Funk’d Up!

This track dates back to sometime in the early 00′s – I’d guess at 2001, and was made as a possible promo release with a guy from a certain, high profile dance label having some creative input. My then production deal with the Ministry of Sound added some complications at the time and for (yet again) one reason or another, the promo 12″s of this track were left sat behind some A&R man’s desk and never saw the light of day. It’s a darn shame really, because I genuinely think this is the best house record I’ve ever made (the ‘Sharp Boys’ thought so too, and attempted to sign it for release on their label!).

On the studio, geek side of the fence, the track was made up with some old funk samples, a cheeky little borrow from an Art of Noise track (hence the ‘Dum’ in the title) and use of an old style, proper analogue filter unit, called the Electrix Filter Queen.. or something like that. Anyway, ‘it’s all about the tunes’, as a radio DJ friend of mine says, so.. here it is – enjoy.

The ‘and me’ part there actually translates to a similar type production that got SO close to an actual release, but due to some bizarre focus switch from the label (MCA Records) at the time, left this project on the shelf. I created a pseudonym (as I was often to do throughout my career – good, bad move?). The artists then was CHANNEL D, the track was called ‘Oh-We-Oh (love or lust?)’. The ‘D’ of course was my surname initial, and latched onto a utilised vocal sample from the cult 60s spy TV programme, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

As you’ll hear from the Soundcloud file below, it is indeed a sample-fest, an audio potpourri of bits and bobs that somehow hangs together with an underpinned groove lifted from Oliver Sain’s rare groove classic, ‘Bus Stop’. It contains original drums, bass, keyboards and guitar and fell nicely into the wake of the Bomb The Bass et al productions mentioned earlier. Alas though, it was not meant to be. MCA Records got as far as sending a legal document to secure the track, then as I said, had an eleventh hour transfer of affection (as it were) to another in house producer over at DMC. And no, before you ask, I aint, and wasn’t, bitter. I did however bury the project, not even letting DMC themselves put it out – and swiftly moved on to create another sound, another direction and flip a re-invention along the way. ‘Oh-We-Oh’ was never broadcast live on radio, never released in any format and was only played (off 1/4″ tape) twice at my then DJ residency, The Hippodrome, London. I found an old cassette with it on recently, and that is how I rediscovered it. Download if you’d like and enjoy, even for old times sake..

WTF?!

Call me some ol’ dude advancing in years, but I honestly can’t even remember programming, recording or mixing this. But I do however recognise my own work. The track in question is (and appears to be called), ‘The Mexican’. I can only assume this was a post Tinman period work, a further exploration of guitars and dance music.

Technicals

For the studio geeks, the Roland 303 style acid sections would definitely have been programmed with Propellerhead ReBirth, the guitar was pretty much a dead cert john Moores performance (same dude who played the ’18 Strings’ riff) and you’ll all recognise the Tarntino-esque vocal samples. Were these from Pulp Fiction? Maybe you can tell me.

Anyway, it’s available for a period on Soundcloud and as a free download (below) for y’all. “Everybody be cool… YOU be cool”!

Your Name’s Not Down

For me, for ages, the MoS was a pretty closed shop. The main room, called ‘The Box’, seemed like a hallowed ground of tribal worship, continuously occupied by American jocks and those of a ‘deeper’ playing style than perhaps mine. The MoS DJ booking team were however becoming more aware of yours truly and the style and technical aspect of my DJ sets (using technology to enhance the up ’til then, standard two deck experience).

All Change

With enough tongues wagging then, they finally took notice and dived straight in with a main room set offer, though laced with a kind of ‘come on then, show us what you can do‘ attitude – I had, therefore, to make it special. Thankfully, the club was opening its musical style to the more techy (and trancey) tunes surfacing in the mid-90s, a situation mirrored by their then burgeoning CD licensing compilations moving from the darker, underground vibes to a more energised flavour of content – and that’s exactly where my style sat.

Into Battle

The icing on the cake for my debut set was the use of a new piece of DJ sampling technology, the Akai Remix 16 sampler. It was capable of triggering and manipulating 16 pads of loops and singe-hit samples, at a quality of audio that made it virtually indistinguishable from the actual running vinyl. Sure, by today’s standards, it might appear somewhat archaic, but in ’96, it was a ground-breaker. I prepared a basic sample content set and for the first time ever, partly rehearsed my initial hour’s performance in my studio. I couldn’t go into that kind of live scenario, with that kind of technology (oh, and various Akai head-honchos and the Ministry management team watching my every move), without some prep!

