I don’t know if any of you know this, but from 2001 to 2011, I constituted one quarter of the atoms in the white-hot comet of cool that was RocknRollSoul.
We started out life in a Belgian bar called the Dove Regent in Islington, timing our tentative outings on the decks with friends’ birthdays to make our little club night look popular.
After that we moved to the Albany, Great Portland Street, which we were particularly keen on due to it being the venue for the Heavenly Sunday Social. We could say we were using the same DJ corner as the Chemical Brothers and Paul Weller, because, well, it was sort-of true.
The night became a success, thanks to unabashed hype from NME, where I was working, and London PRs’ habit of bringing their bands down to show them something that felt a bit speakeasy (the Albany only held 100 and was open till 2am). Members of Kings of Leon, the Libertines and the Soledad Brothers popped in; Noel Gallagher and Martin Freeman wore our badge (of him, more later). At the peak of this first wave there were 100 in the bar, another 100 queuing to get in, and we found ourselves fretting as to what we would do when the White Stripes turned up (as it happens they stayed in that night and watched The Omen instead).
The formula was shonkily mixed rock with soul and soul that rocks. There were four co-founders: me and my mates Gary Barrell, Jimmy Young – not that one – and Nathaniel Cramp, now boss of the label Sonic Cathedral. We brought in pals such as Wee Al, Andrew Laidlaw, the Funk Pursuivsnt, Jah Shabby and the wonderful Emma Sunley, one of our first regulars, who we found on a Ryan Adams messageboard and who followed us on a Summer Special jaunt to the Isle of Man on her moped. Her friend the other Emma, married the Funk Pursuivant, while former Blur tour DJ and future Weller bassist Andy Lewis also met his wife at Rock’n’RollSoul.
Andy was one of our first guest DJs. This being a high time for soul compilation albums, we also coaxed Eddie Piller, Stewart Kirkham and Darryl Easlea to open their record boxes, as well as the Go! Team, the Soundcarriers, the Crackles, the Soulsavers, Stuart Geddes (Belle & Sebastian), Paolo Hewitt and more. The latter put us in touch with Martin Freeman (who’d said nice things about us in NME having heard us DJ at the Awards before some bloke called Mark Ronson). To everyone’s surprise and delight, he hotfooted it from the stage of the Royal Court to the decks of RocknRollSoul to play a set. His guestlist included Bill Nighy who came down and cut some elegant rug.
There was the odd live engagement, too. A Wilson Pickett impersonator for our birthday party at the Legion; the actual winner of Stars in Their Eyes, Emma Wilkinson as Dusty Springfield, and Colbert the Black Elvis, who opened a riotous night on the Battersea Barge with Edgar Jones and the Joneses. All the aforementioned, including Freeman, who came back for another night, turned up on trust and got paid only in beer and cab money. The other proceeds, we syphoned into our Tuesday night venture Health & Happiness, an above-average folk and country night where the actual Jackie DeShannon once performed for us.
The night moved around: to the even smaller basement of the Slaughtered Lamb in Farringdon to the scary sectarian stronghold of The Cock in Smithfields, to the hard-to-fill but sometimes spectacular Phoenix on Cavendish Square, before limping on to the Market House in Brixton. Things had changed: the 80s were being celebrated more than the 60s and people were now used to every pub having decks. The Market House was busier downstairs than its venue upstairs and it was time for us to pack it all in. Ten years is a good run for a club night. And it wasn’t hype that got us second place in the Londonist’s’ clubs of the year. Like all of the above it actually happened, powered mainly by music, comradeship and the kind of energy one can only possess when you’re surrounded by likeminded friends, seduced by the possibility of the city, and yet to have kids keeping you up at nights.
So why am I telling you all this? I’d love to say that we’re back, Back, BACK! But we’re not. Although we could make ourselves available for parties (we have literally played 21st, 30th, 40th, 50th, and 60th birthdays; no funerals as yet). No, it’s only to drum up support for the playlist below, my first experiment with Spotify’s new Mix feature. These aren’t the songs we used to play; they’re what we would play if RocknRollSoul was still a thing. I hope you enjoy it.
What a lovely read.
