Episode 55
Dan Greenpeace's Route Through Radio
Dan Greenpeace, a distinguished luminary of the hip hop scene, shares his remarkable journey in this engaging podcast episode. As the principal hip hop DJ at XFM during its zenith, he has cultivated a wealth of experience in the music industry, spanning from DJing to A&R and concert promotion. In our conversation, he elucidates the origins of his moniker, recounts formative experiences in Leeds, and reflects on the evolution of hip hop culture. We delve into his tenure at XFM, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the station's hip hop landscape, as well as his transition into management and talent booking in Dubai. Throughout the discourse, Dan's passion for music and his insightful anecdotes illuminate the profound impact of hip hop on his life and career.
Mentioned in this episode:
Reissued classics from Be With Records
Get 10% off at bewithrecords.com using the code ONCEADJ
Transcript
So welcome back to one two dj.
Speaker A:We're here today with a man who I was trying to think how to describe.
Speaker A:I would kind of just say like a hip hop man about town.
Speaker A:I don't know if that's accurate or not, but Dan Greenpeace, what do you think?
Speaker B:Legend.
Speaker B:Hip hop legend.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, that works.
Speaker B:No, I mean call me a man about town.
Speaker B:Look, people make their own mind up by the end of it anyway, so.
Speaker A:You just know a lot of people.
Speaker A:That's kind of where I'm going with that.
Speaker B:Certainly know a lot of people.
Speaker B:Yeah, that much is true.
Speaker A:Now a couple of things before we kind of get into it.
Speaker A:One thing is where did the name come from?
Speaker A:Because I always forget to ask people once we get into the flow of.
Speaker B:It, excuse the self promotion on the T shirt as well.
Speaker B:Where did the name come from?
Speaker B:Well, yes, very simple.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:We'd go down to four Star General in London on Carnaby street and buy hip hop gear that was kind of imported in from New York.
Speaker B:And I got hold of a pair of like green Adidas, I think they're called top 10 highs.
Speaker B:And I had this green Adidas track suit.
Speaker B:So I was walking around Leedsite center in full green and someone just said, oh, it's Greenpeace.
Speaker B:And I became DJ Greenpeace.
Speaker B:The Dan Greenpeace came in quite a few years later because then I was writing for a lot of magazines and they would credit me as DJ Greenpeace if I wrote reviews.
Speaker B:And then a lady, I can't remember, it was Herb magazine I think in la.
Speaker B:And she just sort of basically put me down as Dan Greenpeace rather than DJ Greenpeace.
Speaker B:And then that was it, it became Dan Greenpeace just because she kind of just knew me as Dan and Greenpeace.
Speaker B:And Yeah, a long way around of.
Speaker B:Yeah, a long way of telling you summed up in about 20 seconds.
Speaker A:And the other thing just to flag is my kind of knowledge, you is that you're.
Speaker A:Let me reword that.
Speaker A:When people have talked to me about you, it's.
Speaker A:You're one of those people where people will be like, oh, Dan's got a lot of stories.
Speaker A:So if we're talking about something and you realize it's an amazing story that I've not kind of managed to pull out of you, you know, just if we need to just kind of stop everything in divert, then please just go for it.
Speaker A:So, yeah, that's a great introduction there to you.
Speaker A:And so what I tend to do is just go into timeline with people, really.
Speaker A:So how did hip hop first come into your life in Leeds?
Speaker A:I'm particularly interested as I'm bought.
Speaker A:I'm Wakefield born, so I've grew.
Speaker A:I grew up not too far away from there, but in a village where there was none of this sort of stuff.
Speaker A:So it'd be great to hear.
Speaker B:How did I get into hip hop?
Speaker B:I got into hip hop.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, I give you some context.
Speaker B:I'm 53 years old, right?
Speaker B:So my life, my lifetime has pretty much tracked the progress of hip hop since the early days.
Speaker B:I wasn't at the New York Bronx Jams, you know, in the late 70s, but by the time I was 11 years old, 12 years old, and forming my own sort of musical tastes, you know, the early kind of hip hop was floating around, whether it's Sugar Hill Gang or the early Eletre Records or whatever it may be.
Speaker B:So it was just kind of.
Speaker B:It was kind of part of the evolution of pop music, I guess.
Speaker B:You know, I started off listening to Adam and the Ants when I was young.
Speaker B:My cousins were into the Clash and Sex Pistols.
Speaker B:So there's this kind of like, intersection of punk rock meets, you know, Malcolm McLaren that was going on in sort of New York and that.
Speaker B:That sort of like, you know, through the music press and through, you know, the very few bits of hip hop that was on tv, you know, we start becoming aware of this art form, right?
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I was old enough.
Speaker B:I was at that age where I was kind of forming my own musical tastes.
Speaker B:And, you know, I knew what I was into.
Speaker B:I was into BMXing.
Speaker B:So BMXing, breakdancing, hip hop, graffiti, that whole culture was just new and exciting and.
Speaker B:And that was kind of the previous generation.
Speaker B:My cousins were like, you know, Clash and Sex Pistols.
Speaker B:And the next step was, you know, Adam and the Ants for me was the kind of.
Speaker B:Was the kind of like the.
Speaker B:The connector.
Speaker B:So Adam on.
Speaker B:On his.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B: had a track called ant rap in: Speaker B:And clearly he was going back and forth from America and.
Speaker B:And being exposed to this kind of hip hop culture.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I was listening to the Anton and rap.
Speaker B:I'm like, wow, what the hell's rap?
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But then I started seeing it on tv and it all kind of just.
Speaker B:But it all came at that time.
Speaker B:It was all so new.
Speaker B:It was just happening.
Speaker B:It wasn't really called Hip hop or rap or whatever, it was just what we were seeing.
Speaker B:And it just captured my imagination and I just thought it was incredible.
Speaker B:And whereas, you know, my older cousins were into the Clash, that was their thing.
Speaker B:And hip hop was my thing.
Speaker B:And it was just like that sort of next step, next logical step.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So how accessible was hip hop in Leeds as a culture?
Speaker A:Not even necessarily just records.
Speaker B:My earliest memories of any kind of culture were probably around 82, 83.
Speaker B:Like the electro compilations had come out.
Speaker B:There was local youth clubs.
Speaker B:I remember there was one dance studio.
Speaker B:Sounds a bit bougie, but there's one dance studio which.
Speaker B:Close to where I lived, they were offering great dance lessons.
Speaker B:And this must have been 82, 83.
Speaker B:But in terms of you wouldn't see it in clubs, you wouldn't see it on the streets until maybe a year or two later.
Speaker B:But then, you know, 83, 84, it was a thing.
Speaker B:There was an explosion and, you know, people were breakdancing.
Speaker B:Me and my brothers had lino.
Speaker B:We'd go to these kind of, like, youth club events where people were breakdancing.
Speaker B:There was local places offering breakdancing lessons.
Speaker B:So in terms of the culture, I think probably breakdancing was the first thing I was exposed to very visually.
Speaker B: h and the get fresh crew with: Speaker B:And then you'd see the odd documentary and there'd be an odd segment in news or on Blue Peter where you'd see, oh, that's that thing that we're doing and it's on tv.
Speaker B:It was so rare to see the culture anywhere in the street.
Speaker B:I mean, Leeds was a relatively big city, but I think if I grew up in London, it would be a lot different.
Speaker B:But, you know, you're asking the question about Leeds, so that.
Speaker B:I'm answering the question.
Speaker B:But there wasn't much, but the little bits that you could grab onto were, like, so precious.
Speaker B:And you'd record off TV news segments and then people pass tapes around and someone recorded it and I missed it.
Speaker B:And then now it's so prevalent and the culture is so in your face and on your phone and right under your nose.
Speaker B:Back then, it was so rare to get a glimpse of anything.
Speaker B:And so you really held onto that moment when.
Speaker B:When you did.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So when did DJing come in for you then?
Speaker B:DJing probably came in.
Speaker B:Well, I mean, look, my parents always had vinyl.
Speaker B:There was always a record player.
Speaker B:It was a pretty.
Speaker B:For the time, it was a pretty high end record player.
Speaker B:My dad had a pretty high end tape deck and amplifier and there was always vinyl.
Speaker B:My, my, my mum was into sort of like blues and soul.
Speaker B:So there'd be like Booker t in the MGS 21st century.
Speaker B:I can't remember the name of the band.
Speaker B:They did that.
Speaker B:Heaven on Hellbreak.
Speaker B:I remember the name of the band, but that was in a collection.
Speaker B:My dad had Wings and Beatles.
Speaker B:So mum was very much, you know, black music influenced.
Speaker B:And my dad was very much sort of like, you know, the kind of pop at the time.
Speaker B:Abba, Beatles, Wings, that kind of thing.
Speaker B:So it was a real mishmash.
Speaker B:But there was always a chunk of Iron man.
Speaker B:There's a lot of vinyl behind me, but There was always 100 records, vinyl records.
Speaker B:And I was always playing through those.
Speaker B:And I'd do pause mixtapes cause the tape deck was quite high end.
Speaker B:I would, I don't know if anyone on your podcasts or on these podcasts I mentioned pause mix tapes, but you would basically it had a very accurate pause bar.
Speaker B:So if I was playing a record, I can probably capture the break and do a relatively decent loop on just a 90 minute cassette and like repeat drum breaks or samples or guitar licks or whatever it would be.
Speaker B:So I'd do like these pause mixtape pause mix loops.
Speaker B:Yeah, I know it's a thing.
Speaker B:I know I wasn't the only one.
Speaker B:But at that time I thought I was the only person in the world doing that.
Speaker B:You know, you literally thought.
Speaker B:I literally thought I'm the only person on the planet who's put a needle on a record, found a little loop or a sample and I've looped it using this tape deck because you don't know anyone else is doing it.
Speaker B:Years and years later I'm listening to producers and DJs from around my who are around my age saying they did the same thing.
Speaker B:And I'm like, but you never would have known at that time.
Speaker B:So for making these like pause mix loops on this very accurate cassette deck I had, I remember it's like this push the button.
Speaker B:It was like incredibly accurate.
Speaker B:You could catch it for with a millisecond so you could loop things quite effectively.
Speaker B:And then it was just like, you know, there's always vinyl.
Speaker B:I was making these loops.
Speaker B:I was like discovering stuff myself.
Speaker B:No one was telling me what to do.
Speaker B:There was no instruction manual, there's no YouTube.
Speaker B:I just discovered it and then.
Speaker B: getting to Pirate Radio about: Speaker B:So there was a station in Leeds called Lethal FM.
Speaker B:There was a number, there was a number.
Speaker B:There was Lethal fm, There was Paradise City Radio in Bradford.
Speaker B:There was a number of stations that were popping up, all run by sort of dodgy fellas who were dealing drugs and getting money by any means.
Speaker B:But they had to buy a transmitter.
Speaker B:They needed Technics turnt, they needed a mixer, they needed mics, they needed a studio.
Speaker B:So it was always a kind of like in abandoned or you know, like council flats, high rises and Leeds Center.
Speaker B:I'd used to get the train over to Bradford and I was collecting records by that point.
Speaker B:So that by that point there was like Jumbo Records and Leeds and Crash Records and Leads and I'd be.
Speaker B:I'd be collecting avidly vinyl and going in secondhand shops, getting the train over to Manchester and buying records there as well.
Speaker B:So this was probably 85, 86.
Speaker B:Before then I was only really buying.
Speaker B:I was only like consuming records that I'd heard on the electro compilation.
Speaker B:So on the electro compilations like the Ilene Brothers or Imperial Brothers or hashim, you know, fresh three MCs or whatever it may be, they run these comps.
Speaker B:When I started to make a little bit of money, I had a job at a local cinema and I'd make a bit of cash and I'd go straight to Crash Records or Jumbo or whatever it was at the time.
Speaker B:And I'd try and look out, I'd try and seek those 12 inches out.
Speaker B:So off the electro albums, that's my favorite one.
Speaker B:I've only got a few quid.
Speaker B:I'll buy that 12 inch.
Speaker B:And it was an import 12 inch, so at that time they were like 4 or 5 pounds each.
Speaker B:It's quite a lot of money.
Speaker B:And gradually I've sort of built up a collection really.
Speaker B:And then, and then started doing pirate radio and I had a sort of small collection of music to play and then I'd start mixing it together.
Speaker B:I didn't have decks at home at that point, but I'd sort of start mixing records today, live already.
Speaker B:So it was radio that really got me into the dj.
Speaker A:Right, so that actually gave you an opportunity to practice.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My practice time was live on radio and honestly that continued for many, many years.
Speaker B:When I was on xfm, the only time I really practiced was when I was sort of.
Speaker B:I mainly play vinyl and unless I was sort of playing exclusives or CD or DAT or whatever.
Speaker B:But yeah, my practice session really was when I was doing radio and even when I was on XFM for almost a decade, you know, that live mixing experience.
Speaker B:And of course then I was degenering clubs a lot and doing, you know, various events.
Speaker A:Yeah, we'll come to that in a bit.
Speaker A:Just on the pirate radio then.
Speaker A:Something I've not thought about until you mentioned it then, like the level of investment, the shady guys that are funding it and stuff.
Speaker A:If you're a dealer in Leeds, what's your impetus for setting up a pirate radio station?
Speaker A:Is it monetizable?
Speaker B:No, I think.
Speaker B:I think, you know, they couldn't sell ads really.
Speaker B:I mean, they probably had the local chip shop who maybe wanted to, you know, advertise and there might be a few quid.
Speaker B:I've got a picture here actually.
Speaker B:This is funny.
Speaker B:I keep this as inspiration.
Speaker B:I'll give you a bit of a story.
Speaker B:So bit of Tessa Sanderson, the.
Speaker B:The athlete.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So this is Tessa Sanderson.
Speaker B:And I didn't put this here on purpose.
Speaker B:I have it there as inspiration.
Speaker B:So basically Tessa Sanderson had a shop in Leeds and it sold like high end Fila, Sergio Tacchini LS tracksuits.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And it was right in the.
Speaker B:Pretty much in the neighborhood where we lived in Moretown in Leeds.
Speaker B:And the reason why I put that picture there is because if it wasn't for that store, Tessa Sanderson's World or Leisure World it was called, I Probably Want to be the Pirate Radio dj.
