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In this engaging conversation, Adam and Mr.C delve into the intricacies of DJing, the evolution of music genres, and the profound impact of meditation on creativity. Mr.C shares his journey from rapping to becoming a prominent figure in the house music scene, highlighting the importance of balance in sound and the communal experience of DJing. They explore the spiritual aspects of music, the challenges of fame, and the cultural implications of drug references in songs, particularly in relation to the iconic track 'Ebenezer Good.' The discussion is rich with insights on personal philosophy, the role of music in society, and the transformative power of meditation. In this engaging conversation, Mr. C shares his journey through the music industry, emphasizing the importance of happiness, authenticity, and community. He reflects on his experiences as a DJ, the challenges of maintaining his unique sound, and the financial aspects of his career. The discussion also delves into the creation and legacy of The End nightclub, his views on politics and society, and the significance of mindfulness and meditation in personal growth.

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Adam Gow

So today we're here with legendary underground dance DJ, hit maker extraordinaire, front man of the shaman, Richard West, aka Mr. C thanks for coming on. That's

Mr C

my absolute pleasure, sir.

Adam Gow

Brilliant, and I hope it's we get into things in a little bit of a different way. Okay, so what you may have done, because I think what what you tend to find with people is, if they've done a few podcasts, it might just be the same sort of things in the same way. Yeah,

Mr C

I get, I mean, obviously people do want to know about Ebenezer good, and I do get all that. But yeah, it's we usually end up branching off onto different subjects because, you know, I'm an interesting character, which is why I'm here,

Adam Gow

yeah, and I'm looking forward to getting into it, yeah. So the first thing I tend to ask is around how you got into music and how you got into DJing. Because, just to give you some context, my experience is all kind of around hip hop, funk, so, so that's more the world of people that I've interviewed. So it's exciting to get someone that's that's gone a lot more into sort of techno and deep house and things like that. Because for me, it's about, I want to understand the commonalities for all DJs, be it a funeral DJ techno, right?

Mr C

Okay, well, that makes sense. I'm actually, um, playing a gig tomorrow night where I'm playing five hours of funk console. Oh, amazing.

Adam Gow

There you go. So was, was that an entry point for you then the funk and soul?

Mr C

Yeah, very much. So my mom used to like listen to soul music when I was a kid. So she'd listen to, like, the Commodores, Barry White stylistics, like those sort of bands in the early 70s and mid 70s. So, you know, I automatically liked soul music because it was like, Yeah, as a kid, I did like Elvis Presley. He's very soulful anyway, for a rocker, and then when he died, I was like, immediately, and I posters off the wall, get rid of the records, and became an Abba fan for about a year when I was 11, as my first guilty pleasure, I guess what? Why

Adam Gow

did you why did you get rid of everything when he died? Then was it like there's no point lamenting? My

Mr C

mom asked me the same question. She's like, What? What are you doing? Why are you taking I'm not he's gone. Mum, I don't know. I just had this thing. I was only 10 years old. I believe all around that when, when he passed, and, um, no, I was just like, Okay, we are. He's gone. That's it. I'm not work. I'm not going to be a fan of someone who's dead that. There's no point find someone new. That was, that was it. I dropped him like that, like a ton of hot bricks overnight, right? Yeah. It's very weird. My mum thought it was a bit weird,

Adam Gow

yeah. So like with I try not to do too much research on this, because sometimes it can, it can end up. I'll try and guide you somewhere that I can where things happened.

Mr C

I'm the I'm the sort of person I do tend to pull away and make other answers out of questions when people do that.

