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THE HUSTLE FOR THE STRUGGLE EDITION
News Reviews & Interviews
THE LAST POETS Barrie K Sharpe, Teedra Moses Jackie Sears & Shirley Jackson (Conscious Org) thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
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WELCOME TO ISSUE 68 Greetings, Happy New Year albeit belated and welcome to issue 68 of the Soul Survivors Magazine, the first for 2017. Really looking forward to this year which going by some Club Nouveau ‘Rumours’ promises to be an interesting and exciting one here at Soul Survivors HQ. Firstly a big thank you to those who, in one shape or form, have contributed to the successful mission (not so impossible) of us putting on the forthcoming Soul Survivor Awards. With a Roy Castle Record Breakers embraced, enthusiastically, in more ways than one, and in some Tribe Called Quest ‘Scenarios, it has highlighted quite a bit of Marvin Gaye ‘Ego Tripping’. Not sure either why there’s been a Temptations ‘Ball Of Confusion’ over the preliminary nomination and the subsequent voting processes, but there’s nothing like a bit of Prince ‘Controversy’ albeit unintentional to galvanise interest. It most certainly has caused a Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes ‘Everybody’s Talking’ conversation amongst many. ‘There’s A Reason’ why you really don’t wanna miss ‘The Big Match’ featuring The Brit Funk Association performing a red (Arsenal) white (Spurs) and blue (Chelsea) all ‘London Town’ derby fixture of memorable songs. Debuting at The Soul Survivor Awards, the kick off is 7pm with some light refreshment music until the Awards starts at approx 8pm for an hour, give or take extra time eventualities seeing as we are at Stamford Bridge. The Brit Funk Association first team 11 for 90 minutes, guaranteed to play out of their skins will create plenty of ‘Hi Tension’ moments throughout, the only decent ‘Match Of The Day’ fixture. With match winning celebrations and a Koffee Brown ‘British Hustle’ ‘After Party’ till 2am on offer, I’d hurray like Murray for the turnstile entrance of £25 17th Feb London SW6. It promises to be a Funkadelic ‘One Nation Under A Groove’ Sly & The Family Stone ‘Family Affair’, so see ya there. This issue is one of Tupac and Janet Jackson ‘Poetic Justice’ proportions. Like Mary J Blige ‘All That I Can Say’ is ‘Blessed Are Those Who Struggle’ so I’m humbled to feature a ‘Straight No Chaser’ interview with none other than the purveyor forefathers and original Ini Kamoze “lyrical gangster” of the ‘Hot Stepper’ spoken word language, The Last Poets. I have purposely written a review to correct a completely false ‘This Is Madness’ slur on The Last Poets, at an event held at The Royal Festival Hall. It’s deep and factual but necessary because the powerful legacy of The Last Poets is not one to hijack and distort the truth. They truly are Soul Survivors with a ‘If we only knew what we could do’, the world would be a better place, ethos. There is no question of the anomaly that surrounds Barrie K Sharpe and his Sharpe Eye view of his surroundings. It’s been a long time coming but there was always a ‘Masterplan’ to feature Barrie an original ‘Sport’ card carrying member of the ‘Hustler’s Convention’, at some point in the magazine. Balancing the ying and yang there’s plenty female energy from the super talented soulful goddess of millennium soul Teedra Moses and the hard working and enterprising Conscious Org ladies Jackie Sear and Shirley (without Laverne) Jackson. Looking ahead we feature and interview in issue 69 with Acid Jazz’s Eddie Piller. There’s lots of interesting events and adverts to troll through including an alternative Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren influenced gangster boogie session, ’The Long Groove Friday’ at The Crowndale NW1, Easter Friday 14th April. Between now and the next issue I will have been back to my interim Roy Ayers ‘Destination Motherland’ the lovely surroundings of a Sweatband ‘Jamaica’ to see my pops. I’ll be seeking out some native Jamaican soul for Blackpool next year, and I may, if you behave, bring back some Carib pleasantries like yam, bammy, and white rum... if you cross my palm with silver... ’No Problem’ like Norman Beaton and Victor Romeo Evans and his pet snake Bellamy. Thanks to Anna Benson for photo’s Darrel S, Ayshea, Scarbutts Soulprovdyer, Jason & Ronnie C for their contribution towards making this issue happen or in it’s distribution. Thanks Hollis King front cover image of The Last Poets. FITZROY
WHAT’S INSIDE? 4 JACKIE SEARS & SHIRLEY JACKSON (CONSCIOUS ORG) 8 DARRELL’S FUNK BOX 14 FITZROY INTERVIEWS TEEDRA MOSES 16 LLOYD BRADLEY & FITZROY INTERVIEW THE LAST POETS 24 RECORD REVIEWS 28 FITZROY INTERVIEWS BARRIE K SHARPE 36 EVENT REVIEWS 41 ROLL CALL OF FAME 46 WHAT’S GOING ON All adverts are placed in good faith and The Soul Survivors Magazine take no responsibility for any issues arising from the use of those who have advertised. All dates are correct at time of going to print – please check with venue or promoter if unsure. All rights reserved 2006 - 2016 © The Soul Survivors Magazine It is essential to note that all artwork, adverts and listings must be confirmed and sent in to fitzroy@ thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk before 6TH MARCH 2017 in order to meet the graphic designer and print 3 week preparation. This will ensure that the magazine for April and May is ready and out on the street ahead of 1st April 2017. Thanks in advance. The Soul Survivors Magazine Team! Suite 013, 986 Garratt Lane, Tooting Broadway, London SW17 0ND E: fitzroy@thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk M: 07956 312931 C fitzroy.facey C Fitzroytheoriginalsoulsurvivor C TheSoulSurvivors MSoulSurvivors1 thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
Fitzroy interviews Jackie & Shirley
CONSCIOUS
“The aim of Conscious is to help raise funds for community organisations and creating platforms and opportunities for the people.”
O R G A N I S AT I O N Jackie Sear and Shirley Jackson are experienced in both their diverse professions and geographical surroundings. Yet both have found a synergy in providing a service not only to the music industry but to the wider community as well. This enthusiastic part time hobby has become a full time project working with charities, DJ’s, clubs and pushing this through their own radio station. Overcoming hurdles with belief and sheer determination these sisters are doing it like Annie & Aretha… for themselves... and everyone else!! Fitzroy: First thing, Conscious Promotions is a concept you both have, so tell me how you two got together? Jackie: I’d been running my own charity for 13 years and I was coming to the end of my time. I was looking for something to do without any pressure and the only thing that was close to my heart was music. So I thought about doing stewarding and being present at live concerts. One of my last charity events was for a festival for International Women’s day. This included a house music event with an all women’s DJ line up at Broadway Boulevard. Do you remember that place Fitzroy? (Fitzroy: Of course I do I, believe that’s where we met, Jackie back in 1995.) It was really successful and Bosco Almeida came up with our brand and we started doing events, and it was a hobby not a job for about a year. I was also working on a live music project called Open Musicality. That’s Page 4 - Issue 67
where I met Shirley, we were working on different parts of the project, I was coordinating and Shirley was doing the social media and marketing side. As great as Open Musicality was, we had an issue with venues so it stopped. It was at that point that Shirley and I started talking about what I was doing with Conscious and it wasn’t really doing much particularly as it was just a hobby and I had other work commitments. Then Shirley came in with some really good ideas. Shirley: We decided to join forces as I was working with other promoters in the industry and felt we could work well together due to my background and expertise in corporate marketing and managing events. The radio idea came about when I was developing a website for another station and could see how good it would be for Conscious to have their own station. It took a bit of persuading but happily my nagging paid off,
but it’s definitely been a good decision. We started the radio as a sideline for our events, but even though it’s only been running for a year it is growing as a platform from strength to strength. It has given us a big market presence both to older and younger audiences. It’s become a major part of our business. Jackie runs and heads all the strategies and procedures together, Bosco is the creative side and branding and I’m the one who gets all the work done. I head and run the radio side, Jackie is the one for bringing on more DJs from her raving days (It had to pay off) I also head the marketing and day-to-day side of the business. Our business is growing, it’s great to be part of its development and we three make a great team. Jackie: What makes Conscious interesting is that it’s a social enterprise. This means we are not for profit, so the profit we make in all of our endeavours, goes into community projects, such as our BPM events, and because of my background in community work, we give community and social media support too. Fitzroy: As I said earlier we met in 1995 and I didn’t see you for quite a few years. I bumped into you at an event and you asked me to DJ at a Charity event in 2009 in West Ealing. What I find fascinating is how your community work impacted on you in your work to clean up your local estate, Copley Close in Hanwell. W.7 I lived not far from that area and even back in the early 1980’s Copley Close did not have the best of reputations. So just for the benefit of the readers please elaborate on what you did and how you commanded such respect amongst the Ealing community, as it must have been no mean feat. Considering the local authorities and police agencies were reluctant to get involved, I think what you did should be applauded. Jackie: I moved to Copley Close in 1996, after being moved from various places. When I first moved there it was not a nice place to live. There was a pub on the estate that was run by drug dealers, it was a very racist and divided community. We had a big Muslim community, Somalian and other lovely diverse cultures in our area. As a community we were basically forgotten. The police wouldn’t come onto the estate. Basically every time there was an incident the people in the pub disappeared. I’d already been doing youth work so I knew what I wanted to do when I moved onto the estate. What scared me the most was that people thought this was normal behaviour, getting beaten up on the street and drug deals happening at 3pm in the afternoon. Kids were being used and getting caught up in this behaviour. I decided to use what I knew about community and youth work and what I’d been doing for 6 years before that, and get a law degree. I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously because I was a single mum living on Copley. I set up an organisation called
EASE, which stands for Empowering Action and Social Esteem. Basically we were looking after individuals, supporting them and doing community development at the same time. To give you an insight, the estate is now going though the process of regeneration, but it was subsiding 15-20 years ago. The repairs were not being attended to and it was literally a horrible place to live in and outside the flats. We made sure people got their repairs done and also helped the kids to identify what the problems were on the estate. Cutting a long story short it was in 2001 when I set that up and the pub was closed down in 2007 because it was a crack den. I received lots of threats, as did my family. In 2009 the pub was knocked down turned it into a marketplace and basketball pitch, we got play equipment put up across the whole estate after 10 years of campaigning. We took over the sweet shop and made it into a community centre. We started doing classes for all the different communities to work together but we couldn’t do that properly until the pub was knocked down because people were too scared to walk past it. When that did eventually happen it was like the clouds parted to make the sunshine and it made things a lot easier. EASE has carried on without me, running youth clubs and supports for adults. The first year I raised £5000 and in 2009 I raised £600,000 so I’m really proud of what I’ve done but I didn’t do it on my own. We had 22 staff and 40 volunteers and I’m just glad that it continues without me. Fitzroy: I think you should take a bow because you must have had to deal with some very unscrupulous people. Without going into too much detail how did you over come that because those types of characters are very intimidating and quite relentless? Jackie: They are cowards, as it was when I was alone they would try and intimidate my kids and me. If there was an adult they did nothing. Most of the time I ignored it, I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong and in my gut I knew I’d be alright. The funny thing is the people I got most of the grief from, ended up using our services, and when they asked if they could join in I said yes of course. These were sometimes 18 year old boys wanna be gangsters and I wasn’t going to let them intimidate me. Not on my watch. Fitzroy: Growing up in west London you’ve now got some local celebrities from the area. Jackie: Yes I know Simon Bartholomew guitarist of The Brand New Heavies. Our mums were best friends, I’m like his annoying little sister. Fitzroy: Shirley prior to working with Jackie what’s your story and background? thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
Shirley: I was always corporate working in investment banking for 20 years. I also looked after my children and worked for a computer company called CISCO not the singer. I started working with Aitch B of We Love Soul doing social media for him. Because I was at home not working I got very involved promoting them on social media and also designed and built their website. I enjoyed it and it opened doors for me. I don’t claim to be an authority on music, but I know what I like and enjoy music. Fitzroy: It reminds me of Anna Marshall and myself when we started the magazine in 2006. She has a more corporate background and more was more industry but our combined skills set the platform for the Soul Survivors Magazine. Jackie: I actually think that is our strength though, because I wanted to make something I could make some money out of with Conscious, as I always when doing things for charity I never make money for myself. So when it started looking beyond being a hobby and more a business that’s where Shirley came in. I’ve learnt how to be business minded from someone who would avoid business applications. Over the last few years I’ve been doing consultancy work which has helped me to understand business more. When you run a charity, people think you can do stuff for free. The amount of time I spent doing funding application forms, it always helped the projects and it’s like applying for a job filling it in, there’s hundreds of people applying. So I really believe in serendipity and everything has happened for a reason and at the right time. Although I started Conscious in 2014, it really didn’t
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start to happen till 2016 when I met Shirley and we started talking properly. Shirley: At first Conscious was like a hobby but because I found myself unemployed and I wasn’t getting anywhere finding a job, I started to look at it the concept more seriously. Jackie does her community work so she didn’t have the time but I found myself with more time on my hands so decided to just go for it. Our strong selling point for our services is that when we do our charity events a portion of the costs incurred goes back to help fund our events, the flyers the CD’s or the websites marketing etc. Being a CIC company we do obviously draw a wage as we must eat but it’s all relative. We feel there is a hole in the market for what we are doing, providing a service and giving back, not only money but we also offer the small charities our expertise and feedback on how they can impact their charities better in terms of marketing. Our BPM events are fantastic not only because of the fantastic line ups, who we must thank, as they all play for FREE. Jackie and I bounce off each other with ideas and we are getting so many great people who want to work with us its truly a great place to be. I can see our business just developing from strength to strength as mine and Jackie’s ideals are the same, although she is the official raver out the two of us. Jackie: I’d say to anyone with an idea that if you have that leap of faith, other people will be attracted to it. After the success of the first event I went to Bosco and asked him to do some branding for Conscious and he got it straight away. That’s why he’s with us because if it wasn’t for his branding
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we wouldn’t be recognised. I worked 3 jobs when I set up EASE had two kids and a husband (for a little while!!) but taking that leap of faith is why things are working for us. Shirley: I could still go out and get a job but now being 50, Jackie and I can build up a legacy and help people with the power of music. Jackie: The aim of Conscious is to help raise funds for community organisations and creating platforms and opportunities for the people. We are looking to help build careers not just in music. We come across opportunities and put people forward and they actually get jobs out of it. Shirley: I did actually tell Fitzroy about our connections service. We are getting a website to market our Conscious Community Connections. Fitzroy: I like the sound of that. When the magazine first started the idea from Anna Marshall’s side was that amongst us as soul people we all have business and a trade and because of our musical connections we may want to support each other. Anna runs a local publication called The Local Oracle. It caters for local business and homes in the Kent area and it’s successful. I
17/01/2017 02:01
was considered an oracle of information of where to go on the club scene knowing all the promoters, and DJ’s and supplying guest lists of punters. So we joined forces and for a while that was the direction we aimed at but ultimately the music was more prevalent, with this newfound interest in our generation’s musical outlets. So 11 years later it’s almost come full circle that you have the idea to do it and maybe the climate is now. Jackie: Serendipity again Fitzroy. It all works out in the end. Shirley: I must mention Conscious Sounds presents our BPM fundraving event to celebrate International Women’s Day 2017. The selection of beats and bass lines will be expertly thrown down by a special line up of couples going back to back. Friday 3rd March 2017 Nomad, Old Street, London, EC1 and we are supporting E.A.S.E (Empowering Action & Social Esteem) to provide the Uplift course, a confidence building course that enables women and girls to improve their selfesteem and build positive relationships with themselves and others. So four years on we have gone back to our roots. Fitzroy: Thanks ladies it has been good and thanks for advertising.
