An edited version of my interview with DJ Gilly first published in the December 2010 issue of Colchester 101 Magazine.
Colchester 101 columnist Gilly and I talk about old times, the places we used to
go, and the people we both know.
Gilly is somewhat of a legend in this town of ours so,
somewhere amongst all the reminiscing, I endeavour to learn a little more about
his DJing career which has spanned almost three decades since he started out at
the former Boadicea pub on Headgate (now the Fox and Fiddler) with former DJ partner
Choc in 1982. Back then he was playing a heady mix of jazz funk, soul, new
romantic and techno with the occasional Ramones or Sex Pistols track thrown in
for good measure. “Nobody told us what to play,” says Gilly,” so we played what
we wanted”.
Talking to Gilly it becomes clear that his fondest memories
are of his ʻRare Groove Sceneʼ stint during the mid 80ʼs at The Venue, now
Curve Bar, on East Hill. “People would be eating Mexican food downstairs and
Iʼd be playing ambient tunes in the background, then at 11pm weʼd go upstairs
and get the party started.”
Gilly recalls Tony and Sian, the owners, being great people
to work for, and The Venue being the place to be at the time, making it an
amazing place, the DJ says. “Everyone who was anyone in Colchester would be there
and we had some great nights. They were very happy times.”
Gilly went on to enjoy an incredible eleven year
residency at Twisters Bar on North Hill, having arrived there via the nearby
Times Bar (now the Noodle Bar). This was a period when a whole new generation fell
in love with his eclectic mixes. “I brought music to Twisters and had a great
time over the years, but eventually the time came to move on to something new,” he
explains.
That ʻsomething newʼ was a three nights a week residency at
Robertoʼs on Crouch Street, however Gilly has since moved on again and enjoys DJing at numerous venues in Colchester and beyond, as well as spinning the decks at last year's Colchester Free Festival.
It becomes clearer as we talk where Gillyʼs deepest musical taste lies.
“I love all kinds of music, in the past Iʼve been a punk, a MOD, a new
romantic, I even listen to some classical music”.
But when asked to narrow it down to a genre or two the
answer comes quickly - “Jazz funk and soul”.
It was back in the ʼ80s at the Embassy Suite on Balkerne
Hill, now a Chinese restaurant, that Gilly spent many a Sunday at their jazz
funk and soul nights. “I didnʼt DJ there often, mostly I was a punter like
everyone else”.
We reflect again about times past. There are so many more
bars and clubs to choose from in Colchester on a Friday or Saturday night these
days. Gone are the times when we would have to venture out to Guines Court in Tolleshunt
DʼArcy, or the Tartan House in Frating, to hear some good tunes.
We both agree though that with more choice comes a shift in
culture. “People were more into the music back then but now drinking has become
a bigger factor.
“Music will always be here but now you have all the X Factor
and all the wannabe television shows... music and fashion was rawer and it was
a pleasure to go out looking different, being a punk, a mod, a new romantic...”
To Gilly it will always be about the music.
I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 01206 642245 or email me simon@media48.co.uk
Head for one of
Colchester’s numerous live music venues of an evening and there is a good
chance you’ll see a young American guy supporting the main act. Buddy Lee Dickens is his name, and in the
past few months, since the breakup of his band The Family Dickens, he has
firmly established himself as one of the greatest support acts around. Combine
this with his claim to fame as Kentucky’s number one musical eccentric and you
know you are in for a treat.
Whether he’s
covering the Spiderman cartoon song, delighting the crowd with his version of
the Big Bang Theory’s theme, or belting out such self-penned titles such as
Root Beer or Walking Bear, with off course his distinctive Kentucky twang,
Buddy has become a firm favourite on the town’s music scene and is now setting
his sights further afield, telling me “I’m starting to gig in Chelmsford
every week for Shakey’s Unsigned Sessions at Club Fusion to try build up a fan
base there.”
Buddy is
also planning a tour of Essex and London to promote his debut album The
Bathroom Sessions, “I recorded it in my bathroom on a 4 track and I’ve released
it on iTunes, Amazon, e-music, Spotify and on mp3.”