Adam Gow

So, so the thing that really jumped out to me looking at your Wikipedia was that your kind of entry point into the world of DJing was through rapping, right, correct, yeah,

Mr C

Adam Gow

at that point, what were you getting access to? You from London, right? I'm

Mr C

from London. Yeah, yeah. Access to absolutely everything that ever got released in America. You know, that's the good thing about being in London. It's a music capital of the world, and it's the hub for Europe. So all the New York and LA stuff or whatever would all fly into London, and there it would be in our record shops. You go down to groove records on ward or street, and they had everything, you know, I mean, it's like, absolutely everything. And there was a whole lot of record shops, Blue Bird and all that. And also at that time, we had a lot of pirate radio stations in London, the early ones, JFM, Horizon Invicta, solar radio, and they used to champion American black dance music. So it would just pile in Seoul funk, disco, reggae, jazz, hip hop. It would just pile in so people like me, obviously, oh, right place, right time as a kid,

Adam Gow

yeah. So, so which, which rappers were you listening to?

Mr C

Adam Gow

So a couple of questions. Then, when you were when you were rapping, when you first started, were you rapping with an American accent, or were you kind of British with it?

Mr C

No, no, no English accent. I mean, it did have a little bit of an American accent, I guess, you know, like, my first raps were totally old school. It'd be like, like the sugar Hook gang or, you know, like that, that sort of style, like that, you know, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five style. So it was very it was basic. It was really early. It just started as a movement. And so I'd copied that style and parroted that kind of style. So there was a little bit of an American in there, but I was rapping about being from London. You know, London is my place of birth, where the people had a rocking hard down to earth. It don't matter if you're north, south, east or west, because London is the place that rocks the best. Well, Mr. C in the place to be rocking. I'm around spending cash of money, and it was so it's not American, but it's not it's, I guess, I don't know, but that was how my thing was right at the beginning, because I'm not American, and I think that was one of the things people liked about when I would rap, when the acid house scene exploded, the energy that I came with was definitely a London vibe. And as my rap got better, and as I wrote more lyrics, my accent became more like my normal accent, rather than the American thing, so that it changed quite quickly. But there was definitely an American training there when I started, without doubt, yeah?

Adam Gow

Because, because that's something I find interesting with the sort of first wave of like brick core, or whatever you want to call it, the sort of rap, like gunshot hijack things like that. Yeah, I was already out of it by then. Yeah, yeah.

Mr C

Adam Gow

so how did 16 year old rap in Richard Mr. C kind of get ingratiated into that acid house movement and the it was the nights at the clink, right?

Mr C

Adam Gow

yeah, I guess kind of Run DMC. And, yeah, that's kind of the turning point, isn't it?

Mr C

Adam Gow

on another point that you mentioned, then, for lack of a better word, let's say New Age, right? Yeah, call it what you want. That's probably quite a limited, progressive sort of Outlook and set of things to be thinking about when you're quite young. In the 80s, I would guess, yeah,

Mr C

I didn't know anyone my age that was into anything spiritual, like meditation, yeah. What

Adam Gow

was your journey into that then?

Mr C

Adam Gow

Yeah. I remember I got into meditating about eight years ago and and immediately my just, my work days seemed to go better. And I just, I just felt, yeah, those, those a few different things I can think of in particular where I was like, I'm just dealing with this better because of meditating. It's just it was helping me in so many ways, and I just couldn't stop telling everyone to do it. It's everything.

Mr C

People don't read. People don't realize it's it's fascinating. They don't realize what it does. I mean, even if you don't get into the spiritual side of it, just the technique of it alone, you know, by my, you know, doing a body scan, and then scanning your body from the tip of your toes to the top of your head, slowly but surely, every muscle in your body brings you completely into the moment and makes your thoughts disappear right at the very beginning. And this is before you even start the focus of meditation on whatever it is you're focusing on, be it a mantra or your breathing or your your senses or depending on what type of a meditation you're doing. But you know, it just, it brings about focus. It brings about, you know, if you focusing on your senses, all of a sudden, you're not procrastinating anymore. You're not focusing anymore. Things are not winding you up. So it's a technique for all these mental health benefits right off the bat, and that's before you even go down the mumbo jumbo route, which I love the mumbo jumbo side of it.

Adam Gow

Yeah, something that might be cool to do at the end of this, if we've got time, as if you'd be up for giving me a little guided meditation, something a bit different to do.

