One More Tune DJs

31/10/2024

The grisly climax of several Pin Up Frights was spending a record fee to secure the DJ services of Carl Barat. A complicated character, but he was certainly box office. New blog and loads more pictures on the One More Tune DJs website. Sincere thanks to & for most of the photography. Tag anyone you recognise 😁🧟‍♂️👍

23/10/2024

It's not all music here at OMTDJs HQ as I visited Amsterdam at the weekend to run . I don't think there have ever been any champion distance runners from Donegal (where 100% of my genes are from), but I like getting fit and this is the first time I have competed internationally. Like some crazed homing pigeon the day before the race I walked right past old haunts , punk rock dive bar Cafe The Minds (yes, its named after ) and the Leidseplein, where I busked back in 1999 🎸. I also hobbled around the Rijksmuseum on the Monday morning and finally saw the famous Cuypers Library. At the race itself I succumbed to mad cramp and finished 3:30, 3 mins behind my PB. Fine margins at this tough level 😆 Swipe to see some pics including a Mobot on the finish line 🤖

14/10/2024

I never ever met this guy, but respect is due. I saw him in the Soundhaus and I saw him in Spain (OK, Catalonia) and it was great fun every time. When running parties in the noughties I tried to make pals with and failed, and it was maybe Jackmaster deleting my emails!

As a DJ he had a world famous ability to play whatever the hell he wanted, Idioteque at the end of his fabriclive mix being a perfect example (if anyone else tries to play Radiohead, it's a disaster - I speak from experience).

When I think of Jackmaster I think of the fantastic Ultra Thizz (I assume he produced it, I don't know what genre it is), Simulated by Marco V (trance?) and Georgy Porgy by Toto (yacht rock definitely).

I will let others such as wrestle with his legacy, noting that RA has seem hell-bent on taking down some of their Gods of the 10s. Maybe they will step more lightly from here on in.

14/08/2024

Thank you Fiona! How lovely to get a review from a wedding back in the mists of time of September 2021.

I have checked correspondence and I did indeed describe the 7 hour example playlist Fiona sent me as (caps lock deliberately on) "AMAZING". Multiple Primal Scream and Pulp was played and also, later on, Utah Saints and Future Sound of London. Wonderful records.

is a very cool venue but unfortunately it's an absolutely epic journey from my humble Glasgow lodgings, so I am pretty much priced out of ever DJing there again.

Delays were also no problem as I got time to chat with the legendary .

08/08/2024

Thank you Richard & ! I felt onstage that WEDFEST was a very Good One but I never truly know if I'm just getting high on my own supply of fun times. I've already Done A Reel (go look please) from the wedding. Upon reflection, I included several photos of Rosa's dad BJ from his afternoon DJ set, and it looks a bit like he is One More Tune DJs. And y'know what? That's fine. I spoke to him at the end and he was great 😁😎🪩

06/08/2024

Tales From the Dancefloor by with Luke Bainbridge. Sacha was the creator of The Warehouse Project and Parklife. I have huge admiration for someone who can scale club nights to the heights of thousands of folk per night. A few years back I had tickets for New Order's biggest ever show, also promoted by Sacha, but couldn't go (I did the right thing and attended a great pal's stag do in Aviemore :-))

Some thoughts -

I don't think it needed the autobiographical stuff about Sacha's childhood at the start. It doesn't seem that relevant, apart to flag he is a big Prince and Bowie guy and maybe isn't that into the music his parties and events have become famous for.

There's some surprising typos and repetitions - was this finished in a rush? Was Luke brought in fairly late on? At the start the chapter titles all reference The Smiths, then that's just ditched for more factual headings ("Grace Jones").

It's not really clear why he took on re-opening (nightclub) Sankeys in (incredibly rough area) Ancoats. In my experience promoters don't really know much about running clubs - and vice versa. There's definitely a chunk of story missing there.

Otherwise he seems honest to an almost fault. It's absolutely fascinating and great fun. He admits staging fights to avoid sound restrictions, drills holes in walls belonging to Network Rail, names and shames plenty of promoters and artists, even grasses up Man U players and staff for attending parties before big matches.

