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The
following is an edited transcript of an interview Pete did with Lisa Nash for Club A
Vision. |
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| Pete, when did you start
DJ'ing and how long ago was it? |
| I first started DJ'ing in
about 1976 / 77 |
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| You used to DJ at the Soul
Weekenders, how do u find the crowds differ at all from the big events, say, colours? |
| Obviously they change, the
weird thing about DJ'ing is, when you've been doing it for a long time, the crowd roughly
stays the same age and you get older. That's the way it works. It's all relevant to the
times, it's a lot madder since about '87 / '88, the whole thing is more national, bigger
business and more international than it was back in the late '70's and through the '80's.
That's the main way it changes. |
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| What did the Soul Weekenders
mean to you? |
| I suppose the best way of
describing it is, back in the early '80's there wasn't any notion of all night clubbing.
There wasn't any notion of people travelling abroad and going to places like Ibiza
together. There weren't any clubs that ran Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, so what
they did was to get everyone together in one place, so they could do it together for
longer. As soon as cities all over the country started to get their own established
nights, be it Back2Basics or Vague in Leeds, be it Cream in Liverpool or Wobble or
Miss Moneypenny's in Birmingham, you can go to a city now and have a good weekend. |
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| At Radio 1, Friday night is
the Essential Selection, what is the Saturday night show called and how does it differ
from Friday nights show? |
The Essential Selection is
more of a traditional, jocked on show, where I'm the presenter, basically the idea is i
turn up every Friday night with a bunch of records, and basically my mind state is
I'm enthusing about it to a bunch of friends. People find out what the records are and
there are different features in the show, it's based on a traditional radio format, having
a DJ tell you what the records are.
Saturday night is a mix show, so a part from me introducing it and saying goodbye at
the end, it's just continuous music. I'll do it on a fairly regular basis, mainly
when we are doing an outside broadcast, the rest of the time, which is the majority of the
time, it will showcase the worlds best DJ's. That was the idea behind the show. Not only
do you get a mix show onto Radio 1, which they hadn't had before, but showcase the worlds
best DJ's. |
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| Dance Nation 2 is an album
mixed by yourself and Boy George. When you are approached to do an album like this, who
actually chooses the tunes? |
It's works differently, with
the Ministry series, they give us a pool of records they want us to choose from and you'll
work with that and occasionally when it doesn't all fit together, I'll ask them to go and
get a couple of other things.
Where as with the Essential Mix albums it's a totally free choice. |
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| Do you prefer having a
completely free choice? |
| They are two different
concepts. The Ministry is a very focused idea of being a much more populist, retrospective
album, which celebrates the club hits of the last six months. Where as the Essential Mix
album is a lot more aligned to the format of the radio show, which is all about new music
and what's coming up within the next 4 - 6 months. So it's two completely different
things, if they were the same I wouldn't do the both of them. The reason I do the Ministry
one is because it's different to the Essential Mix one. |
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