Mr C

Adam Gow

money as well, isn't it? TM,

Mr C

it is TM. It's ridiculous, a rip off. And you know, it really is. It's a rip off. Like, I don't feel that they're they're really giving people the truth because you shouldn't, you know, like they give you a mantra or a sound that you're not allowed to share. I shared mine, but I didn't pay for it. I might give it to me for free as well. So, you know, there's the TM side of it, there's mindfulness meditation. And I do mindfulness meditation based on concentration on the senses, or mindfulness meditation based on the breathing. And then I do also teach a short, 234, minute blast that you can do before an important job interview to get yourself focused and grounded and centered. Or. For doing an interview or a podcast or going into the studio to make music. You know, there's a little five minute meditation I would teach to help people with their creative endeavors or whatever it's they've got to do that day, that moment. So, yeah, I started teaching it back then, and the workshops are very special. They would last 11 hours, 12 hour workshops, and sometimes longer, because I was also doing psycho analysis work on the individuals as a group, and psychoanalyzing their actions and thoughts and trying to find out what their problems were. Very good at that. I'm very good at finding out what people's problems are by asking questions and challenging them. Modern day psychiatry kind of pisses me off a little bit. You know, I think for most people, one what it should be, a one stop visit. You should be able to find out what your problem is, what is the what the event is that cause your problem? What is the event that give it gave you this purpose in life that is hidden and unwanted, and what can you do to get rid of that problem, which is finish thinking on the event. And how do you finish thinking on the event? Are there techniques for finishing your thinking on the event and all this kind of stuff, and psychiatry doesn't really give you those things, like you go to a psychiatrist and they'll ask you questions and get you emotional, drag up shit from the past, and then say, all right, off you go, go and think about all that, and then come back next week. No, that's, let's see. That's where it all falls down. For me, it's like, Alright, we've dragged up this shit from the past, right? How did you come up with that shit from the past that you know? What is it that brought that shit from the past up? What is it that brought that into that person's mind? And then what? Why is it coming to the person's mind? The only reason that that shit from the past has come up into the person's mind is because they haven't finished their thinking on the event. So therefore, when it comes up, the event is still there, causing problems. And when you have a traumatic event in life, that trauma will give you something that we call an unwanted, hidden purpose, like, for an example, someone who's bullied by their big brother, yeah, as a kid, would have the they're being disempowered by their big brother. Yeah, that disempowerment would give that person the unwanted, hidden purpose to be powerful, which in turn will make that person into a bully. Yeah, and if that person has the purpose to be powerful, if their if their purpose isn't being achieved, they get angry, violent, all sorts of problems start to happen because the purposes of being achieved. And that could be, there's 101 different purposes. You know, it could be the purpose to be loved, the purpose to be respected, the purpose to be acknowledged, the purpose to be correct, and the purpose to be powerful, the purpose there's, there's 101 of them. So it's really important for the psychologist to get the purpose right, yeah. And once you have the purpose, it's from the purpose, and you get the purpose by challenging the person's anger or their affinities. Because the only time you're ever going to be angry is when your unwanted hidden purpose is not being achieved. If your unwanted hidden purpose is being achieved, you are the happiest person on the planet. So if you challenge anger and question anger, you'll then be able to find out what the purpose is that isn't being achieved. Once you find the purpose, you can then regress the person to the event that caused it. Once you find the event, you then go into the event in details, and it is then that you showed the the client the techniques to be how to be able to finish your thinking on that event. Once you finish your thinking on the event, the purpose that came with that trauma disappears. It disintegrates, along with all of its bodyguards that are the voices in your head saying, Oh, don't do that. You're going to fail. Oh, you're not good enough. All these voices are protection mechanisms for your purpose. With the purpose comes security. So the security disintegrates along with the purpose once you finish your thinking on the event, and that's where psychiatry gets it wrong. They don't give you techniques to finish your thinking on on events, and that's what I would do, people, just

Adam Gow

going back to your timeline then. So you were you were rapping, and then it was from there that you started DJing. Is that correct? Yes,

Mr C

Adam Gow

make it easy to to kind of get into the club's DJ in there? Yeah, absolutely,

Mr C

Adam Gow

did you learn music when you were younger because you were talking about specific sort of chords, you know, minor sevenths and things like that that you get in sort of jazz and so have you got a background in, like, keys or anything?

