The UsVsTh3m crowd really gave me the horrors with this app, at least when it was returning UK No.1s. Mine has a fast start – Odyssey, in July 1980 – but then plunges into two Spice Girls tracks and, Christ!, Wet Wet Wet. And Frankie Knuckles has left the building. This of course was an excuse to Listen To All The Things.
Here he is (thanks to Les Inrocks) in 1977.
The amazing thing here is that even then, when there were no conventions for this sort of thing, it’s all already there. It even sounds pretty fresh.
Here he is on the radio in 1986.
And live in 2012:
I saw him play in November that year at XOYO. I had flown back that morning from Dubai; I probably wouldn’t have done that for many other artists. He projected; DJs are infamous for hiding behind the machinery, and either making a virtue of being a faceless technical force or else trying to escape it and looking like a twat. But he seemed to host the night in a real sense, projecting welcome and acceptance. I also remember that he didn’t play much of his own stuff. Nothing could have been easier than running through a conventional, conservative set of the classics, but he wasn’t going to do that.
Anyway.
even if I prefer this version:
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