Go a phone call late afternoon off my mate Greg to see if I fancied spinning some vinyl up at the Rogiet Rave which is just the next village up from Caldicot. There’s been a few of these go off this year. It’s all the Kaotik Soundsystem Crew behind it who are a local free party collective who run events all over the place, concentrated in Bristol. Kaotik have given birth to DJ superstar Vandal. They’ve done well, delivering dance music in the local area and have a good following. My first contact with them was back in around the year 2001-2 when I was running the Shuffle DJ Academy full-time and used to teach them the decks down at Caldicot Youth Club as I did at youth clubs and community centres all over South East Wales at that time. They were a good bunch of kids and even though I’m at a distance I keep an eye over all the stuff they get up to. They have been beset by tragedy as a collective on multiple occasions and this is a terrible thing to suffer. But they are still going strong and partying hard. It was an honour to dust off some vinyl, pack up a bag of tunes and head up to deepest darkest Rogiet to spin some toons. My night kicked off at a Ben The Hat event in Caldicot and then I got a lift up to the Rogiet Rave.
It was nice to see a bit of a crowd at a dance music event locally. I had a bit of a fear that my music wouldn’t go down well as they are quite particular about liking music above a certain BPM. But I was asked to play funky so whacked on a few classics. Good to be back on the decks Tried out some Shamen, Frankie Knuckles, a few more trancier tracks like Quench – Dreams. The most annoying thing about the gig was that this annoying as f**k local guitarist from a local band, started heckling me from before I’d even put on a record, screaming that I was s*t and should get off the decks. Running around campaigning to get me off the decks. Telling anyone who would listen how bad I was as a DJ. He started getting violent and threatening violence etc. I don’t know. You can only get this sort of nonsense in Caldirot. It’s like evolution hasn’t reached here yet. What happened to free party free love? Christ, there’s not many places I can think of in over 30 years of clubbing and organizing and DJing and going to events where dance music is played that there is ever event an angry word spoken, let alone violence or threat of violence. In the end DJing became untenable so I just got off the decks. And sure enough, said guitarist was straight behind the decks, his single Pendulum record in hand ready for his big DJ debut and quite funnily the other DJs just said ‘F**k off get off the decks: you’re not a f**king DJ.’ so he sloped off. Everybody wants to be a DJ, eh? You can’t keep every crowd happy but it’s nice to be musically open-minded whether you are aDJ or a clubber or just listening on the radio.
The old Wez G vinyl got an airing and I’m grateful to Greg Burlz and the rest of the Kaotik crew for inviting me out to play…. Keep it real guys. Peace out! Wez G
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