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James Huxley
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On 2 Feb 2010, at 18:04, Pulse Radio wrote:
here is the full transcript for you to check
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What was your first experience of the electronic music scene in Leeds?
There was no scene naturally at the start. Leeds went from Punk to Goth to New Wave and New Romantic pretty seamlessly and those of us who were weird enough to like Black Culture had to make do with the West Indian Centre and the odd band that came to town. That was until John Keenan, the legendary Leeds promoter, started to put our great city on the map with serious gigs at The Duchess and The Irish Centre. I think The Duchess of York Pub was perhaps the most important venue in Leeds' history. Keenan also put on some mini festivals in the early and mid 80s called "Futurama" in the old Bus Terminal which is now the waste ground in front of the Hilton. In those days I liked Kraftwerk, Einsturzende Neubauten and Can. "Krautrock" it became known as. It's funny... you never used the terms at the time. We never called ourselves "Goths" to begin with or labelled music at all really . It was just stuff you liked. We were less influenced by fads then. Mainly cos there were hardly any magazines or such telling us what to do. I honestly believe the "look" of Goth was just us from Leeds getting everything wrong hahaha! What I mean is at the time maybe three things were cool and universal in the UK. The back end of Punk, wearing black and the beginning of New Romantic. So Goth was just old Punks and Young Turks wearing black. I honestly believe that. It's really weird that it is huge in America now and that, 'cos it was 99% Leeds and 1% Robert Smith I kid you not. hahaha! funny but factoid.
Stuff from London tended to be pre-packed and came with a title but the Leeds scene happened on it's own. There were no Malcolm McLaren's behind you pulling the strings, it was organic. So it didn't have a "scene" at all for electronic music. Some of us liked what became known as "Benelux Beat" or "Belgian New Beat" or sometimes confused with "Industrial", Front 242 and such... Don't all those stupid labels sound mental now?! They all come from bone idle London journalists too late for the party. Still do hahaha! Anyway. Electronic music meaning music made with no traditional instruments was pretty rare, it was merely an element of music in general, as sequencers and drum machines became more common and more importantly more affordable.
In terms of music for me it was Skakker Humanoid that really made me turn from sort of hybrid music... sort of rock or indie with electronic elements ... I liked the cutting edge of music but this was a totally fierce and uniquely electronic sound was "Humanoid". It won me over to Darth Vader's Rave Up no doubt! I mean Kraftwerk were quite restrained really but Stakker rocked. Which is a horrible word I never use unless I really mean it haha!
The thing that was uniquely and totally "Leeds electronic" was this band called Cassandra Complex. I worked in Parkside Studios which at the time was one of maybe two proper studios in Leeds. On Stanningley Road it was just up from Mike's Carpets haha! The legendary Mr Carpets. Anyway... we had everyone in there at some point. Visiting bands like The Jam used the place... every major Yorkshire band hired rooms and storage from us and I helped Swedish Mike make flight cases too out of there. There was The Mission, Sisters Of Mercy, The Wedding Present, Cud... I mean it seems funny now to say it but at the time these were international names but I digress... Cassandra Complex were in there and they had a Simmons Kit. Simmons made those hexagonal electronic drums in the 80s. I was a drummer then so it made a huge impact on me cos I was convinced we were extinct as a species thanks to drum machines. I used to sneak in and have a go on them at night. Haha! drum-stalker! Next time I saw the band they were called "MDMA" now bear in mind this is like 1984 or something... loooong long time before MDMA the substance was even heard of, never mind available... next time I saw the band maybe a year later they were called The Utah Saints.
In a nutshell before The Utahs there was no electronic scene in Leeds. I'm not being biased cos I worked with them cos at that time I was working in a studio and they were a band, all that was to come years later. The reason they were important was twofold.
The first reason is Clubs. Leeds didn't have clubs as such for the 1st half of the 80s. They had "Discotheques", chrome and carpet hellholes with weak lager and strong scents and a bloke shouting over chart records. You had "Mr Craig's" which was Peter Stringfellows' attempt to bring "London Sophistication" to grim Leeds. Truly awful it was. Still is nowadays as Gatecrasher. Couldn't have been taken over by more appropriate tossers haha! but on the plus side you did have "Dig!" and "The Cooker". They was upstairs at what was then called Coconut Grove which was later the upstairs of The Gallery/Pleasure Rooms and run by Gyp and his crew. Gyp's family own "Salvo's" which just won a TV award for best restaurant funnily enough... but the place is also a Jazz Mecca thanks to Gyp and he was and still is The Don of Jazz in Yorkshire. Also on that tip "The Downbeat" was proper. Dancing music for people who did proper dancing. It was more like a Northern Soul thing. Rare Groove and Funk and people who were there to dance not to cop off or fight. It was awesome. That was run by George Evelyn and Kevin who became Nightmares On Wax. But I think for electronica the lads who eventually became The Utahs ; Jez Willis, Keith Langley and Tim Garbutt... they were promoters all over yorkshire earlier on. They ran every night at "Ricky's" which later became The Gallery and after that The Pleasure Rooms and they promoted nearly every night there. People who later started Vague and Basics were all generously helped out by them, as was I. Vague started as a back room at The Gallery, I think they called themselves "The Kit Kat Club" then.
Music was the second reason the Utahs were important. You can find bands that made electronic records earlier than The Utahs but not in Leeds and not from there. They are up there with some of the first electronic records in the UK in their earlier incarnations but certainly they, The KLF and The Shamen were the first wave of UK electronica. I'm dead proud to know and have worked with them lads and I think it's too easy to forget their heritage. Anyone who has met them will confirm they are the best of chaps... so much so that I think they get overlooked. But without them I would have no place in the industry... nor would Back to Basics as Dave Beer was their tour manager for example hahaha! yes it's true. Sorry I have not really answered the question cos I always chuckle at the mention of a "Leeds Electronic Music Scene". You are talking to someone who prayed on his fucking knees for something like to exist back in the old days haha! I think I had left Leeds before it could really make that claim to be honest. Back then one band and one or two clubs did not a scene make. I for one felt very isolated. I can't honestly say it could be said to have a scene until much, much later. Maybe my first coming across an embryonic scene in Leeds is when we brought Kiss FM there in about 1996, by then they had something going on. Enough to warrant a Radio station certainly.
Was Leeds as much a hub for musical creativity in the 80's as it is now?
If you think of Goth as musically creative it was a fucking ant's nest haha! That gave way to "Indie" and Leeds always did ok with that label. We do quirky quite well. We always do. It's like our football. We have periods of greatness and periods of drought but we are always unique and unconcerned about how the rest of the world perceives us. I think the 80's was a period of flux for the entire UK but the North/South divide was never more vivid than that time. Thatcherism you see? I mean we all knew people, families, whole towns destroyed. Not a word I use lightly. Trapper was one the doormen at The Gallery for example. He was an ex miner and he saw some shit I tell you. It was a very unpleasant time in a lot of ways. It's funny you know when you see people glamourising the 80's now. They just were not old enough or northern enough to remember how fucking shit it was haha! seriously though... it was not leg warmers and mullets and drainpipe keks and skinny ties. It was grim man! grim!
I mean one thing you must remember about certainly the early 80s was the total and all encompassing nuclear paranoia. This may be hard to digest now but you definitely had a part of your consciousness a recurring thought the world would end in your lifetime. Seriously. And for good reason because at the height of the Cold War it was considered "likely" rather than "unlikely" that there would be a WWIII. It just wasn't like now, I mean for example you were involved in politics. I didn't know anyone who wasn't political back then and that was a direct response to Thatcher and her cronies. You have to understand that many of us clung on to Acid House for dear life for political reasons. It was an illegal movement. We fought physically with the Police alongside Miners at Raves. It was made very illegal to be a Raver. It was ridiculous when you think about it!
