Name: RETURN TO LEGEND PT2 @ THE REFUGE MANCHESTER 07.04.18 (greg wilson live mix) by gregwilson
Duration: 2 h 26 min 37 s
Description: Following the success of the Return To Legend night at The Refuge in Manchester, a second night was quickly arranged for those unable to get tickets for the first. Once again I feature music from my time at Legend in the early '80s, both original tracks and re-edited variants.

respect for fitting this so smoothly in the set! <3

I CAN DIE AFTER THE WEED ANDVTHE DISCOVER OOF THIS MASTER

@gregwilson: What's the name of the track at 1 hour?

Recorded at a trio of events in April 2023, in support of my book, Discotheque Archives, this mix is an amalgamation of these three nights – Sidney&Matilda in Sheffield (1st), Golden Lion Todmorden  (7th) and World Headquarters in Newcastle (8th). I had issues with my recording device throughout the weekend, but managed to capture enough to be able to patch between them, resulting in close on three hours of music highlighted within the pages of the book – all original versions, rather than edits/reworks.

The mix features 33 tracks, which span the years 1963-1983 and is packed with classics and cult-classics, providing a snapshot of dance music, in its many facets, during the pre-rave decades..

Book info/orders: https://superweirdsubstance.com/product/greg-wilson-discotheque-archive-extended/

DISCOTHEQUE ARCHIVES ON THE ROAD - APRIL 2023 (greg wilson live mix)

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

Full recording of Greg Wilson's closing set at Beat-Herder Festival in Lancashire's Ribble Valley 16.07.17.

TRASH MANOR @ BEAT-HERDER FESTIVAL RIBBLE VALLEY  16.07.17 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording of my appearance at the 21st Anniversary of the Green Gorilla Lounge parties in San Francisco, held at Monarch 17.11.17.

GREEN GORILLA ANNIVERSARY @ MONARCH SAN FRANCISCO 17.11.17 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording from appearance for Freeze at Liverpool's Underground 09.12.17.

UNDERGROUND LIVERPOOL 09.12.17 (greg wilson live mix)

Nearly 2 hours of big hitters from my New Years eve set in the main bar at the Horse Meat Disco NYE party in Manchester.

Neil Diablo live mix @ Horse Meat Disco NYE 17 at The Deaf Institute, Mcr

Following the success of the Return To Legend night at The Refuge in Manchester, a second night was quickly arranged for those unable to get tickets for the first. Once again I feature music from my time at Legend in the early '80s, both original tracks and re-edited variants.

RETURN TO LEGEND PT2 @ THE REFUGE MANCHESTER 07.04.18 (greg wilson live mix)

Festival No.6 has been a yearly highlight of recent times, its location unique. Tucked away on the North Wales coast in a magical village and famous as the location for the classic ’60s TV show ‘The Prisoner’, Portmeirion is truly a place plucked out of the imagination – an Italian fantasy creation of architect Clough Williams-Ellis, who designed and built it over a 50-year period.

Unfortunately the September weather often fails to rise to the occasion, which was apparently the case on Saturday. I played on the Sunday, my 3rd appearance at Village Limits in its enchanted woodland environment, complete with floating dancefloor (you don’t see one of those every day) beneath a huge mirrorball. 

As we set out on the drive it was in hope, rather than expectation, that the rain would hold off, and I’m pleased to report that the gods were with us, people able to dance to their heart's content without getting soaked wet through in the process. It turned out to be a fitting Village Limits finale, not just for this year, but until the festival returns – next year they’ve decided to take a sabbatical to re-strategize for the future, with many people left wondering if this could be the last one, at least in its current guise.

If so, it’ll certainly be missed by my friends and family – we always arrive pretty mob handed, lots of people heading in from Merseyside and Manchester, linking up with others from far and wide. I have to say that the production and artist liaison was outstanding this year, everyone invested in what they’re doing and setting the right environment for those performing. Special thanks to Amy and Jenna, such lovely people to be looking after you.

The full recording is now up on SoundCloud, available to stream/download. It was a gig that was sandwiched between an afternoon talk in the Dome Gallery and closing the VIP area between 11-1, which was big fun!

I really hope Festival No.6 will be back after a year’s hiatus, there's nothing quite like it. If not there’ll be many happy memories of gigs in a variety of special spaces. Its surreal quality is something that sets it apart, and all the creative set-building in the world can only provide a façade of what here is real and permanent. 

But even with all that, it comes down to the crowds you play for, and those at No.6 make the most of the surroundings, regardless of the weather, partying through a weekend like no other. Thanks to all of you who’ve partied away to the tunes I’ve played there during the past 6 years on this spectacular festival site.

FESTIVAL NO.6 VILLAGE LIMITS PORTMEIRION 09.09.18 (greg wilson live mix)

Full recording from my appearance at Ministry Of Sound in London for Art's House 09.03.19.

MINISTRY OF SOUND LONDON 09.03.19 (greg wilson live mix)

Recorded in Electric as part of the recent Brixton Disco Festival. I played between 8pm-10.30, directly before Evelyn Champagne King performed. I began as the doors opened, the room filling up in no time – I really enjoy this type of scenario where I can commence on a downtempo groove, gradually building to a more frantic conclusion.

BRIXTON DISCO FESTIVAL @ ELECTRIC 27.04.19 (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.

RETURN TO LEGEND PT2 @ THE REFUGE MANCHESTER 07.04.18 (greg wilson live mix)

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