brewster productions
you can catch bill brewster at this year' s electric elephant festival in croatia .
brewster productions acoustic nights concert: 6 p. m. sept. 2, hedge house museum lawn, 126 water st, plymouth. the big lonesome will perform, with molly brule opening .
plymouth – brewster productions is celebrating its 10th season of acoustic nights, its hugely popular, absolutely positively free summer concert series on the hedge house lawn. and this year’s lineup promises wonderful and inspiring entertainment .
jon dorn co - founded brewster productions back in 2008 with longtime friends scott mceuwen, harrison quinn and andrew carleen. as the series’ co - producer, dorn said he’s thrilled with the reception acoustic nights has received .
( c) 1999 bill brewster and frank broughton all rights reserved. isbn: 0 - 8021 - 3688 - 5
dorn said that when choosing the acts that would play during the independent music festival, brewster productions aimed to include as many genres of music as possible. showcasing everything from jazz to rock, dorn said the event appealed to a large audience .
plymouth – brewster productions acoustic nights concert: 6 p. m. sept. 2, hedge house museum lawn, 126 water st, plymouth. the big lonesome will perform, with molly brule opening. free. for information: www. acousticnightsplymouth. com .
if you' re interested in finding out more about brewster productions or the artists they work with, dorn gave us a little tip on how to stay in the know .
we' ll be posting our summer concert series schedules in april at urltoken and urltoken .
mark dale caught up with bill brewster to discuss his exhaustive book, previous and present dance music scenes plus his project plans moving forward .
brewster productions and its music series owe their lives to volunteers, sponsorships and grants. the 10th season is sponsored by the music box, and the venue has been donated by the plymouth antiquarian society. the series is also supported in part by a town of plymouth promotions fund grant .
because most of the bands that play at the festival perform only original tracks, dorn said the event is unusual for the waterfront area. although cover bands would most likely attract a larger audience, giving young musicians like derek measor, the chance to perform is extremely important to brewster productions .
jon dorn, co - founder of brewster productions, said the show has been held at since 2007 under the name school house rock, only receiving its new name this year. during the saturday afternoon event, six bands played on the main stage, while two acts performed on the side stage .
here you can find out more about some of our key past productions, giving you an insight into how they were staged and the directorial choices that were made .
talawa’s was the first all - black production in london, directed by yvonne brewster. rather than altering the script to accommodate ‘blackness’ or trying to subvert the play’s values, brewster reasoned that the theme of identity and trying to work out one’s origins made it relevant to all sectors of society in britain, black britons in particular .
brewster productions pushed the event back an hour to wait for the rain to stop, and the musicians took off their shoes and shirts to perform in the sweltering heat. during their free afternoon festival, everyone involved was working for a common cause: exposing residents of plymouth and beyond to original music from up - and - coming acts .
talawa was set up in 1986 by yvonne brewster, mona hammond, carmen munroe, and inigo espejel. talawa theatre company was the first professional black theatre company in britain .
box office: (508) 896 - 1888 3299 rte. 6a, p. o. box 1305, brewster, ma 02631 info @ urltoken © 2017 cape rep theatre
bill brewster also co - ran the influential dj history website and forum and, for 20 years, co - ran and dj' d at an underground club night called lowlife. both of these projects he killed off in 2015. we recently caught up with bill brewster to ask him about his long history in dance music and what' s next on the cards .
there have been more than 300 professional productions of the play in the uk since 1900, in every style of venue from proscenium arch and thrust stage to theatre - in - the - round and open air. casts have ranged from established west end stars to all - male, all - female and all - black actors and from modern dress to period setting. four notable 20th - century productions are highlighted below .
grimsby born bill brewster' s first vocation was as a chef, but thankfully for us, the world of music and writing beckoned and he forwent a stressful life filled with cuts and burns to the hands .
his latest compilations have been an impressively annotated and thorough series of ten multiple cd sources packs for harmless records, covering the catalogues of the likes of trax, sam, sleeping bag, p & p records and dj international. these amazing collections are sadly the final releases from harmless, which has been one of the uk' s premier reissue labels of the last two decades, but brewster' s compiling continues. up next is a two cd set of larry levan productions and remixes for universal .
