Fabio

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s a special honor today to welcome the man they call Fabio because in a round about way most of us, if not all of us, wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for him and a couple of other folks. So let’s give the man a hand [applause]. Funnily enough, while we were thinking of boring DJ issues like ‘back’ and ‘sciatic’ and these kind of problems that you encounter, I found another similarity which was that one of the first people to give both of us a break was a man called Colin Dale. And he’s one of the most undervalued characters in this whole thing.

Fabio

Colin Dale was a big inspiration for me. He was a soul DJ, came from the same background as me, he’s from Brixton in South London which is like England’s equivalent of Detroit, really. Very ghetto, very black, and Colin was always into electronic music from very early, like late ‘70s, early ‘80s. And he used to be into a lot of hi-NRG, early hi-NRG stuff. He taught me about the whole techno thing, he brought me to see Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Blake Baxter in 1987 at a place called Legends. The problem with Colin, Colin never believed in himself enough as a DJ. I think he was a great inspiration to people but he didn’t believe in himself enough and when the whole rave thing took off in ‘88 he kind of missed the boat a little bit but he is probably my biggest inspiration.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you say he was into the hi-NRG stuff, that wasn’t the most normal thing for a young black youth to like in London at that time, was it?

Fabio

We was into some different shit. I went through the whole black thing, being into dub, into disco, into funk and I met Colin and Colin just turned my ear a lot to a lot of stuff out of New York. Blondie “Rapture” changed the game. People have got to realise that, Blondie - Rapture, that was a serious tune man, and it changed a lot of stuff. And he played me Blondie - “Rapture”, and I was like, “What is this? This tune sounds so gay! What is this, man?” And he took me to a few club and stuff and I got the whole electronic vibe because I was a real staunch music man and I just didn’t believe in the whole electronic movement of the late ‘80s. The only place you could listen to hi-NRG was at gay clubs so we started hitting gay clubs and stuff. There was a gay club down the road from me called The Fridge in Brixton, these guys called Boilerhouse they used to play there, and they used to play crazy stuff like New Order the New Romantic stuff which was like Visage and stuff like that, and I just really got into that stuff. Amylnitrate helped. And then before you knew it the whole house and techno explosion started, that was just the natural progression, really.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Everyone knows about The Loft and Fire Island and all these legendary places in New York, they’re well documented, but what was gay club culture on the beginning of the ‘80s like as far as you could see it as an outsider?

Fabio

It was exciting. There was a club called the Mud Club, which was run by a guy called Leigh Bowery who was instrumental to the whole club happenings in London. And we used to go out there, that used to be a crazy place because you’d have ghetto kids, new romantics used to go there, Boy George, George Michael used to go there. I used to go there, and you just had this crazy mixture of people that just had this longing for electronic music. Not like it is now where you get this kind of segregation, “I’m into Drum & bass, I’m into techno, I’m into this, I’m into that,” sub genres and ridiculous things like that. W§e were just going there and jamming and it was so exciting. So the gay scene in the States, it was just as important in the UK. They were willing to take risks that normal clubs weren’t willing to take, musically. And people-wise as well, there was a snobbery in London in the ‘80s about clubbing. And the gay scene just didn’t adhere to that at all, didn’t care about the whole VIP thing, whatever you looked like didn’t give a shit, you could just come in there and party. So that’s what I found so infectious about the whole gay scene it was very special, a very special time.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Up until a certain revival a couple of years ago, when you looked at club pictures from London from the early ‘80s, like early Face magazine, it didn’t really look as if it was about having a good time. There was a bit of make up and posing and all that?

Fabio

You had the fashionistas but it wasn’t really like it is now. I find the whole VIP fashion thing now it’s not about music at all. Then it was, and that’s what was exciting because a lot of influential artists of the ‘80s did go to those clubs. You had Trevor Horn going to that place, Trevor Horn to me is a pioneer of that big, big sound that I’ve always loved since I was a child. Following on from producers like Norman Whitfield, who used to produce the Temptations, and Quincy Jones, the Mizell Brothers. And Trevor Horn had that big stringy kind of sound. And Frankie Goes to Hollywood are seminal to a lot of what was going on as well. “Two Tribes” and stuff like that. So it was exciting because you didn’t really know. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t a black sound, it was just this London thing. It was exclusively London. And it wasn’t just fashion. I think The Face has always been slightly shallow anyway so they were just taking pictures of people with red hair and stuff. Beneath that there was some good shit going on.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Before we get into the favourite subject of any good British DJ, slagging off the press, it’s funny how celebrity culture these days tries to emulate that subculture.

Fabio

That’s the good thing about drum & bass. Drum & bass gets tagged with this thing of not being trendy enough and it’s this odd music that nobody gets, which I really like. Because in London you’ve got this crazy, VIP, celebrity bullshit thing where you go to clubs and there’s footballers and you play silly music. That VIP thing was never like that in the ‘80s, it was always about music. Now it’s not so much about music. Drum & bass is quite grimy, you wear whatever you want, it’s not about Gucci or Prada, it’s quite freestyle. I love that. It has its phases but that’s because it gets trendy all of a sudden and everyone thinks, “Oh yeah, drum & bass, really trendy let’s go and check it out.”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Where did a place like Crackers fit in?

Fabio

When I was about 12 my cousin was really into the soul scene and she took me to this place called Crackers, which you had to be 18 to get in to but I was a tall guy and I used to sneak in there. It used to be on a Friday afternoon from 12 until 3. Everyone was working. It was a small club with this guy called George Power playing and another icon of mine, Paul Anderson, and he used to play the most amazing soul and funk stuff, Roy Ayers, Earth, Wind & Fire, stuff I was really into at the time. But I went to school in Brixton where it was all about reggae so I always hid the fact I went to Crackers. I never really told anyone otherwise I would have got beaten up because soul was like, “Nah, nah, you don’t listen to soul, you’ve got to listen to reggae.” At school I was listening to Steel Pulse and Dennis Brown and stuff like that. On a Friday I used to go and check out funk stuff with my cousin, wear my little waistcoat and my patent shoes and go and watch these amazing dancers go crazy to the latest funk stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you had parallel lives then?

Fabio

I had parallel lives. My secret identity was soul music and no one ever knew because I just hid it from everyone that I was the soul boy and I was the rude boy at school. I was listening to all the pre-releases, and that helped the whole thing, my whole musical heritage. I’m pleased it went that way, really.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

For us that’s about as far away as ‘14/’18 and Flanders, why couldn’t you be a soul boy and a rude boy at the same time at school?

Fabio

It was peer pressure. Being in school you couldn’t really be a rude boy if you liked soul music. It wasn’t rebellion. Reggae music in the ‘70s talked about struggling and pain and a lot of what was going on in Jamaica at the time, which was a lot of bullshit with the government. At election time they used to get guys from the ghetto and fight the opposition parties and stuff so it was very rebellious, very ghetto. You know, it was “Police And Thieves,” Junior Marvin, and stuff like that. That’s what it was about so it was very street at the time. But soul music was about love and people didn’t really want to hear about that. They didn’t really want to hear about people talking about going out and partying at the disco.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But there was a lot of subversive elements and political agendas in the soul movement?

Fabio

The thing is about soul it was still about dancing whatever message there was in that music we never heard it because it was all about dancing and that’s why disco was not political at all. Disco was… it is what it is. You go and dance and Donna Summer singing some airy fairy shot but we didn’t care, you go on the dancefloor and you leave your cares behind as Chic said. That’s what it was about, total escapism, where reggae music wasn’t. It was about how I was living at the time in Brixton, it was very similar to what was happening in Brixton at the time so it wasn’t much of an escapism. I found soul music more as a kind of fancy thing and more of an escape. Girls and all that kind of stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So going back a little further to your When Harry Met Sally-moment, when did you meet your Statler? You can’t hardly say Fabio without saying another name too.

Fabio

How did I come up with the name Fabio?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That as well.

Fabio

I was going out with this lovely, lovely looking Italian girl and she always said, “If we have babies I want it to be called Fabio.” “Ok, that’s cool, I love that name.” So what happened - Colin Dale came into this as well - there was a pirate station starting up and Colin Dale was meant to do a show and he pulled out at the last moment because Kiss FM in London was just starting up so he was like, “Listen, can you do this show for me?” I said, “Sure, no problem.” So I went down and got a basket full of records and went down to this pirate station, knocked on the door, walked in, and ten minutes beforehand he said, “Listen, you need a name.” And I said, “OK, what about Fabio?” And everybody started laughing. “What do you mean, Fabio? You’re a black guy from Brixton, Fabio doesn’t suit the bill, what about Pablo?” And I was like, “Yeah, cool, but nah, nah, Fabio, it’s just got a ring to it.” And that’s how it started. That’s another thing, having two different names it’s like I’m a different person when I’m Fabio. My real name is Fitzroy. When I’m Fitzroy I’m a totally different person.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When did you first see the Fabio that was a weird kind of modeling dude?