Another thing about the period ; It's a common policy of film designers and costume people in the motion pictures to use a rule of thumb whereby if you are depicting a period you tend to use things in it from the period before. Because at the time only a relative handful of london types had the money to indulge in the latest fashion. I mean a lot of the iconic 80's things didn't exist up here... smiley t shirts, day glo dungarees, bandanas etc... indeed they didn't exist much outside of the media. A lot of the 80's, both visually and musically still had one foot in the late 70's. And again don't jump to conclusions. The late 70's had stuff going for it as well as against hahaha! but one of the reasons "Baggy" came along, which by the way was not invented or confined to Manc land... it happened on the Terraces and was inspired by teams of "Casuals" trips abroad for one, so it came off the Terraces in many towns North and South...but that thing of having a hybrid of Indie and Acid House is a Northern thing. Not being blindly futuristic but taking the new ideas and giving them a grounding in what has gone before and gone well. The thing about futurism is it nearly always looks stupid in the actual future. I mean the first 1960's series of Star Trek looks idiotic now, an iPhone has more convincing technology in it than a load of random flashing lights and doors that open by themselves and go swoosh they don't go swoosh at all now do they?! only if they are broken hahaha! What I mean is musically in maybe Germany or Chicago or London they were trying to make future music and some of it sounds a bit weak now but a lot of the Northern 80's stuff was made imbued with that Northern vibe of being cautious and it was married to more classical elements like tunes and instruments and has stood up well. Mind you there was some web-footed barking bollocks an' all hahaha!
What effect did the Acid House movement have on the city? How did it change it?
I for one was in London when that kicked off although I returned to Leeds maybe monthly since I left in the mid 80s to see family and friends. I feel Leeds pre-dated it. For me "Acid House" was a label to cover a hysteria that was happening in London and in the tabloids. My feeling is electronic music was doing fine before people started calling it Acid House. I was bang into it though I really though we were going to change the world. If you'd have shown me the snobby, elitist and money obsessed thing it has become now I would never have believed it!
Back to Leeds in what was it? 1988? The raves in Blackburn were certainly more influential than the city based stuff in The North. The hysteria and hype about Acid House was born and raised in orbital greater London and in The North we had our own thing going on. I think we looked at it as funny right up until it really wasn't. The Sun was screaming for the heads of these "evil killer drug barons" while on the following page selling smiley t shirts mail order. The UK tabloids disgust me. Basically the tabloid scum sold our generation's scene down the river for cash. They instigated and maintained the delirium that led to the frankly insane "Criminal Justice Act". Don't get me started! grrr!
A little known fact is a Leeds DJ called Rob Tissera was the Jesus of Acid House. He was sacrificed for our sins haha! No seriously he was the first person to be arrested under "The Bright Bill" which was the precursor of the laughably titled "Criminal Justice Act". It was a massive bust at one of the bigger Blackburn raves. Mind you I think Rob will admit getting on the mic and shouting "Fight the fucking Pigs!" didn't endear him to them hahaha. Cunts gave him 6 months! For playing records!
How did Acid House change Leeds? Well it drove it all indoors for starters. Discos became "Nightclubs" and legendary places like The Gallery became huge. Suddenly it went from something that was sort of a sideline for musicians... we DJ'd for laughs really but it wasn't 'proper'.. but suddenly stupid amounts of money were flying about. You could get thousands into a venue where at the time only a few bands could achieve those numbers and more importantly, it was kicking off every night. Certainly for students and you can't talk about Leeds and leave the students out. We hated them hahaha! but they are bread and butter for Leeds. I mean it has the largest hospital and as such the biggest medical teaching facilities in Europe. The Uni and Poly are massive, as is the music and art school. Leeds resembles a resort for influx and exodus of students. When it is 'freshers' week the whole town is a mess hahaha! I mean the streets are chokka with Students. Conversely when they leave it can be a ghost town. Also you have to bear in mind Leeds is at the centre of hundreds of smaller towns and the rail station is humming with activity on a weekend. On the map Leeds looks very small and actually it is... you can walk across the town centre in ten minutes... but if you look on a map it is in the middle of a huge area of smaller towns, I think the geographical term is "hinterland". Leeds serves as a city centre for a huge area.
