean ripping it down to 128 mp3′s for sharing on blogs, something that is personally not for me (only an opinion – each to their own). I mean ripping my collection so I can use it with Serato, or any other digital solution I choose to adopt in the future. Because, lets be honest, its kind of all going that way.

Background Research

When I started to look into this I didn’t realise how many options I would come across for ripping the correct way, or someone else’s correct way, or someone else’s correct way, or…well you get the idea. Everyone has a take on this, so I am going to lay down some caveats for my methods so you can understand what I am trying to achieve writing this and make sure it sounds useful before you have to dive in (it’s quite a lengthy article after all).

1. This article is written in such a manor that it is more about the reasoning why I chose to rip vinyl a certain way, with background info and alternatives suggested. Its not a step by step how to.
2. I am not an audiophile. I mean, I like my sound to be as good as I can with the budget I have, and try to make sure the basic things are right, but this article tries to look at things from the angle of someone who cannot spend £800 on a power supply.
3. To back that up, I am operating here on a strict budget, only buying things within budget that will really help the process. I cannot afford to spend £500 on new equipment, and I think that many other people would be in that position.
4. I struggle to fully explain technical terms. I am not a sound engineer. I know what compression means because I bought a book that explains it to me (written by a sound engineer), but that’s about it.
5. I took a lot of help from people on the wonderful DJ History Forum (in particular the ninja that is Darryl Funk and the super digital convert Captain Cookson), and other such places. You could do worse than look there to accompany this. I will add some “further reading” at the end.
6. This article is by no means the be all and end all – that is, even though I have learned a lot I don’t know everything. Anyone who disagrees or has something to add please do so in the comments at the bottom. I am  just as much a novice as some of you reading this might be, and nowhere near an expert as others will be.
7. Please don’t use this to have a debate about whether or not vinyl is better than digital. The answer is it probably is, but great music is great on all formats.

With all that in mind, and if your still with me, Ive split what I learned into three stages; preparing your vinyl, getting the right equipment and recording to digital.

Preparing Your Vinyl

Old records get dusty. In fact, new records get dusty too, but not like old records. Even if you have all your records stored immaculately in plastic sleeves in dry places, if they have been sat for years unused, they will be dusty. Old records also get scratched, worn, used, damaged and generally soiled more than new records simply because they have been around for longer. Dusty records sound terrible when recorded to digital, and although you can do your cleaning at the stage when its in the computer – do you really want to, when you could do it before hand and take away the need for often over zealous click / scratch removal software?

Before you rip your vinyl it needs cleaning. Maybe if its brand new from Juno / Piccadilly that morning you would be OK, but in general, it needs cleaning. There are of course many solutions to do this, ranging from soapy water in a kitchen bowl, to wonderfully expensive robotic cleaning systems. If you can afford it, for sure, buy one of the robots. If you cannot, there are a few things that I have purchased that made a real difference for me.

• Vinyl Cleaning Fluid – this one to be exact. Cheap, and good. Two little sprays and a good wipe is a good start.
• Ant Static cloths – for wiping the vinyl. Be careful which ones you buy because they sometimes leave fluff on the record, which I am sure defeats the object. Choose carefully, and they make a big difference.
• Static removing gun. I managed to get one of these quite cheap from eBay, and i was a little skeptical at first. However when I was cleaning my records it was really evident just how much static was on them, and static discharges through the needle – so it was really a no-brainer. Its made a big difference (just use it on the record before you are about to rip it).

That’s it. That’s how I clean my records, with a combination of the above. I guess, really, it doesn’t matter how you clean them as long as you follow one of the more tried and tested methods. Someone will undoubtedly tell me that using the vinyl cleaning fluid is bad for your records, and so on. I’m going off what I know, and all the above cost me about £40 altogether, which is palatable. I am thinking about getting one of these for some of my older records, they really clean into the groove well (read that review and you will see), but its an (admittedly small) expense (at around £30 on ebay) that I don’t need at the moment.

I’m not saying that all your records will come up scratch or crackle free if you give them a good clean, that’s really not going to happen. At least you have done your bit though to get rid of either years of neglect or overplay. Its probably an obvious step really, anyone who tries to rip dusty arse old records without even trying to do something about it probably deserves what they get. Once your records are nice and clean its probably a good idea to get some plastic sleeves over them, make sure they have an inner sleeve also – and generally try to keep them in as good a condition as possible. Sounds obvious doesn’t it, but I know loads of people who never follow any of these steps.

Getting The Right Equipment

I agonised over this for weeks. Months, if I am being honest. My poor girlfriend often had to be on the receiving end of what I had decided to buy and how I had decided to do things, just so I could hear my decisions out loud and make sure they made sense. Even then I wasn’t sure, and unlike many other facets of my life, she couldn’t help me. You see, I am a little bit obsessive compulsive (it runs in the family) and I start to freeze up a bit if I think I could be doing something better. (This, incidentally, is one of the reasons I am dreading comments from people who read this who know nu-fangled solutions I didn’t discover). In the end, I had to decide and get on with it, trying not to worry that if I spent another £1000 then I could get that little bit more from the rip – I wanted good solid quality with pretty much the equipment I already had, and a small budget for improving or upgrading.

The key to getting the best quality recording is taking as many links out of the chain between your record decks and your PC as possible. Everything that you have between the vinyl and the final digital output can colour the sound in some way. Mixer, Amp, Cables, Digital Audio Interface – everything. You need to minimise the links, and if you do have to use equipment, use the best that you can. Same with cables, needles, and so on. Using the best that you can, however, does not mean that everything you have at the moment needs to be chucked out and new equipment purchased at huge expense, as you will see.

There are three different methods I looked at:

Ripping with a dedicated turntable that has digital out

For me, you can forget this method. I don’t really even want to waste that much space saying why – all you need to know is that they sell these record decks in the ever awesome electrical goods isle at Asda. That might sound snobbish – I don’t mean it to, what I am saying is that these are made for the mass market. If you just want to rip your old collection for your shitty pc speakers and play it through iTunes then these will do the job. They are not made for serious ripping (and subsequent playing), and should be avoided. Your DJ Turntable has a better needle, tonearm, everything. One of the decks I looked at only converted to MP3 onto a flash card with its own in built software. That’s some scary shit. If you want to see an entire list of what NOT to buy for ripping vinyl, why not browse the entire stock at Maplins.

As a side note, there are USB turntables that you can get from Numark and Stanton – although they are a good few hundred quid, maybe if anyone has used these and had any experience they could post up about it in comments…I am not even sure that these are something that you could successfully rip with (I assume they do analogue to digital conversion down the USB lead – but just don’t know).

Ripping with a Technics turntable through a dedicated phono stage

I learned a lot about sound quality and how mixers work with amps when I was reading up on this. It would shock most of the proper DJ’s to hear this, but I didn’t know what pre-amps or phono stages and such things were. Why should I? Its not something I ever really had to be concerned with. I don’t really use my turntables for listening – i use them as a technical tool. Somethings I do listen to on vinyl but always found the quality from the usual setup to be adequate.

It turns out it is something I really need to be concerned with when looking at ripping vinyl, and correct sound reproduction from vinyl…and everything else to do with vinyl. Its something that passed me by through ignorance rather than design. I am not going to go into the details of how these things work here, because Wikipedia is cleverer than me and can do a better job. However, I am sure if your serious about ripping vinyl then you have come across these terms and may be thinking about this route. There are three different ideas I toyed around with.

The Ripper

The first is this thing – The Ripper. Not only does it have a great name, but it also looks like it does nothing other than RIP YOUR VINYL. Which, of course, is a good thing. No gadgets, no fanciness, no over complifimication – just pure RIPPING ABILITY. It is basically a phono stage of seemingly very good quality that you plug your deck straight into, and it has a USB lead coming out of it that goes straight into the computer. So it does the analogue to digital conversion in the box, and then you use whatever software you want at your end on the computer. You don’t even need an external soundcard to go into – truly an awesome black box for RIPPING and RIPPING ONLY. There are, however, a few draw backs with it. Firstly its around $400 – which at current exchange rate equates to about £270. Not exactly fitting into my “small budget use the equipment you have” mindset is it. You can of course buy a kit version and make your own (for much less expense) but it requires you to have a masters in molecular nuclear physics no doubt, and I am stupid. So no.

The other problem is slightly more technical – as I will explain in the recording to digital section further down, when recording, you really need to to be able to capture at a high sample rate and bit resolution. You may be familiar with the standard resolution for CD’s – 16bit and 44.1khz – 16bit is the resolution depth and the 44.1khz is the sample rate. Just because CD music is at those rates doesn’t mean that’s all you can have with digital, you can record a far greater level. Ill explain more about this later, but The Ripper only rips at the aforementioned 16bit and 44.1khz – so straight away, even through it would sound good, you cannot record any better. That’s a limitation too far (and one I admit I didn’t spot at first). This coupled with the price led me to a sadly negative conclusion about this particular piece of hardware.

Alternatives? Yes, there are plenty. There is another USB cable straight to PC Phono Stage (of sorts) called the USB PhonoPLus V2. It looks a bit tacky compared to the machine that is THE RIPPER, however, I am told by a couple of people that it does a good job. Its about £80 (although hunting on eBay I found it for less) but sadly it has the same limitations musically as THE RIPPER – that is, your pretty much restrained to recording audio at CD quality. Its just not really good enough, so maybe a dedicated phono stage that’s not a digital converter would be better, and let my soundcard handle the analogue to digital conversion by itself?

I looked into this, and it would be great – but once again I found that it would cost me a good amount of money to get a really good pre-amp. The one I finally settled on, if I was going to go down this route, would be the Cambridge Audio 640p. This seemed a reasonable price and I also like Cambridge Audio gear. It might not be top audiophile standard, but its good value and good quality equipment and it has served me well over the years. Looking into what else I would need if I purchased one of these, in order to get the best recording I would need a moving magnetic cartridge (a needle for the deck) and also some really top notch audio leads from the pre amp to my computer. All this is starting to seriously mount up, and if you remember, there is a very limited budget I have on offer here so I am starting to wonder at this point is there any compromise between this method and the equipment I already have?

Ripping with a Technics deck through a mixer

This is almost identical to the method listed above, however, instead of a dedicated pre-amp, it uses the pre-amp that you already have in your DJ Mixer (assuming, of course, that you have a DJ mixer). In this instance, I am lucky that I own an Allen & Heath Xone 32. Some quick research on the web and I found out that the pre-amp installed into this mixer as standard is very good, and that I would be hard pressed to beat it even if I spent decent money…so, with my new found knowledge, I settled on using the pre-amps in the mixer.

The solution entails your Record deck going into your mixer via the phono leads, then some good quality phono cables coming from the “Record Out” of your mixer, and into your computers external (or not-come-as-standard internal) soundcard. Something that many people would already have setup these days because it is probably how many of us record mixes in the first place. The things I needed to do were upgrade the cables between the mixer and the PC – and, I settled on the best Cambridge Audio Azur cables I could get (around £40 each I paid for them), and I also needed to make sure my soundcard could handle the incoming signal and had decent analogue to digital conversion, at the correct 24bit / 192khz format that I wanted. Luckily, mine is ok. I have an Audiophile Firewire (picked up from ebay for about £100), and it can handle everything I need to throw at it.

Rme Fireface 400

Thats not to say if I had money to spend I couldn’t get better – there are a million soundcard’s out there that are better than the on I am using, but again, going back to the budget debate – I have to be practical. Realistically, to get the best possible sound conversion, you are looking at high end cards like the RME FireFace 400 – but this little beauty weighs in at about £650 brand new, or £550 second hand – so clearly, its aimed at a spectrum that is out of my range at the moment. Another good soundcard, and one that I will eventually upgrade to (in the next few months I hope) is the Edirol FA-66 (which I have seen going for around £200 on ebay). Both of these cards have better analogue to digital convertors, and so you will get a better, cleaner sound from your recorded vinyl. I am not exactly sure how much of a difference you would notice as an average user on standard equipment though, but maybe someone else could shed some light on that?

Hardware Setup

So you really dont need me to tell you how to plug a record deck into something with the minimum of fuss, and I am not about to do that. I am going to give you some basic bullet pointed tips for things to make sure you have your hardware setup correctly.

• Make sure whatever needles you have decided to use are tracked correctly and are in as good a condition as possible
• Make sure your Technics deck is grounded properly either with the ground lead attached to the ground on the mixer properly, or the technics ground lead modification fitted (i.e. – no need for a ground lead anymore).
• You want as few steps as possible ftom your deck to your computer – so really, one lead that comes out of the mixer straight into the soundcard. No shitty extension cables joined at the middle, no ground loop isolators getting in the way, nothing. Just one lead from the deck into the mixer, and one lead from the mixer to the soundcard.
• Make sure that any digital djing solution you might use is not connected – as in, dont use the pass through option. No point in “passing through” Serato for ripping, might as well just bypass it altogether.
• Make sure that you are not connected to an amp – you don’t need to be. As were taking the signal straight out of the mixer into the soundcard, we don’t need use the amp at all. If your connected to an amp and the sound is being ripped through that, the sound will be coloured by the amp.
• Make sure no noise enters the room during the recording process – there is no point you hearing what you are recording – all you are in effect doing if you have the sound turned up is increasing the chances of bass / noise feedback into the rip itself.
• Check your equipment for any digital hum – try to figure out if anything is laying any noise or interference down that could potentially upset the track that you are ripping. You can check for this quickly by listening through your speakers with nothing playing – if you hear something, there is a chance it could be recorded. (There is also a way to check for this in software I will mention later).

Conclusion

Just to re-cap…I am going to use the equipment I already have to rip:

1 x Technics 1200 Turntable
1 x Ortofon Nightclub S cartridge (properly tracked and setup)
1 x Allen & Heath Xone32 mixer
1 x Audiophile Firewire soundcard
2 x Cambridge Audio Azur reference phono leads

Sure, with a better soundcard it might be better. Sure, with dedicated pre-amp and moving magnetic cartridge, it might be better – but ultimately, it would also be significantly more expensive, and I do not have that kind of money to invest at the moment. Its something I will upgrade over time. The only thing I really need to do now, is make sure I have everything I have decided on setup to the absolute optimum it can be. That doesn’t cost money, just the time and care to get it right.

