greg wilson
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GREG WILSON REVISITS LEGEND
ELECTRIC CHAIR – THE RIOT
MANCHESTER
THIS SUNDAY 06.05.07
Between 2am and 4am in Jilly’s Live Review, as a
special feature of the Electric Chair All-Nighter,
Greg Wilson (representing the Invisible Players along
with Don Letts) will be revisiting an absolutely
crucial month in the evolution of Manchester dance
culture, playing a selection of the tunes he featured
25 years ago at Legend (or Legends, as the black crowd
would call it), where he hosted the UK’s most
cutting-edge black music nights every Wednesday from
August 1981 until the end of 1983, pioneering the
Electro-Funk scene in the process, which, in turn,
laid the groundwork for the oncoming Hip Hop, House
and Techno movements.
May 1982 is hugely significant as this was the month
that the Wednesday night sessions went through the
roof. Attracting its audience not only from
Manchester, but all over the country, the night would
enjoy extraordinary success, drawing a capacity crowd
every Wednesday for over 18 months solid, with queues
right up Princess Street, until Greg retired from
DJing in December 1983.
Lindsay Wesker, the club reporter from Black Echoes
magazine, and later one of the team who set up
London’s massively influential Kiss FM, described his
first visit to Legend in July ’82; ‘Quite simply, on a
Wednesday night, if you’re not in there before 10.00,
you may not get it. Why, you ask yourself, have these
people turned out in their hundreds on a Wednesday
night? Legend must rate as one of the top 5 clubs in
the country. If the heaviest American funk is what you
require, you’ll hear plenty of it coming out of the
beautifully balanced, but highly dangerous PA. And as
for the lights! This place has got ingenious lighting
inside the dance floor! Above the dance floor is some
half a mile of neon, which makes you think you’re
inside the Close Encounters spaceship. If I’d walked
out of the Legend front door and found myself on Mars,
I wouldn’t have been surprised. The lighting engineer
demonstrated the elaborate laser effects, and the
other effects plus the sound system create one of
Britain’s most conducive funking environments’.
Although we can no longer offer such spectacular
surroundings, what we can do is bring you a musical
feast circa May ’82 – the month that Afrika Bambaataa
& The Soul Sonic Force changed the course of dance
music forever with their seminal single, ‘Planet Rock,
which heralded the Electro era.
A copy of Greg’s ‘What’s Going On’ list from a quarter
of a century ago this very week, will be available on
the night. ‘What’s Going On’, handwritten by Greg, was
photocopied and given out at Legend and his other main
venue of the period, Wigan Pier. It included a
floorfillers chart reflecting what the biggest tunes
were each week, whilst also listing the records that
Greg had just bought on import, mostly from Spin Inn
on Cross Street, the main import specialist in the
North of England back then. Then there was the news
section, with a particularly important announcement
this issue – details of the forthcoming broadcast of
Greg’s first ever radio mix, to be played on Mike
Shaft’s weekly Soul Show, ‘Takin’ Care Of Business’ on
Piccadilly 261, the following Monday night (May 10th
1982).
Greg’s mixes would literally become the stuff of
legend and, to mark the anniversary a re-construction
of this inaugural mix will be made available as a
limited edition CD in selected Manchester record shops
later this month - ahead of that it will be broadcast
on Saturday night during the Unabombers' Electric
Souls Soundsystem show on 97.7 XFM (begins 11pm).
May ’82 was also the month that Manchester’s most
famous club ever, The Haçienda, opened its doors, but
it would be a number of years before it would finally
make its mark – all that lay in the future. Whilst the
late 80’s were all about The Haç and its role in the
mainstream explosion of dance culture in the UK, the
early 80’s belonged to Legend and the underground.
It’s only fitting that its influence should be
remembered and celebrated at Manchester’s greatest
underground night of recent times, the ever essential
Electric Chair.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
www.electriks.co.uk
ELECTROFUNKROOTS WEBSITE:
www.electrofunkroots.co.uk
INVISIBLE PLAYERS:
www.myspace.com/rizlainvisibleplayers
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www.electrofunkroots.co.uk
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