Stormin’ Norman
March 15th, 2002 by freddie96
Stormin’ Norman: Sunflower Kate meets Norman Jay
Earlier this summer, in those heady days between the Enchanted Garden and the Big Chill at Lulworth Castle, Sunflower Kate sat down with everyone’s favourite DJ to have a bit of a natter. Here she reports back on what he had to say about the Big Chill, the art of Djing, and, of course, his penchant for hats.
‘As me and my friends discussed, Norman Jay is a bit of a deity. Looks a bit gloomy on Sunday, Norman pops up and the sun comes out with the whole of the main stage dancing. How cool?’
Len odd
‘I thought it was interesting that he (Norman Jay) said that he loved coming to Big Chill events because no matter what he played, everyone still enjoyed it. I guess that’s because most of the folks there don’t really confine their listening pleasure to particular genres – rather, they confine it to QUALITY music. Norman Jay, you radiate genre-busting greatness!’
Adam J
‘The 2 hours that Norman Jay took us onto his spaceship and onto another planet, landing us in back in the sunshine. What a guy.’
Cotton WoolHead
‘Norman Jay – The best DJ set of the week, not taking anything from anyone else, but he knows how to work the Chill people, every single person up on their feet on Sunday afternoon, well I thought this was suppose to be a chill! Pete and Katrina even managed a bop on stage.’
Bagol
‘Thumbs up… Norman Jay and all the music.’
Andrea
‘To be grooving away to the incredible Norman Jay and be able to look over and see little nippers having the best time running up and down the bank and in the trees, laughing and jumping whilst their parents get a big up from Norm for bringing them…’
Annie
‘With no real surprise to the long serving Big Chilldren, the sun once again obeyed the orders of Norman Jay and shone on the audience for two hours of pure feel good music. Norman dropped new and old tunes alike, interspersed with banter about how The Big Chill was the ?best festival?, full of ?the friendliest people?, etc. etc. and other niceties…’
Mach V
Just a few comments found on the Forum when we, The Big Chilldren, arrived back from the Enchanted Garden earlier this year.
I mean…. what a guy. Whilst the rest of the country was glued to the omnibus edition of EastEnders, we were experiencing a glorious, 2-hour aerobics session, where we danced like aliens, lost weight through sweat, repeated the phrase ‘he’s soooo cool’ a hundred times and worshipped the sunshine that he always seems to encourage out from behind the clouds. To begin with, we were all laid back, enjoying the ambience, sipping Champagne Lushes… and by the end of the set, everyone was on their feet, leaping around to ‘California Soul’, having spilt the Champagne Lushes an hour and 45 minutes ago. The Sunday Sermon at the Big Chill has become legendary.
Someone once said (and don’t quote me but I think it was Father Dougal from Father Ted) ‘Don’t meet your heroes as they will always disappoint you’. Obviously I was ignoring this as I bundled myself off to sit in on Norman’s Giant 45 show on BBC London! I was privileged to meet one of the most charming, passionate and beautiful people I have ever had the pleasure of encountering. I was in the studio for 3 hours, watching the true master at work, nodding my head and shuffling my feet, then, when the show was over, it was my chance to ask a few questions of the man who brings the sunshine to any Enchanted Garden and makes losing weight on a Sunday most pleasurable.
So here goes: Sunflower Kate Meets Norman Jay:
K: So, When did your relationship with the Big Chill Start?
N: Ermmmmm… it started probably about 6 months before I actually made my debut appearance. I didn’t know Katrina, but I had heard of Pete, or rather I knew of Pete. We met by being on the same bill at a festival in Sydney… about 6 months prior to my debut appearance for the Big Chill in 2000 last year. Pete was there, and we were introduced to eachother by a mutual friend. Luckily for me, Pete was backstage and I was doing a finale set at this huge festival in Sydney called ‘Vibes on a Summers Day’. It’s basically like Notting Hill Carnival, The Big Chill and Good Times all rolled into one but with a Sydney twist to it. It’s huge and it’s wicked. Pete was there, and after my set, you know, the place is going absolutely ballistic, he said to me ?you’ve got to do The Big Chill?… so I said, ?Well, I couldn’t wait to be asked?!
K: Hoooooooarrray… so you’d heard about it before?
N: I’d heard about it and I had always known about it, but due to other commitments, I was never able to go.
K: Did you have any preconceived ideas about what you thought The Big Chill was going to be like?
N: Yes I did, I knew for one, it was always gonna be good…
K: …of course…
N: …and I knew it was going be exactly what it said on the tin….. i.e. CHILLED. When I first arrived there, I loved the vibe straight away, ‘the vibe’. Because, luckily, I am able to play at loads of different parties and different festivals, music festivals, from your kind of… very sort of ravey things, which I actually like, to something like the Chill which is completely relaxed.