Listen Up

Anyway, the set came, and passed and, thankfully, all went well (shortly after the performance, I got a call from the MoS management team, and accepted their offer to come on board for the London club and International tour gigs – the rest, as they say, is history). Back to the live recording below however, sure, with no sequenced MIDI or computer triggering of the Remix 16, all being solely down to the accuracy of my fingers, there were a few (er-hum) ‘moments’ – But, warts and all, I’ve popped the whole unedited section onto Soundcloud. For what this minor piece of my personal history is worth, I hope you at least enjoy listening to it.

Stop press: Part Two below

New Beginning

Terpsichord brought out the more uncompromising edge of my personality, reflected too by the large amounts of tech-house creeping into my DJ sets and a general dissatisfaction at the mundane amount of (conveyor belt) house music in general at that time. The first track to appear, influenced by this environment, was ‘The Bells’ – a track which, again like ’18 Strings’, I totally self financed, from the first day in the studio, right up to promo pressings on heavy weight vinyl to be hand delivered to a London distributor.

Dead DISCO

The track itself featured a re-arranged acapella excerpt from a 1979 underground disco record, ‘Put Your Feet To The Beat’, by the Ritchie Family. I managed to get hooked up with the original record’s producer (French label owner, Henri Belolo, who I’d worked for years earlier and also the same guy who wrote and produced the Village People’s, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ – how ’bout that?!) – and he was kind enough to send me the multitrack vocals.

Forging The Bells

The programming on the ‘Bells’ track consisted of a minimal, driving tech-house beat, a wobbly [mid bass] signature sound, forged with great assistance from long time collaborator and friend, John ‘Moorsie‘ Moores, plus some more messed up sonic experimentation courtesy of my then beloved, Metasynth and HyperPrism sound design tools. The main riff of the track was influenced by Scottish band, the FiniTribe’ and their late 80s, ‘De-Testimony’ tune – The musical notation of ‘The Bells’ hook, though close, was not an exact copy however (Play full length, original mix below).

‘Mitch’ Takes Control

The week before I was due to deliver the 12″ promos to a west London distributor, BCM Mallorca resident DJ and long-time friend, Des Mitchell had popped into my studio. Des grabbed a few copies of ‘The Bells’ promo to take back to the island a few days later and as he had numerous big name jocks guesting at BCM, promised to drop a few into their hands. Unbeknown to me, that very weekend coming, Paul Van Dyk was due to play and Des gave him not one, but at Paul’s request, two copies.

Come to Take You ‘Home’

Within a matter of 3 days, I had a fax sent from Van Dyk’s ‘Vandit’ label, offering to sign the track for European territories. Taking the offer under consideration, the following weekend came, seeing me have a Saturday night off from DJ’ing – Imagine my surprise then when my phone lit up big time around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, saying that Van Dyk had just dropped the two ‘Bells’ copies [mixed together] to the assembled masses at London’s then superclub, ‘Home’, live on Radio 1′s ‘Essential Mix’.

Sure enough, Monday morning came and I walked into the studio to find faxes and messages from various distributors and labels asking for an appointment to discuss signing the track – purely on the fact that Van Dyk had played it to such a rapturous response at ‘Home’ – and that boys and girls is how the ‘industry’ used to roll back then.

Terpsichord GO!

The story thereafter can be condensed into me:

• Accepting an offer from Cream records (then financed by EMI if I recall correctly)
• Having the track remixed by the awesome Pascal FEOS (amongst others)
• Producing a ‘bonus’ track (or ‘B’ side) called ‘Two Freeqs’, which Cream liked so much they pressed it as a limited edition 12″ on it’s own
• Going on to do DJ sets (branded nights at London’s, Heaven club for example), remixes (including my super-hard take on Darude’s ‘Sandstorm‘ – see video at bottom of post) and further productions and releases under the ‘Terpsichord‘ branding for the next 2 years
• Being chuffed to mint balls when then numero uno DJ/Producer, Timo Maas declared ‘The Bells’ to be “the best record Cream has ever put out”

Supporting Cast

The FEOS mix was a gorgeous piece of borderline techno, you can hear it below:

‘Two Freeqs’, aside from the whispy robotic vocal and heavy breaks/electro feel, also contained a live, ‘from the top’ modulation performance on a Roland Jupiter 6 – probably my most favourite of polysynths – listen below..

