Teamy and Larry celebrate five years of their monthly night, Wrong Island, on Sat 8th September. We hear some words from the Sleazy pair in advance of the party.
One of the Glasgow clubbing scene’s most reliable and consistent monthly parties, Wrong Island, celebrate their fifth birthday on Saturday 8th September. We hear from Teamy and Larry, the DJs behind the monthly Nice N Sleazy soiree, about what the night has meant to them through the years. They pick out some of the most iconic Wrong dancefloor-fillers from through the years and tell us about some of the most memorable moments from half a decade of monthly debauchery on sweaty Sauchiehall Street.
Teamy
Well, in terms of tunes, first up I think I’d have to pick I Was Made For Loving You by KISS. Around November 2009 I picked up a copy of the extended disco version and sort of became obsessed with it for six months. I think I played this every single time I DJ-ed in the early half of 2010.
It’s one of those great songs like Don’t You Want Me Baby? or Don’t Leave Me This Way that everyone knows the words to and the guitar solo is just perfect. No over-long guitar wanking, just 4 bars of brilliance then straight back in. Amazing restraint from a band hardly known for that. Around 3:12…
This also led to one of the most memorable moments at the club, when a very excited David Barbarossa got up on stage and got properly taps aff on the stage (the stage invasion that seems to happen every month is one of my favourite parts of the club). Luckily, I’d set my phone to record the end of the club and so we have video evidence of the crowd reaction, if sadly not the boisterous boy himself.
And one important moment for me was when we put Andy Blake on. We don’t really do guests at Wrong Island any more, partially due to financial reasons and partially because we prefer to have the night to ourselves. However, in the first few years we had a few guests, generally people we’d spoken to over the internet and hit it off with. One of these guests was Andy. I’d picked up the first two dissident records at Rubadub and decided to email the address on the records, which I must say is quite unlike me; in those days I’d normally I’d be too shy to email anyone out of the blue.
Anyway, he came up to DJ and played a great set, I think it was also the busiest Sleazy’s had ever been at the time. There was one track he played which I instantly became besotted with. I asked and it turned out to be a very rare disco record which had been instrumental in the emergance of House music – Mach’s On & On, which was currently going for £50 online.
This is now a long-running thing in our friendship, me running up and asking what a record is only to find out it’s some rare thing that Andy has twelve copies of, each copy having a different sleeve or artwork or label – I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone quite so fastidious about his collection.
So we became good friends, I ended up doing A&R for dissident and got records by Den Haan, Truffle Club and The Niallist out.
Oh AND I finally got a copy of On & On this year for a princely sum of £5 – which goes to show that just because something’s on discogs for £50, doesn’t mean it’s actually worth £50.
Larry
The thing that I would like to say first about Wrong Island is what I believe makes it a bit special. First and foremost, we don’t give a shit. I mean we really give a shit about the music and making sure everyone (including us) has a really good time, we just don’t take ourselves too seriously. We are not afraid to make fannies of ourselves! Teamy once stripped down to nothing but his famous tiger underpants on stage and everyone went daft, girls trying to pull ’em off, ass slapping… the lot!
It’s generally a bit of a riot by the end of the night. We also play whatever records we like, no matter what style/genre/decade/tempo or where in the world the record comes from. If it’s a good fuckin’ record, it will get played. If we want to sing along, solo air guitar or whatever – it will happen! Plenty Wrong behaviour that is somehow always all right on the night.
We also have a fairly primitive approach to things. We generally play nothing but vinyl. Pretty determined to support the art of mixing records together the oldskool way. Something which has resulted in me cracking a rib and giving myself continual wrist problems transporting my records about and something that you see less and less of now as technology takes over. We don’t fuss with fancy lighting or visuals and ridiculous sound. We have our 70s mobile disco Wrong Island flashing light box balanced on two tables on the stage and thats pretty much yer lot. Think it all adds to the character with Sleazy’s Pheonix Nights interior to finish things off nicely. Keep it simple, keep it raw. I like to think this esthetic and overall approach offers a bit of refreshment to Glasgow’s scene where it sometimes seems to be a battle for who can pull off the most impressive sound and visual experience… all the while falling all over each other to book the best guests. It all becomes a bit bland and samey. A bit too serious.
It’s nice to think that we are still going strong after five years with mainly just myself and Teamy playing the records. Good resident only nights are something of a rarity in the city. You tend to find that nights that go for big guests all the time can be hit and miss. Nights that focus on the residents are usually more consistent. They know the crowd and usually throw better parties. Have faith and support your local DJs, Glasgow! We have way more fun just doing it ourselves!
A lot of 80s jams get played at Wrong Island every month. It’s one of my favourite decades for sheer party music. There are a lot of records in this category that have stood out over the years but one that has been on heavy rotation from me and always goes down well is Pointer Sisters’ Automatic.