For about five years, my musical partner in crime and I ran a monthly Live + DJ night in a pub in Cambridge, on the road from the train station to town, so always a transient audience popping in. Two live bands (I mixed the sound) followed by a couple of hours of DJ set, usually by me but often by guest DJs (who showed me up, as they could actually DJ whereas I just played tunes).
I tried to play interesting, rather than popular, tunes – there are plenty of other venues in town for chart pop or dance music. I always kept a pad of Post-it notes and a pencil handy for the “this is great – what is it?” questions (this is pre-Shazam).
One table of regulars were students, who came month in, month out. I received my highest complement when they came over one night, as I packed the gear away and said “we’re not really bothered about the live bands, we come to hear what tracks you will play”. I went home feeling about 10 feet tall.
Sadly the pub landlord had a triple heart bypass, handed the keys back to the brewery, and was replaced by a gammon who painted a massive Union Jack on the wall. It was made clear that we were no longer welcome – the rhythm section of the house band were both gay, and I often played music made by “forriners”.
Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.
It really is fun, isn’t it? I do remember half the time drinking too much, convinced there was no one coming, then hitting the decks completely plastered when it was busy and absolutely loving it, “mixing” those seven-inches largely by ear; I also remember someone mentioned that we should do a bit of a Fatboy Slim, ie clap along to our records and gee the crowd dup a bit; the atmosphere in the Albany was fantastic, a proper sweatbox.
I also think this is the absolute best music for dancing. It was a flagged floor; there were no poseurs dressed to the nines and putting talc down to do spins. It was exactly the club I’d always wanted it to be. We maybe could have kept a bit more of the money rather than subsidising our other nights, but I remember those fondly too. There’s one bloke doing something similar on his own in the Phoenix and some other pubs, and he must trouser a few hundred quid each night because he does it solo. But we were all about the fellowship and the fun.
But I know what you mean about gammon pubs. I was a bit perturbed rocking up at the Cock one Saturday afternoon to set up. It was a Rangers pub inside the meat market at Smithfields, and there’d been a big EDL march in town: the place was full of proddys with drums and flutes. Fortunately when we said we needed to get going to play our soul music (gulp), someone who looked and sounded like Ian Paisley bellowed: “Lads! These boys want to set up, everybody out, now!”, and they all filed out.
My favourite “dodgy” moment was the time I was spinning a Junior Senior track. Someone in replica football kit with tats on his neck, came and ‘suggested’ I stop playing “all this poofter music – play some ABBA instead!”
Reader, this DJ’s next selection was Homophobic Asshole by the Senseless Things.
He swigged the dregs of his pint and stormed out.
Strange as of course ABBA were/are very popular with gay clientele.
That’s what made it all the more strange.
Keeping the club night free entry meant that most complaints could be dealt with by “You haven’t paid to come in so, if you don’t like it, there are plenty of other pubs in town and the door is over there”.
What a brilliant playlist, one that I will be giving a lot of listening time to I’m sure. Totally agree about this being the best music for dancing. Puts me in the mind of Wendy May’s Locomotion Club, which ran at Kentish Town’s Town & Country Club in the late eighties, which I went to a few times and absolutely loved…an unpretentious, happy night was always had by all who attended.
I’d forgotten about the Locomotion. It was great, wasn’t it?
It was fab. It was apparently the club that Nick Hornby based his character Rob’s DJ background on in the book “High Fidelity.”
I never went but it gets a mention in TMTCH’s King Street Serenade. Pre Covid, Wendy was still DJing, she was at an indoor festival at Margate.
Wendy is apparently now a resident of Hastings and DJs locally, although there is an upcoming “reunion” of the Locomotion at London’s 229 sometime this month. I went to one pre Covid, and that was good fun too.
I was unaware of her DJ rep but followed her on Facebook because her musical choices are always good. In my mind the character in High Fidelity was a Nanci Griffiths new country type. I arrived in London a couple of years too late for all that.
I believe that Merrill Heatley, another ex Boot Hill Foot Tapper lives in Hastings, almost as though people from that brief London Cowpunk scene have gravitated there.
Along with London singer-songwriter Jason McNif, and an awful lot of ex-Q and NME journos.