Red Lines: Bristol, England. House parties, Hip Hop and smoking Drugs..
![]() ![]() The plane, sky, airport, shadow, trail, sun; a thing; Landing, trucks, usa, desert, dust; Sukhoi, pak fa (t-50), air force, multi-purpose, fighter, figure, flight. In May, UNIQLO are going to be selling a whole ton of new Nintendo-themed t-shirts, some of which are hot as hell. Each one was designed by a fan, and the overall. Meet the brand new Earth 3D for Windows Desktop! It's not just a beautiful desktop wallpaper and screensaver with the day/night cycle, real starry sky with the actual. Massive Attack's history goes back to 1. Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch. Massive. Attack. They formed. Dug Out in 1. 98. Miles Johnson, Nellee Hooper, Grant Marshall (Daddy G), Claude Williams. Wille Wee), Robert. Del Naja (3. D) (who. Andrew Vowles (Mushroom). They. were essentially an even looser collective than Massive Attack, and encluded. One of the earliest and most. DJ collectives in the UK, they rapidly made themselves. Their. performances at illegal parties, such as on the downs, where the police arrived. Red House in St Paul's. The. Wild Bunch would epitomise the sound (agglomation of hip- hop, rare groove, soul. They are largely myth and legend to those who. Bristol. The Wild Bunch at St Pauls Carnival, Bristol, 1. By the. mid- '8. 0s The Wild Bunch and their all- night party jams had gained a reputation. Bristol's city limits. In fact, it was a trip to Japan. Bunch's demise. 3. D got homesick. and came back to Bristol early, while Nelle Hooper left soon afterwards to pursue. He moved to London, to work on the ground- breaking. Soul II Soul into the pop mainstream. Bjork and Madonna. The excellent photographs. Beezer, Julian Monaghan and Rob Scott, who memorialized. Dug Out. Nellee Hooper looks impossibly young and baby- faced, Grant looks. Del Naja stares out of the frame like the precocious. Robert De Niro, and Miles. Johnson - well, he looks like a star. He came back. but when he found out what was involved he didn't want to know.'Hooper and Johnson manned the decks, specializing in grandiose scratching of. Def Jam label, with Marshall also. DJing and acting as MC, and Del Naja and Williams rapping. Del Naja was also. They were also very. In 1. 98. 5, it was evident. Del Naja was full of ideas but didn't have. By this time they were also successfully. Del Naja appearing in a documentary about graffiti art being made. Dick Jewell for Channel Four, and getting his graffiti into. Henry Chalfont, along with Goldie from Wolverhampton. What happened between. Massive Attack in 1. The essential facts are that in 1. Wild Bunch blagged a trip to Japan through contacts made via Neneh Cherry. The Face magazine. Del Naja was unhappy there and returned home, ending. Johnson and Hooper then signed a deal as the. Wild Bunch with Island records, with themselves as the only signatories, and. The Look of Love and Friends and Countrymen. Island in America and on import in Britain. Johnson and. Hooper, who were by living in London, then fell out and Hooper went To form. Soul to Soul with Jazzie B, while Johnson went to Japan and then to New York. Signed to a management by Cameron Mc. Vey, Massive then signed a record. Virgin which eventually resulted in Blue Lines album. From. 1. 98. 9 they began fusing together the hip hop, sweet lover's rock reggae, booming. British sound. Developing a sound that took advantage. Delj, Grant and Mushroom decided to move on from playing records to. Massive Attack was born. Ditching the spraycans and packing. Bristol didn't have a wide open. New Orleans or Kansas City, it did have one club, the. Dug Out, where black and white mixed fairly freely, unusual in a city centre where. Romeo and Juliets used to operate an unofficial quota system. And whatever the theory, the Dug Out really does. It also links together the mini- boom that Bristol's. Pop Group. Pigbag and Rip Rig and Panic in the early eighties, with the sound- system crew. Bristol sound, the legendary Wild Bunch. They then started. DJ at the Dug Out (where Grant was already established) every Wednesday. Bristol's first New York- style sound system. They were accused by some. Talk. to someone who went to the Dug Out and they will immediately become misty eyed. Gary Clail was there, terror funk singer Mark Stewart, and a host of punks, rastass. One of the bunch, Nelle Hooper, left. Soul II Soul and co- produced their first two albums. The rest became Massive. Attack who in classic laidback Bristol fashion released one single in 1. Cica records. for a sum of around . The album Blue Lines was one of the finest. Just when the hype was at it's highest. Massive Attack. The Dug Out was shut down by the authorities and. Moon Club on the edge of St Paul's. Indeed, its reputation. Bristol sound. becoming comparable to that of Minton's Playhouse and the clubs of 5. Street. in the history of bebop. Of course, like its historical forbears, it was also. Bristolian jazz musicians like Keith Tippett and Larry Stabbins. Working Week) paying their dues there by sitting in with the resident trad. Located on the site of what. Thai restaurant, in Park Row, just across the road from the university. Clifton, the Dug Out lasted until 1. Park Street Trader's Association got it closed down after a number. During its high point in