You also have to bear in mind that in the late 80s Leeds had a massive amount of money ploughed into it. They moved the DHSS there en masse into one of the largest single structures in the UK. A good barometer of Leeds' standing is the fact the Harvey Nichols chose to open the first store outside Knightsbridge in Leeds. Which is quite something when you consider how much money was involved in the building and what a significant message a high -end retailer like that is sending out. It's like Harrods deciding to open a branch in Scunthorpe hahaha! But seriously, the thing about Leeds is geographically it is exactly in the centre of the UK. If you put your finger on Leeds you can spin the British Isles around like a top. Consequently all the haulage firms are based around Leeds. So the reason there was so much investment in Leeds in the late 80's was because the plans for the Euro-tunnel at that time included an express from Paris to Leeds via London. Of course like so many British plans it went a bit wrong to say the least but Leeds benefitted from the concept even if it didn't come to pass in reality. The main thing I remember myself is that when I left Leeds in about 1986 you literally took your life into your hands if you went out in the city centre of a weekend. You could guarantee a fight. It was the civic pastime then hahaha! There was litter and claret everywhere. When I came back to bring Kiss FM to Yorkshire in 1996 there was cafe' society! fucking hell! hahahaha! I honestly didn't recognise the place! there was no trouble to speak of on the streets, all the dereliction had been repaired and the overall vibe was really cheerful and positive. I guess Thatcher was victorious in the mining towns but when Labour got in it really did feel like a victory for the North. How things change eh?
Anyway, to attempt a more concise answer I would say for about a year Acid House was a very beautiful thing, all about the best things in people. Not long after there was shitloads of money and for the first time in my experience... cocaine in the North and it all went South fast, if you'll excuse the poor play on words.
Could you tell us about your involvement with Utah Saints?
Surely yes. As I mentioned way back in the 80s I was working in the studio where they rehearsed and they are just famous for being really lovely fellas. Certainly in Leeds they are. They are those sort of people that anyone who has met them, even for a flash of a few seconds, knows they are uncommonly nice chaps. Which is very rare in our industry. I'm not saying our industry is populated entirely by wankers, or maybe I am hahaha! that makes me one too then but.... it's extremely rare to have a spotless rep as there is always... always some tosser somewhere badmouthing you or full of hate 'cos they are not making it... anyway I digress a bit but it's important in the story of Leeds to know that The Utahs pretty much give breaks and help people out a lot and don't really walk around claiming authorship of anything if you get my meaning. They quietly laid the foundations for what many years later became the Leeds Scene for want of a better phrase. In the early days I was a footsoldier for them. I DJed at the various nights and ran the night we had in London... and I learned all the ropes through them. Much later we made music together and in fact "Dope Smugglaz" included Jez and Tim to begin with but their workload meant they had to drop out.
When I say I learned everything from them I mean the lot. Programming Cubase, promotion, DJing... I mean Tim Garbutt was the first DJ on Top of The Pops and one of the first UK DMC competition winners. He has serious skills. I was learning about sequencing, MIDI and Ataris when everyone else was a Goth thanks to them hahaha! It seems such a looong time ago. Oh dear!
Jez was the first person I every saw with a MIDI guitar, I mean I had never even seen one in a magazine or anything. It's pretty easy to look back in scorn at old inventions and by inference inventors... but those lads were years if not a decade ahead of their time. They really were. I owe them a lot and I am not ashamed to admit it. I am as unapologetic about it as Mr C is about The Shamen haha!
In terms of Leeds I would say my time bringing Kiss FM there and being at The Faversham impacted more on Leeds than The Utahs. If anything my involvement with the band was exclusively outside of Leeds.
How would you describe the buzz/atmosphere/attitude in Leeds towards electronic music as it began to spread?