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There’s always an alternative. Or is there? In the merry world of clubland it isn’t unusual to find events that are multiroomed functions. Room 1 would be R’n’B, Soul Classics. Room 2 would be the ever present House room and then there would be an ‘alternative’ room. The alternative room is one that conjures up thoughts that the music in this room will be, by definition, different to what is already being offered in the other two rooms. But what constitutes an alternative room? In fact, what exactly defines alternative music? For me this room should be heavy on Jazz, Funk and Broken Beat. Unless a promoter specifically tells a DJ what to play, you’d think that it would be a given that those tutored in the art of turntablism would be aware of their duties when placed in said room . I can remember attending an event that had a third room and the music in there was puzzling to say the least. I expect the extra enclosure to be playing stuff I won’t get to hear on a normal Club Classics night. Now I know that I am speaking purely from a personal standpoint but I see rooms such as this as an opportunity to broaden the average punters musical experience. There’s nothing like hearing some bass heavy funk on a brilliant sound system rather than on monitor speakers in a wine bar. And when it’s heard like that, it gives those that aren’t necessarily into that type of music a chance to hear it properly. The alternative room should be treated, by the clubber, as a classroom where they are going to be educated into the left side of Soul. Granted, when you step in to the room you may be thinking “What the f**k is this?” as Colonel Reds’ ‘The More We Have’* rattles the speakers. But stick around and soak up a different vibe.
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We should all start to embrace our music. As club nights for us Soul Survivors have exploded in numbers, over the past 7-10 years, there is the worrying trend of them all sounding the same. Close your eyes when you are next out and you could be at any night absolutely anywhere in the country, and that’s not just me saying this. I have had numerous people coming up to me, bemoaning the fact that the music all sounds the same, but when you point out that there is another room that is offering something different it’s the same old response, “Yeah, but they’re not playing anything that I know”. Of course they’re not, you f**k wit! If they did then it wouldn’t be alternative, it’d just be an extension of the other rooms. All of us Soul Survivors aren’t getting any younger. I probably have a good 6 or 7 years of clubbing left in me, and that time is going to fly by, so let’s support the extra room that promoters have provided for us. And DJ’s have the cajones to dig into your crate and fire something special through the sound system because, in the last ‘alternative’ room I encountered, they played ‘Candy’. I was not impressed. *Colonel Red - The More We Have (Guyana Son Remix)
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TEEDRA MOSES
Talk about turning a misfortune into creating your own fortune, well Teedra Moses has certainly achieved that. With one of the most serene 21st century voices, she commands full houses when performing in the USA and here in the UK. ‘Still Got Love’ for what she does Teedra shares her ethos with some ‘Cognac And Conversation’ with The Soul Survivors ahead of her March 2017 date. Firstly, tell me about growing up. You were born in 1975 in Louisiana with your mother’s singing influence. Growing up in New Orleans in the 1980’s there was always music in my house all day, and it was never off. It was either turned up or turned down. I went to an all black catholic school in New Orleans that was popular in New Orleans for inner city kids. In our black catholic church it was a lot more gospel singing and clapping. Financially we didn’t have a lot but my mother was very loving and liked to have nice things. We were a very close-knit family. My father was a bit of a tyrant at times, and my brothers and my sisters were very, very close. I stayed till I was about 14 before I moved to LA, which formed a lot of what I became as an artist. In New Orleans you learn to be comfortable with yourself, because everyone is so raw and so real. Moving to LA taught me to polish myself a bit more. What you heard in my first project ‘Complex Simplicity’ was a very raw and real young lady, that was polished by the more progressive and liberal city of Los Angles. Basically I grew up with a lot of love and adventure because I’m Sagittarius. I understand that you were a stylist working with Will Smith, Kelis and R Kelly and you broke your leg on a video set and then decided to start singing is that correct? That’s correct. I worked with my best friend Nonja McKenzie and she still is, to this day, a key stylist and I was assisting her. It was really cool because I got to see behind the scenes of music and I also learned a lot about accessorising myself as who I am. So when I became an artist she was my stylist and that helped
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I’m an artist who, when I’m on stage it’s like I welcome you into my living room. I’m going to make you feel so comfortable that you can dance and sing along.
me further to understand myself, style wise. It was part of my adventure in life. I first travelled to Europe with Will Smith and I got to travel the world wardrobe styling before I got to travel singing, so it was a prelude to what I was going to do. It was super cool and I never said anything to anyone about my singing aspirations or the fact that I could sing. In my mind that was not what I was there to do. I was there to assist my friend and the artists we worked with so it was really funny to the artists and directors when they found out I could sing. Most people, who have a desire to sing, when they are around influential people, would have taken that opportunity. I first came across you on your ‘Complex Simplicity’ EP that was sent to me as a promo and I was quite taken by it. At the time I was Dj-ing for a lot of the current soul artists like Raphael Saadiq, Bilal, Jaguar Wright and Eric Roberson at the Jazz Cafe. So when I got your EP the killer track was ‘Still Got Love’ with that reggae bass line influence so I was happy to be playing your material at these new school soul live events. How did that work for you in terms of getting you on the map? From what I understand in retrospect that ‘Complex Simplicity album’ was ahead of its time and we didn’t have the luxury of the Internet and social media as strong as it is now. So it really was literally a word of mouth project and a slow burner to the point that some people are just discovering that album now, and saying, “Oh I just found your new album.” We did something that was a little more timeless of that time period and it was a very cool experience because it’s become a cult classic now. It still hasn’t pushed me to the place that I wanna go. But it’s something that has me in the heart of RNB lovers, which I love. It was on an independent label with limited promotion but year-by-year it grows. In the same year you did collaboration with Raphael Saaqid on his ‘Ray Ray’ album and did two tracks ‘I want You Back’ but for me personally it was all about ‘Chic’. I loved the way you and Raphael intertwined. I got to tell you a story about 6 - 7 years ago we used to get some random post from someone in the north of England who would sent us an envelope with all of this stuff about you like they were a crazed fan. It would say Teedra Moses is a goddess, can’t you bring her over. (Teedra: “Oh, my god.”), you’ve got to get her over. We tried to explain that we were a magazine. This was happening for about 6 months and I wasn’t sure if it was a joke but for them, you were the one, the matrix singer. You hadn’t quite surfaced to the masses and I wasn’t sure how to equate their enthusiastic passion for you. You have now built up your following
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and Simon Precilla, who advertises with the magazine, invited me to see you on Valentines Day in 2013. You were amazing, filling up the venue that was packed with more people than some established artists I’ve seen perform there. So my question is how do you receive the love having performed at Jazz Cafe and KOKO in the UK?
wonderful and they are following their purpose making music and moved to LA about a year and a half ago and I’m very proud of them and I’m grateful.
My relationship with the UK is cool because outside of Baltimore USA, London was the first place I heard people singing all the words to my songs in the entire room. That gave me instant love for London and it will never go away and that energy is real. So I automatically felt an immense, profound energy and vibration to give to London when I came here. With me giving that energy and love over the years, it always comes back to me. The first time I saw love from them I decided I was going to love London forever. Simon is someone who does these shows and they were always successful. I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel so if it’s rolling it’s rolling and we work well together and it will continue to grow.
They are rapping like their father and they are very good, like their father.
I’m going to share something with you. The magazine has acknowledged Simon with a special award for the best independent promoter. I only advised him about that today (Teedra: “Oooohhhh that’s awesome!”) He said he was shocked and didn’t see it coming. I’ve been monitoring what he’s been doing and it’s unique and it is well deserved because he brings over a lot of new artists and no one champions the new blood of soul music today other than him. (Teedra: “He totally deserves that.”) It’s poignant that you and I are speaking today. Your album ‘Congnac in Conversation’ I really liked and I did this review. ‘This album is of an expressive and sensitive nature surrounded by some atmospheric productions. Teedra is well loved and respected worldwide and delivers as an opener “R U Scared”, an up-tempo and catchy club cut. Rick Ross raps on the mellow Dynasty “Adventures In The Land Of Music” grooved “All I Want”. “Only You” feat Natee with its rising strings and “Beautiful Chaos” have no bass instrumentation, yet they still sonically sound great showcasing totally Teedra’s enchanting vocals. Teedra slow jams with Anthony Hamilton on “You’re The One” and rides an afro broken house rhythm on a brilliant Boddi Satva produced “Skin Diver”. There are some poignant accapella interludes and a rock guitar, piano and electric bass laced “No Regrets” to be savoured. Check out the frighteningly amazing production of “Yesterday Ain’t Tomorrow” reminding me of Case’s “Touch Me, Tease Me” 1996 classic. Taste some of Teedra’s Holy Moses soulful libations.’ (Teedra laughs. “I love that, thank you.”) You are very unique and have an enchanting voice and that is why you are respected here in the UK. Do you get that love or a similar love in America? Yes, very similar, but I have a core strong fan bass in America. Do you have new material coming out? I’m working on it now and by the time I come over in March I will most likely have a new record. It’s called ‘Courage’ and its very R&B. How are your children, they must be 20 now? 21 tomorrow (Fitzroy: “So they are Capricorns…”) They are
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Are they singing like you or rapping like their father?
Ok their father Rass Kass made a big impact in the UK with that album. You’re coming over in March so what can you say to the wider audience who may not have experienced you? I’m an artist who, when I’m on stage it’s like I welcome you into my living room. I’m going to make you feel comfortable that you can dance and sing along. Your inhibitions are going to go, as I don’t bring any on stage with me. I drink and I toast drinks with you and we tell jokes and have fun. It’s very, very intimate. With the songs I wanna make it sound different and better than how you’ve heard it recorded. I may flip it different ways and give you a different perspective of it and have great musicians who travel with me. We want to leave an impression on people to make them want more and to experience it over and over again. With regard to your audience have you noticed the demographics between the men and the women? There is more women but a lot of men as well and within that demographic there is also a lot of the LGTB community mixed with black, white asian, young and mature audience members. I love that diversity because that energy brings people together, that would not ordinarily be seen together It’s like a Benetton audience. (Teedra: “Exactly.”) Unfortunately I don’t think I can make your concert as I’m going to see my father in Jamaica, but if I’m back in time I will come to the show. I would love to see you there. Last question do you know of Marc Mac of 4hero? 4hero the group, they are amazing. I think collaboration with you and Marc would be great. I would love to do something with him, the 2 albums I have of theirs are awesome. I’ll hook that up. Thanks. Enjoy Jamaica. Thanks Fitzroy CATCH TEEDRA LIVE AT ELECTRIC BRIXTON 12TH MARCH 2017.
www.soulgigs.com
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Stomp Radio first began broadcasting in the Summer of 1986, and over a short period of time it had established itself as one of the leading Pirate stations around, unfortunately constant raids by the DTI sadly forced the pirate transmission to cease.
Stomp Returned IN 2007 broadcasting globally via the Internet, and in 2009 Stomp was the first soul station to broadcast on DAB across East London and Parts of Essex. Stomp continues to run a no playlist policy allowing dj’s to express themselves more freely, also meaning much more good music, and more variety reaches its many listeners. This year Stomp will be celebrating 31 years as a radio station, and will be celebrating with The Long Good Friday, at the Manor Berwick Pond Road, Rainham Essex, on April the 14th, tickets available from the Stomp shop on our website.
Come Join us online at www.stompradio.com and check out some of the DJ’s including.
Sandra C, Peter P, John Walcott, Don Gee, Ricky O, Chris Alexander, Guy Unger, Jim Jackson, Ian Escrader, Colin Parnell, DJ Looney, Andy Sharp, Angela Anderle, Mellow A, Hugsta, Gavin Page, Gary Walden, Curly CJ, Abbo & Sponge, Anita Long, Mr C, Imran Mirza, Simon Ford, Steve Soultrain, Pete Collins, Garry Williams, Nick Hosier, Grumpy Brown, Terry Matthews, Heavy Soul, Jester, Colin Brown, Mark Collins, Andy Ward, DT, Footsie, Scott James, 6MS, Paul Sams, Sean French, Richard Francis, Keith Richards
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Photo: Hollis King
Interview by Lloyd Bradley and Fitzroy Facey
THE LAST POETS You can only be humbled, as was I, to spend practically the best part of three days with the lyrical forefathers of the conscious spoken word, The Last Poets. I DJ’d for them back in 1995 and their legacy presence was strong then, but now they are energised with a power akin to the mighty Black Panther clenched fist. ‘Blessed Are Those Who Struggle’ for their quest to have equality, freedom and independence in liberating the mental physical and spiritual chains for those primarily of the African Diaspora. These are the befitting words that can be attributed to The Last Poets, who are not afraid to speak the truth to the world. Lloyd Bradley and I were in the presence of true poetry in motion.
Lloyd: The time The Last Poets were formed, at the end of the 1960’s, Poetry was a big thing, a big deal. Why do you think Poetry was so huge at that time? Abiodun: Why was poetry so big in the late 1960s? Yeah, because people like Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) had taken poetry out of the tearooms and put it into the street. They’d put brass knuckles on the words. They’d punch you in the face with the words. They made poetry loud and proud. Before Amiri Baraka poetry was quiet, you sipped tea and ate crumpets and when Amiri Baraka came on the scene I always referred to him as ‘the’ liberating poet. He liberated poetry and he used poetry to liberate black people. We were really following in his footprints in many ways, because he was our mentor on a
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“When you talk about poetry, who is a better poet than Smokey Robinson? I use him to this day when I do classes and sing “I got sunshine on a cloudy day”. How do these kids know it, did they hear that in the womb?”
real level. We decided to have a group, having some men come together and do poetry to give an example to black people how important unity was. Poets don’t usually roll together, they roll individually, and we felt if we gave an example, if we provided a unified front, using poetry, it could be a good example for other black people to see how important it was for us to unite. And I suppose it did have some influence because we had an impact immediately, with what we said from the stage. Finding the name helped a bit because when you decide to call yourself the Last Poets it sounds serious. Umar: People have challenged us on that too. Why do you call yourself the Last Poets? How do you have the right and the vanity to call yourselves The Last Poets?