Personally, I had a lot of criticisms of the Victoria Warehouse venue during my visits, and Sacha confirms that he also knew it was crap and the worst 2 years of his life. (I actually got taken into a room there once, and was accused of stealing phones. So it's good to hear there actually was a massive problem with phones being stolen, by a Romanian gang.)

Overall a 5/5 for me!

11/07/2024

New blog - Rosa & Richard's WEDFEST feat Tequila Mockingbird, BJ the DJ, and One More Tune DJs! Link in bio to photos by and videos by me 🙂

05/07/2024

I will write a proper blog about this wedding, but it will take a wee while for the professional photos to be ready (and for me to beg permissions to use a few of them). In the meantime a wonderful review from Jayne and and a nice photo of me and my guest co-DJ .

I wouldn't say I was nervous about this one, but I definitely thought relatively hard about the potential playlist. "This guy has come all the way over from Scotland, and he's pure rubbish" is feedback I wanted to avoid.

Jayne very graciously omits to mention that I played Nessun Dorma and it bombed. I did however break the habit of 20 years of DJing and played Robbie Williams, and it was a big hit (Rock DJ if you must know). Thank you Jayne and Josh, and thank you Wendy for the styling 😁

27/06/2024

The Islander: my life in music and beyond by Chris Blackwell with Paul Morley. Chris grows up in Jamaica, is educated at Harrow in England but is asked to leave, then builds a career out of reggae, ska and rocksteady jukeboxes and soundsystems back home. Island Records really takes off with Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop", a song I absolutely adored as a child.

There follows loads of anecdotes about an amazing array of musicians. Steve Winwood, Nick Drake and John Martyn. Cat Stevens, Robert Palmer, Tom Waits and Grace Jones. The heart of the book is Chris' discovery of, and ongoing collaboration with, Bob Marley. If you've ever wondered why Redemption Song was uncharacteristically just Bob and a guitar, the full story is told here. Loads of other things are explained too. Why Steve Winwood was in a group named after another band member. How the Tom Tom Club came about. How some of the biggest records of all time (eg Back in Black) were recorded at Compass Point studios. The MTV-smashing video to "Addicted to Love". How Chris ended up owning Ian Fleming's GoldenEye resort.

You get a sense of Paul Morley playing a very nice hand and it's almost like an expertly crafted setlist, with the story of U2 saved until the end. I feel there's probably not as much U2 chat as some would like or expect. There's also only a page on Roxy Music - which suggests there's a story there we are not getting.

Overall it's all about the music and about Chris' love of Jamaica and its people.

5/5

29/04/2024

Some Monday morning fun, it's "Muscly Murdoch", my sole foray into comic strip artistry around 2007 for Glasgow comic Khaki Shorts. You can clearly see the bold lines and dynamic energy of my favourite world-class Marvel pencillers & .geoff, and the influence of many Boxing Days spent reading Oor Wullie annuals.

Around this time my big brother counselled me against referring to Stuart Murdoch by this nickname in all Pin Up Nights media. He was concerned it was disrespectful. It was of course meant with great affection, and I'm sure Stuart (if he ever noticed it) knew this. I met him at a party once, and he was surprisingly down to Earth, and VERY funny.

19/04/2024

Mare's Guitars by Johnny Marr with Martin Kelly. Guitars have been the obsession of Johnny Marr's life. The photography by Pat Graham is beautiful, the captions and short interviews fascinating. He credits his Irish parents with his love of music 😁.
He owns the guitar worn (and I mean "worn") by Bryan Ferry in the famous inlay photo of For Your Pleasure. Famous friends such as Noel Gallagher, Bernard Butler and Ed O'Brien describe guitars he has gifted them. I'm not sure Morrissey is mentioned even once. Make of that what you will. 5/5

10/04/2024

Just a reminder that I can also help with writing speeches, and have set out my top ten tips for wiring a wedding speech on my website, under the tab "speech writing". That's it. "Brevity is the soul of wit."

21/03/2024

I keep getting asked about birthday parties, playlists, and mixes - so I've written FAQs.

I find myself regularly answering questions about DJing at birthday parties, helping with playlists, and creating mixes. Here’s some handy FAQs. Is a DJ really necessary at a birthday party? It depends. If you want a big proper party with a jumping dancefloor, then almost certainly yes. The party ...