Fabio

Oh, straight away. Someone came up to me but it was too late to change it. Haven’t had any calls from him or anything, it’s never been a problem.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Why did Colin have to pull out?

Fabio

At the time, the whole pirate thing was just really starting off with the advent of rare groove. Everyone started to get into the whole rare groove, warehouse party thing and Kiss FM had DJs like Norman Jay, Bobby and Steve and guys like that, and Colin was like: “Well, it’s established. I’d rather go here than some new pirate station starting up with nameless DJs.” So Colin started to go to Kiss FM. I became one of the nameless DJs and we had some good DJs come out of there. Dave Angel was on Phase One, the station I was on, Pressure Drop, these guys that were really instrumental in the first early beats stuff and stuff like that. It was a very influential time, we’re talking about 1984/’85. I started off playing really way out rare groove stuff, stuff like early Blackbyrds, crazy stuff coming out of New York like Moody, crazy electronic stuff. But there was one specific day, I went to the record shop and bought “My Melody” by Eric B and Rakim and “Mysteries Of Love” by Fingers Inc. on the same day. And that day changed my life.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What shop was it?

Fabio

Red Records in Brixton. And those two tunes changed everything for me. My Melody was the start of real hip hop. Eric B and Rakim, Rakim probably the greatest rapper of all time, and ‘Mysteries Of Love,’ which was Fingers Inc., was the first real house tune that I heard out if Chicago so I’ll always remember that day.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Wasn’t it odd that someone who had to live parallel lives a couple of years earlier with these scenes which were so far apart, that on that day you got these two records, which are two a lot of people millions of universes apart but are so close to everyone in this room because they convey a lot of similarities?

Fabio

When I heard Rakim rap for the first time I was like: “Damn, this guy.” You know, rap before then was Sugarhill Gang and stuff like that it wasn’t really… Rakim just came with these metaphors and Eric B was an incredibly underrated producer, just came with these sick rhythms and sick beats. And “Mysteries Of Love”, which of course, guys like Robert Owens, who I think is the most underrated vocalist of all time, and Larry Heard, who is a total genius, to get those two tunes on the same day was just like a turning point. I think it was fate. You get those moments in your life where it’s like a blueprint. I could have gone either way. I was really into hip hop a lot. I was into KRS-One and stuff like that but there was not a club scene as such. Whereas the house thing had just started up and it was so exciting and so exhilarating and I chose that path.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you feel liberated that suddenly Fabio and Fitzroy could be the same person and play the same stuff that they liked within 15 minutes of a set?

Fabio

For me, DJing in the early days was never fun, I used to be so nervous about DJing. Nosebleeds and stuff like that. The first DJ set I ever played was in a place called Gossips with Tim Westwood, who’s now the king of UK hip hop. He gave me a slot. I was a dancer, I used to be what they called a ‘boogie boy’. We used to go to clubs and dance, basically to get girls. But we never used to, because we used to end up so sweaty and so into the music that by the time we’d finished dancing all the girls had gone home so it was a pointless exercise, really. One day Colin, again, he didn’t turn up for a gig and Tim phoned up and said, “Listen, Fitz. I know you’ve got records, come down and spin some tunes.” And that was stuff like Change, I was into Change, the group from the US, “Glow Of Love” by Luther Vandross and stuff like that. Chic, I loved all that kind of stuff. And I went down there and played and I was so, so nervous I thought there’s no way I could ever do this for a living. I just couldn’t do it, I preferred to be a dancer and just go out there chasing girls all the time. So the DJ thing never clicked for me but it was an important moment because it showed me what it was all about. DJing clicked for me with pirate radio.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

On that particular phone call, how many [does Tim Westwood impression] “exactlys” were there? What was Tim like at the time?

Fabio

Tim was cool. Tim has got this thing where, if you don’t know he’s the real founder of hip hop in the UK. This 52 year-old white guy whose father was a bishop, but talks black. I mean, he is the most ghetto speaking guy. I don’t even understand what he’s talking about sometimes. But he’s always been a real important person when it comes to black music in England and he was a wicked soul DJ. He used to phone me up and be like, “Listen, Fitz, I’ve just got this wicked tune in, this new Roy Ayers thing, what track should I play? “Cameo. Oh, Cameo. Cameo, Cameo, Cameo. I loved Cameo.” I used to be his ghostwriter in a funny sort of way, I used to tell him what tracks to play. He’d never admit that now if you were to speak to him but I did, and so he was like, “Come and play some music.” And I did well, I did well. And another thing, there was no mixing in those days it was all about selection, which to me is still the most important part about playing music. You can have all the technology you want, Final Scratch, whatever it is, Ableton Live, if you can’t put two tunes together none of that matters, it really doesn’t. You can be the best mixer in the world. I used to listen to Jah Shaka, who to me is one of the greatest DJs of all time, and he still plays with one deck, which is belt-drive. It’s not even like, you can’t do that [mimes touching deck]. You’ve got to push it in. And he makes people dance because he’s a selector. He can put two tunes together, which to me is still the most important thing. Selection, man.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you speak of selection, the rare groove thing got out of hand as well. Especially the ‘rare’ bit in it.

Fabio

It’s been through so many different phases. The whole rare groove thing was really exciting because, we were kicking off warehouses, we’d go to a warehouse in the middle of London and break in and set up a soundsystem and play music. And you had guys like Jazzie B, another guy who is totally underrated, he put British music on the map. He gave British black music an identity. Guys like that were starting out, Trevor Nelson, Norman, Gilles Peterson, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, all those guys were all just coming up at that time, it was amazing to see that at the time. The police were chasing us as well, they used to raid these warehouses on a regular basis and we didn’t care. There was just that feeling, that buzz that something new was happening. And then Colin took me to listen to Derrick May and Blake Baxter. That seriously changed my life. Derrick May, the guy’s just such a genius.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What was so different about it?

Fabio

It was electronic music that was beautiful music. Before that electronic music was still quite - don’t get me wrong, I love New Order and stuff like that - but I never saw the beauty in electronic music. I didn’t think electronic music could ever sound like Marvin Gaye and Stevie and these guys and when I heard Derrick May and Blake Baxter play they had these amazing strings and pads and it all just made sense to me. It had so much soul, it had so much rhythm. And I just thought, ‘These guys are from Detroit which is the scariest place that I’ve ever been to in my life. It’s so industrial, it’s so bleak, and they can make music that sounds like this’. It just made me know that electronic music had that thing, that timeless quality.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How did that fusion of the rare groove thing and the electronic thing happen?

Fabio

It happened strangely enough because the ethos of breaking in and being a bit of a rebel didn’t quite suit rare groove. Rare groove isn’t rebellious enough and when dance music came along, this whole thing, it just came along and came through with this drug-fuelled energy. It was different, it felt more like, ‘This is what warehouses were made for’, and it was an incredible time. I remember listening to Paul Oakenfold at place called Spectrum, Heaven in London and just looking up and seeing all these lasers for the first time. I’d never seen lasers before and people just looking up to him like he was a god. DJs never really had that status. DJs were still someone playing music, you never knew who it was, it was this little guy in the corner and then it just turned DJing onto something totally different. And I remember him playing Yello “The Race”, [sings Yello “The Race”) and I remember the whole crowd just putting their hands up and looking towards the DJ and I found myself doing the same thing and I just thought, ‘Shit, this is what I want to do. This is really what I want to do’. The power that’s there… and you couldn’t even see him you could just see this silhouette and it was like church. It was like praying to some god. I thought, ‘This is me, I want this, man’.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Because of the god-like element or the moment when you had your hands up?

Fabio

Both. Not wanting to feel like a god but to have that power of people with music, something that I’d loved all my life, to see it affect people in that way. Yeah, I wanted to do that. You can get that in the form of live bands but not with a guy with decks. These things are another thing that changed everything [points to the turntable], Technics. When I saw the the power that this shit had I was like ‘Woah’.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What is the power?

Fabio

Basically, the pitch and how steady it is. You’ve had millions, Vestax and everyone’s made decks but these are still the blueprint. It’s amazing, I went with my daughter to Science Museum in London and they had this archive and they had a pair of Technics decks there and they were like, “This is what DJs used to play with in the ‘80s and ‘90s.” And I was like, “What a cheek! I’m still playing with this shit now.” It made me feel a bit like technology has taken over a bit. I still play a lot of vinyl, dubplates and stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Are these moments when you feel like a dinosaur, like a relic from another time?

