DESCRIPTION:
http://www.discogs.com/Kirk-Degiorgio-Mass/master/190865
radio days

Kirk Degiorgio was born in Stepney, East London in the late 60's.

Raised in a family who loved a wide range of music - and one which could claim a hugely famous pop-star cousin in Marc Bolan of T-Rex - Kirk got early exposure to music from artists such as Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Sly Stone, Roxy Music, etc. His mother Janet Feld was a young 'mod' who devoutly followed The Kinks, The Who, etc around the venues of London.

The family moved out to Suffolk when he was 4 years old.

In 1979 his aunt - only 6 years his senior - gave him her collection of soul and funk 7"'s. His aunt was another clubbing member of the Feld family and would regularly attend The Lacey Lady and The Royalty to hear DJ's Chris Hill and Robbie Vincent.

At age 11, Kirk was far too young to go to clubs to hear the type of records he had acquired from his aunt so he tuned in to various black music radio shows and taped everything he could between '79 and '82.

Kirk's weekends revolved around the various radio shows he could pick up from his house in Ipswich: starting with the Radio Luxembourg Disco Top 20 show on Friday nights hosted by Tony Prince, then continuing early on Saturday morning with Robbie Vincent's Radio London show and ending with Tony 'Shades' Valance's 4 hour 'Soul Session' on local Radio Orwell. Often he would ask his Aunt in London to tape him Greg Edwards Capitol Radio Show also on Saturday evenings. Towards the mid-80's many of these shows were no longer on air - but fortunately the more specialised early soul pirate stations Horizon, Invicta, JFM, Solar, etc were just about in range from Ipswich.

One of the biggest influences on Kirk from this period were the mixes of Essex based DJ Froggy. These were a feature of Robbie Vincent's show and were the first UK examples of the kind of mixing being made famous in New York by Larry Levan, Shep Pettibone, etc. Kirk also swapped tapes with local US airforce personnel stationed at nearby Bentwaters airbase who had recordings of megamixes from NY's Kiss FM and other US black music stations. [continues...]
http://www.myspace.com/kirkdegiorgio