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Keb Darge
January 25th. 2001
Edinburgh Evening News
Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh College Of Art
DEEP FUNK KING KEB's TIME HAS COME AGAIN
He's big in Japan. Now Darge's Seventies soul gems are rocking Scots,
writes Yogi Haughton
Keb Darge is the self-proclaimed innovator of a new musical genre
called Deep Funk. The Elgin born DJ is the keeper of a musical flame
that's fed by dusty old seven inch singles dug out of second-hand
bargain bins in shops all over the world.
And most of the discs 43 year old Keb spins these days are the same
platters he thought he had no use for a decade ago.
Back in the Seventies Keb was at his happiest scouring through dirty
record box after dirty record box in mouse-infested warehouses
all over America.Northern Soul was the quarry back then, but searching
for that elusive floor-filler was never an exact science.
So many records that lacked that driving Northern beat would be bought,
get maybe one play on the decks, and then go into the cupboard under
the stairs never again to see the light of day.
But a split with his wife in 1987 saw cash-strapped Keb forced to part
with his Northern gems to meet a seperation deal.
Records valued at £2000 to £3000 a pop had to be sold - but remember
this was a genre where almost mythical releases could command a
horse-choking £17,000 price tag.
No-one can imagine the pain, torture and suffering Keb must have gone
through that divorce. And it wasn't trhe loss of his wife that was
being mourned.So Keb was left with the records under the stairs, the
ones he'd thought were nothing more than junk. But like fine wine, many
of the old sevens had matured with age. Deep Funk's time had come.
Keb recalls: "Because I had very little Northern left I started to play
the old records. To my surprise there was all this great rare funk
stuff with great looking labels in among them. Trendy London clubs like
The Brain and The Mud Club were booking me to play bits of Northern,
Boogaloo and Funk. Then I met a Japanese girl and fell in love, off I
went to Japan chasing after her, funk records in hand, and I started
to DJ out there."
The Japansese reaction to Keb's hybrid funk convinced him he was on to
a winner. "It went down a storm. Nobody had really done the funk sound
out there properly and before long I was playing to 800 people at a
time.
So what's the difference between a James Brown or Fred Wesley track and
a Deep Funk cut?
"Deep Funk is deeper and more underground," comes back the answer."It's on little labels with obscure names, like Twink - records made by
one-hit wonders of working class black America"
The records were originally released at a time when most radio stations
in the States wouldn't touch black acts. It meant they were doomed to
obscurity even before the ink had dried on the music sheet. And it was
that underground feel that struck a chord with Keb's Northern Soul
obsession. For people like Keb, purity is a must and an addiction.
"It is very like the pioneering Northern Soul days", he says."But this excites me even more because it's got world-wide appeal."
Now Keb is preparing to spread the Deep Funk gospel in Edinburgh with a
night of evangelising at the College Of Art's Wee Red Bar tommorrow.
He's no stranger to Edinburgh, appearing here at Hogmanay in 1998 and
1999.
So tommorow the Wee Red will be getting a dose of that dirty medicine
and shaking to some of the funkiest music ever to trouble the planet.
Northeren Soul and garage will be represented as well, with Deep
Sensation's Colin Gate, Fraser Dunn and Keith Whitson joining
co-promoter Jolly behind the decks in two rooms.
But with 300 tickets already snapped up, you'd better move fast if you
want to get funked tommorrow.
Yogi Haughton |
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