Fabio

Yeah, I do slightly. I only got my first computer two years ago, my first mobile phone four years ago. I’m a bit scared of technology, there’s something quite scary about it. The speed of it I don’t like. I don’t like that you can just get in contact with people so quickly and get things done so quickly. I think it takes away a lot of brain power. I do feel a bit like that. Even just having a Mac. I bought my first Mac last week, I had a PC that got ravaged by viruses. Everyone was like, “What you doing with a fucking PC? Get a Mac.” And I was like, “Listen, I don’t give a shit.” As long as I can get online and send an email. But now I’ve got into the Mac thing I see what everyone’s talking about. And that’s what happens with technology. You get into something you don’t want to and then you get drawn into it so much, and before you know it, you’re some techno freak, man. It scares me slightly. But even MySpace. Everyone was like, “Fabio, you need to get on MySpace, it’s what’s happening, you need it.” And I’m still not on MySpace because I hate it. All I see on MySpace is naked people trying to fucking get off with each other (laughter). And then it’s under this banner that, oh yeah, it’s so cool, we want to get our music across to people, it’s bullshit. My girlfriend and I had a big problem because I looked in her MySpace page and saw all these naked men. I was like, “What the fuck are you doing?” (laughs) “Who the fuck’s this?” And she’s like, “Oh, they’re my friends.” And I was like, “Do you need naked friends?” (applause) Six months time I’ll probably be half naked on MySpace as well. That’s what I mean about technology you just got to be there.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s where technology interferes with psychology as well. Do you think that the overall peer pressure of the Internet high school popularity contest, you looking on there and going, “Oh, hang on, my girlfriend’s looking at this and his chest is a little wider than mine and I need to get the angles.”

Fabio

Yeah for sure, it’s the new gym.

Torsten Schimdt

Shouldn’t you be old and bold and brave enough to set the stage and go like, “Pff?”

Fabio

No, no, no. I’m too insecure for that. I’m still very insecure about everything that I do. I’m not a confident person in a lot of ways. No, no, no. I’ll never feel confident with technology, even the CD thing, I’m freaking out because of a crash and something’s going to go wrong and stuff like that. Then, at the same time, I do appreciate that this is the way it is. Big case in point, drum & bass is very techno based and Grooverider is using Serato Scratch and he’s now getting everybody to say, “Why do you do it, now you’re killing vinyl,” and it’s like, well he’s like me but he’s like, “Well, this is the future man.” You can’t be traditionalist about everything. I think that just stops progress. It’s just me, I just find... I take a long time to get into stuff but then when I get into it I dismiss everything else. It’s just me man. It’s a Libra thing.

Torsten Schmidt

Wasn’t one of the pit falls of drum & bass in the first place that it championed progress so much that it’s somehow hindered itself from a healthy progress?

Fabio

Yes and no. I think drum & bass’ biggest problem is that it became a trend thing. A lot of people were saying that they were into it that weren’t really into it. It was just a phase that they went through. Drum & bass’ problem is it doesn’t really conform enough in a funny sort of way. It keep itself to itself slightly, which I don’t always think is a good thing. At the same time it’s kept it real and it’s...

Torsten Schmidt

Real as in?

Fabio

It hasn’t changed that much man. It’s never really sold itself to the world, not like hip-hop has. When I look at hip-hop and I see, people will say, “Drum & bass has been around a long time, maybe we’ll get to the stage hip-hop got to,” and I’m like, “Well, do you want to get to that phase?” The realest hip-hop, for me, is just underground and no one in America really, really wants to listen to it because they’d prefer to listen to Jay-Z coming back again after he retired like four months ago or something, which pissed me off because I sat down and told myself, “Jay-Z, you’re retiring but you’ve got... There’s so much things you could say to the kids, man. There’s so much things instead of thinking, well I’ve said enough about bitches and crystal so I’m going to give up.” I’m pissed off with that man and I’m glad drum & bass will never go down that road because it can’t go down that road, it never will.

Torsten Schmidt

What do you think drum & bass has got to say to the kids?

Fabio

Nothing, really. I don’t think it says anything. You either like it or you don’t like it, you dance to it or you don’t dance to it, man. Do you know what I mean? I don’t think it’s really got that much to say because it’s a very rhythm-based as well which is another reason why a lot of people can’t get their head... It hasn’t got any hooks, very... It’s quite monotonous. It hasn’t really got a lot of melody, these kind of... My sister just reckons it sounds like a car rolling backwards down a hill. That’s what she said it sounds like to her and I know a lot of people can’t really get their heads around it.

Torsten Schmidt

You’ve been always known as one of the DJ’s in the game that liked the harmonies and the melodies and that kind of stuff.

Fabio

I try and bring that. It’s hard right now, it’s hard because every time I do that something else comes along, like Pendulum. Pendulum’s coming out which... They’re great, I love Pendulum, absolutely love them.

Torsten Schmidt

Are you just saying that because you feel you have to say that?

Fabio

No, no. I’m saying that because, sonically I think they’re amazing and I think they are the first drum & bass group since The Prodigy that can take it onto a massive stage and sound incredible. On a stage of 40,000 people they will sound amazing. No, no, no, I’ve got total respect for Pendulum, total respect, totally, just like I had respect for Prodigy back in the day. I loved Prodigy, the early stuff.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s exactly the same kind of thing with the Pendulum thing. At what price are you playing to 40,000, 400,000 people? Can you give us a run down of what an early Prodigy show looked like?

Fabio

Early Prodigy was crazy because we used to be playing a lot of soulful breakbeat-y stuff and Prodigy used to come on with this kind of punk attitude. They just had something, there was like Utah Saints around at the time, Aphex Twin, Orbital, Leftfield, but Prodigy just had the game sewn up in the live element. They had this amazing live show with so much energy, so much creativity as well, they were very creative, Prodigy. I think that people underestimate the skill Liam) had in producing stuff like “Firestarter”. He moved from “Charly”, which was this ridiculous record about a cartoon character, to Firestarter in one fell swoop and that took amazing skill and courage to do that. So total respect to them, total respect.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

By the time the Prodigy came ‘round the first time you already had gone through how many lives?

Fabio

A lot, because then, going back to ‘88, Drum & bass wasn’t around so we played techno. A lot of techno like R&S. I played “Mentasm” on dubplate, ‘92/’93. Joey Beltram actually came down and gave me an acetate of it. I’m so proud of that moment. In ‘88 it was Chicago house, acid house, and bones breaks, Frankie Bones from New York, Little Louie Vega, the whole New York sound was incredible, Frankie Knuckles, stuff like that. And then at the same time there was a lot of balearic stuff going on as well. Balearic is the original Ibiza music, very guitar-y, quite druggy stuff. Which I liked as well, I loved balearic stuff but I was really into the Chicago [sound], Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk, them cats there, man, they were the real dudes at the time for me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When did that whole thing get out of hand, that early warehouse scene?

Fabio

When the press, the national press got on the whole drug thing. There was a story about a big rave called Sunrise. They broke into some fields and there was 35,000 people illegally dancing on the most beautiful day ever in England, it was a beautiful day and night. And the press came down and it was on the front page of the newspapers the next morning that this 30,000 frenzied kids had gone on the rampage in some fields and taken ecstasy. There was ecstasy wrappers found on the floor, foils with ecstasy in them, no one really understood. The great thing about the rave movement was the first time black and white people came together as a kind of movement, it never really happened before. The soul scene is very black, Crackers was very black, it was 95% black, and you had your kind of punk/mod scenes, which was very white. I know it sounds really superficial, really clichéd - but there really wasn’t no colour, we really looked at white people and Asian people as one family.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

And once you’d drunk from the same water bottle...

Fabio

Yeah, that’s right. Once you drank from the same water bottle that was it and those were the days, very exciting times. But it got shut down basically because the government came up with this bill called the Criminal Justice Bill, which stopped you from doing any parties in a field. They just rushed this bill through which was totally illegal for them to do it and there was riots in London about it, a lot of protests and stuff. And then it went into clubs and a lot of people thought it’d be sanitised and it was the end of everything. The end of dance music. And it survived, man. It survived, it survived.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you think back to the riots the Criminal Justice Bill caused and the media outrage and stuff, and when you think of the deprivation of public and personal rights we’re facing nowadays, especially in England with CCTV and whatnot, how do you feel about that in comparison?

Fabio

We felt cheated and we were governed by a woman called Mrs. Thatcher who was the common enemy and we just felt that she was so against young people and their ideals and what they wanted to do and she was getting more and more right wing and suppressing. It was very depressing times and that’s why I think acid house was so relevant. She shut down all the mills in the North of England and everyone just felt like it was... The country was slowly getting shut down and raving was such an escape for everyone. And drugs was as well, let’s get it straight. Acid and ecstasy was a major part of what was going on at the time. People used to take so much drugs to get away from the drudgery of what was going on and she was out a little while after that anyway. The Criminal Justice Bill was one of the things that got her out. The Poll Tax, which was an extraordinary bill that they tried to pass through government, that and the Criminal Justice Bill helped to get her out so we helped change things. That’s the way I see it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you look at the open public outrage at that time, what is going on currently, where is the open resistance movement in England in the last three or four years or whatever?