most stations could not afford the orchestras and productions that went into the network radio shows ,
explained ben selvin, who worked for the leading transcription disc company .
and so we supplied nearly 300 stations with transcriptions that frequently—but not always—featured the most popular bands and vocalists .
our productions of henry iv part i over the years have included many famous actors playing the pivotal roles of prince hal, hotspur, falstaff and henry iv: richard burton (hal), michael redgrave (hotspur) and antony quayle (falstaff) in 1951; ian holm (hal), hugh griffith (falstaff) and eric porter (henry iv) in 1964; alan howard (hal) and brewster mason (falstaff) in 1975; timothy dalton (hotspur), joss ackland (falstaff) and patrick stewart (henry iv) in 1982; robert stephens (falstaff) and julian glover (henry iv) in 1991; david warner (falstaff) in 2007 .
i don' t miss it because i go back there and it isn' t the same city any more. but i miss that period of me living in it because i lived in the east village within walking distance of my office, northcott productions, king street, power music, nervous, tribal america, sub urban, for the record .
' [ yvonne brewster ] has not transposed the play to black territory, with different, if analogous manners and conventions. she has not turned it upside down with black masters and white servants. the revelation of this production is that the sight of black actors inhabiting the skins and minds of upper class white victorians does not seem strange or perverse' .
at the moment i' m just doing bits of journalism and djing at weekends. i' ve just done a larry levan compilation for universal that' s out at the end of march. well, i say i' ve just done it, i actually did it two years ago, it' s just taken two years to come out. it' s larry levan productions and remixes, things like peech boys and man friday, over two cds .
directed at the time by gielgud, this version was regarded at the time as the definitive production of the 20th century. it was produced by h. m. tennent, one of the leading theatrical managements of the period who were famed for their lavish and starry productions. it was designed by motley who produced a detailed set which was very different from their usual minimalist style, but true to wilde’s elaborate stage directions. gielgud’s direction was similarly faithful to the text and the edwardian style. one critic noted that :
in the 30 years since its inception, talawa theatre company has produced more than 40 notable and acclaimed productions including: the black jacobins by clr james; the importance of being earnest by oscar wilde; antony and cleopatra, king lear and othello by william shakespeare; the road by wole soyinka; the lion by michael abbensetts;' tis pity she' s a whore by john ford; blues for mr charlie by james baldwin; the crucible by arthur miller; rum and coca cola by mustapha matura; waiting for godot by samuel beckett, and all my sons by arthur miller .
on july 23, a total of eight bands performed their original music at the plymouth independent music festival at pilgrim memorial state park .
with temperatures reaching well into the 90s and a rainstorm striking in the morning, the plymouth independent music festival faced its fair share of challenges on saturday. still, the members of, which hosts the show, and the musicians were willing to work through the obstacles .
we worked really hard to put the set list together and there is a lot of talented young bands around here ,
dorn said .
i think it can be surprising to some people how many awesome bands are around here. so we really try to find them, give them a stage and get their music out there because it should be .
this year, the bands came from towns between boston and cape cod and included plymouth' s as well as emma ate the lion, the release and the brightest lights .
it is all over the place ,
he said .
especially with these shows, we try to not make it all just one genre. we kind of want to have something for everyone .
for dylan wheaton, a member of the band emma ate the lion, the presence of a wide variety of musicians was one of his favorite parts about performing at the festival .
it is definitely an eclectic assortment of different types of music, so it' s cool to see that everyone' s hanging out and supporting all the bands ,
wheaton said after his afternoon performance .
measor has been playing guitar with his rock band blacklight sunrise for about two years, and said he truly appreciated being given the chance to play at the event .
[ the festival ] offers an opportunity to up - coming bands ,
he said .
we are just trying to get out there .
