Carl Cox took my call on a Wednesday afternoon sounding chipper. I’d caught him in the middle of another interview, but he switched over within minutes and apologised sincerely for making me wait, which worked to cement his ‘nice’ reputation in no time.
But despite his kind spirit, a delightfully naughty streak to the 51-year-old quickly unveiled itself. It was one that took a cruel kind of pleasure in frustrating his fans.
“I see people in the clubs, they try to Shazam [a mobile app function that identifies songs playing around you] my music — it doesn’t come up! It’s unrecognisable. People get p***ed off when I put a track list up and it’s undefined, unknown, artist unknown,” he laughed.
Like many old-school DJs, he prides himself on finding those hidden gems. Ahead of his March 21 performance at Atlantis Beach in Dubai, he told tabloid! all about his three-decade dedication to the underground music movement and what he thinks of today’s commercial DJs.
What does underground mean to you?
Underground means to me that you won’t hear hardly any of the music on the radio, on MTV, on any car adverts, in elevators. Every single record I’ve ever played, people never knew. All they knew is that it was good, it was emotional, it had feeling, substance, soul and passion in that sound — that sound is the sound of the underground.
Would you rather hear your own songs on the radio or in a club?
I’m not really interested in the radio, per se, even though I do have a radio show which I have a benchmark for putting my music out on. The idea is not to sell music that’s already commercially accessible on the radio — there’s no point, because that has already been sold by somebody else. My idea is to take that young kid in Bogota that doesn’t even have two pennies to rub together, but he made this tune from his heart. I play that record with conviction to a lot of people who have no idea what it sounds like, what it’s about, where it comes from — all they know is that it’s good ’cause I’m playing it. And if that person gets attention based on how good that record is, that is where my heart lies.
You started out in the ’80s and have watched the DJing scene evolve.
What’s really fantastic is that I have been privileged to have grown up in the late ’60s, ’70s, watching all these amazing bands turn into something great. Now, the DJ culture is something that’s being respected as an art form and being taken seriously as a career. When you fight for something so hard to be heard, and to be respected and listened to — I mean, I’ve been involved in this music movement for 27 years, now — and now, when I’m sat and I’m DJing, people are like, “Oh my god, you play all this top music, you make all these people happy, it’s amazing that you do all these events,” rather than, “Oh, you’re just playing the pub for money,” or “You play other people’s music,” therefore, not even recognising your talent or your art. We fought for this, so we got it. It took a while, but we got there in the end.
Do you pay attention to the new generation of DJs, like Avicii and Calvin Harris?
Of course I do. I listen to them all, because I wanna know what my neighbour DJs are up to, if I’m digging them or I’m not digging them. There’s so much great new music out there that when you’re sort of trudging the same old sound it gets boring. Some DJs are doing really great, some are just doing it ’cause they’re getting paid. We’re in the entertainment industry — people are digging what they’re doing and I can’t be upset about it in any way, shape or form. I think it’s good that they’re doing it, it’s just that I can’t get involved in the new music movement, in that sense, because my background doesn’t allow me to, because I grew up with the essence of the passion and the soul of music.
How did you get a reputation for being the nice guy?
It stems from my mother and my father and the way they grew up. I respect everybody, as long as they respect me. I’m in a very privileged position to be doing what I’m doing and I can’t be horrible! I’ve come to bring joy into your life, not misery.
*Live @ Atlantis with Carl Cox, Gilles Peterson, Sharam and Yousuf will take place on Atlantis Beach, Atlantis the Palm on March 21 between 6pm-3am. Tickets are Dh200 regular and Dh400 VIP, available online through virginmegastores.me.