Fabio

It’s not happening because the lines have been blurred politically for me. All England really cares about is terrorism and we’re getting kind of flummoxed with this phony war on terror. But I think the youth nowadays just haven’t got it in them to be rebellious. I think everyone’s too content in a funny sort of way, they’re quite happy with what’s going on. English people aren’t really rebellious by nature anyway. They don’t really stand up and do anything about things, unless it directly affects them, and so I don’t see anything changing at all. The more politics gets a stranglehold on everything we do, the less chance there is of any revolution of any kind. I don’t think it’s going to happen anywhere. Western society, we’ve become very fragile and very... We don’t like the government but we sit down and as long as it doesn’t affect you, you don’t give a shit. You’re too interested in looking after your kids and stuff like that. I’ve got two daughters, I can’t be a rebel now, I’m too old.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What position does that leave us as musicians, producers, DJs and stuff?

Fabio

Music’s always free, though. Music’s always your way out, your escape. You can say what you want through music. You can do what you want through music so that’s cool, music’s always real. In bad times music always thrives and that’s why I think now, we’re going through a great music phase at the moment, I think there’s some wonderful music around in all genres. I think house music’s got itself together again, I think there’s some great techno stuff, great underground hip-hop, great UK hip-hop, which took a little while but it’s there now and is going to shake the whole American thing up. UK grime and stuff like that. Someone said to me the other day that there’s this thing in England, I don’t know if it happens out here, called happy slapping, where you go around and you slap people in the face and record it. And someone said to me that’s because kids are bored and that’s actually very inventive that they’re thinking of new ways of doing shit. And I thought it was bullshit at first but in a funny sort of way it’s true, they’re using technology and making their own little movies out of [it], their own little snuff movies. And happy slapping’s big stuff, it happens all the time. It’s never happened to me, but kids are bored, that’s why they do shit like that and record it. They mug people and record it and that’s invention for them, that’s them producing and directing.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When does boredom become a creative force?

Fabio

It depends. If you get too bored, I don’t think you can be creative. I think if you’re bored and you’ve got passion and you’re slightly focused, I think you can do shit. I think if you’re just bored and lazy, you’re not going to get anywhere. Times are so rough now and things are so bad and people are so disillusioned, people are turning to the music and there was a time when people were just not really into music. London goes through phases. London two years ago, techno died, house died, drum & bass died, but now everything’s thriving again because all we hear about is bullshit about the war on terror and shit like that. I think in times like that music always thrives.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s been in human nature to always complain about the youth being lazy, even if you go back to Socrates and whatnot, and now with you being on this whole music thing for like, I don’t know, a long time, what’s your trick to overcome the laziness? What’s the stick-up’s you give people?

Fabio

My biggest thing is age. I’m in my early forties now and it’s just keeping young. That’s what keeps me focused. I play in some places where I could be the grandfather to a lot of the kids who are in there, it makes me think sometimes, ‘Wow, this is weird’. And then, other times I think it’s just great because it’s keeping me in the young thing. When I was younger, if you were 40, you were old. I looked at you as very conservative, did your thing, and now if you’re 40, I go to clubs and I’m kind of the youngest guy in there, so that’s cool. It’s changed, being old now. In the music game anyway it doesn’t matter. John Peel, who was one of our greatest DJs, he always said to me, “Listen, just have fun. Don’t ever take it too seriously, don’t analyse things too much, don’t think about social issues, it’s music and your love for music.” When I was 14 I used to love black music so much but the only chance I could hear it was on a pirate radio called Radio Luxembourg. And I used to have a transistor radio that I used to listen to under my pillow because my mum always used to check if I was awake or not and I used to listen to the charts on a Sunday night with a guy called Tony Prince and he used to play the top 30 American tunes and that was wicked, man. Now, that in a way was kind of improvising. Now, because of technology, you don’t have to improvise. Things are too easy that’s what I mean about... I got that passion because it was difficult to stay up at 11 o’clock and hear that shit and I used to listen to it and a lot of times it used to crackle and it used to go off and I used to wait for it to come back on and I used to miss a couple of the tracks and now you can get everything on digital straight away and you can hear whatever you want to hear.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Are you romanticising it or are you thinking that stuff’s too easy to get hold of?

Fabio

A bit of both. But there’s something really sweet and innocent about that, 11 o’clock you’re listening to some ship out in Europe fucking broadcasting music. And it’s illegal as well, it was an illegal station, you could just about hear it, and just something warm about that that you can’t have nowadays. There’s nothing you can’t hear, there’s nothing you can’t do, there’s nothing you can’t see.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So you think something like Rinse FM doesn’t have that kind of warmth?

Fabio

No, because it’s very knowing. You know people are listening to you out there. I think them guys didn’t even know if people were listening to them. They were on this ship and they didn’t even know that this little guy in Brixton was sitting down listening to their...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But with about 800 million different radio stations no one knows if anyone’s listening too, right?

Fabio

For sure, that’s true, but there always is someone listening, there always is. People find shit whereas before, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m wrong.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you ever feel like you were taking away the job or the opportunity from some passionate 14 year-old kid from Brixton to turn their habit into a job?

Fabio

No, no, no. I never feel like that because if you’re good enough you’ll make it. I don’t ever sympathise with anyone and think that I’ve stopped anyone’s progress. I just don’t think that’s the way it is. When people say, “You’re stopping a lot of the young guys coming through,” well, so what? At the end of the day, I’m there to be knocked down. So if you’re good enough, you’ll make it and that’s the truth.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Good enough is one thing, having the long breath another thing, especially when it comes to residencies. There’s a lot of crews and kids who go there and start out the club and the first night only ten people turn up, the second night twenty people turn up and they just go, “OK, no-one wants to listen to us.”

Fabio

We started a club called Speed in 1993 with LTJ Bukem because I was really pissed off with the way drum & bass was going. There was a lot of really ragga jungle which was wicked but was bringing totally the wrong crowd. A lot of people getting shot in clubs, and I was thinking, ‘This isn’t for me’. So we found a club in the West End and we decided to do that and for the first four weeks we had the total of about 40 people in there. We kept on and within three months it had got huge. I was hearing Tony Wilson, who was an important guy in the whole Manchester scene, the whole Happy Mondays and stuff, saying the first night he launched his club the Stone Roses was playing in this little bar with 20 of his friends there and them never knowing if more people are going to come. If you’ve got something like that maybe it’s because you’re doing something everyone else is doing, maybe you should try and do something that’s a little bit leftfield, something a little bit different. But I do my night on a Wednesday and sometimes there’s no one in there at all.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You did pick the odd day not the Friday?

Fabio

For sure, because I think in the week people are more tuned in to music. On a Wednesday night you’re a music person. You don’t go out on a Wednesday night to get out of it and drink loads, it’s a music night, it’s quite chilled. Thursday nights as well, which is now a weekend-ish kind of night. When we started off Speed on a Thursday night everyone was like, “One, it’s not going to work because it’s Thursday. Secondly, Drum & bass is never going to work in the West End and third, you’re trying this soulful kind of Drum & bass thing, that ain’t gonna work, no one wants to listen to it.” So on all these levels we went against the grain, which is great.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you think the demographic of club nights on a work day is changing because of more people being out of jobs?

Fabio

Yeah, but I also think the fact that people do know that weekends have just become quite mainstream, clubbing has become quite mainstream and I think real music people are going out in the week, weekdays, regardless of going to work. I mean, we finish Swerve, which is my club in the West End on a Wednesday night, at three. A good friend of mine comes down every week, he takes two busses home and he takes two busses to work and I love that, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. It doesn’t matter how tired he is, he’s there every week and you don’t really get that at weekends, you don’t get that real feel. So the weekdays have always been great for me. I love DJing on a Wednesday night man, it’s just so cool.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What about Sunday nights?

Fabio

Cool. Blue Note in London was probably the most famous drum & bass night. It was crazy, used to finish at 12, Goldie’s night. That was mad, that was a mad, mad, mad time. Very punk, very electric, Grooverider used to play there. It was the start of really dark drum & bass, the whole dark drum & bass movement with Ed Rush and them guys, that started at Blue Note. I was kind of resident there as well. Residencies are very important to me, it kept my people with me all the way and because I play a slightly different form of Drum & bass it’s kept my crowd happy and a lot of those people that come to Swerve don’t necessarily go out to other Drum & bass nights. It’s great, I’d always do a residency midweek, always.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So when it comes to building up these things, you’re always building up ‘your people’, and you have to turn yourself into some kind of trademark. How important is the MC in that?

Fabio

Well, I don’t have MCs in my club on a Wednesday. Not because of any reason but I just want the DJs to come down there. I think DJs can hide behind MCs a lot sometimes. You get MCs that are so skilled you can be shit and get away with it. Down at Swerve they don’t have MCs, you’ve got to rely on your musical skill and your musical knowledge and getting your way around playing a good selection. So I don’t have MCs. But MCs play an important role because Drum & bass is very rhythm/track-based. They put the kind of sugar on the cake, they make it understandable to everybody.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It took you a while to get to this point to be able to do that but on a Sunday night in ‘91 or ‘92 in some Ealing warehouse you needed to have the MCs.