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urltoken
thanks for the support so far! we' re offering a free fancy apple product to the next person who does the following: 1) find or build a time machine. 2) go back to early march when we shot this video. 3) pledge $ 200 within five minutes of when scott says
pledge in the next five minutes
. 4) enjoy your
new
ipad !
in case you missed it: we launched a kickstarter project to help save our acoustic nights summer concert series at the hedge house lawn. here' s our fancy launch video – if we can' t raise $ 2000 by june 1st, we' re gonna sell all of our sound equipment and buy a jet ski. either we have a great concert series, or we spend the summer cruising around the ponds of america' s hometown on a sweet ski - doo – can' t lose! but seriously, please pledge and share: urltoken
concert dates: did you catch our video announcement last week? the 2015 acoustic nights summer concert series is happening: june 27, july 11, august 15, august 29, september 5 at the beautiful hedge house lawn. lineup coming soon !
acoustic nights 2018: july 7 + august 11 + september 1. free concerts !
full series info at www. acousticnightsplymouth. com. artists to be announced soon !
2013 plymouth independent music festival - official announcement -
gimli vs. aragorn
the series kicks off next saturday, june 24, with brooklyn folk and americana singer / songwriter dan mills and plymouth’s own star singer / songwriter hayley sabella, a featured performer on pbs. all shows start at 6 p. m. and are held at 126 water st. on the 1809 hedge house museum lawn .
the series features up - and - coming artists from all over the region who perform acoustic folk, pop, jazz and everything in between. the concerts are held monthly throughout the summer on four saturdays .
george woods performs with stephen macdonald july 22. kaiti jones takes the stage, after savoir faire opens aug. 22. and the popular band macalla will close the season sept. 2 with molly brule opening .
“we are so excited to celebrate our 10th season with this lineup, ” acoustic nights co - producer eva walsh said in the announcement. “it’s a great mix of genres and it showcases the richness of the independent music scene in eastern massachusetts. ”
“when we started the series, we were 21 - years - old, just trying to help young musicians find a place to perform their original music, ” dorn said. “we had no idea it would go for 10 seasons; the community has been amazingly supportive. ”
© copyright 2006 - 2018 gatehouse media, llc. all rights reserved • gatehouse entertainmentlife
original content available for non - commercial use under a creative commons license, except where noted. wicked local kingston ~ 182 standish avenue, plymouth, ma 02360 ~ privacy policy ~ terms of service
© copyright 2006 - 2018 gatehouse media, llc. all rights reserved • gatehouse news
original content available for non - commercial use under a creative commons license, except where noted. wicked local carver ~ 182 standish avenue, plymouth, ma 02360 ~ privacy policy ~ terms of service
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the universal themes of ‘the importance of being earnest’ and the witty way in which its author, oscar wilde, conveyed them have made it an enduring classic, popular with actors, directors, and audiences .
the emphasis on surface appearance which wilde satirises in ‘the importance of being earnest’ is strongly reflected in the design and production values of early 20th - century revivals of the play .
the sets and costume were highly stylised and actors employed a similarly heightened artificial style of speaking and moving. images from the lyric hammersmith production of 1930, directed by nigel playfair, show this very clearly. the actors are all carefully placed and appear stiff and unnatural, conveying the restrictions of dress and manner dictated by victorian society .
this version starred john gielgud as jack. at the time gielgud was a rising star famed for his beautiful voice and striking profile. he went on to repeat the role three more times, as well as directing the play on two separate occasions .
' gielgud has wisely kept this little masterpiece as one of the objets d’art 'one saw on victorian mantelpieces, under a glass case. the diction is mannered, and the movements studied; thus bringing out the best in the author' s lines' .
the cast contained some of the best, and best known, british actors of the time: peggy ashcroft as cecily; gwen ffrangcon - davies as gwendolen; margaret rutherford as miss prism, jack hawkins as algernon, gielgud as jack and edith evans, whose delivery of ‘a handbag’ is still mimicked today, as lady bracknell .
oscar wilde’s friend, lord alfred douglas, visited gielgud in his dressing room after seeing the show, but much to gielgud’s disappointment was unable to give him any idea of how the original production had been performed. instead: ‘he merely insisted that most of the best lines in it were his and that he had stood over wilde when he was writing it’ .
