Bill Brewster
wrote the definative book about DJ culture «Last Night A DJ Saved My Life». Besides his dayjob as an acknowledged writer, journalist and CD compiler and his night job as a DJ and record collector he runs the DJ History website, which is the web’s meeting point for all dance music aficionados.
His new book «The Record Players» can be found in any good book store.
This song is so long, it might actually last the whole time...
It has these synths that sound like they’re bubbling up from an electronic cauldron.
Is it a Nar whale? No! It’s the B-25’s. The B-52’s are the epitome of sunshine music, supremely daft and brilliant.
Have you ever seen the video to Fat Bottomed Girls?
I can see cactii when I hear this...
My favourite club record. Mad disco played loud, what more can you ask for?
It’s the night after the Sound Factory, and we’re making pancakes and maple syrup in my St. Mark’s Place apartment.
1978, The Music Machine, Camden Town, the Clash performing this song. Incendiary!
Don’t ask me why, but when I hear this song it reminds me of blonde women with long hair running through the grass, slowly.
The only time I eat cucumber is either in soup – yum! – or with tuna and mayonnaise – double yum! – and this blues-funk record makes the perfect condiment.
I’m 21, I’m getting ready to go out and looking in the mirror thinking I look great. I look an idiot of course, but when you’re 21 you’re allowed to do that.
I generally like wallowing in depression, like most men, and this is moody as hell, yet curiously uplifting.
If you’re destroying hotel rooms, you’d need some Zep to help you along, and this De La Soul-sampled tune is the perfect one.
I can’ think of a more disagreeable way of disturbing my neighbours than this discordant and disturbing record. When I was 18, I played this to death.
It’s 1995 and I’m driving back to Grimsby late at night and I can see Lincoln Cathedral up on the hill, bathed in sodium light. And «Dark & Long» comes on the radio...
This is the least sleep song with «sleep» in the title ever. Funky modal jazz!
These days, I’m happy to stay in the stands rather than the pitch.
What a record! It’s like 60s French hip hop, and who is better than watching girls go by than the French?
Mechanical music for mechanical fun.
A song that will remind me of my wife forever.
Perfect for that sunny morning feeling after you’ve just made love with the wife.
Betty reminds me of sweaty bodies. You can imagine her doing it in the studio, beads of sweat running off her face. Grr.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I love the Creation and this is one of their finer moments, unfortunately desecrated by Boney M some years later.
A hippy classic, leftfield psych-pop, dreamy and perfect for those intimate parachute moments.
My mum loves Shirley Bassey, and I love her reading of this Beatles classic.
It’s got the right rhythm for a game of table tennis. Maybe.
«Fly with me, all through the night...». Those groovy Germans sing and you can’t disagree with that, however literal.
You need rhythm when you’re playing chess. Apparently. I’m playing to the beat of John Lee’s foot.
Oooh that’s better...
Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Bling!
I’m scared of heights, the likelihood of me washing anything above the ground floor is highly unlikely.
I hate the dark, and this is the spookiest record I’ve ever heard. I’d probably have heart failure combining the two.
Slow, low and really fucking far out.
Well, it’s about a train, sort of, and it’s beautiful, definitely.
They travel, I travel, too.
It’s soft and gentle... and I think we should all say a little prayer when we wake up.
If I’m writing I prefer silence, hence this...
I never work in the garden, I don’t even have a garden. But if I did, I suspect this might be played while trimming the parsnips.