Speaker B:So basically, I'll give you one story behind.
Speaker B:Behind the Pirate Radio.
Speaker B:I won't name his name, but the guy who ran the station basically decided to throw a metal bin through the window and raid the entire store one night of all the high end tennis gear that was in there and sold it all and made a bit of money and set up the station from the money he made from raiding Tess Sanderson's store.
Speaker B:So I hope she doesn't know this and I hope this doesn't get back.
Speaker A:I can't imagine Tessa Sanderson's listening because.
Speaker B:Because the photo of her in.
Speaker B:In front of that store, it was from a newspaper clipping when she got robbed and it was in the local Yorkshire Evening Post.
Speaker B:Tessa Sanderson store gets burgled or robbed or whatever.
Speaker B:So that's the reason that photo's taken from a local newspaper article where she's being interviewed.
Speaker B:I think by this point he may have let.
Speaker B:He may have ransacked the store maybe two or three times, you know, so.
Speaker B:So the whole reason why that station was set up is because he literally raided the store.
Speaker B:He also then a few houses, took a few savings account bank books on those houses and was like, going into the branch and taking money out.
Speaker B:So later on in life, I found out, you know, you know, victim of serious drug abuse and all sorts of kind of issues that come along with that.
Speaker B:So he ended up being institutionalized.
Speaker B:But that's how that particular pirate radio station started that I started on.
Speaker B:So, yeah, that's a bit of a story about how that came about.
Speaker A:Yeah, I just can't imagine why you'd do a job like that and then think, well, what am I gonna do with this money I'm gonna invest in.
Speaker B:There was a love of music.
Speaker B:You know, it was all born from a love of music.
Speaker B:Parrot Radio was a thing.
Speaker B:You know, I used to DJ on this station called Paradise City Radio.
Speaker B:I used to get the train to Bradford from Leeds.
Speaker B:Was a bit of a trek.
Speaker B:And, you know, I'd go into that house probably 16, 17 years old.
Speaker B:It was clearly like a drug den, like crack, dent or whatever it was.
Speaker B:I'd go three flights of stairs up to where the studio was, but I'd come downstairs and there'd be like a load of dudes smoking, you know, injecting, God, you name it.
Speaker B:It didn't even phase me.
Speaker B:I just like, oh, all right, guys, I'm gonna do my radio show, go three flights of stairs, come back down three hours later, get back on the train back to Leeds, job done.
Speaker B:All I wanted to do was share music.
Speaker B:All I wanted to do was play music, practice, have a set of decks to DJ on, share the music I had, and get that interaction from the crowd as well.
Speaker B:Because we, you know, we, you know, people would.
Speaker B:People would call into the studio on a.
Speaker B:Like a rotary phone, just like.
Speaker B:And, you know, you give people shout outs, whatever.
Speaker B:It was very basic, very rudimentary.
Speaker B:You know, there were great times, but, you know, that's kind of where the whole DJing thing and the radio thing came from.
Speaker B:It was just a passion for sharing music on stations by either criminals who loved music as well, and by whatever means necessary, found the means and the funds to get the equipment to do it.
Speaker B:And that radio station that I broadcast on first in Leeds, which is very close to my house, it got raided a couple of times.
Speaker B:I'd take all my records in there, maybe had a couple hundred records.
Speaker B:The police would come, raid it.
Speaker B:All my records would get taken, the equipment would get taken.
Speaker B:But then after six months, you could go back in and sort of request for them to be returned.
Speaker B:So some of the records would go back, some of the equipment got returned, sometimes it got confiscated and you never saw it again.
Speaker B:But there was a cycle of this for two or three years in those early days, you know.
Speaker A:Are there any particular records that you lost that are painful?
Speaker B:I can't really remember, but every.
Speaker B:Put this way, I've always been a collector and had pretty discerning taste.
Speaker B:If I was spending my hard earned money, I didn't buy any, you know, so it was like early Ultra Magnetic mcs or early electro records or, you know, records on Profile or Tough City or Cold Chilling that I'd got so that, you know, anything that I lost would have hurt, you know, but nothing that I couldn't buy back later on.
Speaker B:Later on in life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Was the pirate radio quite a good springboard for going out and DJing in Leeds?
Speaker A:Was it quite a good network builder?
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker B:I mean, there weren't many people doing hip hop.
Speaker B:I was like the hip hop radio guy.
Speaker B:There was a couple of others.
Speaker B:It wasn't until I was maybe.
Speaker B:I mean, there was a club called the Warehouse in Leeds which still exists on Summer Street.
Speaker B:And back then this is probably 87, 88.
Speaker B:And the big records were like Doe, Scandalized Mine, Sugar Bear, JVC 4 Strong Island, Rub Baston, Easy Rock, It Takes Two.
Speaker B:And what would happen then is like you'd go to the club, the Warehouse, and there'd be three, four DJs in the night.
Speaker B:There'd be a hip hop DJ, usually George from Nightmares and Wax, DJ es.
Speaker B:You should get him on the podcast as well, if you haven't already.
Speaker B:So you got DJ E's.
Speaker B:Then you got DJ Kevin, who was the other guy from.
Speaker B:He was the other department, the other half of Nightmares and Wax and he was the house DJ.
Speaker B:Then you got this guy DJ Roy, who was the sole and funk DJ.
Speaker B:And what would happen is the DJs would come on and do an hour reach and the hip hop guys, when George was DJing, the hip hop, the hip hop guys would go on, jump on, do the Running man, listen to those kind of hits.
Speaker B:Then he, then the house guy would come on and the house, you know, guys or girls would go on and dance to the house music and the hip hop guys would step aside.
Speaker B:So every musical genre was in that club at the time, but it was almost like segmented by slots.
Speaker B:So it wasn't just a hip hop club or a house club or a soul club.
Speaker B:It was.
Speaker B:Everything was in one place and it would rotate.
Speaker B:So you'd get a real mishmash of like music fans in one place and one time and they'd get their chance on the dance floor and enjoy that dj.
Speaker B:Then he would rotate and that's kind of how it was for a long time.
Speaker B:So George was always like a year or so ahead of me in terms of DJing.
Speaker B:He didn't do Parrot Radio, but George, Nightmares of Wax was kind of the hip hop DJ.
Speaker B:And then he, probably about when I was about 18, 17, 18, I got my first sort of local gigs.
Speaker B:He put me on some of his gigs and I'd find my own little gigs and I'd do private parties.
Speaker B:And then by about 18, I was sort of getting opportunities to DJ in clubs and I'd have a pretty good record collection by then.
Speaker B:So I knew I could sort of do a good two hour set and keep it moving.
Speaker A:Yeah, so we've all read Andrew Emery's books.
Speaker B:Who, sorry, who's that?
Speaker B:And you had him in your podcast.
Speaker B:For the record, he was never a dj.
Speaker A:No, no, no, but he was my rapper.
Speaker A:He's, you know, he's close enough to the culture.
Speaker A:Don't make it harder for me to get DJs.
Speaker A:I'm struggling already pulling you there.
Speaker B:Love, Andrew, my oldest friend.
Speaker A:So, yeah, so what's your sort of memory and viewpoint on that era and working on.
Speaker A:Because you guys did an album, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, we did a lot.
Speaker B:We had a group called Prehistoric Ages.
Speaker B:There was me, Drew Countdown and then adjacent to that there was like New Flesh for Old in York and then there was a load of local guys.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so look, you know, we did a load of demos.
Speaker B:I was the producer, he was the rapper, DJ Countdown was the dj.
Speaker B:He did the scratches.
Speaker B:We did so much.
Speaker B:Not an album, but we did countless demos.
Speaker B:We went from being called Progressive Agenda, then DJ Countdown left.
Speaker B:We want to keep the PA letters.
Speaker B:So me and Andrew, you know, Sat State, had an all nighter at his house listening to all, you know, hip hop records.
Speaker B:You know, him farting constantly.
Speaker B:It was like torture.
Speaker B:By the end of it, we kind of gone through the dictionary and we came up with the name Progressive Agenda.
Speaker B:So that was kind of, you know, that's probably what you read about in the book, mainly Progressive Agenda.
Speaker B:And that was our, you know, we do We're a Terrible Life.
Speaker B:I did the beats, sometimes I'd rap, I'd always fluff my lines, you know, it was woeful.
Speaker B:It really was absolutely woeful.
Speaker B:But it was the best times, you Know, we had the best times.
Speaker B:So, you know, my memories of those times were glorious, you know, and it's amazing when, you know, Drew wrote that first book, Wiggers, the memories that came back, the photos we unearthed, it was almost like, you know, reading your life story, you know, back again.
Speaker B:Half the stuff I forgot, you know, it was just, it was.
Speaker B:Honestly, it was amazing when he wrote the book and then for other people to read it and relate to it.
Speaker B:And I saw a YouTube video a couple of weeks ago of, I can't remember, some guys did a YouTube video about being in a 90s rap group.
Speaker B:I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker B:It's online somewhere.
Speaker B:And it was almost like the video version of that book.
Speaker B:And I sent it to Drew and he's like, oh shit, that's the idea of my TV show gone then.
Speaker B:But even seeing that video is like, you know, it all came back so vividly.
Speaker B:But, yeah, the happiest of times, happiest of memories and, yeah, and the launchpad for his book, you know, his journalistic career and my dj, radio and concert promoting career, it all came from that moment.
Speaker A:So in what way then?
Speaker A:How did that lead onto further opportunities?
Speaker B:Well, when we did that, he got a number of jobs.
Speaker B:I just had a career, honestly.
Speaker B:We didn't go straight into music business.
Speaker B:I didn't become a full time dj.
Speaker B:I had a pretty regular career.
Speaker B:We did my A levels and then went to university.
Speaker A:What did you study?
Speaker B:Business.
Speaker B:And I had a Bradford University.
Speaker B:And then I went on to do a number of jobs, worked for some big corporates.
Speaker B:You know, I had some sort of, you know, I was like, I could have gone that corporate way or I could have gone the music way.
Speaker B:I almost kind of regret, you know, not having the guts to sort of go straight into music.
Speaker B:But I think living in Leeds, even though there were opportunities, it wasn't in your faces.
Speaker B:Living in London or one of the biggest cities.
Speaker B:So I think I sort of chose the corporate route and then didn't really find my feet and get the confidence or get the opportunities to then go into the full time, the music side until a bit later on.
Speaker B:So it probably wasn't until, honestly, until I was 30 or 29, 30 that I, I got the gig on XFM because I moved down to London with words.
Speaker B:I moved to London with my job in like 97 and then obviously was exposed to way more than I was in Leeds, you know, a music industry I was going to make.
Speaker B:I was, you know, we were like, you know, on street Scenes for major record labels like Sony.
Speaker B:We'd be DJing clubs, we'd be going to clubs.
Speaker B:It was just so vibrant.
Speaker B:But I think my progress was stilted a little bit.
Speaker B:Still being in Leeds until the age of about 26, 27, I probably missed out on a lot that I could have done if I'd have been in London.
Speaker B:So a lot of my friends who grew up in London and peers now and colleagues had that extra six, seven years that I did and they were full time record producers and really accomplished DJs and doing incredibly well and I think I missed that little window.
Speaker B:So I, when I finally got into it, I had to play catch up a bit.
Speaker B:Yeah, but, but, but to answer your question, that I guess the, the, the big opportunity for me came being a journalist.
Speaker B:You know, Drew, Drew had a day job in Leeds.
Speaker B:He was always an aspiring journalist.
Speaker B:You've read his follow up book, you know, White Right, Right Lines and you know, he, he was the one that sent off his, you know, his writing to Andy Cowan at Hippo Connection.
Speaker B:And so he was always like writing, you know, feature pieces and interviews, things like that.
Speaker B:I had the idea of doing this column called Independence Day where I'd kind of like write and review independent rap records, you know, probably sort of like 80, so 95, 96, around about that time.
Speaker B:So he was writing the features, I was writing the column.
Speaker B:So I was connecting with record labels and people like Peanut Butter Wolf and Madlib and you know, all those kind of like, you know, and the Raucous Records and Bobbito and Stretch Armstrong.
Speaker B:I was, I was connected with all those guys through writing my Independence Day column.
Speaker B:So I know some of these guys are friends to this day and I've worked with this to this day and stayed in contact with it, which is incredible.
Speaker B:But I think, yeah, being a journalist, being in Leeds, I wasn't exposed to the clubs as much.
Speaker B:I wasn't exposed to the radio at a higher level.
Speaker B:I wasn't exposed to being, you know, taking my production skills or DJ skills to the next level.
Speaker B:So in the interim I became a pretty well known sort of journalist and contributed to Hip Hop Connection and a number of other magazines as did Drew.
Speaker B:So we kind of both progressed and then it wasn't when I moved to London, then I was exposed to more DJing and radio opportunities and that's when it kind of flourished.
Speaker B:So the journalism was the inter.
Speaker B:And we did Fat Lace magazine from Leeds as well.
Speaker B:So we started Fat Lace magazine when we're still living in Leeds.
Speaker B:And so I said the journalism side was probably my first foray into the music industry, so to speak.
Speaker A:I think it can be hard as well with what to what you were saying about like the people that go into music full time straight off.
Speaker A:Because I think in our society as well you kind of, you have the kind of safe corporate options with things.
Speaker A:There's I, not in the same way, but there's things where I kind of went for the safe options because you know, it's almost like, well this is what I think my parents would probably think I should do.
Speaker A:And you know you get a lot of influence from that even though they're not hard forced it.
Speaker A:Like when I started DJing, my mum, the first thing she'd say is you starting getting paid for this or what?
Speaker A:You know, and in the end, you know, when you start getting paid you're like I'm getting a better hourly than I would do in the safe job, you know.
Speaker A:But also I think with it and I don't, I'm interested to know if you agree or not.
Speaker A:I feel like there's just things you can learn in the corporate world that can help you either in say the music world or it can help you tie the two together and you can kind of exist in a world where you kind of operate a little bit in both.
Speaker B:That's a really good point, Adam actually.
Speaker B:And that aspect where you get the best of both worlds is now benefiting me where I am now in life and in my career and in business because I did have that kind of corporate training, so to speak.
