Dave Lee aka Joey Negro Interview

Joey Negro image

How did your career start?
"I’ve been DJing since the late 80’s but what really started me off was making music. I’d always been a big music fan. I managed to get a job in a record shop in London in 1986. I moved from Clacton on Sea in Essex down to London and got a job in just around the time house music was really kicking in. It was the time when tracks like Jack Your Body and Fingers Inc had come in but hip-hop and rare groove was really strong too. It was a really exiting time to be in London and I met a lot of people like Jonathan Moore (Coldcut) and Trevor Nelson, who was working on one of the vans that sold us records, it really seemed like there was a new school of people coming through. I stayed in the record shop for about 9 months before getting a job with a record distributor (Rough Trade), which taught me a lot about the business. I then started my own label called Republic, we put out a lot of early New York garage (things like Blaze and The Turntable Orchestra). Joey Negro interview close up pic

At the same time I started making my own music, something I’d always wanted to do. My first release was a track I’d done with a friend called MDM - Get Busy on Republic. I started Z records in 1992 which was set-up to release my own records or stuff that I really liked. Out of our 75 releases, I’d say around 65 are me or tracks that I’ve remixed. Things like Must Be the Music, Can’t Get High Without You, Saturday."

Were You Involved In the Acid House Scene?
"I was involved in the Acid Scence to a degree because I was around at that point when acid exploded. We did an acid track, a mix of MDM called ‘Get Acidic which came out on Transmat, Derrik May’s label. It was a cool scene for a bit but I felt it overshadowed a lot of other music that came out around the same time because it was just so dominant. It was interesting to see so many people who weren’t really interested in dance music who were all of a sudden getting on board something."

What is it About Disco That Inspires You?
"I often wonder what it is about disco music that I like about so much. I’m always playing records to try and analyse what it is I like about it so much and see if I can use it in one of my own tracks. I guess when really got into music in my teens the music that was really dominant on the radio was stuff like Shalamar, Beegee’s, Third World, Can You Feel the Force. I just loved it. I didn’t get into it because it was a cool thing, it was just because I liked it...
There’s loads of people whose records from the 70’s I love, producers like; George Duke and Kenton Nicks, this stuff really gets me."

What Do You Think Makes a Good DJ?
"I think people like to see a DJ whose enjoying himself, there’s nothing worse than seeing someone who’s completely still. Visually, DJ’s can be pretty boring and if they’re not dancing looking like they’re enjoying themselves, what’s the point? I don’t like going completely crazy and jumping into the crowd!! but hearing music that I love loud, I find it hard not to dance."

What record Would You Like To Be Played at Your Funeral?
I was thinking some really long boring instrumental just to keep people standing there looking at each other thinking "god this is shit!"

How would you best sum up your Attitude to Life?
"I dunno really, I guess I’m a pretty easy going person really but then again I get really wound up sometimes. I tend to just take it as it comes I guess."

What Words Of DJ Wisdom Could You Share With Mankind?
"I always say to people, the best way to do it is to either make your own record, even if it’s not great or to start your own night and get a cool scene going around that. You have to get your name on some vinyl or some flyers. To begin with you have to make yourself a commodity."

Can You Predict the Year that people will run out of disco samples to Use?
"I don’t think people will ever run out of disco samples. As technology change people will find how to do different things with the same samples. Take a record that has been sampled 15 years ago, you could sample it now and do something different with it. The days of making a track by just sampling a big chunk of a disco record and just looping it will maybe run out sometime, but only because people are gonna get bored of that sort of thing. But something like Lola’s theme which was probably the biggest dance record this year was just a big disco sample record. Why didn’t anyone sample it before? I wish I’d sampled it! If people wanna make a disco sample record in 100 years time I think they’ll be able to find a record that may or may not have been sampled before but do something with it that is so different to what you can do with it now that it might as well be a different sample."

Joey Negro / Jakata Interview continued...