After a recent
support spot for Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer at the Arts Centre Buddy has been
inspired to try his hand at rhyming “I’m working on some
backing tracks to try out, and a few gigs to see how it goes , which I think
might be difficult for me considering I can’t keep in time with myself!” he
jokes.
As if all this isn’t enough to keep the young American busy he is also working
on a Buddy Lee Does Punk CD on which he will be recording his take on some
classic punk tracks by bands such as X-Ray Specs, Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Sex
Pistols and the The Undertones, and possibly including a cover of Colchester’s very
own punk rockers Special Duties’ hit Colchester Council “It will be free to download
and also free at my shows once it’s all done and dusted,” he tells me.
Punk rock
country style. YEEHAW!!
Buddy adds “Apart
from all that I’m just trying to work on backing tracks and the stage show to
make it better really.” Well his efforts certainly impressed the Wivenhoe May
Fair team who jumped at the chance to offer him a slot on the main stage this
year alongside the likes of local favourites Surfquake and Hobo Chang. I think
it says a lot about his dedication to his music that coming on after this
year’s Colchester Free Festival headliners Animal Noise - where he will also be playing this year - a task that might unnerve any solo artist after seeing
them whip the crowd up into a frenzy, Buddy won himself a whole bunch of new
fans with his performance, and even had people running back to the stage to
dance when he launched into The Big Bang Theory.
If you want
to hear more from Buddy you can catch him on the Leftfield Show on Radio Wivenhoe this coming Monday 2nd July at about 7.30pm.
Find out more about Buddy and check out his music at his official Facebook page
The Bathroom Sessions are available to download on iTunesAmazonand emusic
I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 0800 756 1470 (we even pay for the call) or email me simon@media48.co.uk
Going along to see any band at the Arts Centre always feels more
like an event than a mere gig, and that was never to be truer than last night
as one of the greatest, and most exciting, bands to come out of Colchester took
to the stage one final time. Yes, sadly it’s true that all good things must
come to an end, and last night we were gathered to say a fond farewell to Fuzzface
as the band members prepare to go their separate ways.
Although they haven’t really been together as a band for the
past year or so Ady Johnson (vocals, guitar), Matt ‘Reverend’ Simpkins (vocals,
Hammond organ, guitar) Toby Bull (vocals,bass) and Mark Turnbull (drums)
decided to delight Colchester’s music lovers one final time before fondly
saying goodbye and good luck to Matt, who is soon to move away from Colchester for three years of study for his ordination as an
Anglican priest.
Timing is everything in life, so with my usual bad timing we
missed the support act, up and coming Wivenhovian singer/songwriter Lou Terry,
and arrived just in time to grab a drink from the bar and brace ourselves for a
veritable feast of organ driven rock ‘n’ roll.
It wasn’t long before Fuzzface took to the stage and set
about delivering the kind of set that they have been delighting gig goers with
since they got together back in 2001. Well two sets to be precise, with a short
bar/toilet break between the two, because if this was to be their final ever
gig then they weren’t going to be teasing the crowd with a forty minute affair and
leaving us begging for more. No sir, Fuzzface were going out in style with a
set containing all the fan’s favourites, and no doubt their own too, for a good
hour and a half.
Now, if you’ve never seen Fuzzface before, and have only
ever seen Ady Johnson performing his own solo material, alone on the stage with
his acoustic guitar, or sometimes with backing from Surfquake’s Nelson on
double bass and Toby Bull on the trumpet, it might have been quite a
surprise to see him in full rock ‘n’ roll mode brandishing a Gibson SG as they
belted out a mouth-watering set that seamlessly blended rock, indie and soul
with influences drawn from, amongst others, the likes of Blur, The Kinks, Small
Faces, The Jam and The Stooges, with the sheer driving power of Matt Simpkin’s
Hammond organ making it all the more delicious. They were clearly enjoying
their big night. And so were we.
If any of the fan’s favourites were missed out it would have
been hard to tell. I Can’t Let You Go, Not Now I’m In a Hot Tub… in fact too
many to name check them all. They were all there. Played with rafter rattling
energy until finally it ended, after a second encore, with a theatrical bow to
the crowd who, to be honest, would have stood there all night if they would
have carried on playing.
But it was time to say goodbye.
As I briefly chatted to Colchester’s Mr Cool, Ben Howard,
afterwards a young guy commented to him “That was amazing! I can’t believe I
never saw them before.” “And you won’t see them again” I thought,” nor will any
of us. So cherish the memories of this night.”
I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 0800 756 1470 (we even pay for the call) or email me simon@media48.co.uk
Getting caught in one hurricane when you are on holiday is bad enough, but getting caught in another the following year is downright careless. But somehow I managed to do it...
It was forecast to make landfall at Tampa Bay, Florida as a
high end category 2 hurricane
But Charley had other plans…
It was August 2004 and I was in Orlando with my family and, after a week of hitting
the theme parks hard, we were due to drive down to Tampa that evening to stay
with our friends Mike and Mel. However, that morning Mike had called to warn us
there was a hurricane making its way towards Florida, and Tampa was right in
its path. He suggested that we stay put in Orlando and drive down the next day
when all the shenanigans were over. That sounded like a plan to us so we
hastily arranged to keep our hotel room on for an extra night and headed off to
Sea World for the day.
Having pounded western Cuba a few days earlier Tampa was nervously
bracing itself for the hurricane’s arrival, but at the last minute Charley
suddenly veered several degrees off its projected path and made landfall farther south
in Charlotte Harbor.
Tampa had dodged the bullet.
By now the storm had intensified into a category 4 hurricane,
with winds reaching 145 mph. That’s some serious wind! Ripping through the city of Punta Gorda,
Charley destroyed 11,000 homes, six schools, six fire stations and about 300
businesses. State Governor Jeb Bush (George’s brother) dubbed Punta Gorda
Florida’s "ground zero."
Charley's sights were now set on Mickey Mouse.
Meanwhile, in Orlando, we were sitting in Hooters enjoying a
pre-hurricane dinner. News had reached us that Charley had set a new course and
was heading our way, so we’d decided to cross the street and grab something to
eat ahead of the storm rather than use the hotel’s restaurant. It had seemed
like such a good idea too until, as we finished eating, all hell broke loose
outside. Suddenly it got very dark, the heavens opened with almost horizontal driving
rain outside the window we were sitting by, with palm trees bending at seemingly impossible angles and threatening to
uproot and be carried away by the unstoppable forces of nature. The manager locked
the doors, told us to move away from the windows, and said nobody was to leave.
Buoyed by two or three beers, I remember thinking “Oh well, there’s probably
worse places to spend the night than Hooters….”
Thankfully this was to be just the little storm before the
‘big one’… a bit of a pre-party so to speak, a teaser for what was to come, and
some twenty minutes or so later things calmed down and we were able to make a
mad dash back to the safety of our room at the Rosen Plaza.
My daughter Victoria prepares for the hurricane
My other daughter Jessica unfazed by the approach of Charley
There we hurriedly packed our suitcases and put them in the
bathroom in case a window broke and our room was opened up to the elements. I
also filled the bath tub with cold water. Why? I don’t honestly know, but it
seemed like a good idea at the time.
Then Charley hit. And it hit hard. Its journey overland had
taken some of the sting out of its tail, but winds of up to 100mph are nothing
to be sneered at. Ignoring instructions from the hotel to stay away from the
window (we learned there was a little speaker in the ceiling of the room so
they could talk to us at all times) I positioned myself on the window sill of
our tenth floor room, between the curtain and the glass, to watch the free
show. Charley tore through Orlando but for the most part America’s vacation
capital held firm. I saw trees topple, others split in two, and air
conditioning units ripped from rooftops and carried away by the wind, but most
memorable all for me was the roar of the wind and the constant splatter of
grit, dirt and sand picked up by the wind and trying to wear the glass away
like Mother Nature’s very own sandblaster.
