Mark Rae pt 1: Right Places, Right Times

Speaker A: 00:00:50

Welcome back to Want A dj, everyone. We're joined this week by producer, songwriter, label owner, self publisher, remixer, novelist, and former DJ Mark Rae. Mark, how you doing today?

Speaker B: 00:01:02

I'm good, Adam. Thank you very much for having me on.

Speaker A: 00:01:04

No problem. You've been sort of on my kind of backlist for quite a while, so it's good to finally get you on. So you've done a lot of different things here.

And what I like with this show is when we kind of like when I started, it's about, okay, like say your first step on the journey is a passion about DJing. It's kind of, how did we get into that? And then where. What are all the different places it can take you and the journey it can take you on? Yeah, so.

So, yeah. What was your first sort of experience around music and where did you grow up? Is it Newcastle?

Speaker B: 00:01:41

So I was born in Ashington, the mining village. It's not a village, it's a town, really. And then brought up in Cramlington, Newtown.

And then we moved when I was about 12 to a different place called Ponteland. And then I studied in Manchester with a degree. So that's basically my early arc. But I mean, obviously music is.

Everyone's exposed to music from a very young age. In my case, it was through 7 inch vinyl.

And the radio, particularly the radio on the weekend when in the early 70s, my father would be fixing Hillman Hunters and family cars that were rust buckets, as they were back then. And of course they put the Benetton radio on that would be sitting on out in the garden, you know, on hot summer's days.

And just those fantastic shows that would be on a weekend. And I looked back to correct and see what this was. But apparently on a Sunday, they did two or three hours of it.

Now we go back to: 1969

Some of the songs that were in the charts are just still stunning now. Songs like Summer in the City by Loving Spoonful, which, if you listen to that now, it'll send, you know, makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

Cause it's like I'm back, you know, like Marcel Proust's Madeleine. I'm back in the back garden with my dad fixing the car. Down, down, down Da da da da da da da da D Hot down Somewhere in the city.

Do you know what I mean?

And those things, the immense emotional force that a good pop song has coming from a small radio when you're a child and you're like, wow, what world is inside there? Cause it's not just the song. It's like, what's he singing about? Where's that being broadcast from? Cause it's not from around here.

You know, it's like a little window for a child's mind into the fact the world is big and brassy and interesting.

Speaker A: 00:04:00

Yeah, because that's a song that you reference in the book, isn't it, as well?

Speaker B: 00:04:04

Yeah, you know, because I remember it more often than not. The songs that I remember the most when I was very young were the ones that my dad would react to.

And he would react in the same way as someone who was on the dance floor, who you were DJing for.

So from a very young age, you know, I'm talking, you know, four or five years old, I was watching my dad, you know, bang the steering wheel in the car when a certain tune came on and, you know, have an unmistakable physical reaction to wanting to dance or react to the music. And it's very emotive, people in my family. So therefore, you can see I'm like, from a very young age, music is powerful and music creates reactions.

So I think that's my origin point.

s, you know, it was: 1981

I'd been too young to understand punk, but then, I think very strong, you know, like elder brothers and sisters of my friends were going through it. And I can remember someone playing Orgasm Addict, the seven inch single. And it's going, what's that? What's an orgasm?

You know, and that fact that punk was weird and dangerous and interesting and people would spit on you in the street. Do you know what I mean? This is a pretty rough time, that era.

But then you've got people like Gary Newman appearing on Top of the Pops, you know, and doing our friends Electric and just literally going, what's this? You know, because it's like a weird man all done in makeup. But that turning point of synthesizers defining the beginning of something new.

And I think that defined a lot of my early.

I can remember bands like Rainbow, the sort of kind of rock and rock, heavy rock stuff being in the charts and then suddenly, like, Vienna coming on, you know, and in the Air Tonight by our boy Phil Collins. And they sounded astonishingly different at the time, you know.

And then obviously that led me to buying things like so, as well as like buying the best of the jam as they sort of ended and taking that all in.

I also bought the Golden Age of Wireless by Thomas Dolby, which is one of the most ethereally, beautifully brilliant albums in, you know, the British music canon. Because it's a guy who was a genius at using synthesizers and early versions of samplers.

And I think it's not a mistake that I was drawn to what he was doing because it was very scientifically complicated in a way, but lyrically deep.

So, you know, I think my childhood, coming into that new era of electronic equipment and then a little bit later, samplers defined my journey in life, you know, by just luck and timing, you know, because I was buying these records that meant a lot to me. Prefab sprout, Steve McQueen, Thomas Dobby produced that as well. But then suddenly the stuff started happening.

I went to school with the daughter of the overseas producer for the Tube. So on a Friday sometimes she'd come into school, you all sat at your desk and she'd say, does anybody wanna go to the Tube tonight?

And you know, I go, yeah. And she'd give me tickets and I'd go onto the Tube and see Salt and Pepper perform My Mic Sounds Nice or Mantronics or Bobby Womack.

So at that time the Tube in Newcastle was one of the most forward thinking and excellent pieces of music and journalism around music that there's ever been in this country. So once again, look, it happened to be in Newcastle from Tyne Tees television, do you know what I mean? I thought it was Channel four, wasn't it?

Speaker A: 00:08:13

But I didn't even know it was shot up there.

Speaker B: 00:08:16

But you know, the fact that then I was in school with this girl and I saw Bobby Wommack perform live as well as, you know, that Madness do It Must Be Love as they were breaking up. And like lots of key moments that brought me close to it. I mean, I was actually.

I'm in the background of the crowd when the Smiths do this charming man when he's throwing the gladiolas around and it's like there's Schoolboy Mark Rae, you know, but at that time you had a lot of people dressed in ripped denims who are into the Smiths and like it was all about, you know, kind of being melancholy.

But this rumble of hip hop was going on and soul music and remembering my Dad's response physically to music and disco and reggae and stuff in the 70s, I was like, ah, what is this? This banging stuff with loud drums and people flowing on top. And, you know, I'd experienced New York as a. How old?

As a 10 year old, I went there on a Greyhound bus and it was absolutely terrifying. Cause I'd been. I went to Toronto to see my dad's sister and he said, son, do you want to go to New York? I said, yeah, that'd be great.

So we got on this bus and we sort of traveled through the night and we got off and we were given that, said, you mustn't go here, you mustn't go there. Do not go here. Do not go to the Bowery. Do not go to Times Square. Do not go. It's like, what are we doing?

ings. And of course, that was: 1978

And I could feel. I didn't know, but, you know, I could feel the city for the time that I was there.

So all these little things added up to me having some kind of stuff going into my DNA. Obviously Americana, to the Smiths fans in the mid-80s hang the DJ and Americana was kind of weak. And anything that was.

I remember doing my first and only ever job with this guy from Gateshead and he.

On a Saturday, you were allowed to bring in your own music on cassette while we were doing these experiments to test the amount of paracetamol in sulpidine tablets. And I brought in.

So I'm crushing these tablets in and I brought in this cassette and it's got Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers playing Go Go and, you know, bits of Sly and Robbie's dub album. And then bits of this. I remember him turning into me while the Chuck Brown song was on. I was going, what is this rubbish? It's ridiculous.

And he had like makeup on from being in like a. The night before, performing in like a synth band. And I'm like, this is the real stuff, man. Listen to Chuck Brown. I feel like busting loose.

And he's going, this is ridiculous stuff. Why are you listening to this? So, you know, there was that kind of lack of knowledge about true underground black music in the wider public.

Do you know what I mean? So it was almost like there was a sense that if you. I was attracted to it naturally.

But then once you started Getting the odd record from underground record shops. You felt like you were part of some kind of grand secret that you could never learn enough of. Because there was no Internet. You know what I mean?

There's no.

Speaker A: 00:11:39

Yeah. What was the supply of black music into Newcastle like then?

Speaker B: 00:11:43

At that time it was good because there was Hitsville usa and then there was also a lot of good clubs. I mean, you know, Newcastle's. Newcastle's a great place. And it always had a connection to all the good scenes.

