I first became aware of Paul on the old Southport Weekender message board and his amazing mixes and stories about the weekenders. I was also amazed at his encyclopedic knowledge of music! I wanted to get Paul’s opinion as I knew it would be very interesting from his background and journey through various styles of music. The time, effort and photo’s that he’s provided has been unbelievable and I can’t thank him enough for this. I initially contacted him while he was on his way to the airport for a holiday and also to go to the Vocal Booth Weekender.
Paul grew up in Hemel Hempstead but has now moved to Aberdeen with his fiance. He has a podmatic site were he posts his Starpoint radio show which is a mix of all the genres he loves and also his fantastic Do You Know House mixes –https://paulstuart.podomatic.com/ – here we go:
Early influences – anyone influential that turned you on to the music you started listening to/playing and which artists/bands did you grow up listening to?
I remember my parents getting a new Toshiba music centre (record deck and tape deck on top, radio dial and controls along the front) around 1976, so I would of been 12. The Radio was always on when I was growing up and there was only pop stations but I can’t think of anything caught my ear as I was football obsessed.
My dad liked Jazz etc when he was younger, went to Ronnie Scott’s etc in London with his pals, he was more a ‘mod’ then a ‘rocker’ of the late 50s early 60s. When this music centre arrived he started buying records again, he’d heard Earth, Wind and Fire on the radio and bought their ‘All N All” album and playing it to death, started buying their older albums so at weekends we’d be in the house and EW&F would be playing constantly plus other bands like WAR and The Isleys Brothers were also bought. The film Saturday Night Fever and the Disco scene was at its height so there was lots of Black Music on the radio. I also had pals at school that were into Soul Jazz Funk through their older siblings who were into it and through them I found out about specialist shows like Robbie Vincent on BBC Radio London and Greg Edwards on Capital Radio and also magazines like Blues & Soul and Black Echoes.
The world of Soul, Jazz and Funk really opened up to me then. In around 1979/80 I religiously bought the magazines, read them from cover to cover and also taped all the shows to listen to again and again during the week until the next show. It really was an education. It was through these shows that we were exposed to the latest releases and just as importantly the older music we had missed, as well as more underground Jazz and Fusion. Imagine 13 and 14 year old kids playing Ronnie Laws and Dave Grusin albums!!
As I was still too young to go out to clubs Radio DJs such Robbie Vincent And Greg Edwards were my biggest influences – Robbie for more Soul and Jazz, whilst Greg the Soul and Funkier stuff.
I loved listening out for the new releases and checking the magazines to check what was new. I’d started buying records with pocket/paper round money from WH Smith’s or Woolworths etc but then we discovered a market stall in town that stocked the latest imports, albums and 12s, so that was a regular port of call every Friday after school. We were now able to get the records Robbie and Greg were playing instead of waiting weeks for them to turn up in the proper record shops.
(It’s at this point that Paul tells me about cataloguing all the records that he buys and provides pictures on them!!)
I started to catalogue all the records I was buying when I first started collecting and tbh I really couldn’t tell you why..
Hopefully it gives you a flavour of what I was buying and shows I was buying a bit of everything and buying more and more House as time progressed. I also used a red star/line under the artist to mean it’s an imported 12″. I also included the date and the mix too.
Do you still do it or has that stopped with most things being digital?
Yes I still do it for my vinyl, although it’s mostly older stuff I buy now. I have separate sections for 7”/12” and albums! Sad I know!
We had a little crew (8-10) of us at school, who were into this music and through one of the girls we met some older guys that were going out on the Jazz Funk scene and through them we eventually went to local clubs in Hemel. Me and a pal also booked to go to the legendary Caister Soul weekend in October 1981. So after reading about the ‘Soul Mafia’ club DJs like Chris Hill, Froggy and Bob Jones in Blues and Soul, my eyes and ears were opened once again, to the night time, underground world of the Soul, Jazz Funk scene.
It was around this time (1982/83) that producers started using more electronic instruments and production techniques and making music specifically for NYC clubs and big sound systems. Labels like Prelude and West End were big but it never felt like a big leap into the unknown for me to go from Soul and Funk to the new sounds that were appearing during this time – Hip Hip/Rap and Electro and then House, it was an evolution and I could hear a traceable path back to what had come before.
A split in the Soul, Jazz Funk scene started around 1984/85, with some DJs and punters staying true to the traditional sounds and some DJs playing the new music. I’d been going to nights such as ‘The Special Branch’ in London which had the DJs that were probably at the forefront of pushing new music, to a more ‘London’ crowd, as well as DJs like Gilles Peterson and Bob Jones pulling in the Soul/Jazz crowd. This music was the new club tunes of the day, as well as the latest Hip Hip and some early House with lots of Rare Groove tunes too.