K: You do seem to get everything into your sets… at the Enchanted Garden this year for instance you took us on a rollercoaster journey around so many different genres it was like doing a wild aerobics class…
N: I found that the Big Chill is the only place where I can really be me. Not that I’m not me when I do other gigs, but, to showcase to an audience who want me to express myself musically… and in the couple of hours that I have, it’s an A to Z of Norman Jay’s taste and influences in 2 hours…. basically, a quick tour through the years.
K: It certainly is fantastic… do you get to hang around at the festival either before or afterwards?
N: I try to get to the festival as early as I can on the day that I am playing although I haven’t been able to do that with much success recently due to the previous nights’ gigs. Like the last Enchanted Garden… I had just finished at the Cross at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning and couldn’t find any of my friends to drive me, so I had to drive myself straight from Kings Cross to the Enchanted Garden. It took me about 4 or 5 hours, nearly crashing several times on the way by falling asleep behind the wheel. I just had one thought on my mind though: ‘I just have to get to the Chill because I don’t want to let the people down’…. On the first year, through no fault of my own, I was an hour late, and I was really pissed off and angry with myself over that.
K: We’ve forgotten and forgiven.
N: They’re a forgiving bunch, providing my excuse is bona fide… which it was!
K: If you had your own festival, who would you book to play, apart from yourself?
N: If I had my own festival I wouldn’t play, I would probably compere it. And it wouldn’t necessarily be music. There’d be film. There’d be food. Basically a bit like The Big Chill. Who would I have? I don’t know. Umm, I think it would be open to all. You know, open mike, open stage. Organise it yourselves, just appear. So long as what you do is of some sort of quality or relevance. I don’t know, I’ve never really given that a lot of thought. I like the idea of Come One Come All.
K: Where do you think The Big Chill is heading?
N: Where do I think it’s heading? Erm that’s a strange one that! I never really give a lot of thought about where things head, because for me, my outlook is that life is lived in the present, not in the past, and no-one really knows what will happen in the future. So, you know, life is like a rollercoaster, so I just get on one of the cars and ride it. If something is intrinsically good, then good things will always happen to it and good things will follow it, and I think, for the Big Chill, it definitely falls into that category. I think a lot of time can be wasted negatively trying to chart a path to where something will head. There are many stops along the way but so long as you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, which I think in this instance most of us can. You know it will all be good.
K: They just keep getting better and better – from my point of view anyway…
N: Yes and me too, I mean I have only been to two, hopefully this will be my third one (Lulworth)…. providing that people bring the right attitude, because it’s a mindset… then it will be fine… other details will take care of themselves … that’s what I think anyway.
K: Your radio shows are reasonably varied but your live sets often come down to the traditional classic tunes, do you ever get bored of having to play the ‘traditional Norman Jay’ set?
N: No, not really because, you know, luckily for me the records that I play I really, really love. There are many reasons why the set, if it’s a house set or a funky set or whatever set, are narrowed down because of the mix of music. The early recordings are not sonically good enough to play and I know from my own experience that the radio is a great leveller, so all types of music can sound fantastic on the radio, but that doesn’t always translate into the live arena and I think that’s the mistake many DJs make and that’s an assumption that some punters make. I am often asked ?Why don’t you play the stuff live that you play on the radio?? Sometimes I am at pains to explain that you can’t always do that, because some of those records just do not sound right when you play them live… they were only made to be played on a home stereo, they were not really made to be amplified and all you do on a modern digital sound system is amplify the faults and you don’t do them any justice.
K: Are there any tunes that YOU have to play whether the crowd want to hear them or not?
N: No, any tune I play is because I want to not because I have to. Let me make that clear.
K: Well it’s kind of obvious really…
N: Sure… it’s because I really enjoy those records… and I think it’s important, especially in this day and age, for DJs to champion the music or the tracks that they truly, truly love. Then you become synonymous with that music… that moment in time is captured and you know that it’s a Norman Jay track… not in a cheesy way but you know when that’s a Mr Scruff track or a Gilles Peterson track because you need to make those tunes into signatures, and that in itself differentiates you, or separates you from the rest.
K: Have you ever cleared a dance floor?
N: Arggghhhhhhhh plenty of times! And sometimes deliberately. It’s almost like getting a rubber and erasing the page and starting again. Sometimes you need to do that, if it’s only to build the mood from scratch.
K: If you could play a set anywhere any location… fantasy, fiction or reality, where would it be…?