Cause the people are passionate there, you know. So there was Tom Corker and a guy called Scotty had a night on, I think it was a Thursday night at Rockshots, which was a gay club.

And you could go in there and Jimmy Somerville would be at the bar, you know, and it would be, you know.

But that's the whole point of my story is that at that time, the places where you'd hear LL Cool J Am, Bad, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Rock Lobster, all these kind of tunes would be in gay clubs doing student nights on the weekdays, you know.

Whereas, like, if you were to go to, I mean, there was a great soul club in Newcastle called Walkers, which was playing all of the, you know, the proper soul tunes. The Big Jam and Lewis Productions, the shirelles, the Alexandra O'Neills for the people with chinos and swept back hair.

But then the students and the underground crew were in these back rooms or in these gay clubs where people were playing, you know, obscure import hip hop mixed with house mixed with Go Go. It's really special time, isn't it?

Because at that point, shops like Hitsville usa, clubs like the Riverside, Rockshots, World Headquarters, you know, to be a student, then your mates would perhaps be into the Smiths and the Water Boys and this type of stuff. And then you'd be like, no, look at this Public Enemy album. And it would be like.

I remember hanging around the DJ booth at the Riverside in Newcastle and there was this DJ called Alan Clark who could mix and he was a good dj. And, you know, this is how open it was back then. He could see my passion. And I think I'd bought something like 10 records, right?

Most of the club's filled with kids. This is the Riverside Newcastle filled with kids with ripped denim coming up and saying, you know, this American stuff's rubbish.

You know, he'd be like playing Chuck Brown and be like, no, stop doing that. Play some Smiths. That's not proper music. And then he sort of.

He was nice enough to see that I was passionate I said, oh, Alan, can I have a go at DJing? And he said, yeah, you come on. You can go on and do half an hour at the beginning of the night.

I mean, that's how it goes when people are open and friendly and warm. And Alan Clark was like that, you know, and DJs back then would be like, oh, this is what this record is.

You can get it down there, you know, DJs were few and far between and we supported each other and if there was someone new coming along who had passion, you know, you'd spread the word and the knowledge.

Speaker A: 00:14:35

Do you think that's anything to do with the sort of size of Newcastle, that it's kind of. People understood that the community had to be won and you had to kind of help other people to build it up.

Speaker B: 00:14:51

To some extent, yes. But I'll tell you what Newcastle did suffer from back then was just complete lack of mass.

So it would be like, you know, maybe a few hundred people were into hip hop, so just wanted to do a club night. Half of them would be too young to get in. And then it was just difficult. And also, remember, we were very immature and naive club promoters.

I did my first club night there at a place called Millionaires and it was called. I forget what I'd called it.

Anyway, someone said there's a night that used to be on here called Fever and it was by these two southern lads who did a rare groove night. People forget that groove before house music took off. Like, the cool stuff to be into. If it wasn't the Smiths would be like rare groove.

s code, a lot of flip kind of: 1950

And then you get the MA1 jacket time, which is when the Beastie Boys and all that sort of took off.

So, you know, I can remember a few people that I knew going around trying to steal Volkswagen and Mercedes metal signs off cars and me thinking, this is not a very good, not a very cool thing to do. So I didn't get involved.

But by the time, you know, I'd realized that it was equipment based, you know, so buying records and playing them in your house and then being invited by a friend in the riverside to play a few was like standing, you know, on the shore while you saw a ship go by and going, I need a ship and I need to have a wheelhouse. And I need to. Like, I was my. My real journey started when I went to Manchester.

And I chose Manchester because I wanted to go somewhere where there was a mass of black society and access to soul and hip hop and the music which had got under my skin. And that was the most important decision.

I was never really bothered about what I chose to study as my degree choice chose because I chose a very hard one. And it was combined studies, which sounds easy until you realize I was doing psychology on one side and then chemistry on the other.

And like, that's almost like doing art and physics.

Because with psychology you can answer degree level, you know, questions by just blabbing and going on about a few people doing this and then putting, you know, putting cats in a box and rolling Sellotape round. And then the statistics would get hard, but otherwise it was just a lot of stuff.

You sit in an organic chemistry lecture and you don't follow what's going on, and they say, okay, so what is this equation? And you just go, I don't want to be here ever again. So I walked out of my chemistry degree because I couldn't handle it emotionally. It was.

It was too heavy. And I think in a way, I was carrying to some extent the weight of what my father wanted me to be. He wanted me to do whatever I wanted.

But he had been a chemist and that was just often the way it went back then. You know, your dad would. It's really interesting chemistry, you know, son, you should give it a good go. And I was like, all right then.

But it got me to Manchester because I. I just went straight to Johnny Roadhouse once I got. Once I got my.

It's just so immature and terrible to do with money, but, you know, you got like 450 quid from, you know, that's called Beginning of October to December, your first term. Grant. Right. As soon as I got it, I just went straight and bought TJ equipment.

Speaker A: 00:18:29

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:18:29

You know, so I had no. Nothing to eat and just practiced scratching Mantronics records with talcum powder on the bottom of them. Do you know what I mean?

Cause I didn't know what slip mats were. So it's quite hard to.

Speaker A: 00:18:42

So did you have the rubber mats then?

Speaker B: 00:18:44

So I had the rubber mat on Garrard non decks that you couldn't change the speed of.

But I'd worked out that if you had two Mantronics who is it records that you could spin one back and keep playing the beginning, which really is kind of like, you know, the origins of hip hop, but like it was so difficult to know the knowledge back then unless you had someone who knew. And I didn't. So I came. All my friends didn't partic.

Well, they sort of liked the fact I was into hip hop, but I didn't have any hip hop buddies really. So when I arrived in Manchester, it was like, okay, let's see what this is all about.

And I went to Johnny Roadhouse, got the garage decks, the Realistic mixer, and I was smashing the little on off button, which was tiny. It used to hurt my nails. And then listening to Stu Allin on a Sunday, and it was literally like being in heaven.

Cause it was just a phenomenal experience to hear that wave of import hip hop and house and go, go still going on through places like Spinning and Eastern Block and to buy the records and take them back and. Okay, so I've already probably lost about 150 quid on this black coffin, wooden box Garrod DJ set. I don't stop there.

I'm like, how much else money have I got left? Ooh, right, I'm gonna go into town and I'm gonna buy Ultimate Breaks and Beats. Cause someone had tipped me off about them.

So I'd go in, you know, one week and I'd buy two copies of Ultimate Breaks and Beats number one, and then the next week it'd be number two. Next thing I knew, I had the entire set on doubles. And I had absolutely no grant. So I was having to say I had to start selling them back slowly.

But this is where I'm saying the passion and the obsession is often kind of overlooked in people's stories.

But for me, I, you know, I was gonna stop at nothing to learn what these drum breaks were and what DJing was and how to do it and how scratching worked. And it was my passion and it remained so for a long time, you know.

Speaker A: 00:22:19

Yeah, you just mentioned Stu Allin. Now, my introduction to our awareness of Stu Allan was, I guess you'd say, probably like a hard house tape that my sister had from a Fantasia, right.

Where he's playing all this hard house stuff and then he just drops in. It's a speeded up. I think it's Strong Island.

Speaker B: 00:22:44

Oh, by JVC Force.

Speaker A: 00:22:45

Yeah. Is it that.

Speaker B: 00:22:48

We know Kurt Gazelle produced that track from yes. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:22:53

Come on to him.

Speaker B: 00:22:53

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:22:55

No, it wasn't that. It was back by Dope Demand King B. Yeah. I actually mentioned this in my last episode because I did it with two Tough from Tough Crew.

Speaker B: 00:23:04

Oh, God, I love him. He's one of my Heroes. Yeah, he's one of my heroes, that guy.

Speaker A: 00:23:07

I was listening to one of your mixes and it was on that and I was like, oh, yeah. But, yeah, so my. My thing was Stu Alan. Like that.

That was an early taste of hip hop for me and I just fell in love with that tune and how funky it is and stuff.

Speaker B: 00:23:19

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:23:20

But then the rest of it, I just thought of Stu Allan as a dance music dj, but then it's only kind of after he passed that I kind of heard a bit more. So, like, anything else you could share about him would be really cool.