What were you playing/buying/listening to mid 80’s on wards and when were you first aware of House music? Was there a tune, a progression, a moment that caught your attention and turned you on to the sound?
By the mid 80s I was still buying new release Soul and Funk, catching up on older tunes, Hip Hop tracks too – just mirroring what I was hearing in the clubs and specialist shows on the radio and pirate radio from London.
The first ‘House’ record I heard was played at a Caister Soul Weekend in October 1985 by my favourite DJ – Froggy. The Weekender had its own radio station with the DJs playing on it over the 3 days, sometimes broadcasting the DJ sets from the main room and we used to take cassettes up and record the shows. I set the tape running and went out. Whilst out I heard Froggy play Cameo – ‘She’s Strange’ then try to mix in a track with this massive beat that really caught my ear, especially hearing it on the big sound system. Checked the recording the next day and I found the track right at the end of the tape so only heard the booming beats just before it ran out. The following week I was in the record shop and got them to play the tape – the track was J.M.Silk – ‘Music Is The Key’ on DJ International.
I’d been buying tracks like Serious Intention and Paul Simpson/Easy Street Productions and it really didn’t seem that different. A few months later, prob around March/April 1986, I read about another couple of tracks in ‘The Street’ magazine and both on DJ International – Fingers Inc – ‘Mysteries Of Love” and Donnie – “The It”. I asked the next time I was in the record shop but they only had the Fingers Inc track and totally it blew me away. Adonis – ‘No Way Back’, Sleezy D – ‘I’ve Lost Control’ and Marshall Jefferson – ‘The House Music Anthem’ all appeared on Trax over the next few months. More releases on DJ International came too and you would start to see the same names credited on record labels and a definite sound was emerging.
I was still buying both new and old Soul, Funk and Jazz over the next couple of years plus Hip Hop too but now House was becoming more dominant in my record buying.
Here’s a tape that I did in March 1986 for a pal – one side is all Jazz and the B side is some of the new release soul/funk tracks, picking up tempo into JM Silk which was probably the only House record I owned at the time and just before more started appearing in the record shops. The J.A Groove after it is an early Timmy Regisford production out of NYC before finishing off with The Strikers which shows the link back to Disco.
You can tell from speaking to you online/forums/social media and listening to your mixes that you have an extensive knowledge of music including house music – is there a particular genre of music that is your main passion or is your interest in all genres the same?
I suppose I was lucky in that when the music bug got me the thirst for knowledge was always there and has been there for whatever genre.
You had to do your research to find out about our music with it being an underground scene. You read sleeve notes on albums, listened to specialist shows on the radio, read every word of Blues & Soul, Echoes and Groove Weekly and later travel into London to go to the specialist record shops. We were lucky in that we always had regular weekly Soul, Funk and Jazz nights in Hemel with DJs Mike Allin, Brother Louie Ralph Tee and Joe Field – all ‘name’ DJs on the scene so I learnt a lot from those guys. As well as the DJs our mates and crew in Hemel, most of who were slightly older than us, had been on the scene a few years.
I met my best pal Deano in Ibiza in 1984 and hit it off just talking about music and started swapping tapes. He lived just outside of Rotherham and I lived in Hemel Hempstead on the outskirts of London. I discovered so much music and knowledge through him and those tapes. The scene in the North was slightly different to the one in the South. We’d be playing certain tracks from albums and I’d get a tape from Dean with a different track from the same album that I’d hardly played or artists I’d never heard of especially Jazz wise.
Was it a natural progression from what you were playing at the time to House music or did you stick to what you were doing at that time?
It was around 1984/85 when the Caister/Soul Mafia scene in the South East started splintering with some DJs wanting to stick with the ‘traditional’ and ‘real’ Soul Funk and Jazz. There was even a small movement in the scene, termed ‘L.A.D.S’ (League Against Disco Shit) and some nights were termed a LADS nights meaning they would be playing real Soul and Jazz and delving back into their collections for older music from the 70s.
It was a natural progression really, as I previously said, there was always a thirst for new releases and I found it easier than most Soul Funk fans to adapt to new sounds like Electro and Hip Hop/Rap back in 1982/83, then GoGo when that started arriving from Washington DC in 1984/85, then House from Chicago in late 1985 and it’s variants, Acid in 1986/87 and Techno in 1987/88 etc – to me, there was always a link to something I’d heard before.
We continued to go to Soul nights and weekenders all over the South East but we also started going to the Special Branch parties in London where they had a more progressive music policy. Firstly at the Swan & Sugarloaf And The Royal Oak and their regular ‘Doo At The Zoo’ parties in London Zoo. They also had their parties in locations such as The Natural History museum, Lords Cricket Ground, Chislehurst caves and to Ibiza in 1986.
