Zone Magazine Issue 037 Spring 2023

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Hello Jay, first of all please tell us where you are from, what you do? Firstly thanks for having me Paul, its generally me asking the questions over at PHC so this makes a bit of a change! I've lived in a town in Suffolk all my life which has always generally meant travelling if Ive ever wanted to go out. We're about an hour from London, Cambridge is about half hour, Essex about an hour. You kind of got used to it in the early days, distance was never an issue. I now alongside my regular job run the Progressive House Classics blog and Facebook group. Tell us about family life and what goes on when you are not DJ'ing and looking after PHC? We have our hands full and family life is pretty hectic. Ive got 3 boys with Autism so there's never a dull moment! Its the 1980's, your 13, and your just discovering music, tell us all about it? I was born in 1970 so Ive got some memories of the late seventies but I think things became a lot clearer musically in the eighties. My parents were big music fans and Saturday afternoons were always reserved for the playing of LPs, lots of Roxy Music and Elton John. When I went to 'middle' school the first real band I kind of embraced was Duran Duran who I managed to see live on a couple of occasions. Things really changed for me with the dawn of electro and breakdance though. In 1983 I picked up the first Street Sounds album 'Electro1' and I think I can safely say that was the first life changing experience I had with music, within a year you had Breakdance The Movie and Beat Street, both made a big impact. It was the first kind of youth movement that I felt I actually became involved in. I ended up becoming a keen breakdancer and would frequent the local youth club and recreational space with a piece of lino and a great big cassette deck. We did it religiously every Thursday and Saturday. Myself and my brother managed to see Public Enemy, Run DMC, Eric B & Rakim and LL Cool J live in the eighties. The thing with the whole electro breakdance scene was it became everything at the time and although it didn't have the lasting power of house you can definitely see the roots for the new sounds that were coming through. I think you could argue that without Electro you'd have no rap and no house, its integral in the early development of both. What was your first vinyl record? First record I actually bought with my own pocket money was 'The Specials – Too Much To Young' in 1979. Before that everything was handed down from my parents. You started off as a mobile DJ, tell us about the ins & outs of that! By the time I was 15 I'd become interested in playing music, we used to have these video roadshows come to the local youth club and they would be playing lots of soul funk and DMC mixes along with giving us a bit of Electro to break too, it sparked something and by about 16 I was travelling down to London buying US house imports. I then bought this old mobile disco that comprised of a Citronic Thames II deck with built in cassette player, light boxes and pin spots. None of it worked properly! I spent several weekends with my dad repairing everything and we got it going, what then transpired was me going on the road. I had a regular Thursday at the local hospital social club and from that ended up doing weddings and birthdays, I once got booked to do a birthday and when I set up it was full of skinheads, ended up getting one of them to go home and get his record collection so that I could play it, way out of my depth on that one! The disco worked well and one Friday I answered an ad in the local paper. The town nightclub was looking for a DJ, at this point I honestly thought that was what I wanted to do for a living so I applied and got an interview. Looking back it was hilarious, me and about six other blokes all sat on chairs at the side of the dance floor waiting for our 30 minutes. I played a load of soul funk and a couple house tracks, no mixing just blends and a bit of microphone banter introducing tracks. It turned out none of the others were happy on the microphone and I got offered the job to support the DJ upstairs although the manager was not to happy because of my age and lack of experience, decent personality club DJs were hard to find so I guess they took a gamble. The DJ I was supporting was a Liverpudlian guy named Allister and he was the first DJ to show me mixing two tracks together on 1200s although I never grasped it and just stuck with the blends. I learnt a lot about the art of DJ'ing from that guy. Why did you step back from the DJ scene around 2000? I wouldn't say I conciously stepped back from the DJ scene but I definitely remember a disitinct change in the way the whole scene was moving forward. The pinnacle of that was the Y2K celebrations, its well documented how everything kind of imploded with costs which in turn had a detrimental effect on a number clubbing brands. It kind of signaled the beginning of the end for the superclub brands but gave rise to the birth of bar culture. I ended up working in two bars in my hometown across maybe 2 or 3 years which embraced this. The first bar nights we were playing were a mixture of prog and funky house which went down really well but it soon moved in to a more predominent funky house direction which to be honest wasn't really my thing, but I was getting paid every Friday and Saturday night and that at the time was what mattered. I would say it was around 2003 that the regular weekend work started to fade out, it was also the time the I left my buyers position at the record shop.