I love this record and never get tired of belting this out at the top of my lungs. Pretty much everyone who comes to our parties always knows this one and it never fails to lift the night up a notch when dropped. When I was younger I always thought that this record was sung by a bloke, until I found out it was the Pointer SISTERS. That voice – so deep and so amazing!
Next up – Oor Whitney. I don’t think there is any other record that gets quite the same response at Wrong Island than one by Whitney Houston. I’ve always quite liked Whitney, heck I even bought the soundtrack to The Bodyguard when I was a young teenager. Something I probably shouldn’t profess to doing and definitely one of the oddest and most worrying choices I made back then. Anyway, I kept finding copies of my favourite Whitney records whilst record digging, a few months before she sadly departed. So for a good few months Whitney featured heavily at our parties, sometimes more than once in one night. There was a bit of Whitney hysteria going on and then she died! The night she made her exit I was playing one of her hits and the place went pretty insane – more than usual. Then some girl came up to me to ask if I was playing it cause Whitney was dead? I had no idea what she was on about? “Dead, what, really?” ,”Aye she died tonight!” “No way thats crazy.. I’m just playing her record cause I like her”. A weird moment for sure.
Hard to pick my favourite track, but I guess I Wanna Dance With Somebody is the one that sends all the girls (and me and Teamy) into a frenzied singalong the most at Wrong Island. No one feeds my cheese habit quite like her. RIP Whitney.
And! Of course we can’t talk about stand out tracks at Wrong Island without mentioning Prince! We are just a wee bitty obsessed with His Royal Purpleness. Easily one of my favourite artists of all time. Of course we are not alone and the reaction we get anytime we drop a Prince track bears testament to that. One of the times I played with PVK (Pro Vinylist Karim) -another well know Prince fanatic and all round purple worshiper- I knew things were gonna get silly. Karim reckons together we played around 17 Prince tracks in total that night! I’m not sure if it was quite that much but defo double figures!
There are so many Prince tracks I could mention but one that springs to mind is actually an edit by Dimitri From Paris or Dimitri From Stoke On Trent as he calls himself on this record, of I Wanna Be Your Lover. Its simply a recording of Prince playing it live spliced together with the original to devastating effect. I was instantly hooked the first time Teamy dropped it, got a copy on vinyl and played it at the end of every gig I did for months. A huge record for us both and one that never fails to make em go nuts!
Another record that I have rinsed heavily at Wrong Island and beyond is AFX (Aphex Twin) – VBS.Redlof.B which was released as part of the amazing Analord series. Tam (my wee bro and our artwork talent) mentioned this as one of his favourite standout tracks from our parties and I can always hear him yelling when he hears it coming in! Aphex Twin is nothing short of a genius. This is one of those techno records that simply takes the roof off. I never ever tire of hearing it and still get goosebumps every time I play it out. A perfect end of night screamer. A perfect techno record… although it’s one of those right record at the wrong speed tunes, as like many Aphex tracks its a bit too rapid and I need to pitch it down a bit… Definitely an all time favourite.
I also need to mention another record – Double 99’s RIP Groove not just because it is an utter classic but because it takes me back to when I first started mixing records together. My mate Stuart Bruce or Speed Garage Stu, as we all used to call him, is the man responsible for giving me the DJ bug. Stu was UK Garage obsessed and this was one of the biggest garage records around at the time. I’ve played this a lot at Wrong Island, once that bassline drops nobody is standing still! Stuart Bruce this one goes it to you mate.
Quite often we like to take things back to our oldskool rave roots at Wrong Island as well. When it was all about massive out-door raves, good Es, wobbly jaws and special times. Yet again it’s pretty tough trying to pick a stand-out track. I’m gonna go with DJ Edge (or Edge 1) and Compnded. One of the best rave records around then and one I get a lot of fun out of playing at Wrong Island. Let me see ya hands in the air!
In terms of really special nights, as Teamy mentioned earlier, the night Andy Blake played was pretty special. What an amazing collection of records he has, very insightful and interesting and an altogether top bloke.
There was also the night we brought George Issakidis over to our club. That was something I won’t forget. For good and bad reasons! The set he played was one of the most enjoyable, druggiest, sleaziest, slow burning, acid house and techno sets I’ve heard. Which disappointingly went out to an almost empty dance floor! It happened to be the quietest night we had ever had but with the best music. He didn’t care though and neither did we and our wee squad had such a great night. What a truly lovely guy he was – so much fun!
And, the time Barbarossa had a full dance-aff with some random dude on the stage was incredible! Not sure how it started but they were both going for it and the whole club was vibing out with them. I felt like I was at an 80s block party. It was highly entertaining stuff. Barbarossa of course was the king of the dance floor that night and owned that kid! What a legend you are Babs.
The Wrong Island Twitter is worth following and they have a brand new website coming soon; but most importantly, for now, get yourself along to Nice N Sleazy on the 8th to party.
(Wrong Island artwork designed by Tam Wilson)