Will Manning

Today I’ve spent a good three hours in my bedroom at uni sitting on my chair at my desk listening to some mixes which I have recorded and downloaded from DJ Swerve’s show on KISS FM and it got me thinking.

I think this is just an excuse to blog about my favourite DJ but I’m not sure, let’s see where this goes.

For those that don’t know, I’m a DJ. When I started out DJing there was no one saying “hey kids, want to be a DJ? Here’s how..” infact, there still isn’t and there never will be, it’s about experience, passion and fighting your way through this fierce industry. I started life as a DJ from the age of 8 or 9 in my bedroom mixing together tapes, or more fading them into each other (I didn’t have a clue what mixing was back then) from that I got the bug for music and recieved a karaoke machine as a present. On the machine there was a tape recorder, I got my mum to buy a load of recordable tapes and off I went, pretending I was a DJ on the radio. I used to pretend I was a presenter on Capital FM, back then it was the station my mum would listen to in the car with the likes of Chris Tarrent and Steve Penk – not DJ’s but presenters. From these recordings I decided to pretend I had my own radio station, I called it UK FM and Street FM.

UK FM was the Capital FM of my fake radio world with Street FM being the KISS 100. I loved doing this and did it for a good few years from my bedroom eventually recording myself onto CD’s.

Anyway, where am I going with this. I’m not actually sure but I just became quite reminiscent of my childhood today and the beginnings of my career.

DJ Swerve was always at the front of this, though he didn’t know it at the time. I used to listen to his show every Tuesday night between 9 and 11pm and this was my source of what the latest Hip Hop and R&B records were. Within the show was two 20 minute mixes every hour, the first at 9.20 and the second at 10.20, these would be my 20 minutes of zone out time every week where I would listen to every detail of the mix from the transition to the track selection, BPM, juggles and every scratch and cut he made. From years of listening to Swerve I built my own mixing style, not from copying him but from developing ideas he gave me and giving it my own spin. I was such a geek, I could listen to his mixes and know when he would start a juggle, do a scratch, bring a track back and start a mix into the next song – yes, total nerd. Not to meantion I would text into his show every week so he knew I was listening – god I was a right groupie.

After bombarding Swerve with messages on MySpace at least 4 times a week I finally met the man himself at Market Bar just off Oxford Street. There was a DJ competiton which I had entered but not been selected for, I went down anyway and I watched Swerve do a live set and was blown away. I think I was 12 or 13 by this time.

When I was 15 I entered a competiton called “Are You The CK One” it was essentially a chance for DJ’s to showcase their skills infront of Swerve and DMC Champion DJ Rafik. It was sponsered by Calvin Klein and DMC. I was by far the youngest person there with the rest being 20-30 so I was nervous but still thought I had a chance to win, sure enough after showcasing a 10 minute set I did win, £1000 in fact, not bad for a 15 year old. The funny thing was that Swerve marked me down because he knew me, more that I was a weird groupie fan.

I started out with so many crazy DJ names it was stupid, I told my best mate if he thought up a name I’d pay him, he said DJ WM, I never did pay him but I took the name. I went under DJ WM for sooo many years, probably too many. That was until I started working for the BBC and the name had to go, thank God, that was one of the best things I’ve done and I’d probably still have that name now if it wasn’t for my then manager talking sense to me after speaking to 1Xtra. Will Manning was born.

It’s become clear in recent years that mixes with juggles and scratches on radio specialist commercial shows are less and less important as the listener just doesn’t understand what on earth the DJ is doing and gets bored of hearing a 4 bar juggle or some crazy cuts. Shows such as CJ Beatz on BBC Radio 1Xtra are keeping this alive for me and at least these recordings will live on through my iTunes.

So I’m still not sure why I’ve said these things I just thought I’d share some things I did before I was even 18. Theres so much I’ve done up to now but I wanted to meantion how I started out, the most common question I get is “how can I start out as a DJ?” so I hope this shines some inspiration to some of you.

I hope In a few years I can write another post similar about all the amazing things I’m doing now with touring, radio presenting, TV shows, interviews and sitting in a bedroom and Birmingham City University with the rain pouring down outside.
Thank you.