Click right >> HERE << to listen to Jane's mix!
You don't have to be a nerd or particulaly lucky or anything of that nature to have come across the name Jane Fitz in your clubbing escapades. She has played and are still playing all around the most respected venues and for a simple reason. Let me bring it to you like this: There are DJ's who should have found another way in life and there are DJ's who should have stuck with producing records. There are DJ's who are good - even great - within their narrow subgenre of dance music and DJ's who will make a musical mess with two decks. BUT finally there are also those DJ's you meet that live up to their name, DJ's who make an impact on you and can take you places with their mixes. Jane Fitz is of the last rare breed.
Jane Fitz lives in Hackney in east London. Like most people in Hackney you'll probably see her in the park, the local pub or at the market on her day off, but unlike most people her day off is Monday due to a busy schedule playing in various clubs around the world most weekends. And moreover, unlike most of the people you'll meet Jane has been lost in music since the age of 8 when she would zone out on the floor with Herb Alpert and Stevie Wonder in her fathers headphones.
She is currently promoting the Night Moves parties with her friend Jade Seatle in London. She's played alongside countless DJ's like Brothers' Vibe, Brawther, Hakim Murphy to count a few. She runs her weekly radioshow DirtySounds Sessions. Radio has in fact been a major part of her life since she as a 10 year old tuned in to pirate radio stations, up until she began mixing on various radio shows. I could go on and on speaking about her life, but I prefer to let her do the talking.
NWS: Tell us a bit about how life is in Hackney.
Jane: Yes, I live in east London, and have done for
most of my life. The parks are lovely, lots of friends are nearby,
the food and pubs are brilliant, and I'm 15 minutes from my parents.
Over the past three years or so, where I live can be very busy at
weekends, and I sometimes wish everyone would leave because it's
really not that hip and also it's really driven the prices up - £4
for a pint of frankly rubbish Guinness in my local pub. Not on. Apart
from that I have very little to complain about, either in my local
life. Oh, except the queue at the post office, which is always way
too long.
NWS: What's the difference to you between recording a podcast
and playing live?
Jane: I
guess the main difference between recording a podcast and playing
live is that I've never worn my pyjamas while playing live. Also I
take out somewhere between 60-80 records when I play out, so I have
to make the best of what I've packed. While recording at home, I can
pull out anything as I feel like it. To be honest though, when I make
a mix at home it's usually from what happens to be on the floor that
day – so new bits I've bought, promos or something I've pulled off
the shelves during the week. The sound tends to be a bit different I
guess – I probably thump it out a bit more and try and stir up a
bit more energy when I'm playing out; unless I'm doing a warm up set,
or the early morning slot (both of which are my favourites if given a
choice). You don't have those kind of restrictions or
responsibilities when you're at home, so it's more solitary and
probably less pressured and more thoughtful because of that.
NWS: I have yet to hear you DJ live and am looking forward to the day.
Jane: You've
probably never heard me live because I think i'm still pretty under
the radar so I tend to only get booked to play at more underground
nights, or by more switched-on promoters. I haven't released any
records – which is the only way to make a name for yourself these
days – and the stubborn teenager inside me says I shouldn't have
to. I have a radio show on an internet radio station on a Monday
night, and a couple of thousand followers on soundcloud. I co-run a
small party with no advertising in London. And my music isn't exactly
populist either. I just do my thing in my own way at my own pace. I
would hope that means what I do retains some integrity. If I can
share the music that I love with more people, via channels such as
your lovely podcast, and that in turn makes a few more people happy
and into it, then that's pretty cool for me. I hope you can hear me
out because I put a lot of work into packing my record bag and I
really try to play weird and wonderful records you don't know,
because if I'm on a dancefloor, that's the sort of things I would
want to hear.
NWS:
I know you DJ'd since the 90's. Can you tell us about your beginning?
The feeling of London scene at that time, the parties and the vibe?
Educate us a little please.