N: The reality is, I would have loved to have played a set at the legendary Paradise Garage. To this day I have never been anywhere, in a club sense, as awe inspiring. It made a huge impression on me. I went there several times in the 80′s when it was open and watched the great Larry Levan at work. I would have loved to have played there. I have walked into loads of places in my time, loads of clubs all over the world, loads of festivals all over the world, thought yeah these are good, but I’m not really fussed whether I play here or not… but that place, I would have loved to have played there.
K: The Big Chill has a fantastic Community Forum on its website and the Big Chilldren helped compile a few questions… so I’m going to ask you those now. If you were going to be in the Guinness book of records which record would you want to break?
N: Which record would I want to break? Ermmmmmmmm…
K: …it could actually be a record…
N: No… not physically… I am able to have a career because I never broke my records, I kept them all, luckily for me! What record… ermmmmmmm I don’t know really. I would like to become known for being associated with bringing peace to mankind… or even, in some small way, to stop the conflict between peoples… I think that’s what I would like to do!
K: When was the last time you were seen in public without a hat?
N: As recently as Friday…
K: Good Lord!
N: I often go out without a hat because it acts as a great disguise… because underneath this myriad of head gear, I do have a latent afro and occasionally it needs to breathe. It’s great when I’m out, particularly on my bike… I like to ride around town without a hat! Or if I go out at night, on the rare occasion that I have a night off and I go out somewhere, it’s amazing because people look twice and maybe 3 times… is that Norman Jay? They’re not really sure… so if you don’t want the attention, it’s a good disguise!
K: You must have a pressure ring around you head!
N: Yeah… but I love head gear, I always have done and I think I am allowed to be that little bit eccentric!
K: Talking of your bike… where do you get new tyres for your chopper?
N: Well, there are a couple of places online that actually sell tyres now… but before, I was fortunate enough many years ago to buy a job lot of tyres… very, very cheaply. So I had a huge stock… maybe 20 or 30 sets of tyres… which I gave to various friends but I kept a good amount.
K: Tell us about the new album.
N: The new album… yeah… Good Times 2. The first one did phenomenonally well – I was scared of that. It did over 40,000 worldwide and Nuphonic our record company asked us if we’d be up for doing it again… so we jumped at the chance. It’s a combination of tracks that we would have loved to have put on the first one… and basically it illustrates where Joey and I – or probably more me than Joey – it’s where our heads are at musically. The first one was a retrospective of where we’d been, encompassing our roots, where we started and how difficult times were then. Now it’s a little bit more contemporary. There are a couple of chilled tracks on it and one or two drum and bass tracks on it. There’s an awful lot of tracks that we would have loved to have got from major companies, but that was a real nightmare for us and they made it very expensive to get them. So we had to make do with smaller label stuff, it didn’t really matter but musically Joey and I both feel that it really illustrates where we are at today.
K: Now tell us about the film…
N: Yes, the film’s been made… I’m dreading it, I haven’t even seen it yet. I can’t bring myself to watch it. The film is called ‘Good Times, a True Notting Hill Story’ and we are looking to premier it sometime in Sept or October. We are looking to put it round a few of the country’s arthouse cinemas… the cooler cinemas. It’s great… all the current, sort of big DJs are on it, you know, my peer group DJs who started off when I did, back in the day. Your Judge Jules, your Jazzy Bs etc etc… Jonathan Moore from Coldcut. It’s sort of a semi-autobiographical account of how and why I started the struggles I went through, with setting up with Kiss FM in the early days, and what drove me to do all the illegal warehouse parties in and around London in the early 80′s.That was unheard of for a black kid, in London, in those days, because when I started there was no such thing as a black DJ in the UK. So I faced a lot of hostility and quite a lot of covert racism, but I still stayed true to what I was about and despite everything, despite the system that was in place, I came through and challenged a lot of conventions at the time, simply for my love of music and my love of partying but more importantly my love of being with really good open-minded people. That was very important. The film illustrates and documents that, with archive footage from the bad old days, the riots in the 70′s when we were kids, to where we are at now, culminating in the finale session at Notting Hill last year on our 20th anniversary, there is incredible footage there. The film crew came with us to our inaugural trip to Africa, to Namibia. They came with me to New York, where it was bitterly cold, I couldn’t do the interviews because I was so cold. It just rambles on for about 80 minutes. It might have some interest to club people but there is a story in there for anyone who’s been clubbing in any shape or form over the last 20 or 30 years, anyone should be able to relate to it. The closest thing that I can relate it to is the Buena Vista Social Club, this is like a UK version in English with music you know and love.
Here the interview had to end. I did learn, however, that this man has been playing records at parties since the age of 8. That’s lots of parties, a lot of party people and lots of dancing. So we are just some of the privileged Chilldren that have experienced what he can do… he makes the sun come out on demand… Norman da Man!
Sunflower Kate xxx
PS. Thank you to the Forum Chillers who helped me sort out some questions!
