Right Here Right Now

A letter from our Norman...

Sceptics might say of this informal gathering,

"Why the hell are you doing it again? Last year was a one-off triumph."

Well, they have a point, but the reason, of course,

is that I love to party, and the party we had on the beach last year

was so much fun, so beautiful and so right,

that it would be criminal not to try doing it again.

No, I never thought we made a mistake.

But we were a lot younger then, and inexperienced, and naive.

And of course, they're like shields really, because you don't realise

how precarious a situation is!

But that's quite nice, because it means you go to the edge

and you go a little bit further. And usually, it's at the edge

where good stuff happens.

# Right here, right now, right here, right now...

In 2001, we get a phone call from Channel 4 all about cricket.

They had just bought the franchise to show Test cricket in England,

and they wanted to celebrate that by playing it in parks

and outdoor venues throughout the summer, to get people into the idea

of watching Test cricket on Channel 4.

They were coming down to Brighton to show one of the Test matches,

and they had a sound system for the commentary and a big screen.

They just phoned me up and said,

"As Brighton's representative of dance music,

"do you wanna DJ an afterparty, free,

"for the people of Brighton to have a little dance on the beach?"

We lost the cricket on day two, so no-one came and watched the cricket.

But an awful lot of people came to the after party.

I think there were 40,000 people there.

It just, this thing happened. It was phenomenal.

My first thought when we finished was,

we have to do this again next year. We have to own this.

The sun was shining and it was free.

And who doesn't like a party?

And who doesn't like a party on a beach?

And who doesn't like a party on Brighton beach,

with Norman Cook DJing? I can't see...! It's a-no brainer.

It filtered in over the years, Brighton.

I'd go down early on when I'd left drama school,

and there's just something about it. I don't know what it is.

There's some kind of calm. It's beautiful.

But it's also got that city edginess.

It's just a lovely vibe. I think maybe because there's

loads of students, loads of artists, loads of musicians,

and things like that.

I came here because of music, I came here because of gigs.

I came here because Brighton is beautiful.

Brighton started with the whole thing of coming here for health.

You came to Brighton to drink the waters, to bathe in the waters,

and then Prince Regent came and gave the town a notoriety.

It's cabaret, it's burlesque, occasionally, it's singalongs.

And the town's always done that.

Sometimes, being a resident in Brighton, you hand over your town

to visitors, and you accept that.

You live here and you embrace all of the elements

that the town has to offer.

We welcome those visitors, too.

We want them to enjoy themselves,

to indulge in their legitimate pleasures,

however odd they may seem to us.

Were there a lot of them? Yes, whole crowd.

You couldn't move, it was jammed, about 200, I should think.

I went to lock the door and they pushed me over!

They just left you lying on the floor, did they?

NO, one of the rockers picked me up, another rocker at another table.

He was very sweet.

I've been in Brighton now 22 years.

I paint things on walls for people.

Yeah, this one here, the client said they wanted something Brighton.

So, I thought, yeah,

what's more Brighton than Fatboy Slim these days?

So, the connection with Fatboy Slim goes way back

and a lot of the artists we work with, as well as a lot of

the local people in Brighton, have a connection with him.

He's a bit of a gallery favourite.

He has collaborated with a few of our artists.

One such example would be this Mark Vessey here,

and he actually approached us and said, "I love Fatboy Slim's work

"and I want to do a project with him,"

which culminated in this series. So, this is actually

Norman Cook's own record collection.

There's a kind of two-way love affair

between me and the city of Brighton.

But also there's a pride, I am very proud of this city.

I think it is the best city in the world.

There's something about its relaxed attitude, its tolerant attitude,

and its eccentricity that I just really love.

Brighton is here to be invaded, for people to have fun.

Here at Brighton, a seaside town not far from London,

is one of Britain's most modern universities -

the University of Sussex.

I grew up in Surrey.

My sister went to university in Brighton, and I used to come down

and stay with her and I just thought, "This is the place,

"this is where I belong."

So when it came time for me to go to college,

I just wanted to go to Brighton. I didn't care what degree I did,

and stayed ever since.

This year, it's very much The Housemartins

that have been in the news. We were proud as punch

that they're back in the city today. I'll be chatting with them

in a few moments time. Could I help you?