It was a real melting pot of music, of the latest Soul and Funk, GoGo And Hip Hop ( sampling old funk and James Brown tracks). House was added to the playlists, rare groove was massive, especially in London. We went to Delirium at the Astoria a few times, plenty of Warehouse parties, Bournemouth Weekenders and Special Branch parties but it was always an eclectic mix of music. The first night I went to that was mostly all House was the second DJ International tour in early 1987 at the Limelight in London in support of Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk – Love Can’t Turn Around’ with its singer Daryl Pandy doing a live performance. I don’t remember who the DJs were or if there were any Chicago DJs playing. They played a lot of tracks I had but I was hearing them for the first time over a big club sound system. We also caught the tour when they played at ‘The Point’ in Milton Keynes.
I was reading that House was massive ‘up north’ in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield with whole nights dedicated to it but in London, the nights I was going to, it was just part of the playlist. As 1986/87 went on more and more of the nights I was going were playing more House music mostly for the simple fact there were far more releases coming through and it was becoming more popular.
Fashion wise I’d come from the Soul scene where it was just a Soul/Jazz T Shirt bought from SeeBees at Caister or the latest T-Shirts of Soul bands that had toured recently. When we started going out in London what we were seeing and then wearing different styles was definitely a lot smarter than I was used to.
How old were you when you went to the Caister weekender?
My first Caister (#08) was in October 1981. I’d left school in the June and had just turned 17 at the end of the September and apart from one night at Hustlers, the local Soul night in Hemel, I’d not been anywhere besides the local pubs with my mates. We had tried to book for the Caister in March 1981 but it was sold out, so we just sent off the booking slip for the next event and got in. We’d became friends with the local ‘tribe’ through a few girls that one of our school crew knew and went on their coach to Caister. I had read about the Weekender in Blues & Soul but really didn’t know what to expect and some of the older lads took me under their wing and I had a ball. To hear the music I loved over the massive sound system for the first time just blew me away – that and the heat!!!
How was Ibiza in 86?
We went to Ibiza on the first ‘Special Branch’ holiday in May 1986, there was 7-8 of us from Hemel and Luton. It was ‘our’ music, played by ‘our’ DJs, with 150/200 of ‘our’ kind of people. It was pretty well organised, we had an apartment complex to ourselves plus an overspill that were in a nearby hotel. There was a bar with our DJs that acted as a base and nights in a couple of the San Antonio’s clubs. The Milk Bar was just taking off that year and the Cafe Del Mar was just down the road though at that time there was nothing else was there at the time except a few tables and chairs on the terrace at the Cafe with a large rocky front. Most people just bought bottles of beer from the local supermarkets and sat listening to the music.
Musically it was still a ‘Special Branch’ mix – the latest Soul/Funk, Hip Hop, Rare Groove, James Brown, Real Soul and Jazz plus a little bit of House. In May 1986 it was still a very new addition to the dance-floors although my pal had bought Adonis – ‘No Way Back’ On Trax the week before we’d left and put it on a C90 tape – that was the first time I’d heard it.
When did you start going to the Southport Weekender? That must have been a perfect mix for you musically? When did you start playing in the Sands? Do you miss it?
My best pal Deano had been telling me about The Upnorth Weekenders since they began in 1987 which had a great mix of music and people apparently. Having been to all of the Caister Weekenders between 1981-1986, then weekenders in Bognor and Barry Island, Bournemouth weekenders every Easter, then Nicky Holloway’s 3 KAOS weekenders – there were too many other things to do but I made sure I booked in with Deano and his pals for the 8th Upnorth/Southport Weekender in April 1991.
I remember travelling up on one of the coaches from London, drank too much on the journey up and got into the Sands to wait with some pals for Deano. Drank some more and fell asleep in the pub!! Eventually we got on site and got ready for my first taste of the Weekender.
Seeing familiar faces and hearing amazing music in every room made me feel right at home. I met so many new people over the weekend that it blew me away.
The DJ line up really was the best the UK had to offer through every genre. The Soul Base was still the heart of the Weekender with 70s and early 80s Soul to the fore but with some DJs pushing new releases. The Powerhouse was a mix of the big club tunes of the day, Hip Hop, Streetsoul and House all being played. The Jazz Room was packed with amazing dancers but I spent most of my time in The Asylum for my fix of House. I just remember it being filled with smoke all night and getting really busy once the other rooms had shut around 3am. Wandering outside around 5-6am into a really foggy morning and the only difference to being inside the room was it was bloody freezing!!