There are more exciting Hurricane Charley
videos on YouTube but this was my experience
Twenty minutes later, maybe thirty, it was half time in this
battle of wills with the elements as the eye of the hurricane passed over us,
and for a while it went eerily calm outside. Realising the situation was
somewhat worse than they had anticipated, and no doubt suspecting that idiotic
guests such as me were disobeying instructions to stay away from the windows in
their rooms, the hotel made an emergency announcement for all guests to
evacuate to the conference centre on the lower ground floor. We duly obeyed
their instruction, and here is where my fun ended as all my attempts to get
anywhere near a window to watch the events outside were met with orders of “Sir, I need you to keep away from the window”
from the morbidly obese security guards.
The view from our room the next morning
Damage in the hotel car park
The next morning a one hour drive down to Tampa to finally
catch up with Mike and Mel took nearer five hours as we crawled along the I - 4 in heavy post hurricane traffic. I
recall telling my two daughters how lucky they were to have had this once in a
lifetime experience.
How wrong I was!
Fast forward to August 2005 and we are once again in Florida,
this time in Fort Lauderdale, and guess what, there’s a hurricane on its way
and this one is called Katrina. But we’re not worried, this one is only a category
1 and we’ve survived a category 4. We were staying with friends Jay and Lynne,
along with two other couples, Dean and Lex and Stephen and Bobby Jo, so we did
the only sensible thing we could think of and went to the supermarket to stock
up on beer and burgers and had ourselves a hurricane party! As Katrina began to
make herself known to South Florida we were out on the back porch barbequing and
putting the pool furniture in the swimming pool so it couldn’t get blown away.
After eating much fun was had standing in the garden braving the winds... until
someone was startled when a lilo from someone’s pool struck them firmly in the
back and we decided to enjoy the rest of the hurricane from indoors.
The wind starts to pick up
as we BBQ in Fort Lauderdale
The morning after the night before
Little did we realise, seasoned hurricane survivors that we now
were, was that once Katrina had crossed Florida and entered the Gulf of
Mexico she would strengthen rapidly to become a category 5 hurricane, the
strongest ever recorded in the Gulf at the time, before making landfall a
second time in Louisiana on August 29th and heading for New Orleans.
She may have weakened to a category 3 by then but she caused more than 50
breaches in drainage canal and navigational canal levees, flooding 80 percent
of the city. Thankfully an evacuation order had been made and between 80 and 90
percent of the city’s residents had fled before Katrina’s arrival. Many of
those who stayed behind took shelter at The Louisiana Superdome but still
nearly 1500 perished in their homes and in the city’s flooded streets.
The Louisiana Skydome after Katrina
As for us, we by this time were watching in horror as the events
unfolded from the comfort of a cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the
Seas, and the only real inconvenience we had suffered had been the ship
arriving late into Miami the afternoon after our encounter with Katrina, having
been forced to plot a course back to Florida that would keep it away from the
hurricane. Little had we realised during our encounter with Katrina that she was to go on to become one of the deadliest storms ever to hit America. We counted our luck stars many times over the next few days as our
original plan had been to be in New Orleans with our children during that time-frame, and we had only booked the cruise to join our friends, who we had hurricane
partied with in Fort Lauderdale, at the last minute after a great deal of persuasion
from them, or we might have ended up in the Superdome too. I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 0800 756 1470 (we even pay for the call) or email me simon@media48.co.uk
By pure coincidence last night I had been preparing my Colchester 101 interview with
Robbie Grey to post on this blog and today I was walking
through Colchester and who should call me and suggest we meet for a coffee but Robbie himself. So we met up in Cafe Nero for a chat about what Modern English are up to at the moment. But
enough about that for now.
Here it is as published a year ago in June 2011 as Modern
English prepared for their long awaited homecoming gig at the Arts Centre.
