VARIOUS ARTISTS
CHRIS BANGS PRESENTS THE PLAYBOX

My musical journey as a DJ peaked in the mid- to late 80s with the legendary Cock Happy and Special Branch nights and Doos At The Zoo, spread across various venues in London. There were other joint one-offs, including a memorable night dropping tuff jazz tunes from the likes of Art Blakey and Charles Earland surrounded by giant Victorian machine generators at Kew’s Museum of Steam where instead of our usual banners and posters, we decorated the room with toilet paper. I also guested fortnightly on Gilles’ Monday jazz night at the Wag Club getting home at 5am and at work, in body if not in mind, at 8am.

There were also Special Branch holidays in Ibiza and Corfu, Rockley Sands, Prestatyn and Caister weekenders, dropping jazz dance, funk, rare groove and even a bit of Cliff Richard on the holidays and playing classic Blue Note jazz and Santana at Cafe Del Mar.

I was credited with inventing acid jazz after a particularly wild night in early 1988 DJ-ing at a Nicky Holloway Special Branch Doo in Brentford, London. We were playing hard Latin jazz tunes while the words “Acid... Acid... Acid...” were projected onto the giant screens behind where Gilles and I were DJing. We stopped the music , I said “acid jazz” on the microphone and we both collapsed laughing. Acid jazz was never meant to be more than a mild piss-take and really was just a reaction to the hype that acid house was getting in clubland. We never intended it to be that specific, but acid jazz went on to become a genre that conquered the world. It gave me the freedom to play Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic poetry and early hip-hop tracks alongside hard bop and tough Latin tunes.