24/01/2024

5 or so years ago I was at a Citizen’s Theatre fundraiser at .  The chap who invited me was actually from Manchester, and unfortunately wanted to chat all the way through a Ricky Ross solo piano performance.  He didn’t seem to “get” who Ricky Ross was.  This is probably as good an indication as any of Ricky and Deacon Blue’s unclear status.  They can play arenas throughout the UK, but outside Scotland are probably seen as an 80s pop rock act on a par with something like Johnny Hates Jazz.  Within Scotland they are regarded as having several absolutely massive songs and quite a few more very good ones.  I don’t think anybody in Scotland really thinks or bothers about what genre the band is, or whether they have ever been “cool”. They're as much a staple on 's Get It On as what folk are having for their dinners.

By the mid 90s Ricky seemed to think Deacon Blue was a creative straitjacket, but he never achieved solo success (bar co-writing James Blunt’s first single) and at the time of his writing this in 2021, he seemed to have embraced the Deacon Blue songbook as containing the highlights of his career. I would have liked more about how he wrote particular songs.  There is a bit of “God Stuff”(as one grumpy reviewer on Good Reads has put it) but I would actually have liked more of the God Stuff as God, and Dundee United and Bruce Springsteen, is clearly what makes him tick. As well as Glasgow – there’s lots of positivity about Glasgow. "Dignity" was written by the window of his flat in Kenmure St, Pollokshields.

So - I’d give this a very solid 4/5 - bearing in mind I’m a fan who gets hacked off at folk talking over Ricky performing.

ps during the post-dinner auction at the Citizens’ fundraiser, I actually won an item that I had made an initial offer for, just in order to kick the bidding off.  Whoops!  It was lunch, hair, make up and professional photos on the Citzens stage (via their wardrobe dept) for and 7 pals.  A veritable bargain.

07/12/2023

Stay True by . posted that she had snapped this up following a recent trip to trident books. A Pulitzer Prize winning memoir. I was intrigued.
The author reflects on his coming of age at Berkeley College in California, his experience as a son of Taiwanese immigrants, and the murder of his friend Ken, whose family arrived in the USA from Japan several generations prior. Hua and Ken are an odd pair. Hua is straight edge, thrifts his clothes, is an inveterate music snob and denies liking girls for their looks. Ken on the other hand loves nights out, and is a hit with the ladies.
In my opinion Hua does a better job of bringing his friend "back to life" than another recent memoir about a friend who has died (Mayflies), including leaving some doubt about who liked or needed whom more. After Ken's death, Hua gets (tentatively) into drugs, alcohol and s*x. Was he living life vicariously through Ken? What would Ken have made of this? Would they even have stayed friends after College?
Hua is wounded when a friend in their circle questions if Hua and Ken were actually close friends at all. Maybe they weren't. The book leaves enough ambiguity that it's a possibility. The descriptions of 90s California will probably be a treat for anyone who was there. I'm also the son of immigrants so I really liked the bits about his dialogue with his parents. The back cover compares it to Patti Smith's Just Kids, which is rather a high bar. But I would give this 4/5 to go with its 2023 Memoir Pulitzer Prize.

02/12/2023

Tarzan Economics by Will Page, former Chief Economist of Spotify. I read this a while ago but seems appropriate to highlight in the context of everyone sharing their Spotify Wrapped. The book has subsequently been "rebadged" for paperback as "Pivot". The central premise is that if your business vine is withering, you need to reach out and grab a new one. Will argues that the music industry has successfully managed this by monetising streaming, and he explains how it came about.
Earlier this year Will reported to the World Intellectual Property Organisation on the equitable remuneration (ER) models for streaming. The idea of ER is that creators - who often can't negotiate directly with service providers (streamers) using their work - should still receive fair compensation. Will's report was criticised by people such as Tom Gray (Broken Record Campaign) for misrepresenting some aspects of the debate.
And, echoing that, if I had a criticism of this very interesting blend of memoir, music biz mechanics and popular economics, it would be that Will is very much a company man. There's an assumption underlying the book that Spotify is absolutely in the right, and artists should be glad to be getting a tiny % of streaming revenue vs non existent revenue from illegal downloads. 4/5

30/11/2023

Saw at their Brixton Academy Christmas show in 2013. Drunkest crowd I've ever seen. The band was great and Shane seemed coherent. Was a nostalgic gig for me as my big brother played them loads in our family house in Cambuslang. I loved hearing songs like "A Rainy Night in Soho" live. Shane was a great artist respected by so many. Any friend of The Clash and Nick Cave is a friend of mine. You also have to admire how he held on to that fine head of hair til the end - hope for us all. RIP Shane.