Speaker B: 00:23:33

So Stu was like a godlike figure to anybody who was into any type of music that came from import shops, you know, as in the same as Hitsville USA in Newcastle, except spinning, which he had a deal with, were a much bigger deal. You know, they were like. They were kind of ground zero for all the Hacienda DJs, obviously, as well as Eastern Block.

But, you know, Spin in had been there before Eastern Block and Spinning had connections going back to a different era of, you know, soul and funk and then probably like Northern and Motown and that sort of connection. So it was really, really deep and stuff had top tens from that shop.

So you think about it, you know, you just had to tune in and he'd play tunes for the first time that you'd ever hear them. And then you knew you could go into spinning that week and if you really love something, you could buy it.

And if you're lucky, I mean, with the really big ones, there'd be none left. So. But it meant you could write it down and you could go in there and talk to people about it and then.

Yeah, it's just a lovely thing because then you get into the culture of record shops and you get into the culture of people's personalities. And obviously Stu, he did. And I did listen to all of them, he did a soul top 10.

Now, obviously, you know, people like Dave Walker from Fat City, he was a big soul head. So that modern soul, you know, was part of my story as well. I was into it, but then it would be the hip hop top 10 I was mostly into.

And then after that there'd be a House top 10. And I'll be really honest with you, I'd never really. I was quite.

I was into a bit of house and a bit of soil, but it was mostly hip hop for me at that time. So, yeah, I would go in and I. I'd pick it up.

But obviously if you went into a record shop then and you Wanted to go and buy, for instance, an EPMD 12 inch. You know, you'd see the. The. The new groove. There'd be new groove records playing or some really crazy underground house tune.

And you'd be like, whoa, I'll have that as well, you know. So there's a.

There's a cross breeding and understanding that the distributors who are bringing in imports were bringing them in from all different parts of America. And that was the education. You know, you'd learn where a certain soul came from or you know what. New York hip hop, obviously, then the West Coast.

But Philadelphia hip hop, you're talking about too tough. Who you've had on there. I was obsessed with Philadelphia DJs before I knew about Jazzy Jeff really.

But like Tat Money, who is Steady B's dj, they were the first guys who were trying to. Who manipulated. It wasn't like someone scratching.

This stuff is really fresh, you know by Fab 5 Freddy yeah, it was someone transforming like a break by sliding the family stone backwards and forwards and chopping it up. And it was just. It was a real puzzle. Like I saw it as a mathematical, scientific puzzle. How is Terminator X getting.

What is he doing to rock Steady on When a rock get up, get down and then he's like. He's dragging it back and pushing it. And obviously Terminator X isn't a Philly DJ, but the Philly DJs started the transforming.

They started the different way of manipulating a record. And I think I took to that more than scratching because I just liked the feeling of. Of on the right hand behaving like you're a rhythm guitarist.

And then on the left hand pulling it backwards and forwards and distorting it and moving it. It felt as if you were, you know, you were sort of marinating and regurgitating the rhythm. And scratching was much more aggressive and point fronted.

But yeah, I was really, really into it and used to get the VHS cassettes of the DMC finals. American ones, which I forget what they were called, but there was one year was probably like maybe 88 or 89. We used to watch all the time.

I mean, some of it's quite hilarious looking back, but people chopping up Al Nafish that It's Time B side. I had two copies of that and it was just it's time in the house for six hours straight. It's time. Yeah. I loved it, man.

Speaker A: 00:28:02

Yeah. So how did you approach kind of trying to get gigs and were you. Did you feel ready to. To go out and gig at this point.

Speaker B: 00:28:11

Yeah. So this is actually quite an important part of the story because this is where it melds with.

It melds with social references, it melds with friends, it melds with the time. So obviously, when you're young and you've just started college and, you know you can't do much else other than create your own scene. Yeah.

And I think a lot of people did that in those days and that's. That's part of a lot of people's story.

So I arrived in Manchester, spent all of my time scratching and mixing and listening to Stu Allan and collecting records, and it was slowly getting bigger till they were perhaps nearly three feet thick of records. And, I mean, that just felt so amazing.

And there'd be like, Schooly D and Houdini and Public Enemy and then there'd be a Bobby Womack album and all this sort of stuff.

And then the people, a few, few London people I met at parties when I first started, Ed Pitt, he was the first guy I met who was like, I know, Ultimate Breaks and Beats and Apache. And I was like, wow, you know that? Yeah, I've got them come over. So, you know, talking to him about records.

And then I went to Sheffield and I can remember going into the lead mill in Sheffield and just going up to the DJ and saying, can I scratch? And the person was like, all right.

Then just basically, you know, there's like a full club and I'm just suddenly scratching a record that I think I'd brought to the club. And I think it was like ultra magnetic MC's funky or something. And it was the bit where he goes, psych, I carry a Magnum.

And it was like scratching that over a house record or something. And then he said, can you leave now, please? I don't know.

It wasn't Graham park, but Graham park was on at around that time and he was playing tracks like Super Super Lover C and Casanova Rudd, which is a great hip hop tune. But that little capture there, that Graham park was playing hip hop tunes early on, shows you exactly where we are.

Where, before the takeover, I call it, of club culture by house music. Yeah. So I'm in Sheffield visiting a mate. Because I was so busy scratching, I didn't make any friends in Manchester.

I'd have to go and see my schoolmates. My schoolmates, like, oh, I'm in Sheffield.

I'm sure all of you who've been students, it's like, you know, you spend the first year visiting your other mates in other cities because you want to keep your Friendship going. So I go to Sheffield and a guy who's sharing a flat with my mate at Martin Wilcher's sharing a flat. And his friend is Ross Clark.

And Ross Clark basically becomes a very important figure. Cause Ross Clark's living with Dave Walker. And Ross Clark and Dave Walker become sort of together. We become a team of like, promoting and DJing.

We start a club called Fever, which is driven in essence by Ross's ability to have a social network and my collection of record scratching and flyering ability. Because if you remember how I was saying about being obsessed with collecting ultimate breaks and beats, also being.

When I was given a flyering job, I would do it like it was some kind of maths project. I'd literally just go, right, I need the names of all of, you, know, all the places where the students live. Because I was living.

I never lived in one of those. What do you call them? Where students go? Accommodation. Yeah, residents, halls of residence. So I never got into those. I was living in the hood.

Speaker A: 00:31:54

What area were you?

Speaker B: 00:31:56

It was in Victoria park, right next to the International. And it was all. It was kind of crazy around there. I used to like, look out the window at night and go, what am I doing here?

As people run around with baseball bats screaming while I listened to Stu Allen in the background. It was like, this is exactly what I need to be seeing while I'm listening to hip hop. So, yeah, it was good.

But, you know, Ross and I decided to start this club and we named it Fever. And I'll be really honest with you, it was a name that we agreed on, but it was the name of the two guys in Newcastle at Millionaires Club.

They'd done a club called Fever with a picture of Mike Tyson when he was like 19. And I said, we should just call it Fever. And he's like, that's a good name.

Ross brought all of his mates down, including Dave Walker, who was all a big social group. And we just started off from there playing, you know, rare groove mixed with Go Go mixed.

Ross was more into house and he had connections to the Hassi and he went to see the house music scene there as it started to build up. And Fever was a smash because we knew what we were doing because we had good taste in music.

So the DJing was perhaps at the beginning was a little bit raw. But, you know, you learn how to mix on the job.

And I was spending so much time scratching and mixing that by the time I got on Technics, which by then, you know, within that year, I Ended up buying one of them. And then I'd play cassettes on one side and scratch over the top of them. And then I did cassette mixing with three sets of cassette decks.

So I'm already making my own rudimentary beats by looping Ultimate Breaks and Beats with a cassette. Three cassette decks. Ross isn't so much interested in that, but he's like, still. He's building up the social side of it.

Dave Walker's helping with that. Everyone's flirting. It becomes a big social scene.

