Sometime contact and innovative UK Dj/Producer Greg Wilson has a 33-minute interview, I assume based on his Living to music series that he has been running for a couple of years now. Greg talks about actually sitting and actually listening to the music, while not doing anything else. Greg makes a good point about being able to focus while listening.

Which reminds me of being about 14, and converting my clothes cuboard in my bedroom into a mini-recording, listening booth. I had a small stool, papered the walls in music newpaper and magazines, wired up a small red light, and I’d retreat in there, close the doors and listen to albums. At the start of Greg’s interview he talks about hearing early reggae and Trojan singles. Which brings up another thread, which is how influential the West Indian and Jamaican immigration to the UK was in the 1950’s.

While it was far from easy for those who came to help rebuild Britain, after the second world war, what’s true is that they had undeniable impact on music and culture. Don Letts Subculture series covers the impact and the musical impact, Robert Elms talks about the impact on fashion and clothing. The whole sub-culture was so anti- the main stream of the time.

That 1960’s impact certainly opened up minds and wallets to the Jazz, Funk and eventually disco in the 1970’s. Fascinating stuff seen in retrospect, in the fourth episode, Letts nicely shows the how that merged with the Punk music revolution, the subject of my last blog post, which on the Roxy Club, where Letts was the DJ.

The complete Letts six part series Subculture, is available via the Fred Perry Subculture website. If you are interested in this fasset of British culture, I’d recommend watching it all. My personal story is in the latter part of Episode-3, Episode-4 and the early part of Episode-5. I managed to acquire these as MP4 files and look forward to watching them all in sequence one day.

For the record, my Dad, Frank Cathcart, almost always wore white socks and September 23, 1973 was my 15th birthday and the first All Nighter at Wigan. As Robert Elms says in Episode 4 of Letts Subculture, Soulboys, “there was a line across the country about Luton, and you didn’t cross it.” – We lived on that line, often straddling it.

Greg Wilsons latest Living to Music was Shuggie Otis ‘Inspiration Information’. Its a great album, give it a real listen.