Part 2 of this very wordy article will cover the software side of things – what to use, correct settings, cleaning up recordings, storage, tagging…the works. It might take me a few weeks to write it, but when its done, I will link back to it here…

Like most people I imagine, my understanding of disco went as far as Saturday Night Fever. In fact, even worse than that, somewhere in my mind I probably linked it with the film Grease just because that had John Travolta in it as well, and Grease was of course rock and roll (and crap rock and roll at that). Hey – what do I know. Disco was just an excuse for a shit party, or to stumble into one of the many ironed on night-club cum-disco-pub’s like Boogie Nights and such that fester out across the nation. Think Disco, think The Bee Gees, The Jacksons, Chic, I Believe in Miracles, I Will Survive, D.I.S.C.O, YMCA (surely the ultimate disco record *cough*), Stayin Alive, The Hustle and millions of other tracks, artists and groups that appear on every “Best Disco Album Ever”, ever. Its safe to say that disco couldn’t have been further from what I considered dance music, even though it more often than not made people dance. These people were the enemy of music, as far as I was concerned.

In around about the year 2003, as my days of djing were drawing to a close (through a combination of the impending arrival of my first little girl and what I thought was a simmering down of the passion I once held for the music), I started to look at other tracks and genres that had always interested me but id never really found the time to explore, and undertook a 4 year journey that completely rewrote everything I knew and understood about dance music, and specifically my cheesy friend Disco. For the 7 or 8 years previous, I had done nothing but buy one kind of music really in order to better understand and appreciate, and for that reason listening to music had started to become a chore rather than the pleasurable experience it should have been. It was time to find the passion again.

I had already read a couple of books that had been of some interest on the broader spectrum of dance music. The first was Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, by Frank and Bill. This armed me with a knowledge of the progression of the sound, but not necessarily the commitment to research further into it. Whilst it was a great book (and one I have since re-read), I was just happy with the fact that I had a more rounded understanding. I also read at the time books about the spectrum of dance music I already knew about having lived through it – Simon Reynolds Energy Flash and Altered State by Matthew Colin which were both pretty formulaic and forgettable (in my opinion, of course). People from Blackburn took ecstasy? Really? Astonishing.

What happened to me musically as I started to dig deep, is probably no different to anyone who is aware that disco is not all for four year olds. Its amazing though, how many people say things like “do you wear platforms when you DJ” or other such bollocks…so with this in mind I wanted to write down, as best as I could, the things that helped me to discover that Disco far from sucks. Call it a starting place to discover more about dance music if you will, something to help a newcomer (not an experienced old cynic) what direction they might have to take. The directions are numerous, and I probably cant remember them all (Cd’s, documentaries, books, films, people, places – some that aren’t directly about disco), but this should be a good start, if nothing else.

Love Saves The Day

Nothing could prepare me for the change in my life when it was suggested to me by THP from Cosmic Disco that I read and understand a masterpiece. Love Saves the Day is a book by Tim Lawrence that defines the rise of dance music in America during the seventies and describes how foundations were laid. The idea of how a party should take place evolved over the course of the decade until it reached a climax with The Paradise Garage and Larry Levan. This book introduced me to so many names that I remembered from Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, but as it concentrated on a much shorter period it allowed a far greater depth to each. Francis Grasso, David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Arthur Russel, Mel Cheren, Larry Levan, Francois Kevorkian, Frankie Knuckles, Bobby Guttaro, Danny Krivit, The Gallery, The Saint, The Loft, The Garage. If you don’t know much about how these are connected to disco, read this book. See how the complex relationships between all intertwined to create one of the most vibrant, creative and hedonistic times of modern day. This is still the best factual book have ever read, and I have read numerous. I am just about to give it a third read in 2 years.

Mel Cheren – My Life and the Paradise Garage

Mel Cheren is considered by many as the godfather of disco. I’m not sure I agree with that moniker but he was certainly a hugely important figure in the development of the sound. As the head of West End Records, Mel presided over the release of many tracks that are timeless classics, and still move dance-floors today. Indeed, one of my favourite tracks of all time comes from the West End label of this era – Brenda Taylor, You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat it Too. The book itself chronicles Mel’s life up to the late nineties, and shows the creation of West End records, the development of the super-elite gay community on Fire Island, the birth of the Paradise Garage and The Saint (two seminal New York gay disco’s), drug dependency, and the tragic hangover from years of guilt free partying. This book isn’t just about disco, but it puts disco into perspective from the person (and people) who helped to put it on the map. Understanding the time itself helps to understand the music. A warning though – if you are sensitive about reading about issues and descriptions that are not necessarily about your particular sexual persuasion, then read at your own risk.

Maestro

Maestro by Josell Ramos chronicles the rise of clubs like The Loft, The Paradise Garage and The Gallery by people who either witnessed or helped to shape the disco, and ultimately, the house scene. Focusing heavily on New York and Chicago, interviews with Mancuso, Tee Scott, Grasso, Siano and many of the dancers and party goers of the time give a brilliant insight that really compliments the vibe created by a book like Love Saves the Day. Some people would say that its hurriedly put together, and maybe lacking in chronological flow but I like that about it – and its only hurriedly put together if you are already an expert on the subject. Its the interviews with Grasso that I found most interesting, as he really was the DJ that laid the foundations in New York. Sadly, he passed away in 2001, but watching the footage of him in this film there is no doubt of his impact on later generations, including the likes of Ron Hardy (a hero of mine), Knuckles, et al. The documentary goes on to cover the emergence of House and Garage music from the disco scene, and puts things into context perfectly. Find out more from an interview with the director, or one of the many clips on youtube.

DJ History Forum

Even though its populated with far too many southern Manchester United fans for my liking, the DJ History forum is an invaluable resource. Everyone (almost everyone) who lives on it knows loads, about everything. Any track you don’t know, someone will. And not only that, they will know the year it came out, the label it came out on, what other mixes were with it, where you can buy it, and what your grandads dog was called. Couple this with posts from scene leaders such as Francios K, Greg Wilson, Todd Terje, Bill Brewster (who owns and runs the site) and so on, and also mixes from almost every disco DJ in the country (with track listings) – you are talking serious musical knowledge. Even if you don’t post much, you can browse, read, learn, buy and conquer.

Salsoul Compilations

Salsoul, oh Salsoul. A label that most people know of, even those not riding the disco merry-go-round. I wont lavish you with the details of why Salsoul were so instrumental (along with other labels such as Prelude and West End Records), but I would suggest that you take a listen to the compilations that came out on Suss’d around 2003/2004 and onwards. Disco Divas and Soulful Sista Flavas, Walter Gibbons Anthology, Essential Boogie Flavas, Latin Funk Flavas, DIsco Trance and Cosmic Flavas…the list goes on and on for great compilations of timeless disco from this label. A real insight to music being created around the end of the seventies / beginning of the eighties. Greg Wilson was asked to put together a compilation of disco electronica for the Suss’d Salsoul compilations – it was to be entitled Electrophonic Beats, Dubby Mixes & Black Underground Flavas. Sadly, It never came out, but we decided to document the story about it regardless.

Music Blogs

There are absolutely millions of music blogs. Some give away free tracks for you to download, which is mildly naughty. Some inform you of edits that are coming available, some review older tracks, some have interviews with cool people. Some, like this one, just post up mixes and talk shit. Never underestimate the power and the knowledge of the people in the musical blogging world. Some of these people bleed cowbell if you cut them, and they should be feared, revered and respected for the knowledge and wisdom they possess. Or something like that. I am not going to list every blog I visit here, I don’t see the point when DJ History has pretty much the most difinitive list of music blogs I have ever seen (and the largest sidebar to boot). Just look under the Blogs We Like section on the right. A special mention must go here to Cosmic Disco as well, as I have said in the past, without that site this one would not exist.

Discogs

I think some of the people on the aforementioned DJ History forum are actually hard wired into the database of this website. I, however, knew next to nothing when I started to use it for finding out about labels, tracks, producers, compilations – everything. Its a database so vast and precise that I bet even the people who made the tracks themselves didn’t know half the stuff about their own music. If you want to see what the engineer for a track has worked on, no problem – click his name and off you go. There is also the added bonus of the discogs marketplace, where you can buy the track you have searched for as long as someone has it for sale (or even sell it, if you have it). Better than buying off eBay were you invariably get completely ripped off, as I found to my detriment.

Disco Tracks

You might notice that until now, I really haven’t actually mentioned any individual tracks or labels (apart from the Salsoul Compilations). Bit stupid that, you are probably thinking – as disco isn’t theory – its music. The reason is that its not really up to me to dictate what you should listen to when you delve into the world of disco. I can, however, list some tracks that I like (love, in fact) and some that show that disco isn’t all high pitched Mancunian’s and Italian Americans. Here are some great tracks, with relevant information bits. You don’t have to like them all but I think its a reasonable spread, and although many of them fit into other sub-genres, they are all disco to me. Note – these might not be obscure oddities or treats, but then that would kind of defeat the idea of writing an article about “Discovering Disco”. Walking before running, I think the expression is. Note 2 – It took me hours to think about what to include or not include, so I know I have missed out a million things, and yes, it hurts. Note 3 – I toyed around with adding soundclips with each track, but you know – as this article is all about discovering it for yourself – maybe it would mean more if you tracked them down yourself.

Aquarian Dream / Phoenix
http://www.discogs.com/release/1064027

This crossed over into Northern Soul clubs (especially The Mecca in Blackpool – it was a Levine favourite). Great up tempo early disco track, easy to find on loads of disco / northern soul compilations.

Al Hudson / Spread Love
http://www.discogs.com/release/579578

A track I know as it was re-made as a drum and bass track by nu:tone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPCcnlEaRxc). Another uplifting slice of early disco funk.

Eumir Deodato / Space Dust – Sherlock
http://www.discogs.com/release/502967

Straight dance-floor stuff from Eumir Deodato – a superb musician who has released many great tracks over the years (and still does).

Disco Drum – The Cats ‘N’ Jammer Kids
http://www.discogs.com/release/312985

The only more obscure one here – even a search of GOD doesn’t show me much about who Cats N Jammer Kids are. Great slower percussion heavy disco track.

Five Letters / Tha Kee Tha Tha
http://www.discogs.com/release/1221494

Italo Disco – recently released on the Italo Disco compilation. I wont go into the whole sub genre of italo disco here, but this track could be a good starter for you.

Jean Carn / Was That All It Was
http://www.discogs.com/release/790602

Paradise Garage classic – very camp (IMO), brilliant – great structure. Really good disco and relatively easy to find on compilations (CD or vinyl).

Love Unlimited Orchestra / Strange Games & Things
http://www.discogs.com/release/472823

Barry whites backing orchestra (40 piece orchestra according to discog’s) go solo on quite a few albums and this one is a real good bubbling disco, very laid back, showing another string.

Liquid Liquid / Optimo
http://www.discogs.com/release/95988

Disco not Disco – sub genre alert – this doesn’t probably sound like disco per say, and that’s because it isn’t. But it was played in the disco clubs of the time, and still is today – disco influenced, if nothing else.

Montana Sextet / Heavy Vibes
http://www.discogs.com/release/196601

A masterpiece. Vince Montana had his hand in everything. No words I could put here could sum it up, so just have a listen yourself.

Tata Vega / Get It Up for Love
http://www.discogs.com/release/361477

Great up tempo disco track released on Motown records. Dancefloor stuff again, great lyrics.

The Salsoul Orchestra / Magic Bird of Fire
http://www.discogs.com/release/7329

Salsoul – inspirational. This might not be the best of the Salsoul, or Salsoul Orchetra tracks, but its certainly individual and shows disco’s live roots in a great light.

Womack & Womack / Baby I’m Scared of You
http://www.discogs.com/release/865095

Another Paradise Garage classic. Another hands in the air, camp anthem.

And…

Well – I am still learning at a reasonable pace. I have just finished a book by Peter Shapiro called “Turn the Beat Around” which I didn’t enjoy one bit sadly, and would struggle to recommend. I also recently finished a few other books about hip hop which has really interesting links to disco culture as one helped to progress the other (and vice-versa). Really though, the only way to learn more about the music is to keep searching, and keep listening. And I intend to do that until I shuffle from this coil. At the risk of sounding cliche’d, I am still discovering what disco is every time I read something new about it, or hear a new track.

Actually that sounded really, really cliche’d. Great ending.

In 2004, during Suss’d’s tenure of the classic Salsoul label, Ian Dewhirst approached me about the possibility of putting together a Salsoul ‘Flavas’ compilation, reflecting the more electronic side of the labels output during the early 80’s – the type of stuff I would have been playing on the black scene during the Electro-Funk era.

Focusing on Aug ‘81 – Dec ’83, the period I was at Legend in Manchester, I went through my old record lists and came up with the following:

Full Tracklisting

Aurra / Such A Feeling (pt 2&3) / Shep Pettibone Mix
Rafael Cameron / Boogie’s Gonna Get Ya (Instrumental) / François Kevorkian Mix
Weeks & Co / If You’re Looking For Fun (Dub) / Shep Pettibone Mix
Vaughan Mason / You Can Do It (Instrumental)
Sly Cabell / Feelin’ Fine (Club Version) / Shep Pettibone Mix
Leroy Burgess / Heartbreaker / Shep Pettibone Mix
Instant Funk / (Just Because) You’ll Be Mine (Extended) / Shep Pettibone Mix
Edwin Birdsong / She’s Wrapped Up Tight (Extended)
The Jammers / And You Know That (dub) / Shep Pettibone Mix
Aurra / Baby love (Instrumental) / Shep Pettibone Mix

(unmixed continuos stream of compliation is available at the bottom of this post)

I liked the fact that the album would also serve as a tribute to one of the great remixers of the period, Shep Pettibone, who worked his magic on no less than 7 of the tracks I selected. It was a solid groove packed compilation that documented not only the Salsoul tracks that I was playing back then, but the precise mixes. Often, with retrospective dance compilations, a vocal mix will be used, whereas it might have been the dub or instrumental that was the club choice. In this way some comps fall short of being as definitive as they could be, which is always an important consideration in my book. With the exception of ‘Heartbreaker’ by Leroy Burgess, none of the selections were the lead versions of the tracks. This was reflective of the way things were back then, with the more interesting / creative mixes often appearing as secondary versions. It was a wonderful time for the remix, with people like Pettibone, Tee Scott, Larry Levan, Jellybean Benitez and François Kevorkian experimenting with a dubbier approach, which perfectly suited the audience I was playing to. With this in mind, the title was to be ‘Electrophonic Beats, Dubby Mixes & Black Underground Flavas’.

However, the fact that the majority of these tracks (although not these mixes) had appeared on previous Suss’d Salsoul compilations, made the company nervous. Concerned that they might be accused of repetition, they decided to switch their attention to another, untapped, section of the back catalogue, coming up with ‘Disco Trance & Cosmic Flavas’, which was released instead. Although I had nothing to do with the selection of tracks for this album, I re-edited 2 of them – ‘War Dance’ by Kebekelektrik and MC Lane Explosion’s ‘Oxygene’.

This would turn out to be the final release in the ‘Flavas’ series, the licensing agreement between Suss’d and Salsoul coming to an end soon after. So, sadly for me, ‘Electrophonic Beats’ never got to see the light of day’.