If Colchester did music it would probably be the best music in the
World. Hang on a minute. We do, and rather well too! There’s Ady Johnson, Cav
Ok, Angry Vs the Bear, Greg Blackman, plus a host of upcoming new bands such as
Fick as Fieves and The Family Dickens. There was also Blur of course, who we
continue to claim as our own, even though they did turn their backs on our
town, with Damon Albarn once claiming “Places like Colchester celebrate the
mediocre.” Thanks Damon, we’re feeling the love!
But, did Blur make it big in America? No. Even their bitter rivals
Oasis couldn’t crack the States in a big way. Modern English did.
Modern who?
English. Modern English. Post-punk Colchester band. Remembered fondly
by many of ‘a certain age’ around Colchester, and beyond.
A decade before Damon and co burst onto the scene and informed us that
There’s No Other Way, five young guys from Colchester found a way into the
hearts of Americans with their single I Melt With You. It had been picked up by
college radio stations across the US. The band made a video, and found
themselves the darlings of new music television channel MTV. Suddenly they were
famous! “It was mad, Robbie tells us. “We weren’t even looking for it over
there. It was being played on import and hadn’t even been released. Some DJ
picked it up and played it on his radio show,then another, and another, and it
just spread like wildfire across the major stations. All of a sudden record companies
were sniffing around. We were recording our second album with Hugh Jones at
Rockfield Studios in Wales and we got a phone call saying there’s a bidding war
in America for I Melt With You!”
The single reached number 7 on Billboard’s Top Tracks chart and 78 on
the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983. It was even voted number 39 in VH1’s Greatest Songs
of the 80s. Robbie continues “We’d been playing to a couple of hundred people
in some dodgy dark rooms and suddenly we’d got people like Matt Dillon introducing
us on stage at the Ritz in New York. We played there a lot. There were 1000
people outsideand he came backstage and said ‘How do you want me to introduce you?’ and we just said ‘You can say
whatever you want!’ We did a matinee show and I had my shirt ripped off by screaming
kids.”
That one song is almost a part of American popular culture. It was
used in the closing credits of the seminal 80s movie Valley Girl, starring a youthful
Nicolas Cage playing a young punk in his breakthrough role, and it has subsequently
been used in several television shows over the years. It has also been covered
many times, most notably by Bowling for Soup and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, and has
featured in numerous American television commercials with the roll call including
:
Burger King
Ritz Crackers
Vicks
GMC
M&Ms
Taco Bell.
A cover version of it is still featured in Hershey’s ‘Pure Hershey’s’
commercials, which have been running since 2008, and Rob Lowe’s new movie I Melt With
You was inspired by the song.
Photo www.andyroshayphotography.co.uk
Photo www.andyroshayphotography.co.uk
It all began around 1976/77 when punk rock exploded onto the UK music
scene and inspired Colchester teenagers Robbie Grey, Gary McDowell and Mick
Conroy to form punk band The Lepers. “We thought, ‘this is brilliant, we can do
this’. So we did. It was as simple as that, we just picked up bits and bobs and
made a noise. But nobody wanted to be the singer so I got lumbered with that!”
With Robbie on vocals, Gary on guitar and Mick on bass they set about making a name for themselves, and The Lepers first gig was in Red Lion
shopping precinct’s underground loading bay. Robbie recalls, “There was a
socket in the wall and we plugged all our gear into it. That was our first ever
gig, we did posters for it, and people actually turned up! We got booked for
everything after that, including a Sham 69 gig at Woods, because nobody else
was doing anything like it at that time.”
In those days your musical taste, and the fashion style that
accompanied it, defined you to your peers, and to the world around you,
creating a kind of tribalism that was very often violent. This was exacerbated in
Colchester by the tension that existed at the time between soldiers from the
garrison, and civilians. “It was brilliant in Colchester then but it was dodgy
too” Robbie recalls. “Soldiers had their own pubs, so you couldn’t go in
certain pubs, and punks were hated anyway. But we were having a great time, and the music was so exciting. That’s why the poster for the Arts Centre
gig is black and white, because that’s how I remember Colchester at the time.