27/11/2023

The Secret DJ by .  A brilliant read.  There are several great anecdotes.  In one he is holed up in a suite at the Columbia Hotel, wrapped up in toilet roll and feeling “like an astronaut crossed with a Rolling Stone”.  In another he describes a night at what was billed “the world’s largest nightclub -  Manumission in Ibiza.  I went to Manumission only once, and it was a very weird night out.  The Secret DJ’s description really nails the experience in a very skilled way. 

There’s not as many of these capers as you'd maybe expect, and the second half of the book is actually very dark and describes serious health problems and his outlook on life, family and friendships.  There are also some specific DJ-based polemics on topics including tax, Spotify, music festivals, and hobbyist DJs. I didn’t agree with everything that he said, but I was absolutely engaged throughout.  In fact, the book finishes more strongly than it begins. 5/5

17/11/2023

The Operator: David Geffen by Tom King. This was initially authorised by Geffen but he withdrew support as the project progressed. That's why we don't get his view on the dizzying array of business deals described within.

Geffen seems to like folk music at heart and his initial signings are Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Neil Young, and The Eagles. In negotiations Geffen is very reluctant to ever name his price first, which is contrary to negotiating advice you may have seen about setting your intial "anchor" as low or high as possible. In fact, his chief negotiating strategies are persistence and whingeing. He moans so much about certain bargains that he gets them renegotiated - this is again very contrary to ideas about not going back on handshakes, or your word.

He frequently manages to strike ridiculous looking deals/joint ventures where bigger record labels cover all expenses/losses but Geffen gets to share in profits. This lets him dish out big money deals to Dylan, Elton John and Donna Summer, who each reward him with their least commercial records. John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" also tanks - until John is shot dead, after which it's a smash hit.

By the 80s Geffen is pursuing success in the movies and gives Tom Cruise his break in Risky Business. He has delegated A & R to a "troika" of tastemakers and successes multiply. He doesn't understand Guns n Roses but calls in a favour with MTV to get "Welcome to the Jungle" broadcast once, at midnight. The rest is history. We never hear what he thinks of "Trans" (Neil Young's infamous foray into electronic music - the book just notes it's a "commercial dud"), or Nirvana.

The massive 600 page count could have been culled with less gossipy stuff about his many girlfriends (including a 2 year relationship with Cher) and boyfriends. The book ends around 2000 with the establishment of DreamWorks with Stephen Spielberg. Again, Geffen "caps the downside" by building the animation studio from the ground up using investment from Paul Allen of Microsoft. Overall much more a business book than a music one. 4/5

31/10/2023

Thanks so much for the review .  We bonded over our mutual Arctic Monkeys/Alex Turner fascination.  And his wee boy has the same name as my wee boy.  Great taste.  The first dance was “Sweet Dreams, TN” by The Last Shadow Puppets.  Definitely more kind of s*xy or impudent than most Arctic Monkeys songs.  Pretty cool eh?  Yeah, I thought so.   There were things I hadn’t played for years, or possibly ever, which were very popular indeed - such as the “Heads Will Roll” remix, “212” (still sounds absolutely filthy), “Cuff It”, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin” and “Canned Heat” by Jamiroquai.  The Scissor Sisters and Jamiroquai were requests which initially made me laugh, but actually sounded good on headphones, so I played some disco songs and built towards them.  Why not?  (I was reminded that I had once been an enthusiastic Jamiroquai fan – I saw them at the SEC around 1997 when Jay Kay climbed on top of a speaker and smoked a huge joint.  Wouldn’t happen at The Hydro.)  I knew some of the wedding guests were from Dundee so I sat on “Same Jeans” until near the end.  Pandemonium ensued.  (I’ve written before about how I once camped beside Kyle Falconer at T in the Park - he was still going when we all conked out round 4am, and he was also still going when we woke back up.  Some boy.)  I was also going to bow to popular pressure and play “Belter”, but the bride Cassie made a thumbs down/vomiting gesture when it started, so I stopped it and luckily had “Song 2” ready to go instead.  Great party.  As Brad says, even though it was already a 1am finish, there was no sign of the party slowing.  I do indeed think we could have gone a Kyle Falconer sort of distance!