More recently I copied off the demo CD of this unreleased comp for Cosmic Boogie’s Stu Robinson. It was right up his street, as they say, and he asked if I minded him uploading onto the site, to sit alongside my ‘Renaissance Mixes’, which are also hosted there.

So here it is, just as I put it together at the time (apologies for the crackles on some of the tracks, we never got to the stage where we try to locate clean copies for mastering). Hopefully it’ll help illustrate this other, lesser-known side of Salsoul, which is often overshadowed by the label’s earlier years and its pioneering mixes by Tom Moulton, Walter Gibbons and Larry Levan. It would have been nice to see this as a proper compilation, available in the shops, but sharing it online provides some level of consolation. Hope you enjoy.

This is the second part to an article I started last week on tracks that changed my life. I wrote a load of blurb at the start of that one so I wont bang on here, ill just dive right in. Remember, these tracks are in no particular order (least of all chronological).

Black Water (Octave One)

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Back in 2001 I was going to Bugged Out! in Liverpool from time to time. I had always known that Justin Robertson was a good DJ from his sheer variety (northern soul, house, techno and whatever the fuck lionrock was). He was resident at Bugged Out, and the first time I heard Blackwater played it was by him. I wouldn’t say I was a techno connoisseur, but this track led me onto many things I would have missed otherwise. Funk D Void, Phil Kieran, etc. are maybe not a similar style to the somewhat percussive detroit sound of Blackwater, but it was a pass way to them none the less. This track is fantastic, could fit into a set of any genre (and was played by all and sundry, not just techno DJ’s) and is widely revered as a classic. The mix I love has the Ann Saunderson vocal. A really great piece of music with one of the finest basslines I have ever heard.

Share The Fall (Grooveriders Jeep Style Remix) (Roni Size)

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A great track on its own, Share the Fall really benefited from the Grooverider jeep style remix when it came to working for a dancefloor. Why the original album version crossed the border between trip-hop and drum and bass, Riders version is a workout for any club. The beats are toughened up, the vocal used to build energy, searing tech synth stabs roll throughout, and the overall hypnotic feel makes it one of the standout tracks of all time for me. Another track I played out many times, that worked even though it might have been slower than many of the darker pieces around it. Optical was the studio engineer for Grooverider, I am led to believe, so there is every chance that he could have been the man behind this. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Better Days (Jimi Polo)

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This was the first track I heard when entering my first proper dance night at the ripe old age of 14, and for that reason it gets included. Its a big room piano cheese monster, not something I really love now but at the time I had never heard anything as euphoric or uplifting in my life. I think the version I would have heard must be the Sasha remix (and I think that is the one in the video also). Its still a great track if you like that kind of thing, and I am sure still gets played to death all over everywhere. Strangely I never bought this on vinyl, I only have it on a retro compilation. Maybe I will hunt it down if only for nostalgic reasons.

Breakdance (electric boogie) (West Street Mob)

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I suppose really I should reference back to Apache by Incredible Bongo Band – as that’s all this track is, its just a cut up with added electronic voice samples (Breakdaaaance!) – but I heard this first so there is no point trying to look all authentic and original. I still play this, in fact, I played it a few weeks ago when DJing out and people never get tired of it. I started to play it when me and my friend Roscoe did a little upstairs party at the Zanzibar in Liverpool in about 2002, and I think I will always take it out with me (even if it is a really obvious track). I don’t really need say anymore, I could pretty much guarantee that anyone reading this will have heard it. May have been responsible for my start it looking back at the history of dance music.

Love has Come Around (Donald Byrd)

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I must admit, when I heard this track again in context over the last few years, I had no idea it was a Jazz Funk classic from the early 80′s. In fact, I had heard this many times going out, or maybe it had been sampled so much I just thought I had. Its a great track that I have played out in all the places I have played, and have included it on one of my Cosmic Boogie mixes. You could easily start or end a night with a track of this magnitude. I don’t know anything else by Donald Byrd, which I guess is just lazy really considering how highly I rate this. I should make the time to find out.

Teardrop (Massive Attack)

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Teardrop reminds me of a low point in my early life – a time when for one reason or another, not many things were going right. Early relationship trouble, not knowing what to do with myself (I was about 18 at the time), and generally, not enjoying life. I bought the Mezzanine album the day it came out, having been a big fan of earlier Massive Attack stuff. I played teardrop all the time, some might say its a depressing tune, but I think that all depends on the context. The overriding feeling it always gave me was “everything is going to be ok”. No matter what had gone wrong I could put this track on and things could brighten up – if not literally, at least in the way I looked at them. It also had characteristics of the sound i was into at the time (dark drum and bass), with haunting beats and hypnotising vocals from Elizabeth Fraser (of the Cocteau Twins). I don’t play this now as much as I probably should, but it had a huge effect at that particular point in my life.

Alien Girl (Ed Rush & Optical)

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Boom. Dark, nasty, rave drum and bass. Perfect for the big room, a masterful tech stepper that owes more to heavy metal than it does funk or soul. Darker music at the time was far more uplifting to me than any of the funkier shades of Marcus Intalex et al, and this is just about the epitome of it. I still love hearing this track, it killed every dancefloor around, still does (played in the right context of course) and I am very happy that I was there to witness this and many other tracks of its ilk as they happened. After this period, drum and bass started to reinvent itself because it had lost all the feeling, but still now, I reckon there is more feeling in this than many tracks that came out later. An anthem for the cause, and only one of a number of brilliant tracks produced by these two.

Electric Relaxation (A Tribe Called Quest)

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In younger years, I always thought that I didn’t have much time for hip-hop or rap, I thought Public Enemy were OK, and NWA, but probably more because my mates did rather than ever actually really connecting in any way. One friend though who was really into both started to pass me more things he thought I would “get”, and that was pretty much solely A Tribe Called Quest. I could have picked any number of tracks, but Electric Relaxation is the best (for me at least), with a fantastic groove, production, and lyrics. Not too “different” like Outkast or (sometimes) De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest are still the best hip hop act of recent times for me (with my limited knowledge, of course).

Daughter of Darkness (Tom Jones)

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Another track that fuelled my early vinyl fetish. Everyone who collects vinyl must of at some point gone through the grandparents vinyl and tried to find things that they liked. At the same time i was listening to early Elvis stuff, I was also finding out that I liked Tom Jones – or at least one track. I don’t know why I picked this out of the pile of records, I would have been no older than 10 or 11, and for some reason I played this over and over again, until I eventually bought the album second hand from a charity shop (or was bought it – I cant remember). I don’t really know if I can articulate what it is I like about it – its nothing special I don’t suppose, not a “stand out” piece of music, or anything ground breaking…I just like it. I always have and I always will. Please note that why I don’t really give a shit about American Politics (as the youtube video shows), I do think that at certain points Hilary Clinton looks like the spawn of beelzebub himself. So I thought id leave this video up rather than a picture of a record spinning.

Nightmare (Kid Unknown)

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If “Better Days” was the first hugely uplifting tune that I experienced in a club, this was probably the most satisfying. Uplifting because of its raw energy, rather than its hands in the air euphoria, this breakbeat house monster was a favourite of a few of us clubbing at the time. Dark, driving and very northern old-skool, produced by Nipper (although discogs disuptes that fact), this track was clearly a precursor to the darker breakbeat drum and bass I would get into many years later (for example – Alien Girl mentioned above). I like a lot of Warp stuff and although this may not be the most ground breaking by any stretch, it would always be my selection from the label.

Thanks for reading through. What I would really like to do is make this the start of a series of 10 or 20 tracks that changed other DJ’s lives. It would be really interesting to see what people come up with. Ill fire some requests out to people I know, and if successful I will turn this into a series of articles.

Its really difficult to write a list of favourites. What is your favourite house track? What is your favourite film? They change all the time for me. Some days I might say Donnie Brasco is my favourite film, other days it might be The Panic in Needle Park. Some days it could be Voodoo Ray, another day it might be Strings of Life. I guess it depends what kind of mood I am in. Today, for example, its The Panic in Needle Park. Until I get home, then its more than likely Blazing Saddles. You see my point.

One thing I can list though are tracks that have changed my life, for better or worse. That wont ever change unless I happen to bump into the Doc and borrow his time machine. This list (in no particular order) is not exactly representative of the style of music I like now, or the style(s) of music I always liked in the past…but it does have 20 tracks that left a lasting impression. It’s not the most original maybe, but I can’t go throwing obscure cosmic classics in just to make myself look cool.

Here are the first ten, the second part will be posted next week…

And She Was (Talking Heads)

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Talking Heads were a big part of what I listened to growing up. My father is a great lover of this band, and although I could have named any Talking Heads track here I guess, I am going for And She Was. I remember I used to sit next to the hi-fi at home and write the words down, wondering what it actually meant. I was only eight or nine, so I didn’t understand it was about taking drugs. It’s a fantastic story – musical poetry, with a kind of folk/pop backing that only Talking Heads could successfully pull off. This will always be one of my favourite songs because of the profound effect it had on me as a kid – maybe that’s because its written like a children’s story, or maybe its just because it was a brilliant song no matter how old you are. The fact that I picked it up on vinyl for £1 in a second hand shop is the icing on the cake.

In The Ghetto (Elvis Presley)

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I always liked Elvis when I was younger thanks to a friends influence, it was probably the start of my passion for record collecting. The later stuff he did rather than the earlier rock and roll – after the 68 Comeback Special – appealed to me most. In The Ghetto is a brilliant song about a boy growing up in poor surroundings, unable to break free he turns to crime which leads to an early death, and the circle continues. Indeed, the song was originally called “In The Ghetto (The Vicious Circle)”, but it was shortened before it was taken to Elvis. Its my favorite Elvis song, and one of my all time favourites because of the wonderful (yet very sad) story it tells.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone (The Temptations)

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Another great song in a lyrical sense, as well as a musical sense. This builds up and up and up and…with so many layers intertwining to make a track that can work almost anywhere, in any context. It was played a lot around my childhood as The Temptations were prevalent in our house, and it surely must have had influence on my taste in predominantly black music. A mixture of soul, funk, with maybe even a small amount of disco, and a searing vocal that has been sampled to death. Genius.

Brown Paper Bag (Roni Size)

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Roni Size had been producing drum and bass before the Reprazent album dropped onto the world in 1997 and won the Mercury music prize, but this for me has to be his outstanding track probably of all time. Brown Paper Bag was not only a great track on the album (an album which I still adore), dropping it on the dance floor also caused maximum damage (and still does today). A long, jazzy intro was synonymous with Roni at the time, but the live instruments used to full effect mean the energy was infectious, and this appealed to both hardcore and non drum and bass audiences. It helped me to fall in love with drum and bass for the next 10 years.

I Know You Got Soul (Erik B & Rakim)

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As a young raver, I frequented a club called Maximes that played “old skool” house music, usually stuff from about 1988 – 1992. I started going around 1994, and as I was usually one of the first people on the dance floor I was always dancing to the earlier, slower stuff (before all the obvious cheese got banged out). One track I always loved, but didn’t know the name of till much later, was “the ABC track”. This is all we knew it as for years as it sampled The Jackson’s ABC (Motown having again been played a lot through my growing years), added a fatter break and hip hop attittude. Finding the name of the track out, I should really have just paid more attention to the lyrics in the chorus. The start of my love of hip-house, and later a fascination with certain aspects of hip hop, this track lead me onto paid in full, The Jungle Brothers, and A Tribe Called Quest.

Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) (Frank Wilson)

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The most popular Northern Soul track of all time? It is said so. Not for me, I doubt, but still a track that has left a huge mark on my life. Its not for what it does for me, but who it reminds me of. My girlfriend, soon to be wife, played this a lot when we met as she loves Northern Soul and it always reminds me of her. With the arrival of our little girl she has had more of an impact than all of these tunes put together, and if that’s not enough, then as an introduction to Northern Soul its not a bad one…

You Dropped a Bomb On Me (The Gap Band)

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A good friend gave me a copy of this as an MP3 when I was at the height of my Drum and Bass collecting. I loved it. It was definitely one of the tracks that started me collecting boogie/disco music, and one of the first 7″ tracks I bought by accident from ebay mistakenly thinking it was the 12″ (which has now happened at least 10 times). A fantastic track with an absolute killer bassline, great vocals, and a wonderful hook in the chorus. I’m not so sure about the dancing in the video though…

Al Naayfish (The Soul) (Hashim)

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Another track that I didn’t know the name of for many years even though I loved it from the moment I heard it. Mixed in with all the old house sounds I used to listen to, this stood out because it simply wasn’t like anything else. I didn’t realise that was because it was made in 1983, and had preceded so many things that didn’t sound as good by 10 years. Incredible really. Id argue that this was, maybe is, my favourite dance track of all time. Although as I said before, that changes with the days. It certainly helped craft a love of break-beat that still burns strongly – even though the track is pure 80′s electro. A genre defining moment. Id have said this must be the only piece of early electro that had Egyptian influences, but I have since learned otherwise.

Is It All Over My Face (Loose Joints)

Click here to view the embedded video.

A great moment, when I found this track shortly after reading Love Saves the Day, I realised that disco was so much more than “Chic – Good Times” (an admittedly great record), and it could be driving, minimal, raw yet still really funky, without the need to have a thousand violins going off, and no John Travolta in sight. Whilst this isn’t by any means my favourite disco track, its certainly the track that made me understand the most about disco. I don’t know as much as I would like to know about Arthur Russel, but masterpieces like this drive my need to find out more about music and the people who made it.

Miles From Home (Peshay)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another great drum and bass track, brilliant for the fact that it was played to death by many of the DJ’s who only played the darker, techier styles of drum and bass at the time. Peshay was, and is, an innovator – with countless brilliant pieces of music to his name (with another one I really should include with the next part of this article). Not quite as soft and dreamy as Bukem, but certainly as jazzy as anything produced by the Reprezent crew, miles from home has a step beat, jazzy piano, strings and bass, and a brilliant build up to the break release. I played this tune almost every time I played out (the original not the later equally as good remix), and always got a fantastic reaction. I don’t think it ever got the recognition it deserved, but maybe it did and I just didn’t ask the right people.

Update: 20 Tracks that changed my life (Part 2), is now online.

That is one hell of a statement in that title, and its not entirely truthful. I guess the real title would be “How I started to understand how to mix disco and other earlier genres of dance music and what advice I can give.” That’s a little self indulgent (and long), plus, I’m going to put the thoughts of others down here as well, so its not just about “me” per say.

