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THE BEGINNING

Sometimes in life you see, hear or feel something and think to yourself . . . ‘THATS FOR ME!’ Usually it lasts for a while and then something else stirs you and you move on to that instead. Every once in a while though, you don’t just see, hear or feel something, instead it leaps up, smacks you around the head with a wet fish and shouts ‘DESTINY’ very loud in your ear!

Back in 1988 a 19 year old young man watched intently as the older man mixed one record into another, creating for a while, a whole new tune.

“I was totally and utterly mesmerised and I couldn’t seem to work out which tune was which…”

For the next hour or so the young man watched and learnt. He learnt that the art of DJ’ing wasn’t just about playing one record after another as he had previously been doing. It was about blending records together, creating an atmosphere and more importantly it was about having fun.

“I really felt something that day,” says Richard, “just watching Frankie deejay blew me away. I managed to get to play on these brand new SL1200’s after Frankie had gone home, as he left them overnight at my brothers house. I remember thinking ‘God these slipmats are really slippy’ and I don’t think I got a mix right that first night. The following day I got myself an old Technics SL100 (i think) which had a rotary pitch control and plugged it into my mixer alongside a crappy belt-drive thing with no pitch control whatsoever!”

“I’d get home from work, eat my tea and practise. I’d mix a tune in on the SL, then swap it over onto the deck with no pitch control and mix in another. I’d be swapping and mixing for hours on end ! Every weekend I’d be at Huddersfield’s (if not West Yorkshire’s) ORIGINAL after-hours club ‘The Montego’ watching Frankie play. In those early days all they had was a smoke machine and a strobe light and you wouldn’t be able to see your hand an inch away from your face, but the atmosphere was amazing compared to the usual nightclubs in town”

It’s quite clear from speaking with Richard that his love of House Music hasn’t diminished in the 22 years he’s been DJ’ing.

“I’d be spending Friday and Saturday nights in ‘The Monny’ watching Frankie rock the place and then hours every evening after work practising. One day I had my records with me in the club and Frankie said ‘Go on then fella, your turn!’ with this massive grin on his face. I was absolutely shitting myself but it was awesome even if some of my mixing was slightly dodgy !”

A couple of months later and Richard had found himself firmly installed as a new resident (the first in 3 years) alongside Frankie and his brother Neville.

“Sometimes I’d find myself playing 8/9/10 hour sets when the others didn’t turn up, but to be honest you couldn’t of dragged me away. I even lived next door to the club for a couple of years in the flat above Frankie’s, they were mad times but loads of fun”

By 1992 though the fun was dwindling. Frankie had left after numerous arguements with the club owner over wages and the state of the club, which hadn’t been decorated in years. Richard though stayed for another year whilst teaching a young local lad Mark Bates how to deejay.

“I remember saying to him ‘I can show you how to beatmix, I can even show you a few tricks and skillz, but when it comes to style you have to develop your own’. I use to listen to as many mixtapes as possible as well as watching Frankie and I’d pick up all sorts of stuff that I’d incorporate into my sets and then all these things became part of my style”

In 1993 Richard decided to stop deejaying for a while. The birth of his first child Joshua meant that 8 hour stints at The Montego just weren’t viable. He still kept his ‘hand in’ playing at one-offs and friends parties but it wasn’t until 1998 that he started looking for DJ work again.

“Mark had started a night called Smooth & Silky spinning UK Garage and I started playing early 4/4 Speed Garage sets. At home though I was still spinning funky US House, especially the early Subliminal and Defected stuff and I wanted somewhere to play that. Luckily I got a slot on local community radio station JIVE FM every Saturday and that helped curb those House cravings!”

THE HIGHLIGHT

Me at the Ministry Of Sound – London

In April 2000 Richard spotted a competition in DJ MAGAZINE to win a set at the MINISTRY OF SOUND in London. He spent the next week working out a set on THREE decks and then hit the record button on the tape deck.

“That first ‘dress rehearsal’ was OK, but I knew I could tidy it up a bit more. Over the weekend though there was a fight at a party where my decks were and the arms were snapped off so I had to send the tape off as it was. I didn’t hear anything more about it over the next few months and just thought oh well, perhaps they just don’t like it. At the end of October I was at a friends house when my wife Samantha rang me. She was really excited and asked me if I was sitting down and for a moment I thought she was going to say we’d won the Lottery, but she said she’d just had a guy called Tom Kihl on the phone saying he worked for DJ MAG and would I call him back asap. I rang the number she gave me expecting to hear a friend putting on some silly voice, but a girl answered and said ‘Hello, DJ Magazine’ and for a couple of seconds I just clammed up. I asked for Tom Kihl and sure enough they put me through.

“Hiya mate” he said, “we’ve had your tape going round and round in the office and really like it, would you like to play at the MINISTRY for us?”

“If I wasn’t gobsmacked before, I was then and I think I asked him if he was joking and who’d asked him to call !! He assured me it was genuine and I could hear my tape in the background and seeing as there was only one copy of that tape I knew it was real!”

The following week flew by and Richard soon found himself in the back of a minibus filled with friends and family and heading to London.

“Frankie had come to watch and all week I’d been remembering stories he and his wife Gail had told me about their visits to the Ministry back in the early Nineties. I was really nervous all week trying to sort a set out, but on the day I was just looking forward to getting there and wasn’t nervous at all”

After two hours driving around London trying to find the Ministry, Richard and crew finally pulled up outside.

“I remember walking into the bar which was already pretty busy and I turned round to check everyone had got in when I spotted my name being projected onto the wall.”

Baby Box – DJ Magazine Competition Party

12-2am High Commission
2-4am Trisha McGrady
4-6am Richard Fenn

“I just stood there staring in disbelief with this silly grin across my face. My name, spinning round on the Ministry Of Sound’s wall! My set went well and to see everyone clapping and cheering when I finished was just the ultimate compliment. Afterwards I went to dance in the bar for an hour or two before we all set off home. A few weeks later and my face appeared in DJ Mag so I rushed off to buy a few more copies !!”

THE PRESENT

Since then Richard has played at most of the major cities across the North including Manchester, Leeds, Oldham, Wakefield, Bradford, Sheffield and Middlesbrough as well as gaining residencies in Dewsbury, Bury and his home town of Huddersfield. Having completed a 2 year National Diploma in Music Technology Richard is also starting to produce his own material.

You can catch him live every Wednesday evening 6-8pm GMT on the internets fastest growing radio station Pressure Radio.

After more than two decades spinning house music, Richard’s style has evolved into vocal and funky house with sprinklings of deep and tribal grooves.

As Richard himself says. . . .

“A good tune is a good tune and if it’s got the funk no matter what genre, I’ll play it!”