published: 5 /
11 /
2013
Dave Goodwin in 'Vinyl Stories' talks to BBC Radio DJ Mark Dennison about some of his favourite vinyl albums and singles
Article
Every now and then I sit and ponder about all the people that make the music industry work. Have a go for yourself, and have a think about all the people involved. You will soon come to the conclusion that it is a massive industry. Think of all the folk like us at Pennyblackmusic, reviewing, reporting and photographing. How about the roadies at the gigs? What about about all the PR companies that graft away in the background? How about giving a thought to the people that make the instruments and equipment like Peavey, Marshall and Gibson? The list is endless…
Nowadays there seems to be a forgotten side of the industry because they are no longer as huge as they were in, let's say, the eighties. What about the DJs who play the music day in day out? This month's ‘Vinyl Stories’ is about one such man, who quite frankly, changed my perception of these hardworking contributors to music.
Mark Dennison was brought up in the North East of England in Middlesbrough, and moved to Nottingham to attend college there in 1988. Mark went to Nottingham Polytechnic for four years, before moving back up North where he met his future wife. He then went on to work in radio, moving to Hull and then back to the East Midlands in 1996. He moved around a little from one place to another and basically went where the work was at the time. During this time he was always self-employed until he joined Radio Trent on his return from the North and then spent fourteen years working for them, finally leaving in 2010 when it turned into Capital Radio to work with the BBC.
To get a feel of things, I asked Mark why he wanted to get into radio and not any other kind of media?
"It sounds daft this but me and a mate of mine would have our own radio show and muck about a bit. We used to tape the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon and re-do it our way. Mum and Dad always had the radio on at home, so you would always pick up on 'stuff' and you soon realised what you did and didn't like. This was when Radio 1 had their heyday and all the DJs were stars, and I thought that looked like a kind of cool job to me.”
“At that time I hadn't quite worked out that you could do it as a job, which was a dream back then. So, I worked in hospital radio, and sent a few demo tapes off to various Radio stations. It so happened that while I was at Nottingham Poly I got a slot at weekends back up in the North East, and I used to travel back to do it on a Sunday afternoon. What they paid me for doing it didn't quite cover the train fare but it was a gig, a proper radio gig!”
“When I graduated from poly I got a full time job up there. Towards the end of my time at poly I got Thursday night and Friday night slots at Trent. It was a cool show to do. It was sort of prime time, then but the trouble was all my mates were out on the lash while I was working! The shows were 8 till 10. If I was really smart about it, I'd meet them at the Irish or something and just down pint after pint to catch up with them. But it was money-on a proper radio station.”
“I left and then went back to Trent, and by the time I'd got back it had become this formatted station where all the music was chosen for you. You were told where to speak and for how long, and initially I bloody hated it! I was commuting at the time from Hull to Nottingham and the wife was heavily pregnant, and she would always ask when I got back how it was going, and I'd say, “Yeah, yeah, fine,”, but inside it was horrid. To me that's not proper radio but I got used to it, and also I found how to get me into that format.”
“I got out of Trent just before it turned into Capital, and for once I got my timing right. I'd been there for fourteen years and I was bored. I'd been talking to Radio Nottingham , and before I went to the BBC they asked me what I thought of it and I thought......do you want me to be brutal? At that time it was perceived to be an old people’s radio station. That's slowly changing and I hope it's becoming a bit more accessible to a younger audience..."
I asked Mark about his vinyl in general.
"There was a time when I remember my dad coming in after he'd sorted a load of stuff out in the loft and he'd got these boxes of vinyl, and he said, “Look, do you really want these or can we get rid of them?” So, I said, “I'll have a leaf through,” and I knew that as soon as I started looking through it I'd be getting them all out and saying, “I'll have this one and I'll have that one,”' so I just said, “Get rid of them, but I'd rather they went to a charity or a record fair and not just in the bin. In the end that's what he did, so all my vinyl has gone except from a few choice bits and bobs left in one particular box. It was quite interesting going up into the loft because there's some absolute cack in there. but since you rang me the other day and asked if I minded doing this it's brought some memories back. "
I was still intrigued by the radio set up, and asked Mark if vinyl was still the main format when he got his first radio job.
"When I started out in radio we were mainly CD, but we did still have a bit of vinyl left too."
With a slight smile and a raised eyebrow, I ventured....”And your vinyl?”
"Well, the first thing I ever bought with my own money was a single by Madness – ‘Baggy Trousers’. The first album I ever bought, and this was before the days of the ‘Now’ albums and compilation albums (I think Mark was trying desperately to find a reason for what he was about to produce from his bag...), was this K-Tel album from 1979. I remember the Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ was on there. It was in the same ilk as those ‘Top of the Pops’ albums from the same era. But they were brilliant because you had seven or eight songs on each side, and Sad Café were another band on there. My uncle was really into Sad Cafe.“
“This was around the time when I was at secondary school, and the mish mash that was the eighties. I was just discovering radio and also I'd just started doing my first discos, somewhere around 1986, and I was doing a paper round to bring some money in. I was around eleven, I think. I had to buy my own clothes. Kids don't know they're born today, do they?”
Quizzically I motioned, “So let's have a look at the next little gem” to which Mark hesitantly produced two albums from his bag of goodies.