Its impossible to explain how to mix a genre of music really. I mean, its all in the ear of the beholder isn’t it? And does music need mixing together? David Mancuso doesn’t think so, neither do I when I listen to an album. I’m writing this because I want to share my experience of waking up on the record decks, learning how to mix in different ways, and how you can crossover genres and BPM’s without it sounding awful. I’m no master at this craft yet, I’m still a novice really…but that doesn’t really matter. I learned a lot over the last few years, some the hard way naturally, but some by listening to other people (how they mix (and what they say). So if you have just woken up to the fact that you want to mix up a bit of everything together, and not just be 130bpm hard house all the way, then keep reading.

nb: there will be people out there that will scoff at everything written here. If you scoff, its because you worked out your own way of doing things that’s immeasurably better, and you don’t really even need to read this in the first place…this is just how I did things and it might help others who are still at the start. Also, im not knocking any other styles of music, I like everything (apart from Trance). Whatever flicks your switch.

My Background

OK – there is a self indulgent part here. My background is, basically, a drum and bass DJ. I was never really a very good one – I was pretty good at tune selection (I was told) and at finding music that others might not play…but I was pretty rotten when it came to technical ability. The whole “leaving a tune mixing for 3 minutes” thing never really worked for me – not only could I not do it very well, I didn’t really like it. I liked the tunes how they were, not really crossing over basslines for that killer mix – I just wanted to play the tunes one after the other blending them in, and I did that, but it was considered (understandably) by some to be boring. Without character I suppose. Not stamping my own style, and so on.

As my tastes in music changed over time, I found that I wanted to play all different genres together, different speeds, different rhythm’s…but yet still keeping it as a mix rather than a compilation. This was the most important thing; it still had to have flow, meaning, form…but not with the same rigidity and uniformity that I had always mixed drum n bass.

Mindset

The first thing I had to do was change my mindset completely on how records should be put together. It turns out this was the most important part of learning to DJ different genres in new and exciting ways. If you can imagine that when mixing drum and bass, or even early house music before it, I had always just beat matched two records and let them crossover, then brought the other one in. Sure, I had a few tricks like places to drop certain tunes, but that was pretty much it. Blending two tunes together, take one out as the other one kicks in – and away you go. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the longer the mix, the more technically proficient I was – and therefore the better DJ I was. Correct? Sadly not.

It turns out that the more I thought about it, and listened to mixes from other DJ’s (god bless you Deep House Page), I realised that the only thing that mattered really was the next tune you put on – did it keep the energy going, did it flow right, did it sound right…did it feel right? Once I understood this, I stopped thinking that I needed to beat match and 30 second blend every single mix together. Tracks that I loved had been consigned to the “can’t play that because I can’t beat match it in” bin. Anything that didn’t start with some form of predominant (and easy to mix) percussion had been demoted, even if the track that burst in from it was amazing. But not any more.

Its like un-learning everything that you have learned over the last however many years you have been mixing. Its taking that robotic way of doing things and giving it back a human touch. Drum and Bass, although I will always love it, can be very synthetic. I think the same can be said about house music (certainly genres like hard house). Blending together Disco, funk, Boogie, Soul, Electrofunk, Pop, Hip Hop and so on, is anything but…so you need to remove that synthetic way of doing things.

At last I understood that the correct mindset was “play anything as long as it fits”. Fits with the mix you are making, fits with the vibe you want to create, or fits with the crowd that you are playing to. And although this might sound really obvious, it was the biggest change I had to make.

Technique

Mindset may have been the most important change (for me) – but technique certainly has its place. There are many, many different ways to mix, and I would be stupid to suggest that I know all of them, or can explain even the majority of them here. I did, however, pick out three new(ish) ways of mixing that have become key for me.

Chop Mixing

Chop mixing is great. I would never have chop mixed a few years ago – its cheating. Slamming in one record without even mixing it? Pah. I can blend my two records together for 17 minutes, I’m that good, so why the fuck should I chop mix? Simple really – chop mixing can sound both astonishingly good, and can blend two tunes of complete different BPM or Genre together extremely well. Chop mixing is your friend. Take two disco tracks that have so much going on in them that they would be hard to segue together, chop from one to the other and hey presto – your into a new track, taking the mix (or dance floor) off in a new direction. Nobody has noticed until its too late to care (or in truth, nobody has noticed because they didn’t care as it sounded so good).

There are some things I try to do when chop mixing – that’s find compliments between the two tracks. For example, a track has a bongo roll in it, so I might find another that starts with a bongo roll and chop over at that point. People were either listening to the bongos at the time, or expecting them to come in – so no one notices. The other thing would be to find a contrast – so say the music is building up to a crescendo, just as it reaches its peak, chop it over to something that drops everything down again…as that’s what the tune you just mixed out of was probably about to do anyway, so you are keeping the structure and flow correct. With chop mixing you can throw funk into disco into hip hop into house into boogie into northern soul into…whatever you want really. I don’t know many people who can do that by beat mixing, apart from maybe the worlds most skilled turntablist’s, of which I am not.

The other thing to take note of is that “chop” is quite an amusing word.

Fading

I don’t know if “fading” is the correct term, or “fade mixing”, but I am sure you understand what I mean. Fading is pretty simple – fade one track out, fade another one in. There are subtleties around this; you can fade a track out when its near the end, bring the upfader (the volume fader) down, and taking the other upfader up to bring the new track in. Alternatively, you can find two instrumental parts of the track and fade those across each other, so nothing clashes (beat wise). Clearly, you have to make sure that the fade will work – don’t, for example, try to fade one horn section into another horn section unless you are certain it will work. Fading strings can work but its tricky (in my experience), and fading across pads is usually OK.

You can also use the crossfader to fade (no shit) – just find a part of the tracks that sounds similar and slowly slide the fader across. Same as the volume up/down really, only slightly easier to perform. Take note of when the beat might drop. If you are fading at the very end of one track into a new one, make sure the beats don’t together hit on the fade – that is unless you have successfully managed to beat match the two tracks together (in which case that would probably sound great).

Fading is simple – its the best way to get two tracks that are in no way similar together. You don’t necessarily need to find sections that compliment each other, you just need to make sure they don’t crash bang wallop over each other. I think fading is the most common kind of mixing with different genres that i have heard because its arguably the easiest and doesn’t detract away from the tune itself. It leaves the music unspoiled, and that’s pretty much always a good thing.

Beat Matching

Warning. Disco, Funk, Boogie and most other forms of dance music pre-1980 are not programmed by a drum machine. Well – they are, but that “machine” is fed on burger and chips rather than the mains supply. Human drummers are not as precise as a drum machine. I prefer that – I love live drums – I only wish I could successfully play the drums – but it can be a real problem when you are mixing. With house, drum and bass, techno, trance, hardcore and all of our other recent forms of dance music, the beat is invariably laid down perfectly. With many of the earlier styles of dance music, it is not. This means that just when you think you have something beat matched perfectly, the drummer goes off by a couple of BPM’s for 20 seconds or so, and it sounds like you have mixed the records together with a brick.

There are a few things to take note with beat matching, if you want to do it. I still do it, but I always make sure that the mix is fairly short (more a quick blend than a 20 minute wankfest), that I know the records that i am trying to beat match (therefore maybe knowing about any BPM pitfalls). I also bear in mind that if I do attempt it, and it doesn’t quite work (especially when I am playing out), to just fade it over quickly because most of the time no one really cares about beat matching anyway.

The only time you really have to worry about beat matching is if you are in a room full of DJ’s who are all sat with a crate of rotten vegetables. I think some people are of the mindset that if you beat match correctly, you are a good DJ. Maybe a long time ago, I thought that too.

Let one record stop, then start another one

Not for me this one, although the great David Mancuso would always champion it and there is no reason it shouldn’t be a valid way of playing records, because that’s exactly what it is – playing records. I don’t really think it needs any explanation; let one record stop, take it off, play another one. I’d be careful doing this if you are playing out, unless the crowd know what the score is, any stop in the music usually means you have fucked up as far as they are concerned.

Other things to consider

Knowledge is key.

Knowing your records, studying them, studying were the breaks are, finding records that work together, all that usual stuff – its still just as an important aspect as ever. In fact, its very important; you can’t rely on records mixing together just because they are both house records (as some people may have done), you need to find ones that work. Its not too difficult, its just spending time with the music you love.

Reading was also key for me – reading and listening to mixes, meeting Djs, getting advice from people (and listening to it and taking it on board). Ive done all those things, and I am still a complete novice really, and still struggle to get certain records together even though I know Djs who can pretty much mix anything with everything. So never ever stop listening and learning.

In the space of a few years I read maybe 10 or 15 books on music, DJ’ing, and so on – things I didn’t know, like the vibe at the time disco was around that Love Saves the Day captures, or some of the more interesting technical hints and tips in How to DJ Properly. There are sites better than mine that have a good book listing so I wont put one here (I’ll just post a link to the one on DJ History).

What others say

This article was written because I read a page in a now sadly departed dance music magazine (Keep On Magazine) entitled “the art of mixing disco” (volume 1, issue #4, page 72). Its a great little article, here are some excerpts of some of the thoughts of the DJ’s in that article, and also from friends of Cosmic Boogie:

Al Kent (Million Dollar Disco)
The most important thing, and probably the most obvious, is to be prepared. No matter how tight the records sound, they’re always going to drift; especially around a fill. If you can learn the fine details of your records, then all the better. But realistically, unless you are going to play the same half a dozen records for the rest of your life, you will have to play it by ear.

Matthew Burgess (Lowlife)
Unlike their house counterparts, most disco records don’t tend to begin with 16 bars of drums. However, they sometimes have cut friendly horn stabs (like Kasso by Kasso) or drum fills (like Wings of Fire by Dennis Coffey), which can be combined with a break in the previous record to create a seamless mix; even though the records have only been playing together for a small amount of time.

Nicky Siano (The Gallery)
Mixing records can go beyond beat matching, and I’ve always believed the selection was much more important than the mix. But that is my personal opinion. When mixing, I hear a horn that matches a horn in another section, or a bass line that is similar, and those two sections would BLEND together, without necessarily beat matching. Words which answer messages in the last song also create a fantastic blend and atmosphere.

Baggy (Cosmic Disco)
Other than learning the basics of beat matching, counting bars, song structure, not clashing the vocals (Almost as bad as when the Ghostbusters cross the streams) etc. the main words of wisdom I can give when mixing styles would be just keep an open mind with your programming, do your research and go out into dusty records shops and dig out and listen to as many different styles of music as possible, get on the blogs and forums and take recommendations from trusted friends and acquaintances and play what instinctively feels good to you. Finally don’t be afraid of making mistakes.

Simon Busby (Short Circuit)
Cough loudly and flick the crossfader across.

Niles (Cosmic Disco)
You just need to feel the tracks and play it by ear.

Summary

You really will make your own mind up. You really will find a way that suits you best, that might not take on board any of what is written here, as it might be too restrictive. Mixing comes from the heart, not the head – or it should – and this advice is purely mechanical and functional. As with everything written on blogs everywhere, its personal to me (the author) so don’t shoot me down for it, just take from it what you will. Or nothing, if you wont. If anyone wants to add to the page, I am always happy to update so feel free to throw any comments in below.

Happy mixing.

Note: as a follow up to this article, I created one thats less technical and more about how I discovered Disco is not shit. You can find it here: Discovering Disco.

Its pretty obvious, isn’t it?

Make sure you have your Serato MP3 library and crates backed up, as often as possible. Its pretty obvious, but as this relatively stupid DJ found out – its not compulsory, and people often forget. When people forget to do such obvious things, sods law will dictate that said persons will come a cropper. Especially if these people are not only stupid, but also, pretty unlucky.

(Yes, I forgot).

A few months ago, I lost half my MP3 library…well…technically I didn’t, but I lost the latest, super cleaned up well categorised and tagged version. Days of work up in smoke because I deleted the wrong drive, and very stupidly did not have a back up. After spending an unjustifiable amount of time to get back to where I had already been, I thought that a really good backup solution was needed. I started to look around and pieced together something that works for me, based on my existing Serato setup, and how I like to use computers. You can find more about how I set up my MP3 collection, or how I setup and optimised my laptop for Serato if you want to, they are both pretty relevant to what you are about to read.

There are three parts to backing up a collection; backing up your collection for playing out with you, backing up your collection locally at home, and backing up your collection more permanently on the net (or some form of secure storage). I will cover all three, but as my Serato is PC based, many of the things I mention will only work on a PC. If anyone knows of any mac equivalents, please mail me and I will update the relevant section.

It might seem overkill to some to go into this level of detail – but its taken me years to build what I have. Take from this what you can.

Backing up your collection for playing out

I take my Serato collection out with me on a USB drive. Everything is stored on the drive – the crates, the mp3′s, all the Serato information. This works for me for a whole host of reasons that I don’t need to go into here (they are covered in other articles on this site), but it does cause problems. If I leave the drive at home, I’m screwed. If the USB drive breaks, I’m screwed. If the laptop I use fails to recognise the USB drive – I am screwed. Believe it or not, two out of those three have happened to me in the past, and I have been screwed, but maybe that’s just my luck.

Assuming that you also use a USB drive for your Serato collection, there are two things you can do here (or both, if finance is not a problem). Firstly, put a copy of all your MP3 files onto a partitioned drive on the laptop. Mimic the same structure as you have on your USB, copying everything over but the Serato crate files. If you copy these over as well, when you open up Serato (and have your USB drive plugged in) it will think there are two identical libraries and load them both – leaving you with two copies of each track, which doesn’t sound too bad but is a pain in the arse in reality. Taking a copy of just the main MP3 folder structure that you have means that if the worst happened and your USB drive failed, you could at least drag these files into new crates quickly…and hey presto, entertained party-goers.

The second thing is simple – buy a second USB drive and take out an exact copy of your main drive. You can even copy all the Serato files over with this so you can have the same crate structure as soon as you plug it in. The chances of both drives failing or being left at home are pretty slim. Its the best choice if you can afford it. The only drive I would consider getting is the Lacie Rugged USB drive. Its brilliant – you could drive a tank over the thing and it would still work. Had a full pint spilled on one recently and it didn’t even flinch. Most USB drives I have had in the past break when I am taking them out of the packaging, so this really made a difference. The only downside is splashing out £140 for 2 drives (£70 each). I haven’t been able to afford that yet, but one day, I’m sure I will.

Backing up your collection at home

Once your ok for taking your stuff out, its important to make sure you are backed up at home. I looked at quite a few packages that would backup files automatically to different locations, including other network drives and media like CD and DVD. I wanted something that would only backup files I had changed, and not copy the entire lot over each time (as that means each backup would take forever). As I usually only remember to back stuff up at the last minute (IE. ten minutes before I am taking my drives out), something that takes hours to backup was not going to work for me. After running through a number of freeware packages, which were all pretty so-so, I found KLS Backup 2007 – a program that I had to buy, but it was worth every penny. A quick look on the site shows me that there is a new version out (KLS Backup 2008 funnily enough), and that it has gone up slightly in price to $59.95 (about £30 by current exchange rate). I don’t know what the new features are, because I haven’t upgraded…but I am going to take an educated guess that they haven’t removed anything, and that KLS backup 2008 gives me all the same features of 2007 (with nicer icons no doubt).

