The Love Unlimited offer up a little slice of house music history for your listening pleasure. It’s great to be able to feature this rare old mix by Graeme Park, which was recorded at the Garage club in Nottingham in 1988, about the time that he started his stint at the Hacienda.
Graeme worked at our favourite record shop, Selectadisc, and was given his first break by Brian Selby, who opened the shop in 1966, and also part owned the Garage club. Brian only retired this year and we wish him all the best.
Many flavours feature on this mix including his trademark cut-up of Run DMC & you get a taste of what was happening across UK dancefloors at the time… Big thanks to Paul Wain for the recording.
Graeme Park Garage 88 - Pt1 [45:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Graeme Park Garage 88 - Pt2 [45:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Graeme Park Garage 88 - Pt3 [45:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Graeme Park Garage 88 - Pt4 [45:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
15 responses so far ↓
1 Edward Lewis // Jun 12, 2008 at 1:31 pm
big time
2 mike // Jun 13, 2008 at 6:49 am
Christ on a bike, this brings back memories! By the sound of the track selection, I’d place this around June/July 1988 (i.e. pretty much exactly 20 years ago), which was around the time that the old Garage re-opened as the Kool Kat.
Meanwhile, I had just started playing Thursday nights at Eden (Greyhound Street), having graduated from fortnightly Mondays at the Barracuda (Hurts Yard). Mr Park’s weekend sets were a major inspiration, and indeed most of these tunes are in my own vinyl collection, some of them unheard (until now) for the past 20 years, making these mixes a very emotional ride indeed. (Jeez, that killer piano riff on SLF’s “Show Me What You Got”!)
The 1988 Summer of Love in Nottingham wasn’t quite like the Summer of Love of popular legend, as these mixes show. Blacker, funkier, more varied, not purely acid-focussed, and still making room for hip hop along the way. Great times indeed.
Anyway, and with my own memory assisted by some crafty Googling, here’s an almost complete track listing for Parts 1 & 2:
Mohamed’s House - Sheik Fawaz
Ye Ke Ye Ke (Afro Acid Mix) - Mory Kante
Hustle (To The Music) - Funky Worm
In The Name of Love - Swan Lake
So Many Ways - The Brat Pack / I’ll House You - Jungle Brothers
Bingo Bongo - Minutemen
Pump Up London - Mr. Lee
Rock This Place - Mr. Lee
Show Me What You Got - SLF
The Party - Kraze
Weekend - Todd Terry Project
Dreams Of Santa Anna - Orange Lemon
Can’t Win For Losin’ - Blaze
King Of The Beats - Mantronix
I Like It Loud - Jewel-T
Put Your Hands Together - Eric B. & Rakim
Gittin’ Funky - Kid ‘N’ Play
??? (I know it, but I can’t place it… aargh…)
Talkin’ All That Jazz - Stetsasonic
Work That Body - Taana Gardner
Let The Music (Use You) - Night Writers
Where’s Your Child - Bam Bam
Voodoo Ray - A Guy Called Gerald
Oochy Koochy (F.U. Baby Yeh Yeh) - Baby Ford
???
Ride The Rhythm - This Aint Chicago
Show Me What You Got - SLF
Party People - Royal House
Bustin’ Out - Material
In The Name Of Love - Swan Lake
Back to The Beat - Todd Terry Project
The Dance - Rhythim Is Rhythim
Strictly Business - EPMD
For The Lover In You - True Mathematics
Don’t Scandalize Mine - Sugar Bear
Go On Girl - Roxanne Shante
3 mike // Jun 13, 2008 at 6:51 am
(Oh yeah, and HOW MUCH Todd Terry?! This must have been the moment when we all discovered him in earnest… I remember it well…)
4 dom // Jun 13, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Hi Mike, thanks for passing through & leaving such a great comment about the mix, thanks for the tracklisting & also your memories.
Eden - now that’s a blast from the past…yes the mix captures the full spectrum of different styles moving dancefloors at the time. Great Times indeed.
cheers
dom
5 DAVID // Jun 13, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This mix is bang on. Probably sums up Summer 88 everywhere! Nice to hear everything in the mix as well. I’ve got most of the tracks anyway but it certainly brings it back ‘as if we were back there’! Best year of my life!!( children excepted) and music in general!
6 MrB // Jun 18, 2008 at 4:47 am
I saw Graeme Park at the Garage a little earlier, perhaps 86, and at a club called the Barracuda. My friend told me how good he was, of course there was no Gguest djs ” then only really residents, so to go to a club for a specific dj was unusual.
It was just as house was breaking, so you would hear maybe only a small handful of house tunes during the night.
Good stuff.
7 bob // Jun 19, 2008 at 5:54 am
good work mike!
8 lance // Jun 26, 2008 at 1:18 pm
thank you for that superb mix..,it is like an audio time capsule of good clubs around that time…it brought back many happy memories of the grasshopper in westerham and the slammer in gravesend around that time
cheers paul
9 bison // Jul 6, 2008 at 9:04 am
Just a small point but it’s not strictly true about no guest djs before 1988…thousands of us in London/south east used to trek all over the region because a certain jazz, funk soul dj was making an appearance at a club and this had been happening in the London region and indeed in the rest of England (funk scene/northern soul etc since the late 60s). To a large extent the acid scene down south was driven by djs who were already known from the older scene.
10 AP // Jul 15, 2008 at 4:32 am
WOW!!!!!!! Amazing, and Ally Whitehead? I have a mix from koolkat 1990, its quality
11 AP // Jul 15, 2008 at 5:06 am
Downloaded and on me ipod, this is fantastic, thanks so much for sharing
12 Little Titch // Aug 27, 2008 at 3:00 pm
This was the first club I ever went to, and first house dj I ever listened to. Brings it all flooding back. So exciting to have been part of this. No E’s yet. Just weed and acid. Also went to Eden. Dancing with Chris and Claude in the Soul Brothers. First time I heard the ACIIEEEDDD!!! Chant. This is great. All coming around again now.
PUMP IT UP NOTTINGHAM!!
13 Sven // Oct 9, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Looking at the tracklist sent a shiver down my spine.
Things really were much better back then….
14 Paul // Nov 11, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Quality mix, im still gutted at having lost all my old tapes from those days and my full collection of tapes from the Urban Beats Club @ the club on Thursday nights that Graeme ran before it became Venus.
And yeah, Graeme was playing in London in those days too so DJs did used to guest, I remember us following him to some club in London and him going mad at his then GF for spending £100 on some shoes down there, hehhe. It’s amazing now to thing we would all go back to his flat after gigs and he’d be going through the tape of the night straight away getting it ready to sell the following week, I will never forget his broken toilet and having to flush it from the bucket by the side of the bowl! Ohh happy days!!
15 scott park // Nov 13, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Ah, my big brother……………………………….quality.
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