Not sure how much I’ve mentioned it before on here, but it’s no secret I’m a big fan of the Uncle Dugs show. Formerly station manager of Rinse FM, Dugs now runs a oldskool radio show every Friday morning on Rinse that’s been doing a lot to both bring back and create new interest in oldskool music. Combining loads of classic tracks from the 89-96 era (usually one year per episode, and all spun on vinyl) with a radio persona that’s sort of pirate radio mc meets shouty fishmonger, Dugs’ excitement for the tracks he plays spills out over the airwaves and goes a long way towards helping a broad audience understand why these tunes still matter 20+ years after the fact. Add in great on-air interviews and specials like this one, and you’ve got a radio show not to be missed (even if you have to check it on the podcast archives due to timezone differences)
This Friday, Dugs will be featuring an exclusive Stevie Hyper D audio documentary ‘Junglist Soldier’. For those who don’t know (and who didn’t see the post earlier in the year), Stevie Hyper D is considered one of the most important jungle mcs ever, and sadly passed away back in 1998 long before his time. There’s been some tribute events and even a posthumous compilation LP, but as far as I know, this is the first documentary on him ever. It’s airing exclusively on the Uncle Dugs show this Friday, 11am-2pm GMT, streaming at http://rinse.fm or on 106.8FM if you’re in London.
From Dugs….
This documentary has been put together by Matt at Audio Compound with help from Stevie’s nephew Darrell and features the full story of Stevie’s life and career.. The documentary has the full blessing of the family and with nephew Darrells input has been able to seek out interviews with some real key people from Stevie’s life and career from both family circles and musical circles.. As well as telling the story of Stevies life through narration and interviews you can also hear exclusive clips of Hyper D at work from the sound system era right through to acid house times into the rave world where most of us ending up finding out about him..
Friday 19th October will be known as #StevieHyperDDay on twitter so please tell a friend to tell a friend and let’s see if we can get this trending for the world see..
Check out the trailer for the Junglist Soldier audio documentary here:
And be sure to join the Facebook event and share it with friends
And if you haven’t checked his show yet, Get to the rinse archives and start clicking the circles that say “Uncle Dugs”
There were two MCs I declared a must-see – Stevie Hyper D and MC Ruff from Prodigy. I saw Ruff at a Hullabaloo party in 1997 or so and he rocked – raspy dangerous rhymes interspersed with singsongy jubilation. I was all set to see Stevie the next summer at Toronto’s World Electronic Music Festival but sadly he passed away scant weeks before. There were something like 200 acts at that festival but all anyone could talk about was this MC. RIP to this natural MC.