Fabio

Oh yeah, you do. [In] drum & bass still you do need an MC a lot of the time because you have to have someone to interpret the music, they’re kind of like interpreters in a funny sort of way. Japanese clubs as well, it’s great to have an MC. Even though they don’t know what you’re talking about they pick up that vibe and there’s a voice there so they can follow it. It’s great like that, but then there’s other times they’re a slight intrusion and if you get an MC that thinks he’s a bit more important than you are you have slight problem there.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What’s the harshest thing you ever had to do to an MC?

Fabio

A lot of the time I just plug the mic out or turn the fader down or just tell him to piss off, basically. Which is always a good way, that one always works. But unless he’s really awful I just say, “Listen, it’s not going with what I’m doing, so…”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

At a night like Swerve what do you incorporate there from the things that you learnt at nights like Mendoza’s?

Fabio

It’s still the same. I’ve still got the same ethic behind what I do. It’s still the same kind of soulful feeling that’s always been with me whatever music I’ve played. It’s always got to have that sense of rhythm and that soulfulness, that vibe, I just try and maintain that. A lot of drum & bass is very - harsh isn’t the word - but it’s very hard. I don’t really like soulless music so much and a lot of it can sound like a cacophony of noise. I try and make it sound like it’s got some kind of structure a bit more. But saying that I do, I love a lot of hard Drum & bass as well. I love what Dillinja does, I think he’s a real scientist. Photek, and another thing, we mustn’t underrate producers like Photek who was the template for producers like Timbaland. Timbaland’s gone on record as saying he’s listened to Photek and learnt loads from him and even the way, the little shuffles you get nowadays in hip-hop, you listen to hip hop eight years ago and you listen to it now, the way they use their snares slightly differently, the way they shuffle their hi-hat’s around. A lot of that does come from drum & bass and I think drum & bass does get a bad rep. I mean, garage music, which was supposed to have killed off drum & bass was a hybrid of Drum & bass. Garage music was made by Drum & bass producers that got pissed off with the fact that drum & bass went a bit too technical and wanted to get back to more natural sounds and that’s how garage came around. So drum & bass is very important and I think it gets overlooked a hell of a lot of the time. A lot of the patterns that’s in the drums, you can hear it in a lot of music nowadays. You can hear it in R&B, you can hear it in hip hop, you can hear it in a lot of what Timbaland does, you can hear it in a lot of what The Neptunes do, so I think people [underestimate Drum & bass].

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

For a lot of people it was the back alley for finally being politically correct to admit to like certain electronic music, thinking if you liked your funkiness and soul and that’s how it was probably OK for the hip hop crowd to admit they liked the electronic side of things.

Fabio

For sure. Drum & bass is the most electronic music you can get. What’s changed with Drum & bass more than anything else is the speed. Drum & bass is still maybe too fast, it’s running at 175. Maybe if you slowed it down to 160 you’d lose a lot of that kind of clowny vibe you get with Drum & bass sometimes. I think sometimes the speed gives it that effect of being ploddy and [does bassline impression], it’s a lot more complex than that. So if I think drum & bass needs to learn something, I think it does need to slow down a bit. I’m as susceptible as anyone else, when I play sometimes you just get the thing to pitch up to +6 and then you listen back to it and think, ‘Shit, that’s going way too fast’. So I think it does need to slow down a bit.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That’s maybe not bad thing in general to slow down a bit here and there.

Fabio

I just think it’ll sound slightly more warm. But we had a big discussion, the whole Drum & bass fraternity about that, so I think a lot of the guys will be slowing it down.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Was that in one of those secret meetings that you guys have?

Fabio

We do. It’s like the Freemasons and it’s quite Nazi-esque. We all sit down there and plan our changes but it never happens though. We all walk away and think, ‘Fuck that!’ It never happens. There was a big meeting once about what we were doing with speed, there was a big meeting with all the guys. They had this secret meeting and they were like, “Oh, you know, they’re bringing drum & bass to the West End...,” and drum & bass is very strange like that, if they don’t like things they have meetings and they try and oust you. Have coups and stuff. So they had this big thing about the West End, “We don’t want it to go to the West End. Fabio, Bukem, they’re selling it out,” which did hurt quite a lot at the time because a lot of these guys were friends of mine. But it never happened, it never does really. Drum & bass people are long, they take ages to do anything. So you never have to worry about the meetings.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So meetings, fraternities and stuff, and going back to Mendoza’s, you can’t really talk about you without mentioning your sibling or your brother in crime.

Fabio

Oh, Grooverider? Oh, Grooverider, man. Grooverider’s been great for me because I’m very lazy and he’s so focused. It is really like a yin and yang thing. He’s totally the opposite for me but he’s been a total inspiration, he’s been as inspirational as people like Derrick May has, anybody. Incredible DJ, incredible, man, great friend. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him and that’s being serious.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How do you keep a working friendship over so many years?

FABIO

We don’t really see each other that much, which is good. If you ever want to keep a friendship, don’t socialize that much. We don’t socialize that much, man. We’ve got our own thing going on. We’re kind of really different and at the same time we’re very similar. And he gives me my space. I don’t answer my phone a lot and stuff like that. I’m very hard to get hold of and he’s very accessible and stuff like that. He just keeps me kind of real, man. And he’s a real techno freak. He’s a real, “Oh Fabio - you need to be on MySpace, you need to be on AIM. So he keeps me up with techology. So I’ll probably be doing some other scratch thing because he’s just starting it and he’s like ‘Look man, you’ve got your two deck things and it’s wicked and it sounds like you’re playing vinyl and stuff. So he just keeps me in touch with the real world. A lot of the time... I’m a real kind of family guy and I really don’t like to be immersed in drum & bass all the time. In drum & bass, in a funny sort of way, you’ve really got to live the life so much. They don’t like you doing anything else. You’re not suposed to eat things that drum & bass people don’t eat and stuff like that. Drum & bass is very odd like that and I really don’t want to get caught up in that whole drum & bass thing, so I try and do a lot of other things and get on with not being totally obsessed with music all the time. I love football a lot. That’s a major love of mine. My team is Tottenham Hotspur. I don’t know if you know about football, but they’re the greatest team in the world. And... I love my football.

Torsten Schmidt

They had a great attacker once.

Fabio

Huh?

Torsten Schmidt

They had a great attacker once.

Fabio

Yeah. No, they’re still [inaudible]. I don’t want to go into the whole footbal thing. Don’t even get me started. I like to listen to loads of stuff. I went to... A producer of mine took me to a metal... He plays punk, metal, stuff like that, and he’s the producer of my show. He had a surprise party so I went down to this bar in Camden and listened to this band called Capdown - I don’t know if any of you guys have heard of this metal group? Crazy! Wicked, man. And I went in there and there was all kind of skull and crossbones on the walls and I was thinking “Shit, man, they’re going to be doing some... they’re going to be cutting some young virgin’s throat in the middle of the dance floor.” And it didn’t happen, man. These two rock bands came on and they were amazing. In this little room like this and they just had so much energy and so much vibes. I felt like a kid again, man, because it was music I hadn’t heard and it was just wild, man. So I love that shit. I love that nu-metal stuff that’s coming out. So I listen to a lot of that. Listening to Madlib, as well, who I’m going to go and see in London. Listen to a lot of that stuff at the moment. I love the way he produces, I love the way The Neptunes produce, a couple of years ago more than now, do you know what I mean? I’ve got mad love for J Dilla, who passed away. But he was another... you ask most drum & bass producers and they will quote J Dilla as the man. And if you listen to a lot of J Dilla’s stuff, the warmth in his music is what I try and encapsulate a lot in drum & bass. These warm b-lines, the way he used snares and stuff like that. I thought J Dilla was an incredible, incredible producer. Very underrated. So I’m listening to a lot of really early J Dilla stuff at the moment. Yeah man, I’m loving music at the moment though. I’m loving music again. A good friend of mine sent me some real good minimal techno. The whole tech house thing is great at the moment. I’m starting to feel really alive again now for the first time in a little while about the whole music thing. And coming here to the Academy and seeing what you guys are doing is great. It’s a great outlet for young guys like yourselves to experiment with shit and everyone seems really positive here and on the same page and everyone’s working and everything seems really real here.

Torsten Schmidt

Now, with the things you like and the position you’re in - I don’t know, the radio shows and whatnot - wouldn’t you be able to go like, “Drum & bass rules, I do my thing now and I just go home and start playing the nu-metal stuff next to the latest Dilla beat tape, next to whatever kind of thing. Would you, in your position, be able to get away with that and probably create something new on top of that.

FABIO

Yeah, I could, but then, you know... To me still, as a DJ, what you do has got to make sense, and to me that wouldn’t make that much sense. To me, I’ve got to have some kind of cohesion, whether it’s a good or bad thing, whether it’s kind of like being inventive or not it’s still got to sound cohesive. I don’t like...

Torsten Schmidt

Is there a difference between club DJing and radio DJing though?