Tell us all about your Djing and residencies! I'd have to go back to working at the local club in the late eighties which we spoke about earlier. While I was there a number of my friends were popping in for a drink and talking about going to acid house parties, initially I didnt think it would be for me as I was very happy where I was. I honestly thought I was going to travel abroad and DJ, I'd put a tape together for a company called Juliannas which was a DJ agency. I still had the mobile although I wasnt using it anymore. I felt like I'd progressed from that, but then it happened.. I went to my first acid house party and everything changed. Within about two months I'd finished at the local club and weekends were about going to parties and the whole DJ thing just didn't seem as important as I once thought it was. What I did know was that I fancied putting a party on and in March 1990 I rented something called the Drummond Centre and sent a load of flyers that I'd made up out, me and a couple of friends set the mobile disco up, flooded the place with smoke and put on some Chicago house, next thing the police walked in and said there was a report of an acid house party taking place and they shut us down! Hilarious looking back on it. A guy called Mick Logan was kind of doing the same thing but in a pub enviroment on a Sunday night I think but he pulled it off far better than I did. How the hell I'd have done a whole night was beyond me, no guest DJs, no Technics and I couldn't mix! Weirdly though this didnt put me off. I then decided to break into a farm unit with exactly the same setup, this time I had a DJ who did his best on the Thames II setup. After that event I rented systems and concentrated on doing parties right through 1990-91, warehouses, event halls and outdoor forest parties, Tin Tin the guy behind the Energy raves was a regular guest. There were 3 of us that concentrated on this and we had some decent success until the pay party unit got on to us! It wasn't until about 1993 time that I actually decided to step back into Djing initially with a set of JB belt drives which I then upgraded to a set of 1210s. I learnt to mix pretty quickly and had my first set at a local snooker club event, from then on lots of one off events which I organised and this took me up to the opening of a venue in my home town which was initially a cocktail bar but very quickly became a venue that many of us used as a meet before events. It was incredibly popular. I ended up as a resident there on Saturday nights and put parties on featuring lots of guest DJs including Lee Coombes, his brother Tim and one of the guys from SOR. After that ended up getting shut down in a dramatic drug bust I ended up moving over to a neighbouring town at a club called Vinyl Room where I played alongside lots of different guests, I think my favourite nights were with Mike Cosford (Fantazia Club Classics Tour) and Anthony Pappa, we were the first in the area to feature Anthony who I think we booked via Nick Gordon Brown at DMC, it was around the time he was putting together the Freefall – Skydive track. I did lots of retro nights there supporting Slipmatt, Ray Keith, Shades Of Rhythm, SL2, Ratpack, Baby D.. real good fun at the time and regular well paid work. Eventually I was playing back in my home town doing parties called Boom! These then led onto the two bars that I spoke about earlier. I had pretty regular work for a few years and was lucky enough to be working in a record shop for a good portion of that. ESSENTIALDANCEMUSIC 21
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 037 SPRING 2023 - Lemon8 " Be
Page 3 and 4: WELCOME ISSN 2009-8014 (Online) ISS
Page 5 and 6: LONDON HOUSE MUSIC WHAT THE HOUSE 3
Page 7 and 8: Exclusive DJ Mix FREE Exclusive DJ
Page 9 and 10: " We’ve already been working with
Page 11 and 12: Paul, you recently celebrated 30 ye
Page 13 and 14: " Ive been releasing music for 25 y
Page 15 and 16: " I was lucky to be around the club
Page 17 and 18: OUT NOW
Page 19: " I think my favourite nights were
Page 23 and 24: Where do you see the future of Elec
Page 25 and 26: DBM - Real Dream (1991)- [UMM] UMM0
Page 28 and 29: Who is Harry and who is lemon8? Har
Page 30: Festivals, Superclubs, small clubs
Page 33: Digital, vinyl, or CD’s and why?
Page 37 and 38: Stuart Paterson & Terry Hobbs
Page 39 and 40: " The festival scene is where every
Page 41 and 42: Emma Noble Tito Pulpo & Terry Hobbs
Page 43 and 44: Stuart Paterson & Terry Hobbs Dave
Page 45 and 46: The Headliners Crazy P (DJ SET) Cra
Page 47 and 48: " Most of the gigs I have had where
Page 49 and 50: What label has been the best to wor
Page 51 and 52: WIND DOWN SHOW PRESENTED BY AMARE N
Page 53 and 54: Who are we chatting to today? Digit
Page 55: Tone Rangole & Jay Lehman 2015 ibiz
Page 58 and 59: featurelabel __________________ Wor
Page 60 and 61: First off, how are you doing guys a
Page 62: You started off as Paper Recording,
Page 66 and 67: DJ CHARTS - spring issue 2023 Jens
Page 68 and 69: featuring ANA BE fly released 15th
Page 70 and 71:
Albums - Dance Deejay.de / Vinyl /
Page 72 and 73:
Vinyl + Digital Albums - Dance TECH
Page 74:
30 YEARS A DJ available now to stre
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Zone Magazine Issue 037 Spring 2023

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