Basically – it does everything. I wanted to be able to set up a job that would auto backup from my USB drive as soon as I plugged it into the main PC. KLS does this, and will synchronise the files rather than just straight backing them up. This means that if all I have changed from the last backup is 10 or 20 files, it only backs these files up, rather than taking the whole lot over again (which as I have mentioned could take hours). As long as I make sure that my files are backed onto different drives I have in my PC (and they are currently backed onto 3 different drives), I can be reasonably comfortable knowing that not all three of my main PC drives will fail at the same time. I mean, what are the chances of that happening. Hmm.

Because there is still a slim chance that would happen, say my little girl accidentally poured water into my computer, or I spilled a full beer on it, or a power surge, or…well because there is that chance, its also advisable to backup onto some kind of standard media. KLS will backup onto CD/DVD as well, although I just did a backup using Nero (any CD/DVD writer will do). Get a Dual Layer DVD writer – they are stupidly cheap now – a quick look on dabs shows one for £17, and you can find cheaper no doubt. With dual layer you can write 8GB to one single disk. My collection currently weighs in at about 20Gb, so three disks and I have everything backed up in hard copy, and hard copy never fails. Unless you get robbed. Or there’s a fire. Or crap on the disk. Or…

Backing up your collection to permanent storage

The last piece of the puzzle, and probably the least needed – but by far the most secure, is to find a backup solution that enables you to keep your files stored on an external server; maybe on the Internet, or shared storage space.

There are a million websites that do this, and many of them are free. Microsoft, for example, have the Microsoft Skydrive – an online storage solution that is free to all Windows Live users. BT have the Digital vault, that is free to users of BT broadband, and there are many web 2.0 (gah) sites that have storage as the main selling point – box.net, allmydata, amazonwebservices (you can find a very well compiled list of storage solutions here)…but they all seem to come with the same limitations. 5GB maximum storage, all files must be transferred by hand (not synchronised automatically), pay for extra 5GB chunks, wont host MP3′s, and so on.

I knew I would have to pay for a service, just because I wanted more than most of the free sites were offering…but I wanted to pay as little as possible (of course) and also, for my money, get synchronisation as part of the deal. Then, just like on my home system, only the files that need to be transferred (ie. the ones that are new or have changed) will be fired across cyberspace. This is essential – because synchronising a large number of files up to a server on the Internet is just about the slowest thing you can do. No matter what your download speed, your upload speed is *usually* pathetic. Mine, for example, on an 8mb BT land line is taking about 14 hours to transfer 1GB. When you have 20Gb to get through, you don’t really want to have to do all that by hand each time, or it would take about 2 weeks. Which is rubbish.

I found what I was looking for with a site I had used in the past that had clearly undergone a refit. Idrive gave me 150GB of storage space for $5 a month (or $50 if I sign up for a year). it also has a tool that will allow you to auto synchronise certain folders up to the web, and it can run permanently so as soon as you change those folders on your local PC it starts working, shooting things up to the server (slowly). Perfect really. I don’t know of another site that will do the same for the price, but one may exist, so hunt around (and please let me know). I wont go into the in’s and out’s of Idrive here, I will just say that the software was pretty easy to use, and everything worked first time, as you would expect.

Summary

This is probably the geekiest article I have ever written. Ive spent a whole night of my life collecting my thoughts on how best to backup a bunch of files so then you don’t lose them. Writing it at some points, I felt that surely there is no one in the world who wants to know this stuff at this level. But really, there should be. Lets look at vinyl – there are articles in magazines, on sites, in books…all related to how best to look after and store your vinyl. There are complete solutions, products, and businesses that are founded on this alone. I am not saying that an MP3 is nearly as valuable or personal as vinyl; we know that’s not the case. Having that tune to play at the right time, no matter what the format, certainly is, and as I use Serato, my MP3′s should now be treated with just the same love as my boxes of records.

I know that now I have everything backed up, i can never lose anything. Unless of course there is some kind of global catastrophe. But what are the chances of that happening?

There’s something about Southport. On paper, it looks great. 5,000 friendly people and tickets that sell out months in advance. Live acts that push the boundaries of soul, jazz, funk, Latin and house. DJs who are at the forefront of every evolutionary branch of Black music. But when the sweat’s pouring down your face in the Powerhouse, or when Theo’s playing just a little bit too loud and you still can’t be dragged away, or when you’re surrounded by some of the greatest dancers you’ve ever seen and you don’t feel even a little bit self-conscious, you feel the part of Southport that can’t be written down. The part of Southport that isn’t captured in the footage and that isn’t invoked by live recordings. It’s a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

In The Gift, a literary exploration of the creative spirit, Lewis Hyde retells a mid-nineteenth-century English folk tale about a man from Devonshire. Fairies had given this man a barrel of ale that would never run dry. For many years the ale flowed freely until one day the man’s inquisitive maid removed the bung of the barrel and peered inside. All she saw was cobwebs. And so it is with Southport. Whenever I try to pin down just what it is that makes Southport special, I’m inevitably left with cobwebs. What I do know, and what the Southport faithful most definitely knows, is that here, for six days each year, there is magic in the air.

And it’s a magic that everybody feels. A few songs into a blistering set, Carl Craig takes to the mic: ‘I know you’re all music lovers here. Southport’s all about the music. So I’m gonna play a little different to how I usually do, I hope y’all keep dancing!’ For two hours his pulsing, concrete beats and nagging synths cause a riot in the freshly branded Beat Bar.

Another highlight in the most progressive room at the Weekender came from Luisito Quintero on Saturday night. His contagious energy and glowing smile elevated the mood as he introduced rhythms from the Afro-Latin, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Venezuelan diaspora to an excitable capacity crowd. Recloose followed with one of the standout DJ sets of the weekend, not only joining the dots between the organic and the electronic but blurring the boundaries completely with his low-slung show of tropical techno funk.

At 6.30am on Sunday morning, Theo Parrish stepped up to the turntables. Whatever music Theo chooses to play, it always sounds like Theo. It’s mind-bending, it’s raw and it’s feverishly unpredictable. Whether it’s the giving of a particularly rousing techno 12″ to an admiring DJ Rahaan or the passion that flows through every twisted sound, his magic – the magic of Southport – is a magic that can never be truly described, but once felt is never forgotten.

Lead photograph by Kwame Asiaw
Book tickets for November’s Weekender here.

You were in Liverpool last Thursday for Africa Express, how was that?
Mad! Absolute chaos! An amazing array of people came, we were on stage with Baaba Maal, Nitin Sawhney, even the rhythm section from Reverend and the Makers.

So is this the first time you’ve toured?
Yes apart from a few gigs we did in October. It’s building slowly as it’s such a small thing but people pretty much always go away thinking, ‘Wow that was something!’

It’s such a unique fusion.
It is an unusual thing but then we’re not trying to mix fish with foul if you know what I mean: everything is from the same gene pool. We’re not putting conflicting rhythms or conflicting scales together and that fusion is what the concept of Soul Science is all about.

The rhythms and the melodies are old, really old. Like thousands of years old! If somebody calls it blues or they call it funk then yes, its outer shell is blues or funk or reggae or whatever it is. But the actual science of how you fit a rhythm with a melody is very ancient, and it comes from different parts of Africa. It’s not just any blues lick I’m playing. I know enough about Juldeh’s traditional music to be able to play a lick I know he relates to, that’s why it works.

I particularly liked your version of Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man.
Ah yes, Juldeh is Fulani so he calls it Fulani Coochi Man!

How much of the set is improvised?
Our system is that we know the rhythm and the key of each song, and we have a signal to end each piece. And we know a few key points in the set but the actual form of each song, for example how many bars it is before somebody starts singing, or when someone takes a solo, that’s completely improvised.

And it works so well as a unit – even without drums or bass, you’ve got a really full sound.
My inspiration was the bands you see in the streets in places like Morocco, with just three guys. If one guy with an acoustic guitar can sound pretty big then why can’t three people sound enormous? There’s not a lot of sub bass and as much as I like it, you can live without it. It gives a spacious feel to the music. A fiddle, electric guitar and percussion trio – I don’t think there’s another band in the world quite like it!

You can buy the Soul Science album here.

What is your definition of an edit?

In a strict sense it’s taking an existing recording and altering the arrangement, although, with the options available via modern technology, the lines have become increasingly blurred.

What is the difference between an edit and a remix?

In the original sense, an edit involved the stereo master only, whereas a remix was when you worked with the multi-track tape of a recording and were able to access all the separate elements, allowing you to add effects and change the eq’s of each individual sound. Once again, this has become a grey area, not least because remixes changed radically in the late 80’s and 90’s as record companies looked to maximise sales of dance releases by having multi-genre club mixes of the same track. Often, the original recording was completely replaced as the ‘remixer’ utilized their own sounds, specific to the style of dance music they were associated with. This was more like a re-recording (sometimes a totally different track, bearing no audible relationship to the original) than a remix in its true form.

lot of the stuff I do sits somewhere between edit and remix. I often work with all the individual stems of a complete recording, whilst retaining the same eq’s and effects. This obviously allows me far greater maneuverability than I’d have with a straightforward edit, although not as much as a full-on remix. I also overdub my own sounds, adding new textures and flavours.

How did edits come about and what was their use?

They evolved in New York in the 70’s, as extended versions for DJ use – the 12” single grew out of this . The original Disco mixes were essentially edits, the pioneers like Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons splicing tape to extend the tracks they were working with. The first commercially available 12” single was the Walter Gibbons mix of ‘Ten Percent’ by Double Exposure, issued on Salsoul in 1976. Although he worked from the master tape, he only had a limited amount of time (3 hours) to put his mix together, with his approach being very much edit based – running off sections and splicing them together.

Why did you start making edits?

My first re-edit was in 1983. It was on a track called ‘Heaven Sent’ by Paul Haig, which was pressed as a DJ only promo. As far as I’m aware, this was the first re-edit by a UK DJ (although re-edit wasn’t a term we used back then). I got into editing as a result of the mixes I was doing for Piccadilly Radio, starting in May ’82. Originally these were recorded live onto reel to reel (a Revox B77), and topped and tailed at the station by one of their engineers. One day there was nobody there to do this and I ended up going into one of the editing booths and having a go myself. Following on from this I began to use editing as a feature of the mixes, which became increasingly intricate, especially after I bought my own B77 towards the end of the year.

What do you think of the current trend of edits and all the new labels like Supreme, Mindless Boogie, Dirty, etc. releasing them?

I definitely regard it as a positive development. Apart from my own edits, I play lots of other peoples’. There are some great edits out there and some not so great ones – it’s the same with anything.

Do edits still serve the same purpose as they used to?

I think that nowadays they provide a strong example of how older music can still be evolving, years after it was first released, as a new generation of listeners connect with these tracks from their own perspective. Great music is great music, no matter when it was made, and if a new edit can make a track more relevant to people now, I’d say that’s good thing.

Would you say that this trend is a reflection of the current lack of inspiration in todays music?

There’s always good new music out there, it’s just that sometimes you have to dig deeper than at others. There’s also a wealth of older stuff to explore, so it’s only natural, especially with all the online options available at this point in time, that there’s an interest in the music of the past. Re-edits put a contemporary spin on something that might otherwise be regarded as purely retrospective, providing a balance between looking back and moving forward.

INTERVIEW WITH ALEXIS LE-TAN (TRAX / FRANCE) – NOV 2007

Read about Greg’s Credit To The Edit compliation: http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/credit_to_the_edit/index.html

Greg Wilson Editing Tape – ARTE Tracks Aug 2007

Click here to view the embedded video.

About a month ago, I wrote an article on how to organise your MP3s for DJing. It would seem from the amount that have read it, it was found to be pretty useful. I thought that maybe following it up with a number of other Serato tutorials would be a good idea… so here is the second; Setting up your (PC) laptop for use with Serato. Before I start this article, I want to make it clear that many of these ideas have been taking from existing forum posts, the SSL wiki, and other tips from people on the web. I am just trying to put everything together in one easy to read chunk to save you all the hassle I had finding out this information. With that in mind, I’d like to thank jaybird, and the many other people from whom I recycled and reorganised many of these tips.

This is written with my circumstances in mind, therefore it is a PC only guide (I don’t have a Mac), and specifically for Windows XP. I may transfer over to Vista at some point, and if I do, I will write a new piece about that. Also, while I try to explain everything as best I can – it also assumes you have some level of technical knowledge as far as computers are concerned. The more technical, the better, in fact.

Background

When I bought my Serato, I didn’t have the money to buy a brand new laptop as well. I assume that I am not the only person who found themselves in this position. Even though you could get a new laptop with good enough specs for about £400, it’s just money I didn’t have. So, I had to use an older laptop, and figure out a way to get the absolute best performance out of it so Serato would run without issue. This turned out to be pretty difficult as at first I had USB dropouts, poor performance, tunes stuttering and stammering as the CPU load went to 100% all the time… almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. If any of these things are happening to you when you are tying to use Serato – then this article could help.

First Steps

First thing is to make sure your laptop is as close to (if not better than) the minimum system requirements. These recommend that you have at least 1GB of memory, and a 1.5GHz processor, but I have managed to get Serato to run without a problem on 512MB of ram – albeit having to disable pretty much everything on the laptop and using it solely for Serato and nothing else. If you can get 1GB of memory though, I recommend it as an upgrade for a 512MB machine usually costs very little (£20 – £30).

The next thing I would do is make sue that the laptop is running Windows XP – it’s better than Vista performance wise at the moment for Serato. For a clean copy of Windows XP, follow these steps:

1. Format the Laptop, making sure you have all the latest drivers for the components in the laptop at the ready. Rather than use a driver CD that came with the laptop, if you are technical (and comfortable) enough, I would get all the latest drivers for each component from the relevant site. For example, I had to get motherboard (chip-set) drivers, sound drivers, graphics card drivers, and so on.
2. When the laptop is formatted, you should partition the drive, leaving 10GB for your operating system on the C drive, and setting up whatever you have left as a library backup / mix recording drive. On an 80GB drive this would mean 10GB for OS and the small packages that you would eventually install, and 70GB for your tracks.
3. Install a fresh copy of Windows XP on the C drive.
4. Install all the drivers, putting the chip-set drivers on first, then graphics, then sound, then… (delete as applicable).

Do not, under any circumstances, download any software at this point to put on the laptop, or install any other packages that came with the laptop on CD. We simply don’t need them. The only thing that should be on the PC at this stage is our nice fresh copy of Windows XP… at this point we do not need any virus packages, or broadband helpers, or printer software – leave the fresh install as is.