Leeds has always lived in a little micro climate of it's own. We looked at the rest of the country and later the world getting their pants wet about it but we just carried on as normal. I think that is what longevity is all about. Never getting caught up in fads. The reason students still to this day flock to Leeds as a "party town" is because it is a party town. It has been for a long time cos it ignored the rest of the country. It was a liberal atmosphere long before any media hype about scenes. Pioneering councillors like Mayor Bernard Atha were making Leeds a "24 hour city" in a european sense many, many years ago. While venues in London were getting hammered by such unpleasant twats like Westminster and Southwark councils, Leeds was making moves to support the dance industry, not criminalise it.
Although I am jumping the gun a bit. The initial atmosphere to Electronic music was like the initial reaction to all new things... pretty hostile. Everything shut down at 2am at the very latest... and the dinosaurs of rock hated anything electronic and many still do sadly. However as it began to become a sort of national hysteria it grew also in Leeds albeit in a more restrained way. The big affect that was a major change was when it kind of went 'overground' in the mid 90s. It was very much the preserve of the aficionado until suddenly every tom-dick-harry-sharon-and-tracy was all over it like a cheap suit. It sort of, from a Leeds perspective, ceased to be "yours" and became a national fad and suddenly you found it wasn't "yours" there were Mancs and Chelsea Boys and even Europeans who all claimed ownership. This was where it fell down for me for instead of become unified it became fractured. It divided into snobs who carved it into territories and "teds" who were considered part timers and johnny-come-latelys and were "ruining" it for the "chosen few". I find that aspect of it very depressing personally. I always thought it was for everyone who cared about it. Of course then the elitists say; "yeah but we care MORE" which is just ridiculous. Shame, shame shame...
I don't think we can talk about the buzz about new music in Leeds without mentioning The Fav. The Faversham was originally a small stately home of the Quilliams. An ancient family who are landed gentry in the area. In the 1950s they dealt with the whole aristocracy collapsing by selling all their land (mostly to The University where it now stands) and tuning The Faversham into a hotel. By the late 70's the sons of the family had turned it into something new... not really a pub, although technically it was a massive pub... but a place that had bands on and a killer soundsystem and a dancefloor. Something we take for granted now but back then it was revolutionary. The Fav in the 80s was the only place to be. It was my local for example and if you left Leeds for a year and came back, The Fav and the scene was always there. Basically anybody who was anybody was there, mainly 'cos there was nowhere else it must be said hahaha! but also because The Fav was always the cutting edge of music. I mean Danny Tenaglia's first UK gig was at The Fav... yeah it's a fact! also lads like Carl Cox were being booked in like.. 1989 way WAY before they were big names. The only other clubs of note were The Phono, short for "Le Phonographique" hahaha! pretentious Goth bollocks! But we also had The Warehouse which was, as the name suggests, a proper club of the type we recognise today. But all roads lead back to The Faversham if you trace the scene in Leeds. Particularly to Guy Quilliam and His Lordship himself... the legendary Lord Roger Faversham. There would be no scene in Leeds without them. To this day Roger is still a player, the current venue Basics is in is down to him for example...
As an artist in the scene, what kind of receptions were you receiving from your music? Was it pure, unadulterated madness?
I wouldn't say I was "in the scene" as my own high points happened in London and were imported back into Leeds really. Generations can pass very quickly. When I came back to do Kiss FM in Leeds in the 90's a lot of the Basics DJs didn't know I knew Beero (Dave Beer, Back to Basics Promoter) from before Basics even started, they saw me as someone from London. It doesn't matter what you sound or look like by the way... if you aren't Leeds 24/7 you aren't Leeds period. The fact I had spent ANY time in London meant to Loiners I was "From That London" and had "Fancy London Ways" hahaha! Most of them have no idea I was there before they were. Like I said earlier there was a lot of money and coke around by the 90s and I wasn't feeling that aspect at all. It had changed for me. For me Leeds was a place of the 80s and I had an outsiders view from the 90s onwards, or rather I was assigned that role by younger people who didn't know my history. Which is natural.
