British musicians?

[Wilse]

@mdma:

Where's Wilse when I need him?

Here, at last. :-D

I'm listening to Sly & The Family Stone right now.
Haven't heard them in ages, although I'm about to go and DJ soul, funk and disco so I thought I'd refresh my memory.

Re. the topic, where to begin?
Slam are not a bad British house duo that spring to mind.
There's also loads of good, lesser known British house stuff.

For decent pop, you could do worse than Franz Ferdinand or Kasabian. Both are excellent live.
I also love that Cesars track, Jerk it Out. Not certain if their British, though.

There's loads more but I'm afraid I'm in funk mode just now.
Actually, The Brand New Heavies were a decent British Soul/Funk band. As were Average White Band.

-EDIT-
I should do this soul malarky more often. I've just been listening to Curtis Mayfield and Sir Joe Quarterman. Absolutely fantastic.
It's amazing how I can go years on end without listening to huge chunks of my record collection.
Having said that, there are rather a lot of them.

[Wilse]

No doubt about it, the 80s had some excellent stuff.

New Order, Stone Roses, Simple Minds, Talking Heads, U2, etc, etc, all produced some excellent stuff in the 80s.

Having said that, it's probably my least favourite decade for "the charts" but I never pay much attention to them anyway.

I'm listening to "The Clash - London Calling," just now. 1979. One the best albums ever.
One of my mates bought me it on vinyl (not an easy task) and a Kasabian concert ticket, as a thank you for DJing at his wedding.

[Wilse]

@mdma:

Cool gift!

Certainly was.

Promise me that you weren't like the wedding DJ that Peter Kay talks about in his standup routine!

It was a one off. I've never DJed at a wedding before and am not likely to again.
The only reason I did this one was because the guy getting married is the guy I record with and even then there were conditions attached.
I insisted that he chose a playlist, with a list of songs for me to choose from and that if anyone complained about the tunes, I'd refer them to him.

As for being like Peter Kaye's guy, would he have finished with "What the World is Waiting For" by the Stone Roses? ;-)

[Wilse]

@mdma:

Did you mix the tunes or just drop 'em in?

I was using hired CD decks so mixing wasn't really an option.*
Receptionist at the hotel still said it was best wedding music she'd ever heard.

Which was nice. :-)




*I normally use vinyl.

[Wilse]

@mdma:

I tried to reply to this last night but the piece of kiech PC i was
using keeled over.
Finally got my Peg reconfigured to my new ADSL provider. :-)

That wedding was the first time I've ever used CDs to DJ with.

Last month at Chakra I used CDs again but only two and with good
reason.
1. I was planning playing "Guns of Brixton" but my vinyl copy of "The
Story of the Clash" is a bit crackly, so I took my London Calling CD.
(Won't have to do that again. :-))

2. I played one of our tracks to see how the crowd would react.
Naturally, I don't have this on vinyl, so hadto use a CD.

Other than that, I always use records.

As for mixing mp3s, have you seen Final Scratch?
I have to confess to wanting that. You get two slabs of time-coded
vinyl, each of which can be assigned to an mp3 on your laptop. You can
then control the mp3s by hand, via the vinyl - genius.
The best bit is it works almost like real vinyl.

[Wilse]

Just a tad pricey though

The only reason I don't have it already.