Speaker B:I worked for big organizations, I traveled a bit with those organizations on property, business trips, you know, and, and, and now, you know, I'm still DJing, I'm still connecting, collecting, I'm still, I love hip hop, I love music, I don't do radio anymore, but I'm a concert promoter, I'm a, I'm a Middle east based concert promoter running a business that was acquired by Sony Music two years ago.
Speaker B:And so even that whole to go full circle for me being on the Sony street team in the mid-90s, working on NASA's album and Fuji's album, then suddenly to have my company partially acquired by Sony decades later and then being sort of like, you know, having run my own business for many years on my own and with my business partner on a very sort of independent level, but then being sucked into a corporation, those skills that I learned in those early days allow me to navigate in that corporate setting now, you know, so it wasn't Entirely wasted.
Speaker B:And I don't regret it.
Speaker B:At the time I was like, oh damn, these my friends are like full time music producers killing it, traveling around the world.
Speaker B:And I've kind of missed the boat a little bit.
Speaker B:But you know, everyone has their own path.
Speaker B:But yeah, to answer your question and come back to your point, it's a very, very good point.
Speaker B:Yes, it has benefited me.
Speaker B:I don't regret it.
Speaker B:And later on in life I've realized how valuable those early lessons I learned were.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I guess that even with something where your business has been acquired or partially acquired, whichever it is, if you've not had the corporate experience, you might not.
Speaker A:You could go one of two ways with it.
Speaker A:It could make you feel really insecure about your position in the company or it could make you really sort of a bit too carefree, thinking, well, we've got their money now, so you know, it probably gives you a bit more of a measured perspective on it.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, look, there are complexities to it into the way the deal was structured and you know, and, but in a way, yes, I can maneuver in that environment.
Speaker B:I can probably do a lot that my peers who went on to be full time music producers could not imagine doing.
Speaker B:And that was just my path.
Speaker B:But the main thing is that I've never lost touch of the music.
Speaker B:I never stopped DJing, I never stopped collecting, I never stopped my passion for the music and the music form.
Speaker B:I'm always learning and as you get older, bit older, and you go through these kind of business phases, and I moved country, I moved to the Middle east and moved to Dubai like 10 years ago.
Speaker B:I've got a family and I'm in a totally different phase of life.
Speaker B:But there's been one constant which is the music, the DJing, the love of the culture.
Speaker B: I didn't use a sampler since: Speaker B:Then literally 30 years later, you know, it's, it's the pandemic and I'm messing around with Ableton and I'm like, you know what, I've got all these records, I've even been buying breaks all these years and samples and digging for interesting records.
Speaker B: I put my first single out in: Speaker B:And I'm like, I could never have even imagined doing that.
Speaker B:And like, you know, talk about a late, a late developer.
Speaker B: irst record out, you know, in: Speaker B:But it just shows you like, you know, life takes you in different directions and, and everyone has their own path and you just gotta, you just gotta see it as, you know, if you're looking for that instant success and gratification, sometimes you gotta run.
Speaker B:It's gotta, you've got to run the test of time and see where life takes you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So something.
Speaker A:That's probably one of the reasons I started this and, and my kind of interest in the human experience.
Speaker A:A big thing is around, like, getting older because I certainly feel in the last couple of years, my back's telling me I'm getting older, my hips are.
Speaker A:But like, you get people who seem to.
Speaker A:It's like some of us, like, stay connected with the things that make us feel young.
Speaker A:And some people just particularly safe to get into the corporate world, like high stress job, it just falls by the wayside.
Speaker A:And they don't, they don't kind of have these things.
Speaker A:But I think there's something so nice, even if you'd not kind of sort of start producing again, just, just having that thing that, that is so true to your heart, it keeps you young in spirit.
Speaker B:It does.
Speaker B:You know, hip hop specifically, I'm sure music generally does, but being involved with hip hop.
Speaker B:Hip hop is a youth culture.
Speaker B:You know, hip hop is.
Speaker B:It came from the streets, it came from a young demographic and, you know, it's morphed and changed and gone worldwide and become a whole different thing.
Speaker B:But it has kept me young and I'm incredibly lucky.
Speaker B:You know, you make your own luck.
Speaker B:I know, but I'm incredibly grateful for the way the twists and turns in my life, the opportunities I've had, you know, the people I've met, the people I've worked with.
Speaker B:I'm grateful for everything, honestly.
Speaker B:I've done some incredible things.
Speaker B:I look back and go, wow, you know, I've lived the hip hop dream, you know, I really have.
Speaker B:Whatever I dreamt about, you know, I dreamt, you know, I did business at university and I dreamt of owning a business.
Speaker B:I've got a business.
Speaker B:I dreamt of being a dj, I became a dj, I fell in love with radio.
Speaker B:I was on radio at the highest possible level.
Speaker B:When I was on xfm, every week I would count my blessings, I'd be Like, if it stops tomorrow, I've done my thing, you know, I live my dream.
Speaker B:I'm broadcasting outside of Leicester Square studios at XFM Capital Radio building overlooking Leicester Square.
Speaker B:Interviewing 50 Cent or DJ Premiere.
Speaker B:You know, it's like, wow, you know, this really happened.
Speaker B:A lot of pinch myself moments.
Speaker B:I was very, very grateful, and I still am very, very grateful.
Speaker B:And when it came to an end, when XFM came to a stop and, you know, they, you know, all good things come to an end, but, you know, they changed the format of the programming.
Speaker B:They automated a lot of the programming.
Speaker B:They got rid of a lot of the specialist shows.
Speaker B:I was devastated.
Speaker B:You know, I was honestly.
Speaker B:I remember my last show and there's a lot of close friends of mine in that studio.
Speaker B:I was utterly devastated.
Speaker B:I'm like, why don't I go to one extra sooner?
Speaker B:Why was, you know, why didn't I sort of switch to the BBC?
Speaker B:Why don't I do this, why don't I do that?
Speaker B:And it took me and then I went into management, managing artists and moving away from radio.
Speaker B:But my wife.
Speaker B:My life went into a whole different direction then.
Speaker B:But still I look back at that and go, well, you know, that was the end of that chapter, beginning of another chapter.
Speaker B:But only when you look back in life with the benefit of the ripe old age I am now.
Speaker B:It was all meant to happen and I realized it happened for a reason.
Speaker B:At the time, I was distraught, but, you know, it forced me to go into a different direction.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:How did XFM come about?
Speaker B:XFM came about.
Speaker B:I was in London.
Speaker B:I moved to London in 97.
Speaker B:I was sort of milling around.
Speaker B:I was DJing, I was doing clubs more.
Speaker B:I was DJing at Fabric.
Speaker B:I was doing this, that and the other.
Speaker B:Maybe Fabric wasn't around at that early stages, But I was DJing a lot.
Speaker B:I was consulting for a record label called Wall of Sound.
Speaker B:If you remember Wall of Sound, they had a label called Bad Magic, which is like a hip hop imprint.
Speaker B:And Theo Keating, AKA DJ Touche, AKA Fake Blood, as he's known now, he was an artist.
Speaker B:He was the wise guys on, On.
Speaker B:On Water Sound.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I basically.
Speaker B:I had started on radio.
Speaker B:So I was in London.
Speaker B:I just started on.
Speaker B:I started on radio.
Speaker B:I'll tell you what I was doing.
Speaker B:I was still doing a lot of writing and I was going to a lot of PR companies and meeting a lot of people.
Speaker B:I was interviewing a lot of artists and one of the pluggers for Wall of Sound met me at one of the PR Companies called Darling Department.
Speaker B:And Ian was one of the plovers and said to me, hey, Theo's, you know, thinking of starting a record label, an imprint, a wall of sound called Bad Magic, you know, and why do you come and meet him?
Speaker B:So I went to meet Theo, we got on really well and he's an incredibly talented guy.
Speaker B:I mean from graffiti to DJing to music production, incredibly, I was one of the most talented people I've met.
Speaker B:Incredible creative and probably one of the people I was talking about where I'm like kind of, I wish I was, I wish I could have, you know, I wish I could be him, I wish I could be a full time creative.
Speaker B:But my life took me in different directions.
Speaker B:But he's one of a good example of that.
Speaker B:Incredible creative and you know, just amazing person and very talented.
Speaker B:But anyway, he was.
Speaker B:So we started talking about the hip hop label and he said, look, why don't you go and find some hip hop artists?
Speaker B:So I went to la, to the B Boys Summit in la.
Speaker B:I met Ugly Duckling and I brought their record back.
Speaker B: first record we licensed from: Speaker B:So ex North America.
Speaker B:And they were the first group that we.
Speaker B:So I brought them in, we put their Fresh Mode EP out and then it came onto an album deal.
Speaker B:Then they signed to excel in it.
Speaker B:Then I did a number of other sort of like one off deal, you know, one off deals.
Speaker B:I, you know, signed Cage's first one of Cage's first records, 54, produced by DJ Maiti Mai, another amazing creative that I stay in touch with and I'm even working with.
Speaker B:I've been doing a remix for High and Mighty this week which by the time the podcast ends might actually be out again.
Speaker B:Full circle moments.
Speaker B:So I brought in a number of, you know, I was a journalist, but then I was suddenly in A and R, I was suddenly in A and R and I was bringing in records, I was signing one off records.
Speaker B:I didn't know how to do a deal, I didn't know how to sign a record.
Speaker B:I didn't know really much about anything.
Speaker B:I signed Black Twang to Bad Magic.
Speaker B:Black Twang was the one of my signing.
Speaker A:Did you sign the creators?
Speaker B:I didn't sign the creators.
Speaker B:The creators were always in the mix through Theo.
Speaker B:Cause Theo was buying records from Julian and Simon.
Speaker B:So Theo discovered the creators, but I certainly then helped them with the album.
Speaker B:So I took Evidence and Alchemist And Madlib and the Loot Pack and Craig G and Consequence and all these incredible artists.
Speaker B:I was in the studio saying Mos Def Kweli in Julian's little studio in Kingston.
Speaker B:You know, I was at all those sessions throughout the recording of the whole album.
Speaker B:You know, we filled rooms like, you know, late nights, Mos Def laying down his vocals.
Speaker B:That's how I got a freestyle for my first.
Speaker B:One of my first mixtapes is Mos Def and Kweli.
Speaker B:And I got them to do like a little freestyle for me.
Speaker B:You know, it really kind of looking back, rock and roll moments.
Speaker B:But yes, I was involved in that album for sure.
Speaker B:I didn't sign them, but I was certainly involved in the A and R.
Speaker B:I brought a lot of the album and worked with Julian later on as well and sort of still stay in touch with them, still buy records from him until recently.
Speaker B:So, yeah, to answer your question about xfm, so I was very much in the Bad Magic world and the Wall of Sound world.
Speaker B:You know, our offices were in Ackland Workshops off Port Verbella Road.
Speaker B:Banksy.
Speaker B:Banksy Studio was in our offices.
Speaker B:There was Wall of Sound Records on one side of Lambert Grove, sorry, of Portobello Road, Ackland Workshops on the other side.
Speaker B:Ackland Workshops was where the storeroom was.
Speaker B:All the records and the CDs and vinyl was stored.
Speaker B:Banksy's workshop and studio was at the back of that storeroom.
Speaker B:So I'd go in, he'd be working there every day.
Speaker B:And he even did some design.
Speaker B:He did Black Twang's album cover.
Speaker B:He designed a load of stuff for Wall of Sound Records.
Speaker B:He was just there.
Speaker B:He was around, you know, I remember we moved Wall of Sound, we moved offices, we moved into a new office.
Speaker B:And he painted those kind of like happy chopper helicopters all over the wall and did literally entire wall of his artwork.
Speaker B:And I remember when we eventually moved out of that office, you know, he.
Speaker B:My friend Alvin, I think, actually filmed him painting, doing the mural.
Speaker B:Then when we moved out of the office, I think he filmed Banksy painting over the mural.
Speaker B:Cause the.
Speaker B:The value of the wall would have been more than the office at that time, because he'd achieved some kind of fame.
Speaker B:So through being from journalism to working at Wall of Sound A and Ring for Bad Magic, the plugger that we were working with said to me and Theo, I work with Zane Lowe.
Speaker B:Zane Lowe was on XFM at that time.
Speaker B:He's a massive hip hop head.
Speaker B:He's a big fan of Fat Lace magazine.
Speaker B:He loves all the stuff you're doing.
Speaker B:Would you be up for meetings?
Speaker B:He wants to do a hip hop show, so me and Theo went to meet him.
Speaker B:I can't remember where we met.
Speaker B:Maybe we met at the pub, I can't remember.
Speaker B:Anyway, Zayn was geeking out.
Speaker B:Love Fat Lace.
Speaker B:Best thing ever.
Speaker B:Hilarious.
Speaker B:All my Kiwi mates love it.
Speaker B:He was working part time in a record shop.
Speaker B:Maybe at the time as well.
Speaker B:Just started on xfm, was just on mtv.
Speaker B:He goes, guys, I want to do a hip hop show.
Speaker B:I'm really busy.
Speaker B:I need some guys to do it with.
Speaker B:I need some guys to book the artists and buy the records and I haven't got time for all of it.
Speaker B:I need some co hosts.
Speaker B:Do you want to do it?
Speaker B:I swear my life.
Speaker B:Within.
Speaker B:Within three days we were having a meet with Andrew Phillips, who's the head of XFM programming.
Speaker B:Within about another week after that we were on air.
Speaker B:You know, it was that quick.
Speaker B:And we actually pre recorded it for the first few months because our schedules were crazy.
Speaker B:I still, I think I still had a job at that time.
Speaker B:I think I was still doing my day job at that time.
Speaker B:Theo was a full time creative producer, dj, whatever.
Speaker B:And Zane was doing TV and radio.
Speaker B:Maybe he'd quit his record store job then as well.
Speaker B:But the only way we could get our times aligned was by doing, by doing a pre record.
Speaker B:So we'd go in like a Tuesday afternoon, I'd go in my records.
Speaker B:But we start to get guests really quickly.
Speaker B:I mean because of my journalism connections and my connection through record labels and DJs.
Speaker B:I think Maceo from Della Soul came in and did a guest mix on one of the first shows.
Speaker B:Milt d from audio 2 randomly was in London producing a rock record or a country record.
Speaker B:A country artist by, I think Jason Downs, I think his name was.