You got Bristolians, Geordies, Essex boys, you know, people from different backgrounds, from London. This is the fun of being a student. And at that time, you know, it was an electric time, wasn't it?

Because it was just as it was probably just before the Summer of Love and then that. That was about to happen. Funny little things I remember was I remember I had this record with Martin Luther King's speeches on it.

And at the time there was this house record that went free at last, Free at last. Hola, we are free at last. You know, the classic speech. And I had the record and I was playing it and then one of the.

One of the bouncers or someone on the door who was a member of the club staff said, oh, can I borrow that record? You know, do you want to listen to it? So I lent it to him. And this is a lesson for anyone. Never lend any records to anyone.

You either don't get them back or this is what happens to them. So basically I said to him, like, a couple of weeks later, can I have that back? And it came back and exactly where it said, free at last.

He'd literally put it on an ordinary record deck and gone backwards and forwards, trying to recreate the record until it didn't exist anymore. You know, there was no groove and a good early lesson there. So, yeah, electric time I can remember getting.

And then, of course, you go back and I take the DJ equipment back to Newcastle, go to different clubs. There was still Tommy Corker and Scotty doing the same nights in Newcastle. You could slowly see house music coming.

And of course, a lot of big house records went straight into the charts, didn't they? You know, I mean, a lot of the music at that time, it wasn't really underground.

You know, pump up the volume and things like that, and Superfly Guy gonna take you higher. I mean, these were chart records, weren't they, in the late 80s and then early 90s comes round and the club's going.

We're obviously trying to get our degrees and do that and the clubs became bigger and bigger and bigger and people loved it because we put a lot of effort into it. Banners, bigger sound system, Jazz and rare groove in one room. Early hip hop ragger and garage in one room from us with brakes and stuff.

And then in another room there'd be like the, the. The house and then the, the banging sort of stuff, that DIY sound system. So if you take a.

You roll forward to like say: 1991

And I think Tom from Groove Armada used to come down and then also Giant Steps, Morris from Giant Steps used to come down. So, you know, like at that point there was quite a lot of people coming to this thing.

We'd have like half live band DJing on top and then in the back dungeon room, the.

There'd be DIY sound system from Nottingham and there'd be 700 people in there and you'd be DJing and it would be so many people in so much heat that the moisture would go to the ceiling and then it would fill the ceiling with water and as you were DJing, it would drop onto the vinyl. Huge bits of congeal, well, you know, sweat from people and it would like knock the stylus and it's hard to.

Lots of people smoking, so you can imagine like hardly any oxygen smoke, people going nuts to records. That hearing for the first time, it was insanely different to how people would experience clubbing now.

It was on the edge of dangerous in lots of different ways.

There was a great mixing of locals, some scary locals, students, Asian and black kids from London who are coming up and wanted to go to somewhere where they could hear music that they got back home, do you know what I mean? Mixed with, you know, people like myself who are just obsessed with it. And it felt very special and it was.

And those nights went on and they were great. And then we had an emcee who came down one night and then there was a gun incident. He tried to shoot the bouncer. Then suddenly the rumors went round.

We're on the. The main news at Northwest tonight. You know, there's was this around the.

Speaker A: 00:38:22

Time the Hacienda was having old problems, I think.

Speaker B: 00:38:24

I think in all honesty, I think the whole of Manchester was having problems at the time. I mean, it was called Gunchester at around this time that we were doing this stuff.

So certainly people were being exposed to stuff that seems quite crazy and looking back. But yeah, of course, you know, clubs equals money and money equals gangsters and gangsters, you know, so what we did.

So there was another club that was important for my introduction to street soul was a place called Precinct 13. And I know that there's. It got my friend Ed Pitt, who I started Fat City with, and then Dave Walker, of course. They.

He had a Thursday night called the Daisy Age and we have Fever on a Wednesday night. We used to do some swapping of DJs, which was fun, you know, and it would bring.

We got to know some of his crowd and we swapped crowds a bit, but it was at Precinct 13. So basically then one or two summers into it, we keep the night going while Ed's away.

And then, like, basically the only people you could attract would be playing soul music would be the local crowd.

And we had a great time being introduced and learning about British soul music, you know, and street soul, which is where that element in my music comes from. But that was the best DJing I think I've ever experienced was DJing in Precinct 13 on a street soul night.

Just because I suppose at that point there was a lot of pirate radio stations in Manchester, and when Fat City opened, we went on to kind of feed that along with other shops in the city.

But we did particularly well with street soul and basically playing street soul that was being played only on pirate radio and only there, nowhere else into inner city Manchester. Then doing a club where you played these tracks that only they knew was a very. Almost hermetically sealed, beautiful scene.

And the music was slow and deep and soulful and heavy. Massive bass lines and. Yeah, I don't think I'll ever repeat that connection. I mean, I was an outsider, really. I was just taking part.

But I was learning about music and arrangement and soulfulness and. And bass lines and things like that. So that was my education in street soul.

And we did that with people like Andy Mad Hatter and people like Sefton and O and D and Leaky Fresh and all these guys who'd been scratch DJ champions on the Stu Allan show were doing nights there as well. So for a While there, Precinct 13 was one of the few places that you could go to hear street soul.

But I want to just rewind quickly because I mustn't forget to mention the kind of dons of all time Manchester sort of sound system cultures like soul Control. And they were doing. All of.

They were doing house and techno and dancehall and street soul before all of us, including the Hacienda, do you know what I mean? They were doing it first because they basically had a massive sound system.

And they also, you know, they were in the game of buying imports and buying British reggae and soul tunes and playing them loud at the carnival. So they had a night at the gallery.

I went there a couple of times and, I mean, that was just amazing, you know, like, I was proper Moss side and just all of black Manchester going to a proper dance where you'd hear like, you know, don't look any further and, you know, classic black American R B tunes mixed with loose ends. Just A Little More by Fifth of Heaven, all those type of tunes. You hear them for the first time. Listen to them now. They sound like slow jams.

But those tunes were played in the dance and got massive reactions. People standing on tables, banging bottles against the ceiling. Like.

It's hard to describe how intense and emotional all that sort of soul music scene was, you know, And I took very little part in that. I only went to the gallery twice, but I learned a lot. And there were guys that we looked up to soul control.

And then, of course, what we were doing was just, you know, essentially like a student night, which attracted locals. But then that was good because we got our education and then we were able to, you know, move on.

And from that, you know, Fat City was born, the record shop, at just the right time. And, you know, I set that up with Ed and then Dave came on board.

Speaker A: 00:44:49

So what happens then? Are you just like, guys, should we open a record shop?

Speaker B: 00:44:53

Well, it was actually.

Speaker A: 00:44:54

What's involved?

Speaker B: 00:44:55

Yeah. So it was Ed Pitt's idea.

I'd gone to, you know, I had a sort of like, failed relationship in Leamington Spa and I was still wanted to dj and I came back and slept on my mate's floor. And then basically Ed said, come on, let's start a record shop. And, you know, and I was like, yeah, that's.

That would be great because, you know, I love music. So we went to the. We went to the Prince's Youth Trust and borrowed some money that was backed up by the bank.

And then we just got a small little spot. Ed put all of his collected Rare Groove collection From a London Perspective.

And I got on the phone to the distributors and we just started ordering, you know, the box. The CD boxes that were like about a foot and a half long with. In cardboard that had one CD in them. That was a marketing point at the time.

Do you remember those? There was those we were getting. But that though, that's, that's nothing. We had the odd one of those.

But when you're on the phone to the distributor, you'd be wanting to buy all the stuff he knew about and they'd always be trying to say, oh yeah, there's this new band called, you know, Squiffin J. And you'd be like, well, what's it like? Oh, it's all right.

And they'd put one in there and it would be something that would be in the stock for six years because it would be awful. There was all those sort of stories, but in the end we were like moving hip hop of the time.

There's a kind of acid jazz was going quite strong, but we, we were doing more of the American hip hop with instrumentalization. You know, the, the kind of cut up DJ tracks that you could use. Nubian Crackers Springs to mind mixed with obviously the classics of the time.

Pete Rock, Main Source, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: 00:46:41

So we're talking about 93, 94. Ish.