the critical reception of the play showed that this was a wise decision. every reviewer noted that the play was entirely faithful to the original in everything but the colour of the actors, and so judged the production on the strength of their acting rather than the interpretation of the text. as nicholas de jongh commented in the guardian :
costume for lady bracknell (' the importance of being earnest'), by bob crowley, the aldwych theatre, london, 1993. museum no. s. 108 - 1993
another all - star, period dress, version of the play, directed by nicholas hytner. maggie smith made her first stage appearance in london for five years as lady bracknell and critics were divided over her new interpretation of the role. for some, she exaggerated the comic elements of her character too much, but for others, her performance was a breath of fresh air :
' the role of lady bracknell has always been haunted by the formidable ghost of edith evans, but at last another theatrical dame has stolen the coveted crown and placed it firmly on her own head. maggie smith, with her handspan waist and sucked - lemon lips, is totally commanding.'
the production also featured margaret tyzack as miss prism, richard e. grant as algernon, alex jennings as jack and claire skinner as cecily .
designer bob crowley gave the set an exaggerated sense of perspective which foregrounded the constant distortions of the truth throughout the play and reinforced the idea that nothing is quite as it seems .
discover the many treasures in the beautiful v & a; galleries, find out where events are happening in the museum or just check the location of the café, shops, lifts or toilets. simple to use, the v & a; interactive map works on all screen sizes, from your tablet or smartphone to your desktop at home .
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the second play in shakespeare' s series of histories, musing on the realities of wielding power .
was performed after the official opening of the shakespeare memorial theatre in 1932 and fifty years later was the inaugural production at the barbican theatre .
when shakespeare wrote henry iv, part i, what he used as his source material and how he changed it .
the rsc is a registered charity (no. 212481) © 2018 royal shakespeare company
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he started djing in the 1980s and despite being a fan of grimsby town he managed to acquire enough knowledge of the game of football to become co - editor of much rated football fanzine when saturday comes .
while continuing his record collecting and djing sidelines he progressed through a writing career that took him to new york in the early 1990s, where he ran dmc office as editor of usa mixmag. he returned to the uk, full of inspiration from the new york house scene, to run the twisted uk label .
in 1999 the book last night a dj saved my life, co written by bill and frank broughton, was published and it was the first serious attempt to chronicle the history of the dj. they followed that book with dj manual how to dj properly .
it felt like we were giving dance music a culture, in a way. even though it was already a culture it existed only as an oral history prior to writing that book. obviously loads of articles had been written over the last 30 / 40 years, but it was pretty amazing that none of it had been documented in a book .
it felt like an amazing opportunity to set a marker for what dance music culture was and the history of it. i think that' s what we' re most proud of, we were the first people to document it as a whole, a holistic view. you look at all the books that have been written about dylan and the beatles and there' d never been a single, proper book about djs. if you think about all the cultural impact they' ve had over the years it just seems bonkers .
i' ve always been, not anti that rock canon, but very suspicious of it, that idea that these are the great records and these are the great artists. it' s almost always white artists and that really used to niggle me a lot. the greats always used to be couched in white rock critic language. that' s not something i ever agreed with .
and, for me, one of the joys of djing is having an album that' s crap apart from one track. but you love that track and you play it, it could be by queen or supertramp, and that really doesn' t fit into that nme taking a line on a band, that kind of stuff. i found it liberating, when i discovered djs and djing, that you could find one track by an artist that you' d always hated, that was brilliant. and that' s ok. that' s kind of what being a dj is all about. that really goes against the grain of how rock criticism is written .
well, there were things like the balearic scene, for want of a better description. we put a load of stuff in about belgian nu beat and popcorn, the cosmic and afro scene in italy, the balearic stuff that had been happening in ibiza and we kinda lumped all that in, in a chapter, which was sort of about europe .
we didn' t exactly miss that out in the original version, although we did miss out cosmic, but it didn' t really fit anywhere, so we created a chapter so we could go a little deeper into it. same with hi energy. we shoehorned hi energy into the disco chapter, but in the second edition we gave it its own space and gave it a bit more of the respect it deserved .