Speaker B:So I heard Milt D was in town.
Speaker B:So Milt D came on and did top billing live on the show.
Speaker B:Pete Rock was just working with BBE Records and he came in with the un, he had an album.
Speaker B:We had these incredible guests very, very quickly.
Speaker B:Pre recording.
Speaker B:I remember the first couple of weeks, it was mad, you know, we were doing the radio and we'd take beers into the studio and I think one time we had this big mixing desk.
Speaker B:It's like full, you know, full state of the art, like recording studio.
Speaker B:At the time I spilled my beer in the mixing desk and it just went everywhere in all the phases and I thought, oh shit, we've been doing the show for like two weeks.
Speaker B:We're gonna get fired.
Speaker B:But luckily, luckily, the station saw the funny side of it.
Speaker B:I mean, we kept our jobs, but.
Speaker B:But very soon after that.
Speaker B:So after that, Zayn got very busy.
Speaker B:He was full time on XFM doing all the.
Speaker B:Doing the Daily Show.
Speaker B:Theo was busy with his DJing career.
Speaker B:And eventually those two guys just sort of like, look, we can't really commit to it prerecording every week.
Speaker B:Why don't you just go live and you just do it, Dan?
Speaker B:So I just took over the show.
Speaker B:And then after about three months, I was suddenly then doing it live on a Saturday night, going right up against Westwood, like nine or 12, you know, at the same time as Westwood Broadcasting, certainly around London and surrounding areas.
Speaker B:But you could get XFM nationally as well.
Speaker B:And this is before they had the Manchester station.
Speaker B:So it just moved really quickly.
Speaker B:So at that point, then I was writing for magazines, I was DJing clubs.
Speaker B:Wall of Sound were doing these crazy nights at club.
Speaker B:A club called 93ft East.
Speaker B:Banksy will be outside doing graffiti design the flyers.
Speaker B:You know, we'd have, you know, I'd booked the artists for, for these, for these gigs I bring, you know, I remember DJ Spin Battle brought over and Paul Nice and all these kind of guys.
Speaker B:So I was DJing clubs and they would.
Speaker B:It just suddenly exploded.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:I was on a major radio station, but I still had a day job.
Speaker B:I was getting asked to do crazy things.
Speaker B:I remember I got asked to go on Richard and Judy.
Speaker B:Yeah, no joke.
Speaker B:And I've got the footage.
Speaker B:No one will see the footage.
Speaker B:I've got it as a digital file.
Speaker B:I got it taken from VHS and digitized.
Speaker B:I got asked to go Richard and Judy to talk about street slang.
Speaker B:Still, like, right, we need a.
Speaker B:And this was before one extra.
Speaker B:There was only Westwood, me, maybe 279 on choice.
Speaker B:There weren't many radio DJs.
Speaker B:There weren't many well known DJs.
Speaker B:So they were like, oh, we need a DJ, all right.
Speaker B:The booker for Rich and Judy knows, knows the head of, you know, xfm.
Speaker B:Oh, Dan's a hip hop dj.
Speaker B:He'll come and talk about street slang, you know, I don't think they knew who they were booking.
Speaker B:They'd never really heard of me.
Speaker B:You know, I turn up to Richard and Judy.
Speaker B:I'm in the green room with the Nolan sisters and some, I don't know, this lexicographer, I forgot his name.
Speaker B:A very accomplished guy.
Speaker B:So then I'm being in it.
Speaker B:Then I'm live in the studio being interviewed by Richard and Judy talking about street slang and the latest, you know, words on the streets.
Speaker B:And they're looking at me like, who the hell's this guy?
Speaker B:You know, we, we don't think they're going to get this low, like nerdy looking accountant guy, you know, come in the studio this.
Speaker B:Cause I had this kind of corporate career and I put my air mas 95s on, I put a polo sweatshirt on or whatever.
Speaker B:But you know, I was still in very much corporate world but, but living this kind of, in this parallel universe, it was, it was a, it was a very, very strange moment.
Speaker B:Anyway, my finance director at that company at the time was at home and saw me live on Richard and Judy, right?
Speaker B:And at this point in my office, I was getting records sent to my office in Chiswick where my, where, where the company was.
Speaker B:I was even getting gold discs at that point, you know, from record labels for the stuff that I was doing.
Speaker B:Gold discs arrived in the office.
Speaker B:I'm DJing, I'm out and about.
Speaker B:You know, there isn't social media there, but I'm driving around the country in this job, I'm flying around the world with this job.
Speaker B:But then my final director sees me on Richard and Judy and was like, sees me in the office.
Speaker B:They're like, what exactly were you doing on Richard and Judy yesterday?
Speaker B:And at that point I was like, okay, I gotta move, I gotta change careers, I gotta move into music full time.
Speaker B:I can't do both.
Speaker B:The two don't coexist.
Speaker B:It's impossible.
Speaker B:Now I'm kind of too well known in the kind of music scene and I'm too busy with work, you know, I was flying back from the airport, you know, from doing a job for British Airways.
Speaker B:Going, arriving the airport, changing into my hip hop gear, hip hop T shirt, hoodie, trainers, going to interview people.
Speaker B:It was like Clark Kent, you know, I was like Superman into the photo booth, into the phone booth, changing from suit into my hip hop gear.
Speaker B:And it just got too much, it was crazy.
Speaker B:And it actually culminated in me DJing.
Speaker B:I was DJing Liverpool at a club called, an event called no Faking.
Speaker B:And me and Yoda were living together actually in Chiswick at the time, in a flat.
Speaker B:I was working in Chiswick and we were housemates and I went to DJ in Liverpool and after I DJed, he stayed in a hotel.
Speaker B:I went back to Leeds for personal reasons and I crashed my car on the, on the, on the, on the M62 or whatever it was.
Speaker B:Leaving the club at 3 o'clock in the morning from Liverpool, driving back to Leeds.
Speaker B:And I had my company car.
Speaker B:It was an Audi A3 Turbo.
Speaker B:A3 Turbo, whatever it was.
Speaker B:Anyway, all Yoda's records are in the back of my car.
Speaker B:All my records were in the back car.
Speaker B:We're playing on vinyl.
Speaker B:Then I got paid maybe 300 quid in cash.
Speaker B:I was whizzing back to Leeds.
Speaker B:I was living in London then.
Speaker B:But because I was DJing Liverpool, I'll go out to Leeds, you know, see some friends and family.
Speaker B:Crashed my car, spun out, fell asleep at the wheel, got hit by a truck.
Speaker B:You know, I saw my life flash before my very eyes.
Speaker B:I still had this job at the time.
Speaker B:When the police got to me, I was sparcoed.
Speaker B:There was a truck embedded in the side of my car that they had to pull the side.
Speaker B:They had to pull the passenger seat door off the car.
Speaker B:I'm like saying to the ambulance guy, I can't really see.
Speaker B:I think I've gone blind.
Speaker B:And he squirted some sort of saline lotion in my eyes.
Speaker B:I'm like, oh, that's better.
Speaker B:I can see now.
Speaker B:But my head had gone through the window.
Speaker B:The car was covered in blood and cash because I put the cash that had been paid in the cup holder in the car.
Speaker B:And so the impact of the.
Speaker B:Of the accident and me hitting the barrier, then the truck hitting me.
Speaker B:The car was just covered in my blood and cash all over the place.
Speaker B:And I said, I say to the policeman, I wasn't drinking, I hadn't taken drugs.
Speaker B:I'm a dj.
Speaker B:I got paid in cash.
Speaker B:That's the right.
Speaker B:It looked like a crime scene, you.
Speaker A:Know, make a good album cover.
Speaker B:Yeah, my brother, actually, this is before phones, camera phones, but my brother went to pick my car up because I was in hospital with severe whiplash.
Speaker B:I broken my collarbone and I had glass in my face and I was having had an operation.
Speaker B:I want this glass removed out of my face.
Speaker B:My brother went to pick the car up and he took these kind of Polaroids in my car and it was destroyed.
Speaker B:The inside was covered in blood.
Speaker B:The airbag had gone off.
Speaker B:He had to get all Yoda's records out the car, all my records out the car, taking them back to Leeds.
Speaker B:The whole thing was a.
Speaker B:Not a disaster, but it was just like, all right, shit's gotta change.
Speaker B:Like, has gotta change.
Speaker B:I can't be doing this anymore.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So that's when, very soon after that, I went back to my job.
Speaker B:I went back to my job.
Speaker B:And then very soon after that I got the gig on XFM and then I drastically changed, you know, careers and went into the music industry.
Speaker B:And I was about 29 at the time.
Speaker A:Just one more thing I was going to ask you about XFM because we've talked about one elusive character in Banksy, Carl Pilkington.
Speaker A:Did you ever have anything to do with him?
Speaker A:Xfm?
Speaker B:Oh, good question.
Speaker B:I did, yeah.
Speaker B:Carl was the.
Speaker B:Was the head of Sound.
Speaker B:He was.
Speaker B:He was the head of Station Sound, so he was the head producer at xfm.
Speaker B:And Carl, whenever I did prerecorded interviews, there was a good mate of mine, Chris Denman and Carl Pilkinson.
Speaker B:So Carl Pilkinson was the head of Station Sound.
Speaker B:He was the station producer, essentially.
Speaker B:All the.
Speaker B:All the XFM audio identity was him, the broadcasts, the recording sessions.
Speaker B:It was either him or Chris.
Speaker B:Chris went on to be the producer of the XFM show, but Carl was quite often, I'd be in sessions with Carl and he'd be recording my session.
Speaker B:So I'd be interviewing Chuck D and I'd be face to face with Chuck D.
Speaker B:But Carl was behind the glass, running the boards and recording the session.
Speaker B:And, yeah, so, yeah, I knew Carl really, really well.
Speaker B:And I was there when Ricky and Steve came back on Exo Firm.
Speaker B:I was there when.
Speaker B:When the Office, before the Office was.
Speaker B:Had even started, was a thing.
Speaker B:I was there when the Office was.
Speaker B:Became an immediate cult success.
Speaker B:I'd see Ricky and Steve, Stephen Merchant at the station.
Speaker B:Carl was there.
Speaker B:And then that.
Speaker B:Again, that moved really quickly.
Speaker B:You know, Ricky and Steve used to do their show on Saturday afternoon, right?
Speaker B:So they did it live on a Saturday afternoon and I used to do my show on a Saturday night.
Speaker B:So I'd go in Saturday afternoon, I'd go and buy records in the West End.
Speaker B:I'd go to Bongos, all those stores.
Speaker B:Then I'd go into xfm, get all the records that have been delivered to me at xfm, take them all home, process everything, get my show ready and then come back into London later on.
Speaker B:So I quite often see them on a Saturday afternoon doing the show, recording the show, and I'd see them in the office and then I'd come back later on.
Speaker B:So I was very much there the whole time.
Speaker B:I can even tell you how the Carl Pilkinson Persona even came about.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, he.
Speaker B:Andrew Phillips was the head of the station, basically, you know, said, you know, Ricky, Ricky and Steve are coming back to the station.
Speaker B:They'd obviously got some kind of success.
Speaker B:They were on the.
Speaker B:They were on Axiform in the early days before it was acquired by Capital Radio.
Speaker B:So they're in the old location.
Speaker B:Then they came back and thought it'd be a good thing to do.
Speaker B:So it was the Ricky and Steve show.
Speaker B:What they needed, though, the Ricky and Steve show, they needed someone to run the desk and engineer the show, so they put Carl in there.
Speaker B:Andrew Phillips told Carl in no uncertain terms, you are not allowed to talk on the mic.
Speaker B:This is Ricky and Steve's show.
Speaker B:And told Carl and Ricky, you're not allowed to bring Carl on the mic.
Speaker B:Now that's Red Rag to a bull to Ricky.
Speaker B:So when you hear that, when you listen back to those original shows that became the early podcasts, they were the first podcasts, and Carl was the genius that monetized those and did a deal with Apple.
Speaker B:He left xfm, did a deal with Apple, and they were charging for those podcasts, but then they became free.
Speaker B:And there was a couple of very clever people, but those.
Speaker B:The very, very early podcasting days.
Speaker B:So thanks to Ricky Gervais, we're here today.
Speaker B:But what happened was Andrew Phillips would say, carl, you're not allowed to talk, and you're not allowed to talk to Carl.
Speaker B:So they would ask him questions and he'd be like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker B:You know, like, carl, what do you think of this?
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Whatever, you know, and he's Dulcie Northern Tones.
Speaker B:And the whole reluctantly talking and reluctantly sharing and reluctantly getting a conversation came from that.
Speaker B:It was like Carl was not allowed to talk to them and they were not allowed to talk to Carl.
Speaker B:But because Ricky.
Speaker B:And as soon as they kind of heard Karl sort of talking and interacting, it just became a joke.
Speaker B:It became funny.
Speaker B:Carl's reluctance to engage in a conversation, being careful what he said, being careful not to say something that could lose his job or whatever, even though he's the head of the station sound, he's quite a senior job, you know, he was fairly well protected, but he obviously didn't want to overstep his mark.
Speaker B:And that's how it came about.
Speaker B:And then it became a thing.
Speaker B:And then it was like, look, you're not allowed to talk to Carl, Karl, you're not allowed to talk.
Speaker B:And then that.
Speaker B:It would just.
Speaker B:It would get worse and worse and worse every week.
Speaker B:So all those kind of.
Speaker B:All that stupid shit you would hear him come out with is because he wasn't really allowed to say it.
Speaker B:And Ricky would just make so Much fun out of him because he couldn't really speak his mind or say too much.
Speaker B:And that's that whole dynamic between Ricky, Steve and Karl that went on for many, many years was born from those kind of early days on xfm.
Speaker B:So answer your question.
Speaker B:I knew Carl very well.
Speaker B:I haven't spoken to him a long time.
Speaker B:Me and Yoda did a mixtape, I think Unthugged two or something, or Unthought three, and I asked Carl to do an intro for it and I emailed him and he was doing Idiot Abroad and I think he was in Africa somewhere in a tent and he recorded it on it on his phone or whatever and said, oh, you know, I'm in a tent recording this, you know, Shout Out Dan Greenpeace and DJ Yoda again.
Speaker B:And, you know, that was the last time I spoke.