Speaker B: 00:46:43

Yeah. So Fat City was an idea in late 92 and then it was in function by 93. By the end of 93 we'd probably moved shop twice. Dave Walker was on board.

And then within about a year of that we'd expanded quite big.

And then I just had this, as I just described to you, me doing tape loops with cassettes and, and then also scratching and, and, and listening to American jazz and funk soul records, listening to Sample Origins. I just thought I gotta start a record label because I.

When you, when you're on the phone and someone says, we've got these records coming in, do you want one of these? And then you'd say, I'll have five of those, I'll have 10 of that Pete Rock track and I'll have a reorder on the EPMD stuff. I'll.

I'll have this, I'll have that. And then you get some certain ones in and they would have samples that were sat in their original, on the original album in the racks of Fat City.

And you think I could have done that. I could have looped that and put better drums under it. So there was that nagging thing. So I did an album with that was like Fat City and Gone Clear.

Gone Clear became Grand Central. Obviously Fats that.

He went on to do all the fantastic stuff with reissues and compilations, but I wanted to kind of make stuff and that's when I, I So I. I kind of stopped working in the shop and worked in an.

In an office that was Fat City's office and started doing the records and then basically set up Grand Central. And on we went with that with Rae & Christian and. And, you know, Central heating.

And that was quite an adventure with lots of scratching and scratch DJs and, you know, funky fresh few and mark one and only child and Mr. Scruff and Tony D and all these things. And it just like was a snowball of creativity and releasing records, you know.

Speaker A: 00:48:44

Yeah. I mean, you know, you look at some of the artists that you've had on there and some of the guests as well.

Like, your first out was your first album that you put out, the Tony D album?

Speaker B: 00:48:55

No. So the very first album was called Frying the Fat and it was basically had the Fat City logo on the front. And that was a compilation album.

And it was. But it. So I. I licensed some Tony D tracks.

Speaker A: 00:49:12

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:49:12

And also I'd met people in the shop who I was up for a. And Ring and bringing them together to develop them and myself. And they're all around me. So we. Yeah, we put that out first. I mean, it was.

It was me pulling it all together with the help of everyone. I borrowed some money and once I got into it. So the Frying the Fat came out after there'd been some 12 inches. Right.

So the very, very first release is a. I went to license Tony D beats from the Cave. I chose tracks from that album.

There was about 18 tracks that I chose, like six or seven or eight, put them on my own EP and released it. Tony D Central J Parlo EP. And then, you know, it was first priority, which was an early iteration of Rae & Christian, in a way.

Then there was a Rae track which was me trying to do drum and bass. I mean, this is the great thing about. We're not. You know, it's like jungle but with soul samples. You know, Marcus Intellects remixed that track.

You know, this is a key moment. Then I did a Mr. Scruff 12 inch. Remember, at the time we're doing club nights that are like, driven by Fat City. And obviously.

Speaker A: 00:50:25

Is this the Friends and Family Nights?

Speaker B: 00:50:27

This is before then, because we did nights at the Hacienda, as the Hacienda was in essence, coming to an end. You know, we had Grandmaster Flash and, you know, LTJ Bookham. And it was just a weird time because. Because we'd all been into reggae and hip hop.

You know, when Jungle came out, it was just an extension of that.

Speaker A: 00:50:49

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:50:49

You know what I mean, before it became drum and bass, it was very much felt like samplers and drum breaks and very much close to hip hop. So there was that element going on there. And then from that point onwards, I sort of got more serious because I was like, trying to think, how.

How can I make something? The way I saw it was that to make something really happen would be to cut your teeth on doing remixes and then make your own album, you know.

So by the time Steve and I had been working together on the early Gone Clear, Grand Central and Fat City, Frying the Fat stuff, he was engineering and mixing. And I was like, you know, we should. You know, we should basically put an album together. And I think Steve was a bit shocked.

He's like, well, what do you mean? I was like, well, you know, I'm just gonna get loads of vocalists and like, we just make beats and we'll do it. And we did it, you know.

Speaker A: 00:51:45

So my research said that you guys first sort of interacted when you were both sharing the studio space. And he kind of came past and noticed that something that you'd done was out of tune. Is that right?

Speaker B: 00:51:56

It was, yeah. It was more to do with beats in the bar, actually. And it wasn't. The doors were. It was a corridor between us.

So the Fat City office, which had Steve Smith, who does Ear to the Ground now. So there was Steve Smith, Ross Clark, Ear to the Ground, Fat City and the beginnings of Grand Central.

And then opposite that office space, there was Simply Red's demo studio, which Steve Christian was employed as like an engineer for any sort of projects that Simply Red wanted to invest in. Cause at the time they were investing in Blood and Fire, the reggae label.

And, you know, there's a guy called Chiz hall who was doing a compilation called from manchesterwithlove.net. these are all sort of distant things, but, like, that was very much happening at the time. And I can remember being.

I can remember making beats in that Fat City, Ear to the Ground, Grand Central Office and literally like having to get on the floors. People with guns came in who were taking over home nightclub below. That's what Manchester was like at the time.

You know, you just water off a duck's back. But we just hid. I turned all my equipment off and like hid in the office and waited for them to go.

But that was up and down the same corridor where all this music got made. So I think sort of key moments would be, I'm driving the label, I go back to live in London, actually, for a while.

Because all of the records are getting made in London and I was delivering them all around Soho in my Renault Savannah and full of records, getting parking tickets everywhere I went. Like, you know, do you want 50 of these, 20 of this? Do you want this first priority 12 inch, do you want this aim 12 inch?

Do you want this EP from Funky Fresh Few? You have 12 of them, 20 of them. Collecting all my, all the money the next week. And then eventually I was like, I don't want to be in London anymore.

I'm going to go back to Manchester because it's cheaper. And that's where, you know, I know more people and I've sorted the distribution and also I'd befriended lots of the journalists at Mix Mag and Music.

So I knew I'd set a ground swell down that I could, you know, move forward on came back and Central Heating was essentially the what happened from me coming back because I had more of a hands on connection.

album and he showed us the SB: 1200

But the thing is, because Steve Christian was a musician and because I like to sample 17 seconds of jazz records, which is where the whole thing over the hallway came from. I think I had a 17 bar loop going on and he came in and he said, why is that 17 bars long? I was like, well, why shouldn't it be 17 bars long?

He said, well, because it's normally like 8 and 16. And I was like, I don't care, I just loop whatever I loop, you know what I mean?

And that was the sort of the beginning of our relationship where he had musical training and knowledge and production and engineering skill and I had all of that record collecting and creative sample putting together. So it was a really good combination. Yeah. And you know, Steve was great in the studio and great at programming.

So things like the Nightmares on Wax remix. So you know that. So obviously central heating around the times you started getting the remixes.

And I think, you know, the first one we got was the Far side Running, which is a pretty big one to get. But the reason why I got that was because when I was living in London, I was living in the flat of Liz Baron Cohn in her cupboard.

And her brother was a film director who was working with Orlando again, who was the A and R man of Delicious Vinyl Records who released the Far side. So, you know, some things in life are about your skill, but other things are about your.

A bit of your skill, then luck and then also being in the right place at the right time.

Speaker A: 00:56:15

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:56:15

Do you know what I mean? So basically she, I think she must have. This is Liz Baron Cohen must have said, oh, you know, Mark's been staying, he's been making loads of beats.

He's been keeping me up at night, pressing the keyboards too hard and she must, you know, I think he got a hold of some of my tapes and he said, oh, I think I sent him a tape or he'd been over. And he took a tape off me and he took it back, played it to Orlando again. He heard the tape and he was like, yo, do you want to remix the Far side?

And I remember when he said that, I was almost like thinking, is this a real question? You know, do you want to remix the Far side? And I was like, yeah, yeah. So FedEx DAT arrives. First experience of FedEx, right?

This is like, when is this,: 2004

In the hip hop way. So I'm running the. The FedEx DAT acapella is in the DAT machine. I think I might have had to buy a DAT machine to listen to it.

And I'm searching for samples for days on end until I find that Gators track, Concentrate. And I know I'm onto it. Um, I add a flute to that loop and I think that's one of the best parts of it when I found that flute.

And the flute was from a. A break beat compilation, not unlike ultimate breaks and beats, but obviously there was a lot of bootlegging going on at the time.

And I got that record from Fat City, chopped the flute up, put it over there and then I go back to Steve and I'm like, come on man, this is an opportunity.

And that must have been just at the time when I moved back, because I remember I did the remix in London in that cupboard and then we finished it in the studio in Manchester. Steve mixed it and he also time stretched the can keep running away cause it wasn't in tune.

And this is perhaps where you'd see the origin of things not being in key. Because I viewed music as something that was like a collage to be manipulated. And I'm sure that's how most hip hop producers are.

I Remember later on, a story with the RZA from the Wu Tang Clan when we were working with Texas and the bass player in Texas was like, mark, I've just been working with the Rizza, and I was in the studio with him and I said, that sample's in the wrong key. And apparently the Reza said, what's key? Yeah, what's key? I mean.

And it's a good question because sometimes if you can get a related key that's not quite right, it can create the most incredible tension or harmonic difference that a musician wouldn't choose, if you know what I mean.

Speaker A: 00:59:16

Well, this is the danger of the kind of tempo analysis and stuff you get in DJ software now and stuff, I think, as well, isn't it?

Speaker B: 00:59:25

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:59:26

You know, sometimes things might look incorrect to a computer, but they just sound good.

Speaker B: 00:59:31

Of course. Yeah. And I mean, that tension is something that's. That's fantastic. So, yeah, you know, great adventure and journey in the studio with Steve.

Lots of late nights after the Far side remix. Nightmares on Wax ask us to do a remix, and then that's. That's when we're really getting into thinkers, you know, Steve's picking up on the energy.

So I put the Nightmares on Wax remixed together in my studio in Manchester. I'm now back in Chawton. Then I get it to Steve and then he starts to play keys on it and then does amazing programming.

And, you know, we're starting to form the beginning of Rae & Christian in that. Those moments, you know, and, you know, that's where the excitement comes from.

Because then I'm like, well, we, you know, the next thing we need to do. And it's quite interesting how I did it, because collectively, everyone's got different skills, but like central heating, you know, Mr.

Scruff's on there, Ames on there, Only Child's on there. There's lots of different vocalists, like Buffy Brock's and then Viber on the original version of Spellbound.

You've got all these different things on there.

Andy Votel, of course, who goes on to do such a brilliant job with Twisted Nerve and his own music and Badly Drawn Boy and Find Us Keepers and all that. But this is all when we're all really young and, like, desperate to just do something. Yeah. All in this juicy house little room that simply redone.

And, you know, we get to a point and I'm like, well, we need to start making albums instead of doing Central heating. That's a compilation album.

We need to do an album where it's the vision of the artist so the only person who I thought was capable of that in that moment was Tony D. So I was like, tony, I want to do an album with you and I'll get all the vocalists together, but can you bring a rapper? Because I don't.

You know, I can't get UK rappers that, you know, I was. To be honest with you, I. You know, at that moment, I wasn't. UK rap was an anathema to me, really.

It was like I liked, you know, the American rap music and rappers, rather, you know, the hip hop with people like AG and CL Smooth and all that. So really, if I was gonna do a Tony D album, I wasn't gonna ask UK rappers.

And apologies to all UK rappers, because obviously that's now become its own thing, which is almost dominating, in some ways, aspects of hip hop culture at times, you know, with Drake copying, you know, Drill and all that sort of stuff. But at that moment, my decision was Tony. So he brought. He recorded Low Key. He didn't bring him over, but then he brought yz.

bring your S, I'll get an SB: 1200

The Beat discs, and we'll make an album. We did an album in about, I don't know, eight days.

Speaker A: 01:02:29

Wow.

Speaker B: 01:02:30

Yeah. And I had to be very prepared. And it put the pressure there of, like, you got to get the vocalist and the songwriting right.

Get the beats from Tony, give them to people like Buffy Brock, Lorna Harris, who is working with. With Goldie at the time, and see what you can get done, you know, and we did that, and Low Keys was the rapper on that. And.

And then I think we went to tour that album, and this is then that. That's probably ground zero for what was about to come.

Because when Zai, when YZ comes over with Tony D, that's when the beginning of Northern Sulphuric Soul starts.

Speaker A: 01:03:07

Right?

Speaker B: 01:03:08

Right. Because basically, while we're touring with Tony D, YZ is around us and with us, and he's hearing beats and he's helping us finish them.

I've been DJing in places like Sweden and Norway, and I'm in Sweden with the Jungle Brothers, and I say, get their details. I'm like, I'd love to do a track with you. That happens.

Texas had been involved in Good Advice on the Central Heating album because we've been asked to remix. Say what you want. I remixed say what you want out of key.

And it was the best decision I've ever made because that disc on the wall behind me, which is not there for your viewing, but that disc on the wall behind me, which is just there to remind me that I can still do it, but that disc on the wall comes from me mixing in the wrong key. So I made a remix of say what you Want that sounded like the world was gonna end because of the tension between her vocal and the sample I had.

And that sample was what turned out to be good advice, but it didn't. Wasn't in the same key as say what you want.

So basically I sent them a cassette, and they were like, mark, we really love the music, but it's in the wrong key. So I was like, well, hang on a minute, I'll remix it again.

So I did it again with Steve's help with different samples, and we did that say what yout Want remix, which is one of our best bits of work, actually, as remixes. Very aggressive, with a mob, Deep scratch. Take these words home and think it through.

And then before you know it, I'm able to put Northern Sulfuric Soul together because of the Texas Connection, Cue Ball and Kurt Gazelle. I'd worked with Mama Mystique by being asked to remix her. He'd produced Mama Mystique, Kurt Gazelle.

So I was like, hey, I want to work with Mama Mystique. I don't know if you've ever heard her, but she was brilliant. But he said, oh, man, she's. She's quite difficult to get a hold of. We'll do it for you.

And that was how Q and C ended up on Northern. Sofia Exile, Right with Texas.

Speaker A: 01:05:12

Was. Was it the label or was it the band that were kind of pushing the hip hop remixes?

Speaker B: 01:05:18

I think it was Ashley Heath, who was the boyfriend and editor of the Face. He was the boyfriend of Charlene Spiteri, and he had his ear to the ground, and he knew us from Manchester because he'd been to our Fever club night.

So you can see it's all about threads in the ether of that time.

Speaker A: 01:05:38

Yeah.

Speaker B: 01:05:38

Do you see what I mean? So it's like, you can't make that stuff up. It just happens. And if the energy's there and people are going in directions, they'll ask each other.

So he asked me to meet Charlene, and basically I got given that remix and I did it wrong. But they liked the music so much, they did a song on it, and it ended up on White on Blonde.

So you can see and if there's anyone listening, the lesson in that is that your mistakes will often be the best things you ever do in your life. So I did something wrong, but the passion was there and there was a good idea there.

And, you know, I can remember Steve saying to me, don't ever do that again. You know, if something. You get a remix, I'll get it in key. And I said, but if it had been in key, we wouldn't have got that track with them.

So do you mean it was like a moment where non musicality won?

Speaker A: 01:06:29

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: 01:06:30

Hip what? Hip hop one. You know. Yeah.

Speaker A: 01:06:33

Because it's interesting that you had this kind of strong link and connection with us hip hop at that time, because I don't know that there was much of that sort of thing happening in London. I mean, you had like the creators that they were. They connected quite a lot with us rappers. But, yeah, I think that was probably.

Speaker B: 01:06:57

A little bit after just a tiny bit. They did great stuff though, didn't they? I think, yeah. Do you know, there was all sorts going on.

And you should never think that you were in isolation, because I'd been in London for that year when I was driving the records around. So, of course there was the. The problem with London at that time is that, you know, you probably.

You had Giles Peterson, you had the jazz scene, you had the Monday nights at that club. I never. I went to them occasionally.