Fabio

Yeah, there is. Because it’s just you and you don’t know who’s listening. When you’ve got people facing you, you tend to compromise a bit more if you see a crowd. When you don’t have anyone to dance, you know, when you don’t have to make people dance, people didn’t pay money to come and see you DJ, so it’s a different art form in that respect. You can chill a lot more. I’m a lot more relaxed on the radio as well. I’m very tense when I DJ. I don’t know why. I’ve been DJing 20 years. I’ll walk into the smallest club with no-one there and I’m like “Eurghhhh!” Which is good, because I think that’s what keeps me, that’s what keeps the whole adrenalin thing going with me, man. But radio I do love. I think it’s a great art form and it survived the advent of television and stuff like that. I still think, in a funny sort of way, it’s the most powerful medium there is. Because you don’t see that person, you’re just hearing this distracted voice coming out the speakers and there’s something about that that I still really, really love.

Torsten Schmidt

And in some ways the internet has breathed...

Fabio

New life into radio, for sure. The great thing about internet radio is that people are falling in love with radio again and really findinf out how important radio is.

Torsten Schmidt

And also the selecting process because with all the music out there they need someone they can trust to filter through the crap.

Fabio

For sure. I think even in war time radio was an assurance for a lot of people out there. When the bombs were falling and stuff like that radio was the most important thing. It made people kind of escape from the shit that was going on. Whereas I don’t feel TV does that. TV kind of draws you into that. It shows you everything. And radio’s not like that. Radio is a totally different kind of medium, man. It keeps you happy. It gives you assurances in a funny sort of way.

Torsten Schmidt

Also triggers your imagination.

Fabio

Yeah, exactly. You’ve got to use your imagination. It’s more visual than television is, in a funny sort of way. You know what I mean? You paint your own pictures, man. A lot of people were like “Oh my God, I didn’t know you were black.” And I’m like “Why?” “Because of your name and stuff.” And it’s like, “OK!” A lot of people dont know what I look and stuff like that and that’s cool.

Torsten Schmidt

That’s a very comfy thing in this age of...

Fabio

In this age of image and stuff like that. You don’t have to be good looking to DJ as well. It’s not really and image-based thing. You don’t have to look a certain way, you don’t have to eat a certain way.

Torsten Schmidt

As long as you stay away from MySpace.

Fabio

Yeah, as long as you stay away from MySpace. And Radio One is very good to me in the fact that I can play whatever I want and I can kind of do what I want. Which is very important to what I do. And, plus it’s worldwide, it’s got a huge internet following, they’re very clued up about the whole net thing, they’re on top of that kind of stuff. And they’ve kept with us for seven years, which for mainstream radio... I feel very privileged to be there for that long. It’s the pinnacle of any DJ wanting to be on the radio in England. Radio One is really the peak, you know, of your ambitions really.

Torsten Schmidt

When you’re at that level of professionalism, a lot of people think they would need someone called an agent. Now what exactly does an agent do?

Fabio

Ummmmmm...take 15%. Do you know what I mean? [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

So it’s like the tax man?

Fabio

No no no. To be fair, agents kind of like... My girlfriend’s my agent as well.

Torsten Schmidt

Is that always a good combination?

Fabio

No, it is. No, it’s good, because she’s one of the first agents. You can’t be out there ding all that stuff and she does all the bullshit stuff. She’s there and I’ll shout at her a lot and she’s far between these egotistical DJs. It’s very hard work for her, very hard work. Especially drum & bass DJs. All the guys are so insecure and stuff. She’s like the mother. I haven’t got an agent and managers and stuff like that. I’ve never gone down these roads, it’s not really me. I’ve just got an agent and that’s it, do you know what I mean? And she does very little apart from get my work together and this kind of stuff. She doesn’t intrude.

Torsten Schmidt

But the whole thing is, we all like to work in an environment where we like the people that we work with, but if it’s your girlfriend on top of things and you feel like something’s not going the way you want it to... I don’t want to be you to tell her...

Fabio

Oh, but no no no. She listens. She listens and she knows on a professional level you’ve got to keep it like that. You’ve got to keep your relationship separate. If I say something, she’s got to take me as an outside in a funny sort of way. We’ve always established that from the very start, that if she’s not happy with things, she tells me and if I’m not happy I tell her. So we’ve got a great relationship on that level. I can shout at her and she doesn’t take it that personally.

Torsten Schmidt

So if I was now starting out... I mean how did you survive without doing no productions, for example? Especially in something with the [inaudible] for exclusivity?

Fabio

Yeah, I mean nowadays you’ve got to be an artist to be a DJ. It’s quite sad. It’s very difficult now to just be a DJ on your own merit and just go out there. but to have lasted this long is a testament to me in a funny sort of way because I’ve done it without having anything to sell ever, apart from the fact that I’m a DJ. I’ve not done it off the back of having big tunes out there. I’ve done it from the fact I’m just a DJ and that’s very rare nowadays, to find a DJ that’s not an artist. So on one level I feel privileged that I’m still around and I still get booked on merit, more than the fact I’m Fabio who made this great tune but can’t DJ so well, which happens quite a lot nowadays.

Torsten Schmidt

Does it?

Fabio

Yeah it does. With artists, yeah. I’m not going to name no names, but a lot of artists do live off the name thing.

Torsten Schmidt

Ummmm...you did dabbke in label work as well.

Fabio

We’ve still got it. We’ve still got the label, Creative Source. It’s hard work. It’s hard work trying to balance running a club night, DJing, doing the label, but drum & bass is going through a very good phase now. We’ve got a lot of young, exciting artists. We’ve got a guy called Alex Perez, we’ve got another guy called Breakage, we’ve got a whole slew of guys all under the age of 25 making the most amazing music and these guys are the next generation, so drum & bass has another 15 or so years left in it. Whereas five years that wasn’t the case so much, it was still a lot of the old figureheads on top of the game. Now these young guys have come and they’ve shaken up the Calibres, the Photeks, the Dillinjas... they’ve all got a wake-up call, man and they’ve all got to get their shit together. And even Goldie, who I spoke to other day, said he’s more inspired now than he has been any time in the last ten years. Which is good to hear, man. That’ll be great for the game. And the fact that we’re getting these new guys from all over the world, we’ve got some great artists from Australia, New Zealand, America, Brazil, China, everywhere. And that’s great. And in that respect as well, the internet has been a great thing. That’s the way you’ve got that link up. So on a worldwide level, the young cats, they’re doing it, man and they’re shaking up the game. So that’s great, man.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s slightly different compared to the days when you just got like crazy advances and the first thing you could do was buy like that really big fuck off desk and a new car and all that kind of stuff.

Fabio

That’s the most difficult thing.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s far more reasonable I’d say than difficult, maybe.

Fabio

It’s very difficult because we kind of exist on vinyl sales as well. The whole download thing is very difficult to sella nd package, so we’re still doing vinyl as a main sales point and that’s kind of dying. Vinyl sales are not great at the moment, so the artists aren’t getting paid the same kind of money the was two or three years ago, so on that level it’s slightly worrying that vinyl sales are not doing so well. And that’s what a lot of the drum & bass fraternity have got this problem with using Serato Scratch, because if you guys use Serato Scratch with Cds then the kids aren’t going to want to buy vinyl.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, on the one hand the writer is not going to buy a lot of vinyl anyway. A lot of it would have been sent to him as well, so if he plays...

Fabio

No, but then you buy dub plates. The dub plates that we buy cost £50, which is $80/90, which is a lot of money. You could spend mortgage money for a month on dub plates and then you can get the same kind of thing just burning a CD but you don’t get the same sound. I don’t think you get the same sound youdo off vinyl.

Torsten Schmidt

How many cutting house have closed down over the last ten years?

Fabio

Oh, many. There’s only two left in London now. So that whole thing’s dying, so the futur’s not looking great for vinyl. But hey, you never know - I’ve heard that there’s a vinyl revolution coming around so let’s pray that happens. I don’t know how true that is, but it’s odd that a lot of kids gorwing up nowadays have never used a deck, which is quite strange, man. I went the other day to buy a Sony Walkman for a relative of mine in Jamaica and I walked in the shop and said “Can I have a Sony Walkman?” and he showed me these DVDs and I said, “No, a cassette.” And he really didn’t know what I was talking about. He was like “Cassette?” and I was like “Yeah, yeah, cassettes.” And he kind of laughed at me and I just thought that’s happened so quickly and now they’re talking about CDs being obsolete very soon. It’s all going to be MP3s. It’s quite scary the way things move.

Torsten Schmidt

When you take the tape as an example, back when you were listening to Radio Luxembourg or whatever, if someone from London sent me a tape of Colin Dale, I would listen to this tape religiously, because that was the only source. Now, possibly within an hour, I could download 8 terrabytes of mix shows that when am I going to listen to them? How do you think is that changing the whole perception of music psychologically and all?

Fabio

That’s why I do worry slightly about what happens next, because, as you said, we’ve gone from tape, which you could send to somebody, and it’d take a couple of days to get there, you’d sit down and listen to it, where now you can burn stuff in a couple of seconds. There’s a freakishness about that I think...

Torsten Schmidt

Is worrying the right approach? That’s all I’m wondering. because on the other hand you can find out about studd so much more easily.