I will always be grateful to Alex & Dave and everyone else involved with the Weekender as they gave us a chance to see our heroes and their talent up close and personal, and at my first SPW I got to see Teena Marie on the Saturday afternoon – one of my favourite artists live in concert.
Phyllis Hyman, Roy Ayers, Frankie Beverly & Maze and Terry Callier all played over the next few years as well as PAs from rising and future stars. As well as our DJ heroes from all over the UK and in years to follow from The USA and Europe too.
I’ve made so many life long friends through the Weekender, not to mention my fiancée Yvette, who was always a regular face in the crowd. She had been going since the first Upnorth Weekender in Berwick and seemed to always be in the pictures of ‘the previous weekender’ that were in the back of each event program. She knew lots of my pals and even though I had met some of the Aberdeen crowd, it would be many years before we would actually meet.
When did you start playing in the Sands? Do you miss it?
We usually went up to Southport on a Thursday as driving up from Hemel on a Friday was a nightmare with the traffic anyway so we got our chalets on the Thursday and went over the Sands. There were usually a couple of Weekender guys playing tunes on the pubs DJ equipment but it was exciting just being there and catching up with our pals. Then around 1999/2000 one of our mates who was pals with the guys DJing said he would be organising DJs for the Sands at the next event and there would be better equipment and would we like to play next time. The improved sound didn’t happen so Richard, who had a decent little sound system, said to me about taking the gig over and doing it justice so we squared a deal with the Sands owner, Tommy, and at the next event in 2001 Richard brought up his sound system. We set it up on the Thursday night, ready to play over the weekend. During the previous months preceding the Weekender, Richard and I talked a lot about plans for the music policy for the Sands and obviously the Weekender was geared up for new music and as we both had decent record collections we wanted to play music that was different to that played onsite. Richard especially has a fantastic collection with his Mod>Northern>Modern Soul>Boogie>Rare Disco>House background and it crossed over well with my JazzFunk>Jazz>Boogie>House collection. We really worked well together and a lot of thought went into the music we played and the feedback afterwards on the newly formed Southport Weekender forum was really positive, which really spurred us on to do it better. Richard added to his sound system, we bought more music and the gig just grew and grew as it went on.
We had a few close friends play guest spots for us on Friday afternoon (Respect to Deano, Matt Archer and Si Finnigan, Big Will, Barry B, DJ Edgar, Barry May and Dave Jackson) who all played great guest spots for us on Fridays plus Billy Davidson and Kerri Chandler who both played great impromptu sets on a Sunday. Obviously lots of people offered their services but we really didn’t want anyone coming in and banging out an hour of anthems, that just wasn’t what it was about so we just played most if it ourselves.
It’s safe to say it was the best of times, especially on Fridays. We’d get to the pub around 11am, sometimes with only an hour or two sleep, usually less and still pretty drunk from the night before and we’d just play great music. Just what we loved. We usually played 3 records on 3 off between us, nice and mellow to start, watching people come in, drop their bags and greet friends as they arrived. It really was an amazing soundtracking and the excitement built with the music as the afternoon went on. Then around 5pm we’d start playing House and watch it go off, mixing 90s house that we didn’t hear outside of our own bedrooms, with new releases and it really worked. There were certain tracks we played that became ‘Sands Classics’. I always played Kim English – ‘I Know A Place’ on a Friday afternoon, the lyrics fitted perfectly for everyone that had travelled from far and wide to be at the Weekender – “for the love of the music, for the love of the sound”
It really was a dream gig for me and to be paid in beer all weekend just made it perfect!!
Big respect to everyone that supported us, especially The Barcelona Soul Mates, The Dutch, Belgian Crews and all our UK friends ♥️
Some Sands classics: Wall Of Sound – Critical, Kim English – I Know A Place (E-Smoove Mix), Blaze – How Deep Is Your Love, Soldiers Of Twilight – Believe, Andy Caldwell – I Cant Wait, Master C&J – Face It, War – Five Spot, Gil Scot Heron – Home Is Where The Hatred Is (live), Mysterious People – Love Revolution (Mood 11 Swing), Sunfire – Step In The Light, Ozone – Our Hearts Will Always Shine, Mike Dunn – Born 2 B House (Get Down Mix) and Intense – Holding On
Just as I was sorting this interview out and getting ready to post it the news came out about next years Southport Weekender in March and Paul is on the bill to play the event. He also has a night called Basement 108 in Glasgow on Saturday 30th November with guest DJs – The Journey Men.
Paul – thank you again for all the time, effort, words, pictures and amazing stories that you provided for this interview.
InTheBeginning 
Thank you Paul, great idea to get insights from the grass roots, was really good to reminisce and dig out the old pics etc…
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