You had Mo Wax, you had Ninja Tune, but it certainly was a bit more earthly, connected to what I call traditional origins. And it's quite interesting, if you think about it, that Tony D was in Trenton and that was an outlier of New York.

And he always used to go on like, I could have done a lot better if I'd moved to New York.

Speaker A: 01:07:47

Yeah.

Speaker B: 01:07:48

And then you look at it, you look at us, and I always remember A and R Men saying, you know, people in. When we're in London, we think, oh, who did that? Oh, that's Ryan Christian, or that's on Grand Central, or, wow, that's really good.

What's going on up there? And then they'd come up to visit us and they go, what are you guys doing up here?

And it was kind of a little bit of a myth, mythological scene, because it wasn't, you know, we didn't do drugs, we didn't go and hang out with James Lavelle. We didn't go and like be on the scene. We just basically continued to work in our bedrooms on making beats.

And then I borrowed money and worked very hard to make sure that the release is right and put a team together, you know, of A and R and business people like Ian Cook and Eliza Terrell and Rachel Wood and Eoin Sanderson and Darren Laws and Howie Martinez. These are all names that should be heard.

You know, these are people who worked really hard on my ideas that we collectively built up together, you know, and obviously Dave Walker kept running the shop really well with Matt Triggs and Mark Talkington and lots of these people. And it was a real scene of really extreme energy where people were trying to survive to pay rent and eat.

But then also we all arrived in the Northern Quarter every day and got on with making businesses in life and breathing and club nights and giggles and laughs and, oh, have you heard that new tune? And, oh, this has done that. And then of course, you'd have Luke Oona, you know, hanging around there being hilarious.

And, you know, he said, you know, they did T shirts with Northern Sulfuric soul on. And that's where I got the idea from. And I said, you know, can I use your terminology for this album?

And he was fine with that because at the time, you know, I did the Second Electric Chair and then Only Child is just an Una Bomber and I was releasing his records and playing gigs for them and then playing gigs for us. So it's hard.

It's hard in, you know, as we all get older, you forget how that was a scene and a lifestyle and people who are really connected and young and laughing and joyous and full of love, you know, it was a great time and that's what DJ DJing gave me because it was the beginning of all that and it continued throughout it.

Speaker A: 01:10:10

It's the people doing it for the love of the music, isn't it? Not for status or wealth necessarily or anything like that.

It's just the people that love creating that get together and they want to share music, share ideas.

Speaker B: 01:10:22

And I mean, that's.

That's what, you know, something like having a record shop is all about transferring energy and excitement of a record to the person who walks in and they go, I'll buy that. And the pile gets bigger the more, you know, your knowledge of those tunes. And then as a dj, it's about telling a story.

And, you know, there was so many club nights that were fantastic. Friends and family. Christian Wood, or Woody as he was known, Tom hall in London, these great nights that clashed.

People like Roots Maneuver and the Next Men and fantastic artists from America in both hip hop and soul and DJing. Cool DJ Marv. I mean, there's literally hundreds of names. And it was all part of a scene. And that's very hard to achieve.

It requires everybody to believe in it and it requires fabric and something in the air and a belief and a. And a time. But then, like all scenes and everything in life, it has a time limit because those people get older and then things change.

The Internet comes in or things just can't work anymore. And that's why there's a sort of misty haze of. Of memory and then to some extent, melancholy about it a bit. But it's like. It's youth, it's life.

And, you know, we're very lucky that we lived through that period before the digital era took over. Music and clubs and people and phones. It was all, you know, cigarettes and big beats and bass and having a great time.

Speaker A: 01:12:01

Yeah. How did you guys kind of get in touch with aim?

Cause I think like, both the first two sort of AIM albums, they're things that I had on heavy rotation at the time.

Speaker B: 01:12:12

Yeah, no, he's a very talented guy. He came into the shop, Fat City, and he was buying breakers albums. And I said, what do you.

Speaker A: 01:12:18

What.

Speaker B: 01:12:19

What do you need them for? And he said, oh, I'm making music. And I said, I'm, you know, I've got a label or I'm starting a label, you know, let me hear your demos.

Started there, got the demos, and, you know, we slowly went on the journey that led up to his albums. And of course, obviously with Northern Sulfuric Soul, if you look at who raps on Cold Water music, you'll see that it's Q and C and YZ and then my.

My cousin Kate Rogers. So basically I, A and R that for him to get him the vocalists. And he was, you know, the master of the beat side.

And we had to find a way of transferring his very meticulously made octamed and Atari beats.

They had to be completely remade again into an Akai sampler and then engineered and mixed by Steve, which was actually was a big, you know, if you're very organized, you can get it done. But a guy called Mike Ball, who was like head engineer at the label, he.

He went into a little back room on Tibbs street there and he transferred all the samples for Cold Water Music from Andy Turner's records to an Akai sampler. And then basically Steve mixed it. And I just made sure that he got the rappers, which is quite easy because Q and C had.

Were involved with Rae & Christian and so was yz. So we got that sorted. Andy Turner liked My cousin's singing, so I sorted that out. I had a record in the studio that Sale was made from.

So, yeah, I used to share samples, share all the equipment and the people and the vibe and that's how it all got made. But, you know, Andy was up there in Barrow chopping his samples up and. And making magic with them. You know, he's very.

Probably the most talented of us all at putting samples together for sure.

Speaker A: 01:14:10

He's. He's a wicked producer, for definite. Why did you have to rebuild his beats? Is it because it's hard? Like, he didn't have the right hardware.

Speaker B: 01:14:20

So when Aim had made his Cold Water music or his tracks, right, he'd done it on an Atari, an octamed. This is my. I think it was my memory. I think that's what was going on. Whatever it was, it was. It was not.

It was like 8 bit, but like off the front of a magazine cassette type production. See what I mean?

So in other words, like, for it to be as the highest quality that was available at the time, because I know it's obviously the digital world has taken us to like 32 bit float now and music sounds massive in comparison to even our tunes in the 90s.

Speaker A: 01:14:55

Yeah.

Speaker B: 01:14:55

You know what I mean? It's massive now in comparison. So I was like, Andy, you know, we're gonna have to get all of the.

All of your records and the way you've made this, you're gonna have to make it again in this studio. And while me and Steve are doing the remixes and doing our stuff, there was a back room and Mike Ball basically went. And he kind of.

Andy would go, right, this is off that. And it would go in. And then basically you'd have to essentially, almost had to make the whole project twice. And he made it himself entirely.

But I'm trying to say the process was. Yeah, was how are we going to get all these samples of yours into Akai and get them at the highest quality?

And then, you know, basically Steve just mixed it. I know that that took a long. It took a long time, which is why we started like, you know, it probably took a few months of that process.

But this is what, you know, if you want to do things properly, you've got to treat the whole process seriously, you know.

Speaker A: 01:15:55

Yeah.

Speaker B: 01:15:56

You know, if you're gonna make an album where someone's got loads of demos and they're made in a certain way, it's gotta be finished professionally. And to do that, I facilitated it by making sure that the studio time was there. And Mike Ball would sit there and go, right, what do I do next?

Need to take this horn off this jazz record and put it exactly there. Yeah, yeah, Good on Mike Ballford for, you know, sitting down and. And doing that.

Speaker A: 01:16:21

So you toured with a live band, didn't you, with Rae and Christian, Is that right?

Speaker B: 01:16:27

Yeah.

Speaker A: 01:16:28

Was that. Was that from the first album or was that from Sleepwalking?

Speaker B: 01:16:32

Oh, God, no. It was be. It was from. It was from. It started with Tony D. Like, I said that Tony D. That. See, that Tony D tour was hip hop.

But then I went in: 1998

I said, I put you first. And I thought he was great.

I was always looking for DJs that were better than me at scratching because, you know, I loved scratching, but I wasn't particularly good at it. And these guys were on another level. And then Sneaky. I'd really love to remember Sneaky's origin story.

I know that in the end, I think we might have got Sneaky in to do Rae & Christian as a bassist. I'm sure we did for the Northern Sulfuric soul stuff. But somehow I just ended up taking Sneaky and Parker to Australia.