23/10/2023

"Out of Space: how UK cities shaped rave culture" by .

I had several false starts with this. I initially expected something psychogeographic, about how a city's design or layout affects its nightclubs. Or alternatively some theories similar to those in David Byrne's How Music Works (about how the physical shape of CBGBs dictated the music Talking Heads started to perform). When I realised this book was going to just be essays about the scenes (past and present) in various cities, I was a bit underwhelmed.

I loved the Glasgow, Manchester and London chapters. But I've never really went clubbing in Liverpool or Sheffield, so hearing about their DJs, parties and venues simply wasn't as fun. There was no buzz of recognition. I also missed any sense of jeopardy. These histories are written by the victors, not the DJs who struggled to be understood, or the parties that fell out of fashion.

However. Just like your favourite or set (Live in Tokyo?), this finishes incredibly strongly. There's interviews with Thristian Richards (), and Carly Heath (Bristol Night Time Economy Advisor). There's speculation on what a club even is in 2023. Food halls? Open air extravaganzas like ? Mega venues like ? Maybe the whole book should have been on these really challenging themes. In any event, and having given it a few months, for any fan of music and clubs it's a comprehensive work and absolutely a 5/5

19/10/2023

Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young. (thank you for the loan.)

If you don't like folk music, in particular British Folk music, look away now. This book is not so much an "Incredible String Band" as an "Incredible String Theory" as the author tries to establish a pagan-ish ley line from Vaughan Williams and Ewan MacColl, Pentangle and Fairport Convention, Kate Bush and Steeleye Span, all the way through to ultimately Talk Talk, Glastonbury and Aphex Twin. Certainly thought-provoking stuff that had me firing up the Spotify and listening to plenty of new (to me) music. In particular Sandy Denny and Talk Talk are far more interesting than I had previously thought and I've listened to them loads.

Nick Drake gets faint praise, which doesn't go down well with someone who likes Nick Drake enough to have read a whole book about him (by Patrick Humphries, see photo). I spent a decent bit of 1998 listening to Nick while pining for a girl I used to bump into at student hovels when visiting my friends at Edinburgh Uni. That girl eventually chose a guy from Burnside Tennis Club over me, which is almost as funny to me now as Bob Mortimer's line about his wife having "left him for the man from Allied Carpets".

All joking aside, Drake's albums Pink Moon and Bryter Later are surely high water marks of the whole imaginary genre this book is promoting, so the treatment they get here is weird. John Martyn's Solid Air suffers similarly. Ultimately the chapters on the post war decades were of most interest to me and I found myself skimming a fair amount of the other 600 pages.

Another minor piece of personal history - I did like this sort of music enough to arrange a whole night about it. (Pin Up Flights at the dearly departed RAFA Club, which attracted about 40 very serious young men, several of whom probably graduated to become incels or serial killers. The poster was good though.)

3/5

16/10/2023

New 5 star review 😁⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you and Peter. Extra points for calling me "John D".
As I think I explained to Jenna, my dad was called Denis and wanted me named after him, the rest of the family wanted "John", the compromise was "John Denis". Sadly when I was a baby and yknow - couldn't speak - it was never enforced as definitely double barrelled like a "Marie Claire" or "John Paul", and frequently became John D or just John (😕). My dad would then often call me "Patrick" after his wee brother. What a nightmare.
I happily answer to D or JD and honestly hate being called "John", though that's what I'm called in my day job. I suppose I've certainly been called worse.
That was a boring story wasn't it? Look - another 5 star review. Hurrah! To read a full blog about the wedding, link in bio 👍

13/10/2023

A new blog about Jenna and Peter's wedding at . Link in bio. Thank you !

Video:

Catering:

The Cake:

The Flowers:

Stationery:

MUA:

Pizza:

Celebrant: Jean Steele