Listen to Fish 1 by FISH on #SoundCloud https://on.soundcloud.com/1x4dX

What the version of Riding High please? Never thought I would ever been into a house version of it :)

Is this one of your edits Greg? Lovely stuff!

Fucking gorgeous of a Sunday evening. Thanks a mil.

Greg - She cant love you baby like me - what is this mate? Thanks for the mixes!

Wow Greg, just when it couldn't get any better. Perfection.  Thanks

This is the first live mix I’ve uploaded since restrictions lifted, two hours recorded last month by the side of the River Thames on London’s South Bank between Waterloo and Westminster bridges, next to the London Eye.

BETWEEN THE BRIDGES LONDON SOUTH BANK 21.08.21 (greg wilson live mix)

Full recording from The Social in London's West End, 18 years on from my previous appearance there, soon after I’d started DJing again, for the launch of the Don Letts 'Dread Meets B-Boys Downtown' compilation. With its recent refit, The Social surely stakes a claim to being amongst the best small venues in the land. Great close-up atmosphere and a wicked sound system in a compact 150 capacity space. 

There's a short video clip/photo montage over at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ_yi_vqRoC/

It provided the perfect opportunity for me to debut a bunch of new edits I’ve held back for the right occasion, which I thought would be The Riot at Depot Mayfield in Manchester on New Years Day, but that fell victim to the covid uncertainty. I struck lucky though - there couldn’t have been a better environment for this than The Social, complete with a fully vibed-up crowd emanating an extra special atmosphere, which, with January’s Ministry Of Sound gig (where I focused on tracks from my recently re-broadcast Essential Mix) sets the tone for 2022.

THE SOCIAL LONDON  11.02.22 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording from Brixton Disco Festival at Electric Brixton 30.04.22 - directly before Cerrone live appearance.

The final track, 'Delirium' by Francine McGee, in memory of legendary Canadian DJ Robert Ouimet, who mixed the track, one of my all-time Disco favourites. Robert had died earlier that month - he was resident at Montreal's most famous club, Lime Light, in the '70s/early '80s.

BRIXTON DISCO FESTIVAL @ ELECTRIC 30.04.22 (greg wilson live mix)

Live recording from the Stonebridge tent at Glastonbury Festival 2022.

GLASTONBURY STONEBRIDGE 23.06.22 (greg wilson live mix)

ESSENTIAL MIX - JAN 2009
Uploaded on 17.01.10 and exclusive to SoundCloud. Available for the first time without voiceovers and jingles,12 months on from original Radio 1broadcast on 17.01.09.


EMAILSHOT A FEW DAYS AHEAD OF MIX BEING AIRED:
2009 kicks in for me this weekend with my first gig of the year for Udio (1st birthday) at The Gramaphone Club in Shoreditch, London on Friday night, which coincides with the airing of my only just completed in the nick of time Essential Mix on Radio 1, made up of 43 tracks in just under 2 hours.

Given that the 5th anniversary of my DJ comeback has only just passed, I decided to take the opportunity to make the mix totally representative of this period, with all the selections being amongst the biggest tracks I’ve played since I made my second debut at Music Is Better in Manchester.

Five years represents a significant package of time, a fixed point from where I can reflect on what’s been a continually snowballing sequence of events, set in motion when Danny Webb asked me to appear in Manchester on that December night back in 2003.

There were less than 100 people there that night, but they were the right people, and I was taken aback by the response to my return, both on the night itself and during subsequent days, when people who were there began to post on the forums. I’d never expected all the feedback be so totally positive!

I’d figured that I’d play that night, using the combination of laptop and reel-to-reel for the first time, then go away and think about what worked and what didn’t before I made my next move. I would never have believed that things could come together so immediately, it was as if I’d hit a completely unexpected hole in one, especially when two of the people who were there, Ralph Lawson, DJ from Back To Basics in Leeds, and one of my fellow DJ’s that night, Richard Hardcastle (Solid State) from Society in Sheffield, both asked me to play at their nights no sooner had I finished my spot.

One thing kept leading to another and, in Sheffield, I was approached by Tony Daly to play at the now legendary Tyneside Cinema party in Newcastle, a bespoke event where he took on the substantial risk of presenting me in a city I’d never DJ’d in previously (unless you count the 1983 TV appearance on The Tube, which was filmed in the Tyne Tees studio). Then, of course, there was London, where Steve Kotey and Bill Brewster booked me for their parties, bringing me to the capital within the first few months of my return for Ouch and Low Life.