Speaker B:I don't think I've spoken to or seen him since I since did that drop in that intro for Unplug 2, I think.
Speaker B:Unplug 2.
Speaker B:Electric bubble.
Speaker B:Ooh.
Speaker B:So if you listen to that online, you'll hear Cole Pilkinson at the beginning of that mixtape.
Speaker B:Nice, because I called it a favor.
Speaker B:So, yeah, anyway, that was.
Speaker B:That was the whole thing that happened.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because, I mean, I still listen to them now on almost a daily basis.
Speaker A:There's nothing like it.
Speaker A:So with the.
Speaker A:I'm not going to ask you questions about Carl for another half an hour, don't worry.
Speaker A:But was he told not to go on the mic because people knew what he was like and that he was a bit different?
Speaker A:Like, why.
Speaker A:Why was it so much like, Carl can't go on?
Speaker B:No one knew who Carl was.
Speaker B:Carl was the station producer.
Speaker B:Carl didn't have.
Speaker B:Carl wasn't a presenter on the station.
Speaker B:I was a presenter.
Speaker B:Zane was a presenter.
Speaker B:Lauren Laverne was a presenter.
Speaker B:You know, there was this Ricky and Steve representers.
Speaker B:There was this incredible era of presenters that it was almost like the early 6 music.
Speaker B:So that the CL that all, you know, Zane went on to Radio 1 and went on to huge things, but a lot of those people were on the station at the time, went on to be the early presenters for 6 Music.
Speaker B:When XFM eventually imploded, that was one of my regrets.
Speaker B:Why didn't I go to six?
Speaker B:Why didn't I go to one extra?
Speaker B:Why did I stay on too long?
Speaker B:By the time I was trying to rescue my career, it was too late.
Speaker B:I was chasing my tail.
Speaker B:I'd missed the boat, so.
Speaker B:But a lot of those incredible talents from XFM Went on to BBC, but no one knew who Carl was.
Speaker B:Carl wasn't a presenter.
Speaker B:He wasn't on the mic.
Speaker B:He was the head of the station sound and did an incredible job and was very, very talented.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But, yeah, so when, you know, to answer your question, I just.
Speaker B:He wasn't even a personality.
Speaker B:He wasn't even someone that was like, oh, it's Carl in the office.
Speaker B:All right, geezer.
Speaker B:You know, it wasn't even that, you know, he was doing sessions.
Speaker B:Coldplay were coming into xfm.
Speaker B: ds in that golden era of like: Speaker B:Chris Martin, you know, was going out with one of the girls in the XFM office.
Speaker B:Yellow was written about her, you know, that.
Speaker B:Those, those, those maybe divulging too much there.
Speaker B:But anyway, though, it was a golden era of like, indie.
Speaker B:And I was.
Speaker B:And I was this hip hop kid in the middle of it all.
Speaker B:And I had everything I wanted, you know, any artist I want.
Speaker B:Because the pluggers, the radio pluggers that were plugging the records, they were like, right, they'll go and do Westwood, we'll get them a mainstream Radio 1 appearance and we'd do XFM with Dan Greenpeace.
Speaker B:It ticked the box.
Speaker B:So a lot of these hip hop artists, so let's say Capitol Records, were in dilated peoples.
Speaker B:No one really knew how to work dilated peoples at a major label.
Speaker B:But one thing's for sure, not even Westwood wanted dilated peoples.
Speaker B:One thing's for sure, Dan Greenpeace was gonna take Dilated Peoples.
Speaker B:So I was a big tick in the box for those radio pluggers at the time.
Speaker B:We ticked the XFM box.
Speaker B:That's cool.
Speaker B:That's credibility.
Speaker B:Even Zane, when Zane went to Radio one, he told me that in their playlist meetings, they want to know what hip hop records they played.
Speaker B:So they'd look at my playlist that I'd send out on a weekly basis as to what Dan was playing on XFM and choose the kind of the next underground hip hop record or the big up and coming hip hop record.
Speaker B:I remember going on Lauren Laverne's show each week and doing my Dan Greenpeace hip hop segment.
Speaker B:I'd go in on a morning.
Speaker B:No, it wasn't Lauren Laverne, it was Zoe Ball.
Speaker B:Zoe Ball was on xfm, so she'd bring me on.
Speaker B:And she'd say, what's your hip hop record of the week?
Speaker B:And it was like.
Speaker B:I remember one time it was hey Yah by outkast.
Speaker B:No one had heard hey Yah by Outkast.
Speaker B:I could have played it up an underground up and coming artist.
Speaker B:I could have played a dilated or anything on Raucous or whatever it may be.
Speaker B:But that record dropped and I was like, this is incredible.
Speaker B:This is so different.
Speaker B:I'm gonna play this.
Speaker B:So I think I gave hey Yar by Outkast the first ever UK radio play.
Speaker B:And she was like, wow, this is interesting.
Speaker B:You know, it is like.
Speaker B:And, you know, we had these incredible moments where I got this incredible, you know, opportunities to, like, go on the mainstream side of the station as well and expose hip hop records.
Speaker A:Well, I think even with just the sort of packaging in the title of the Unthought mixes, like, it's something that just instantly makes hip hop a lot more accessible and kind of just calling it that kind of removes any sort of like perception boundaries that certain people might have.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's pretty like sort of clever in itself.
Speaker B:We got.
Speaker B:Look, we got some.
Speaker B:You know, we did probably one of only five, maybe even three hip hop mixes on the Essential Mix on P Tong.
Speaker B:You know, me and Yoda.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think Yoda did another Essential mix.
Speaker B:I think DJ Shadow did an essential mix.
Speaker B:And I saw Pete Ong recently in Dubai, came over for business and I said to him, you probably don't remember me, but I'm Dan Greenpeace and I used to be on XFM and I did an Essential mix.
Speaker B:I totally remember you.
Speaker B:We had a bit of a chat again.
Speaker B:Another weird full circle moment.
Speaker B:But that, you know, doing the Essential Mix was a big door opener for me and Yoda as well.
Speaker B:And, you know, we then bootlegged that mix and put it out ourselves or through another guy.
Speaker B:God knows how many CDs he sold.
Speaker B:We probably got a grand each, who probably saw 20,000 CDs, but, you know, these crazy, like, you know, man, you know, crazy shit.
Speaker B:It was a crazy time.
Speaker B:It really was.
Speaker B:Looking back at was groundbreaking times, you know, whether it's Ricky or Steve or what.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And then when I was on, I'd be.
Speaker B:In fact, just before I.
Speaker B:Just before I joined xfm, I was pretty cool with Westwood.
Speaker B:And Westwood was like a kind of an icon, you know, absolute icon, you know, from Bad Meaning Good documentary 987, exposing the London posse and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:It was like legendary and we'd listened, we'd, you know, we'd, we'd get second and third hand copies of his tapes and his shows and hearing ultra magnetic MCs tracks for the first time.
Speaker B:But in some weird roundabout way, through my Independence Day days for Hip Hop Connection and being known as a dj, he asked me to come on and do an Independence mix.
Speaker B:And that first show that I did, I hadn't quite started on EXOFM yet, but I knew it was coming.
Speaker B:I knew we'd had the meetings.
Speaker B:So I went on a show and I had all these.
Speaker B:Cause when I was interviewing artists, I was getting them to do artist drops.
Speaker B:I had this incredible bank of artist shout outs that I'd acquired before I was on radio, but for my mixtapes.
Speaker B:So I went into Radio 1 and I did the guest mix and I was dropping incredible drops that I was getting from Busta Rhymes or whoever.
Speaker B:And it's almost like my little segment sounded so professional.
Speaker B:Cause I was so ready to go to radio from my pirate radio days.
Speaker B:But from being doing mix tapes and knowing how to compile music, I was so ready for that radio opportunity.
Speaker B:It was incredible.
Speaker B:And the Westwood, when I appeared on Westwood, Eminem, that was the first time Eminem went on Westwood show.
Speaker B:And of course I was good.
Speaker B:You know, I knew Eminem and his manager, Paul Rosenberg.
Speaker B:And so when they were in the studio, it was a big deal.
Speaker B:And it was almost like I was on Westwood.
Speaker B:I was doing this independent mix.
Speaker B:Eminem was on the show.
Speaker B:We're all kind of knew each other.
Speaker B:And that was just, that was just before I started on xfm.
Speaker B:So by the time I started on xfm, I was hitting the ground running.
Speaker B:I did Eminem's first ever radio interview.
Speaker B:So Zayn did his first TV interview for mtv.
Speaker B:In fact, Paul Rosenberg said to me, we're gonna do one radio interview.
Speaker B:We're gonna do one, one, one TV interview.
Speaker B:So I interviewed Eminem.
Speaker B:I went to Manchester, to one of his shows in Manchester, backstage.
Speaker B:And there's video, there's YouTube footage of me interviewing Eminem backstage.
Speaker B:And I interviewed Eminem, broadcast it on xfm.
Speaker B:And Paul said, who should we get to the radio?
Speaker B:And if Zayn, it's got to be Zayn, mtv.
Speaker B:So he went back down to London, he did Zayn on MTV.
Speaker B:So there's a weird video online, it's a 45 King video talking about the origins of 45 King working on stand for Eminem.
Speaker B:And the two interview clips they used was me interviewing Eminem in Manchester.
Speaker B:Prerecorded for my XFM show and Zayn interviewing Eminem for the mtv.
Speaker B:So we were the first two people to interview him and this was the first, the second or third week I've been on xfm, I was interviewing Eminem and I got all the presenters from XFM drops.
Speaker B:So I got him to record drops, Eminem to draw drops for all the X Men presenters.
Speaker B:So within three or four weeks, I was making my mark like nobody's business.
Speaker B:I was like the hero.
Speaker B:I was the hero of the station, the hottest rapper at the time, one of the hottest artists on the planet.
Speaker B:I got the first ever radio interview getting everyone drops.
Speaker B:It was a wild time, you know, and then very soon I left my job and went to music full time.
Speaker B:And then I.
Speaker B:I actually got a job with a record label at Boston called Land Speed Distribution, which is the precursor to Traffic Entertainment and Get on down, which, you know, may not know, do a lot of hip hop reissues.
Speaker B:So that was the turning point.
Speaker B:Because of my work in music and as a journalist and a dj, they approached me and said, we need a.
Speaker B:We need someone to handle our UK business.
Speaker B:We've got a UK distribution deal through PS Play against them, and we need someone to handle all our UK marketing and distribution.
Speaker B:And they offered me a salary and it was the same salary as I was getting my job.
Speaker B:So it was an immediate transition.
Speaker B:I was on radio, I got a job running this US record label.
Speaker B:Bang, that was it.
Speaker B:I was gone.
Speaker B:So by the time I turned 30, I was like, right, that was the turning point.
Speaker B:I'm fully knee deep.
Speaker B:I'm up to my neck in this business and culture now.
Speaker B:This is it, this is the turning point.
Speaker A:Because didn't Ugly Duckling some of their stuff came out on Pious, didn't it?
Speaker B:They did.
Speaker B:That was after.
Speaker B:So we signed it to Wall of Sound and then Ugly Duckling, P.S.
Speaker B:had their own record label as well.
Speaker B:And so it kind of switched from being on Bad Magic, Bad Magic kind of folded and stopped being a thing.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:And then they switched to ps and then I think they actually went to Excel Records for Little Stone as well.
Speaker B:But Excel was distributed through ps, so it went through the same.
Speaker B:All through all went through the same system.
Speaker B:So, you know, pretty crazy stuff, man.
Speaker B:You know, it was exciting times, you know, that whole time was very, very exciting.
Speaker B:I was right in the thick of it, you know.
Speaker B:And then Fabric clubs, like Fabric emerged and I really started cutting my teeth in proper clubs, with proper sound, in proper rooms, with big DJs, big you know, I do my own hip hop nights at 93ft East.
Speaker B:It was the.
Speaker B:We had the All C.
Speaker B:We all see live, we called it.
Speaker B:And there was a promoter with XFM called Adrian who gave me a budget.
Speaker B:And he goes, look, you know, you've got $5,000 to spend.
Speaker B:You know, book artists for me.
Speaker B:I'll fly them in, you know.
Speaker B:And I brought in Cormega, Large professor, nonfiction local artist.
Speaker B:I brought Black Swanx.
Speaker B:I bought, you know, signed Black Swanks of Bad Magic, Estelle High and Mighty.
Speaker B:I've got the flyers somewhere, there's millions of them.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And that.
Speaker B:And that was my entry point into booking.
Speaker B:Not only DJing, being a journalist, running a record label, being A and R, being a radio presenter, but booking talent, so booking artists.
Speaker B:I wasn't taking the risk, I wasn't putting my money in it.
Speaker B: And here I am in: Speaker B:Again, full circle.
Speaker B:But I cut my teeth in mid to late 90s booking hip hop DJs and negotiating fees.
Speaker B:And, you know, we'll pay for your flight.
Speaker B:We won't pay flight.
Speaker B:We'll give you three grand, two grand, they want five grand, we'll give you two.
Speaker B:I was negotiating with these, with the.
Speaker B:With my heroes.
Speaker B:I was negotiating with, like, trying to do a deal with Last professor to come over and.
Speaker B:And then Lars professor would come over and then me and Yoda went in the studio with him and recorded the worst hip hop track of all time, mainly due to our production for Unfuck the album.
Speaker B:But, you know, I'd bring in.
Speaker B:I'd bring in large professor to D.J.
Speaker B:and we'd pay him an extra grand and he'd do a track for me in Yoda for our unfucked album.
Speaker B:Roland.
Speaker B:25 years later, maybe 30 years later, I'm bringing Diamond D to Dubai to DJ, and I'm saying, while you're here, do you want to jump on a trap?
Speaker B:And he's like, play me some beats.
Speaker B:And I'm like, funnily enough, here's some beats I prepared earlier because during COVID I'd fuck all else to do.
Speaker B:So I started making beats.
Speaker B:So I'm doing the same thing 30 years later, going full circle moment it was.
Speaker B:You know, some of the shit that's happened in my career in life is just.
Speaker B:Is crazy how cyclical it is and how full circle it goes.
Speaker B:It never ceases to amaze me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you were Sway's manager for quite a while, right?