Abiodun: That’s because they don’t know where our name was actually gleaned. There were a number of poems we researched like ‘Strong Men Keep On Coming’ by Stirling Brown, Margaret Walker’s ‘My People’ was another poem, but the one that was the basic platform for The Last Poets was from a South African poet named Kerapeste Kgositsile. Nobody could say his name so we called him Little Willy. He wrote a poem called ‘Towards The Walk In The Sun’. ‘Towards The Walk In The Sun’ was in an anthology that was recently put out but it was originally published in 1967 and edited by Larry Neal and LeRoi Jones who became Amiri Baraka (revered African American Poet). On page 237 is the poem ‘Towards The Walk In The Sun’ and that poem describes how horrible it was living in South Africa under the Apartheid regime. At the end of the poem it was changed from regular print to bold fonts which read “This wind you hear is the birth of memory, when the moment hatches in time’s womb there will be no art talk. The only poem you will hear will be the spear point pivoted into the punctured marrow of the villain, the timeless native son dancing like crazy to retrieved rhythms of desire bathing into memory”. Then David Nelson (original co founder member of The Last Poets) added “Therefore we are The Last Poets of the world”. So we had a platform and now we had got this name and David extended things by writing a poem called “The Last Poets” turning these tears into spears, and so we were up and running. To compound the situation we got a place because we knew we would make much more of an impression if we had a place where we could provide workshops and produce our own shows and ones with other artists. So we had a place in Harlem where we extended an invitation to folks like, Don Albert Illa, Pharaoah Sanders, Leon Thomas and Sun Ra’s Arkestra and we provided a home for National Black Theatre, which today has an 8 million dollar building. When Barbara Ann Teer first saw it and came to us she was paying us 75 dollars a month to rent her National Black Theatre in our space, which I don’t know what you can get for that kind of money today. We were a very serious cultural institution in Harlem and almost immediately we had an effect on the Harlem community. My whole reason for being involved in the poetry was that I wanted to desperately be part of the black power movement. That was spurred on by the fact they had killed Dr King even though I do not purport to his philosophy of turning the other cheek, I’m not down with that. But I did respect the man because my family did and I thought it was wrong that they shot him down. I believe that was when I got a gun because I was incensed, but I turned my mouth into a gun and my words into bullets and that’s how I responded to the atrocities we were facing. That’s how I was learning and being in The Last Poets for me because I was the youngest and the baby of the group as David Nelson was 10 years older and I was the same age as Umar. I was going through rights of passage at the time. I learned from experience and I’m a quick learner and I had to read a lot. When others were quoting what was going on they would quote books like Harold Cruse ‘Crisis Of A Negro Intellectual’ “and say you know what he said on page 295.” I’d never read the book and couldn’t even tell you what he said on
page 2. They had all these quotes and I felt totally insecure. I read more in 5 months than I ever read in college just to have a decent conversation with guys that I respected. I read things like ‘Wretched Of The Earth’, ‘Crisis Of A Negro Intellectual’ and ‘Destruction Of The Black Civilisation’ by Chancellor Williams. These were like bibles to me. I was absorbing all this information. It’s one thing I do have to criticise some of our hip-hop artists for, that they don’t read. But we had to read about some of the things that had happened that were chronicled in books. Lloyd: That’s an interesting point because it seems to me that you read books regularly like one or two a week. The knowledge and ideas you were getting you were then putting into your poetry which makes it more accessible to your audience who may not have access to books or to be able to read. Were you aware of doing that?
Umar: What Abiodun did, when the album was being made, was to tell Alan Douglas to put the poems inside so that the audience could read them. (Abiodun: That became the protocol and I
only said that because I thought we were talking so fast that it would be difficult to understand what we were saying.)
Another reason that we read was to make sure that some brothers, who were running game with this so called “revolution” didn’t get away with the BS and we could tell people what was really going on. We actually caught brothers trying to play that game but we had a direction and a movement, and we made sure we caught anybody who was trying to fake the movement. That’s why we read Fanon, Mau Si Tung or Makaveli and everything else, so when somebody was playing games, BOOM! we jumped in right away because we had the knowledge and we could tell they didn’t have it. Abiodun: Those were weapons that we had at our disposal and it was a very electric and exciting time because we really thought we were going to have a successful revolution and change the thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
circumstances we were dealing with. I was gun hoe and all fired up and I admit I wasn’t as up (on the knowledge) as many of my brothers were but I had courage. I did not mind learning and learned as quick as I could. Umar: We’ve had a lot of credit as being the so called godfathers of hip-hop but there’s a lot of other credits not given to us or that has not been recognised to make it clear how much impact we have had in this record business. That first album we put out sold 450,000 copies by word of mouth alone. When hip-hop started coming in they had to think of new ways to promote our words on rhythms. They had never had an album like that so they started devising street teams and new A&R teams to deal with the various types of communities. So we have changed things in the industry that we have never gotten credit for. On the first album Billboard had an advertisement ‘If you’re a nigger this will scare the nigger out of you, and if you’re white it will scare the shit out of you.” I still have copies of those billboard ads. We turned the record industry around and they had to change how they put our records out. Lloyd: What you did as well, with the success of an album like that, is that you’ve told people it’s all right to talk political and to say exactly how it is. Prior to your first album, it was The Impressions and Curtis Mayfield (when he left the group) and James Brown who might of said something, but following on from that you had to make a statement, if you were making an album. Abiodun: When I had a chance to speak with Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, who I consider as two of the architects of hip-hop, they said that we were all they listened to. Kool Herc said “We used to study you guys religiously and I could recite yours and Umar’s poetry better than you guys, no disrespect intended.” I was blown away when I was given an award in Columbia at a college 6 months ago. They gave me a plaque and a whole bunch of accolades. When we were in the elevator people were singing our poetry and Zach the organiser said “Damn, I messed up I should have had them on stage to do their stuff”. Everyone in the elevator wanted to let me know that they had listened. Straight up. They knew ‘Black Thighs’ and everybody knew ‘On The Subway’ partly because it didn’t have any curse words in it, and Frankie Crocker played it, God rest his soul. (Umar: Yes, he did.) He was the only DJ who had courage enough to play our stuff because it was not in rotation. He took a chance. You knew when Frankie Crocker was on because he had a song we loved when he was on air ‘Moody’s Mood For Love.’ (Umar: They used to say if Frankie Crocker isn’t on your radio then your radio isn’t on.) Those guys Frankie Crocker and Jocko were rhyming also, and they don’t get the credit like we do and there were other brothers who were doing the spoken word language and captivating the audience, (Umar: Way before us) and were very innovative. Kool Herc said the only thing that killed them was that they didn’t have the political edge we had, and they had turned theirs more into a clown show more like fun and games
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like The Sugar Hill Gang “Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn” and playing with it. The real deal of the politics of the word was diluted. KRS has stayed true to the political on many levels and the others just made it fun but they liked our style and how we had come off. Remember everyone else was trying to sing because of the great impression of Motown. We all used to get in hallways and try to sing “Ooh weeeeyoo baby baby” like Smokey Robinson. When we first started I thought we could do some of that Smokey Robinson vocal singing, but the others in the group couldn’t hold a note if you gave it to them and I was the only one who could sing. So we had to do something different and that when we chanted to deliver the message without having to sing. Umar: Being from the mid west I must tell you how impactful Motown was with the cats from Ohio, Chicago and Milwaukee. At that time we had three options, one was pimping, the other was going to a factory, and the third was going to a college to see if you could get educated. So with those cats out of Motown with that sound The Temptations, Mary Wilson and everybody, the brothers were saying “I ain’t gonna be pimping, I’m going down to Detroit with a tape, and maybe I can get down.” This turned a lot of us around because that was like a light saber we could hold on to, and keep the negative stuff out of our minds, because if those brothers in Motown can do it, we can do it too. In 67 with all the riots in Detroit, the most damaging thing was that Berry Gordy took Motown out of Detroit to California. Detroit has not recovered from that because it broke the city and peoples hearts. Motown was an important factor to the lives of many in America. Abiodun: When you talk about poetry, who is a better poet than Smokey Robinson? I use him to this day when I do classes and sing “I got sunshine on a cloudy day”. How do these kids know it, did they hear that in the womb? Kids know that stuff. Lyrics are nothing other than poetry to music and who writes better than Smokey? Umar: Holland Dozier Holland were very poetic too, so poetry always has black people subscribe to. Abiodun: We are a poetic people but it’s never been defined as such. Every single thing we do, for example you could be dirt poor but you don’t leave your house unless your sneakers match. We move in rhythm, we use metaphors in a natural way and we personify whatever we want to, and it’s all a poetic understanding. No one says ‘He’s using personification’ because according to them you could only have learned those terms when you go to a conversated school. When you are a black person and your dealing with life, you’re trying to communicate and you are going to speak poetically. Lord knows if you’re a preacher you better be able to take that bible apart and give me some poetic verses, even though the bible is nothing but a big book of poems anyway. You better break it down and make it funky for me to understand, if you want me to put my money in that plate. We’ve always had a poetic spine and vein in fact I think Davi Nelson wrote a poem saying ‘Black people are poetry’.
Lloyd: You guys did it first on a high profile level. It was 1967-68. Why do you think it took all this anger to be expressed through poetry? Umar: The intellectual black folks were sharing it amongst themselves but it took some cats from the streets to come out there and push it forward. At first a lot of those Black Art Intellectuals, didn’t dig that we were The Last Poets and the fact that we got so much attention from the community, who related much more to us than to them. They didn’t even see this as part of their Black Art Movement until they eventually put their arms around us, and said it doesn’t matter that you haven’t got an education like us, but we’re proud of you. They needed us because we are bringing knowledge and attention to them. There was a time though where there was a little rift between the intellectuals and The Last Poets but Amiri Baraka said “No, these guys are a part of this.” Abiodun: Yes he embraced us completely. Now I appreciate what Haki has done back then he was Donald Lee, and he had issues with The Poets, because as far as he was concerned, we came and snatched his thunder. We were new acts on the block we were young, and had just come on the scene, and all of a sudden we became more popular than he was. But we were writing real stuff and not trying to be intellectual, because we were down with the people. Amiri embraced that and we embraced him too for being right there getting knowledge at his feet. Umar: I saw it as a compliment that Arimi would critique my poem ‘This Is Madness’. He said he heard shades and ramblings of Amiri Baraka in there and that just blew my head up. Here’s a man who in 1967 with the Newark Riots I first came into contact with. I’m sitting in my car with my beaver skin, bodily 500, my silk tie, French blue shirt and shoes and I’m with my boys smoking reefer. (Abiodun: But he read a lot). We are listening to Yusef Lateef. I’m also reading and my boys are saying, “Why are you always reading?” I replied, “So I can tell you dumb mother fuckers what’s happening ok.” (We all 5 of us laugh). I’m reading this newspaper and there is a picture of Amiri in front of a Volkswagen car, his head was bandaged tricking with blood and he had that typical Baraka scowl on his face. The caption said ‘Smash those jelly white faces.’ So after we all got a little high, all these cars with white people are coming past me and I’m looking saying “Oh jelly white faces.” I gotta meet this man who says words like that. When I came up to the east wing and Abiodun had left, I got to meet Baraka and he has always been a friend and a father to us. He never slagged us and we loved him. Abiodun: I got give credit to Sonia Sanchez. There was bookstore called Liberation bookstore and I had never ever seen an all black book store like that. It was on 133rd Street and Lennox Avenue. I went into the bookstore and there is a caricature of a sassy black woman with her hand on her hip, butt poked out and a beautiful big Afro. It said “What does a white
girl have that I ain’t got but a white pussy?” I said to Una the owner “Holy shit, you can say that in a poem?” Una said “Sonia can.” I did a talk at the Schomberg in Harlem recently and I mentioned that inspiration and Sonia was there. She said “I told that brother not to make a poster of that.” and she’s fighting that till this day, but the brother took her poem as a poster, and I was impressed. To see that language on a poster and you can call that poetry took poetry to another level. It wasn’t speaking about a snow bunny, it was in your face and that’s the one thing we were about and that was in your face. We didn’t use fancy terms to say what we meant, we said exactly what we meant. Umar: Sonia ran with the brothers back in the day. She was a warrior and she was down running with us and Marvin X going all over Harlem doing poetry. None of us were afraid. Lloyd: Do you thing your lack of fear and your boldness allowed a generation like the Philly gents Gamble & Huff, Kool & The Gang and Curtis Mayfield to think that they could be fearless too through their music?
Umar: We influenced a lot of people. (Abiodun: And we didn’t even know the impact we were having) (Umar: We weren’t even thinking like that.) Abiodun: To be perfectly honest when we first got the group started, Gylan Kain told us not to record because we would be in the bucket of crap with the rest of them people. I thought that was cool, and we weren’t looking for a recording contract, we were looking for liberation. Lloyd: That’s what gives you a freedom that another artist hasn’t got. This leads on to my next question. You have someone on the congas and just yourselves as a rhythm section clapping and stamping your feet. You can do this anywhere, and set up on a street corner and give you a sense of freedom. thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
Photo: Hollis King
BUBBA DON BUBBA TUNDE UMAR Abiodun: Correct we could be walking down the street and see block parties and just stroll right in. In fact the people wouldn’t let us get out of the block until we did something. Because they knew who we were and we ingratiated ourselves with the people early on, because we were never gonna be in the bucket of crap. We never separated ourselves from the people. We made it clear we are the people and the people definitely endorsed us. When we gave a show at the East Wing with feature artist Don Albert Illa, Eric Gale, Don Pullens and Sun Ra, and then we would perform and then we would Parrrrtteee. We had colic greens and potatoes salad, chicken and cornbread doing the whole 9 exercising our black cultural rights in every possible way you could imagine. Then we would go next door to Chairs which was Olatunje’s law and Olatunje was the first one to come from west Africa with the drum and give us ‘Funga Alafia Ashe Ashe’ and his wife Amy from Mississippi and I even got on to her about this some years ago. She was a real capitalist because she charged us a dollar a chair, which at that time was a lot of money. Because when ever we would have a big audience, I’d have to go to her to get some chairs, and she knew we needed 100 chairs so she was getting 100 dollars, and so that was a given. I told her once that “I had a problem with you charging us a dollar a chair”. She said ‘That’s right..it’s a capitalist country and we have to get paid” (Abiodun laughs recalling that memory.)