"Erm.......I must say, this is a mixture of mine and Jeanette's, my wife's, collections combined that made it safely into the box and not the charity sales. The first is one of those ‘Top of the Pops’ albums we were just talking about. Our parents listened to very similar things. This second one is an album of TV themes. I remember when I was doing hospital radio that I did a TV theme every week. This had six tracks on each side and twelve in total which didn't make for a long series of shows, so I used to rotate them. It's called ‘The World of TV Themes’, and look it had ‘The Onedin Line’ on it from the seventies. So, not only was I listening to this at home, but I was putting it on the radio too as a weekly special and people would love to listen to it back then.”
“It was the same with the ‘Top of the Pops’ album. I used to borrow so much stuff from my mum at the time. Again, while I was at hospital radio, Mum was into the Beatles in a big way. I had to promise to look after them, and I would take them all down to the radio station to play them and return them unscratched. But I brought this one and the ‘Top of the Pops’ album out because it was typical of the sort of things they had that I used to listen to. She had a Noel Edmonds LP when he used to do wind up calls. I even used to borrow that because it was great to play that stuff where he's winding people up on the phone. I was brought up on this stuff. And then....."
A smirk starts to form across Mark's face, and I fear the worse....
"I brought this with me because it was typical of the time back then. You wouldn't need to know what decade it was then. You just had to look at the front cover to know it was from the eighties. This is a copy of Nik Kershaw’s ‘Human Racing’. Again this is saved from the charity shop box and is just so typical of that time. I'm owning up to this one too. I would have gone out and actually bought this.”
Mark is now trying desperately to find a way to back up his embarrassment of owning a Nik Kershaw album...
"I bought this though because at the time I would have just started doing my discos. and this was prime stock."
A sound very much like tumbleweed, and a slight breeze passes over as the church bell starts to ring........
"It was every Friday and I thought the guy that was doing it was a bit old, so I kind of muscled in. Don't forget Nik had a good few hits from that album! It was hard to cue albums up back then, especially when it was dark and you'd got a pretty girl talking to you..." Mark re-iterates that he bought it for the disco. "That was THE look of that time."
I glanced at the cover and, pointing to the album cover, said "You could get into a scrap at school in those days and go 12 rounds and still come out of it with perfect hair like that."
"The last thing I've brought with me is three singles. Now, the funny thing about this first one from Men At Work is that the cover says ‘Freeze - I.O.U.’, but inside you've got A Land Down Under’! And the only explanation I can give is that there has been some bad filing going on here."
Covering up his mistake, Mark carried on with the singles, "The second is the Housemartins’ ‘Caravan of Love, and the third is Black Lace’s’ Agadoo’. Look at the back of the latter record. It's got the dance moves and everything on it. At the time, any disco worth its salt had to have a copy of ‘Agadoo’.”
I was now slightly perplexed. I had been provided a background into Mark’s childhood , and now was being presented with his growing up years. "Ok, this is getting confusing. I don't know what to say to be honest!" I said, as Mark burst into raucous laughter, "I had you down as being a 80’s sort of new wave-ish type bod, and here you've blown my theory right out of the water with ‘Agadoo’! And. ‘I.O.U.’ by Freeze? This was one of the BIG ones down the disco!"
"Well, to be fair, the Housemartins was my wife's, I think, because she was a serious 80’s fanatic. The reason for those is, of course, that I was buying them for the disco. I used to enjoy going down to HMV in Middlesbrough and rifling through the bargain box. I built up a massive collection from that, but the things you needed for the disco were there too. If you didn't have that certain track that they were asking for in those days, you were history. Compilations were brilliant because they had everything you needed on there, but at that time they were slow coming out. You'd get one every six months or so, so you had to go and buy your seven and twelve inchers.”
“As far as pinning me down to any kind of genre is concerned, you won't do it because over the years I've had to be so diverse. If anything, I would say I was more into the New Romantic thing. It's the era which is the crucial thing. It's that early 80’s time."
I asked my final question, "So, if you were take one of all the records you've owned and keep it what would it be?"
"Phew that's a toughie...I'm leaning towards that Sad Cafe song ‘Every Day Hurts’! I used to go and stay with my uncle who lived at my gran's up in Manchester. He was a policeman. He used to come home from a shift at all hours and put his music on dead loud. I always thought he was a cool uncle and I sort of hero worshipped him, and he was into Sad Cafe. Listening to his stuff actually got me into music in the first place, and they were the first band I ever went to see live when I was around fourteen."
We carried on chatting, and it was only after Mark had gone that it had dawned on me how stereotypical I was. I naturally assumed that with him being a DJ he would be current and have a big 'Now' collection. But Mark is one of the best in the business and an all round DJ, so why should he? It stands to reason that his collection of records would be eclectic. I also found it a little sad that someone with such a background in music has lost most of his original vinyl, especially as he spoke so fondly of it. Imagine if he had still got all those records from his disco days now. The records Mark brought with him were not the ones I was expecting, but that is what makes this Vinyl Stories column so fascinating.
There's no cult track in there or underground obscurity to marvel at. These are records that tell a life story of a person that has been involved in music all his life. These records bring out wonderful sides of people that otherwise stay hidden. Before he left Mark asked if he could just show me one more, and proudly produced his last from his bag. It was a copy of ‘My Own Nursery Rhyme Record’, and he calmly stated, "I used to listen to this as a kid and my kids did too..."
I love vinyl...
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