And that's kind of one of the key moments as to how they started doing the mad stuff, you know, that became Finger Thing, which I absolutely loved. And we all loved that stuff. Yeah, it was a great time, but, like, it was very fluid, you know. So we picked up a drummer called Tom on that tour.

So basically, slowly it all got put together.

Because remember, you can start out with just scratching records or playing dats, you know, I'm sure several times we heard mini discs and DATs and BEV just singing over them. Bev was singing Spellbound over a dub plate of the original version around the central heating time.

Cause you could do PAS in clubs, you know, you could say, oh, we'll go to Leeds and we'll sing Spellbound off a dub plate. That's the origin of it. And then, oh, no, we'll put in, you know.

And then we had people like Chip Wickham come in, you know, and play saxophone and flute. Because once we've done Spellbound, we needed a flautist. And then, oh, play saxophone as well.

And then the next thing you know, we've got like a freestyle band with a drummer, Sneaky on Bass Parker on cuts, Steve Christian on guitar, and then, you know, double bass for Sneaky, and then horns. And then the next thing you know, we've got all that with Supernatural. Supernatural.

The freestyle rhyme is thrown in, then the far side touring with us. And, you know, we could never get Bobby Womack over. I remember thinking, should we get Bobby Womack over to launch this sleepwalking album? And.

And he. Womack was still touring at the time, and I think it was like $30,000 a gig.

So people's perception of things is always different, you know, Like Bobby Womack, like, you know, he's. He's not doing anything nowadays. He's not. Not releasing records.

But in black America, Bobby Womack is king, or was king, you know, so he was doing gigs for $30,000. I thought, well, I can't afford that, you know, to come and do one song, you know, did he come over.

Speaker A: 01:19:40

To record or did he record?

Speaker B: 01:19:41

No, no, that was all done remotely via DAT because it was too expensive and hard. And I just got the contact, spoke to him on the phone, sent him a dat, and then we spoke on the phone a lot, actually.

Him talking to me for hours, me just going, huh, Huh. I think he might have needed someone to talk to, to be honest with you, but he was absolute dude.

I mean, some of the stories were just incredible and. Yeah, so everything gets made in different ways.

But, you know, if an overarching kind of sense of some of the elements of, you know, people think, well, how did you do all that? Or how did this happen? And, you know, how do record shops runs, how record labels run?

Well, basically, in the end, when you start a business, you've only got one. You've got, like, one choice. You've got to keep moving forward, otherwise the business ends, Right?

So that's a hell of a ax to be hanging over your neck. So once I started employing lots of people, I had to keep paying their wages. So you've got to have ideas and you've got to keep moving forward.

And in those pressured moments, you can make mistakes or you can go out of fashion, or in the end, it's just life, you know? But, like, when you. When you join the battlefield to push on and make stuff, you go until it stops.

And we had a hell of a run, and it was a long time. And. And when you. From this story I've told today, when you think it goes back to the beginning of the 80s or the mid-80s, and then, you know, the.

The clubs in the late 80s, and it's it's a long. It's a long period of time, isn't it?

Speaker A: 01:21:24

Yeah. So just, just going back then to, to the Bobby Womack bit, how kind of exciting was it to be able to connect and work with him? Sort of.

Phone calls aside, it must have been pretty cool to be like, we're working with Bobby Womack here.

Speaker B: 01:21:38

Yeah, I mean, I was, I was really, really excited about it all because he had, you know, I'd bought his records in the 80s and he was actually quite big in the 80s on the soul scene, you know, the Poet album.

And then when the weekend comes, I don't know if you know those tracks and all the things we do when we're lonely, like you're still making really great tunes. So to me, it was like working with a hero for sure. And I, I was very excited.

I couldn't quite believe it was going to happen or that I'd even spoken to him because I went on a. I went on an interview on Dub Lab, an Internet radio station in.

, must have been: 1999

And I said, well, I really like the Far side, who I've remixed. And also I really loved Bobby Womack when I was growing up.

And then a post it note was put on the desk as I was talking, saying, bobby Womack management, this guy's number. So I got off that interview and went back into central Los Angeles, down, down in the center of town there and, and basically got the post it note.

And I was at Green, this company called Green, I can't remember the name. They were doing the promotion for Northern Sulfuric Soul.

So basically they, you know, they let me use the phone and I rang up this guy and he said, hey, yeah, I don't manage Bobby anymore. But Bobby's really, you know, he's really. He's all about the music. You know, he's still really into the creativity and everything.

So here's his home number. So I wrote it down and I rang it and it was like, oh, I'm like, hi, is that Bobby Womack? Yeah, it is. And it's like off I went.

And I was like, bobby, I. I live in Manchester in England and we make music. You know, we're doing stuff. It's like got bit of a hip hop angle and a soul angle.

I've always been a, a big fan of yours. And can I just say, did Rod Stewart like ever pay you your, you know, publishing royalties on do you think I'm sexy?

Because it rips off one of your songs, doesn't it? He's like, yeah, how do you know that? And like, that was it. We were pals.

Because I knew about, you know, I knew about him and he knew that I was a fan and I just said, well, look, give me your address and I'll send you a dat. And then whatever you can come up with, let's see how we get on. And then so of course I'm foaming at the mouth.

By the time I get back to, it's like, Bobby Womack's gonna work, all we gotta do is get a dat. And looking back, I love what we did and I loved working with him.

I just wish I'd sent him more up tempo stuff that he'd, that he'd, that he'd got into.

But at the time we were so stuck in that 90 to, you know, 95 bpm that I just feel like as the artist I am now, would have loved to done something, you know, at 110 or something where it was moving tempo wise, you know.

Speaker A: 01:24:52

Yeah.

Cause I mean, I've not listened to Northern Sulfuric Soul for quite a while, but I always think of that had kind of a bit more of an up tempo side to it, didn't it?

Speaker B: 01:25:00

Yeah, but it's, you know, I'll be honest with you.

Sleepwalking was really difficult to make because I was under a lot of business pressure and I was DJing around the world promoting Northern Civilic Soul and we had released Cold Water Music and I was producing, you know, and I was like executive producing Only Child and Steve was doing that and we were doing remixes and we had a, a remix agency and a DJ agency and I was employing people. You see, when I describe it all, I think, how on earth did I do it and how did everyone else keep with the ideas?

But in the end, a lot of people's collective effort made it run for 11 years.

And you know, in the end I often feel jealous of the fact that at that time, in that moment, if I had not been a label, a dj, a manager, a publisher, all those things, and just been an artist, I would have developed myself as an artist. And I've only been able to do that in the last sort of 20 years since it all ended. You see what I mean?

So basically things like that question is that I think I knew that we needed more uptempo stuff or I knew that we needed more of this and more of that, but then in the end it was like, you need to get this finished within two months because if you don't release it, the label's gonna go under. Imagine being under that pressure, do you know what I mean?

And then getting other people to finish so that we can get stuff out to sell it because the label's going to go under. And then, you know, having to make people redundant because you didn't sell enough records. That's all very, very stressful stuff.

Speaker A: 01:26:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, look, we've done about just under an hour and a half now, so I think if we kind of wrap it up for today and if we reconvene in a week or so and we can kind of look at the last 20 years, really, because we've gone so much into the 20 prior to that.

Speaker B: 01:26:49

Yeah. And in a way it should be. It should be even. It should be.

There's things that I've got to say that I do and I'm doing that I think are almost worldwide unique.

Speaker A: 01:26:59

Yeah.

Speaker B: 01:27:00

And I think that. That for your show, if you're somebody who can unlock those things, then you'll have a hell of a show on your hands. That. That's.

That is actually into new territory, you know.

Speaker A: 01:27:11

Yeah. I think we've got a lot to get into, so. Yeah, that's great stuff. Mark, thanks ever so much for your time today.

Speaker B: 01:27:17

It's a pleasure, mate. I've got to go and get my son now, but. Yeah, you have a good evening.

Speaker A: 01:27:21

You too. Speak to you soon.

Speaker B: 01:27:22

Take care. Bye.