This week it is the turn of south west trance supremo Steve Lid to talk about his Tidy Treasure.
Casting my mind back to the mid-nineties, I had discovered dance music a few years previously, mainly listening to the local scene which was predominantly house music and seeing the likes of Allister Whitehead, Jeremy Healy, Mike Cosford and Graeme Park at the local clubs around me. I was an avid purchaser of any House CDs or cassettes which featured these artists but it was when the Fantazia House collection CD series came out, I started to notice a change in my taste and the biggest change due to volume 2 of the series and the mix presented by Tony De Vit. There was suddenly this different sound that I had not heard before, more energetic, driving basslines and breakdowns, I discovered breakdowns!!
I started to crave this sound and it opened my eyes to different DJs, I started to travel further afield for events and clubs which took me to Plymouth and a small late-night venue called the Sound Factory. Just making this journey was part of the experience, we would travel up in a convoy around midnight, it was not the easiest of drives, over an hour on twisting single lane Cornish roads but that just made it part of the fun and I still question not only how we got there sometimes but definitely how we made it back.
We would cross the Tamar River into Devon and file into this dark and seedy underground club. The resident DJ there was Steve Edwards and he encapsulated the sound I had fallen in love with tracks like Mind II Mind ‘s– ‘Music is My Life’, Westbam’s – Wizards Of The Sonic’ and Vincent de Moor’s ‘Flowtation’. I would lose myself for hours on the dancefloor and I had fallen in love with this tougher edged music.
It was on one of these nights that Steve dropped this track, I could instantly tell that this track was different, the bassline and riff had this rolling effect to it that just built up the energy and you couldn’t help dancing then suddenly Jack Nicholson’s unmistakable voice dropped “We all make mistakes” now at first a major thing that caught me was the vocal in the track, it was hilarious, there was the sample basically telling us that we never had to be afflicted with women ever again if we did 20 pushups a day, lots of ribbing ensued to my partner at the time but the way the whole track was structured was just superb, it was timed so well and was simple, it wasn’t over complicated it just worked and flowed throughout.
Bulletproof ‘Mistakes’ I later found out was the work of Paul Chambers, a musical genius in my eyes and someone who I don’t feel gets the recognition he deserves and with a chunky remix on the flip by the Knuckleheadz, Warren Clarke and Jon Langford of K – series, Volts wagon and Mr Bishi fame ( another hard house hero of mine ), you had the complete package.
This was among the first vinyl releases I ever bought and I still remember seeing the unmistakable logo on the front of the sleeve that I associated with litter. Little was I to know back then that not only would I end up with meeting my best friend through this label and making many other friends amongst the djs and staff but I would end up playing for them, running extremely successful events together building memories far beyond this one slab of vinyl in my hand with a dustbin on the sleeve, and that’s why this will always be my Tidy Treasure
Stream & Download this release here: https://tidytrax.fanlink.to/Mistakes
