Here is the Essay on Alan Oldham for those of you who don't have access to the Web.
Uninvited: An Essay by Alan Oldham A lot of people have asked/e-mailed me if I'm playing the DEMF, so I'm announcing here that I am not. I was not invited to perform at this event. I got a very odd phone call from Mr. Craig (I didn't know he even had my phone number) telling me that there would always be next year's event, and pointing out that he wasn't playing himself. You can't really argue with that point. I was somewhat mollified by this, until I saw the full line-up, released two days after I spoke with him. Taking nothing away from the talent that ended up filling the open slots, I think I've contributed more to the Detroit legend here in our own city than many of the names that I saw on the talent list. I forget exactly how I met Carl Craig. I do remember when he, in 1988, came over to my grandmother's house to let me hear some halting guitar stuff that he'd eked together on his music teacher's four-track recorder at school, in a bid to get me to play it on the radio. He was trying to sound like 4AD. This is even before he'd hooked up with Derrick May. Far from a Techno Legend, just a kid with a borrowed four-track. On my radio show, "Fast Forward", I supported his first releases (recorded on Derrick's gear at his "Techno Boulevard" loft while he was out of the country) as Psyche and BFC on Transmat. I still love those records and even played "Crack- down" out until recently. I did some art for one of his Retroactive records, I forget which one. A year after that, in 1991, I was the very first to play a strange white label he'd given me: "4 Jazz/Funk Classics" by 69, the first Planet E release. At that time, he didn't want anybody to know it was him. Similarly, I was not invited to attend the 430 West Ten Year Anniversary luncheon, taking place during the same Memorial Day weekend as DEMF. I didn't even know about it until a local ghettotech DJ, Disco D, told me. It seems he was invited. I was very hurt by this oversight even more than the DEMF snub mainly because I consider the Burden Brothers friends. I have played and supported their records from the beginning (well, the 430 stuff, not the Direct Beat records). They don't live far from me here in Northwest Detroit. I was over at their house a couple of months ago ! We shared the same distributor up until recently. I valued their insights into the business and our long conversations about music. I have known the Burden Brothers since before they stumbled ass-backwards (via their friendship with Anthony Shakir) into being included on the Virgin/10 compilation "Techno 2: The Next Generation" (1989). They didn't know anybody in the scene besides Shake. The only reason I even knew them at all was because they lived two doors down from this chick I hung out with back in the late 80s named Karen Fox (she helped me do the original label art for K. Alexi Shelby's "All for Leesah" record on Transmat). Marc Kinchen's track "Love Take Me Over" as Area 10 was the big choice off that compilation to the succeed Inner City's smash hit single "Big Fun" off the previous, landmark "Techno : The New Dance Sound of Detroit" record (Virgin/10. 1988), but Octave One's "I Believe" turned out to be the real hit. Derrick May himself brought the reel-to-reel down to WDET for me to play it before it was even pressed (this was the episode where Derrick went nuts on-air during our interview and I kicked him out of the studio; anybody got a tape of that show ?). Thanks to its lyrics, it became a big local hit thanks to my show, getting many phone requests every week, selling records at Record Time and putting the Burdens on the map, much to the chagrin of May, who never even liked the track even though it sounded like something that he would have made himself. The only reason "I Believe" was even included on the comp was because Neil Rushton of Network/Kool Kat personally liked it, even to the point of releasing it as a single in the UK. The Burdens then spent the next few years hounding Transmat for their money. (For the record, my involvement with the "Techno 2" comp, besides playing it on WDET, was that I did the album cover art, which was rejected by Virgin). They went on to form 430 West around '91, releasing hits from Jay Denham as Vice and Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes, both of which I supported. Their mix of "Jaguar" is the one I play out ! I am fully booked for Memorial Day weekend, as you can see by the calendar of events, and have been since February at least. Would have been nice to have been asked to participate in my own hometown festivities, though. This is where having a global profile, as opposed to strictly local, comes in handy. This was fun ! I'm gonna have to write a book. I've got dirt on everybody. If the above is any indication, it will be the anti-"Techno Rebels". Slash and burn politics. Hey, Tim Barr, wanna help write it ? --Alan Oldham