And Then..?

Surprisingly enough perhaps, and despite the relative success of Terpsichord (and more or less coinciding with the big dance music industry meltdown in ’02), I folded my headphones up, packed up the studio and turned my back on DJ’ing and music production, pretty much for good.

It was one of those ‘life needs to change‘ periods. I was getting disillusioned with doing what I was doing and the industry I was doing it for – maybe I’d done ‘enough‘ and wanted something new in life? With my time to come at Digital Village though, from 2003, life did change and began to get a whole lot different..

Still to this day, a simple to understand, incredibly intuitive and logically laid out software package, ‘Notator’ was the first real sign of how things in the future would shape up, leading us to the DAW’s (digital audio workstation‘s) we know and love today. There was a stacked ‘arrange’ pattern to the screen’s left hand side, and each of those patterns could hold up to 16 (centrally placed) tracks of MIDI information addressing one channel and/or piece of kit in the studio. Detailed breakdown of the track contents (what today we’d call a dialogue box) sat sensibly to the right hand side along with a group of transport controls too. Intricate and powerful MIDI editing was possible as was the ability to illustrate sequences in musical staves, which made the ‘real’ musicians very happy indeed.

I have to say, this software was rock solid and hardly ever crashed, and the timing and accuracy of the transmitted sequences would shame some computer software even today. As the early 90s began kicking off, I upgraded to the C-Lab ‘Unitor’ system which incorporated a SMPTE timecode reader – invaluable at the time as I was beginning to get a shed load of 2″, 24 track tapes through the studio door which always demanded synchronisation of the original performances with my new ‘remix’ parts (and I’m sure there’s a full blog post somewhere in me about the trials and tribulations in that department!). Then, however, came ‘Logic’.

The German company C-Lab mutated into ‘Emagic’, and thus was born ‘Logic’. Still running on an Atari as ‘Notator Logic’, the tide was about to turn in what was the supercharged pace of computer/software development during the early 90s. Eventually, I was sat comfortably with my first Apple Mac computer (1993/4) and the first incarnations of ‘Logic Audio’. My machine wasn’t capable of running audio off its hard disc at that time and barely affordable storage was still a little out of reach. It was Logic version 3 that gave the first signs of a fully functional MIDI/audio solution, with version 4 introducing the platinum, gold and silver editions. Sound processing ‘plug-in’s began to appear and by 1996 (and, after the in-flux of monies from the Tinman record) I was able to increase the power of my Apple Mac computer and invest in Logic ’4′. Think about this though for a second – in 1996, I paid almost £350 for a separate, dedicated audio hard drive – it was 3 gigabytes in size. How times have changed.

Moving on then Logic 5 arrived sometime in the very late 90s and with it came not only the processing power and (slightly) more affordable and faster, hard disc space but the Logic plug-in’s themselves had announced their glorious arrival as contenders to actually ‘replace’ the masses of effects processors, and synths I’d relied on on for so long. Everything, it seemed, could quite feasibly be done, ‘in-the-box’. One day then I embarked on a self-imposed production mission to do my next remix session totally within the Logic 5 environment – no hardware samplers, synths, effects or physical mixing desk would be used. Logic 5 had not only flexed its muscles in the sonic department but was also hinting that its automation and mixing possibilities were about to scare the livin’ daylights outta me! It was a memorable day and night for surewhich filled me with excitement levels I’d not experienced for a long time prior. This was amazing, awesome and fabulous and pretty much began a 3 year period of transition to total computer based recording and mixing, bar the odd ‘classic’ synth I refused to let go of (the track that got remixed that glorious day by the way, was my re-interpretation of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love’) PLAY-Dakeyne remix I FEEL LOVE

Fast forward to the 21st century and, well, right now really, I’m happy to be rockin’ an iMac i7 running Apple Logic Studio 9. Sure, I could be/should be running a fully kitted out Mac Pro but quite honestly, my studio sessions are more occasional, chilled and not so ‘conveyor belt’ these days, so the iMac 27″ more than handles the strain. Logic itself is still beyond awesome – add to this the amazing amount of native and third-party plug-ins and virtual instruments and my loyalty remains unswerving despite that Avid temptress Pro Tools shaking her seductive hips at me constantly. Blogging as I do for those good people over at Digital Village (dv247.com), I was happy recently to be invited to record a short series of Apple Logic 9 tutorial videos, which I duly set about and the run of six is below for your delectation and possible enlightenment. These cover individual features in the current version ’9′ and attempt to give easy, follow-along examples of their possible applications. To quote Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s guide..’, “share and enjoy” – bye for now