Fabio

And that’s the flipside. That’s the whole thing about technology. As much as i can turn around and hate on technology, there’s so much plusses about it as well. I’m getting all my stuff fro Instant Messenger now and for me to go back to guys sending me CDs is just not going to happen. Becuase I’m now just so immersed in turning on my computer, just saying I’ll get a tune as soon as it’s finished. I could be playing a tune finished in London tonight in my set which is just bizarre. I mean, seven years ago - even four years ago - if you’d have said to be that could happen I’d have been like “No fucking way.” I mean, Grooverider took me to his house and he said “I’m going to burn some stuff for you on AIM” and I was like “What are you talking about?” and he burned this stuff and he got it from someone and I was like “Shit...” And four years before that we was recording our shows at Radio One on cassette. That was just like 1998 we were doing that. Eight years down the road and you can do all this mad shit, man. You can preprogram your whole set and do all this mad shit. But I just hope it will never take away from the art of you doing it. You know, it’s all good and well. When I was younger there was all these stories about the ronots ding the cleaning and the washing up in your house - [to Torsten] can you remember that? - they used to have these stories about the robots taking over and these were the days when it weren’t about the War on Terror and we were all scared about nuclear bombs and the Cold War. And that’s probably where my fear of computers comes from - that whole thing about robots, like they’re going to take over humankind and they’ll turn on us and shit like that, do you know what I mean? But it’s not robots, it’s computers. It’s not this thing walking around in an apron cleaning your house, that’s never going to happen. But computers is what’s happened and as much as technology is where it’s at and it’s great and it’s fast and it’s now, you’ve got to keep a semblance of art in some way, you’ve got to keep a semblance of doing things for yourslef and thining a bit more about stuff.

Torsten Schmidt

You said earlier that a lot of what made you was the art of selection. How do you you think the role of thr gatekeeper or the quality control or the filter or whatever, however we’re going to call this institution because I don’t even want to call it a person, how do you think that’s going to evolve?

Fabio

I think that’s going to go. I think that’s going to go. I think that the way things are going I don’t think there’s going to be any gatekeepers. I don’t think that me talking about traditional values is going to change anything. I think things are going to be so fast and so quick that no-one’s going to care because it’s like this “I want it and I want it now” culture. People don’t really care about tradition so much and don’t get me wrong - I’m not hating on that, I’m not hating on that, because when I was younger I hated tradition, I hated everything that was like “You’ve got to keep this real and you’ve got to keep that real” and when you’re younger you’re like “Fuck keeping it real, I just want to do what I do.” You know what I’m saying? But I don’t want to sound too preachy at the same time. I don’t want to sit down... My daughter’s four and I want her to have all these things. I want her to be able to get tunes online and I’m not going to sit down and tell her “Listen to cassettes, it’s much warmer, you get a better sound.” I’m not going to do that, man.

Torsten Schmidt

But you’ve got this example right at home. Your daughter is four and you can maybe remember kids that were four when you were four... to what extent do you think her world is different to yours as far as needs and wants and dreams and imaginations and wishes and...?

Fabio

I hate the word “keeping it real” but I try and do certain things, not let her watch too much TV and not let her do certain things, but I don’t want to stifle her from the outside world because you’re going to meet the outside world anyway. She’s going to school now, which is very scary. She had her first day at school three weeks ago and I was terrified because you know how scary the first day at school is. But she knows how to use my mobile phone, she knows how to turn my computer on. She doesn’t know how to use it yet but she will within the next two years. And I can’t stop that because she’s going to need to do that. In two years’ time, God knows what’s going to be around and I don’t want to stop her from ever... I don’t want to be a traditionalist. My father used to say to me “Oh that shit you’re listneing to...” which at the time was funk. And I don’t want to say to my daughter “You’ve got to be doing this and you’ve got to be doing that.” I’m going to give her freedom, but I’m also going to tell her where I’m coming from and she can go either that road or that road. As long as she’s got it up there [points to temple] and she learns at school and knows that education’s very important, that’s the important thing.

Torsten Schmidt

So how do you feel now with music which was so concerned with being at the top of technology and upfront and all that being around for 20 odd years now? I mean, can it get more ironic?

Fabio

Yeah, yeah, I think it can because I think...

Torsten Schmidt

Being around for 40 years?

Fabio

I think it will be. As I said, the youth are very important and as long as they come around with fresh ideas and they come making some different stuff and some very interesting stuff, so as long as you’ve got that... And I think there are people really into real music now, who have seen through the mass-produced bullshit and the real shit that’s out there. You listen to that stuff nd it’s so sanitized and so horrible. I think now you’re getting more and more people, like you’re getting people who are fucked off with governments and politicians and what’s up there and people who are like “You’ve got to like this.” People are like, “No, I don’t have to like this, I like what I like.” As I said before, I really do feel there is a real movement at the moment and a real going forwards in all music genres.

Torsten Schmidt

Just to clarify, “real music” not meaning you have to have all traditional instruments, because I guess some of the most horrible drum & bass was the kind of drum & bass that was “Hey we need a real jazz player on this.”

Fabio

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, when I say “real music” I mean music that’s not marketed and that’s not forced upon you and you’re not made to like it. And that’s the way I see the whole conglomerate thing now. I think you’re foced to like Nelly Furtado because that’s all you fucking see on MTV. That’s all you see on billboards and in record shops. Now, just underneath all that, there’s so much good shit going on. It’s not out there in the mainstream but people are picking up on it. There’s names you can mention to people and they’re like “Yeah man, I love that cat.” There’s so much interesting stuff going on electonically, like Sonar Music Festival. That’s a great festival. There’s a lot of good stuff going on in Italy as well, a lot of good electornic festivals out there, so I think they’re really, really important.

Torsten Schmidt

Now that you mention it, isn’t it comforting and healthy in a certain sense to see that, you said earlier you liked Timbaland, and Nelly Furtado gets him to an album for her and it’s still crap.

Fabio

Yeah, but... Timabaland, what I love...

Torsten Schmidt

And you know he will still do a good record after that.

Fabio

Yeah, but I think in the States you’ve got to do that. It’s like Clint Eastwood. He used to make films like Unforgiven and in between he’s making shit films like Pink Cadillac. And they said to him, “Why do you do that?” and he said “Because I’m playing the game. I’ve got to do that to do what i really want to do.” Scorsese’s the same. He made The Color Of Money which was a terrible film, and he made Goodfellas jusrt before that I think. Sometimes you have to compromise to get what you want. Sometimes you’ve got to play the game. Timbaland’s doing that because he wants to make money. He knows, at the end of the day, he can produce underground shit on mixtapes. Maybe he’s not keeping it real but that’s the way it is, man. He’s probably got his big Bentley he’s got to look after and that’s why he’s doing shit like that.

Torsten Schmidt

That thing needs a lot of petrol.

Fabio

Yeah, needs a lot of petrol and stuff like that. Sending his kids to private school and stuff. He needs the money. But I still think you can listen to all that shit and you can still hear his beats are still incredible. You know, that “Promisicuous Girl” by Nelly Furtado, which is just a nothing tune, but you listen to the way he arranges his beats in that tune, man. That’s him, man. That’s his blueprint and he’s totally doing his thing, so I don’t think he totally sold it out. Even Dr Dre. I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan of a lot of them cats, man. Maybe because of their history a lot of the time, but you’ve got to give your thanks. And reggae music, which is the most underrated music I think there’s ever been. I think reggae music was the first to along with rhythm tracks and it was the blueprint for dance music, you know, dubs. The whole thing comes from reggae, man. I’m a great lover of reggae music, a great lover of King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, Lee Perry. To me, that’s the godfather of music, and reggae music’s the godfather of dance music. And I’ve got to pay homage to James Brown because that guy... Man, rare groove comes from James Brown and searching for rare James Brown albums and the guy’s still out there doing it. I’m going back and listening to a lot of stuff from that era at the moment.

Torsten Schmidt

So here’s to youth and here’s to listening, I guess.

Fabio

For sure. The thing that’s kept me here more than anything else is passion. I’ve still got a real passion for this and I still wake up every day totally thankful that I’m in a position to go places, to do things, to see things, to meet different kinds people. My dad’s still like “Where are you?” and I’m like “I’m in Melbourne” and he’s like “Shit man! You’re in Melbourne!” and he’s checkign up on me because it’s a million miles away from where I’m coming from, from where I was brought up. The way I was brought up, it’s still a dream for me to be doing all this shit, man.

Torsten Schmidt

Does he understand what you do?

Fabio

No, no. He hasn’t got a clue. He just knows that I travel a lot and I’m out there playing music. My mother, who passed away last year, she was probably my biggest influence because she was... Where my dad used to be “Ah, yeah, go to school and read you book, what are you doing with this music thing?” my mom was always like “Don’t listen to him - just do what you want to do.” She always appreciated what I did and she used to listen to my radio shows two to four in the morning...

Torsten Schmidt

Would she badmouth you for cursing on air?