Mr C

Adam Gow

So how did you meet the shaman then? Well, the shaman,

Mr C

Adam Gow

It's interesting, though, how like, because I think about, you know, say, like, sort of New York in 77 how you had the emergence of disco, the emergence of punk, and the emergence of rap, and then I think about sort of 88 England being a little bit like that, where you have the kind of offshoots of the baggage, like everything kind of came together and then exploded apart again.

Mr C

Adam Gow

you on the other ones? No,

Mr C

mean, now I'm turning down gigs and struggling to get by, because now I'm on a piece of the action. When they offer you that piece, did you have in mind that you thought it was going to get as big as it got? Oh, yeah,

without doubt. I you know when I knew move any mountain was going to be a hit. Sadly, after we shot that video for move any mountain, we lost will sinner. We was he went over to the next island, got La Gomera in the Canary Islands with his girlfriend, and she almost got caught, caught with the undercurrent, the Atlantic Ocean. She nearly got caught and warned will not go out to a certain place in certain parts, because she's a stronger swimmer than he was, and he ignored her. Went out and got pulled under, and we lost him. We drowned, obviously into into integral part of the shaman. The guy was was like a shaman. He was a vibes master. He knew the beats, he knew the rhythm he had. He was great at vocals, superb bass player. He had everything he it was a devastating loss for the shaman at that point. So we just started to make the band of one, and then that happened. So that was very, very, very hard. Plav colonic was asked to join the band as a full member as well, and she did want to, but once, will we lost will? She's like, Well, that's it. I'm out. I'm out here. And decided to go and take her her own route, which was fine, and we were about to stop the band, but Colin was getting so many letters from fans. Please don't stop it's a very important information band. There's no one out there giving information about human evolution, about the psychedelic experience. There's no band like this out there. There isn't one, yeah. Please carry on. Please carry on. We talked about it and decided that Colin and I, we would carry on. So we went about getting a new singer to join us. And we did, we went, we did it ourselves, and carried on. Colin and I as the shaman. They are very, very difficult period for the band. But yeah, that was where, when it went from there. It went from there, that was when we started writing the Bosch drum album. And I knew, yeah, like, when we when we wrote Ebenezer good, I'm laughing about it. I'm like, Connie, this is number one. He's like, do you think? Do you think I'm like, do I think this is now your number one, mate? I know it is. Like, I knew that I I was a no, I'd already visualized it. I'd already seen myself on top of the pop. So I'd already going back to my visualization of my spiritual side. I knew it was a knowing right? There was like, did you know that? Did you did you think you might do? Well, no, I knew it already happened. All we had to do now was just catch up with space and time. It really happened. It was, it was a given. So, no, I knew.

Adam Gow

So I don't think we need to get into the specifics of the song. If you don't know, Ebenezer good, I don't even know what to say,

Mr C

greatest pop song ever made. I reckon I would say that would not phenomenally

Adam Gow

big song, yeah. And that album, that was a great album, that was one of my early cassettes that I bought, actually, just thinking about a boss drum when you mentioned it as well. And just like, a little bit of the rap and stuff, I'm not gonna do it, yeah? Like it's still, you know, it still kind of rings there in my head, yeah,

Mr C

it's a good rap. Is a good rap here.

Adam Gow

What was it like having that level of success?

Mr C

I knew it was coming, so I braced myself. It was fun for me. I never really took myself seriously. I mentioned it earlier on in this interview that I think that we're only here to have fun. We're not here for any other reason. We're not here to hunt and gather. We're not here to get rich and hoard money. We're not here to, you know, be the big I am. We're not even here to procreate. We're here to enjoy ourself. That's it. We're here to have fun. We're here to be happy. Happiness is our God given, right? And we that's what we should all be doing, is being happy, and that's how we are controlled by the establishment and the powers that be in the ruling elites in the they're making us unhappy and they're making us struggle, and they're making us desperate, and that stops our evolution, because happiness is enlightenment. That's the only reason we're here. And for me, doing every the whole shaman thing, I was enjoying it. It was it was fun. I was having a more fun than you could shake a stick at, especially doing interviews like winding up the media, winding up the TV. You know, for me it was just one big piss take. It was like, alright, let's, let's have a laugh. And that was what it was. So the right, the writing of Ebenezer good was hilarious. You know that the performing of Ebenezer good was hilarious, and yet, I knew it was going to get to number one. I knew it was going to cause trouble. I knew that it would be controversial. I knew that we'd be splashed all over the papers. I knew all of those things, and that just made it even more fun when they all came to be.

Adam Gow

Did it make it difficult in any way to be taken seriously about your sort of wider message about how we are on this earth and what we're here for and stuff like that? Would you kind of push that and then people going? People go, yeah, yeah. But pills are ACE, aren't they? Yeah, yeah,

Mr C

absolutely, yes. But that was my disguise. It was my beard and glasses. Oh, yeah, Trojan horse. Yeah, my Trojan horse. So, you know, all the time, you know, I was worried for quite some time that I would get in trouble, like, not legally, but bigger than that trouble, I mean directly giving information to people about how to evolve as humanity, how To change the control system that we're stuck in, and that's dangerous for for certain people, and so being the clown prince helped, you know, being that cheeky chappy,

Unknown Speaker

no, no, he

Mr C

Adam Gow

Well, that is really interesting about cigarettes and and it's, you know, there's this so much to be said around the sort of drug debate and stuff like, I don't remember when Leah Betts was in the news, but I'm guessing it was a couple of years afterwards, but it

Mr C

was around the same time. Actually, it weren't, there wasn't a lot. It was just art. It was, it was just after, I think, the holy a bit incident and the misinformation around that was just awful. You know, she actually died wrong the brain. So, you know, because she'd been given misinformation. And like, you know, if people have been told all day does dehydrate you, but you have to be careful. You can't drink too much water. You don't drink six liters of water all in one go. It's going to cause a problem. Then, you know, for me, it was the lack of information that was in it was a problem with all that stuff, which we weren't. Did you

Adam Gow

get vilified, though we

Mr C

were always certified Right, right, right the way across the board? Well, I can, if I'd have had the money at the time, I would have, well, you know, I was actually said some of some of my mates, it'd be great to have do a big billboard poster, right, and have a picture of an ecstasy tablet and a picture of Leah Betts and a picture of a cow, and put ecstasy safer than British beef. Not gone down very well. But I would, I. I was already getting people's faces with that sort of very too delicate obviously, with with her family must have been devastated on losing a family member in the manner that they did. And it was a real tragedy and absolutely heartbreaking, you know. But most of deaths that were recorded as ecstasy. Deaths were due to mitigating circumstances like heart issues or water on the brain or other things you know, and when you know, more people are dying from eating peanuts and ecstasy. I was always going to stand up and say that. Say, Oh, do you know more people die from eating peanuts than eating ecstasy?

Adam Gow

Yeah, you see, I asked because I just imagine if there was ever anything come up in the news that if you saw it, you just think, Oh, God, it's that people are going to come at me or

Mr C

No, I didn't care. I you know, it's not me, not my problem. If you start to make something your problem, then you're messing with your own psychology. And I don't let other people's problems be my problems. It's, yeah, someone's got, like, someone's got a problem with me. Like, yeah, I've got loads of haters, you know, jealous people, haters, people that don't like me for whatever reason. I've got loads of them, and they're the ones with the problem. Like, people say, Oh, I heard someone said this about you. So what? Don't care. I do not give it flying shit, because what will solve my problem? If they've got a problem, they're the one who has a problem, and they're welcome to keep it all to themselves. My thing is about happiness. I am going to be happy. I am going to share happiness, and I'm going to have as much fun in my life as humanly possible, because that's why we're here, to have fun, to have joy, to be happy and to share. That's it. Yeah.

