Street Sounds Electro

[greg wilson]

Just posted on the blog - be great to get your memories / thoughts:
Street Sounds Electro | Greg Wilson

Down the years, so many people have told me about how they got into dance music as a result of the Street Sounds Electro series, which had such a massive impact on a significant chunk of British youth, both black and white, following its launch in late ’83, but is bafflingly absent in so many accounts of UK dance history. Would welcome any comments here about how this seminal series affected and inspired you, and why you think it has never received anything like its proper dues from the wider dance community.

 

[nupski]

thank u greg, add another one to ur list, before electro came along i was listening to all sorts of shite i'm too embarrassed to mention. electro is deffo at the start of my interest in dance music, could never do a decent windmill tho, and if i tried now i'd probs break my neck lol

memories include deafening the adults at my local youth club, carrying lengths of kitchen flooring and a ghetto blaster for miles, fighting some crew that came over from telford to "show us how break dancing was done", and the clothes (farahs, puma g. vilas, pringle, lyle and scott, sergio tacchini, elesse, fila, cerutti, australian, kappa (omg did we really wear that shite lol), pods etc).

and the rest is history, now i'm a complete fook up as a result

good times tho for sure

can't really comment on why it gets missed out when ppl talk about the history of dance music tho, maybe it was overshadowed by the emergence of the chicago house thing in 85, which is rightly credited with being the start of the genre so many of us know and love. the question of whether it would have happened in the first place without electro and disco tho is one of those things we can debate for the rest of our lives, but we'll never reach a definitive conclusion.

great post btw, cheers m8

 

[DAMO 72]

Best article i have read for a long time, thanks for the history lesson Greg
Electro was what kick started it for me, after seeing broken glass break dancing in manchester and hearing stuff on piccadilly radio was what started my journey into the whole culture of breakin etc.
Good times phones:

 

[Morgan Khan]

Street Sounds UK Fresh Reunion

Hi Guys, don't miss the 'Street Sounds UK Fresh Reunion' at Scala, London on Saturday 16th July to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of UK Fresh '86.

I've just added the full listing to Old Skool Anthemz Event Calendar but here's just a few details:

Live artist performances and DJ Sets by:

NEWCLEUS
CAPTAIN ROCK
THE B BOYS feat. CHUCK CHILLOUT
ARTHUR BAKER

MC: BBC RADIO’S DAVE PEARCE

DJs: GREG EDWARDS, MIXMASTER DJ MIRAGE and more…

Nu Electro Stars: DARXID, LEKTROID & XIDUS PAIN

B-Boy Battles & Performances
Graffiti Exhibition
Street Sounds Memorabilia
Plus Much more…

Can't wait to see you there!

Respect & love, Morgan

 

[Jiglo]

Now this I need to go to after being too young to catch the UK Fresh events

What a top line up of acts

 

[PepeLePew]

Me, Sarah, Italoldskool and Mandy are all going
Can't wait

 

[Morgan Khan]

Me, Sarah, Italoldskool and Mandy are all going
Can't wait

Fantastic, I very much look forward to meeting you, Sarah, Italoldskool and Mandy, just over 2 weeks away now and counting!

Now this I need to go to after being too young to catch the UK Fresh events

What a top line up of acts

Hope to see you there Jiglo, happy to hear you like the line up

 

[Jiglo]

You too Morgan

I've got my ticket now anyway and it's good to see that you're going Kev and a few others too :beer:

As for what Street Sounds means to me. Well it wasn't my first foray into electro, but it opened my ears to a lot of new tracks that might have remained underground if they weren't part of the series, at least to me, not living in a city with cool record shops around me. It also gave me a chance to own a lot of high quality pressed tracks for little outlay and nicely mixed together so they kept the tunes rolling at school breaktime when we'd be practicing our moves. The mixes didn't kill the tracks either and allowed me to mix them once I got turntables after the series finished

I also noticed there were some very cool edits too After buying some of the original 12'' records after hearing them first in the series, i've gotta say that I was disappointed that a particular mix wasn't on them, because they were redone by the DJ mixing the tracks. Grandmaster Flash - Style is the one that immediately springs to mind. That edit isn't on the album and it isn't on any 12'', but it made the track much better.

A very clever mix was 'South Bronx' into 'Hold It now, Hit It. ''You got cut off MCA because the rhymes you wrote are Whack......''

It's testament to the quality of these releases too that most of the tracks on them fetch a pretty high price when trying to buy the originals

And apparently, everything on the UK Electro release apart fro Rapologists track is actually the work of Gregg Wilson

For me, I started off buying the tapes for the ghetto blaster, then later on bought them again on vinyl.

 

[PepeLePew]

A very clever mix was 'South Bronx' into 'Hold It now, Hit It. ''You got cut off MCA because the rhymes you wrote are Whack......''

Always loved that bit too

 

[ecksemmess]

At the risk of sounding like a little nob polisher, can I just say how great it is that the man himself Greg Wilson is on this board. A true legend and one-man musical movement. Who knows where the music would have gone without your influence mate! CHEERS.

 

[Shooms]

At the risk of sounding like a little nob polisher, can I just say how great it is that the man himself Greg Wilson is on this board. A true legend and one-man musical movement. Who knows where the music would have gone without your influence mate! CHEERS.

^^ what he said

 

[ste huxley]

What happened to one of the guys whi mixed the compilations in the 80s, think he was called Mastermind?? Did some clever little edits

Like a lot of folk it was breakdancing and the electro albums that went hand in hand for me

Electro 9 is my absolute fave