Fabio

No, no, no. Being from a Jamaican family, I never swore in front of her. I could never do that. I used to go to my wife and she used to go “Fuck off, mum!” and I was like “What are you doing?” You can’t do that in Jamaica families at all. Any time she was listening I used to be careful with what I said. But she was a major force in my life.

Torsten Schmidt

Would you love for your dad to understand what you do?

Fabio

I would, actually. I don’t think he would get it so much, but he’s just very proud. He doesn’t care - as long as I’m doing what I’m doing and still out there doing it, he’s very proud. I don’t think he really cares what it is. He’s like “Are you still alright? Are you still DJing a lot?” and it’s like “Yes, dad.” So he’s happy, as long as I’m still doing OK.

Questions anyone?

Audience member

Any tunes?

Fabio

Any tunes?. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got some tunes here, do you want to hear some tunes? Cool.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

While you’re looking for the tunes there’s a question there from our man.

Audience member

Hey man, how you doing? You mentioned LTJ Bukem before, who’s a massive influence of mine, and I wanted to ask if you’ve done much stuff with the 4Hero guys like Mark Mac and Dego and the part they played in it back in the day?

Fabio

For sure. I mean, sometimes with stuff like this you forget names, but 4Hero, maybe more than anyone else, “Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare”, the worst thing about that I remember playing that in a cub when someone passed out, ecstas, and kind of died in front of me when I played that tune. Which, if you don’t know it, it says, “Mr. Kirk, your son is dead.” And I played that and someone was like, “Listen, take that record off, someone’s passed out, man.” But that was a subversive tune. That tune came out and freaked the shit out of everybody. It was this chaotic rhythm with this “Mr. Kirk your son is dead,” and everyone used to go crazy to it and I used to be a bit like, “This is weird. Dancing to a tune about a dead person.” 4Hero were very important in Goldie’s career as well. Goldie’s greatest moments came with Marc and them guys, Internal Affairs and stuff like that with them engineering his stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

There’s a bit of a love story of those guys hooking up at your night, right?

Fabio

Yeah, at Speed.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Wasn’t it at Rage?

Fabio

Yeah, Goldie met Björk at Speed, he met Marc and them guys at Rage, Marc and Dego.

Audience member

Before you were talking about everyone getting together and the whole West End thing, was there a real community flavour amongst producers as well? Like 4Hero and Goldie and stuff, did everyone kind of share stuff?

Fabio

I’ll tell you where everyone shared stuff, there used to be a cutting plant called Music House and that used to be the aim of the day, everyone used to go down there and cut dubs. Everybody. When I say everybody, everyone. Bukem, 4Hero, Goldie, Ed Rush, Dillinja, Photek, everyone used to meet up at this grimy little place in Holloway Road in North London and we used to cut dubs there, just a little shack. And the guy used to have a lathe and he used to cut reggae stuff like Trojan and Greensleeves from back in the day and we all used to go there and meet up and a lot of the exchange of ideas came from Music House so there was that sense of family. Not family, it’s kind of like, “Oh, he’s made this bad tune, I’ve gotta make a better tune.” That’s kind of what’s happening now but it was more so back in the day because you used to go in and, say, Bukem, he brought in “Music”. I remember the day he came in with that tune he was like, “Fab…” And we were all in there and he put it on and for me it was the most important tune since I heard “It Is What It Is”, Rhythim Is Rhythim. Because what that tune, It Is What It Is, done with techno, it made me see that techno could sound so beautiful, “Music” did that. To me there wasn’t a beautiful drum & bass record until that moment. “Music” came along and I was just like, “Whoa, this music’s got a future in it, got timeless qualities, got everything you need.” So Bukem, he was amazingly important to what I do. What people don’t understand, when Bukem first started DJing, he had this reputation for people falling asleep when he was DJing. Seriously, people used to sit down on the floor and everyone used to be like, “Oh no, I can’t get into this shit,” but he didn’t used to care. He never cared. He never, ever sold out. He’d never put on a tune for them. And I used to say, “Danny, sometimes you’ve got to compromise,” and he was like, “Listen, I’m not going to play no music that I don’t like. I’m just not going to do it and if they don’t like it, they don’t like it.” And I loved that about Danny and he’s still like that now, he doesn’t give a shit, he just plays what he plays. That is a very difficult thing to do, especially in the Drum & bass scene when you get slagged off for doing certain things and you’ve got to have four, five rewinds and stuff like that. So respect to Bukem.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When you talk about Music House as a social gathering point and peer pressure going on, it’s not only about the tracks and the musical developments, it’s also a really interesting social point because you’ve got this closed net of people and someone’s got this advance from this record company, someone’s got a new car, someone’s got this really ugly looking Nike trainers, but he still buys them because they’re 200 quid. As someone who has survived so many of these things and seen them come and go, what are the things you learn to stay above all that and cut away the crap?

Fabio

Just not to listen to it. Just not to listen to what anyone says, really, because you go along with what people say and you end up getting totally wrong-footed. It’s a bit like being at school sometimes. A lot of childishness going on, there’s a lot of hating. Through that closeness you get that, there’s a real competitiveness in Drum & bass, which is really good on one level, but on another level it’s a bit tiresome. Anyway, listen, I’m going to play a tune. Can I play “Music”? This is a tune that I, as I said to you, I heard this when Drum & bass was going through a really kind of glum phase and I needed something and Bukem was like, “Listen Fab, I’ve done this tune, I really don’t know if you’re going to like it,” and he played it to me and it just blew my mind.

(music: LTJ Bukem – “Music”/ applause)

FABIO

That’s a bad tune. [applause]. Bad tune. The next tune I’m going to play is from an album that had so much ambition, and so much epic quality, which was an album that I heard in the ‘70s. I remember my cousin bringing it ‘round, which was Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life. The reason why this album was so magical for me, it came at a time when I think in the ‘70s people took more risks and were willing to do more things on an epic scale. Like Apocalypse Now, a film like that could never be made now, people just wouldn’t really spend that kind of money and have the ambition to do something on such a large scale. And this album, if you listen to Stevie Wonder’s use of electronic music as well, in “Village Ghetto Land” and “Pastime Paradise”, which Coolio used and stuff like that, you can hear how forward he was with the whole electronic sound. The track that I’ve chosen is I Wish because it reminds me of me growing up in Brixton and the way things were and the things that your parents used to say to you. And it’s a quite corny song, the way it’s produced, but it’s got so much soul and so much feeling and as soon as you hear it, you just get that feeling of joy. Stevie Wonder also had this magical quality of making music that you think you’ve heard somewhere before. The Beatles had that as well, they make music that when you hear it you think you’ve heard it a million times before yet it is so unique at the same time. So this is Stevie Wonder “I Wish”.

(music: Stevie Wonder - “I Wish”)

That’s Stevie Wonder “I Wish.” This next song I’m going to play for you, I’m going to play you something brand new, it’s a drum & bass/techno hybrid. It’s a bit Detroit-y but still running at 175 and it’s still got that real drum & bass feel. It’s by a guy called Spirit who’s in New York and it’s called “Coming Home” and this is what I’m talking about, about this new techno hybrid that’s coming into drum & bass.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Don’t you think with your show on the BBC they would enjoy you doing something similar to this as well?

Fabio

Well, they’re getting a new slot where a lot of DJs are playing stuff they wouldn’t normally play and I’m looking forward to that. Hopefully, I’ll get called in because I do really feel that I should be given an outlet. We’ve asked in the past if we could do stuff like this, but there’s a lot of red tape to go through and stuff like that. But they’ve started a new show where you do what you want to do and play stuff from your musical background so hopefully that’ll get going and I could do that because I’d love to do that.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

As you can see upstairs there’s a little outlet like that as well and there’s not a lot of red tape there, I guess about none, and we’d really welcome you to maybe later on, with an open door, do something similar up there in the radio slot. Since we’ve been sitting here for two hours and people are kind of getting ready for lunch, I don’t want them to fade away without giving you the applause and the props that you deserve for sharing your insight with us for the last two hours here. So, give the man a hand [applause]. But nevertheless, you’re going to be around and we still have to hear that tune.

Fabio

I am actually really jetlagged and at this time of the day I’m starting to get a bit fucked up. I’ve got this real allergy to caffeine and I drank a Red Bull earlier and now I’m really starting to talk too fast. Right, I’m going to put on this last tune but thanks a lot guys and I walked around seeing what’s going on here and respect to what you guys are doing. Music, it sounds like a cliché, but it’s the best game you can be in and as long as you’ve got the passion and the belief and you really want to do it and you’ve got the right feel for it and you get what fits for you. Those are the most important things. It doesn’t matter what genre it is, the most important thing is never let anyone tell you what to do because it’s all about doing what you believe in and people can sidetrack you and the more people tell you that you’re doing the wrong thing that means you’re doing the right thing. That’s happened to me so many times, people saying, “You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that,” and the more they do it, the more you know you’re on the right track. So as long as you keep doing that that’s the most important thing.