Greg Wilson - No Sell Out

NO SELL OUT

LEGEND / WIGAN PIER ELECTRO RETROSPECTIVE

MAY 1982 - DECEMBER 1983

MIXED BY GREG WILSON FOR A GUY CALLED GERALD - SAMURAI FM 2005

When Gerald asked me if I'd put together an Electro mix for his Samurai FM show, I knew that this would turn out to be something of a major undertaking! It wasn't a matter of just selecting a dozen or so tracks that would provide a snapshot; this had to be definitive in every sense of the term - a mix that would be totally reflective of the 82/83 period when I first played these groundbreaking tracks to the most upfront of audiences at Legend, in Manchester, and Wigan Pier.

It was only a couple of years ago that I realised that Gerald had been a regular at Legend (or 'Legends' as many people used to call it) throughout most of my time there. I knew he'd listened to my mixes on Piccadilly Radio, but I thought he was too young to get into the clubs back then (he was, but that didn't stop him!). So, once he'd suggested the idea of me doing this mix, it felt totally fitting that it should be for him, someone who directly experienced those heady Electro-Funk days when the old was giving way to the new and dance music was being re-invented on what felt like a weekly basis!

As with any time of change, there was stubborn resistance from the old guard, determined to retain the Jazz-Funk status quo and reject this new electronic sound, which they hastily dismissed as soulless. I found myself at odds with almost everyone on the black music scene - that is apart from the most important people of all, of course, those who attended my club nights. This was a mainly black audience, not just from Manchester, like Gerald, but from areas including Huddersfield, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Bolton, Nottingham, Preston, Stoke, Derby etc, even as far as London. The locations might have been Manchester and Wigan, but the crowd represented something of a gathering of the clans (or crew's, as we used to call them, including the best dancers I've ever seen in a club environment). This all happened at a particularly historical point in black British culture, following on from the inner-city riots of 1981, in areas like Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth and Moss Side, with young British blacks taking a stance against the day-to-day prejudice they faced and serving notice that they weren't prepared to allow this to continue unchallenged. Echoing what had happened in the US during the late 60's, there was certainly a fresh sense of purpose and pride amongst the black youth of this country.

These people were truly dedicated when it came to music and dancing. Despite having little money, they'd somehow find a way to travel long distances in order to attend specialist club nights and All-Dayers. On some Tuesdays at Wigan Pier we'd have up to 500 black kids in attendance, a truly remarkable statistic when you consider that there were literally only a handful of black families living in Wigan at the time.

Wigan Pier was truly awesome, a classic venue in its own right, but Legend on a Wednesday night was the absolute pinnacle for me. One of the reasons I stopped deejaying was because, as far as my club aspirations were concerned, I'd achieved my ultimate aim at Legend. This was to play the most cutting-edge dance music possible to the most clued-up crowd. The fact that I was fortunate enough to do this in such a mindblowing setting was something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest DJ dreams.

I'm very aware of just how lucky I was for these three elements to come together as they did - it was undoubtedly a case of being in right place at precisely the right time. Many DJ's subsequently found fortune and fame, playing at some of the best clubs in the world and cultivating a popstar lifestyle for themselves, but very few have had the privilege of playing exactly what they want to be playing to exactly who they want to be playing it to, week-in-week-out at a time when dance music was literally constructing its contemporary foundations. I was certainly blessed in the knowledge that there wasn't a more cutting-edge club night in the country. At Legend we were right at the cusp of things and, if your primary motivation is to help push things forward on a musical level, it simply can't get any better than that.

Nowadays, people naturally want to talk to me about The Hacienda and how incredible it must have been for me to work there. Given its subsequent worldwide recognition, I can appreciate how difficult it must be for them to fully comprehend that, although I had some great nights at The Hacienda, it couldn't begin to compare with the intensity of what was going on at Legend. The rave scene might have kicked-in some years down the line with The Hacienda at the forefront of the movement, but people were full-on 'raving' at Legend in the early 80's, and this was without the aid of chemicals! It's just that these people were mainly black, at a time when black culture was marginalized in the UK - the style press had yet to catch up with what was happening on the black scene. Gerald touched on this recently in an interview he did for the Little Detroit website - when asked about how magical The Hacienda must have been for him, he pointed out that, 'Legends was a magic moment', and playfully quoting the Steve Coogan character, Paul Calf, added 'The Hacienda was just full of fucking students'! The Hacienda would, of course, enjoy its glory days later in the decade, but, during the early 80's, Wednesday at Legend and Tuesday at Wigan Pier weren't just regarded as successful underground club nights, but the hub of an entire scene.

The tracks on this mix represent this now distant time of both musical and cultural change. I've selected the records that were regarded as controversial at the time within black music circles, the ones that the traditionalists were up in arms about. I'd originally chosen 50 of the biggest tracks played at Legend and the Pier, but this was upped to 60, all of which needed to be edited down to an average of a minute and a half in length, which was no small task in itself! Realising that there were still other tracks I wanted to include, I decided to keep it to the main 60, but drop in snippets of additional records from the period, not only Electro, but also other big floorfillers from my nights. I never played purely Electro, but mixed it in alongside Soul, Funk and Disco (or as people refer to it nowadays, Boogie), and this is reflected by the numerous 'references' sprinkled throughout the mix.

It's good to be able to place some of these tracks back into their original context. Tracks like 'The Message', 'Rockit' and 'Buffalo Gals' would become big hits in the UK, but they were completely unknown when first played at Legend and the Pier. A perfect example would be 'White Lines', which was an underground favourite for many months before the penny finally dropped with the mainstream audience and they came to appreciate it as the wonderful record it is, resulting in a chart stay of over a year! Nowadays, 'White Lines' can be played pretty much anywhere to a great response. It's a sure-fire floorfiller, regarded as a dance standard, but it wasn't always that way - without the initial specialist support it could quite easily have ended up as just a minor hit.

The title of the mix, 'No Sell Out', comes from the opening track. It seemed an appropriate name, given the fact these records were very much regarded by the purists as the selling out of black music, rather than its salvation (something which pretty much everyone can now, with hindsight, clearly see). Listening back to these tracks you can trace the evolution of Hip Hop, Techno and House. This was the point in time when black music fully embraced the available technology and took dance to new dimensions. Hearing these records for the very first time, we knew that the future was upon us and that dance music had entered a whole new phase of its development.

The mix is in two parts, Part One available via Samurai FM in June 2005 with Part Two going online a month later. In August, the two parts will be made available as one continuous mix, with the full tracklisting revealed (including a list of all the additional snippets used). The timespan covered is May '82 (the month Legend first hit capacity and 'Planet Rock' appeared on import, announcing the dawn of the Electro era) through to December '83 (when I stopped working in the clubs).

It's worth noting that Morgan Khan's influential Street Sounds Electro series, which was responsible for bringing the music to a much wider audience (setting the standards for dance compilations in the process) was only launched in October 1983, whilst The Face's 'Electro - The Beat That Won't Be Beaten' front cover wasn't until May 1984, a full two yearss on from 'Planet Rock'.

Thanks to Gerald and Samurai for providing me with the focus I needed in order to approach the mammoth task of putting this mix together. It's a documentative mix that I only wanted to do the once, hence the almost obsessional attention to detail I've put into it.

I hope it's captured a flavour of the era for those who weren't there to experience it directly, whilst, for those who were, evoking memories of a time when music was experiencing one of its most innovative and experimental periods, with the underground dance clubs sowing the seeds for what lay ahead.

For further information about the Electro-Funk era: www.electrofunkroots.co.uk