DJ Gripper + Greg Wilson + Che Wilson
Date/Time
Date(s) - 30/03/2024 - 31/03/2024
7:00 pm - 3:00 am
Underground Music Society, Carlisle Street Barrow-in-Furness LA14 1QT
Greg began DJing in 1975. He enjoyed hugely popular residencies in the early-80s at Wigan Pier and Manchester’s majorly influential Legend, having originally started out in his hometown of New Brighton. He was a pioneer of mixing in the UK and in 1983 he became the first ‘dance music’ specialist hired for a regular weekly session at Manchester’s now legendary Haçienda club. Greg was instrumental in breaking the new electronic, post-disco records coming out of New York, a sound he has dubbed ‘Electro-Funk’. He would ‘retire’ from DJing at the end of 1983, going on to work on various studio projects, most notably with Manchester Hip-Hop crew the Ruthless Rap Assassins, for whom he’d produce 2 albums in the early-‘90s.
In 2003 he set up his own website, electrofunkroots.co.uk, to document this crucial era in the evolution of dance culture and, as a consequence, Greg returned to spinning tunes two decades on, receiving plaudits for his appearances at renowned nights including Electric Chair, Horse Meat Disco, Fabric, Back To Basics, Ministry Of Sound, Asylum, Melting Pot and the Sub Club. Before long he was picking up an ever-increasing amount of bookings throughout Europe and, subsequently, worldwide.
In 2005 Tirk Records released ‘Credit to the Edit’, a compilation of re-edits spanning Greg’s entire career, some even original tape edits from the mid-‘80s (Greg still uses a vintage Revox B77 reel-to-reel tape machine as part of his DJ set-up). This wasn’t his first compilation – he’d previously collaborated on most of the tracks to appear on the Street Sounds ‘UK Electro’ album in 1984, as well as being the selector behind the ‘Classic Electro Mastercuts’ LP in 1994.
Other firsts for Greg include being the first DJ to mix live on British TV (The Tube in 1983), putting together the first UK radio mixes of their type for Piccadilly Radio in Manchester (beginning 1982) and showing a certain Norman Cook (later Fatboy Slim), then a young aspiring DJ called Quentin, how to scratch (Dec ’83). Greg has written for magazines including DJ Magazine, Wax Poetics, Clash and Grand Slam.