(HARMONISING) # Hello, hello...

We're The Housemartins! That's good...

I first got involved with Norman

as I was the radio plugger for The Housemartins.

Norman had a nascent, alternative career as a DJ.

Obviously, I didn't intend to be a DJ.

I always wanted to be in pop bands, but I was a record collector.

If you're having a party and you wanted the best records there,

you had to have somebody who had a really good record collection.

So, I used to get invited to parties by people I hardly knew,

just cos they knew I'd bring my record collection.

But teenage parties being how they were,

my records started getting covered in vomit and cigarette butts.

And so, one time, this girl invited me and said,

"Would you bring your records?" And I'm like,

"Actually, I'm not to bring my records, if that's all right?"

And she went, "Oh". But then, she said,

"What if my dad hires these kind of double decks, like a DJ console,

"and you're in charge of the records, then would you bring your records?"

And it sounded like fun,

and something very, very fundamental happened.

I really, really enjoyed controlling the dancefloor and the music.

It triggered off a realisation that my love of music

is heightened by sharing it with other people.

I started thinking of it more than just a hobby.

And it was around that time when I was old enough to start

playing in licenced venues.

And so, mixing became a really big thing for me -

to learn how to mix, to afford to buy the turntables

that had varispeed on them so you could mix.

And that was about the time I moved to Brighton.

When I moved to Brighton, they had bars and clubs

that had Technics 1200s. So, I used to go and work in those places

for free, just so I could practise on their decks,

and eventually bought my own.

What I'm gonna do, grab that beat and go...

Finger on that, press down on the fader. It's easy!

Picture of concentration, know what I mean?

I'm sorry, Norman.Rubbish!I'll leave it to the professionals.

When I was in The Housemartins in the late '80s

and playing white indie pop, but all the time, that wasn't

the kind of music that I dug.

But then, they invented the sampler and the drum machine.

All of a sudden, white dudes like me could make this music

without having to pretend to be black.

And that just unleashed a whole new career for me,

and that kind of ended my relationship with The Housemartins

and that kind of music. I can't do that any more.

And so, I moved back to Brighton and went back into DJing.

DJ culture and club culture was just absolutely exploding.

It had been in this sort of ghetto,

where you had to be over 18 before you ever heard these records,

and you had to go to the cool clubs to hear the cool records.

But then things started happening, I think,

when house records started getting on Top of the Pops.

Kids started hearing them and they go, "What are these records?

"Where can I hear them?"

A lot of people were like, "What's happening?

"What's going on? These parties I can hear that start at 2 o'clock,

"and finish at 8 o'clock in the morning. Where are they?

"Who are the DJs that are playing this music?"

All this wonder, which was making it really exciting.

When I was 16, we were all going to like Telepathy

and Sunrise and Raindance.

There wasn't hard house necessarily in the beginning.

It was stuff that came over from Detroit and Chicago,

and then it started to get a London feel to it.

And then, Chime by Orbital.

That's what kind of got me in the back of my mate

Matthew Miller's car, driving to fucking Basildon

to meet some dodgy bloke!

Or driving for two hours to score, like, an eighth of hash...

Like, what?!

Honest to God, it was just fucking terrifying,

and frightening, but exhilarating, and exciting.

Seeing the weirdest fucking people.

"What the fuck is this? Where are we?"

I think the reason it was such a big culture

at the time, clubbing, let's not beat around the bush about it.

I think a lot of it is to do with ecstasy...

I think! I think. And so, that just changed everything.

It changed football violence, that stopped overnight.

It was the end of the '80s, everything just changed.

It was suddenly, this culture of love.

It was just happy times.

It was the best years of my life.

Even now, there's friends who I've met raving

who are some of my best friends.

Lots of the big gigs we'd go to, we'd drive for miles.

I went to a weekender called Kamikaze Do Or Die.

Quite a few free parties, you'd just drive along and wait

to find out where you're going to be going.

You meet up with a few people. There would be people that you would see

at certain gigs and you'd just go up and be chatting,

and having a really amazing time. There was never any grief.

You'd just go there and literally dance all night.

For five years straight, I was doing maybe two parties

on a Thursday, two or three parties on a Friday,