In terms of reception... well. If anything Yorkshire people take the piss they don't praise you haha! no chance. I remember once I was driving around the town in a mate's BMW and someone waved me down and was like "Are you Tim?" and I was like ; "yes mate" and he goes "YOU WANKER!" and runs off hahaha! that is what happens up North when you are "spotted". People in clubs just come up and talk to you very normally. I took on separate occasions recently both Mr C and Jon Carter out in Leeds. Both are very "London". Both were a bit taken aback at what a unique place it is and how... well.. just how normally everyone treated them and what a laugh they both had. It's just common or garden friendliness mixed with the Northern thing of not being impressed at all by someone's reputation. Loiners (the term for Leeds Natives) prefer to judge somebody on what they experience with their own eyes and ears they don't give a tuppeny shit about fame. I personally feel I have to return to Leeds as often as possible merely to be reminded publically what a wanker I have become while I was away hahaha!
Do you think the scene in Leeds has always benefited from having Manchester close by? (In terms of both inspiration and positive, creative rivalry?)
No. If you knew anything about Leeds you'd know we hate Manc land. Historically I mean hahaha! Recently perhaps there is a wee connection but not always. In the past transport was very different. Cities were more isolated in the past. Manchester is a city that basically is in a state of rivalry with everywhere, it's that Manc swagger. Leeds knows it's not a major town but it has confidence in itself and that is why it is unique. It doesn't compare itself with other places it just gets on with it. The Leeds thing definitely had much more of a connection with Sheffield. The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and LFO and Warp. Sheffield shares that thing where it doesn't feel the need to compare itself like Manchester does. It just does it's thing. Historically it was Sheffield far more than Manchester. Today maybe Leeds is closer to Manchester but I wouldn't know really I have been out of the country for about 8 years lately. I hope so. Personally I love Manchestershire haha.
In terms of the scene, what do you think are the main differences between Leeds in the late 80's/early 90's and the modern day?
Soft Cell were considered extreme! Being into Electronic music was a bit gay and could get you stabbed mate.
When you return to play, does it feel at all the same?
Yes and No. When I play in Leeds, which is very rarely, you tend to get quite a few old monsters coming out for the first time in ages hahaha. The old faces come out of the woodwork and mix with much MUCH younger clubbers who know me from Ibiza. It's funny but I get people coming up who think I am spanish, cos I am a bit swarthy to be fair, and start talking to me like I am retarded or Manuel from Fawlty Towers or something hahaha! they get a bit of a shock when they find out I am from Leeds. Like I said before, in clubbing generations come and go very quickly. Some people can only hack it for a couple of years before they have to give everything up and get a real job haha! So I get this mad mix of people in Leeds. It was a bit of a shock last time I played Basics cos they got the biggest crowd ever I was really emotional! It was really funny seeing old ravers in their 40s who had got a yearly pass out from the wife and kids mixing with kids who had seen me at DC10 who looked about 12 hahaha.
Seriously though... in some ways yeah Leeds has a timeless thing with aspects that never change... like the crowd on a good night is world beating. They don't haver that London or New York affliction where they are too cool to know a good time... the Loiners just go mental they don't give a fuck and that has always been the case. The faces change and get younger every year but the good bits are constant. Mind you I am a bit biased it's no secret I love Leeds hahaha!
I mean let me give you a good example in terms of generations. A chap called Steve Luigi was easily the biggest Leeds DJ in the early 90's and was worshipped and lauded with great praise. Ask any kid now they will have no idea... why should they? they were toddlers then. But again like The Utahs, Lord Faversham and Co... Steve Luigi was a major part of forming the scene. But as generations fall by the wayside, either victims of drugs or pressure to conform... as each wave of rave passes it's heroes pass with them unless they graft to stay relevant. I mean I often tell people my job isn't making and playing records it's convincing each new generation that appears that I am not shit hahaha! seriously! I mean as each generation comes along each thinks they own it and old fuckers are just getting in the way and if they didn't make your career they can't claim you as one of their own and therefore you are judged, box off and labeled as obsolete without any of them actually hearing what you do. It's natural you can only stick around for the smart ones to be open minded it's a waste of time being bitter and thinking the world owes you a living cos you were famous for 5 seconds in 1989 hahaha! it's the opposite, you need to work like a bastard and through effort make sure you are still ahead of the game. Ironically to be successful in the first place it is all about being ahead of everyone else. You don't suddenly stop thinking like that when you do well.... hahaha actually many people do exactly that! I take it all back... it's a funny old game guv hahaha!