Jane: I
started playing records to people when I was maybe 13 or something,
at friend's birthday parties. Mainly because, while most of the other
girls in my class were spunking their pocket money on My Little Pony
stickers, I was buying Duran Duran and Yazoo records. By the mid-late
80s I was buying a record a week and that would have been some kind
of electro or soul, things like the Streetsounds Electro
compilations, or records by Cameo, The Cool Notes, Timex Social Club,
even some early UK acid house such as Jolly Roger's Acid Man...
things I'd heard played on the pirate radio station Solar, or Radio
London, or at this night I used to go to at the back of a pub in
Dagenham every Monday when I was 15. By the time I played at any sort
of proper party or club or pub, I guess that would have been the
beginning of the 90s, I played things like Gil Scott Heron's It's
Your World, Masters At Work's I Can't Get No Sleep, KRS-One's Sound
Of Da Police, Tranquility Bass' Cantamilla. The feeling of London at
the time? I was a student then, I used to go to things like Talkin'
Loud in Brixton, or Dingwalls in Camden or The Iceni in Mayfair – I
was a proper little jazz and rare groove fiend. That was a really
strong scene then, we could go out to something probably every week
and it wasn't dressy or hip or even that druggy, it was totally about
the music. There were lots of little nights in pubs or basements
locally too, things in Ilford and East Ham as well as going into
Central London. And I was really discovering record shops properly –
Soul Jazz had a big effect on me and my music buying, as did Rhythm
and Bass in Barking. I've still got loads of flyers from those times
because that was a really special time for me.
I sort of stopped
being into house music around 1990 when rave and hardcore got really
big. I don't think I bought a house record again until about 1995, it
was probably The Horn Song or The Bomb or something like that. I
didn't really get into house properly though until I moved to Hong
Kong in 1996 and I started going out there. I went to New York on
holiday for the first time in early 1998 – I went into a record
shop and they were playing Francois K's mix of Cesaria Evora, and
someone in the shop told me about Body and Soul, so I went and it
totally blew my head off. I was in London after that for about a
month, to have my wisdom teeth out – and I discovered Fridays R
Firin. I thought that was amazing – Kenny Hawkes and Harri playing
in this little basement on Oxford Street every week. I came back to
HK all fired up, with a big bag of records and taught myself how to
mix on my flatmate's turntables. I think I played my first house gig
within about a month, at this brilliant party called Robot. That was
it, I've played mainly house ever since.
NWS:
So you've been playing records since the age of 13. Where would you say your "musical
education" began?
Jane: My
musical education started at home – via my mum and older brother.
My mum used to love Stevie Wonder and Freda Payne and Herb Alpert.
And my brother loved everything – one week he'd bring home a Chic
album, the next week Styx, the next week, David Bowie, the next week
Third World. I used to make tapes out of his records when I was
really young, like 7 or 8 years old, of all those different things. I
didn't know about styles then, I just loved certain songs. Then I
discovered pirate radio when I was 10 and used to tape loads of stuff
from there. And also Greg Edwards on Capital Radio. I guess those
three things – mum, my brother's records and the radio, from a
really young age – shaped what I play right now. Certain records –
Earth Wind & Fire's Fantasy, Rotation by Herb Alpert and Another
Star by Stevie Wonder – are probably the first records I remember
really taking me off to somewhere magical in my head, and when I hear
those records now I'm 8 years old again with my dad's headphones on
laying on the floor zoning out. It's a feeling I still get from
records now, so my history and music education is never far away
really. Or maybe I've just not developed a lot since I was 8.
NWS:
Can't help imagining the 8 year old Jane on the floor deep into the music. Let me ask you about your current radioshow "DirtySounds Sessions" which has been running now for
quite some time. What is that about and how can we tune in?