The bookings kept coming, and I found myself driving up and down the country on an increasingly regular basis. Later in 2004 I was approached by Sav Remzi, from Tirk / Nuphonic, with the idea of putting together an edits album, which would be issued the following year as ‘Credit To The Edit’. This would help bring my name to the attention of people outside the UK. There was soon a need to step things up further, now that I was receiving enquiries from Europe, and so began a fruitful relationship with my agent, Matt Johnson (Matty J), who’s done a wonderful job of representing me during recent years.

The last few months have been, to say the least, manic for me, with 25 flights, including 6 long haul, taking me to gigs in the US, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Europe. From a personal perspective I still find it remarkable the way everything has developed, pretty much organically, since I made the decision that I was going to be a DJ once again – had I concocted some sort of comeback masterplan, it could never have worked out anything like as well as it has. It’s definitely been a case of ‘from small acorns’.

It still never ceases to amaze me that people from another continent are interested in my DJ past. Back in the early 80’s, before I went into retirement for 20 years, the furthest I travelled (with the exception of the appearances I made in the South of England as part of The Hacienda Review in late ’83) was to places like Birmingham and Nottingham, when I played at All-Dayers, so to find myself in clubs on the other side of the world is pretty nuts!

Anyhow, I’d like to wish everyone all the best for 09. Big thanks to all the promoters who booked me and everyone who danced to the tunes I played during ’08 in Adelaide, Barcelona, Belfast, Berlin, Birmingham, Blackburn, Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Dundee, Edinburgh, Fukuoka, Glasgow, Hamburg, Leeds, Lisbon, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Newcastle, Nottingham, Paris, Porto Alegre, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Sheffield, Sydney, Tokyo and Warsaw. Also the festivals and special events that I appeared at - Bestival (Isle Of Wight), Big Chill (England), Camp Bestival (England), Garden Festival (Croatia), Ibiza, Lovebox (England), Notting Hill Carnival (England), Rockness Festival (Scotland), Sonar (Spain) and the Southport Weekender (England).

Hope to see you soon.

Greg


FORUM POST DURING FOLLOWING DAYS:                                                        
Thanks for all the positive words. The feedback has been pretty phenomenal, far exceeding what I’d hoped for, especially on the BBC page, where I’d expected that some people would criticize the amount of older music included - the Radio 1 audience is used to current stuff ('in new music we trust'), so I’d anticipated a more mixed reaction. What’s particularly pleasing is that they were all made without the people seeing what each other wrote (they all came online at once, having been checked first by whoever moderates the BBC pages, I presume for swearing etc following the Ross / Brand controversy).

You always hope something you've done will be well received, but the response to this has blown me away.

Greg


ANSWER TO POST RE MIXING PROCESS:                                                      
It was quite a laborious process. Before I could start the actual mixing part I had to edit every track to a coherent length of around two and a half minutes average, inclusive of in and out points. I had a pool of about 90 tracks that fitted the criteria I'd set (a representative selection of the biggest tunes I've been playing during the past 5 years). It wasn't as straightforward as just editing the 43 tracks I ended up featuring - in order to have the necessary options once I started to piece the mix together I needed to have all the tracks at my disposal, just as I would have if I was out deejaying in a club, so the only thing to do was edit all 90 to the required length, even though I knew that only half would make the cut .

Once that was finally done they were all taken across into my laptop, enabling me to vari-speed them via PCDJ whilst I recorded across to my home computer into Cool Edit Pro, where I put the mix together track by track, before adding overdubs (fx, samples, textures) in a similar way to what I do live using the Revox (reel to reel).

I could quite easily have spent another day, tweaking bits here and there and adding more overdubs (the older I get the more finicky I become), but I had a deadline to work to, so, as it moved ever nearer, it became a race against time, with me doing as much as I could before the cut off point arrived.

Greg
                       

Greg Wilson - 2009


ESSENTIAL MIX (by greg wilson for bbc radio 1 2009)

This is another live recording of me playing at Gary Crowley's Lost Eighties night on Saturday May 27th. Absolutely NO SYNCH used, but all played off USB on CDJs.

Eighties Cool Cuts, Classics And Curve Balls Part 2

Late Nite Tuff Guy - The scandalous alter-ego of genuine techno legend HMC (known to his momma as Cam Bianchetti) returned to the Subbie for Viciöus Créatures back in July this year! L.N.T.G puts the acrimony in acronym, the oh in disco, the amp in camp and the dang in dangerous. There is magic in his fingertips, and we were there to witness the fitness! For Day 2 of our 12 days of Sub Club Xmas you lucky shiny shakers can listen back or download this exclusive recording of two inferno hours from his Summer Disco Set [RECORDED LIVE AT THE SUB CLUB ON 30/7/15]

Ahead of this return Late Nite Tuff Guy chatted about his love of #‎Glasgow and the Subbie…“ I Played at the Sub Club in 1999 as DJ HMC and that gig is still today, my favourite gig in 33 years of DJn' Glasgow is an incredible place…”

Late Nite Tuff Guy @ Viciöus Créatures [RECORDED LIVE AT SUB CLUB 30.7.15]

Recording from the 20 Years Of Electric Chair party at Factory251 in Manchester 27.12.15.

Check out my label's music at: https://superweirdsubstance.bandcamp.com

20 YEARS OF ELECTRIC CHAIR @ FACTORY251 MANCHESTER 27.12.15 (greg wilson live mix)

Live recording of Greg Wilson from closing night of Electric Elephant Festival in Croatia at Barbarella's Discotheque 11.07.16.

Check out my label's music at: https://superweirdsubstance.bandcamp.com

BARBARELLA'S @ ELECTRIC ELEPHANT CROATIA 11.07.16 (greg wilson live mix)

I’ve been waiting to write a full blog post before I put up this mix from what is going to be my last festival appearance for some time, but its been difficult, given the circumstances we all find ourselves in, to fully engage, and although I’ve made a start there’s still more I’d like to say, so the post will have to wait a bit longer.

*now online here:
https://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2020/04/16600/ 

Its Easter weekend, so I think its about time I shared the mix – it was recorded on March 8th at the WOMADelaide festival, the centrepiece of my recent Australian tour, and was pretty much a perfect gig for me – environment, crowd, sound/set-up – featuring a jamboree of some old favourites alongside more recent releases / re-edits. There’s a strong Aussie representation, with tracks by Tame Impala, Confidence Man and Owl Eyes - a great new remix of ‘You And I’ by Late Nite Tuff Guy who also provides, along with Dr Packer, a number of reworks.

This was only a month ago, but how times have changed. Hope you’re keeping safe and coping during lockdown.

WOMADelaide FESTIVAL 08.03.20 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording from socially distanced event at Escape To Freight Island @ Depot Mayfield in Manchester 08.08.20.

A socially distanced gig is strange, but it’s all we have for now. With people required to be sat at tables and dancing a no no, a different approach was required, where I could be a bit more free-flowing in what I played without a dancefloor to take into consideration. I started off at Freight Island with a Beach Boys favourite from ’68, ‘Do It Again’, harking back to their surf style of the earlier ‘60s, having scaled the heights and sailed the psychedelic seas in the intervening years, ‘Do It Again’, with those wicked drums, carried a weight of nostalgia and a hint of melancholy – an after the summer song if you will, about a time that can never return. This seemed an appropriate starter for the situation we find ourselves in – dancing in a club or a field already a memory.

This booking, my first since I got back from Australia in March, fell just a few weeks on from the death of Denise Johnson. This was a big shock – she was literally just about to release her first solo album ‘Where Does It Go’, and nobody could have imagined that this would be issued posthumously. Denise came to the clubs I was playing at in the early-‘80s and I remember her first band Fifth Of Heaven from the latter years of the decade. She guested with likes of New Order, Electronic, Ian Brown and A Certain Ratio, but will forever be remembered for her contribution to Primal Scream's ‘Screamadelica’ in ’91.

It has to be said that the Manchester Evening News and a number of publications including The Guardian, The Independent and the NME were shambolic in reporting her death, running a picture that wasn’t Denise. I know that Dave Haslam, the former-Hacienda resident who DJ’d before me that day was one of the first to point out this insensitive blunder on social media, which evoked long-standing black stereotypes and must have been horrible for her family and friends.

I, of course, wanted to play something in memory of Denise, as I had with Andrew Weatherall following his death earlier this year. That two of the key contributors to ‘Screamadelica’ had passed within a matter of months is still difficult to take in, the chaos of the times we’re experiencing amplifying the unreality of things.

Rather than a Primal Scream track I picked out a lesser-known personal favourite Denise recorded for Creation Records with Hypnotone, 1990’s ‘Dream Beam’. The Primal Scream hook-up came about when Hypnotone performed at Danny Rampling’s legendary acid-house party Shoom in London, with Denise impressing. Hypnotone faded into the memory as she scaled the heights with the ‘Screamadelica’ LP and subsequent recordings with Primal Scream. The Jesse Jackson speech over the top of Hypnotone was unplanned, but randomly reeled up on my tape at that point for me to appropriately add its Weatherall reference.

The mix then heads off in its own direction, which turned out to carry a recurring jazz-funk theme via big back in the day tracks from George Benson, The Crusaders, Sea Level, Rodney Franklin and MFSB. These are tracks Denise would have instantly recognised from when she first started going out to the clubs. The late-'70s Jazz-Funk scene in the city, with Colin Curtis and John Grant at Rafters and regular all-dayers at The Ritz, a far too rarely mentioned, a part of Manchester’s musical lifeblood.