the eighties. Upstairs. Everyone remembers the carpet, which would stick to your feet like. Significantly, as noted, it was a place where downtown and uptown. St Paul's and the estates met Clifton trendies and those. Barton Hill and the outlying districts. Suddenly it was like everyone was saying . You'd go drinking in Clifton or Montpelier. Dug Out, and it became an every- day- of- the- week thing. Monday to Saturday. You'd do whatever you did in. Dug Out, sit in the video. What made the Dug Out good. Nowadays you go out on a night till six in the morning and you're. Special Brew and smoking Red Leb, that was the combination. You had the pubs up in Clifton which was trendy. Rip Rig and Panic, M4 sort of crowd, or down St Paul's at the blues, those. Dug Out and mixing. That's why. the Dug Out was such a threat, that's why it got closed down. I mean they blamed. It was more like the Dug Out brought the black people. St Paul's into Clifton, and the traders - it was them. And nor could the Old Bill. The Dug Out was the only place to go', remembers the photographer Beezer, who. Wild Bunch there in the early and mid- eighties, as. Grant Marshall began working as the. Dug Out's DJ in 1. I started. going there in about 1. I was thirteen. You had to lie about your age. There were all kinds of scams. Once, a local. free sheet newspaper had advertised a free drinks token for the club and we. Sometimes the barmaids. You'd. walk in and immediately be confronted by Max, the doorman, who used to just. Oli Timmins, a designer who produced. Smith and Mighty releases and who continues to collaborate. Robert Del Naja. You'd. There was always a fight. Every night there would have to. Sometimes people would let off canisters of CS gas and everyone. Everyone, absolutely everyone. Because. you paid a membership, it cost nothing or nearly nothing to get in, and the. It had an. air of slight dodginess and it was a little bit scuzzy, w. Hich was good. Eventually. Bad. Crew and Grant, and it started to change a bit and people began to dance, though. I remember being rather perturbed because I was into the Clash but. I also liked disco music and they didn't seem to fit together, but then the. Clash started to do disco- type things. Dub was really the saviour of it all. I'd go there when it opened. On the last week before it closed. It wasn't like clubs today, no one frisked you on the. Brian Jones, was a great guy. He was into offshore powerboat. He obviously. made so much money that he let people do what they wanted, as long as they were. The atmosphere was a lot to do with the kids who went there. Paul Johnson remembers it differently: 'At the Dug Out everyone who was someone. People. from differentareas would go but they wouldn't get on. Nellee was there. Clifton people - saying . I didn't like. the Clifton music anyway - Pigbag, Rip Rig and Panic and them - it was too trendy. You could do anything. To give you an idea. I used to pick guys off the dance floor and give them blow. One night I had two guys in the cubicle and the manager. I wasn't bothered and just went out of there smiling, but the guys. I used to practically live there, it was my home and when it closed part of. It was ahead of its time in terms. In those days clubs were quite cliched but in the Dug Out you. People did mix, but it all depended who you were. I was black. and gay and I would mix, but there would be groups of black guys who would just. Even on a. Monday night it was packed. People tell me that they would go because there. The. irony of the club was that really it should been in St Paul's, not Clifton. The police really used to though. Clifton. I remember one night when there. Dug Out, but. about police came in and rounded everyone up, . What began as the loose. Wild Bunch had connections which substantially pre- dated. Miles Johnson, Nellee Hooper, Paul. J and Rob Chant (later to play with Smith and Mighty) had already been in a. Youth; Hooper had played percussion with Pop Group boho- funk. Maximum Joy, and also with Pigbag, with whom he appeared on Top of. Pops. By the time Miles Johnson came back from a short spell in prison in. Wild Bunch began in earnest. Or at least the pavement outside. I'd go along and I'd have to stand outside and inagine what was going. I could hear the sounds but never really new what was actually happening. But my school, really, was the sound systems. There would have to be places. The Mill, Carnival and Wild Bunch parties, and there were clubs like Raquel's. Frogmore Street on a Saturday afternoon, all playing stuff that influenced. Back then there was the Wild Bunch who had their own style and records. City Rockers playing in a different style, and 2 Bad Plus. One and UD4.. all these crews had different styles and records. It's only really. Wild Bunch that people hear outside of Bristol, but all the different crews. Before he was a member of the legendary. Wild Bunch, Nelle (probably not the name his parents gave him) also. Mouth, Maximum Joy and Pigbag. When members. of that posse formed Massive Attack after an abortive tour of Japan, he moved. London to hook up with Jazzy B in Soul II Soul. He. did return to the Massive Attack fray to twiddle the knobs on the Protection. Despite acclaimed. Bjork, Sinead O'Connor, All Saints and Madonna.
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