it' s actually ten years since we did that and i actually can' t remember what else we did, but i do know we wrote about 50, 000 extra words, so we must have done something .
of the great amount of information revealed to younger folks, like myself, in the book, you were the first who ever documented the advances made by jimmy savile in club djing .
for a time that leant him a new air of respect amongst younger djs although it' s now hard to read that he was so important to the story, knowing what we do about him. did you come across any rumour about him during your research ?
we had a lot of people who said ,
ooh, i could tell you a lot of stories about jimmy .
none of them ever did but i always assumed that they were bad. when the shit hit the fan there was nothing i heard that was a shock. those stories had been discussed as informal rumours in the entertainment industry for decades. the scale of it was shocking, but not the acts themselves .
i suspect that he' s just one of several who were at it in the seventies. the seventies has been really tainted now, hasn' t it, with operation yewtree, jimmy savile, jonathan king, rolf harris? it just seems now that any time someone dies from the 1970s we' re only weeks away from an expose of what they did with children or teenage girls. it' s just neverending, so i suspect there may be very many more .
it' s a strange, strange thing to come across now, because that' s when i was growing up, that' s when i was a teenager and it' s almost like having your teenage years snatched away from you, in a way. so many of these people were a core part of my teenage years, not necessarily because i was a huge fan of jimmy savile, i always found him very creepy, as i' m sure most people did. but the fact all that was happening is really disturbing .
for younger people today i think it' s probably very difficult to imagine just how different britain was in the 1970s, the nf, skinheads on the street, the casual racism, the acceptance of misogyny. society has changed a lot since then .
yeah. that was the tenor of a lot of things in the seventies, the casual sexism, the casual racism. and also, if you dyed your hair and wore slightly strange clothes, which i did in the 1970s, you were never too far away from being chased down the street and having your head kicked in .
now you can dress as outlandishly as you want. people might stare at you, but i don' t think most people would do anything. in the 70s and early 80s you were literally taking your life into your hands by dressing weird .
i thought how to dj properly was a great manual. djing has changed a heck of a lot since it was written. was the book aimed at beginners? would you agree that you approached the book' s guidelines in a very old school fashion? if you were to revisit that would, what changes would you make ?
i wouldn' t say the book was aimed at beginners. the core people who bought it were mums, dads, aunts and uncles of beginners. i know from a lot of people who are now djs that these people bought it for them. but we never really aimed it at them .
we knew it had to be inclusive, so we made sure that if you were a beginner you got a lot out of it, but i like to think that it was really for music enthusiasts. the things we really wanted to hammer home were that it' s entertainment and it' s about being into music and wanting to share that music with people. we bang on a lot about that in the book. forget the helicopters and the dancing girls, if you' re not passionate about music you really shouldn' t be doing it .
yeah, we did approach the guidelines in an old school fashion. at that time cdjs were pretty new and not many people were using them, whereas now, technologically speaking, it' s a whole different ballgame. but i don' t think the fundamentals of what makes a good dj has changed. the tools that you use have .
really we should do an updated, digital version with traktor, record box and serato and all the newer technologies included. from that point of view it is really out of date. but in terms of what a dj does i don' t think anything' s changed. you still need the same skills, you just might do it in a different way. it' s about building bridges, relationships with crowds through music .
yes, although building bridges and relationships with crowds these days also incorporates the daily update of a twitter feed and a facebook page. would you cover that if you were to update it ?
we would definitely cover that, yeah. having said that there are plenty of people i can think of who have no digital profile, like andy weatherall, villalobos, and that just adds to their mystique. people queue up for them, so you can go both ways, you can be enigmatic with it and it might not affect you, you can still build a career without engaging in that way .
i personally enjoy it, meeting people who' ve seen you play and, being a writer, which is quite a solitary occupation, it' s not so often you get to meet people who read what you do. djing is great for me because people bring their books to be signed and it' s really nice meeting them .