The first night the club was to operate was for a private party, due to open the weekend after to the general public. The party in question was the wedding night of former Virgin Prunes front-man (and Bono’s best mate), Gavin Friday. I got to the club in the afternoon before the night time shenanigans commenced. To say I was disappointed with what I saw and heard is an understatement. The ‘Kitchen’ was appropriately named and sat in the basement of the ultra-fashionable, Clarence Hotel (owned as part of the band’s property portfolio). A bog standard red brick dancefloor had pretty much zero in the way of club lighting and the sound system consisted of 4 (check ‘em) amazingly enough, free standing mobile-DJ style speakers on each corner. The underground basement looked ‘grungy’, dark and dingy, with absolutely the most bog-standard of furnishings, bar and decor.

The night came and went with me playing a mixed music ‘wedding’ set to a small, nay intimate crowd of well-wishers, rock-stars [spanning the 'fading' and 'biggest in the world' categories] and the odd drunken super-model trying to crash the booth with her manager insisting that she DJ’d (thank you Naomi!). The next day, I had coffee with the newly ensconced manager, Nodd. ‘The band aren’t happy with the club – it’s not opening next week’ he informed me. No surprise there then. I high-tailed it back to the UK and waited for news. That news came soon as it transpired the band had contacted the guy who designed the stage concept for their ‘Pop’ tour to come and save the day – or night(s).

Study the images that pepper this post. The remit for the new ‘Kitchen’ design was ‘less is more’ – and boy was that nailed. Decor wise the inside of the space was transformed and literally ‘smoothed out’, the shell of which appeared to be endless curves sweeping the walls and ceiling. The air-conditioning vents were even rendered invisible been formed out of what looked like giant cheese carvings. Neutral colours prevailed with a ‘stone’ theme prevalent, juxtaposing the elegant leather seating with ‘Starck’ styled aluminimum, steel and chrome multi-leveled drinks tables. The main, elongated bar (which hung a right to the entrance area you see in the image above) was faced by a seating area with large (again, sweeping) pillars supporting the structure with luxurious, velvet drapes emphasising the division of tables. A secondary VIP area was accessed via a small, curtain covered doorway, leading to another seated, bar area with a monastic atmosphere (resplendent with a ‘baby Jesus’ looking out on the soon to come gathered hedonists).

But it was the main dancefloor area (image left) that took mine and many others breath away. Still an intimate venue, though capable of holding 600 people, the ‘Kitchen’ had a modestly sized dancefloor and was surrounded by a canal (or, the ‘moat’ as it became known), which weaved around it, disappearing into a pillar and out of sight. The new, then state-of-the-art Coemar MicroScans and Baby Colour lighting system literally bounced a beautiful array of colour into the rippling water, which itself reflected back and onto the back wall (thereafter nicknamed, ‘the Wave’) containing the huge JBL bass bins. The mid and tweeter units were flown around the dancefloor area, all resulting in probably one of the best club systems I’ve ever heard, became a priority attraction and leading to comments by Dublin’s RTE radio station that “people must go there if only to ‘listen’ to the sound”.

The DJ booth was a tiny pod-like unit, front-faced with brown leather and had room for literally one DJ and no hangers-on (yay!). Facing out to the crowd, the light-jock sat on a stool just outside it and to my left, operating a Roland MIDI keyboard to trigger the then version 2, ShowCad system. As you can probably see from very top image of this blog post and partially on the one below, I had two Technics decks, a Formula Sound PM90, Denon DN2000F CD player and a Sony DAT player to entertain the crowd. Behind me as I faced forward were the amp stacks, and on top of that was an Akai S900 sampler that I coaxed out of ‘The Edge’s studio racks. The Akai was used to trigger primarily sound FX, film dialogue and other random sonics over and in-between the tunes to create additional atmospherics.

