Our man Jacob Arnold over at the excellent Gridface blog has been doing a bang up job of digging into Chicago’s house scene past and present. Check his historical interviews with Merwyn Sanders of Virgo Four fame and Stacey Collins who worked the door at the Music Box back in the days of Ron Hardy for some high-quality first person accounts of the inner workings of the early house music scene. Also check the review of the new Heiroglyphic Being album as well as a few pics from one of his recent live sets.
Also on the essential reading tip right now is DJHistory.com (owned and operated by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, the cats behind the excellent book Last Night A Deejay Saved My Life), which has revamped itself into more than just the great forum that has been a fantastic resource on its own. They update the site regularly with vintage articles like this one about the Funhouse from ’83. Now, they’ve even started their own publishing company in order to put out books about the music they love. The first one is called The Disco Files 1973-78, which I just ordered directly from the site the other day. It compiles Vince Aletti’s columns and writing about disco music as it emerged in New York City in the 70′s, along with all the charts and pictures and everything else that could be useful. Check the link for a free preview .pdf; I will be reviewing this as soon as I get it and finish reading it!
Also also, as a followup to our recent post about the TR One/BAM guys, their live set from the Twisted Pepper this past weekend is availble to download here (direct link!). They also did a recent mix for the Dublin Disco Bus blog that shows off their skills quite well indeed. Check it outtttt………
Wow, thanks for the write-up! I appreciate it.
I’m working on lining up more interviews. I hope I can keep up the pace.
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gmos reply on April 29th, 2009 11:39 am:
yeah, good work Jacob, enjoyed the recent interview with VERB too
keep it up!
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This record never leaves my box.
The Ace and Sandman record on they did on Saber is dope too.
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i read on another blog that merwyn and eric produced tons of stuff trax never released and have plans to put it out very soon!
i want that virgo LP to be reissued!
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Jacob reply on April 29th, 2009 8:08 pm:
Same blog
I don’t think he’s ever done another interview about his music.
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ballyhoo reply on April 30th, 2009 1:44 am:
jacob, thanks for sweet interview!
below’s the blog i was talking about. merwyn and eric commented on the post. apparently merwyn’s on facebook.
http://gold-code.net/wordpress/?p=85
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Jacob reply on April 30th, 2009 8:20 am:
My mistake. Thanks for the link!
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hey, this is Ben, dropped into your store in PIT a little more than a month ago, i’m the dude from chicago who bought the wax poetics issue and you told me about your recent trip to chicago. still hoping to get to quattro to see dunn play… eventually.
that’s Awesome, thanks so much for the link to the Disco Files book, i can’t imagine i can wait very long before ordering!
cheers.
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i’ll add my thanks to Jacob for the gridface stuff. amazing interviews, great resources for discovering new things, and all those ron hardy mixes….amazing.
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really like the gridface blog. always great to hear some first hand interviews, same reason why i love the djhistory site so much.
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Nice one for linking to that Merwyn Sanders interview – he’s definitely one of my house music heroes.
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