Optimising Windows

Now we have this install of XP – it’s time to optimise it. There are many ways to do this, and many things you may or may not need to take out/clean/optimise. Basically rather than split it up here into what is absolutely necessary and what isn’t, I am going to give you a whole list of tips to follow. You can run through these in half an hour and have that clean copy of windows running even faster. In most instances, you don’t need to do a lot to Windows XP to get Serato running at its most efficient.

1. Visual Performance – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “Advanced” tab. Click the “settings” button (under performance). Select the radio button that says “Adjust for best performance”. Click “Apply”.
2. Background Services – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “Advanced tab”. Click the “settings” button (under performance). Select the Advanced tab. Select the radio button that says “Background Services”. Click “Apply”.
3. Disable error reporting – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “Advanced” tab. Click the “Error Reporting” button at the bottom of the screen. Click the “disable error reporting” radio button. Click “OK”.
4. Disable Remote Desktop – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “Remote” tab. Make sure both the boxes on this page are unchecked.
5. Disable Automatic Updates – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “Remote” tab. Click “Turn off Automatic updates”. Click “Apply”.
6. Turn off system restore – right click computer (on the desktop), select properties. Select the “System Restore” tab. Make sure the “Turn off system restore” box is checked. Click “Apply”.
7. Remove unneeded components – Open up the “add/Remove Programs” box from the control panel. Click “Add/Remove Windows Components” in the left hand gutter. Many of the items that pop up, you will not need. Look through them and uncheck any you do not want installed, then click OK. A tip here is I don’t have any of them installed and it doesn’t effect what I can or cannot do.
8. Turn off system sounds – Open up the “Sounds and Audio Devices” box from the control panel, and click on “Sounds”. From the drop down list, click “No Sounds”, then click “No” then click “Apply”.
9. Turn off screensaver – Right click the mouse on the desktop, select “properties”. Click “Screensaver”. In the drop down list choose “none”. Click “Apply”.
10. Remove desktop image – Right click the mouse on the desktop, select “properties”. Click “Desktop”. In the “Background” box, click “NONE”. Click “Apply”.
11. Remove Drive Indexing – Open up windows explorer, and right click on your C drive and go down to properties. Uncheck the box that says “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”. Click “Apply”. repeat this for all the drives on your PC.
12. Disable Fast User Switching – Open up the “User Accounts” from the control panel. Click “Change the way users log on or off”. Untick Use Fast User Switching. Click “Apply”.
13. Switch Off Power Schemes – Start > Settings > Control Panel > Power Options > Always On > Turn off monitor and turn off hard discs to Never
14. Switch Off Hibernation – Start > Settings > Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate > Untick Hibernation
15. Startup and Recovery Options – Right click My Computer and click on Properties > Advanced > Start Up & Recovery Settings and uncheck “Automatically Restart”. Fixed Swap File (Virtual Memory) – Select the Advanced tab of the Systems applet and then select the Performance settings button. Then select the Advanced page. In here it is possible to customise the Virtual Memory. For custom size, this is often recommended to be 1.5 to 2 times the amount of your total RAM for both initial and maximum size. Set this to a fixed minimum and maximum value according to your existing RAM.
16. Disable Offline Files – Start > Settings > Control Panel > Folder Options > Offline Files > Untick “Enable Offline Files”
17. Disable Automatic Desktop Cleanup Wizard – Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Desktop > Customise Desktop > Untick “Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days”

Some of these tips I already knew – some I found on this excellent article that has 25 tips on how to optimise your PC for sound, and other general stuff I picked up in this very good Windows XP Optimization Guide. This is now about the best system we can get, so let’s continue.

Installing Serato

The driver CD that came with your Serato box will more than likely be out of date. The current version of software that is available at the time of writing this article is Scratch LIVE 1.8.0 which you can download here. You can also download the latest update of the manual from this page. This version has the most features of any Serato release so far, and I have been using it without a single problem now for a number of months, so this is the version I am going to recommend that you install.

1. Connect your laptop to the Serato box via the included USB cable.
2. The laptop will now ask you for drivers for the Serato system. You can find these drivers in latest version of Serato that you just downloaded, inside the Drivers > XP > SL1 directory (they are called SeratoUsb.sys and SeratoUsb.inf). Select this directory and continue through until the drivers have been fully installed.
3. The Serato will now be installed for use on your system, however, due to some weird technical issue that is way beyond me, it will only install the Serato drivers for the USB port you had it attached in at that moment. In order for Serato to work on any USB port on your laptop, I suggest that you follow steps 1 and 2 for each port, and then check that it does indeed work as it should no matter where you have plugged it in.
4. You must now install the Scratch Live software. Simply double click the setup.exe that came in the 1.8.0 download, and this will install the software to a location of your choosing. I recommend that this be the C drive, the same as the operating system.
5. When installed, click the Scratch Live icon on the desktop, and the software should load without problem. As long as you have your Serato box still plugged in via USB, you should be able to see the standard Scratch Live view displaying the visual representation of two turntables.

And that’s it. A nice fresh install of optimised Windows XP, with the latest version of Scratch Tools and the drivers installed on all ports. You should really be ready to take on the world.

Serato Configuration

I’m not going to talk too much about Serato configuration, the Serato manual does a good job of that. There are, however, two really important options that you can enable/disable depending on the resources on your machine. If you setup everything as the above article suggests, and you are still experiencing USB dropouts – you need to go into your settings and make sure that the “Auto Build Overviews” and also the “Hi-Fi Sampler” settings are both unchecked. They really can make a big difference to the performance of the laptop. You should also read the aforementioned Serato manual from cover to cover, at least 10 times, because I find something new every time I do.

Disclaimer

I’ve never had to add anything like this to an article I have crafted – but as I stated at the very beginning, I am assuming you have some technical knowledge before you dive in and do any of this. You can post me your laptop to fix if you break it, with a letter complaining that it was all my fault – but expect to see both items for sale on ebay within a few days. In other words – if you are unsure, don’t do it, because it’s just too difficult to troubleshoot.

I have seen countless people asking on forums how you organise, store, sort and play MP3s for DJing. I was, until not long ago, one of the people asking (thanks to THP and Baggy at Cosmic Disco for being the answerer of many a question). It’s only been the last 6 months that I have changed over from being a “vinyl only” man to using MP3s as well.

It started with the bar I play in regularly being CDJ only – and moved on from there. Ease of use on the digital download sites, removing crackles and pops from old vinyl on conversion… the reasons to change are numerous, but are not for all. I’m not writing this article to encourage anyone to change; that’s a personal choice of course. I’m writing this article to share with the world how I keep things organised, stored and ready to be played. This method might not be for everyone, some might only find part of it useful – but it works for me. Take from it what you will.

NB: As I use Serato Scratch, this heavily influences how I do things. However, it might be the same principle for other software/hardware solutions (Final Scratch, PC-DJ, et al).

Software

I use a number of different software packages…

• hdogg – recorder for recording WAV file
• Soundforge 9 (any editing software: audition, cooledit, etc. would also work) for cleaning and normalising files
• Media Monkey – MP3 organiser, tagger, etc.
• Mixmeister BPM Analyzer – writes the rough BPM of a file to the BPM field
• Scratchtools – little scripts that work wonders when used properly with your Serato library

Hardware

I also use hardware in the setup.

• Serato Scratch – you probably know what this does so I will refrain from explaining.
• Rugged USB drive – stores main MP3 collection and Serato library/crates

Organisation Structure

I try to keep things nice and simple for organising files, or else I just end up spending too much time trying to figure out whether a tune is disco, or disco funk, or funky disco, or… you get the picture I am sure. So I have the following folders setup that kind of encompass everything I play:

• disco
• funk
• contemporary
• electro

There are a few others in there, general stuff – but I don’t need to list them all. You get the idea and I am sure that you all have your own genre labeling preferences. I store this folder structure on my main computer – and also mirror it on the USB drive that I use for storing all the MP3s that I take with me to play out. On my main PC this folder structure is stored in a \newmusic directory, on the usb drive its just stored in the root. This means that any new tunes I purchase, or rip from vinyl, etc. go into \newmusic\<whatever genre>, and then, when I have cleaned up the meta information and what not (see “preparing the files” below), I simply copy all the directories and place them onto the USB drive – where all my new files merge with the masses of exciting and wonderful music I already have…

Preparing

Once the files have been added into the correct category in the \newmusic directory, its time to clean them up so that I have some consistency with naming and quality. This is a 3 stage process.

Stage 1 – Check the file quality, volume, etc.

The first stage is to load up the file into SoundForge (or whatever WAV editor you use) and clean it up. I usually run a normalize filter, then check that there is no extra silence at the start and end of the track. These things are not so much an issue if you have downloaded the file from an MP3 site like Juno Download, or Dance Tracks Digital but I usually have things to sort when I have recorded the file myself from vinyl. Once the file is sorted you can save as whatever file format you want (I always choose 320kbps MP3 but you might want a higher or lower quality file). Again, most files you purchase from the net will probably be in the correct file format in the first place.

Stage 2 – Clean up the meta data

Now we have the file we want to work with, it needs to have the correct title, artist, and so on. Without this, its a nightmare finding what you need when its added into the library. Media Monkey is your friend – although iTunes is probably just as good to those who are familiar with it (personally I despise it). Basically there are three things to do – get the title and artist information correct, auto-rename the file-name to match, and take out any of the crappy information you don’t need. For example, I don’t really ever use album art so it just gets deleted out. I also take the time here to make sure the case is correct (media monkey has a script you can run on all files that will do it automatically), the genre is correct to the folder the file is in, and that things are spelled correctly. Its probably a bit anal, but it bodes well for a better cataloged collection. I can now happily search on title and artist – knowing that all my files have the correct information to the best of my knowledge.

Stage 3 – BPM

This stage is not really the most important, although it does help from time to time. I have tried using a couple of different programs in the past to correctly analyze the BPM – and to be honest, all of them have their downfalls. Most of them don’t get the BPM quite right, or sometimes cant get it at all. It’s not even that often that I use the BPM – the style of mixing I practice (shit mixing) doesn’t ever really lend itself to the need for precise BPM. However, it helps – from time to time, I must admit – especially if its a tune I haven’t heard much and I need to make sure it will keep a certain tempo going. I settled using Mixmeister BPM Analyzer, because it’s accurate enough, and best of all – it’s free.

Organising (again)

So now with the files all cleaned up and ready to rock – all I do is merge them in with the existing files I have on my USB drive. It’s just a case of copying the same directory structure that’s in the \newmusic directory, and pasting it into the root of the USB drive.

Serato

(NB: this is only useful for those people who have a Serato system, as it’s pretty specific…)

Importing the new files into Serato used to be the most time consuming part of making my new music ready to play out. The Serato software is, sadly, lacking in many simple areas – especially if you are importing quite a lot of files in one go. I am still in the process of ripping my many hundreds of records – so I sometimes add many files all at the same time. And in Serato, unless you reconstruct all your crates from scratch, this means adding each file individually. A complete nightmare, unless you use iTunes, which will link into your Serato library. However, because I don’t use iTunes (and didn’t want to use it), I just couldn’t get what I wanted out of this method. And then I found Scratchtools.

Scratchtools is a utility that someone who used the Scratchlive Forums wrote. It works on both Mac and PC as its written in JAVA, and if you use Serato, but don’t use iTunes, it will be of incredible use. Basically, it’s a command line tool that lets me batch import files into Serato at the run of a command, synchronising a folder structure I have on my drive with crates in the Serato Library. It’s a little fiddly to get to grips with, but it fits my system perfectly. To start with I have the same crates in Serato as I have directories on my USB drive. To refresh you, these are something along the lines of…

• disco
• funk
• contemporary
• electro

So it’s fairly simple – when I add a tune to a folder on my USB drive – I want that to be reflected straight away in my Serato. Using scratchtools I run a batch file that I have setup, and this does that exact thing for me. It synchronises the crate in Serato with the drive, meaning that any new files I have added are picked up as soon as I load up the Serato interface, and also any files that I have deleted from the drives have been removed. Remarkable really. I suppose it’s even more remarkable that Serato doesn’t do that in the first place – but when you get such quality everywhere else, it’s easy enough to forgive this. There are many other things that scratchtools will do – it will allow you to move your entire library, organise the columns in every crate that you have, search for duplicates, and many other features that now I have them, I couldn’t do without. It’s simply the most important piece of the puzzle for me.

Rather than go into a whole tutorial on scratchtools here, as that could be another ten posts in itself, I will point out all the tutorials on the forums that I read and were of great use. You can also download the batchfile I run each time to update my library, just in case you wanted to use it as a starting template.

• Windows XP scratchtools Guide
• Making and using a batch file to save time with repeated functions
• Sync crates to folder
• Reset Columns

As I use a PC setup (running XP) – the above guides are for this system. There are Mac guides also available in the master forum: http://forum.scratchtools.de/list.php?6

Is that it?

Yes. And no. I hope that people pick up enough tips from here or send me some tips through on how I could improve this process. It takes quite a lot of my time, I admit, but it’s worth it. I have a collection thats really well organised now and finding things is a doddle. The biggest problem I have is remembering which track is which, not actually finding them.

MP3 DJing using Serato is something I initially looked at because I had to, and I’ll be honest, I am glad I did (and Cosmic Disco think so too). I still buy vinyl all the time – just that now I rip it. However you want to DJ, surely it doesn’t matter – as long as the music is good and people dance, that’s all that counts.

edit: as a follow up article, or maybe even a precursor to this one, I suggest you read Setting up and optimising your PC laptop for use with Serato. They compliment each other pretty well…

We never used the term in the North, although many of the same tracks had been massive with the black music audience following their arrival as US imports. We regarded them mainly as Disco Funk, or in some cases Electro-Funk, which utilised elements of the (then) new technology (Disco Funk being recorded in a more orthodox way, with drum kit as opposed to beat box).

It was also an unfamiliar genre name in America, where these records had originated. London DJ and collector, Sean P, renowned for his encyclopaedic knowledge of Boogie, plus other forms of dance music, recalls some friends going into record shops in the US and receiving blank looks when they asked for Boogie; the staff even enquiring if they wanted recordings about ghosts! This misunderstanding was down to the fact that what we call the Bogeyman in the UK is the Boogeyman in the States.

