Displaying items by tag: DJS

Way back in 1986, I was well established as a successful club promoter and party organiser, having largely failed to make it as a singer-songwriter, despite having had two major record deals, great reviews and – in 1980 – lots of airplay in the US.

Located at the corner of Swan and Oak Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a Bat-signesque, white neon Dizzy Gillespie cuts through the dank, early October predictably Manchester weather.

There are ONLY two words, other than the words themselves, which mean House Music … and those two words are … FRANKIE KNUCKLES.

I first read those two words in a New York Record store in 1987, when I was attending the New Music Seminar, looking for tracks to sign to my 'Urban' label. An up and coming DJ by the name of Paul Oakenfold and myself, were in Vinyl Mania on a midweek early afternoon, listening to

© Words Matteo Sedazzari 

The Secret Disco Revolution is an ambitious, well structured, informative and entertaining  documentary made by Toronto born film maker Jamie Kastner.  Kastner has chosen a music genre and movement that in the year 2014 most people take for granted, not in a dismissive way, but the sheer fact that if any famous piece of disco music, such as Thelma Houston’s Don't Leave Me This Way, comes on the radio or at a party,

© Words Matteo Sedazzari

The origin of the 12” single originated from Jamaica in the late 50’s, and developed further into the sixties with the birth of ska, rocksteady, early reggae and sound systems, where party goers would dance to the beat of home grown talent that was longer than the three minute single. Furthermore, with the birth of disco in the 70’s, with the clubs of New York and such like, soul, funk and r ‘n’ b influenced tunes, in 4/4 time, with the bass pumping the music along, the disco dancers needed the groove to go on forever, beyond conventional airtime.