Greg Wil­son

Greg began DJing in 1975 and is regard­ed as one of the most impor­tant fig­ures on the UK dance scene. He enjoyed huge­ly pop­u­lar res­i­den­cies in the ear­ly eight­ies at Wigan Pier and Manchester’s major­ly influ­en­tial Leg­end, hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out in his home­town of New Brighton. He was a pio­neer of mix­ing in the UK and in 1983 he became the first ​‘dance music’ spe­cial­ist hired for a reg­u­lar week­ly ses­sion at Manchester’s now leg­endary Haçien­da club. Greg was instru­men­tal in break­ing the new elec­tron­ic, post-dis­co records com­ing out of New York, a sound he has dubbed ​‘Elec­tro-Funk’.

In 2003 he set up elec­tro­funk­roots, a web­site doc­u­ment­ing this cru­cial era in the evo­lu­tion of dance cul­ture. After a two decade hia­tus from the booth, he returned to DJing and soon wel­comed book­ings through­out Europe and, sub­se­quent­ly, worldwide.

Greg was the first DJ to mix live on British TV, putting togeth­er the first UK radio mix­es of their type for Pic­cadil­ly 261 in Man­ches­ter and show­ing a cer­tain Nor­man Cook (lat­er Fat­boy Slim) how to scratch.

Nom­i­nat­ed by DJ mag­a­zine for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion, and also named amongst their top twen­ty remix­ers of all-time, Greg’s recent remix cred­its have includ­ed Grace Jones, The XX, Groove Arma­da, Bryan Fer­ry, Steve Mason, Joan As Police Woman and Simi­an Mobile Dis­co, whilst he’s edit­ed tracks by A Guy Called Ger­ald, Talk­ing Heads, Orches­tral Manoeu­vres In The Dark, Elec­tron­ic, Imag­i­na­tion and Mis­sy Elliot.

In Jan­u­ary 2009 Greg’s rep­u­ta­tion was fur­ther enhanced when his Essen­tial Mix on BBC Radio 1 became some­thing of an instant clas­sic, receiv­ing almost uni­ver­sal acclaim and was select­ed as one of 10 clas­sics that spanned the show’s near 17 year history.

Greg’s Blog, ​‘Being A DJ’, was launched in June 2010, and now car­ries over 250 posts and close on a mil­lion site vis­its to date. Greg’s obser­va­tions on var­i­ous aspects of club cul­ture now an online touch­stone for an ever-increas­ing amount of dance enthu­si­asts and aficionados.

In August 2010 he co-curat­ed (with Jack Hem­ing­way) the Ware­house and Roller Dis­co areas at the inau­gur­al Vin­tage Fes­ti­val at Good­wood, which proved to be an over­whelm­ing suc­cess, being named ​‘Best New Fes­ti­val’ at the UK Fes­ti­val Awards (Greg also being nom­i­nat­ed in the ​‘Best Feel Good Act Of The Sum­mer’ category).

He has pro­duced a series of doc­u­men­tary pod­casts, Time Cap­sule, Ran­dom Influ­ences and Ear­ly 80’s Floor­fillers, as well as the long-run­ning blog series, Liv­ing To Music.

Greg has giv­en talks on music and DJ cul­ture at a num­ber events at venues The Tate Gallery in Liv­er­pool and Lon­don’s South­bank and Insti­tute Of Con­tem­po­rary Arts, whilst in 2013 he was invit­ed onto a pan­el along­side leg­endary fig­ures Nile Rodgers and Gior­gio Moroder @ ADE in Amsterdam.

In 2014 he unveiled the mul­ti-media label Super Weird Sub­stance, focus­ing on record­ing and live events. In 2015, the label released 8 vinyl sin­gles, brought togeth­er in the 2 CD com­pi­la­tion, ​‘Greg Wil­son Presents Super Weird Sub­stance’. Sep­tem­ber 2015 saw a mem­o­rable Fes­ti­val No.6 Hap­pen­ing in Port­meiri­on and the label has stu­dio albums planned and more mul­ti-media Super Weird Hap­pen­ings dur­ing 2016.

2015 was round­ed off with the 40^th anniver­sary of Greg’s first club date in 1975, with a week­end of events in Liv­er­pool to mark the occa­sion. The fol­low­ing week Greg was pre­sent­ed with DJ Mag­a­zine’s Indus­try Icon award — he sub­se­quent­ly start­ed writ­ing his Dis­cothèque Archives col­umn for the mag­a­zine, high­light­ing a clas­sic DJ, label, venue and record each month. 2016 saw Greg take the Super Weird Sound Sys­tem to a num­ber of fes­ti­vals, with new music and events planned for 2017 with the label.