ABIODUN neighbours. Each crew would do battle with their Dj, MC, beat box, or dance crew using words and it wasn’t physical. In many ways they were mirroring what we did in their own way, but it was something from the streets. Umar: Ohio has been the funk capital of America and when I was younger I used to be inspired by the funk artists like Shug (Sugarfoot) from The Ohio Players. When I spoke with him, he in turn told us that we inspired him when they listened to us. We were told things like this when we were 19 and 20, but we thought people were blowing smoke up our ass. When I really found out how influential we were, was when we were in Eindhoven, Amsterdam. These Dutch white people had our first albums all wrapped up in protective plastic and they said, “We were just waiting for you to get here”. We were thinking it was just black people listening but there was a lot of white people like David Bowie, Mick Jagger most definitely and Paul McCartney listening. I met them and they told me straight we were all were listening to you.
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Lloyd: Your connection with a new black audience isn’t a theatre thing and you’re not on stage and you are right there with them. This showed the way for the funk artists that they needed to be amongst the people and not on the stage. Abiodun: Oh definitely and hop-hop has followed suit with that. Hip-hop when it started was to stop fights within the different
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Fitzroy: Gentleman. Who do you see as some of the architects who continue to do what you do in the conscious way apart from KRS you mentioned earlier? Abiodun: To be honest there isn’t anyone in the hip-hop world doing what we did. Kendrick Lemar sang some things from time to time. Common gave us an opportunity on his on the corner CD but he went Hollyweird, but then he’s making money. I like Rakim because he’s always shown class and he’s good. (Umar: He’s good on stage and women love him too.) He doesn’t curse. When we lost one of our great poets Sekou Suntiata, we The Last Poets, were asked to perform at The Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
Every time Rakim walked by me he would stop and give me a stood in a line with brother Hakim and others from the House of TH because he considered me an elder. Elijah and said to the police “You ‘all ain’t coming in here, this is hug, and ask for my blessing We see many artists who start bowing down to like Melle Mel our day.” One of the police officers looked at another and said on the album ‘Holy Terror’. When we were in the studio to do “Charlie what you think we should do?” Charlie said “I think we my part,pm he starts bowing, I said “Come on now stop that. I just better find something else to worry about.” and they left. That’s came back from Amsterdam and I just said the lyrics “Don’t Push how we rolled back then. Me” and they finished off the rest of the words. “You Melle are making an impact brother.”thSo there are some who have made Fitzroy: You both come from Ohio right? impact but none who have committed themselves overall to how we had committed. were not committedperformance to the money which Abiodun: we areFunk the only Association’ ones who are both ‘buck eyes’ With aWeLIVE debut of theYes“Brit we never got, but I will give them credit because they are getting and that was a connection that we didn’t talk about that much, paid. They have anyone to commit themselves to andMckrieth, be but I’m sureBaptiste, that had a Peter lot to doHinds with usofrelating to one another. Banddon’t Members: Kenny Wellington, Breeze David Beggar & Co. in your(and faceformerly and not get paid. We did what we did because we We met each other in Ohio so that made all the sense, he’s from members of Light of the World) Patrick and Paul McLean formerly of Hi Tension, Camelle Hinds thought we were going to make a major difference and that we Akron and I’m from Cincinnati and we are the same generation Central Line and Jerome Harper of Brassroots. were going to have a successfulformerly revolutionofand be liberated from and sometimes things are bonded through conflict. When I first this madness. met Umar, as head of security he frisked me. I’m a Last Poet They will be performing a collection of the associated hits and and I’m bands going through the club same classics entrance asincluding the audience. He’s ’Somebody Help Me Out’, ‘London Town’, ‘Time’, ‘ British Hustle’, ’There’s A Reason’, Fitzroy: How did you feel about Public Enemy? checking people for weapons, because at that time so many ‘Walking On Sunshine’, ’Nature black Boy’ folks and were ’Sausalito Calling’ getting shot down, so they had to have security. Abiodun: I loved them and Chuck D. (Umar: Chuck D still owes (Umar: We hired our own security forces and that was because me some money.) (We all burst out laughing.) Abiodun: Chuck D of what happened to Malcolm X). Abiodun: But Malcolm knew Best current Best current Best Soul Best Best London Best Soulthat andUKI have because name is Charles he was going to get killed. I Club heard a statement recently Soul a running joke Global Soul my original outside Soul Album Soul Club Weekender Artist/Group Artist/Group London Davis and my nickname was Chuck, and Chuck2016 D says ‘He’s The Malcolm was2016 invited to dinner the night he was killed,2016 and he 2016 2016 Original Chuck D”. (Umar:2016 My boy from PE was Professor Griff.) told them “Tell your wife I appreciate the invitation but I’ll Abiodun: I went down to Hicksville and laid down some stuff be dead by that time.” Do you realise the courage it took for with Professor Griff. Umar spent some time with Flava Flav who Malcolm to say that? I thought Martin Luther was prophetic when was considered a clown, but he was more of a distraction maybe he said, “I’ve been to the mountain top.” But those guys knew to make people feel comfortable. Chuck D would drop in some when the hand was coming to take them away. stuff and when they did that collaboration ‘Self Destruction’, that was important because we were talking about the same thing Umar: You see I had a pedigree from when I was in Akron that earlier. When we zeroed in on the whole concept of niggers, we people knew of about me on the streets. Now what he said about didn’t wage war against the system, we know that the system is Malcolm, I’ve seen them get killed with no one to protect them messed up. Donald Trump is nothing for us, this is child’s play. so I was very serious. So when Dun (Abiodun) turned up at the Umar made a statement at Ronnie Scotts last night, that for 400 gate with his booming voice even back then, “I’m Abiodun and years we have had presidents who are not on our side, this is I’m a Last Poet, you don’t have to check me”. I told him “This is nothing. Even black people said when Barack came that the post security and you’ve got to check in, c’mon now big boy.” And I’m racial period is over (Abiodun laughs….) Well Trump is making insisting and he’s resisting. So I’m thinking this nigger’s crazy it clear that that post racial period is over. No we are back to and I had a 45 and a 38 gun strapped to my side. I lifted up the racist times goddam it, with his “I’m making America ‘white’ my jacket and told him, “If you don’t check in, you check out again.” even though he says ‘great’. We know what he means. brother.” (Abiodun: So I had to let him frisk me.) But then when There are some people who have maintained the tradition on he got on stage and I heard him say “Who is that crazy mother some level of what we did but now there is no movement. In fucker you’ve got at the gate, he’s gonna kill us before he kills the absence of a movement the circus comes to town. There is white people.” Then I saw what him and the rest of the guys did no better evidence of that than what just happened with the on stage doing that poetry, they just fucked me up and turned celebrating 10 yearselse. of Soul Survivors, elections. Including Fitzroy’s Birthday After Party alsomy whole head somewhere Because those boys were serious 3 decades of DJ’s with music by Dez Parkes Darrell S andsingle Fitzroy Original Survivor. and every one The of them Gylan Soul and Felipe was strong. We Umar: Just to show how deep things were back then. When we got together after and Master Of Ceremonies Fat Freddie M.we talked and they said I should come to first started, we used to meet at Mount Morris Park. On Saturdays New York and come see them at the loft on 125th Street. you’d have The Last Poets on one side, The Nation Of Islam on another side, the Black Panthers another and The HousePrice Of -Abiodun: Umaron camethe up door on a mission and like the saying TicketinPrices: Standard £25.00See more Elijah somewhere else. One day something happened and the goes it was the perfect time. He knew he was going to become Limited VIP Tickets for Meet & Greet The Band – Photo - £35.00 police came into the park to get a brother. There were about 10 a Last Poet. The group was disintegrating. Kain was not happy police cars trying to force their way in, but the brothers came being in Harlem, he wanted to be where the people were so forward and told the sisters to get back. Man, us brothers just that’s why he’s living in Amsterdam for the last 30 years. It’s
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like Greenwich Village where people were doing a whole heap of different things and no one was committed to everything, but there was art and he’s very arty. Felipe said I’m the reason he left the group because I said he need to organise his Puerto Rican people. So he did that in Spanish Harlem and started a group called The Young Lords which was like a Black Panther organisation, which was Puerto Rican orientated. I was left on my own and that was not the whole idea of the group. People respected me because I was real and true about what I was doing. I went down to the Aramak hotel, which was a dormitory, set up for students at City College, who didn’t have money to live in other dorms. I got Umar a place there and I knew he wanted to be in our group, and now I needed someone else. So I said to the guys I got this guy from Ohio and I had never heard anything he’d done before, but I liked his spirit and that he was endearing. I said let’s hear him do some poetry and he chose out of two poems. Umar: I chose ‘Motherfucker’ and although it was a little gruff and crude they let me in. But Dun said you can be in the group, but you can never do that motherfucker poem again. Fitzroy: Apart from activists of Black Nationalism like predecessors Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X a lot of people from the African diaspora have been galvanised by you The Watts Poets, James Brown, Gary Byrd, Sun Ra, Leon Thomas and Gil Scott Heron. How did you regard their input to the black power movement?
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Abiodun: All of them were important. All of us black poets were trying to say what the jazz musicians were playing. They were playing sounds and we took those sounds and put word to them. Many of our workshops would have ‘Equinox’ by John Coltrane and ‘Sketches Of Spain’ by Miles and write something to that. So music was a basic foundation for our poetry. Miles Davis loved us and if I go to heaven today Miles would be in his whispery voice “Hey Last Poets what’s happening.” He doesn’t know my name but if you said Last Poets he’d know. Max Roach was a personal friend of mine. Umar: Max Roach would tell us and he’s my contemporary, that we are speaking of what they were trying to say with instruments. There is mutual respect between the jazz community and The Last Poets. Lloyd: I’m so glad you said that because I wrote that your delivery phrasing and riffing are a logical extension of modern jazz and you sound like a jazz band. ABIODUN: They were the greatest influence in-terms of our style. Umar came in sounding like a trumpet. When you know his story, his father was a trumpet player so he can’t even get away from that, he sounds like a trumpet and didn’t need to buy one because he is one. Umar sounds like Umar but he is real and is being himself. Thanks gents.
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NL I NE EAD OAnna RPhoto: O T B K C CL I
DEZ PARKES
FITZROY FACEY
DEZZI D
THE
PHOTO: LYNNB PHOTOGRAPHY
LONG
GROOVE
FRIDAY KETS TIC EARLY BIRD
£7 OR £10 ON THE DOOR
Starring Dez Parkes, Dezzi D and co starring Fitzroy (Soul Survivors)
as ‘The Syndicates Of Soul’ who’ll make the good times roll. These Gangsters Of The Groove who’ve got a contract out on you are ready for an explosive session of the real Gangster Boogie from the 60’s,79’s 80’s and 90’s music heaven to the current millennium.
Showing at The Crowndale, 65 Crowndale Road, Camden NW1 1TN Easter Friday 14th April 2017 | 10pm - 4am Whether your from the Jets or The Sharks, The Vancortland Rangers, The Lizzies or The Pink Ladies, Benny Blanco from The Bronx or Kansas City Mac , are you ready for a real tear up on the dance floor 10pm-4am and fling 2 foot like Bruce Lee?
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Record Reviews Issue 68 kicks starts the records reviews with a two for one bargain CD package from a soul jazz fusion keyboard warrior, the annual Blackpool Weekender triple compilation, and a UK best of British contemporary soul. There’s a 5 track UK production EP, a classic USA old school flavoured single, a jazzy ‘Brazilian Love Affair’ release from Far Out and two UK millennium disco boogie releases. Perfect for Valentines or as Prides of March Presents. Enjoy
Luxury Soul 2017 (Expansion Records) It’s that time of the year for another annual instalment of Luxury Soul but this time the 2017 Edition. It attempts to try and mix it up and cater something for everyone including some alternative chosen uptempo cuts. CD 1 kick starts with SouLutions’s ‘Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover’, a nice enough early 80’s throwback with a 70’s disco bass line. For modern soul enthusiasts ‘I Need You For Love’ by Kim Tibbs is soul toe tapper, and the amazing live at the 2017 weekender band Breakwater’s ‘Gift Of Love’ is very much in their authentic soul vein as a soulful two-step future classic. For the bossa heads Hannah Whites ‘That’s Love’ bossa features uplifting vocals and a melodic guitar solo. The Doggett Brothers with a fresh new sound showcase their 4 floor catchy single ‘You Make Me Feel’, and in contrast Boogie Back add dimensions to the interesting socially conscious Cornell CC Carter’s ‘Where Do We Go From Here’. Very noticeable is Latesah Bush almost Mary J Blige ‘Happy’ vibe Love ‘I Can Sing About’. CD 2 opens with powerful octaves of a new Alton McClain ‘Your Love Is All I Need’ a nice collaboration with Cool Million and Sheree Brown in the vein if ‘It Must Be Love’’. A double dosage of Cool Million with a very cheeky Chic influenced ‘Disco Duck’ version and keeping it 1970’s there’s a likeable Dub works of Roy Ayers’ ‘Running Away’ by Diplomats of soul. To balance the earlier Breakwater inclusion The Pockets ‘Sing A Message’ mid-tempo modern day two-step rarer groove touch will please the LSW lovers. Tom Glide produces a pleasant soul and jazz tasting ‘All I Need Is You’ and the album pays homage to the late maestro Kashif’s acoustic and thought provoking ‘We Just Can’t Get Along’. Always loved the Merry Clayton version feat Merry Clayton of Webster Lewis’s ‘Emotion’ and have big love for Tracy Hamlin, but personally not keen on this up-tempo mix but it will get peoples attention. CD3 is very much the wind down zone of the three with ‘I Found Love’ Mather & Kingdon opening as a nice two stepper with prominent strings. First lady of PIR Jean Carn’s ‘Early Morning Love’ sits nicely as the first of three classic Omni Records late night love selections. Nice to see 24 years later from the unmistakably beautiful Roy Ayers produced ‘It’s Your Love’ appear on a compilation since my mate Dez Parkes introduced many to it. ‘Watch Out’ for Brandi Wells’ seductive Omni ‘Why Can’t We Be Lovers’ classic alongside another seducing Omni sex and soul teaser Rose Royce’s ‘I Want You’. To close Kenny Wellington’s for those ‘Heading Home’ is an exquisite and uplifting catchy vocal wanderlust of his distinguished trumpeting prowess. That should keep you entertained for the whole year.
Ty Causey Ya Some Kind Of Wonderful Tyvonn Records This is fresh and sounds oh so authentically classic from the old school archives reminding me very much of the Stax classic Groovin’. Ty has a sweet suckle honey voice that trickles over a simplistic but effective jazzy soul production. The lyrics would melt most women open to being serenaded and being told practically you are my everything. I really like it with it’s retrospective vibe yet retaining a millennium presence. This song is written, produced arranged by Ty Causey, clearly a very gifted individual whose album is entitled ‘Tyangles’.
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Deodato Night Cruiser & Happy Hour (Cherry Red) If you fancy some serious Super Struttin’ then these two legendary albums from the ill skilled Brazilian Eumir Deodato will serve you more liquid music pleasure than any cocktail happy hour. First served is the ‘Night Cruiser’ album, which features the self, titled major club banger and an equally funky ‘East Side Strut’. Who would have though that ‘Skatin’ would become the inspired groove for Angie Stone’s 2004 RNB bullet ‘I Wanna Thank You’. These instrumentals were produced with great enhancement when you listen to the structures and subtle keyboard plunks of ‘Uncle Funk’ (also with a bonus 7” edit included) and ‘Love Magic’. Track 6 certainly is full of ‘Groovitation’ as its title suggests. We ‘Keep On Movin’ featuring Ray Barretto’s daughter Kelly Barretto on vocals with my favourite from the two years later first cut off the 1982 ‘Happy Hour’ album. Not keen on the more 80’s disco ‘ Happy Hour’ but partial to ‘Just This One Night’ co-written unmistakably by the self professed ‘Minister Of Sensuality ‘Leon Ware. There’s an interesting predominantly instrumental interpretation of Smokey’s ‘Tears Of A Clown’ with a cameo chorus solo from the gospel southern belle Candy Staton. The album features two more boogie wickedness namely ‘Sweet Magic’ and ‘Keep It In The Family’ featuring the insane bass slapping bad boy Gary Granger of The Pockets. Falling from a ‘Skyscraper’ into your pocket hopefully… Buy this!!
Georgie B Soul Family Affair (www.georgieb.info) Georgie B delivers a clever marketing album using adaptations of classic song, song titles, interpolations and various 70’s and 80’s influences. Georgie has cornered his market opening with an EW&F influenced spiritual messaged ‘My Destiny’. Switching things up, check out the modern soul classic in the making ‘Mystery Girl’ a four floor very 80’s production of melodious musicality. Georgie’s octaves certainly suit and excel on that cut. Two of those captivating interpolations include an eye catching Sly Stone influenced ‘Soul Family Affair’ and a millennium Brit funked ‘One For The Money’. ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us’ is an album highlight with is up-tempo disco house semblance you can dance around ya handbags too. Georgie duets with his synergy partner in rhyme Deborah Bell on ‘Slow Dance’ and ‘Secret Love’. There’s a cheeky Jahiem “Just In Case’ influenced ‘It Doesn’t Really Matter’ and a Fat Larry’s inspiration of ‘Soul Family Affair’ remix. My personal tip is the mostly instrumental throwback to an early Loose Ends influenced ‘London City Lights’. Keeping the groove in association, Georgie B is riding that soul train.
Midnight Riot Roller Disco (Midnight Riot Records) This comes from the camp spearheaded by Yam Who’s Andy who is well versed in his disco and boogie music. Out of the 20 tracks there are a few that caught my attention, some with samples I recognise and a few that I didn’t. Andre Espuet sounds good on a fairly commercially produced ‘In Her Eyes’. Using familiar samples check out Big Daddy Kane ‘Need Your Love’ feat. Lorrie, using Windjammer’s ‘Tossing And Turning’, Dr Packer-Papa Told Me using Deodato’s ‘Keep It In The Family’ Deodato and Judge Funk-Head’s sampling the O’Jay’s ‘Put Our Heads Together.’ More sampling and filtering is embraced by Rayko’s ‘Get Away’- (Carol Williams) and Reloved ‘Need A Little More’ using Womack & Womack’s ‘Baby I’m Scared Of You’. Natasha Watts does an alternative with adlibs cover of ‘Street Life’ and not sure on how the got clearance on an unusual use of Stevie Wonders ‘Superstition’. Lastly Ziggy Phunk utilises The Whisper’s fave of mine ‘I Can Make It Better’ wickedly on ‘Those Tears’. Useful to get the dance floor warmed up!!
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MF Robots - The Night Is Calling (AWAL/Kabolt Music) Would you believe me if I told you my high school headmaster’s son is behind this funky piece of boogie soul? Probably like Carlsberg not, but I kid you not. This was sent to me personally by none other than Jan Kincaid co-founder and former drummer of The Brand New Heavies, and he’s ‘Banging The Boogie’ hard here like Rene & Angela. Great energy, very catchy infectious vocals with exciting EFW esq horns from the get go, “I’ve Got A Feeling” like Patrick Duvet this is gonna ‘Fly Robin Fly’ like Silver Convention high and rock many a disco and dance floor. Defo on my Herp Albert ‘Rotation’ the sound of 2017 boogie has arrived!!
Young Pulse Remix of Harvey Mason ‘Say It Again’ Bandcamp I quite admire the re -edits of Young Pulse because they seem to be subtle and not trying to be too clever. Here he gives a wonderful testament to Harvey Mason’s ‘Say It Again’ from Harvey’s ‘Groovin’ You’ album. Very understated by effective extra snares underpin this mix which sounds fresh as alternative to the mush sampled ‘Groovin’ You’ for Disco Revenge’s inspired sampled house classic. I’ll just ‘Say It Again’ this young music producer from Paris makes this sound tasty straight out of the Mason jar. Downloadable from Bandcamp https:// youngpulse.bandcamp.com/track/harvey-mason-say-it-again-young-pulse-rework
Philippe Baden Powell-Note Over Poetry (Far Out Records) This really is an album of musical pleasantries exploring various aspects of latin jazz funk and soul. An accomplished pianist Philippe Baden Powell invites you to listen to his Ramsey Lewis ‘Love Notes’ with a touch of poetic justice. ‘Vamos Donatear’ a delicately funky jazz instrumental showcases Philippe’s nimble finger skills. ‘Notes Over The Poetry’ is a captivating poetic recital about crossing paths in life, followed by more light fingers and soft drum brushes, on an easy listening ‘For You To Know’. Loving the cut ‘Hues’ with its accompanying scats carrying hallmarks of Jon Lucien and Bobby Mc Ferrin. More subtle jazz and funk with horns with Brazilian male vocals come via ‘Chica’ with a contrasting almost cocktail lounge jazz tinged ‘The Lonely Dreamer’ in close pursuit. ‘Salvadore’ introduces a haunting violin solo and to finish ‘State of Music ‘emphasising more lyrically on state of mind is a beautiful short and sweet uplifting end to a classic Brazilian skilled album. Well produced like cinematic surround sound. Always bringing quality from Far Out Records!!
Andre Espeut ,Juan Laya and Jorge Montiel ‘Funky Magnetic’ EP (Imagenis Records) Met a young brutha called Andre at a charity event held by Conscious Org in NW1 and he advised he had some material he wanted to send me. Here Andre Espeut with Los Charlys fames Juan Laya and Jorge Montiel present a retro 80’s disco package of mixes featuring ‘Got That Feeling’ and ‘Funky Magnetic’ EP. Andre’s voice is so remnant of that time period and it sits well on the moog boogie production of ‘Got The Feeling’. Nice original mix but loving the Extra T’s ‘Haven’t Been Funked Enough’ meets an Alex and Cherelle ‘Saturday Love’ vibe on the Deep Disco vocal and instrumental. ‘Funky Magnetic’ is more of an up-tempo Prince vibe without trying to be, with again Andre totally giving a commanding performance. Always got time for Jorge and Juan who continue as championing the jazz soul and funk influence of yesteryear.
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I was invited to Bobby and Vicki’s bedroom around three in the morning eating toast with Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and other members of the JB’s listening to all their stories.”
Fitzroy interviews
BARRIE K SHARPE Coming from a legacy of hustling and surviving through adversity, Barrie K Sharpe, against all odds has often, without rhyme nor reason, landed with his feet firmly stuck to the ground. From his rough east end upbringing to instinctively being drawn to the mysteries of black music, Barry would get the sharpest education clubbing and dancing with East London’s finest. He finds fame and fortune as a DJ, unique dapper don and fashion designer as well as a band leader. It wasn’t part of his ‘Masterplan’ but he’s made the most of his opportunities. Often deemed self opinionated, Barrie was very humble and honest with me about his providential, not so coincidental, but at times unexplainable journey. We turned the clock back 33 years since we met back in the good old days. The best place to start is for you to speak about the period you were born in, your family life, school and teenage life and how you acquired your love for black music. From a very young age, I was in a kids home. My mum was a manic-depressive and bipolar so she wasn’t always ‘compôs mentis’. It was the 1960’s and my dad was a bit of a geezer. He was a good dad but a hard act to follow. I was living in the east end of London and as I said in and out of kids homes (Fitzroy: “Whereabouts?”) I was born in Brick Lane but my early years were spent in the White Chapel area. By the time I was 9 or 10 everyone was a skinhead whether you were black or white or whatever. It was a black thing anyway and the first skinheads I saw were black. (Fitzroy: “When are we talking?”) 1970. There was a reggae shop in Petticoat Lane, an electric light store, and I saw
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these four black geezers outside, sheepskin coats and nice shoes, and I wanted to be like them. The style is a black West Indian style with a British working class attitude. My neighbours were Asian or black and we had to be mates, because our generation was a mixed community. We all lived and went to school together and were very close knit. In the kids home some of the girls took me to a youth club and I heard James Brown ‘Get On The Good Foot’. It was like a religious experience, as I’d never heard music like it before. As skinhead I was into my reggae, as that was the sound of my time. We weren’t into ska as that was before our time. The reggae was in the charts and some was considered pop music. I was mesmerised by ‘Get On The Good Foot’ and I wanted to hear more stuff like it. So hearing things like ‘Make It Funky’ changed my life and I started wearing channel seam flares and the penny collar shirts etc. So up till I was thirteen I was going to
the youth clubs until I discovered a place called the Lively Lady, and it later became Jaws where Mark Roman played. (Fitzroy: “Was that in Leytonstone?”) Yeah and that’s where I met all the dancers like Trevor Shakes, Masher, Horace Carter-Allan who came from another manor, Battersea, to Leytonstone. How we all knew about it, I don’t quite know, but it was local to me. All the music I heard then is the music I play now and what they call ‘rare groove’. It was 70’s funk and out of that little scene came the ‘rare groove’ scene, which was an evolution of music that would have happened anyway, as it’s a ten-year cycle of music, style and fashion. We are talking ‘Wikki Wacky’ and it was the first time that anyone ever heard this music which is mind blowing. I went through the 1970’s going to all the clubs. I stopped going to Crackers in early 1976 when Mark Roman finished there I wasn’t a George Power fan. Nothing wrong with what he was playing it’s just that I was into different music at the time. I went Friday lunchtimes on occasion. You mention Mark Roman were there any other DJ’s who you followed? I went to the Lacy Lady with Chris Hill but we didn’t go for the DJ’s and didn’t really know whom they were. I remember Norman Scott who played at Global Village and Bangs. Good DJ’s got around but I didn’t always know who they were and got to learn their names later. Going back you said you were in and out of children’s homes so whereabouts did you settle as a teenager when you started going around to clubs? My parents moved to Redbridge in Essex which was considered suburban, but my teenage years were in a middle class area. (Fitzroy: At the time back then did you have hair?) Yeah but I shaved it off when Marvin Gayes’ ‘I Want You’ album came out. A lot of dudes shaved their heads like the album cover artwork. Trevor Shakes, Travis and Leon Herbert all shaved their heads. I remember Masher also did that and it was another life changer for me. Ok, that’s interesting. I’m curious about you going to the clubs and coming from east London with all the dancers who, from what I know, were mostly black, how was that for you as a minority white? I had this conversation at Dennis Alcock’s funeral. I’m there talking and all these people are standing there looking at me, about 20 of them. They said they never heard me talk before. I said “What do you mean? Back then it was normal for you guys to go to the clubs but I was generally the only white kid in there, not always but I was one of the very few. So when we’d go home on the back of the bus from a club I just never knew what to say and felt a little out of place”. But when I was in the club dancing I loved it; that was my escape.