So, enough of technical specs and design concepts. Within a short space of what seemed just weeks since the false start, ‘rip it up ‘n start again’ debacle, early ’94 arrived and the ‘Kitchen’ was ready for it’s official opening to an eager Dublin party-crowd. Although I signed on for resident DJ duties (much to the disgust of certain Dublin based jocks I’m afraid), the big opening night was headlined by the bands favourite ‘Paul’, Mr Oakenfold. Paul and I had and have known each other since day dot of this industry, so I was happy to support him that night and together we rocked it! The Kitchen was a huge success in its opening weekend and then quickly settled into its stride, both musically and with the efficient, friendly, cool as f**k staff that worked there. I got used to flying out to Dublin on a Thursday afternoon and returning Sunday for quite a few months after that, and had some amazing nights playing house music all night long (well apart from the again, odd super-model insisting I play ‘No,No, No’ by Dawn Penn, clearing the floor reggae-tastically in the process). As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, the Irish crowd are simply the most incredibly appreciative souls you could ever wish to entertain as a DJ. They totally absorbed and recognised every single ‘special’ thing I did, cheering their support and demanding multiple encores – obviously, a discerning bunch as well, lol.

After about 6 months, my time at the Kitchen had looked like it had the writing on the wall for two reasons. Number one was that my ‘Tinman’ record was gaining huge momentum back in the UK and I could no longer afford the time to be out of the country and away from the studio for 4 days of my week, plus, in a change of management and a re-shuffle which included Nodd making his departure back to England, I faced a non-too appreciative promoter with a seemingly different agenda to the one we started out with. So after around 8 months of solid ‘Kitchen’ clubbing, my time on the emerald isle was, temporarily at least, over. The Kitchen carried on of course, turning into a primarily underground venue and had a good life thereafter, visited by I believe some great local and international DJ talent, and though closing its doors for good in 2005, remains one of the iconic clubbing ventures in dance music history.

I made some good friends in Dublin and to any of them reading this – Sláinte! For you, them and everyone else I’ll leave you with a few sentimental memories that remain of my time ‘in the Kitchen at parties’.

• Bono – “So tell me Paul, why d’ya wanna play House music in my club?” Followed by yours truly enriching the Irish rocker with the spiritual philosophies, tribal references, origins and relevance behind [and of] h.o.u.s.e. music! Shit, I got the gig and sold the dude the vibes – what can I say.. ha ha
• Bringing my studio sensibilities firmly to the assembled masses playing a DAT tape with a repetitive, rhythmic computer voice, spelling out the individual letters ‘K _I _T _C _H _E _N’ at 120 bpm, whilst I mixed in whatever hot-tune was rockin’ it then.
• Listening to, then watching, the entrance of ten tribal drummers, beating in unison when I dropped the classic ’20Hz’ by Capricorn (check video below). The crowd went nuts as these bare torsoed Adonis’ banged ‘to the beat of the drum’, exactly duplicating the records distinctive break down – to this day I’ve never seen anything as original, exciting and vibrant in a nightclub.
• Playing the now seminal ‘Acperience’ by Hardfloor for the first time, switching the Technics deck power off as the acid breakdown started, then finger controlling the vinyl manually at slow speed, gradually picking up the tracks tempo nearing it’s original, in time with the snare-fill crescendo – then, powering the deck back up at full speed – hell yeah!
• Watching 3 of the world’s highest paid super-models (place was bloody full of ‘em) saunter onto the dancefloor for just ‘one’ record, flanked by two bodyguards the size of planets, boogie a bit (can’t mess the hair up!), much to the amusement of the surrounding crowd, then just as quietly, saunter off again, never to re-emerge from the confines of the VIP area.

I could go on, but I really should save the rest for a book.. ?

I brought in the Photoshop design talents of my younger brother Neil who, using a ton of images I’d sourced from t’interweb, put together the flyer you see in the image here – a wonderful montage that spoke volumes of the musical and socio-political time it represented. For the night itself (premiered at East Yorkshire’s coolest indie club, The ‘Welly’), main room tunes ranged from the synthetic delights of the Human League, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Yello, O.M.D., Yazoo etc, to the Gothic darkness of bands like the Cramps, Cure, Bunnymen, B52′s and Iggy Pop. A second ‘back-room’ had friends playing some early rap, mutant disco and breakdance style electro.

I had so much faith in this night as a concept, I actually took to the streets with the host club’s promo team to spread the word and seek out like minded, musically appreciative punters (there was no Facebook then and MySpace was still in it’s infancy).