Speaker B:Yeah, I was.
Speaker B:So basically, that really Kicked in.
Speaker B:I met Sway.
Speaker B:All right, so I was on radio.
Speaker B:Me, Shorty Blitz and Semtex got flown to Atlanta to cover TVT Records.
Speaker B:I had All City Music because Land Speed Distribution went bust.
Speaker B:Trying to type a few stories here.
Speaker B:Landbeat, Land Speed distribution put out 50 cents.
Speaker B:First album.
Speaker B:Guess who's back.
Speaker B:Not first album, but the one that kind of got him is the one that's on the Gondola cover.
Speaker B:I was distributing and handling all the marketing distribution of that label.
Speaker B:Then he got signed to Shady Aftermath.
Speaker B:Because Landspeed Distributions office is right next to Theo Sedelmaier's office, which was Eminem's management.
Speaker B:Eminem's management and lawyers.
Speaker B:So landspeed would take CDs and they'd be checking out CDs from landspeed, vice versa.
Speaker B:Anyway, they ended up signing 50 Cent.
Speaker B:Landspeed kept on selling the CDs.
Speaker B:I was doing my job, kept on selling the CDs.
Speaker B:Universal ended up putting a cease and desist on Landspeed Distribution.
Speaker B:Don't put any more CDs out.
Speaker B:It's signed to the Universal.
Speaker B:So Landspeed folded out of Landspeed folding are going bankrupt.
Speaker B:Piaz, who I was working, I was running Landspeed for, said to me, well, Land Speed's gone.
Speaker B:You're doing a great job.
Speaker B:Why don't.
Speaker B:Why don't we give you your own distribution deal?
Speaker B:So they gave my own Pan European distribution deal.
Speaker B:I didn't know how to run a record label.
Speaker B:I didn't know.
Speaker B:I didn't know how to do anything.
Speaker B:I knew how to anr.
Speaker B:I knew to sign artists.
Speaker B:I knew to discover talent.
Speaker B:I knew how to run a record label.
Speaker B:But they.
Speaker B:They gave me a record label.
Speaker B:And I was.
Speaker B:I was then, this is pre Download Days.
Speaker B:This is pre Napster, whatever it was.
Speaker B:We were selling so many CDs, like I would tell you, and making £5 a CD.
Speaker B:Whereas now you're getting pennies for streaming.
Speaker B:We were still selling CDs.
Speaker B:We could sell 10,000 CDs, but not a single scrap of marketing.
Speaker B:And sell 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100,000 CDs, making a lot of money.
Speaker B:Anyway, I had this distribution deal.
Speaker B:I had All City Music, the show.
Speaker B:I had All City Music.
Speaker B:The record label had All City, the All City Show.
Speaker B:I had All City Live.
Speaker B:Didn't really know what I was doing in anything apart from radio.
Speaker B:I was pretty proficient at.
Speaker B:And I had this record label, right?
Speaker B:So I'm like, you know, I signed Black Swan.
Speaker B:I really want to sign a UK artist.
Speaker B:And I was doing like.
Speaker B:I was signing the Arsonists and Non Fiction and Alchemist, first album, First Infantry, Mobb Deep's Free Agents album.
Speaker B:I was doing all these deals, distributing all these amazing, incredible music.
Speaker B:And then I thought, I want to sign a British artist.
Speaker B:So I went to Atlanta with Shorty Bliss and Semtex, and I was at the.
Speaker B:It was a crazy trip.
Speaker B:We went and we interviewed the Yin Yang twins, Lil Jon.
Speaker B:We were in Outkast Studios.
Speaker B:We were hitting strip clubs.
Speaker B:We were, like, doing wild shit in Atlanta, hanging out with Ludacris, then Lil Jon, then the Yin Yang Twins.
Speaker B:And then being in the strip club with all of them and drinking and Pitbull and crazy shit.
Speaker B:Anyway, it was a wild trip.
Speaker B:And we were at the airport coming back, and I said to Shorty as we got back to the airport, and I want to sign a UK artist.
Speaker B:Like, who do you think I should sign?
Speaker B:I want to work with a uk.
Speaker B:I'll do a deal with or work, you know, work with distributed UK artists.
Speaker B:And he goes, sway, he's brilliant.
Speaker B:I'm like, yeah, I've heard of Sway.
Speaker B:I heard his mixtape and I heard his mixtape.
Speaker B:And so that was it.
Speaker B:I got back within about two, three days.
Speaker B:I reached out to Sway.
Speaker B:I think Semtex connected me and swayed.
Speaker B:Semtext had done great things with Dizzy Rascal and the whole thing and was.
Speaker B:I think it was a Sony musical.
Speaker B:Maybe you'd moved to Universal Music by that point.
Speaker B:So he gave me Semtex, kind of gave me the cosine.
Speaker B:He was like, yeah, Dan's cool.
Speaker B:Dan does his thing.
Speaker B:He's the real deal.
Speaker B:And so because Semtex gave me the cosine again, which I'm grateful to, and lost touch with Semtex, I'd love to get back in touch with him, but gave me the cosine, set up a meeting.
Speaker B:Sway came to XFM to meet me in the lobby of xfm.
Speaker B:And you could tell he's kind of sussing me out.
Speaker B:He's kind of like, kind of, you know, guarded.
Speaker B:And, you know, who's this guy?
Speaker B:And I've heard of him, he's on radio, Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker B:Anyway, he came on the show with Pirelli and all the boys.
Speaker B:We did a session on the show, and then we struck up a deal.
Speaker B:And I ended up doing a distribution deal with Decipher Productions, which was Sway's label, putting it through All City Music, ultimately through Psych.
Speaker B:And we put out this is my demo.
Speaker B:And I was there for most of the recording of that, working with DJ Turkish.
Speaker B:And we put out this groundbreaking album which was nominated for a Mercury Prize.
Speaker B:And it was the first kind of label services deal PS had done.
Speaker B:They'd gone from just being a distributor, taking a small percentage and distributing a record to giving you marketing spend, an advertising budget and a marketing budget and radio money for radio pluggers and TV pluggers.
Speaker B:So it's like a services deal.
Speaker B:So they took 25% of the pot in return for putting money into your project.
Speaker B:So, you know, and, you know, then we were performing live on the mobos.
Speaker B:We were at the Mercury Awards.
Speaker B:It was wild.
Speaker B:It went really, really quickly.
Speaker B:It moved really, really quickly.
Speaker B:So, yeah, and then I was kind of his label, his distributor, jv kind of label deal in place with All City Music and Cypher Productions.
Speaker B:If you look at the back of those CDs, it's all City Music to Cypher Productions.
Speaker B:I actually put a manager in place for him who was a good manager.
Speaker B:He works with some.
Speaker B:He still works this day with a very famous dj.
Speaker B:Won't name names.
Speaker B:But anyway, I got Swayer manager.
Speaker B:I thought it's better that I keep my distance.
Speaker B:Let me be the label, the distributor.
Speaker B:And you are a manager.
Speaker B:Anyway, eventually first album came out and, you know, him and the manager parted ways.
Speaker B:We'd had a successful album, he was recording his second album and we said, why don't.
Speaker B:Why don't I just become your manager?
Speaker B:And, you know, the label is Decipher Productions.
Speaker B:I'll handle the distribution, but I'll take sort of All City off it and I'll become your manager and distributor.
Speaker B:So kind of the dynamic changed a bit.
Speaker B:But yeah, went on to work with him for many years.
Speaker B:Man, Adam, that's a whole other story, you know, that's a whole.
Speaker B:That's a big old chapter, that one, you know.
Speaker B:But I then stopped xfm, so I stopped doing radio.
Speaker B:So almost like the buffer for me for not for losing radio was then getting into record label and the management side, which then took over the next few years and a good chunk of my life and my time, I put, you know, it was all about managing Sway.
Speaker B:I was still DJing, wasn't doing any radio.
Speaker B:I was doing a little voiceover, so I did a lot of voiceover work, right.
Speaker B:So I did a lot of adverts and radio and I was still very much in radio doing voiceover.
Speaker B:And I still do voiceover out to this day in Dubai, actually.
Speaker A:Have you got any voiceover highlights?
Speaker B:You know, I do, I do like Eminem's album Came out.
Speaker B:You know, I do any.
Speaker B:Any hip hop albums that came out, I'd be the voice.
Speaker B:You know, they'd get someone from one extra or from extra family.
Speaker B:Depends what demographic they're marketing to.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, but, you know, I always had a pretty good voice for Rage face for radio, as they say.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I did voiceover work, but I was DJing.
Speaker B:I was still writing.
Speaker B:Maybe I was doing mixtapes.
Speaker B:I still do stuff with Yoda.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I had other stuff on my label, but that became less and less Sway became the main concern.
Speaker B:Yeah, man, his Sway, you know, toured with him, was his DJ once in a while, was his tour manager, went to meetings.
Speaker B:We're always trying to chase that elusive Radio 1 playlist, like Radio 1A list.
Speaker B:And this was before streaming times.
Speaker B:So it was a very, very difficult period in my life.
Speaker B:But I learned a lot about talent management, again comes into what I do now.
Speaker B:I learned a lot about talent, a lot of talent management, about managing, about how artists tick, how artists work, what they need.
Speaker B:And again, you know, now I'm booking some of the biggest artists in the world and bringing some of the biggest artists in the world and have done for many years to the Middle East.
Speaker B:I know how to operate.
Speaker B:I know how to deal with the agents, I know how to deal with management.
Speaker B:I know how to deal with the artists.
Speaker B:I know I understand talent.
Speaker B:You know, I'm a dj.
Speaker B:You could call me talent in my own right, but, you know, I never really put myself on that pedestal.
Speaker B:I was never that accomplished as an artist or a dj, but I know to dill in that world and maneuver in that world.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I learned a lot from Sway.
Speaker B:We eventually did get his Radio 1A list.
Speaker B:I eventually did a deal with 3 Beat Records, which was distributed through Universal Music, with John at three Beat and the team there.
Speaker B:And they were an incredibly accomplished dance music label.
Speaker B:They put out, you know, Barbra Streisand and some big dance hits, big crossover dance hits.
Speaker B:There were very, very successful.
Speaker B:And I signed Sway.
Speaker B:In fact, Skepta was signed to them in the early days as well.
Speaker B:I signed Sway.
Speaker B:We eventually got with.
Speaker B:With.
Speaker B:With Level up and.
Speaker B:And still Speeding with Kano.
Speaker B:We eventually got his Radio 1 playlist, I think Level up with Flux Pavilion chart top five.
Speaker B:So it got to the point where I eventually got him that elusive radio 1A list.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But by that point, I was battered, dude.
Speaker B:I was battered by the whole process of managing, giving up my life for an artist, dealing with the Politics of Radio, Radio 1.
Speaker B:I was on the other side of the fence, I wasn't a presenter anymore.
Speaker B:I was dealing with pluggers who were trying to push my artists to Radio 1 and it was very, very difficult.
Speaker B:It was stressful.
Speaker B:You know, every week the playlist meetings, Radio 1, the plugger going back.
Speaker B:Sorry, they haven't taken it, sorry.
Speaker B:They added Tinsey Strider's record instead of yours, whatever it may be, you know, it was incredibly stressful and hard work and it was a grind.
Speaker B:It was really, really, really tough.
Speaker B:But it toughened me up.
Speaker B:It made me kind of a part of what I do now is very thankful to that process I went through, you know, but eventually got him the playlist, got him the hit record.
Speaker B:He had a very successful year touring after that, you know, the most successful year of his career.
Speaker B:Club shows, touring up and down the country, overseas shows and, you know, I felt like, you know, the relationship was getting a bit tense.
Speaker B:I, I was, I by, by.
Speaker B:In a weird twist of fate, at that point I was, I had a residency club in Belfast called Thompson's, so I was still DJing quite a bit and Jaguar Skills was a resident there.
Speaker B:I bring Zane Lowe with me.
Speaker B:We, and we'd, you know, we'd DJ there.
Speaker B:And I was doing a lot of university, I was touring a lot with Yoda and Zane.
Speaker B:So when Zane did these university freshers week tours, things like that, Zayn will take me or the next men as support DJs.
Speaker B:So I was watching Zayn, who was the fucking phenomenal talent as a dj, as a radio presenter, as a creative, in an interview, he's like, he still remains one of my biggest idols, peers, influences, inspirations.
Speaker B:But I was watching him DJ and when I was doing the early days of xfm, watching him present and I'm like, I'm learning so much from this guy, how to dj, how to present.
Speaker B:I learned a lot from him.
Speaker B:So, you know, me and Zane would go to Thompson's in Belfast and you know, once a month or I'd DJ and do my hip hop set.
Speaker B:And anyway, the owner of the club, the owner of that club was, had a friend in Dubai and I got a call from Stevo and the club Steven Marco in Belfort at Thompson says, I've got a mate in Dubai who needs a hip hop dj and they, you need to get on a plane in 24 hours and I put your name forward, would you be there for it?
Speaker B:I'd never been to Dubai that point in my life.
Speaker B:Maybe transited once through on the way to India or something.
Speaker B:But anyway, I was like, fuck it, let's go.
Speaker B: So this was: Speaker B:Flew in, did the gig, met some friends who I still know to this day.
Speaker B:But I was looking around Dubai thinking, this is nuts.
Speaker B:The Burj Khalifa wasn't quite finished.
Speaker B:The Atlantis, the Palm wasn't quite finished.
Speaker B:All these landmarks, you know, about Dubai now were being built, but they weren't quite done yet.
Speaker B:And I thought, I'm DJing at this club, I'm playing hip hop, I'm smashing this, smashing it with this crouch.
Speaker B:I'm getting on the mic, I'm like, I'm kind of almost like reinvented myself as a dj.
Speaker B:I'm like, I didn't usually play those hip hop, R and B clubs, but kind of like, fuck it, I'm gonna go for it.
Speaker B:Like, you know, got on the mic, makes a fucking noise, da da da da, you know, dropping bombs over the tracks and, you know, destroyed it, right?
Speaker B:And then they asked me to come back again and again and again.
Speaker B:So I'd kind of started working in Dubai a little bit and going back and forth.
Speaker B:And then eventually they start saying to me, look, man, we don't really know how to book artists.