I remember when I first saw you at the WAG around 1983-84 and I saw you Lascelles and Horace. Horace was letting off on the dance floor to ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ by The Penthouse Love Symphony Orchestra and I thought, wow that guy can dance. I was too young and under manners to have seen him prior to that at Crackers in its hey day. I remember seeing you and being honest I thought you looked wrong. When I say that, I mean growing up in west London the whole perception of a white guy with a skin or shaven head was that he was a racist. So you looked scary at first and I was trying to work out if you were some kind of infiltrator, but I got to know you and see you DJ behind the decks, so my views changed. But if I thought like that in the early 1980’s you must have come across some kind of issues, surely, before I met you? I tell you what helped me, it was because I could dance, it’s as simple as that. I was accepted every time. Now John Rielly told me something recently, that I didn’t know at the time. He said that he had always wanted to challenge me, because he wouldn’t have it with me being a white guy in the clubs. But I didn’t take any notice of him as he was of a younger generation to me. In my book he quotes “But he could dance and lost himself in the music like we did”. He didn’t know how to deal with me. It was unusual to see white guys who could dance, I mean many speak about Tommy Mac. Tommy Mac wasn’t a shit dancer. To us he was the clown, we used to laugh at him. He could run around in a circle and pretend he was he spinning, but he couldn’t dance. He’s not a dancer like the ones I grew up around. There was a thread on Facebook which I see you make a comment on the thread. I was named as one of the rated dancers. I stated that I, and many of the people quoted, were not the dancers. (Fitzroy: I remember that post actually.) And I named the real dancers. That’s the white soul boy bullshit writing themselves into history. I don’t have to say anything, everyone knows I was there and I was what I was, and I have nothing to prove but I danced. Tommy Mac was not one of the dancers. I know the story but for those who may not, how did you get to become resident at the WAG? I wasn’t really a DJ but I’d done it once with Shaun Oliver and Nenah Cherry at the Titanic in Green Park. Nenah and Shaun had a DJ clash with the resident (Wrecking) crew. Shaun had a club called Hot Sty and I used to go down there and give him records to play, that I’d had from being a kid. He invited me to play with them and I ended up playing all night long. I got paid too. It was stuff like ‘Rock Creek Park’. No one played that music all night long but I knew that I could. I heard Trevor Shakes drop some tunes at Whilleys venue, Club 7, Wednesday nights circa 1978, (with DJ Claude) yeah that’s right, and he’d play Eddie Harris ‘Get On Down’, ‘Runaway Love’, ‘Always There’ ‘Side Effect’,’Standing Right Here’, Dr Buzzards Original Savannahs thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
Band, ‘Wikki Wacky’ and a couple of James Brown. I’m thinking shit this old music still stands up and I’ve got them all. Trevor Shakes would DJ then come and dance with us on the floor, he was a big influence on me. So it’s was 1984, Rene Gelston had created ‘Black Market’ at The WAG. My girlfriend at the time was Diana Brown, she was his assistant hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon. She used to take my cassette tapes to work and play them. Rene asked who put the tapes together she said her boyfriend, and Rene asked if I DJ’d, Diana said yes, even though I wasn’t one. Next thing you know I’m playing at ‘Black Market’ the opening night with Dave Darrell and I played my favourite records all night. Dave wasn’t comparable with me so I managed to get Lascelle in, who was my neighbour. We didn’t create anything new, we just played 70’s funk to a brand new audience. Many DJ’s claim that they played that in the 70’s, but it was the music of the time, thus it was normal to play it. However we played it in retrospect and we played it all night long. I used to hear the music everywhere with Jay Strongman, Hector Heathcote and Steve Lewis at Le Beatroute, all play half an hour of 70’s, and I used to think this was the best bit of the night. But we had a chance to play that music non stop. We discovered lot of other music because we knew what we were looking for, at the time we could buy them for 10p each, hundreds of them. They weren’t considered ‘rare groove’ then. Lascelle picked up The Jackson Sisters ‘I Believe In Miracles’. He didn’t know what it was and anyone who claims different about that record is a liar. Lascelle played it, people might have heard it up north but for me it was Lascelle who broke that tune. Same with ‘Across The Tracks’, we nicked it off Horace and played it at Cat In The Hat. He didn’t even know he had it. He has been my best mate for years. Forget ‘rare groove’ and the scene, we were playing this to a brand new audience and they had never heard it before. That’s the most important thing. Femi says in the book that he walked out of my club after hearing ‘I Know You Got Soul’ Bobby Byrd and ‘Express Yourself’ Charles Wright and it was a whole revelation to him. I look at it this way but you seem to have a bit of public dispute with Norman Jay (Barry: “Yeah.”) over this ‘rare groove’ thing. I do remember seeing you at the WAG in 1984 and I would say that you definitely cornered the trendy market of people because the WAG was full of trendy people. Other people were playing that type of funk simultaneously, for example Dez Parkes was dropping some of that on Sunday nights at Spats. Yeah but Dez was playing music of the day at Spats, Dez was a great DJ then, he had all the records and played the music of the time, which is the same thing we did, but we played it
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in retrospect. The difference was, we played old records only. We played new things on occasions but it was about the 70’s funk. To be honest we didn’t really know what we were doing and we were not trying to create a scene, we just loved playing our favourite records. When I started they only had one floor open, and when I left it became two floors. I remember when Lascelle was playing upstairs a few years later with his then girlfriend Vanessa. Yeah, that was when he left ‘Cat In The Hat’. We played at The WAG together for one year and we left because of the door policy. My mates couldn’t get in and every week I was arguing with the club about their racist door policy so we left and started ‘Cat In The Hat’. It was known as the ‘rare groove’ club at the time. We got deeper with the music as we discovered more music for ourselves. Lascelle and I knew what we were looking for and with certain people around us, there started to be a movement. We looked for all the James Brown stuff, some of it was rubbish but there was some really good stuff, and when we were buying, it cost us nothing. Then the prices started becoming unbelievable. Now I happen to know that Femi went to Norman who he was working with, and asked him if he had heard certain tracks like Vicki Anderson and he lent them to Norman. Anyone who knows Norman will tell you back then that he was into Northern Soul and Philly. Norman is a good DJ whether he’s playing house or funk. I didn’t think we (Barrie and Lascelle) were DJ’s, just guys playing our records. Once it started to become known as ‘rare groove’, we stopped playing it and shut down the ‘Cat In The Hat’ club. That’s when we started the band Diana Brown & The Brothers which became hailed as the sound of Acid Jazz. Ok, how did you link up with Dez Parkes to release your first single ‘Yes It’s You’ on his TUF label? That would have been 1987 and I was round his house. I didn’t know Dez in the early days. I knew who he was but in 86-87, I’d go round to his house and listen to music. He turned me on to other stuff including Foster Sylvers ‘Misdemeanour’. I played it and it became big. We started talking about music and the band had already demoed ‘Yes It’s You’ with Island records but we put it out with Dez. How long had the band been going before ‘Yes It’s You’ ended up on TUF Records. We started the band after ‘Cat In The Hat’ so we are talking 1986, roughly a year. It was what it was, we did alright with the tune
as something credible. (Fitzroy: You played the conga’s on that didn’t you?) Yeah. (Fitzroy: “Do you play any other instruments?”) Nah. I just played the percussion on all my stuff and I’m not the greatest percussionist. When I played live I was fine. In that session was two of The Brand New Heavies founder members Andrew Levy and Simon Bartholomew. How did you come across Simon and Andrew? We were at Cat In The Hat and Andrew and Jan gave me a cassette tape and I played it that night. It was all right not too funky, but I got what they were doing. I put them together as a band Diana Brown & The Brothers. I brought Lascelle in to make things funky and after about a year we split up and they became The Brand New Heavies, which is really the left overs from Diana Brown & The Brothers. They were funky when Lascelle was involved, once he left they were never that funky again. Marco Nelson was our new bass player, we had the musical genius Gareth Tasker and Femi was managing us for the second stage of Diana Brown & The Brothers. How come Jan Kincaid wasn’t part of the Diana Brown & The Brothers first time round?
How did ‘Yes It’s You’ help to catapult you? I don’t think it did, it was good for Diana Brown & The Brothers. I then went to Japan because I was invited with Jazzie B and Norman to go with Vicki Anderson and Bobby Byrd as I had become close friends with them. Femi, Marco, Family Funktion and Norman Jay had put the JB’s back together, and my band was the backing band. I was invited by Bobby and Vicki to the North Sea Jazz Festival and remember being in Bobby and Vicki’s bedroom around 3 in the morning eating toast with Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and other members of the JB’s listening to all their stories. In my book Bobby Byrd has given me a thanks for ‘bringing me back from the dead’. After the JB’s performance Fred Wesley asked what did I think of their set and I said “You play too fast.” They played James Brown speed. When my band played with them they said that we sounded like them. I thought that now they sounded more like a Cabaret act, which for me was quite sad, from how they started all those years beforehand, and it took that to make them known now. I left the band as I was disheartened by it all. In Japan I discussed with Jazzie B doing a track called ‘Blind Faith’ and by that time me and Diana got signed through our manager to London Records and did ‘Masterplan’.
He was!. When we split up Andrew and Simon were hedging their bets and still in both bands basically. thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
CLIFF BOWEN
EDDIE PENDERGAST BARRIE SHARPE
THE GENTS OF DUFFERS SAINT GEORGE Alongside being a DJ and part of a band, I remember you for your fashion. I used to see you at your shop in Ladbroke Grove. That was around the same time when I was DJ-ing at The Wag. We had Duffer Of St George at the same time, so back then I wore my bakerboy cap backwards. No one else was at the time. Now everything I did I’d seen it done before I never invented anything. So I’d wear the hat backwards at my DJ stint at the Wag, and sell them in my shop on a Saturday afternoon. I wore Gucci loafers which were not yet big. I’d seen other people wearing them, but I’m the DJ at The Wag representing Duffer’s. So it’s about being in the right place at the right time. How long was you at Ladbroke Grove for? A couple of years but we actually started on the streets at Camden. We used to shop at Oxfam and pick up brogues and loads of cheap Burberry macs, and sell them for 30 quid. We earned a lot of money quickly and opened a shop buying old stock, redesigning it so it looked right. Then we started doing collections and opened up in D’Arbly Street in Soho around 1987. Who else was part of Duffer’s? Eddie Pendergast, Marco Cairns and Cliff Bowen. We were just four geezers on the street and in the clubs. There was a lot of rumours about us that we were naughty boys, however most were not true, but we didn’t deny them. We were supported by magazines and we had The Wag club, but it wasn’t just us that started this whole scene it was everybody and a movement of people that made it happen. It was a special moment in time. Going back to ‘Cat In The Hat’, some of the people going there were Jan Kincaid and the rest of the Heavies. For some reason I never went.
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MARCO CAIRNES
Jan mentions in my book how he saw me in the club with Lascelle’s cousin and we just started getting down on the dance floor. He’d never seen anything like it, the way we dressed and danced. When the record finished we gave out some flyers and left. He said when he looked at the flyer he had to come to check out ‘Cat In The Hat’, so we were the advert for the club in that moment. He liked the way we were dressed and had to come. It became a black club because we had no door policy restriction. The guys from Family Funktion said it was the first club they’d gone to where it was a mixed black and white audience in the west end playing totally black music. There were obviously others but in their experience it was the first. Remember a lot of black kids couldn’t get into clubs like The Wag, that’s why we left and we made it accessible for anyone who wanted to come. So you went to Crackers and stopped in 1976 but you also went to the Lacy Lady. How did you see the difference between the two clubs? The Lacy was a lot more white kids on that soul boy scene. To me a soul boy as opposed to reggae boys and it was pretty white, audience wise. The Lacy was quite commercial. They played great music at the beginning and the end but the middle part was pretty commercial. Great club though but Crackers was more black and more dancer orientated especially on a Tuesday night when people used to really get down. The music was heavier with Mark Roman, who was a great DJ. How did you fit in going to both the black and the whiter clubs. You’re from east London and your dancing around Trevor Shakes, Leon Herbert and the rest of the crew. Then you go to the Lacy with a dance style that’s black. But all the East London dancers were there, Shakes, Travis, Foster, Dennis, Norman and Bassey Walker, Hoyle, Masher and Mohammed, at the Lacy too.
I just wondered how it worked when other white dancers see you dancing with a different rhythm to them. Well I did used to get comments from Norman Walker who said he wouldn’t dance near me in case I showed him up (Fitzroy: “Who said that to you?”) Norman. But I didn’t have to be that good to show them up, I just had to be better than all the other white guys (Barry laughs.). How did you start ballet training?
Yeah Simon Bartholemew said it was the first time he saw men not wearing socks when we used to wear cropped Levis and loafers. We had a look of the time but we honed it down and defined it. There was a period for a while where you were not to be seen where were you? I was bringing my kid up. Duffer’s had gone bankrupt and a German guy bought us out. Basically it paid off our debt. I was bought out and we shafted a Japanese company who gave Duffer’s 12 grand to do a collection, which never happened. I said I’d do the collection for free if we called it Sharpeye and if it were successful we’d carry on with it. That was 6 months before I left Duffers. My wife had left me with my son and I’d left the band and I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t equipped to do anything else. I moved to Camden and pretty much cut everybody off and spent time with my son, so this Japan deal came at the right time. Then I opened a shop and the Japanese trademarked the name behind my back. I thought ok you got the name and that’s all you got, so what can you do with it. I started Sharpeye here and done really well in my Soho store. Again it all just seen to happen successfully. I came back with some camp trousers with bondage straps and took them to Jones’s. I sold the lot from a suitcase. I was back and they couldn’t get enough of it.
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I went to the dance centre and I got into ballet there. That may have been where I first spoke to Shakes (Trevor Shakes). During a jazz class the teacher Evrol advised me to go to The Place and trained me for an audition. Evrol taught me a routine and I got in. I did a bit there and got thrown out because I was turning up late and was too tired after a night out dancing in the clubs. I also attended the Rambert for a while. What was your trade then?
I was doing anything I could, hustling. Bent cheque books and cards (Fitzroy: “The naughty stuff.”) Yeah, I was training during the day at dance school and then also at the dance centre at night times. I don’t know where I got my money from, but we used to nick anything, shop lifting anything I wanted, like a pair of shoes.
I used to go to Duffer’s in D’Arbly Street because it was right next door to Black Market Records. I don’t really remember much about other trendy shops like it. How long were you there for? Till 1995, 1996. I didn’t really know what we were doing with either The Wag or the fashion or the band, because I didn’t have a plan. When I was younger I didn’t imagine all this would happen, it wasn’t possible but I fell up hill, being in the right place at the right time. Duffers done really well but not as good as it looks because we were not businessmen and spent a lot of money. We were the trendiest shop in the world and changed fashion. Top designers were clocking us - we changed youth culture in clubs and fashion, by accident actually. (Barry laughs.) A lot of that fashion with the Gabbicci’s and slacks came from the West Indian culture but you just put an English twist to it. We started off very skinhead like with the West Indian rude boy style. Then we developed more into the 1930’s and then 70’s style. We just did stuff and it changed fashion. The whole rare groove thing in the 70’s was flares and psychedelic shirts. The most successful period was the acid house period. What’s interesting was that the fashion was adopted by outfits like The Brand New Heavies.