Could you tell us about your relationship/history with Back2Basics?
Since day one really. Although Dave Beer was around The Utahs and that, I only really bonded with Basics much later in the day around 1995, so in the greater scheme of things while they are one of the longest running weekly clubs in the UK, in terms of my history they are fairly new hahaha! and in terms of Leeds I see Basics as new really... but it has without question been the main influence to several generations while I have been away and I think, in fact I am fairly certain...that I am the most frequently booked guest if you go back all the way... so I have got to see it from both sides. Meaning if I ever had a free saturday or even if I was DJing near Leeds... which for me "near" could be Birmingham haha!... any free time at all in the UK and I would hot foot it home to Leeds just to hang out with my mates at Basics. Kids would come up to me on the dancefloor and be like ; "what time are you on?" or "what are you doing here?" as if DJs were like Newsreaders... we don't exist from the waist down haha!... my answer is always "just doing what you are doing". I have spent so long on the Basics dancefloor I should get a gold watch or something haha! So yeah, the relationship is solid. Most frequent guest and biggest idiot on the dancefloor and proud of it yeah! hahaha! It was totally accidental now I think about it. I was bang into "The Downbeat" which was a proto- Nightmares On Wax venture at what then was actually a Gay venue and I forget the politics involved but I rocked up to go to Downbeat one week and instead it was the first Basics. It was as random as that. It's just one club though really. Lets not forget the others.
What is it about Basics that you love so much?
It never, ever sold out. Everyone sells out once or twice in their lives but Basics never did. At one point Basics could have gone massive like Cream etc but if anything it survived cos it went smaller when it "should" have gone bigger. It is also truly something that was very much a confluence of factors. The crowd at Basics ARE Basics really. I mean some of them have been going almost weekly for over ten years! I am certainly one of them hahaha! The residents are ten times better than 99% of the guests too. And Beero is a great personality. It is one of those rare places where as a guest DJ you play your socks off because it has a standard. It is not overt but it clearly exists. I've seen a few guests who'd I'd seen elsewhere and written off as well... frankly not very good sorry! and they just completely shine when playing at Basics. Again it's a very encouraging crowd and atmosphere but while it is very jolly and friendly it has this history that says ; "this is BASICS mate, you can't be playing any old shit 'ere!" know what I mean hahaha!
What do you think a club like Basics represents in today's electronic climate?
A dying breed. An unwavering standard.
Ultimately, what do you think it is about Leeds that, despite its size, makes it such a diverse, competitive (electronic) musical environment? (the people, the musical history, the northern attitude..)
I think I have covered everything but if I had to answer that very seriously I'm afraid it's rather boring geography, economics and statistics . Like I mentioned Leeds is actually one of Europe's biggest student populations and acts as a City Centre and Central Business District for a massive area of Yorkshire... England's largest county. So I think you used the phrase "despite it's size". That is it in a nutshell really. It is in fact a much bigger and more influential place than even Leeds itself is aware of. It has a weird combination of self belief and bravado coupled with a genuine humility and integral "down-to-earthiness". I mean so many of the major players are not even Leeds. They are students who stayed or from Pontefract or Wakefield and migrated to "The Big City" which believe it or not is Leeds. Like both London and Manchester it acts as a magnet for frustrated creative people from much smaller surrounding areas. It does also have an "X factor" that defies me. I mean... by the Millennium I had been all overt the world but I swear I never knew a place with so many world-class and unbelievable nutters per square inch! And I don't mean rubbishy "wacky" types I mean proper characters. On the streets busking and selling the Yorkshire post and begging beer money off you. Leeds was and is swarming with loons and I cannot tell you why! I mean the clue is the name too. 2 "E"s and an LSD. Enough said.