The word itself has a somewhat dubious background. Here’s something I found online about its origin and evolution, written by American columnist, Cecil Adams:

“Boogie” seems to come, via a circuitous route, from the Latin Bulgarus, an inhabitant of Bulgaria. The Old French term boulgre was used to refer to a member of a sect of 11th-century Bulgarian heretics, and “bougre” first appears in the English writing in 1340 as a synonym for “heretic.” By the 16th century, “bougre” grew into “bugger,” a practitioner of vile and despicable acts including “buggery,” or sodomy. “Bogy” (or “bogie”) first appears in the 19th century as an appellation for the devil; later it came to be used for hobgoblins in general. Hence, the bogeyman, which may be the source of the use of “bogey” and “boogies” to mean “Negro”. Shortly after these usages became common (in the 1920s), there appeared boogie woogie music, and I guess you can figure out the rest.

So it seems that, with regards to black culture, boogie was originally a racist slur, which was intended to demonise black people, before it was adopted in connection with music and dancing by those it was meant to put down. In this way it became a name used for ‘Rent Parties’ within US black communities in cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York during the 20’s, where musicians played in someone’s home and a hat was passed around the audience so they could put in money, which would help pay the rent. It was at such parties that Boogie Woogie emerged, a style that would have a huge influence on the course of black music (interestingly, Disco pioneer, DJ David Mancuso, cites the Rent Parties of 60′s New York as a major inspiration for his Loft parties).

The sub-genre of music that Londoners dubbed Boogie was, in essence, the direct continuation of Disco in its purest form. Many people have forgotten that the genre evolved from the Soul and Funk of black musicians. Later, of course, Disco would become increasingly commercialised, culminating in the blockbuster movie Saturday Night Fever, which elevated the Bee Gees, a white Pop band, to Disco superstardom, whilst a white suited John Travolta would become an iconic figure – the great white hope of the dancefloor. Disco went global, but its original audience, before Studio 54 stole the spotlight, knew that its true stars of the screen were afro haired black kids, who’d been busting all the best moves on Soul Train since the early 70’s.

Throughout the 70’s, the word boogie could be found in the title or lyrics of countless Funk and Disco records, but as the decade rolled on, it was beginning to sound increasingly cheesy to our British ears, especially when a Spanish holiday hit called ‘Yes Sir I Can Boogie’ by Baccara, topped the UK chart in 1977. By the early 80’s a new low had been reached, with Children’s TV character, the robot Metal Mickey, further devaluing the word via his annoying catchphrase ‘boogie boogie’.

However, it began to claw back some of its former credibility thanks to huge underground tracks like Rafael Cameron’s ‘Boogie’s Gonna Get Ya’ and ‘Caveman Boogie’ by Lessette Wilson, plus the Gunchback Boogie Band’s ‘Funn’, and with the emerging Electro scene it’s recuperatation was completed (Extra T’s ‘E.T Boogie’, West Street Mob ‘Break Dancin’ – Electric Boogie’, Man Parrish ‘Boogie Down (Bronx)’ etc).

From a London perspective, the Boogie scene, if not yet born, was conceived in the late 70’s at the West End club, Crackers, where DJ George Power would refer to the dancers, regarded as some of the best in the capital, as ‘boogie boys’ and, as Crackers veteran, Terry Farley, informed me, would frequently use the word whilst talking over the microphone (as DJ’s did in those days). Power was a true pioneer of UK dance culture who has only received a fraction of the full credit he merits. Later down the line he’d be the co-founder of Kiss FM, originally a pirate station, which would play an absolutely pivotal role in bringing London’s dance underground to wider recognition.

But it wouldn’t be until after the Crackers days were long gone that Boogie gradually became a category in its own right. A young Sean P remembers going into a shop in Brixton, called Red Records, in the early 80’s and finding a ‘Soul/Disco/Boogie’ section. It struck him as odd that an old-fashioned word was being applied to such a cutting-edge music.

The sub-genre really came into its own around 1985, when Kiss FM (named in tribute to the seminal New York dance station) took to the air and DJ’s like Gordon Mac, Norman Jay, DJ Tee (Tee Harris), Desi D, Tosca and, of course, Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson began playing club tracks from earlier in the decade (along with other pirate radio DJ’s like Trevor St Francis on LWR and Lyndon T on JFM), describing them as ‘Boogie’. The word Disco had been out of vogue since the 70’s, with the music played on the black scene, pre-Kiss, usually coming under the blanket terms of Soul or Electro, but then a new movement of mainly black kids from South and East London began to refer to this post-Disco groove as ‘Boogie’. The sound was typified by Leroy Burgess, and the big labels included Prelude, West End and Sam, with club support coming from DJ’s such as Trevor Shakes, Dez Parkes, Cleveland Anderson, Henderson Yearwood, Fitzroy Da Buzz Boy and Derek Boland (aka Derek B).

Former Black Echoes writer and Kiss head of music, Lindsay Wesker, a noted black music historian, remembers the station, during its formative period, featuring as much Boogie as Rare Groove (which focused on relatively obscure 70’s Funk), making its way onto the playlists of now established names like Jazzie B and Trevor ‘Madhatter’ Nelson. It was such a big deal in London that Kiss would even release two volumes of their ‘Boogie Tunes’ compilation on Graphic Records in the late 80’s, making a number of highly sought after tracks available on vinyl at an affordable price (echoing Northern Soul, collecting Boogie and Rare Groove was both time-consuming and a drain on the pocket).

But, returning to the question of how the term Boogie came to represent a category of music in the first place, the first clue I could find was in a copy of Blues & Soul from September 1981. This was in an advert for the launch of Jazzifunk Club’s Saturday night at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. George Power, headlined, supported by Paul Anderson (who’d cut his teeth alongside Power at Crackers), Chris White, Colin Parnell and Boo, with the ad referring to the venue’s 2 floors, which proclaimed ‘Jazz On Top! Soul, Funk ‘n’ Boogie Down Below’.

During the early 80’s, specialist club nights would list the music featured as Jazz, Jazz-Funk, Soul, Funk, Disco, and later Electro or Electro-Funk, but never Boogie – the Electric Ballroom was unique in this respect. The only exception I’m aware of was a little known venue called ‘Gemas New Caprice Club’ in Watford, which, in London’s Groove Weekly magazine, advertised ‘Up-Front Jazz-Funk and Boogie’ in August 1982, having previously used ‘Jazz-Funk’ on its own). However, the trail came to an abrupt end at that point and I couldn’t find any further mention in either Blues & Soul or Groove Weekly during the coming years. It certainly wasn’t classified as a genre by the main London import specialists, like Groove, City Sounds and Bluebird.

I wondered if there was any direct link to Roller Disco, which had come to the UK, with limited success, from the US. Interestingly, a cash-in Hollywood movie called ‘Roller Boogie’ had highlighted the craze in 1979, and, by co-incidence, the Electric Ballroom would launch a mid-week Roller Disco night in 1982 with Paul Anderson as DJ. Andrew Mason, from New York’s Wax Poetics magazine, had told me that Danny Krivit, who both deejayed at New York’s legendary Roxy (which originally came to prominence as one of the top Roller Rinks in the country) as well being an accomplished skater himself, explained to him that the slightly shuffled clap / snare on the 2 and 4 (as opposed to a steady 4 on the floor beat) was best suited for skaters, who pushed off on alternate legs to that rhythm. Vaughan Mason’s ‘Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll’ is an obvious example, as is Chic’s classic ‘Good Times’ (which, of course, includes the line ‘clams on the half shell and roller-skates, roller-skates’).

So, basically, the best music to roller skate to, especially in New York, where the most impressive skaters were generally black or Latino, was funkier edged Disco, including many tracks that would later be regarded as Boogie classics in London.

Doing some further detective work, I checked with Danny Krivit to see if the term Roller Boogie was widely used in the US, and he informed me that it was only ever something people might say on a mainstream level, following on from the film, and definitely not how hardcore skaters would refer to the music. It seems that, just as over here, the word boogie was actually considered corny, rather than cool.

So, it wasn’t until a mainly black audience of dance music enthusiasts from London re-adopted the term, to describe the retrospective groove they were into, that Boogie reclaimed its credibility. “Nowadays”, as Sean P points out, “thanks to eBay and the general spreading of the word over the past couple of years, people from the US, Europe and wherever use ‘Boogie’ as a generic term, to describe early 80’s dance music of black origin”.

SEAN P’s 50 BOOGIE ESSENTIALS 1980-1984

Al McCall ‘Hard Times’ (West End 12″)
B.B.C.S & A Band ‘Rock Shock’ (Sam 12″)
B.T (Brenda Taylor) ‘You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too’ (After Hour/West End 12”)
Carol Williams ‘Can’t Get Away’ (Vanguard 12”)
Carole Sylvan ‘Think’ (Sound Of New York 12”)
Cloud One ‘Flying High’ (Heavenly Star 12”)
Clyde Alexander & Sanction ‘Got To Get Your Love’ (Heavenly Star 12″)
Convertion ‘Let’s Do It’ (Sam 12″)
Derrick ‘Boogie Times’ (Sunnyview 12″)
D-Train ‘You’re The One For Me’ (Prelude 12″)
Eighties Ladies ‘Turned On To You’ (Uno Melodic 12″)
Electrik Funk ‘On A Journey (I Sing The Funk Electric)’ (Prelude 12”)
The Fantastic Aleems Featuring Leroy Burgess ‘Get Down Friday Night’ (Nia 12″)
Forrrce ‘Keep On Dancin’ (Phase II)’ (West End 12″)
Funk Fusion Band ‘Can You Feel It’ (WMOT 12”)
George Benson ‘Give Me The Night’ (Warner Bros. 12″)
The Gunchback Boogie Band ‘Funn’ (Prelude 12”)
High Fashion ‘Feelin’ Lucky Lately’ (Capitol 12”)
Hi-Voltage ‘Let’s Get Horny’ (One Way 12”)
Inner Life ‘Find Somebody’/’I Like It Like That’/’Moment Of My Life’ (Salsoul LP)
The Jammers ‘Be Mine Tonight’/’What Have You Got To Lose’/‘And You Know That’ (Salsoul LP/12”)
Jeanette ‘Lady’ Day ‘Come Let Me Love You’ (Prelude 12”)
Komiko ‘Feel Alright’ (Sam 12”)
Legacy ‘Word Up’ (Brunswick 12”)
Lisa Hill ‘I Am On The Real Side’ (Cherry Hill 12″)
Logg ‘Logg’ (Salsoul LP)
Masurrati & Huey Harris ‘Super-Duper (Lovin’)’ (Lioness 12”)
Michael Wilson ‘Groove It To Your Body’ (Prelude 12″)
Montana Sextet ‘Heavy Vibes’ (PSW 12”)
New Jersey Connection ‘Love Don’t Come Easy’ (Carnival 12”)
Northend, Featuring Michelle Wallace ‘Happy Days’ /’Tee’s Happy’ (Emergency 12″)
Q ‘The Voice Of “Q”’ (Philly World 12”)
Rockers’ Revenge ‘Walking On Sunshine’ (Streetwise 12”)
Rome Jefferies ‘Good Love’ (Rain 12″)
The Shades Of Love ‘Keep In Touch (Body To Body)’ (Venture 12”)
Sharon Brown ‘I Specialize In Love’ (Profile 12”)
Sharon Redd ‘Beat The Street’ (Prelude 12”)
Sinnamon ‘I Need You Now ‘(Jive 12″)
Skyy ‘Here’s To You’ (Salsoul 12”)
Spirit Band ‘Keep Your Love Alive’ (Re-mix) (RSP 12″)
Steve Arrington’s Hall Of Fame ‘Way Out’ (Konglather 12″)
Stone ‘Time’ (West End 12”)
The Strikers ‘Body Music’ (Prelude 12”)
Tia Monae ‘Don’t Keep Me Waiting’ (First Take 12”)
Toney Lee ‘Reach Up’ (Radar 12″)
Universal Robot Band ‘Barely Breaking Even’ (Moonglow 12”)
Unlimited Touch ‘Happy Ever After’/‘I Hear Music In The Streets’/‘Searching To Find The One’ (Prelude LP/12”)
Tracey Weber ‘Sure Shot’ (RFC 12”)
The Whatnauts ‘Help Is On The Way’ (Harlem Int. 12″)
Wish ‘Nice And Soft’ (Perspective 12”)

Electro-Funk is undoubtedly the most misunderstood of all UK Dance genres, yet probably the most vital with regards to its overall influence. Central to the confusion is the term itself, which during 82/83 (before it was shortened to Electro) was specific to the UK. From a US perspective this music would come under a variety of headings (including Hip-Hop, Dance, Disco, Electric Boogie and Freestyle), arriving on import here in the UK mainly on New York labels like West End, Prelude, Sugarhill, Emergency, Profile, Tommy Boy, Streetwise, plus numerous others.

Just as Northern Soul was a British term for a style (or group of styles) of American black music, so was Electro-Funk, and, like Northern, the roots of the scene are planted firmly in the North-West of England.Although this has been documented in a number of books and publications down the years, often with a fair degree of insight, the subject is rarely approached with any true depth and attention to detail, the information all in fragments. Perhaps the main reason that Electro-Funk remains a mystery to so many people is because its audience was predominantly black at a time when cutting-edge black music (and black culture in general) was very much marginalized in the UK, and as a result essentially underground. To keep up to date with what was happening on the British black music scene in 82/83 you’d have had to have been a reader of a specialist publication like Blues & Soul or Black Echoes.

In the UK scheme of things Electro-Funk eventually took over from Jazz-Funk as the dominant force on the club scene, but not without major controversy and upheaval. The purists regarded electronic or electric (as they called it) with total contempt, rejecting its validity on the grounds that it was, in their opinion, not real music due to its technological nature (although Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” would put paid to that theory). However, as time went on and audience tastes began to change, even the most hostile DJs were forced to play at least some Electro-Funk. Despite all the resistance, the movement slowly but surely began to gain momentum, sweeping down from the North, through the Midlands and eventually into London and the South. The reason the Electro scene took so long to fully establish itself in the capital was down to the stranglehold the all-powerful Soul Mafia DJs held on the Southern scene. The Soul Mafia, with big names like Chris Hill, Robbie Vincent, Froggy, Jeff Young and Pete Tong, continued to concentrate on Jazz-Funk and Soul grooves (later referred to as “80s Groove”). It wouldn’t be until ‘84 that their virtual monopoly of the clubs, radio, and the black music press began to erode as a new order of music replaced the old, laying the foundations not only for Hip-Hop, but also the subsequent UK Techno and House scenes.

