:: BB INTERVIEWS ::

:: ANNIE NIGHTINGALE ::

Annie Nightingale - A Chat With The Queen of Breaks by Hayley Roper Annie Nightingale, Radio 1's first female DJ, is nowadays known as the 'Queen of Breaks'. She has pioneered breakbeat music for the past seven years and featured its biggest names, such as Plump DJs, Evil Nine, Adam Freeland, Freq Nasty and Rennie Pilgrem, regularly on her show and from outside broadcasts. Annie's radio show has become one of Radio 1's biggest on-line successes, attracting a growing international audience. Each year Annie co-hosts Breakspoll, the international breakbeat awards, with fellow DJ Danny McMillan. In 2004, Annie made a historic live broadcast from the top of the BT Tower in London. Entitled 'The Last Summer Sunrise' party, this all-nighter and webcast featured top breaks artists such as Meat Katie, Friendly, DJ Hyper, also starred US superstar DJ BT who flew in from Lost Angeles especially. The show became Radio 1's biggest specialist music show of the year on-line. Born in West London, Annie recently returned to live there after many years as a resident in Brighton. She began her career as a journalist, became a television presenter, ran a fashion boutique, and made many documentaries for both BBC TV and ITV and for BBC radio. She has been a national newspaper columnist, music critic and columnist for several national magazines. For four years Annie was the sole presenter of The Old Grey Whistle Test, in 2002 the show was voted the most popular music programme in the 100 Top TV Shows of All Time. Annie has always espoused underground music from punk to acid house, electronica and breakbeat. She has written two volumes of autobiography 'Chase the Fade', and 'Wicked Speed', the latter published in 1999 with a foreword by 'Trainspotting' author Irvine Welsh. In the mid nineties Annie compiled the critically-acclaimed album 'Annie On One', on the Heavenly label, the title echoing her then Radio 1 slot, which became the ultimate weekend after- party show. She continues to DJ around the world, playing regularly in London, Paris, Los Angeles. Annie has also played in Baghdad, Barcelona, New York, Warsaw, as well as extensively throughout The British Isles. Currently presenting a film documentary about breakbeat, Annie has also become a film music supervisor, and with her partner Mo Henry has acquired the film rights to the novel 'The Search' by British best-selling writer Geoff Dyer. In 1998 she received the Woman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award from the Music Industry and Related Media Organisation. Annie was awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 2002. In the same year she was award the much-coveted 'Caner Of The Year' Award by Muzik Magazine, the award represented an accolade for Annie's intensive coverage of the scene, "I'm particularly proud of that," she says. In 2004 she was the first female DJ from Radio 1 to be inducted into the Radio Academy Hall Of Fame. She is nominated in the 2005 International Breakbeat Awards for Best Radio Show and for Outstanding Contribution to Breakbeat. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. How’s 2006 kicked off for you? Very well. Feel focused and want to put a lot pf plans into action!! Do you attribute the success of your show and the long run that you’ve enjoyed to the fact that it’s always been about the music you play, rather than about self-promotion, i.e. most other DJs? I think you are always judged on the music you play. I listen very carefully, very critically and try to find stuff that I think other people would like to hear as well, and never play anything that is not 150 per cent insanely good! Looking back, what artist or track first got you hooked on the breakbeat sound? Really hard to say. It sort of grew out of several other genres, for me, Jungle, Drum n' Bass and speed garage. With Breaks being an ever expanding genre of music, how do you select the tracks you play during your show? It's getting harder and harder, because there is always so much good new music arriving every week from all over the world, and may I take this opportunity to thank everyone who does send me their music, even if it doesn’t always end up on the show. In the past five years we’ve seen a radical evolution in how DJs manipulate the music they play. What are your thoughts on the next five or ten years of DJing from a technical standpoint? Yes, this is the big question. Ableton Live, etc, The technology is moving fast, its really exciting, but one must never let the technology rule over the substance of the music. You can over do ‘playing with new toys’. Not that I have of course!!!! On BijouBreaks the theme for this month is the celebration of female DJs and their talent. What advice would you give to women DJs trying to make it in a predominantly male arena? Well when I started in radio there were no women, we were excluded, so here we go again! Breaks is very ‘blokey’, but there are plenty of women I’ve met who love the music. Like everything else you have to persevere I guess. And perhaps more interesting, what would you advise against doing!? I don’t know really. Don’t act stupid, be sincere, be prepared to learn... but that applies to anyone wanting to do anything I would imagine! Staying with female DJs, would you like to be able to include more tracks produced by women in your playlist? Yes of course, there just aren’t really very many. Maybe they get lured into the ‘guest vocalist’ role. You hear that girls, send those tracks in! In your book Wicked Speed, you wrote that you were known as ‘Bossy Annie’ on occasion. Does this title still hold true today? Hmm, well I’m an Aries... other famous Aries are Adolf Hitler, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis... see a pattern merging here? I think we are very direct, and like pursuing goals, but not always in a selfish way. I hope! I really really enjoy motivating people, re-writing their CVs, and I get a real kick out of watching people succeed. Maybe that’s why I like playing new music on the radio. It can help get someone’s career off the ground. I'm an Aries too, so I totally know what you mean. I just read that the quintessential 60’s British clothing label BIBA will be relaunching in England after about a twenty year hiatus. As a notable BIBA consumer in the past, what are your thoughts on its revival? Yeah, I heard about this through a friend of mine who is organizing the first new BIBA fashion show. But I read that Barbara Hulanicki who created BIBA is not happy its being revived. I’m not a retro person really, but I think it will be great for people to enjoy wearing the designs because they haved proved to be timeless and classic. And gorgeous! You’ve broadcast live from the BT Tower and the Berlin TV Tower, and you also attended the World Federation of Great Towers conference in China. Being that Los Angeles is reknown for its seismic activity there is a distinct lack of tall buildings in the area. If we wanted you to broadcast live from Los Angeles, what’s the lowest you’d consider going? Could I tempt you onto the roof of my house? Yes its true about LA ofcourse. There’s that Standard Hotel building in Downtown, that would be fun. Or the end of Santa Monica pier, very happy to play on your roof. I should be back in LA early April. Great! I'll start working on the guestlist. Last time we saw you in LA, at Avaland, myself and some of the LA BijouBreaks crew gave you some stickers. Just curious, where did you end up sticking them? I’ve stuck them all over my desk at Radio 1, they are very cool! Thanks so much for coming that night. It was a wonderful response and proved to me that there really is a breaks scene in LA that wants the music dirtier and harder as it can be. JMekka’s Zilly Zozzage is the tune I most remember from that night!! Absolutley, it was a memorial night for us too. A couple quickies for you: CDs or vinyl? It has to be both. You do get the dirtier low-down quality from vinyl, but it’s a lot easier to bring a bigger bunch of tunes on CD. Beer or wine? Never been much of a beer drinker. Like a deep red smooth Bordeaux, or Californian equivalent! Or even better Belvedere vodka, it's horrendously expensive in the UK, and cranberry. Harrods or Harvey Nichols? Harvey Nichols without a doubt. You MUST check out the Mitchell Brothers tune ‘Harvey Nicks’, it is really hilarious! Again, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. It’s been a real honor. Well thank you. The pleasure is all mine. I’ll see you in LA! :: February 2006 :: Annie Nightingale can be heard weekly on Radio 1 Thursday night 1AM - 3AM GMT and anytime there after for seven days via their 'Listen Again' player. For her show tracklistings, info on her guests DJs and the latest news on Annie herself, head over to her Radio 1 website.

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