it' s interesting the two examples you' ve given, it' s true the mystique doesn' t damage them. if i think about approaching someone from europe, in paris or berlin, i can go on to their social media, see exactly what they' ve been up to and more or less guarantee that i can get them on skype within a couple of days .
but if i want to interview someone like juan atkins or someone else in detroit, chicago or new york, quite often i' ll have to fill in a questionnaire request form to which i might not get a reply and if i do, skype won' t be an option, i' d have to call their mobile, dig for information about what they' ve been doing and these are the kinds of people who, love them though i do, might complain that these originators are being left out of dj polling charts .
well partly i think it' s a generational thing. certain members of my generation do not engage with things like social media because it' s completely alien to them. even the average joe in the street doesn' t have a twitter profile, i don' t think. so, there' s that and then there' s the racism, no doubt .
you may well be right that it doesn' t affect villalobos and weatherall yet it does affect those others. but, you know, villalobos and weatherall are still making music that feels very modern and current .
as much as i also love some of those old techno guys, with many of them i' m struggling to think of a record that they' ve done lately... i got a juan atkins record a couple of years ago, but that was literally the only thing i' d heard from him in 10 years. so i suppose you could argue that the music a lot of them are making is just not keeping up with today' s trends .
there were literally 30 record labels within 400 yards of the office and maybe 20 within 150 metres, so on a friday i would just walk round and come home with maybe 30 test pressings from all these labels. you really felt like you were in the middle of something really special. and you were .
you look back to those days now and that' s where many of the great house records of the period were coming out. mood ii swing were fantastic at that time, danny tenaglia was hungry and trying to get a residency, morales and knuckles were still doing interesting things, there was a lot happening .
i was in the middle of it and i was friends with a lot of them. i don' t look back wistfully and wished i still lived there but it was a really special time and i felt very privileged to be a part of it, even in such a small way .
as you say, you were there during some of the seminal years of new york' s contribution to house music. chicago and detroit get perpetual props, would you agree that new york' s contribution is somewhat undervalued ?
yeah, it probably is, to be honest. it' s hard to say. prior to house music new york was indisputably the musical city of the world. no question. from avant garde jazz, punk rock, hip hop, latin music, disco, there' s just so much amazing music coming out of new york from so many different angles .
it was amazing in the 1970s and early 1980s. i wouldn' t necessarily say it got overtaken by chicago, because i think chicago house was almost like a temporary blip in the city whereas new york moved seamlessly into the house era .
it kinda went from those mid eighties records that paul simpson, tony humphries were making to people like victor simonelli releasing stuff shortly after on nu groove, so it just felt like house music was a continuation of what was happening in ew york and new jersey anyway. it wasn' t the revolution it was in the uk, there were different circumstances in the uk that made it more dramatic .
but i don' t think you can ever overestimate just how amazing new york was from the late sixties right through to the late nineties. it hasn' t been the same place for the last 15 years, for a lot of different reasons, but there are still interesting things happening there .
but you have a lot of european artists now trying to make acid records that sound exactly like the ones that were made in chicago in the late eighties. i don' t hear anyone really trying to sound like masters at work, mood ii swing or todd terry. that whole danny tenaglia, junior vasquez or victor calderone sound also hasn' t aged so well, for me .
some of it has not aged very well. there was that victor calderone record that came out on yoshitoshi, that hasn' t aged very well at all although that record was huge towards the end of the sound factory .
but mood ii swing, i still play a lot of their stuff now. i think it' s the benchmark for quality house music, it' s a real combination of soulfulness and a real tough, sort of demonic sound underneath it. i love that mixture of the soul influence of lem springsteen and the tougher ideas of john ciafone. i think their stuff has really stood the test of time. some others, maybe less so .
other stuff like murk who, although they were from miami, were absolutely huge in new york. everyone played them and, when they stopped releasing on their own labels, they released on new york labels. to me that stuff really sounds good. it might just be cyclical, we might not have moved far enough away from it for people to start aping it .
