Shazam’s Music Of The Decade: Greg Wilson ‘Credit To The Edit’
Greg Wilson’s ‘Credit To The Edit’ release in 2004 remains one of the seminal remix albums of the last 10 years and represents one of the most unexpected musical comebacks ever.
Greg began DJing way back in 1975. He was a pioneer of mixing and remixing in the UK and in 1983 he became the first ‘dance music’ DJ hired for a regular weekly session at Manchester’s now legendary Hacienda club. Greg was also the the first DJ to perform on UK television, the first UK DJ to have a remix pressed on vinyl and even taught Fat Boy Slim how to scratch back in 1983. However, despite this Greg retired from DJ’ing in 1984 whilst at the top of his game. As Acid House took hold in the late 80′s and was superceeded by the super club era in the ’90′s; Greg Wilson’s name was largely consigned to dance music’s history books and was rarely given the credit his pioneering work deserved. Greg’s ‘Credit To The Edit’ release helped rectify that.
Compiling previously unreleased edits and remixes, some of which were over 30 years old and had been made with nothing more hi-tech than a reel-to-reel tape player and a razor blade, the compilation took both familiar and overlooked music from the last 3 decades and re-introduced it to the listener in a totally unique way. Whether it was the sublime extended mix of Chaka Khan’s ‘I Feel For You’ or Greg’s vigorous reworking of Rockers Revenge that gave hints of house music years before the term was even conceived; the work on ‘Credit To The Edit’ showed just how far ahead of his time Greg Wilson really was.
The release of ‘Credit To The Edit’ also coincided with a transition in the fortunes of dance music in the mid ’00′s. A rise in the popularity of darker, more stripped down club music coupled with an increase in digital music vendors which offered an almost unlimited supply of brand new music meant that fewer and fewer DJ’s were digging out old records and recontextualizing them. Greg Wilson’s ‘Credit To The Edit’ flew in the face of this and became one of the catalysts for the rise of the Disco/ Balearic scene in the late ’00′s that saw countless new producers experimenting with their own re-edits of obscure disco, funk and soul tracks.
Thanks to ‘Credit To The Edit’ and a stream of consistently exciting DJ sets and remixes, Greg is now one of the most in demand DJ’s not just the UK but in the world – ranking 91st in Resident Advisor’s influential world DJ poll.
Check out Greg’s appearance on UK TV in 1983. Look out for a totally clueless Jules Holland interviewing the man himself:
