1.Growing Up
The first record I remember buying when I was a nipper was Fun Boy Three – ‘It Ain’t What You Do’, probably sourced from watching the Max Headroom TV shows, with endless oddball videos played back to back from that time. Later in my teens I was a big fan of the pirate radio stations playing out over the airwaves of London – rare groove, jazz-funk, hip hop, early house and rave tackle. I later did a show on one of these stations out of some dodgy industrial estate in Essex – the kit was pretty basic at the time, so you never quite knew if anyone was even picking up the signal at all.
2.Influences
You can’t beat a spot of Herbie Hancock. He is just an amazing musician with an ace back catalogue. And everyone should listen to Wally Badarou. The first time I heard him, I was hooked.
3.Your Crew
From my late teens I worked in various record shops in Soho, which was obviously handy, so I got into DJing from there. I met Phil Mison in one of those shops nearly 20 years go, who I still make music with now, and obviously me and Dicky [Trisco] go back a long way, from when he first invited me up to Dundee to play his club.
4.The Music You Make And Play
Working in record shops for a decade, you get to hear a lot of fresh music. Then it was just a matter of sticking them all together really. When Dicky and I play together we tend to mix it right up, have a lot of fun and are always packing some serious disco, Italo and house weapons. We do play a lot of Secret Squirrel, Disco Deviance and tracks from our own imprints like Music For Swimming Pools and Paradise Row. And of course tracks by friends like Eric Duncan, Faze Action, Medlar, Frank Booker and Chris Duckenfield’s various projects.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
There are a lot of labels out there now because of the whole digital way things have gone. So it can be a bit of a mixed bag and you really have to dig around. And of course social media is a lot more important now than it used to be. But there are great scenes all over the world in places like Asia and South America and it’s great getting to visit and play in these places. I’ve spent a lot of time in particular over the last nine years in Bali, and it certainly makes a nice change from Bethnal Green.
Pete Herbert playsDisco Deviance, withDicky Trisco, at Hudson Ballroom on Saturday March 18.