Colchester 101 photoshoot on the roof of the Arts Centre
In spite of these warring factions, punk, soul and funk were oftenstrange bedfellows and managed toblur the tribal edges. “The Lacy Ladyin Ilford, which was a really
happeningclub at the
time, used to play punk andsoul, and you’d go to the EmbassySuite in Colchester and they’d playfunk all night followed by half an
hourof the Sex
Pistols and the Damnedand all that.”
Homecoming gig at the Arts Centre
But by 1979
punk was past its prime and a new direction would be needed if the band were to
stay together. A change of name, and direction ensued, along with a new sound,
and Modern English was born, with new band members Richard Brown on drums and Stephen
Walker on keyboards. They got themselves their first gig at the Colchester
Institute on the same bill as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam and the Ants,
followed by other local venues including Woods Leisure Centre and the Labour
Club. “The whole Modern English thing happened because we started to play our instruments
properly, so we decided to change our name and get more into the music, using
guitars and keyboards with an edgier sound inspired by Wire and Joy Division.
We became more arty and started to take it a bit more seriously really.”
“Our first
demo, which we recorded at The Hillside Studio in Ipswich, was just a
collection of ideas. We sent them out to about twenty labels and 4AD straight
away said they were interested.”
DJ Gilly, Robbie and myself at the Brightlingsea Festival 2011
Now signed
to a label, they recorded their first album Mesh and Lace, and also released
four singles which weren’t on the album: Drowning Man; Swans on Glass;
Gathering Dust; and Smiles and Laughter. Then it all took off in America with
the release of I Melt With You from their second album After The Snow, and long
tours of the USA were soon to follow. Robbie remembers those days fondly. “We’d
go over there and I’d be walking down the street and people would go “Hey!
Robbie from Modern English!” then we’d come back here and go to the Oliver
Twist (now The Twist) and nobody would know who you were. I loved it. You could
have a few pints in the pub and nobody would know what you’d been up to over
there.”
Busking in Colchester before the Free Festival
Modern
English eventually split up after releasing the album Stop Start in 1986, but
Robbie never really called it a day and reformed the band a couple of times
with different line-ups, touring and recording. Now the 80s line-up is back
together and gigging again “I blame Mick Conroy,” Robbie jokes. “Mick wanted to
get the band back together. I agreed to it, the American manager got involved, and
that’s why it’s all coming around again.”
The week
before the forthcoming Arts Centre gig sees them playing in Paris, then back to
the UK for dates in London and Kent. After that they are heading across the
pond to tour America “The connection with America is still massive. We toured
there last summer and it was amazing.”
Headlining the Free Festival
Their short
American tour last year included playing festivals in front of crowds of up to
25,000 people. “We enjoyed being back together so much It was so funny looking
around the stage and seeing all these old boys who were my friends. It was
brilliant! So we thought we would give it another year then see what happens after
that.”
The line-up
for the tour consists of Robbie Grey (main vocals), Gary McDowell (guitars, vocals),
Mick Conroy (bass guitars, vocals), Stephen Walker (keyboards), the other
Steven Walker (guitars), and Ric Chandler (drums).
Robbie
doesn’t rule out going into the studio to record some new tracks. “We haven’t
really discussed it much yet as we’re still all too amazed at being back in the
same room together after all these years! I’ve got a whole album’s worth of
material written though, and Mick Conroy’s got a whole load of stuff he wants
to bring to the table. So we’ll see what happens.”
For now
though the focus is on the forthcoming tour, and Robbie is looking forward to
be playing back in Colchester for the first time in many years, and seeing
plenty of familiar faces in the crowd.
To bring the story up to date, the Arts Centre gig was a sell out and Modern English went on to headline the Colchester Free Festival in August. In recent weeks they have been back together again writing new material and this July will be touring America followed by a short UK tour including a gig at Dingwalls in London on September 9th.
I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 0800 756 1470 (we even pay for the call) or email me simon@media48.co.uk