i have noticed in sets by people like motor city drum ensemble that the mid - nineties sound is now something that they' re digging for and they' re looking for the ones that are harder to find than the ones that are more obvious. defected have put out that mood ii swing compilation quite recently so some of it is being remembered .
well, we had a 20 year anniversary this time last year and the more i thought about it, that was a really nice way of ending it. we' d done 20 years, at some point it was going to start going wrong, but it was still really good, we were still selling out, people loved it .
i' d rather finish it when it was really good, even though you think' fuck, that' s such a great crowd to play for'. i do miss that, but equally i know it was the right decision. 20 years is an achievement of some sorts .
also, you stopped running your website dj history last year. are you interested in keeping these brand names alive in any way and, if so, how ?
well, i' m in the middle of building my own website at the moment, so some of the content will move over there. we sold all of our interviews to red bull music academy and gradually they' re going to put them all online, which we never got chance to do. we did over 250 interviews, lots of which were never published anywhere .
we' ve had offers from people who would want to host the forum, just to keep it alive, so people can use it as a resource. so, hopefully it will all continue to exist in some form or other. but it just became a bit like commuting to london on the back of a cow. laborious. massive. unwieldy .
we spent so much time doing it and not earning any money out of it, we just thought, let' s put it all to sleep and it just feels liberating. we never took money out of lowlife, even though it was very profitable. we always invested it in cockamamie schemes like publishing books, keeping dj history running. over the years we probably spent hundreds of thousands of pounds running dj history for no other reason than that we' re fucking mental .
i don' t know. maybe there' s a bit of mao tse - tung in me. i honestly can' t say why. i don' t spend a lot of time dwelling on the past. even though we' ve become known as these people who document the past, once we' ve done something i don' t sit there daydreaming about how amazing it was .
i tend to concentrate on the future, what i want to do next. so, i don' t find it painful stopping doing these things, as much as i' ve enjoyed them .
you' re a writer. in many ways coverage of dance music has grown incredibly since you first started doing it and a lot more coverage is now in the video format, thinking about dj sets that you can watch or lecture style interviews that are filmed .
it' s now possible to get immediate access to some of these histories. how do you feel about that? would you agree that although it' s a lot more accessible for the consumer, some of the journalistic skill is often lost in these new formats ?
well the standard of writing is now really bad. but i think that' s a product of the standard of pay for writers being so bad. writers who are really good generally can' t make a living and go and do something else .
i couldn' t make a living as a writer if i wasn' t also djing and doing compilations, stuff like that. all of those things make up a living, but one on their own i couldn' t survive on and i' m pretty well established and get quite a lot of offers .
the other stuff i think is really good. i don' t see things like video lectures replacing what is written in a book or a magazine piece. they' re all adjunct to each other. so you can view a video interview by moodymann then go and read a book on detroit techno like dan sicko' s. they' re different sides of the same coin .
i often watch lectures like that and i think they' re an incredible resource. interviews with people who have a lot to say over an hour or an hour and a half? what' s not to like .
you' ve recently compiled 10 sources compilations for harmless records. and you' ve written the sleevenotes too. and notes on each track! that' s a hell of an undertaking .
yeah [ laughs ]. i reckon i could' ve gotten away with writing a quick 1, 000 words on each compilation, but things like that, to me, present themselves as a real opportunity to go a little bit deeper into a particular subject, so i did fresh interviews and research .
i think each compilation averaged over 5, 000 words, so over ten compilations that maybe 60, 000 words. so, yeah, maybe i' m a bit mental for doing it, but maybe i just a bit of a nerd. i find it interesting, exciting. it satisfies the noseyness and nerdiness inside me. i always think, well, i want to know that, so why wouldn' t anyone else want to know that ?
oh, god. that is really hard. maybe sleeping bag, just for the variety of music that they released. early on, loads of stuff by arthur russell, hip hop, electro, house music. but it' s such a hard call. there are a lot of really good labels there .
it' s the final releases for harmless. that' s quite sad. it' s been such a pivotal reissue label since the mid 1990s. is it just a sign of the times ?