On the launch night, I waited in anticipation for the club’s main ballroom doors from the feeder bar next door, expecting to just perhaps see a decent trickle of bodies walk in with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity. Instead, an absolute mass of bodies spewed into the main hall, ranging from young, pretty indie kids, vari-aged Goths, and a mixture of alternative and cool ‘thirty’ to ‘forty something’s. I dropped the opening synthesizer line (on a loop) from the League’s ‘Love Action’, let it go, and the place went nuts!

It’s ’80s’ season here in the UK on BBC2 right now, and it was this that partly prompted my scribblings today. I was also reminded of some text I wrote for an 80s remix compilation CD inner sleeve, the extract below kinda sums up this whole musical decade for me as a DJ and burgeoning record producer.

Retro-Active Vol. 2 (HiBias Recs – Canada)

“.. I honestly now feel honored to have been there. It WAS magical, it WAS inspirational, it WAS wondrous. Of course, none of us realised that at the time.. we were too busy enjoying ourselves”

And if you’re a DJ, club owner, promoter or party organiser and you’d like a slice of ‘Eight-Zero’, drop me a comment below. Big 80s love comin’ atchya!

Firstly, the ‘..Bumper’ remix was done during my last few days of involvement with the DMC organisation, where I was renting space in the form of my old ‘Studio 1′ environment. This room was equipped with a fair few hardware toys and a large Sountracs mixing desk but by this time I was already pretty much working ‘in the box’ with no external processing/mixing involved. ‘..Bumper’ originally had a tempo of 109 and I took it to quite an extreme house territory of 128 bpm. Within this I programmed some Propellerheads ReCycle‘d percussion loops, originally courtesy of Sly and Robbie – I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to get my hands on those individual samples..

Some cool (for their day) sound design tools were also used: Pro Tools Digi Pack (extreme flanges and metal/lo-fi FX processing): Arboretum Hyperprism for the crazy cut up sequence on the acapella drop on Grace’s ‘Pull up..’ vocal: Metasynth, for the mutated percussion loop punctuating the track. Yeah, it was fun to do, and especially when it got to, shall we say, emphasizing Grace’s rather risque` lyrics

‘PULL UP TO THE BUMPER’ REMIX – PLAY!

Nightclubbin’ for 2006

So from ’99, we move to ’06 and a commissioned session I did for a leading events management company who were providing models and choreography for a high profile Hair & Fashion show. The remit was to provide a modern interpretation on Miss Jones’ ‘Nightclubbin’ track. No parts were available to accomplish this, I only had the original stereo CD track to use as source material. It was to be used for a models catwalk routine (which on the day was very theatrical and a credit to their Creative Director) and subsequently had a very strict timing and ‘arrangement’ factor to adhere to.

Sticking with the original (s-l-o-w-w-w..) tempo of 77 bpm, I made AIFF audio files of different and relevant (1, 2 and 4 bar) sections which were then processed in the ‘Apple Loop’ utility (which I think was very underrated at the time and allowed complete tempo manipulation at a darn fine quality). The visual direction from the event’s Creative team suggested a very sensuous, flowing modulated rhythm with electronic undertones. This lead me to utilise and reprogramme 2 very heavily processed loops from Spectrasonic’s amazing groove machine, Stylus RMX. With some luscious bass emulation of the main hook and a series of very specific timeline positioned delays, the vocal was remapped and sits as you’ll hear it below.

So aside from a couple of hundred fashionistas back in 2007, my remix here remains un-heard and ‘unreleased’. As short as this version is (for the show), I can’t help listening to it over and over again.. So what do you reckon, extend it and get it ‘out there’?

PLAY NIGHTCLUBBIN’ REMIX

The Breakfast show was transmitted today from BBC Radio Humberside’s studios by a rather ‘delicate’ Chris Moyles team, but the big fun was had last night, at the Hull University’s ‘Asylum’ venue. With a live band, Chris, Dave, Dom, Carrie, Rachel, Aled and other guests banged out one of the funniest karaoke night’s you could imagine. All songs were well received but none more so than Dave’s brilliant re-working of the Atomic Kitten track, ‘Make Me Whole Again’.. re-mixed and re-lyricised by Dave to be, ‘We Can Go To Hull Again’ -Genius!

Post gig, myself, the lovely Debz, and good friends Stuart, Dan and Ian, had a few bevvies and chatted with the Moyles team back at their hotel. We all had a great time and it was cool to finally meet Chris face to face – jeez he’s a scream and as friendly as you’d expect. Catching up with Dave is always a pleasure – so, yeah, fabulous end to a kick arse night!