For those of you who want to know a bit more about Greg Wilson... here's what A Guy Called Gerald had to say on Samurai.fm (the original article is here)

Click on the link at the top of this page to listen to an old mix from Greg. The word legend doesn't do him justice...

Electro Funk Roots

Throughout our lives everyone usually finds his or her hero. That special someone who through our respect for their actions inspire, motivate and open our eyes to new worlds in a particular time and space. For a young 15-year-old break-dancer called Gerald Simpson (A Guy Called Gerald) the special someone was Greg Wilson, the time was the early 80's and the place was a nightclub, appropriately enough called Legend in Manchester, UK.

Spinning his cutting edge mix of electro funk every Wednesday night at Legend as well as his residency at Wigan Pier, Greg Wilson was a hero for thousands of mainly black local youth, many of who at that time were part of a nation-wide often violent stands against the prejudices the society they were in subjected them to. Greg was in the unique position of pushing the boundaries of this new music form to this eager and dedicated audience at a time when the foundations of modern dance music were not yet laid and artists, both DJs and producers were shaping the new electronic world every weekend.

It's difficult to believe that this show, a retrospective of the influential tracks from 1982/83, pre-dated the acid house explosion by half a decade yet the sounds still sound so fresh more than 20 years later and in them you can easily identify the origins of the genres that continue to push the scene forward to this day. Equally as impressive is that a mix such as this is possible given the complexities of the remixing and editing of tracks involved in this mix with the technology available at the time. Today production and DJ technology may have developed light years compared to what they were then but the ideas they were based on are still mainly used to this day.

Pioneer is a title given to many musicians these days but there are few seemingly as deserving of this crown in the UK as Greg Wilson. His music changed the history of music in the UK and the perception of a new generation of music fans.