BARRIE SHARPE & DIANA BROWN What age was your son when you started raising him? Eighteen months old. When I was with his mum, I fed him at night and did all that stuff. People say it was great, but it wasn’t that I really wanted to do that, I was 33 not 25 and I had already done a lot, so it wasn’t such a big deal, as oppose to someone who’s young. I was in a position of being able to finance it and had the time to do it without it being stressful. It wasn’t that hard for me to do, it wasn’t easy but you do what you have to do. There are plenty who’ve had it a lot worse than what I did. How old is your son? (Barry: “23”) Oh, so same age as my son Jamal born in 1993. (Barry: “and same age as Trevor Nelson’s son, Miles who he hangs around with.”) (Fitzroy: “Oh really.”) (Barry: “So you can imagine them two.”) thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
That’s funny because I used to live in Dez Parkes’ old house in Clova Road, Forest Gate, E7 and that’s how I got to know Trevor Shakes really well, because he still lived on the same road. Trevor Nelson lived on the neighbouring Earlham Grove which is parallel to Clova Road and we were both DJ-ing at Reminisce at Broadway Boulevard, Ealing W.5 on a Sunday night at the time. Trevor Nelson had never met Trevor Shakes but naturally had heard of him. I brought Trevor Shakes down one night and Trevor Nelson was like a kid in a candy shop meeting him. Funny thing was they practically lived back to back garden to garden to each other. It’s quite an achievement to have a legacy where so many people know who you are but have never met you. Everyone knew who Trevor Shakes was even if only by name and also people liked Horace Carter-Allen. The thing is there are many from that generation who have now lost the plot, they were kings of their world but suddenly when that era ended they’ve got to get a job. They have no skills but dancing so they become a painter and decorator. I see so many of them lose it because of that frustration. (Fitzroy: “Yeah, that’s very true.”) Luckily for Trevor he carved a career dancing, modelling, DJ-ing, music production and singing background vocals for Yazz and worked with George Michael. I know people from my end of west London who were also exactly that and are unrecognisable now. When I was younger I was the king of my world, however as I got older I realised there are many other universes out there. (Fitzroy: “That’s a good way of putting it.”) So after the hiatus of a few years we touched base on MY Space which was pre Facebook. I wrote a synopsis of what I knew about you on your wall, detailing the Wag, Duffers Diana Brown & The Bros’ Yes It’s You’ and ‘Masterplan’. You replied ‘Yes a man who knows the truth’. (Barry: “Did I?” (Barry laughs)) In later years you do Sharpeye and run Big Stuff with my school chum Femi Williams. I must admit I did find it strange that you did ‘Cat In The Hat’ at ‘Remember The Times’ because I’ve not known you to come out of the west end or the city and go to Crystal Palace. I know it’s hard work but it’s been good because me and Lascelle play
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together and I play at my best with Lascelle, there is no question about that. You’re also doing an event in Kavos in May. Yeah I don’t do things like that as I’m not really that kind of DJ and at first I said no. Like I said to Mickey Power I can’t come and play for just an hour so you have to book me for more. Same with Kathos and I told them if you give me an hour, I can really fuck your night up because I’m very specific what I play. (Fitzroy: “That’s very honest.”) Back in the day at ‘Cat In The Hat’ I played what I wanted. I played at Limelight but I wasn’t good there because they were not my audience. I don’t play as heavy as I used to and play stuff you kind of know and don’t try to be to clever because it doesn’t work now. Femi’s going as well is that what convinced you? The money was good enough. I find it interesting that there are so many individual DJ’s who are known for being eclectic. A lot of the white DJ’s have good collections and certain people identify with them in their specialised genre. But I never see them include you as a fellow white DJ who specialises in funk at their gigs. I attract a black crowd and play black music in a black way, like the way I dance. It’s not intentional it’s just what I know and how I grew up. The best DJ’s were dancers first. I’ve been saying that for years and in my interview with Paul Anderson we both said there is a difference from us that came from the dance floor than from those who come from the record collecting side. I never saw any of them on the dance floor kicking up dust. Exactly. Lascelle in a great dancer (Fitzroy: “I never saw him dance actually.”) Very under stated he was around Mutley, Dennis, Masher, Norman, Bassey and Hoyle. All the Shakes crew. Even though I’m nearly 60 I can still spin a choon and go and dance. In my head... not for as long and at a different pace. What motivated the book you’ve written? When my mum died I suddenly started thinking about stuff
and decided to write it down for my son. I had a pretty rough childhood but I never really thought about it. People said I should deal with it but I saw it as my past and it couldn’t hurt me anymore. I’m dyslexic but I realise that I can communicate with people. It’s a skill I never really knew I had. After about two weeks I’d written a sequence of stories about me growing up, and my son and others read it and really loved it. They said I’ve got a book and a movie there. So I started putting pictures to it and re-wrote certain bits and my girlfriend helped me to punctuate it properly. I took it to some publishers advising I wanted to do a limited edition hardback, but I didn’t really understand the language they were speaking in. Someone advised me to Kickstart fund it, which I wasn’t keen on. I wanted 5 grand to get it off the ground and people started donating £500 etc and eventually I said I’d sell the book for £30. Next thing you know I’m doing this and I didn’t realise how much it would cost me. But I’ve sold 5000 copies and some of that is due to me going on Robert Elms’s show, as his ‘Listed Londoner’ which really did help. I had strangers showing an interest so it’s been really good. I’ve seen some stuff on YouTube of you making music with John Rielly. Would you care to elaborate? Yeah, I gave him my music to record on and I’m doing three singles with Steve Rumney, who’s financing the tracks. It’s very heavy funk and it’s the best music I’ve ever done with some Fela Kuti orientated stuff. I know you as a funk man but didn’t you like the other stuff? When it came to the 1980’s I didn’t like that synthesised drum machine sound. We played Steve Arrington and the best of that era, but I do like my soul and my reggae too. I used to listen to David Bowie and Rod Stewart too. But when I discovered James Brown it changed my life. Why didn’t you do any compilations… didn’t you get asked? No and I didn’t want to do it either. No one asked me about that or to do a fashion collection for them because I’m really too passionate about what I do and it’s not necessarily for money. There are many who have done things because it’s like a little club where they all look after each other. I’m not like that, if I’d have a done a compilation I’d have fucked them off. For me that was the end of the ‘rare groove’ and I’d stopped playing all that stuff having played it all in the beginning. Especially when it was all over Kiss FM because it wasn’t exclusive any more. It was the elitism for me and I didn’t cash in on it as I wasn’t that bright. I just lived my life and was very lucky. Fair enough and if the truth’s known I think some people see you as self righteous a bit arrogant and say what you say, but I think you’ve been quite humble today. That’s who I am, I don’t believe in my own bullshit. I’m a normal guy who has fallen up hill.
You do know how to be controversial.
DATES TO CATCH FITZROY SPINNING
Yeah I do especially on Facebook because that’s my job - to connect with Sharpeye and generate sales. What I do is give my point of view and am not saying I’m right, it’s my perception and sometimes I change my mind the next day but it’s about that moment in time. I think people do take you seriously because you have always had a presence of sorts, it’s not often that you smile and you speak your mind and I think many are afraid to challenge you.
17th Feb
SOUL AWARDS Thing is I don’tSURVIVORS take myself seriously. (Fitzroy: “Sometimes we canUnder be our own worstBridge enemies in Chelsea how we present ourselves, not The SW6 necessarily being blatant but it’s other people’s perception.”) I’ve always been accessible and a man of the people. If you look at my Facebook I’m about justice and always have been. I don’t particularly like Americans black or white but I don’t wanna see one shoot the other. I don’t wanna see black people lynched on SOULBOAT the street, so I don’t have to know or like people to not want justice forTemple them. I don’tPier particularly like Muslims anymore than 3pm-8pm I like anybody else, my father was a Muslim, but I don’t want to see them persecuted in fact I don’t like to see that in any minority, and I will stand up for that.
12 March
18th March
That’s interesting regarding your father being a Muslim because I knew that you were not a typical UK Caucasian and had a mixture in HUSTLE JAM & BOOGIE you. I suspected it was Jewish.
Olbys in Margate 9pm-1am
My mum was Jewish and my father was Palestinian. Does that coincide with the skull caps you wear?
14th April
I saw Trevor Shakes and his crew wearing them in 1976. I just THEwith LONG GROOVE FRIDAY continued it, I have quite a few Jewish friends who hated Arabs. It’s all in the book. My dad was a refugee and we lived in The Crowndale London NW1 the east end and had to keep things quiet. So I had all that shit and couldn’t say anything so the skull cap is a form of rebellion and now it’s just a habit.
16th April
I found that interesting that you shaved your head 40 years ago and EASTER I’veLOVELITES seen your kind of Marlon Brando, Julius PARTY Caesar type hair cut and you were a lot slimmer, than your stocky frame too. Luton
It’s been good to catch up and finally do this Barrie, told ya it would happen.
23rd April
Yeah you did Fitz, cheers.
JAZZIFUNK PRESENTS PAST PRESENT + FUTURE CHECK OUT BARRIE’S BOOK Hare Hounds, ‘THIS&WAS NOT PARTBirmingham OF THE MASTERPLAN
ALL PHOTOS: BARRIE SHARPE
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BLACKPOOL SOUL WEEKENDER
Event Reviews
I’ve been blessed to DJ on the last 5 of this mammoth of a weekender at The Hilton and to see the consistency in the Luxury Soul Weekender’s dedicated audience. It’s impossible to catch every set over the four rooms so here is my summation. Friday 5th I caught most of Colin Curtis’s rare groove and funk set and particularly appreciated hearing Wornell Jones ‘It Must Have been Love.’ Thanks for the kind words on my Jamaica Soul session following Curtis in the Lancaster. I certainly enjoyed the reggae version excursions of soul tracks (i.e. Alicia Keys ‘You Don’t Know My Name’), spinning Grace Jones ‘My Jamaican Guy’ and The Naturals ‘Funky Rasta’. By all accounts, the salsa session with Clinton and Hughie was well attended and most enjoyable, something that is becoming more popular each year. It’s always friendly at LSW especially noticed when everyone dresses up for the concert. This year there was a very impressive and fruitful line up with The Pockets and Breakwater. Many will remember this concert as one of the best with both The Pockets and Breakwater sounding very true to their recordings, in particular Breakwater and their first heard in the UK version of Feel Your Way with full vocals. Marvellous! I knew you could ‘Work It Out’. ‘All That I Can Say’ is that Saturday night was going back in time like Jimmy Castor with Jon Jules mashing up the Lounge like Smash potatoes with his ill skill mixing and music choices. Again thanks for the continual support at my resident 3-4.30 am slots in the Lounge. I am humbled by the support and Gary’s Gang ‘Keep On Dancing’ enthusiasm you all have at that hour and a half. Norman Halley kept those with matchstick holding eyes revellers till 6am. There’s Facebook footage of Bigger’s set on Facebook with glowing reports, I caught bits of Chris Box’s set, all of Norman Halley’s brilliant mid evening session and the tail end of Jim Hargreaves in the Lounge and most of Mike Stephens keeping the dance floor set on the Sunday evening. However the finale was bravely left to myself and Jon Jules doing the last two hours. Thank you, thank you like Wayne Henderson and Roy Ayers. Jon and I had the best time, on occasion playing off four decks at once. Apparently it was that well received that Richard Searling got a phone call at 3.30am the Sunday night Monday morning raving about the session. Sorry to those not mentioned but the general consensus was that all DJ’s pretty much played out of their skins… Roll on 2018.
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The Last Poets
Event Reviews
Book launch in Waterstones Haymarket, Royal Festival Hall SE1 and 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. I was invited by the PR machine promoting Christine Ottens (author of The Last Poets’ book) to attend three events in the company of the three remaining prophesying poets, The Last Poets. I attended the Friday session of the book launch originally due to be staged at Foyles bookstore in Tottenham Court Road. However it was a case of The Trammps “Where were you ‘The Night The Lights Went Out’”, but not in New York City instead in London, when there was a blackout on the right hand side of Tottenham Court Road. So the venue was quickly switched to Waterstones in Haymarket. Dez Parkes and myself had previously had dealings with The Last Poets. Dez interviewed them in a private gathering and I DJ’d for them at Jazz Cafe back in 1995 so we were both looking forward to becoming reacquainted. It truly was one of the most humbling experiences to be in the presence of Abiodun Oyewole, Umar Bin Hassan and Baba Donn Babatunde. They are so articulate they bring sexy back to poetry. They are so real, that both Umar and Abiodun as they recited extracts from their purpose driven life shed tears in front of their captive audience. Christine, the books author interjected with the poets and explained how her son’s enthusiasm for The Last Poets led to her writing the book. Naturally Dez and I managed to get a historical photo opportunity with them. On the Saturday myself, our magazine photographer Anna B and Lloyd Bradley were invited to a talk panel session about male masculinity at the Royal Festival Hall. The Last Poets were assembled in a strange scenario on stage with two young London rappers, Suli Breaks and main chair host, Anthony Anaxagorou. The Last Poets spoke with authority and gave a very riveting performance before sharing their words of wisdom. Although I thank Hugo Mintz for the kind invitation, unfortunately, this may not be the kind of review you would have hoped for. The organisation of this panel set up was not, in my opinion, chaired properly and at times was quite shambolic. The host, poet of the month, Anthony Anaxagorou, was at times trying too hard to wax lyrical and lost the audience, and me at times, like a rapper reciting metaphors for the sake of reciting metaphors. (Not even Google would have been able to decipher the dictionary he swallowed at times). I personally felt this presenting and hosting style left the Last Poets open to some individuals who clearly towards the end of the conversation, had an agenda, to try and discredit and ridicule them. It is because of this failed Foster Sylvers ‘Misdemeanor’ that I must share in the correct context, some adverse and negative posts aimed at depicting The Last Poets as homophobic bigots, as opposed to the humanitarian griots that they are. That is not happening… not on my watch… two hopes of that, Bob Hope and no hope. Please bear with me on the importance of this clarification. In the allocated Q&A session a young male, gay Scottish member of the audience asked “For me aligning my sexuality with my identity, a few years ago Frank Ocean came out about
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his sexuality. I wonder why in hip-hop and the wider music industry, it’s difficult to talk about sexuality that isn’t necessarily heterosexual, normative or I like women”. To clarify Anthony Anaxagorou said “He’s asking within the hip-hop culture, why is it not normalised to talk about ideas, everything has to work in a hetro normative framework. So the idea that a man can love another man is not something that you see promoted within the hip-hop parody.” At this point the panel especially the Last Poets seemed somewhat confused by the question and there was a bit of a nervous silence and laughter from the audience. Anthony Anaxagorou cracked a joke asking them “Gentlemen, how are you feeling?” Abiodun slightly confused asked “What a man, loving another man?” Anthony Anaxagorou went on to clarify that “Heterosexual males dominate, the idea of men falling in love with other men isn’t something that is common within the hip-hop milue”. Baba Donn Babatunde said “I’m unaware of that.” Umar said “There is a problem with hip-hop artists loving themselves, for us to even think about them loving something else, or someone else, if they don’t even know how to love themselves, because some of the words and the images they put out there, actually show how much they love themselves. So for us to take time out or for them to take time out and try to explain, why they cannot write about other men in hip-hop…. Whoooo that’s a stretch for real.” (There was some laughter from the audience). Anthony Anaxagorou asks “Would you say that hip-hop as a culture is homophobic?” Umar responds, “Then again you listen to some of these hip-hop artists and they sound like some of them are gay. There’s a lot of gay stuff going on in the hip-hop community, if we really wanna talk about it, so come on that’s up to them what they decide to do”. Suli Breaks explained that culturally as an African, the gay subject is taboo. Baba Donn Babatunde asked the question “Are gay people dancing to hip-hop?” The response was a resounding ‘yes’ from some of the audience and host Anthony Anaxagorou stated “Absolutely that’s all that matters.” Baba Donn Babatunde asked “So what’s the problem?” Then Abiodun stated “I don’t care who you sleep with it damn it, sleep with whoever you feel like.” The audience laugh. Abiodun adds “I really get tired of people putting it on display. That’s my problem with the whole gay movement, you’ve got to be an exhibitionist. You got to broadcast who you’re going to bed with. I don’t want to see heterosexuals kissing each other in the street, keep that shit to yourself goddammit”. Amongst the audience laughter there was a shout from someone saying ‘Fuck you, fuck you!’ and a few people started to walk out. Abiodun continued “The whole idea of making love has to be private, as far as I’m concerned, sacred. You can make love to an orangutan if it makes you happy but just keep it to yourself.” A large portion of the audience laugh. A couple of questions later
a young lady decides to target her misplaced angst toward The Last Poets stating “It’s really interesting to see what just happened that you have a rhetoric going, I guess in a way about freedom and escaping shackles. There was a question I originally wanted to ask you about monogamy, which is a western concept and I wondered what your thoughts and ideas were about that. But then this new idea about the homosexuality has come up and it’s a difficult thing for you guys to talk about. I think you really need to address this. Umar said ‘Ask the question… you said about monogamy”. The lady continues “My question originally was about monogamy but there are lots of people in the room that are extremely… er er…” (she was struggling for words) then she adds “At first I thought how amazing it was to be in the presence of lovely men who respected women, and I wanted to ask the question about monogamy because I wanted to ask what your deeper feelings were, about respect for women and I don’t necessarily believe in monogamy. But something else has just come up now that I can’t ignore. Umar asks, “What came up?” She replies “A man asked you about how you felt about homosexuality in hip-hop” Baba Donn Babatunde states “I asked do they dance to hip-hop”. The lady states “But the response was extremely…Well there was one who didn’t want to answer the question and didn’t want to deal with it… I can’t really explain myself”. At this point several members of the audience reminded her that they had already answered the question. Then host Anthony Anaxagorou then explained that there was only five minutes left and that particular conversation ended quite abruptly. How the bleep bleep do you know this word for word Fitzroy I hear? Because I’m more inch high than Private Eye (showing my age now) and more ‘Undercover Brutha’ than Eddie Griffin, and record things with my Zoom apparatus. Now eat some bitter tasting humble pie because you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar and I have the whole thing digitally recorded, and this is word for word the actual transcript, so go and tell that to the judge. In the words of an Abiodun
recital ‘If we only knew what we could do.” when we do something with positivity. So now like Big Daddy I am exerting ‘The Wrath of Kane’ lashes to those who tried to sabotage the reputations of The Last Poets, and incite unwarranted homophobic personas about them. You just got squashed and obliterated like a sledgehammer crushing a nut, oh yes you did. Did you see those many splinters of shells scatter and fly without Boyzone wings? Whoever was involved read the transcript and weep, because you heard what you wanted to hear, and completely out of context. This really sent me into a ‘Luke Rage’ moment, and I, as the lady tried to miserably state, cannot ignore what you tried to ‘Hijack’ like Herbie Mann for your own agenda. In fact in the words of The Last Poets ‘This Is Madness.’ I actually felt like I had spent the whole weekend with The Last Poets when my final encounter was at a publishing house in Mayfair where Lloyd Bradley and myself interviewed these ‘three wise men’ and it was one of biblical proportions. Still questioning what had occurred on Saturday, Baba Donn Babatunde shared with me that between the poets, they felt that the Q&A was some kind of set up. Something Lloyd Bradley and myself were suspicious of also (although The Sting’s Paul Newman and Robert Redford were nowhere in sight. :o)) Regardless, The Last Poets performed to an audience of poem enthusiasts who were enthralled totally by the two main orators Umar and Abiodun and their trusted percussionist Baba Donn Babatunde. Lastly I’d urge you to get a copy of Christine Otten’s The Last Poets book published by World Editions. I have mine ‘Signed Sealed Delivered’ like Stevie and autographed by The Last Poets and the author and it’s full of real honest and not sensationalised Truth (Telling real undiluted tales honestly.) Thanks to the positivity from Ruth Killick and Lisa from Applesnsnakes Org who kindly invited me, so I could express myself linguistically, albeit not quite the same as the eloquent distinguished gentlemen and forefathers of the ‘Lightening Rod’ conscious spoken word exponents The Last Poets.