Speaker B:Any major artists, any major DJs, can you help us?
Speaker B:And I'm like, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, by that point, I'd be in the entertainment industry for a good 10 years.
Speaker B:I'd really.
Speaker B:I knew agents at WME or CAA, I knew PR, I knew publicist, I knew artist managers, I knew DJs, I knew.
Speaker B:I knew.
Speaker B:I knew artists at a high level.
Speaker B:I knew a high level of artists by that point.
Speaker B:So I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll call in some favors.
Speaker B:So I booked Groove Armada, I booked Basement Jacks, I booked Trevor Nelson, I booked Yoda.
Speaker B:I bought my mates, Yoda, Zayn, then they wanted some indie rock stuff.
Speaker B:I booked Carl Barrett from Libertines, you know, let's do a set.
Speaker B:And I started booking these.
Speaker B:I started booking talent, you know, properly.
Speaker B:And it's not that it was alien to me.
Speaker B:I'd done it before, as I said, in my old city show days.
Speaker B:So then I started not only becoming a dj, but I started brokering talent deals for these clubs in Dubai, still managing Sway.
Speaker B:And then when it eventually came to a natural end, again, the Sway chapter is a whole different chapter.
Speaker B:It's way deeper than I can possibly go into right now.
Speaker B:But we grew apart, but I kind of already set up this life in Dubai, so I kind of ended up.
Speaker B:We ended up parting ways I carried on working from London in my home, booking talent remotely for the clubs in Dubai.
Speaker B:But when we did events, I'd fly in for the shows as well.
Speaker B:So I'd fly to Dubai.
Speaker B:If I bought the Killers or Armand Van Helden or Fat Boy Slim or whatever, I'd fly into Dubai for those shows and make sure the show goes okay, make sure the artist was okay, make sure the agent got a good report, make sure the manager was happy, make sure they got paid.
Speaker B:So I kind of transitioned from DJing to booking DJ and that's when I really started becoming like a pretty major talent booker.
Speaker B:I was spending millions and millions and millions of dollars for my clients in Dubai booking big names and they were getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker B:So, yeah, very soon I decided to make the transition.
Speaker B:We decided as a family, look, we stay in London or I've already sort of semi set up a business in Dubai.
Speaker B:We moved to Dubai and give it a shot.
Speaker B:So I didn't really have any ties.
Speaker B:My record label didn't exist anymore.
Speaker B:I wasn't managing Sway, I wasn't on the radio, I wasn't DJing as much.
Speaker B:But I had this kind of opportunity in Dubai.
Speaker B:So I kind of.
Speaker B:We made the transition, you know, and packed up the entire house, my entire record collection.
Speaker B:We had one kid by then, we had two kids, one was on the way and we moved.
Speaker B:We rented our house out in London and we moved.
Speaker B:Move.
Speaker B:Not really a job to go to, just some sort of semblance of a.
Speaker A:Business, you know, it sounds quite like serendipitous.
Speaker B:Very much so.
Speaker B:Very much so.
Speaker B:And that was 10 years ago, man.
Speaker B:You know, here I am now, you know, 10 years later in these incredible full circle moments.
Speaker B:Still happening.
Speaker B:I'm working with artists that, you know, I've got Dizzy Rascal performing next month in Dubai.
Speaker B:I've seen Dizzy Rascal for years, you know, he was like on the circuit with me and Sway and, you know, you know, we did some big shit.
Speaker B:And, you know, in the early days moving over here, I was booking a lot of artists for a festival called Sand Dance at Atlantis the Palm, very famous hotel.
Speaker B:They had a big stretch of beach which held about 15,000 people.
Speaker B:So Atlantis opened in Dubai and the guy said to me, look, we love what you're doing in that club down the road and you're booking Groova Madre and Basement jets.
Speaker B:But we wanted to replicate that on the beach and create a festival.
Speaker B:So we created this festival called Sand Dance with my friends Tim and Greg at the time.
Speaker B:And that lasted about four or five years.
Speaker B:Major, major artists, you know, Florence the Machine.
Speaker B:I could go to Florence the Machine.
Speaker B:The Machine from Florence the Machine used to run my record label.
Speaker B:She was like my little buddy.
Speaker B:She ran my business.
Speaker B:I was going to put out Florence the Machine's first ep.
Speaker B:They were called Florable and Miserablella on All City Music.
Speaker B:Again, got a cease and desist from Universal.
Speaker B:Florence has just signed to Universal.
Speaker B:She's got a new management company.
Speaker B:You can't put it out.
Speaker B:I've still got that.
Speaker B:I've still got the original masters, I've got the artwork.
Speaker B:But anyway, that's another story.
Speaker B:But Roland, 10 years time, Florence the Machines, one of the biggest artists in the world.
Speaker B:So I call Isabella.
Speaker B:Hey, I want to Bob Florence.
Speaker B:Who's the agent?
Speaker B:Emma bank, caa.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:Hey, Emma.
Speaker B:Florence.
Speaker B:Isabella's a friend of mine.
Speaker B:I booked Florence the Machine, you know.
Speaker B:So some of those connections kind of helped me.
Speaker B: I bought ed Sheeran in: Speaker B:I met Ed on the photo shoot of one of Sway's tracks.
Speaker B:We shot the video in London.
Speaker B:Sway was recording with Ed.
Speaker B:Ed was staying at Sway's house and doing tracks and demos that recorded maybe seven or eight tracks.
Speaker B:Turn up the video shoot, Ed's first albums.
Speaker B:Now, he's not a massive name, but he's certainly a name.
Speaker B:Ed turns up to the video shoot with Harry Styles, a young Harry Styles.
Speaker B:Pre.
Speaker B:Like One Direction Harry Styles, but Pre doing the world tour, becoming insane level Harry Styles.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So there's a video on my.
Speaker B:There's a photo on my Instagram with me, Sway, Ed and Harry.
Speaker B:And Ed was like, hey, good to see you, Dan.
Speaker B:Because I'd known him from being around Sway, he's like, what are you doing?
Speaker B:I said, I'm about to move to Dubai, booking loads of shows out there.
Speaker B:And he goes, oh, well, I'm ready to do my first Middle east show.
Speaker B:Count me in.
Speaker B:Like, just give me a call.
Speaker B:So true to his word, when Sundance, the festival came to an end, I started promoting.
Speaker B:We started promoting our own shows with our partners, you know, first person I called his head, called his agent, did the deal, brought him over for Dubai, Oman, Qatar, India.
Speaker B: an India tour with Ed Sheeran: Speaker B:Just because he gave me his word that he would do it.
Speaker B:And true to his word, he did it and he came over and did the show.
Speaker B:So I was really at that point going into a whole different world of becoming a major concert promoter, major talent booker for sure wasn't putting my own money down just yet.
Speaker B:But that came over the years and you know, became, then we start taking risk and doing our own shows.
Speaker B:But you know, you know, the way it's all come full circle is pretty insane for my early corporate career with Sony and being on the Sony street team, pushing Nas and Fuji's albums and interviewing Nas on radio.
Speaker B:And then suddenly here we are like all these years later, you know, everything I've done in life has kind of, you know, come back full circle.
Speaker B:But you know, the DJ is called the podcast called Once a DJ.
Speaker B:I'm still very much a DJ.
Speaker B:I've got my love back for DJing.
Speaker B:There's the venue in Dubai called Honeycomb, hi fi, like a vinyl bar.
Speaker B:You know, these vinyl bars are very trendy.
Speaker B:One open in Dubai, Devon Oja Sound system.
Speaker B:And a couple of years ago, a couple of years ago I just got really, got my mojo back.
Speaker B:I stopped DJing for years and years and years, but still digging and collecting and not doing radio, not really DJing.
Speaker B:But since I've started playing vinyl again.
Speaker B:Back in the game, man.
Speaker B:Back in the game.
Speaker B:Like I'm digging in this collection every week, you know, still buying vinyl records come every day.
Speaker B:I started playing 45s for a long time cause it was a good format for me to use.
Speaker B:I wanted the aesthetic of DJing, of DJing with vinyl.
Speaker B:But to schlep all these kind of 12 inches in all these record bags and I'm trying to do a four hour set is pretty difficult.
Speaker B:So yeah, I'm, you know, got back into DJing, massively into DJing.
Speaker B:Bring a lot of D I brought and I'm having fun again.
Speaker B:So I'm either booking talent at this level, very high level, or promoting or I'm grassroots, you know, Brought DJ Jim Sharp over a few weeks ago, Sticky Doja, Diamond D, Stretch Armstrong, you know, DJ Coco.
Speaker B:DJ Coco, man, like changed the game.
Speaker B:Like for me it was like I brought, you know, and I was giving him his first gigs out of Japan.
Speaker B:No one's really bringing him anywhere, you know, I, I, you know, I knew of him from his mixtapes and his hip hop days.
Speaker B:But when I, you know, I started bringing DJ Coco out, there was like 50 people turning up.
Speaker B:I was paying, I was paying for his flights from Japan and my own money, paying for the club, paying for his hotels, losing money.
Speaker B:But I was so in awe of the mastery and the craft and the art and the skill.
Speaker B:Blew my mind, man.
Speaker B:Blew my mind.
Speaker B:And so I got the Mojo back for, like bringing the artist that I love out.
Speaker B:So I was either booking Ed Sheeran or DJ Coco, you know, and, you know, just got the love back for bringing talent out.
Speaker B:New talent, DJs, DJing with talent.
Speaker B:It always helps when you bring an artist who's a DJ who can be a rapper as well.
Speaker B:So I brought Diamond D out.
Speaker B:We did a track together.
Speaker B:There's a few more on my hit list that I need to bring out that can rap as well.
Speaker B:Notable producer slash DJs.
Speaker B:There might be another full circle, large professor moment.
Speaker B:You never know.
Speaker B:But, you know, I just got my mojo back for it and I've got this new sort of lease of life with the DJing.
Speaker B:And I'm, you know, I love it.
Speaker B:Go out every couple of weeks.
Speaker B:My time is limited and I'm so busy.
Speaker B:I'm traveling around the region.
Speaker B:I've got a family and kids and, you know, and it's.
Speaker B:It's difficult to balance all that.
Speaker B:But I, I have to crowbar that, that creative time in for me.
Speaker B:Yes, it has.
Speaker B:You know, there's something for me again, right?
Speaker B:I've got my creative mojo.
Speaker A:But yeah, and I think it's the catharsis of it, you know, it's just a thing you've got to release, I think, sometimes.
Speaker A:Or it is for me anyway.
Speaker A:Even if I'm just like tinkering with my decks in here, it's just.
Speaker A:I just need that, you know.
Speaker B:No, it's been incredible, man.
Speaker B:And producing, doing the track with diamond again.
Speaker B:Soft plug available on all stream, available on all streaming platforms now.
Speaker B:It was like I'd learned so much about putting out other artists, promoting, marketing design, designing the album covers, designing graphic design, whatever.
Speaker B:So when I did the Diamond D record, I'm like, right, everything I've learned about putting a record out, I've done for everybody else apart from me.
Speaker B:So I'm going in.
Speaker B:I'm going in, right?
Speaker B:I'm like, I reached out to Kenny Doe, sending the track Kenny Dope I want.
Speaker B:So because I want to press it up.
Speaker B:He's got a pressing plant on his crib.
Speaker B:I'm like, wow.
Speaker B:As I don't want any money for it.
Speaker B:Just press it, Kenny.
Speaker B:And I want it to look like a test pressing.
Speaker B:And he's like, yeah, I love test pressings.
Speaker B:I get this whole deep chat about, we're sending pictures on WhatsApp to each other of test pressings.
Speaker B:We've got rare test pressings.
Speaker B:Kenny Dope, absolute legend, man.
Speaker B:And he's loving my Record, he puts it out.
Speaker B:I handle the digital distribution.
Speaker B:I pay so much attention to the design and the artwork at kcd.
Speaker B:My guy I use in Japan for my artwork.
Speaker B:I used him, did all these motion graphics.
Speaker B:I'm like.
Speaker B:I just went.
Speaker B:I put so much effort into this release that I've been waiting almost my entire life to put out.
Speaker B:I put my first record out.
Speaker B:I'm in full control of it.
Speaker B:And I've got three and a half decades of experience of marketing, promoting, managing talent.
Speaker B:But the talent's me for once.
Speaker B:It's like me now, you know?
Speaker B:So I enjoyed it immensely, man.
Speaker B:I made promo jackets, I made promo T shirts, I made stickers.
Speaker B:I pressed 45s.
Speaker B:You know, it's on itunes.
Speaker B:I got remixes.
Speaker B:I got Theo.
Speaker B:I got DJ design, I got Kish and Turkish to do a remix.
Speaker B:I did a whole remix package.
Speaker B:I went in so hard on that, and I.
Speaker B:And I needed it.
Speaker B:It was almost like.
Speaker B:It was almost like I've done everything for everyone else, apart from me, my entire career on the business side.
Speaker B:Now it's time for me, and I'm gonna surprise people by like, Dan Makes Peace.
Speaker B:People know I produce because if you read the book and, you know, I produced for Drew, Some people from my older days knew that I produced records, but I hadn't touched a sampler in 30 years.
Speaker A: hine now and go back to, say,: Speaker A:And you wanted to big up a track, but you wanted to big up your track.
Speaker A:Can you kind of do what you would have done at the time?
Speaker B:I'm not sure I could do it.
Speaker B:I'll tell you what I would do.
Speaker B:Not what I would say, what I would do.
Speaker B:The big records were always at the beginning of the show.
Speaker B:So I don't know if you ever listened to the All City show, but I had this intro where I sampled the Avengers or a KPM library record.
Speaker B:And it was like all these drops, and it was like this crazy montage of drops and energy, and energy.
Speaker B:And then I'd have this instant replay machine.
Speaker B:This was before Serato, where I'd play my explosions and drops and sound effects.
Speaker B:So the big record would go at the beginning of the show so that we come out the.
Speaker B:We come out the show opener.
Speaker B:You come out the ad break.
Speaker B:There's the show opener.
Speaker B:You drop the big record that week.
Speaker B:I'd play, you know, sound effects, sound effects, sound effects.
Speaker B:And I'd probably rewind it and play it again.
Speaker B:And so that big show open, it was like the big impact.