Adam Gow

So just going on then to that sort of peak of of the shamans popularity. How did that impact DJ and were you getting booked? Did you ever get booked for kind of the wrong sort of gigs, because the guy from the shaman, are probably called the shaman or whatever. Yeah,

Mr C

I did. I got bit I booked. I got booked, you know? Oh, it's the guy from that pop group. Let's book him to play our big Mecca disco tech, you know? And I would get, yeah, I'd get, I was getting a few bookings. I'll be at first, I'll be like, they're not going to like my music because they don't know what I'm going to play do they they're just booking me because I missed a C from the shaman, right? So, and I'm I'm going to go, I'm going to go, and I'm going to play techno, acid house music, underground, fucked up, really twisted shit. That's what I'm going to do. And I'd go into these big places. And none of them booked me again, but I would go in, and I would pull their trousers down, spank their bottoms, and then you get off the people and

Speaker 1

the oven, or rather, people like this, like what the is? What am I doing here? This is mental, and

Mr C

they didn't know what to do. And it was hilarious. And I did that a few. I must have had about eight or nine of those gigs.

Adam Gow

Did your DJ money sort of kind of really bump up then

Mr C

Adam Gow

yeah, it's, it's a tricky one, isn't it? I mean, there's, there's someone that I had on here that they were saying about the millennium, when things got to this peak of like, 100 quid a ticket on the door for places. And after that, people kind of realized that they could have a good time at home and and it's kind of like the bottom fell out of it a bit. Yeah, did you can suffer at that point? No,

Mr C

I've, I've always had my gigs, you know, yeah, I've always been able to survive. I'm really lucky. I'm really fortunate. And I thank my lucky stars all the time that I've been afforded a career as a DJ, and that's been my main body of income, all the money that I earn from the shaman, I put back into the underground music. Yeah, so my DJing has always been my livelihood, not the shaman, and it's a bit of a weird one, like, you know, I went as soon as I got my first paycheck, I set up 100 grand record, 150 grand recording studio called the watershed, and then I started a label called plink plug records with Paul rib and I got all my mates into the studio to learn, and the music was good enough. I released on blink blog with this amazing covers and shrink wraps and artwork and all the rest of it for the up underground, twisted music. Yeah, didn't give a flying fuck. I put every penny back in and that, I always said that I would, if I made money from pop, I would put that back into what I believe in, which is underground dance music. And that's what I did with the label, with the studio, and with the end I put my my remaining shaman stuff that I had, into the end nightclub when we opened that and that was where it all went. It all went back into the underground. So I've always lived, actually survived from where DJ seems,

Adam Gow

yeah, now that was going to be my next question, sort of like, how did the end come about? Because it was, was it yourself and Leo?

Mr C

Adam Gow

So my next question would be, then, as a DJ, how cool is it to be able to have a say in what a nightclub becomes, and, more importantly, what the sound systems like? Brilliant.

Mr C

Adam Gow

amazing. And I think the fact that it's had that longevity, how long was it going? 13

Mr C

Adam Gow

So what? What was it that led to the closure? Well,

Mr C

Adam Gow

Wow.

Mr C

The owner was like, Can you please stay? No, please stay. What do we get out of it? Oh, we just get to carry on functioning as you are. No, we've already got the money. What are you going to give us the money? Or you want us to keep going as we are without the money? He's like, Oh no, keep going as you are without No, we've already made this deal, signed, sealed, delivered with solicitors and lawyers, and everything's done, and we've made this is it? If you're not going to give us, you know, we'll stay if you want to give us more money, but we're not going to stay. We already got the money. What do we want to work for? It's a no. And that was it. We pulled out that we'd we had, we was able to plan our exit. We had an amazing exit strategy that all the residencies that we had there, all the monthly nights and the weekly nights all had their own ending, their own closing party. And it was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful strategy. And you know, what pleased me was I gave almost half of my shares to my family. And very poor come from a poor family in Islington. So I gave my, you know, my mom, my brother, sister, auntie, everyone, everyone got sorted out, you know. So for me, I was really excited to be closing and getting this money, because I could give that to my family. There's, you know, it's a lump each it's a 50 grand. There 50 grand. They're 50 grand. They're 50 grand. To about to do that filled my heart with the most amount of joy that you could ever imagine. And like, you know, people are like, You're mad, you're giving all your money, giving it to my family. They said, Let's have it, right? I can. I'm an earner. I can survive. So

