Graeme Park: Funky House Does My Head In
Author: Jonty Skrufff
Monday, December 20, 2004
Chatting down the line from his Manchester studio, acid house pioneer turned elder statesman of dance Graeme Park admits he loathes being labelled funky house, though it's the term rather than the music that winds him up.
"That expression funky house just does my head in," he explains, "99 % of the time I'm playing house music, but at the Hacienda DJing was always about slipping in leftfield type weird stuff, and it's more difficult to do that nowadays, because a lot of my gigs happen just four times a year. When you're doing weekly gigs, like I was at the Hacienda, you can drop Ghost Town by The Specials and people go mental. If I dropped Ghost Town by The Specials in Loughborough this Saturday people might go: "What the fuck is he doing-' Unless I'm doing a six hour set, which is why we want to do this Manchester thing."
Graeme admits he's hoping to return to weekly clubbing soon, ironically to people from the original acid house generation he first turned onto raving in the original acid house days of the 80s.
"There's a club in Manchester, I can't really say which one yet, because I haven't even signed on the dotted line yet, but a club in Manchester has approached me and I'm looking somewhere in Manchester play weekly, not monthly, that doesn't work," he reveals.
"This club has a mainly over 30's audience, and they are really keen on getting me and I really want to do it and hopefully if I do it I can let you know. That really excites me. You could say "older people, Graeme Park, you're just going back to your housier days', but the whole point is, they still want to hear new stuff."
As well as continuing to champion new house music through both his DJing and his radio show on Key 103 FM, he's also recently embarked on a retro tour, marking a dramatic U turn in his stance.
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): When you last talked to Skrufff earlier this year you were adamant that you weren't going to look back, or play retro, what prompted to start playing a few retro themed gigs-
Graeme Park: "Well, yes I did say that but I'm doing it only it on this Revolution tour I've taken on and these big one-offs with Mike (Pickering). I still don't want to get into that track of just digging out old records every week on a Saturday. I've always had the odd old record that I'll slip in, which was good, but it was my PR Simon Morrisson's idea to do something to celebrate twenty years of DJing. We were chatting one evening and we came up with the idea that it would be good to do a tour that wasn't in clubs, rather in bar/ clubs, and let people hear some of the records that influenced contemporary dance music. Then we bumped into this guy from Revolution and he said: Why don't you come and do it for us, because Revolution started in Manchester and I'm associated with Manchester. Then he rang up and said Smirnoff have got this new drink that they want to appeal to over 25's. So everything fell into place really, to do this tour of Revolution."
Skrufff: Twenty years on, how do you think the music has stood the test of time-
Graeme Park: "I'll tell you what's interesting as the tour's gone on, I've noticed certain things aren't working but the music that is standing the test of time is the really early eighties stuff, and the early electro stuff, because it sounds really fresh and really quite cool. A lot of the early house stuff though sounds really lethargic and quite slow and interestingly, , the younger crowd have got absolutely no time for the early house stuff at all. They don't want it, they don't know it and they don't care about it. Then when you dig out early nineties, almost "92 onwards then everyone loves those records."
Skrufff: How much quality new music are you finding on an av Tags