Jane: The
show has been running on an internet station called
myhouseyourhouse.net every Monday between 10-midnight UK time, pretty
much since the station started, so that's going to be eight years in
November. The MHYH people have always been really supportive and
given me the freedom to play exactly what I want – so sometimes I
might do a soul show, or an old electro show or something. The name
actually dates back to 1999, when I made one of my first ever
mixtapes – called Dirty Sounds For Late Nights. A year later I
started doing a radio show on Groovetech, which was one of the first
internet radio stations, a really great professional set up, and I
called it DirtySounds Sessions after that tape. A few years later the
word 'dirty' started to be used by lots of trashy 'dirty funky sexy
electro house' nights and it made me really hate the name. It has,
for me, genuinely become a dirty word. But I've been using it for so
long it feels wrong to change it. I started putting the archives up
on Soundcloud about four years ago, when Soundcloud was still quite
unknown, because not everyone could tune in late on a Monday night.
And people just started discovering it and reposting links to the
shows. Until just recently you could only post so many archives on
Soundcloud so i've had to delete the mixes - but I've actually got
90 per cent of my shows recorded. I've had some really good guest
mixes on too – they aren't a focus but if I hear a DJ I really like
I want to showcase them. It started with just friends dropping in but
now I ask more people to record mixes – because I think hearing me
every week can get a bit boring. I'm just beginning to get these up
as archives now too because there are so many good ones. I used to
talk on the shows, but I stopped when I started posting the archives
because I thought it got in the way of the music. Maybe I will again
but I'd rather the music did the talking than me. I talk a load of
old shit, my records are far more interesting.
NWS:
What keeps you busy these days and what's in store for the future?
Jane: I'm
on an enforced break from my day job at the moment – so my days are
spent writing a book on the history of pirate radio, which i've been
researching for about three years. I'm also in the studio with my
friend Dom trying to make weird records that we both like, which I
hope will finally see the light of day this year (something I say
every year!). Or I'm travelling for gigs. And then the rest of my
time is taken searching for records and buying records and playing
records. And also filing records away, especially after the weekend,
it never seems to end. I wish that was an exaggeration but anyone who
knows me will be able to confirm this shameful geeky truth. I also
spend rather a lot of time packaging up records I've sold on Discogs
and standing in the queue at the post office, hence my earlier
comment.
NWS:
NWS Cast is all about vinyl, but maybe you can tell us why you buy
records? (and where) ?
Jane: Why
I buy my records has a simple answer – because I like them and
because I really love buying records. That's it. I am constantly
getting obsessions about things and then I have a need to own them.
Where is a very complicated answer because I buy from so many places.
I actually buy a lot from the internet because I always have. When I
lived in Hong Kong, my flat mate used to order records from Juno, so
I started to. That was when it was called the Dance Music Resource
Pages and there were no sound clips. I did that all the time I was in
HK so when I came back to London in 1999 I continued because I was in
the habit. No one in the UK used Juno then so it was a great place to
buy new things no one else had – which has always been a
motivation. I started buying off Vinyl Underground then too. My
favourite record shops in London closed down a long time ago, so I
lost the habit of going – although I do try and pop in and support
and buy things if I'm near and I still like to scour the secondhand
shops. I was a massive basement 50p record digger in the early 00s –
until I worked at the Music and Video Exchange in 2003-4 and realised
that most of the staff considered anyone who bought from the bargain
basements to be cheap scum. Sad but true. So now I do my 50p record
buying on discogs where no one can judge me. And it's cleaner. I hear
of all these younger DJs spending £60 on old Prescription records
and it makes me laugh that most of my records today rarely cost me
more than two or three quid, sometimes a lot less. I pity people
spending that much money on records that ten years ago no one would
touch – at the Music and Video Exchange in 2003 I used to regularly
mark down old Boo Williams records to 50p and now they're going for
£30. I think it's ridiculous – and being a cheapskate, necessity
drives me to unearth new things. I say that, but I'll still regularly
spend £150 in a week on brand new records as well. Oh and I've
recently started buying records off bandcamp – direct from the
artist, sometimes on really small runs. That's probably my current
obsession – and again, just to find newer and weirder and different
things.
You can catch Jane at one of her upcoming gigs or if you are lucky at the Victoria Park pavilion in Hackney having her veggie breakfast. :)
Enjoy the mix!
