It’s a not so lazy Sunday here at cmd+f HQ. For day 5 of the cmd+vent calendar, I’ve got a very special friend of mine to talk about one his most favoUrite artists that, in a roundabout way (I suppose), brought our friendship together.
The origins of my friendship with Richard are very unclear, but we possibly linked via a now defunct music (sharing) forum circa 2006/07. Facebook happened, then Twitter, and Tumblr followed closely after, and we were just those people who’d jump from new social media platforms and always follow back, but we’d always bond over the same kind of tunes. Being close in age, we were young, impressionable teens hungry for fucking cool music. While I was skirting around the Cobra Snake scene in LA, Richard was dancing his way through sticky-floored clubs in London.
Nowadays, Richard likes to remind me how American I am whilST I poke fun at how British he is, and typically debate over the best place to score a burger and CHIPS in the world. When I visited London this past October, we were both the oldest people in the crowd jamming out to Wolf Alice in a tiny club in Camden. Despite getting (and feeling) older (our knees ached after that gig), our concert going habits have hardly changed.
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It was 2007, I’d been to the NME Indie Rave Tour- a sea of glowsticks in a London venue that’s now a gym- and was gradually filling my iPod with dancier music when I discovered this mix. I instantly fell in love with everything Ed Banger, but especially Justice. I started DJing, badly in my bedroom at first and eventually to other mostly appreciative people, making friends (one of whom is now genuinely successful) that I played with regularly. My early sets had some good ideas of my own, but large parts of them were either inspired by or just directly lifted from Justice sets.
The first time I saw Justice live was at Radio 1’s Big Weekend, in the town I was born in, in 2008. The set was a sort of mix of live & other people’s songs done on Ableton, they opened with the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme and as soon as the drums of Waters of Nazareth kicked in I lost my shit for the next half hour. I’ve seen, and met, them a lot of times since then but until this year it had been a little while.
A very recent picture of me and Justice (it was 2008)
Then came Glastonbury. This was my 6th Glastonbury, it’s my favourite festival and I have always wanted to see my favourite band there, this year the time finally came. I’m old now, so I didn’t want to be too near the front- my girlfriend and I stood on a bench towards the side so we’d have a good view. From the moment of the first synth of Safe And Sound I was worried I was going to fall off because I was dancing so hard on this narrow piece of wood. The middle aged woman dancing next to us seemed slightly concerned for my wellbeing, we explained afterwards just how much I loved them. Despite being old, for an hour and a quarter of 2017 music made me feel like a teenager again.
Richard likes to crack jokes on Twitter a lot. Follow him here: @rchrdctswrth
More cmd+vent calendar drops tomorrow!