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Nicola Conti & Stefania 17th November 2016 – Jazz Cafe
Event Reviews
I was invited to see the Italian Stallion musical maestro Nicola Conti and Stefania give a live rendition of her new album on Far Out Records. Nicola Conti gave the limelight to Stefania who is deceivingly tall onstage, whilst he strummed his guitar unassumingly within the band. Stefani most certainly has a distinctive voice and sang in several dialects, not that it deterred listening intently to her emotions delivered over thirteen songs. The band was tight whatever tempo they played at. Amongst the play list was ‘Vento Bravo’, ‘The Meaning Of Love’, ‘Ainda Mais’ Amor and the great adaptation versions of ‘A Gira’ and Gilberto Gil’s classic ‘Maracutu Atomico’. I managed to catch a moment with Nicola Conti who upon accepting a magazine, said, “Of course I’ve heard I know about The Soul Survivors Magazine”. So I was pleased as punch. Great evening.
ANNA B
ANNA B
OLBYS NYE Margate Soul Weekender’s Eli Thompson owns a bar called Olbys in Margate and kindly invited me to spin along side Tony Matthews, Roni O’Brien, Pete Collins and Paul French. Arriving around 10.30 pm there was already a great atmosphere. Pete Collins was dropping classics like ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ by Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes to get everyone in the mood to groove. At midnight everyone was pretty much was snogging everyone happily for the New Year and Tony Matthews came on with the perfect version excursion with a latin jazz bossa mix of House Of Pains’s Jump Around. It was a very warm and musical embracing crowd by the time I came on around 1.30am. It’s so refreshing when you can dig in the crates and people appreciate you doing so, especially outside London in places like Margate. Thanks Olby’s and Eli for inviting me. I’ll be making a bi-monthly appearance, next one in March 18th 2017. There are a series of DJ’s including Grumpy Brown doing a similar bi-monthly stint so please check these eclectic sets out.
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Soul Survivors
Roll Call of Fame Alphonse Mouzon (November 21, 1948 – December 25, 2016) Alphonse Mouzon was regarded as an exceptional jazz fusion funk drummer who worked with Larry Coryells’ and Weather Report. He had a solo deal with Blue Note and during that period, as a leader, he recorded two personal favourites ‘Snake Walk’ and Without A Reason’ from The Man Incognito circa 1975. His impeccable timing and lightening speed hands are showcased on his Virtue album via the incredible fast and furious ‘Baker’s Daughter’. He released an up-tempo disco album with his Mouzon Electric Band in 1979 but returned to his jazz fusion magnificence in 1980 with 13 1/2 minutes of brilliance with ‘By All Means’. I always had an affinity with his 1982 classic ‘I’m So Glad You’re Here’ and it rocked the joint when I played it a few days after he passed. As a side man he featured on Norman Connors ‘Dance Of Magic’ album, Doug & Jean Carn ‘Spirit Of The New Land’ album, Donald Byrd’s ‘Caricature’ album and Herbie Hancock ‘Mr Hands’. He passed aged 68. Colonel Abrahams (May 25, 1949 – November 24, 2016) Apparently his real name Colonel Abrahams was in a band Conservative Manor, 94 East that featured Prince Rogers Nelson on guitar in 1976 but he didn’t really shine until the impressive ‘Music Is The Answer’ with his deep baritone and hypnotic vocals. It was never a favourite of mine but commercially many remember his successful hit ‘Trapped’. I was more partial to ‘Never Gonna Let You Go’ and there is a fantastic remix by Victor Simonelli worth listening to. Considered one of the house vocal pioneers I did manage to catch him few years go at The Indigo and he was quite a showman. It’s sad to know that unfortunately he was previously living homeless and passed aged 67. Sharon Jones (May 4, 1956 – November 18, 2016) Sharon Jones had a late start in her musical career in her early 40’s. Sharon was born in the USA, South Augusta GA but reallocated north to Brooklyn. She fronted The Dap Kings and recorded on Daptone Records and carried the baton for that good old fashion southern funk inspired by fellow South Carolina legend James Brown. She had an incredible voice and toured Europe and definitely embodied that old spirit from the 1960’s and 1970’’s similar to Lee Fields but in the new millennium and as a dominating talented female. She record 6 albums on Daptone showcasing bullets like ‘This Land Is Your Land’, ’Little Boys’ and ‘I Learned The Hard Way’. I never got to see her but went to the tribute night at Jazz Cafe. Probably like the godfather she was one of the hardest working ladies in show business, who unfortunately passed fighting cancer. Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou aka George Michael (25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) Not going to pretend I’m a connoisseur of George Michael or that I was a fan, and most definitely do not have ‘Wham Rap’ in my collection ever… However ‘Careless Whisper’ without doubt is a jazz soul staple masterpiece of his. For me it was his collaboration with Mary J Blige on the Full Crew Remix of Stevie Wonder’s ‘As’ that was recently dropped nicely by Jon Jules at Blackpool Jan 2017 that holds good memories for me. He was well loved and adored as the soul boy from the UK who conquered the US and the world and all due respect to him, as he did have a unique soulful quality. I am not too proud to say though that I was very partial to ‘Club Tropicana’ and dared to play it at a soul holiday, alongside Kiki Dee and Elton’s ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’. Both, dare I say it, had the audience singing and dancing like they were in the shower. I will always remember the promoters face when they heard the intro thinking ‘what the bleep bleep do you think ya doing Fitzroy.” But I just grinned cos sometimes you just gotta have “ ‘Faith’ faith faith”. Thanks George nice one mate !! thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk
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2017 Tour Dates April 20 - Birmingham - The Jam House April 21 - County Durham - The Lobster Ball April 22 - London - Clapham Grand April 28 - Liverpool - The Olympia April 29 - Manchester - Academy More Venues Coming Soon For information and updates please visit WWW.SHALAMAR.INFO/INFO/TICKETS/ “A NIGHT TO REMEMBER” “FRIENDS” “TAKE THAT TO THE BANK” “THERE IT IS” “I CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD” “SWEETER AS THE DAYS GO BY” “THE SECOND TIME AROUND” “DEAD GIVEAWAY” “MAKE THAT MOVE”
www.facebook.com/ShalamarFriends/ Page 42 - Issue 67
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MARCH Friday 10th to Sunday 12th March - HAYLING ISLAND SPRING SOUL & REGGAE WEEKENDER - Mill Rythe Holiday Village 16 Havant Rd, Hayling Island PO11 0PB for DJ’s and and artists see advert
What's going on? FEBRUARY Friday 17th February - SOUL SURVIVOR MAGAZINE AWARDS UNDER THE BRIDGE @ Under The Bridge 2017 Stamford Bridge, Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1HS, Live debut performance from The Brit Funk Association Sunday 19th February - SUNDAY SESSIONS @ The Book Club 100-106 Leonard Street London EC2A 4RH 8pm-midnight £7 £5 before 9pm DJ’s Kengo, Eddieboi DJ Soulprovyder special guest Shy One (DVA Music/ Rada Radio) see advert Friday 24th February - and last Friday every month A FAMILY AFFAIR with OBJ’s spinning jazz funk, soul, latin & boogie + DJ Pepper Sleeves and DJ Bugsy Wan playing their mix of soul & funk The Rocket, 11 Churchfield Road, Acton W3 6BD. 6:30 pm ‘til 1am —FREE ENTRY Venue has full wine & dine menu.
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Saturday 11th March - MI-SOUL - Gordon Mac, Ronnie Herel, Bob Masters, Stretch Taylor & Mistri see advert Sunday 19th March - SUNDAY SESSIONS @ The Book Club 100-106 Leonard Street London EC2A 4RH 8pm-midnight £7 £5 before 9pm DJ’s Kengo, Eddieboi DJ Soulprovyder special guest Uchikawa (Loft Soul Recording) see advert Saturday 25th March - MUSIC WITHOUT LABELS A NIGHT TO REMEMBER No1 Warehouse West India Quay Canary Wharf E14 4AL Gerardo Frisina Bob Jones Grumpy Brown, David Lyn, Mark Blee & Paula Fossett see advert Friday 31st March - and last Friday every month A FAMILY AFFAIR with OBJ’s spinning jazz funk, soul, latin & boogie + DJ Pepper Sleeves and DJ Bugsy Wan playing their mix of soul & funk The Rocket, 11 Churchfield Road, Acton W3 6BD. 6:30 pm ‘til 1am —FREE ENTRY Venue has full wine & dine menu.
APRIL Good Friday 14th April - SOUL TRAIN EASTER @ SWX
15 Nelson St, Bristol BS1 2JY Early bird tickets 2 for £15 Feb then £10 see advert
Good Friday 14th April - THE LONG GROOVE FRIDAY DJ’s Dez Parkes, Dezzi D & Fitzroy (Soul Survivors) @ The Crowndale 65 Crowndale Rd, Camden, London NW1 1TN 10pm4am. £7 early bird and £10 on the door see advert Easter Sunday 16th April - LOVELITE PROMOTIONS LOVELITE’S EASTER PARTY @ Leaside Hotel, Luton LU3 1BT PA from Natasha Watts, 2 rooms of music jazz funk RNB & Reggae and a soulful house room. Dj’s James Vitton, Sherlock, Mark & Jason Lavern and guest Fitzroy (Soul Survivors) £10 early bird tickets see advert for more info Easter Monday 17th April 2017 - BLESS THE FUNK AFLOAT SOUL CRUISE down the Thames more ticket info contact www. blessthefunk.co.uk see advert Sunday 23rd April - JAZZIFUNK PRESENTS PAST PRESENT + FUTURE IN SUPPORT OF GEORGE POWELL, 2 rooms of jazz funk rare groove jazzy house and boogie with a PA from Natasha Watts. DJ’s Colin Curtis Bruce Q, Fitzroy (Soul Survivors ) and Groove On DP’N’J £5 on the door
MAY Friday 5th- Sunday 7th May - VIBES WEEKENDER with UK djs playing the best in oldskool ,soul ,neo soul,soulful house, afro beats & garage, 3 days & nights of the oldskool weekender vibes. A small £30 secures your accommodation and events for the weekender, www.vibesweekender.com, vibesweekender@ hotmail.com vibes weekender group
JUNE Friday 16th - Sunday 18th June 2017 - THE BLACKPOOL INTERNATIONAL SOUL FESTIVAL 2 @ A Winter Gardens 97 Church St, Blackpool FY1 1HL starring The Impressions, Little Anthony and Leroy Hutson plus various rooms and a top DJ line up see advert 15th June- 22nd - KAVOS SOUL & REGGAE WEEK DJ’s CJ Carlos, Femi Fem, Barrie Sharpe, Wil Johnson Mick Foster, Fat Freddie M and more see advert for details
OCTOBER 13th 14th & 15th October - DOIN’ IT IN THE PARK @ Sandford Holiday Park Holton Heath Pool Dorset BH16 6JZ, Live performance from Sunlight Square and set from Norman Jay and a ,multitude of DJ’s see advert
JUNE 2018 20th -27th June 2018 - 3 THE SOUL CYPRUS DJ’s Jon Jules, Stretch Taylor, Booker T, Fitzroy Soul Survivors, Brian Norman for more info see advert
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Doin’ It In The Park
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soul bbooo Paul “Trouble” Anderson Abi Clarke oggi iee Bobby & Steve Paul Clark John Morales Rocky Bob Jones Bob Jeffries Ashley Beedle Jo Wallace Jeff Young Dean Thatcher £180 pp for ALL Ronnie Herel Gavin Page 3 days & 3 nights minimum 5 people 119 Terry Jones Steiner 97 2Tony sharing in 6 berth 7 000 0 0 Melon Bomb Ginger s s s minimum 3 people Brandon Block BobO Povey in 4 berth COBrown SC in this amazing Eddie Piller Grumpy S DII D accomodation Ian & Rob Marie G Gary Dennis Chris Wilcox n Midnight Riot Steve Cole i IB at l I Z Andy DaviesA Mark Sherlock Bob Masters David Cooper FFUU NNticket Call now for purchase/information 01273 413800 KK online bookings from 9am Friday 27th January 2017
Playing Sunday 15th
Norman Jay MBE
(Shake and Fingerpop session) also playing live with full band
SUNLIGHT SQUARE
Starts 12pm Friday 13th October Page 48 - Issue 67 Ends Midnight Sunday 15th