Adam Gow

after the end, then was it a bit, like, what do I do now? No, like, as was super freak going by, yeah, Super

Mr C

Adam Gow

I always find it weird asking about financial things, because it is quite personal. Do you still get kind of publishing coming in from the shame and stuff, then, yeah,

Mr C

yeah, yeah, it's not a lot, you know, like it's not enough to live on, yeah, you know. But yeah, I'm still getting like publishing world is coming in, but yeah, it's nice. It comes in every six months, bit pocket money, yeah, go shopping. No, it's alright, you know. But it's not, it's not huge. You. Could be a lot more. I think if the shaman music was managed properly in these days, in today's day and time, you know, the 90s is the new 80s. Now, you know, like, it's all about the 90s. And I think the shaman could be exploited a bit more, but it's the only problem is it's political. It's like, you know, Colin doesn't want the shaming exploited because he doesn't want the original record label recouping,

Adam Gow

right?

Mr C

Adam Gow

48 Oh, no. I was going to say you're not looking bad for your age. No,

Mr C

no, you know I'm doing all right. No. Botox still got me wrinkles, and if I go like that, but no Botox, and I think it's like I've looked after myself. I keep myself in decent shape. I eat well. I eat healthy. Daily meditation, being positive, celebrating life, all these things keep you young. When people ask me how I do it, I let them know that I do have a Picture of Dorian Gray that's falling apart in my attic, and I also did pickle myself in chemicals. Are

Adam Gow

you okay for time? I know,

Mr C

getting hungry, but you know, survival, I won't die of starvation in the next 15 minutes.

Adam Gow

One that I'd like to ask, based on what we've discussed, is, have you like, I don't know if you still use records or not, but were you good at organizing your records? Because you've hit upon a lot of things about what, where one genre ends and another one begins. Would you organize them? And did you find it as painful as I do?

Mr C

Yes, I did organize my vinyl. It's a mess now, but I organized it into genres. So I'd have New York garage, 80s, New York garage, 90s, deep house, acid house there, Detroit techno, there, disco there, electro there. So I would split it into genres, and if I had a say, a 12, an E, an EP, and it had a house track, a techno track and an electro track and an ambient track on it. Whatever was my favorite tune would go in that genre off of the EP. So if it was the acid house tune I like the best, that would be there, but I'd know that it was there. And I'd know it when I'm playing electro, electro tune up with that, you know, so I did do that. That's my more recent what? Years ago, I used to do it by catalog number. So I would have the record label, eight record labels, A to Z, and then catalog number within the label.

Adam Gow

That sounds like a lot of work. It

Mr C

Adam Gow

when did you live in LA? And how did you find that?

Mr C

Found it on a map? I loved LA. It's a It's great city, but there's a lot wrong with America. La is fun, apart from the 70,000 people living in tents on the streets. It's a bit shocking, but you know, restaurants are great. Food is great. Produce, fresh produce, organic produce, is superb. Quality of life is good. The weather's amazing. I find people a bit flaky in Los Angeles. I'd call it lies Angeles. People would be all friendly in that, but when you follow through, I'm busy and, Oh, can't be, you know, no, I've already agreed to do this. So it's a bit flaky, like that, bit Clicky. And, you know, people stick to their own clicks, and without opening I'm one of these people. I was always open, armed to everybody. And. And I didn't make that many friends in the music industry there, like real friends and close ones. And you know, most of my closest friends in LA were Chelsea fans that I'd go and drink in the pub with watching football. Was it music that