Speaker B:If you're listening to the show, the record I play first is the big track.
Speaker B:So of course, if I'm going to plug myself, I'm going to put that the biggest, the biggest track.
Speaker B:So I'm going to put the pole position right at the top of the show.
Speaker B:So that's how I kind of gave treatment to the biggest song.
Speaker B:And I'd phase the show.
Speaker B:We'd usually do a three hour old city show.
Speaker B:So then I'd do.
Speaker B:I'd break after half an hour and then at the top of the second hour or third hour, I'd go and play some big heavy hitters as well.
Speaker B:So that's kind of what I'd do.
Speaker B:I'd give you that treatment, you know, nice.
Speaker B:But then I'm pretty humble as well, so I'd almost be a little bit too humble and embarrassed to do that to my own record.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:That's what in my mind I'm doing.
Speaker B:In reality, it would be buried in amongst the rest.
Speaker B:Oh, by the way, by the way, this is my new record.
Speaker B:Enjoy.
Speaker B:You know, with Diamond D.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The reality was I'd be too, too shy, too embarrassed to.
Speaker B:And that's probably the reason why I'm not, you know, like Yoda is cut out for being, you know, you've made a career out of DJing.
Speaker B:I was never really comfortable standing in front of crowds, really.
Speaker B:I was never natural.
Speaker B:I was never a natural performer.
Speaker B:I reiterate, I had a very good face for radio.
Speaker B:I was born and built and I was meant for radio, you know, I wasn't meant to be a DJ for.
Speaker B:I'll give you one example.
Speaker B:When I used to sand dance Festival Atlantis, One of the DJs backed out and 15,000 people on the beach.
Speaker B:You got Snow Patrol, Calvin Harris.
Speaker B:I bought Snow Patrol, Calvin Harris.
Speaker B:It was this immense festival lineup.
Speaker B:15,000 people.
Speaker B:There's a prime time slot.
Speaker B:DJ pulls out the day before.
Speaker B:I'm like, shit, who are we gonna put in?
Speaker B:My guys were like, Dan, you, tj?
Speaker B:Like, yeah, fuck it.
Speaker B:And I went on that stage, right?
Speaker B:I quickly got my guy, my friend, to do some motion graphics.
Speaker B:Cause we had this huge screen on stage.
Speaker B:It was like massive stage, festival, stage.
Speaker B:I said, here's my face.
Speaker B:It was a caricature of me by Jamie Hewlett.
Speaker B:Actually.
Speaker B:He did a campaign for xfm.
Speaker B:He did caricatures of all caricatures in a guerrilla style of all the presenters on xfm.
Speaker B:So I Had this Jamie Hewlett face of mine.
Speaker B:I said, right, make some graphics.
Speaker B:Dan Greenpeace, my Jamie Hewlett face.
Speaker B:Give me a one hour reel that I can give to the AV guy and put it on stage.
Speaker B:I did this set.
Speaker B:It was kind of like I played this kind of major laser upon the floor.
Speaker B:Is it all those big, you know, Barbara Streisand, all those big kind of crossover hip hop influence, but big crossover dance tracks, big club festival bangers.
Speaker B:Not house, not dance, but just kind of crossover hip hoppy style, you know, Fat Boy Slim type thing.
Speaker B:I was on the mic.
Speaker B:15,000 people throw your fucking hands in the air.
Speaker B:Dan Greenpeace on the thing.
Speaker B:And I got off the stage and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing?
Speaker B:That's not me.
Speaker B:That is not me.
Speaker B:I can do it.
Speaker B:I can do it.
Speaker B:I've got the confidence, the ability.
Speaker B:I can put that mask on and go, hey, I'm not Dan Greenpeace.
Speaker B:I'm Dan Greenpeace.
Speaker B:But it wasn't me, man.
Speaker B:It wasn't me.
Speaker B:I walked off that stage, I'm like, everyone goes, oh, you smashed it.
Speaker B:You smashed it.
Speaker B:You should DJ more.
Speaker B:I'm like, nah, I'm not cut out for that.
Speaker B:I did it, but I'm not cut out for it.
Speaker B:Let me just show you something quickly.
Speaker B:I'm just gonna show you this picture.
Speaker B:One sec, one sec.
Speaker B:This is the XFM picture.
Speaker B:So there's Zane, Theo Touche, Fake Blood and me.
Speaker A:Is that the guy that did the Gorillas?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So the Gorillas, the Gorillaz were the hottest thing at the time.
Speaker B:And Charlotte Souson, who's the marketing director of XFM at the time, was like, we're kind of relaunching xfm.
Speaker B:We've got these exciting new presenters.
Speaker B:There's Dan, there's Zane, there's Lauren, There's.
Speaker B:Whoever it is, they did a full.
Speaker B:I'm not even joking, a full London Underground Tube poster campaign for xfm.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:That was on Billboard.
Speaker B:That was on billboard size, like posters in Oxford Circus.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:And also on the little smaller ones in the train.
Speaker B:So I'm getting in the train thinking, what the fuck?
Speaker B:Like, there's me on this poster in Oxford Circus.
Speaker B:I was like, it was mental.
Speaker B:It was like I could again, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, you know, and that was a little memento I had.
Speaker B:You know, they gave us all a poster and, you know, there is the reality of that picture.
Speaker B:I look like one of the proclaimers on that Picture Zane looks like.
Speaker B:He's like evil B boy.
Speaker B:Theo's like, get a blaster, do the whole thing, you know?
Speaker B:You know, and when Charlotte said, I want to take a photo of you, she didn't tell me what the photo was for.
Speaker B:So we're in the exit from officer.
Speaker B:She goes, I'll take a photo.
Speaker B:Okay, cool.
Speaker B:She goes, just stand there and pose.
Speaker B:I'm just like.
Speaker B:Like that.
Speaker B:She didn't tell me Jamie Hewlett was gonna, you know, doing a caricature of me for an entire London Underground poster campaign.
Speaker B:Otherwise I'd have gone, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So I fucking.
Speaker B:I look like me on a normal day.
Speaker B:So it always, always kind of riled me seeing, you know, like, saying's like, that's me, that's.
Speaker A:I would have been the same in that situation.
Speaker B:I said to Charlotte, you could have told me, what were you using it for?
Speaker A:Like, so with Dubai having been there, it's 10 years, right?
Speaker A:Has that bit.
Speaker A:What's it been like as a resident, seeing how it's changed and, and developed.
Speaker B:As a place, very interesting.
Speaker B:I mean, living here with a family, you know, watching your kids grow up, taking your kids to school, walking the dog on one hand, it's a very, very normal life.
Speaker B:I do the school drop off, I go to the office, sometimes I dj, sometimes I'm working with an A list pop star.
Speaker B:I'm in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker B:You know, my life is mental in one respect, but the day to day aspects of life is very normal.
Speaker B:You know, we've got a lot of British friends, we've got a lot of friends from all around the world.
Speaker B:We've got a very, very mixed group of friends.
Speaker B:You never know your next door neighbor's going to be here.
Speaker B:But, you know, when it comes to day to day, life is very normal.
Speaker B:You know, you drop your kids off at school, you pick them up from school, you go shopping, you go to Costa and buy coffee, you walk the dog, you drive to work.
Speaker B:You know, life's extremely normal, but it's like doing that, living on the moon, you know, And I never stop pinching myself when I'm at the Burj Gala.
Speaker B:Like, I had some family visiting recently.
Speaker B:We went to the Burj Khalifa and.
Speaker B:Or I take DJs or artists and we'd give them a tour and say I look up at the Burj Khalifa and I'm like, holy shit, I live here.
Speaker B:Like, that's 20 minutes down the road from my house.
Speaker B:That's like in the city, people come in their millions To Dubai to have a holiday.
Speaker B:They save up for a year or two years.
Speaker B:It's like a dream destination.
Speaker B:And I live in this holiday destination.
Speaker B:Not only is holiday destination is the number one most visited place in the world, you know, as a holiday, you know, it's bizarre, you know.
Speaker B:So I live in this kind of weird bubble of a place that either people go, oh, I don't want to go to the Middle east or my dreams go to Dubai.
Speaker B:Whatever your opinion is of this region, you know, it's an aspirational place to come.
Speaker B:But we kind of live in this weird bubble.
Speaker B:So that's one thing.
Speaker B:It has changed a lot, you see, it's very transient.
Speaker B:You see a lot of.
Speaker B:We've had a lot of friends that have lived here, then suddenly leave.
Speaker B:A lot of friends that suddenly arrive, they become your best friends.
Speaker B:Some friends you've got connections with from back in the uk.
Speaker B:You might be from the same town, you might be from the same industry.
Speaker B:You know, you build these connections with people but the connections you make are very meaningful because everyone is in Dubai for the same reason to.
Speaker B:Well, either they've come to do better for themselves or they've just come for a change of scenery.
Speaker B:They've come to escape, they've come to try something different.
Speaker B:You know, everyone's got their own reasons, but everyone is here.
Speaker B:It's not like you just jump on a plane and move here.
Speaker B:You know, it's a mission.
Speaker B:If you're young for and single, it's relatively easy.
Speaker B:But when you're moving your house and your family, that's a big task.
Speaker B:Especially when you've got friends who work for banks here, for example, they may be relocated.
Speaker B:So the banks will pay for the flights and the relocation and the removal costs and transporting the dog and the cat and pay the kids school fees.
Speaker B:We moved of our own sort of volition, if you like.
Speaker B:We moved because we wanted something different and a change.
Speaker B:So we came here.
Speaker B:The reason for coming here were our own reasons.
Speaker B:We were self motivated to do something new and to do something different.
Speaker B:So you have to make it work.
Speaker B:Some people come here as school teachers, come for a couple of years, have a few nice holidays in barley because it's close by and then go back to the uk.
Speaker B:Some people come here and have to go back for family reasons.
Speaker B:Some people come here for a year and stay 10 years.
Speaker B:So it's very interesting the people you meet.
Speaker B:Life is very interesting here is very different.
Speaker B:I know people see what I do through the lens of Instagram.
Speaker B:By and large.
Speaker B:Oh, Dan's fucking killing.
Speaker B:You've got Diamond D over if you're a hip hop head.
Speaker B:Oh, Dan's fucking killing it.
Speaker B:He's promoting this artist.
Speaker B:Business must be great.
Speaker B:Everything's through the lens of Instagram, but that's great.
Speaker B:But you know, you just live normal life.
Speaker B:But it's a weird life.
Speaker B:It's a bizarre life for sure.
Speaker B:You know, you quite often pinch yourself and go, wow, how the hell did we even do this?
Speaker B:How did we even make this move in the first place?
Speaker B:I mean, I was 10 years younger, so could I do that now?
Speaker B:No way on earth.
Speaker B:I won't have the energy.
Speaker B:It was incredibly difficult, but back then it felt right and I did it.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've seen it change a lot more.
Speaker B:Skyscrapers have sprung up after the Ukraine, Russia war.
Speaker B:Suddenly 600,000 Russians move here.
Speaker B:Changed the dynamic enormously in the schools and in day to day life.
Speaker B:Before that huge Chinese influx, then Covid happened, all those people disappear.
Speaker B:So it's very transient.
Speaker B:But things change a lot.
Speaker B:You know, it's an ever evolving city country, the United Arab Emirates.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:And then you see regional changes.
Speaker B:So like when I first moved, going to Saudi Arabia wouldn't have even been a consideration.
Speaker B:Saudi Arabia was a closed country, it wasn't open for business.
Speaker B:We were doing business in Qatar.
Speaker B:Then suddenly, several years later, you know, Qatar got kind of shut off from the rest of the world for political reasons.
Speaker B:But Saudi Arabia springs up.
Speaker B:So we're working in Qatar one minute, the next minute, there's no Emirates flights going to Qatar.
Speaker B:Saudi Arabia is opening.
Speaker B:So you see a lot of regional dynamics as well.
Speaker B:It's quite interesting you're asking me these questions because not many people ask them because I don't really speak to anyone really about living here outside of Dubai.
Speaker B:So thanks for asking me these.
Speaker B:It's quite interesting to answer them.
Speaker B:And it's different to hip hop, but yeah, it's an interesting point.
Speaker B:Not only do I see Dubai change, I've seen the entire region change.
Speaker B:I could go deeper into the politics and wider regional politics, but you know, you probably watch the news, listen to the radio.
Speaker B:We don't really do that here.
Speaker B:It's not like we've got the TV on or you listen to LBC or you're listening to sky or BBC News.
Speaker B:I look at the BBC app once a day.
Speaker B:What's going on in the world?
Speaker B:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:Back to my everyday life.
Speaker B:When I go back to the uk, I find that everyone is bombarded by news and the sirens and there's issues and you live in this weird bubble.
Speaker B:You know, we're kind of buffered from a lot that goes on in the outside world.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker A:It's really interesting to hear about that because it's not somewhere I've ever been.
Speaker A:I mean, I'm not very well traveled, to be honest, so it's always good to hear about other places.
Speaker A:Dan, I'm really mindful of time now.
Speaker A:I know we've both got quite a lot of stuff to do today, so I think it's probably best if we wrap it up there.
Speaker A:Thanks for all your time today and all the stories.
Speaker A:I've really enjoyed this.
Speaker A:It's not felt like the two hours that it's been, but I think, yeah, we should kind of leave it there.
Speaker A:Maybe we can have a volume 2 one day or a revisited, see how things are going.
Speaker B:Yeah, look, thanks, Adam.
Speaker B:I really appreciate it.
Speaker B:It's taken a while for this to come together and I've heard so many of my friends and peers being interviewed on this, on this podcast and you know, patiently waiting when's he going to ask me.
Speaker B:But you know, I've honestly, I've got a lot from listening to a lot of people I know on the podcast.
Speaker B:I know some of them, some of them really, really well and to hear their stories, this perspectives I've never heard before.
Speaker B:So, you know, hopefully mine will do the same with them.
Speaker B:But keep doing what you're doing, man, because it's great and I'm happy to do a part two anytime.
Speaker B:And you know, love the podcast, love what you're doing.
Speaker B:Very interesting and insightful.
Speaker B:So yeah, thank you for having me on the.
Speaker B:Having me on the part.
Speaker B:Anytime.
Speaker A:Great stuff.