yeah, it is. it is sad. but there are other labels that have stepped up and are doing interesting compilations. harmless is basically owned by the bbc and it' s about economies of scale for a company like that .
the way they did it was they would buy the rights to particular catalogues then rinse them before the terms of the license expired and i guess it was no longer financially viable for them to do that. i think the only way to do compilations now is on a much smaller scale and they' re not really set up for that. but it is really sad .
as well as the sources compilations i did the make music compilations for them, one called spiritland and i' ve worked with lots of different people there, gavin fraser, who works at universal, quinton scott, who runs strut, ian dewhirst, who i actually met through writing last night a dj saved my life. they' ve done some amazing compilations .
you' ve now had free head space to think what to do next. so, what next ?
i' ve had a couple of really interesting offers actually. two of them are really exciting, but they' re in the early stages of planning so i can' t really talk about them. i think i' ll have to choose between them as they' re both pretty demanding .
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talawa theatre company is led by artistic director michael buffong. talawa theatre company is the' go to' company for producing new black work, enabling emerging artists to showcase their work before influential audiences through initiatives like talawa firsts, the script reading service and studio firsts. in addition, talawa produces a touring production annually. the touring production is a high quality production of a classic piece of theatre, re - imagined for the 21st century .
funding from the greater london council' s race equality unit as part of the' black experience arts programme' enabled talawa’s first production, clr james’ the black jacobins. since then funding from the arts council of england has enabled talawa to become a national portfolio organisation and the primary publicly funded black theatre company in the uk .
the entry of broadcasting into the history of music has changed all forms of musical creation and reception. radio music is a kind of magic and the radio set becomes a magic box .
thomas edison, who invented the cylinder phonograph in 1877, hardly conceived of putting music on it, and in any case his equipment could only just be heard by a single person, let alone a group. emil berliner, who gave us the flat - disc gramophone in 1887, would still probably fail on the volume test. a decade later the radio waves were tamed, but it would take another full ten years before marconi & apos; s equipment was able to send more than morse & apos; s dots and dashes. however, when the gramophone and radio signal were finally combined, we find our first dj candidates .
in 1907 an american, lee deforest, known as the
father of radio
for his invention of the triode, which made broadcasting possible, played a record of the
william tell overture
from his laboratory in the parker building in new york city .
of course, there weren & apos; t many receivers in those days, but i was the first disc jockey ,
he claimed. deforest was wrong, however—he had been preceded .
at the end of 1906, on christmas eve, american engineer reginald a. fessenden, who had worked with edison, and who intended to transmit radio waves between the u. s. and scotland, had sent uncoded radio signals—music and speech—from brant rock near boston, massachusetts, and astonished a number of ships & apos; telegraph operators out in the atlantic. he made a short speech explaining what he was doing, read the bible text
glory to god in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will
and played a few solos on his violin, together with some singing, which he admits
was not very good .
in between all this, he became the world & apos; s first disc jockey, because he also played a record over the airwaves .
what was the very first record played by a dj? it was a woman (probably clara butt) singing handel & apos; s largo .
and the radio dj was undoubtedly powerful, almost from his inception. his promotional muscle was the major factor in the creation of the modern music industry (and the broadcast advertising industry, too). he was instrumental in founding new genres of music, by bringing together unconnected stylistic strands and by creating pride and ambition in the local folk musicians who played them. in a similar way, the early disc jockeys were key in fostering understanding between different races and cultures.
brewster productions is a concert production and promotion company based in plymouth , massachusetts . brewster productions is the producer of the acoustic nights summer concert series and the plymouth independent music festival . the acoustic nights summer concert series is presented in association with the plymouth antiquarian society . 
brewster productions is a concert production and promotion company based in plymouth, massachusetts. brewster productions is the producer of the acoustic nights summer concert series and the plymouth independent music festival. the acoustic nights summer concert series is presented in association with the plymouth antiquarian society.
brewster productions is a concert production and promotion company based in plymouth, massachusetts. brewster productions is the producer of the acoustic nights summer concert series and the plymouth independent music festival. the acoustic nights summer concert series is presented in association with the plymouth antiquarian society.