As has often been said, Electro is the missing link of Dance music. All roads lead back to New York where the level of musical innovation and experimentation throughout the early 80s period was quite staggering. It wasn’t one narrow style that never strayed from within the confides of an even narrower BPM range, Electro-Funk was anything goes! The diversity of records released during this period was what made it so magical, you never knew what was coming next. The tempo of these tracks ranged from under 100bpm to over 130, covering an entire rhythmic spectrum along the way. There was no set template for this new Dance direction, it just went wherever it went and took you grooving along with it. It was all about stretching the boundaries that had begun to stifle black music, and its influences lay not only with German Technopop wizards Kraftwerk, the acknowledged forefathers of pure Electro, plus British Futurist acts like the Human League and Gary Numan, but also with a number of pioneering black musicians. Major artists like Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, legendary producer Norman Whitfield and, of course, George Clinton and his P Funk brigade, would all play their part in shaping this new sound via their innovative use of electronic instruments during the 70s (and as early as the late 60s in Miles Davis’ case). Once the next generation of black musicians finally got their hands on the available technology it was bound to lead to a musical revolution as they ripped up the rule book with their twisted Funk.

Before Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force’s seminal Electro classic, “Planet Rock” (Tommy Boy) exploded on the scene in May 82, there had already been a handful of releases in the previous months that would help define this new genre. D Train’s “You’re The One For Me” (Prelude), which was massive during late 81, would set the tone, paving the way for “Time” by Stone (West End), “Feels Good” by Electra (Emergency) and two significant Eric Matthew / Darryl Payne productions, Sinnamon’s “Thanks To You” (Becket) and, once again courtesy of Prelude, “On A Journey (I Sing The Funk Electric)” by Electrik Funk (the term Electro-Funk originally deriving from this track, “electric-funk” being amended to Electro-Funk following the arrival of Shock’s “Electrophonic Phunk” on the Californian Fantasy label in June). However, the most significant of all the early releases was “Don’t Make Me Wait” by the Peech Boys (West End), for this was no longer hinting at a new direction, it was unmistakably the real deal. An extreme chunk of vinyl moulded by Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, “Don’t Make Me Wait” would quickly become a cult-classic, and eventually even manage to scrape into the top 50 of the British Pop chart, purely on the back of underground support (as would a number of subsequent Electro-Funk releases).

As the first British DJ to fully embrace this new wave of black music, I came in for a lot of personal criticism. Having already become an established name on the Jazz-Funk scene I was seen as a heretic for playing these soulless records, especially those that were regarded as the more blatant ones (for example, the dreaded “Planet Rock” and the rest of the Tommy Boys stuff, Warp 9 “Nunk” (Prism), Extra T’s “ET Boogie” (Sunnyview), Man Parrish “Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” (Importe/12), and Italian Zanza 12″, “Dirty Talk” by Klien & MBO). I generally opted for the Dub or instrumental versions, mixing them in alongside the more orthodox Funk, Soul and Jazz-Funk releases of the time at my weekly residencies, Legend in Manchester and Wigan Pier, where the scene first took root. These venues, both state-of-the-art US styled clubs, would become central to the movement throughout the 82-84 period, attracting people from all over the country. The music would also gain further exposure via my regular mixes for Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio (beginning in May 82), and in August 83 I’d introduce Electro to a new audience, when I became the first Dance resident at the Haçienda club.

Electro-Funk’s legacy is huge. It announced the computer age and seduced a generation with its drum machines, synthesizers and its sequencers, its rap, cut and scratch, its breaking and popping, its Dub mixes, its bonus beats and its innovative use of samples. Made to be mixed it inspired a new breed of British DJs to cut the chat and match the beats. Now legendary names like Grandmaster Flash, Tee Scott, Tony Humphries, Larry Levan, François Kevorkian, Shep Pettibone, John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez and Double Dee & Steinski became role-models for tuned-in DJs and would-be remixers, whilst pioneers of the new digital sampling technology, including New York producer Arthur Baker and his collaborator John Robie, British producer Trevor Horn (via “Buffalo Gals”) and, of course, the Herbie Hancock / Bill Laswell combination, with their Grammy winning “Rockit” (Columbia), not only revolutionized black music but instigated a whole new approach to popular music in general.

Electro-Funk was the channel that finally brought the Hip-Hop movement, and all its various creative components, firmly into the UK mainstream, helping to spread its message throughout Europe and beyond. To all intents and purposes Electro-Funk pre-dates Hip-Hop in a British context, the term not coming into common use here until much later. We were more or less clueless when it came to Hip-Hop until late 82, when Charisma Records in the UK unleashed Malcolm McLaren & The World’s Famous Supreme Team’s “Buffalo Gals” video, which came as something of a culture-shock to say least, bringing the full force of NYC street-style out of The Bronx and into our living rooms, and inspiring a carnival of breakdancing in cities and towns throughout Britain during the summer of 83. Eventually we’d learn of its origins with Kool DJ Herc, spinning his famous merry-go-round of breaks for the b boys. Before this, most people had presumed that the break in breakdancing referred to the damage you might do to your bones if you got the move wrong!

Although the media gradually latched onto this new dance craze, the scene that surrounded it wouldn’t receive any serious attention here in the UK until 1984. This followed the runaway success of the Street Sounds “Electro” compilations (Volume 1 released in October 83), which would take the music to a much wider audience, and result in The Face announcing “Electro – The Beat That Won’t Be Beaten” across its entire front page in May 84, a full two years on from the US release of “Planet Rock”. This substantial delay in recognition went a long way towards obscuring Electro-Funk’s essential role in kick-starting the 80s dance boom, with many UK club historians bypassing the pivotal early 80s period and mistakenly citing Detroit Techno as the trigger. Even the track that gave birth to Techno, the Juan Atkins / Rick Davies 12″ “Clear” by Cybotron (Fantasy), was regarded as an Electro classic here in 83, way before the Techno scene began to take shape, and would feature on the first Street Sounds “Crucial Electro” compilation the following year. Little mention is ever made of the fact that its remixer, Jose ‘Animal’ Diaz, was immersed in NY Electro, with previous mix credits including “We Are The Jonzun Crew” for Tommy Boy, and “Hip Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)”, which gained a new lease of life following his much sought-after limited edition mix for Disconet (the DJ Only format affiliated to Sugarscoop).

Electro’s star burnt very brightly, initially on the underground and eventually with the club masses. In 1984 the London scene took off in a big way, both in the clubs and on the radio, with the emergence of DJs like Herbie from Mastermind (who mixed the Street Sounds albums), Paul Anderson, Tim Westwood and Mike Allen confirming a radical shift in power on the capital’s black music scene. With the substantial weight of London behind it, the Electro movement quickly went overground enticing an ever-increasing number of switched-on white kids in its on-going search for the perfect beat. With a significant proportion of the British youth, regardless of colour, now grounded in Hip-Hop culture, the new UK Dance era was well and truly under way and it wouldn’t be long before musicians and DJs here began to create their own hybrid styles, most notably in Bristol where Electro was fused with the Reggae vibes of Dub and Lovers Rock, to bring about a unique flavour that would later be known as Trip-Hop. By the end of the decade cities like Manchester and London had become major players on the now global Dance scene, with the UK a veritable hotbed of creativity both in the clubs and the recording studios.

Electro-Funk was the prototype, and Hip-Hop, Techno, House, Jungle, Trip-Hop, Drum & Bass, UK Garage, plus countless other Dance derivatives, all owe their debts to its undoubted influence. Without it’s inspiration, it’s unlikely that British acts such as Coldcut, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, Soul To Soul, Massive Attack, The Prodigy, William Orbit, Goldie, the Chemical Brothers, Underworld and Fatboy Slim, to name but a few, would have emerged. When all’s said and done, Electro-Funk (or Electro or whatever people choose to call it) was the catalyst, the mutant strain that bridged the British Jazz-Funk underground to the Acid-House mainstream, Until this fact is fully recognized the UK Dance jigsaw will remain incomplete and confused, with countless clubbers, twenty years on, having no idea of the true roots of the music they’re dancing to.

ONE HUNDRED OF THE BIGGEST TUNES PLAYED AT LEGEND AND WIGAN PIER

The tracks are listed in chronological order – the first three entries arriving on import in late ’81.

• D TRAIN — You’re The One For Me (US Prelude)
• DR JECKYLL & MR HYDE — Genius Of Love (US Profile)
• STONE — Time (US West End)
• P–FUNK ALL STARS — Hydraulic Pump pt III (US Hump)
• ELECTRIK FUNK — On A Journey (I sing the funk electric) (US Prelude)
• PEECH BOYS — Don’t Make Me Wait (US West End)
• SINNAMON — Thanks To You (US Becket)
• AL McCALL — Hard Times (US West End)
• ELECTRA — Feels Good (US Emergency)
• ATLANTIS — Keep On Movin’ And Groovin’ (US Chaz Ro)
• AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & THE SOUL SONIC FORCE — Planet Rock (US Tommy Boy)
• SHOCK — Electrophonic Phunk (US Fantasy)
• SECRET WEAPON — Must Be The Music – remix (US Prelude – from the LP Kiss FM Mastermixes vol 1)
• GUNCHBACK BOOGIE BAND — Funn (US Prelude)
• THE SYSTEM — It’s Passion (US Mirage)
• ROCKERS REVENGE — Walking On Sunshine (US Streetwise)
• GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE — The Message (US Sugarhill)
• RAW SILK — Do It To The Music (US West End)
• THE JONZUN CREW — Pack Jam (Look Out For The OVC) (US Tommy Boy)
• SHARON REDD — Beat The Street – remix (US Prelude)
• KLIEN & MBO — Dirty Talk (Italian Zanza)
• Q — The Voice Of Q (US Philly World)
• EXTRA T’s — E.T Boogie (US Sunnyview)
• GEORGE CLINTON — Loopzilla (US Capitol)
• WARP 9 — Nunk (US Prism)
• TYRONE BRUNSON — The Smurf (US Believe In A Dream)
• PLANET PATROL — Rock At Your Own Risk (US Tommy Boy)
• WHODINI — Magic’s Wand (US Jive/Zomba)
• STONE — Girl I Like The Way That You Move (US West End)
• ORBIT — The Beat Goes On (Canadian Quality)
• DR JECKYLL & MR HYDE — The Challenge (US Profile)
• TONEY LEE — Reach Up (US Radar)
• GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE — Scorpio (US Sugarhill)
• MALCOLM McLAREN / WORLD’S FAMOUS SUPREME TEAM — Buffalo Gals (UK Charisma)
• NAIROBI & THE AWESOME FOURSOME — Funky Soul Makossa (US Streetwise)
• MAN PARRISH — Hip Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop) (US Importe/12 – later on Disconet 12″)
• INDEEP — Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (US Sound Of New York)
• REGGIE GRIFFIN & TECHNOFUNK — Mirda Rock (US Sweet Mountain)
• MELLE MEL & DUKE BOOTEE — Message II (survival) (US Sugarhill)
• PRINCE CHARLES & THE CITY BEAT BAND — The Jungle Stomp (US MJS)
• THE WEBBOES — Under The Wear (US Sam)
• THE JONZUN CREW — Space Is The Place (US Tommy Boy)
• SANDY KERR — Thug Rock (US Catawba)
• KLIEN & MBO — Wonderful (US Atlantic)
• EX TRAS — Haven’t Been Funked Enough (UK Excellent)
• VANITY 6 — Nasty Nasty Girls (US Hot Tracks – originally on Warner Brothers LP)
• AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & THE SOUL SONIC FORCE — Looking For The Perfect Beat (US Tommy Boy)
• JOHNNY CHINGAS — Phone Home (US Columbia)
• PURE ENERGY — Spaced Out (US Prism)
• VISUAL — The Music Got Me (US Prelude)
• C.O.D — In The Bottle (US Emergency – later on Disconet 12″)
• THE JONZUN CREW — We Are The Jonzun Crew (US Disconet – later on Tommy Boy 12″)
• RUN DMC — It’s Like That / Sucker MC’s (Krush-Groove 1) (US Profile)
• WARP 9 — Light Years Away (US Prism)
• D TRAIN — Music (US Prelude)
• SHIRLEY LITES — Heat You Up – Meltdown mix (US West End)
• WEEKS & CO — If You’re Looking For Fun (US Salsoul)
• FEARLESS FOUR — Just Rock (US Elektra)
• MIDNIGHT STAR — Freak-A-Zoid (US Solar)
• FREEEZE — I-Dub-U (US Streetwise)
• SINNAMON — I Need You Now (US Jive/Zomba)
• ROCK MASTER SCOTT & THE DYNAMIC THREE — It’s Life (You Gotta Think Twice) (US Reality)
• ELECTRIC POWER BAND — Papa Smurf (US Bee Pee)
• NEWTRAMENT — London Bridge Is Falling Down (UK Jive/Zomba)
• S.O.S BAND — Just Be Good To Me (US Tabu)
• TONEY LEE — Love So Deep (US Radar)
• NEWCLEUS — Jam On Revenge (The Wikki Wikki Song) (US Sunnyview – originally on US May Hew)
• HERBIE HANCOCK — Rockit (US Columbia)
• PROJECT FUTURE — Ray-gun-omics (US Capitol)
• TWO SISTERS — High Noon (US Sugarscoop)
• THE RAKE — Street Justice (US Profile)
• WUF TICKET — The Key (US Prelude)
• TIME ZONE — The Wildstyle (US Celluloid)
• CANDIDO — Jingo Breakdown (US Salsoul)
• UNIQUE — What I Got Is What You Need (US Prelude)
• THE PACKMAN — I’m The Packman (Eat Everything I Can) (US Enjoy)
• CYBOTRON — Clear (US Fantasy)
• PLANET PATROL — Cheap Thrills (US Tommy Boy)
• NEW ORDER — Confused Beats (UK Factory)
• HOT STREAK — Body Work (US Easy Street)
• WEST STREET MOB — Break Dancin’ – Electric Boogie (US Sugarhill)
• GARY’S GANG — Makin’ Music (US Radar)
• CAPTAIN ROCK — The Return Of Captain Rock (US NIA)
• B BOYS — Two, Three, Break (US Vintertainment)
• ARCADE FUNK — Search And Destroy (US D.E.T.T)
• DIMPLES D — Sucker DJs (I Will Survive) (US Partytime)
• G.L.O.B.E & WHIZ KID — Play That Beat MR DJ (US Tommy Boy)
• TOM BROWNE — Rockin’ Radio (US Arista)
• GRANDMASTER & MELLE MEL — White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It) (US Sugarhill)
• CAPTAIN RAPP — Bad Times (I Can’t Stand It) (US Saturn)
• TWILIGHT 22 — Electric Kingdom (US Vanguard)
• RUSSELL BROTHERS — The Party Scene (US Portrait)
• SHANNON — Let The Music Play (US Emergency)
• DJ DIVINE — Get Into The Mix (US West End)
• THE ART OF NOISE — Beat Box (UK ZTT)
• HASHIM — Al-naafiysh (The Soul) (US Cutting)
• B BOYS — Cuttin’ Herbie / Rock The House (US Vintertainment)
• MALCOLM X / KEITH LeBLANC — No Sell Out (US Tommy Boy)
• XENA — On The Upside (US Emergency)
• PUMPKIN — King Of The Beat (US Profile)