My next gig was supposed to be a socially distanced Halloween fancy dress at Camp and Furnace for the Liverpool Disco Festivall, but the new COVID-19 restrictions placed on Merseyside put paid to that. The good news is that it’s now been re-arranged for the final weekend of November, which falls around on the Festival’s 4th anniversary, so all is not lost and there’s something to look forward to after restrictions are lifted. Tickets/details here: skiddle.com/e/13892893

ESCAPE TO FREIGHT ISLAND @ DEPOT MAYFIELD MANCHESTER 08.08.20 (greg wilson live mix)

Bookings: matt@thepool-london.com 
Promos: promo@gregwilson.co.uk 
DJ Dates: https://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/upcoming-dj-dates/
Greg began DJing in 1975 and is regarded as one of the most important figures on the UK dance scene. He enjoyed hugely popular residencies in the early eighties at Wigan Pier and Manchester’s majorly influential Legend, having originally started out in his hometown, New Brighton. A pioneer of mixing in the UK, he became the first ‘dance music’ specialist hired for a regular weekly session at Manchester’s now legendary Haçienda club in 1983. Greg was instrumental in breaking the new electronic, post-disco records coming out of New York, a sound he has dubbed ‘Electro-Funk’.

In 2003 he set up electrofunkroots, a website documenting this crucial era in the evolution of dance culture. After a two decade hiatus from the booth, he returned to DJing and soon welcomed bookings throughout Europe and, subsequently, worldwide.

Greg was the first DJ to mix live on British TV, putting together the first UK radio mixes of their type for Piccadilly 261 in Manchester and showing a certain Norman Cook (later Fatboy Slim) how to scratch.

Nominated by DJ Magazine for outstanding contribution, and also named amongst their top twenty remixers of all-time, Greg’s remix credits include Grace Jones, The XX, Groove Armada, Bryan Ferry, Confidence Man, Gilberto Gil and Simian Mobile Disco, whilst he’s edited tracks by A Guy Called Gerald, Talking Heads, O.M.D., Electronic, Imagination and Missy Elliot.

In January 2009 Greg’s reputation was further enhanced when his Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1 received almost universal acclaim and was selected as one of 10 classics that spanned the show’s near 17 year history.

Greg’s Blog, ‘Being A DJ’, was launched in June 2010 for observations on various aspects of club culture now an online touchstone for an ever-increasing amount of dance enthusiasts and aficionados.

In August 2010 he co-curated areas at the inaugural Vintage Festival at Goodwood, which was named ‘Best New Festival’ at the UK Festival Awards.

He has produced a series of documentary podcasts, Time Capsule, Random Influences and Early 80’s Floorfillers, as well as the long-running blog series, Living To Music.

Greg has given talks on music and DJ culture at a number events at venues The Tate Gallery in Liverpool and London's Southbank and Institute Of Contemporary Arts, whilst in 2013 he was invited onto a panel alongside legendary figures Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder @ ADE in Amsterdam. 

In 2014 he unveiled the multi-media label Super Weird Substance, focusing on recording and live events. In 2015, the label released 8 vinyl singles, brought together in the 2 CD comp, 'Greg Wilson Presents Super Weird Substance'. September 2015 saw a memorable Festival No.6 Happening in Portmeirion and Greg rounded off the year with the Liverpool-based celebration of the 40th anniversary of his first club date in 1975 as well as being presented with DJ Magazine's Industry Icon award.

Greg launched his Credit To The Edit club collective at 2016's Festival No.6 and since then has taken it to Liverpool, Berlin, Brixton, Bethnal Green and finally back to Portmeirion for Festival No.6 2017.

2017 saw his label host the epic 14 Hour Super Weird Happening at Liverpool's Florrie, following a mixtape collaboration with Alan Moore, who also appeared at the Happening, whilst it also saw the digital release of The Super Weird Society's 'Gone With The Vibe', released the following year on the first Substance Select 12" vinyl alongside 'The Ghosts Of Watling Street', 'The Best Is Yet To Come' and 'Summer Came My Way'. 2018 also saw the release of Vol.3 in Greg's long-running Credit To The Edit compilation series.

After a handful of further releases, the label was put into hibernation with the onset of covid. Diversifying, ‘Greg Wilson’s Discotheque Archives’ was issued during 2020 lockdown as a limited run paperback, with more books, both Wilson’s own projects and by other authors, now planned.

20 YEARS OF ELECTRIC CHAIR @ FACTORY251 MANCHESTER 27.12.15 (greg wilson live mix)

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