When I started Amateur’s House last year, there were issues I expected I’d end up writing about – plague raves, Derrick May, how useless the dance music press are and so forth. I also...
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2 Minutes
As flavour of the month Honey Dijon is pictured with Madonna in the studio, which one is REALLY going to benefit the most from this get together? For once, this blog is unsure…
Madonna is one of those musicians who I have mixed opinions about. The one hand thinks she’s accomplished a lot in her career and managed to remain relevant when a lot of other names...
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Wednesday Whisper #35 – the DJ who got so angry when he saw this blog, he reminded his friend of the Downfall parodies…
Which DJ recently found a post in the Amateur’s House archive and ended up going on an almighty rant truly worthy of an online parody? A friend who witnessed his reaction got in touch...
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Is there a Novak Djokovic in dance music’s ranks? As tennis player is deported from Australia for being unvaccinated, some people are keeping very quiet about their own indiscretions…
Last week, the news was dominated by a surprisingly small number of stories – and one of those was to do with a tennis player. Novak Djokovic went to Australia to play at The...
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Yousef, Simon Dunmore and Hannah Wants all walk into a bar – and thanks to Twitter, we can see exactly how that conversation would go…
Dear oh dear. There are so many people in the world of house music who can’t see the wood for the trees these days. It’s getting to the point now where it might just...
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After Resident Advisor’s £575k loss for 2020, staff numbers actually went up and payments to directors only declined 30% when company revenue was down by 95% – so what on earth was going on?
This blog is a solo project, recently described by Michael James as a “dynamic, tireless, takes-no-prisoners one-man show”. And though I’d like to think this commentary is correct, I’m the first to concede that...
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As Boris Johnson ponders scrapping vaccine passports for England – if he’s still in his job next week – have they actually done anything to reduce the spread of Omicron?
These days, how much time he spends talking about Covid restrictions is the easiest barometer for measuring how much politcal trouble Boris Johnson is in. We saw this last month – during the first...
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2 Minutes
Dave Clarke can’t get the rights back to his Archive One album from 1996, despite it barely being available to stream and forget about downloads – the mad state of play 26 years later…
Record labels attract some of the pettiest people alive. I luckily never came across them during my five years of releasing music – but I heard no end of stories from others who weren’t...
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Do the Belleville Three need to recruit a new member to keep up the myth? The question as a Detroit source witheringly compares Derrick May to South Park character Kenny McCormick…
For the first few years of its run, the South Park character Kenny McCormick would die in every episode – yet he would return in the next episode alive and well. No explanation was...
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After Defected announce Phase 2 of their Croatia festival lineup, Danny Tenaglia’s appearance is confirmed – but whatever happened to his vow to “resign” from DJing a decade ago?
Danny Tenaglia was, for many years, one of the more hardworking DJs in the house music world. Like many of his era, he was a fan of doing sets that were around 412 hours...
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The final insult? Erick Morillo’s home with private pool and recording studio sold for $9.4million, netting his family a $1.7million profit – but no mention of the owner on the seller’s pitch…
Erick Morillo was a man who did rather nicely out of dance music. According to TMZ, he was able to purchase 7000 Macapa Drive in Los Angeles for $7.6million in 2014. The home contains...
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Here’s One They Made Earlier: Lovestation might be best known for “Teardrops”, but it turns out they weren’t just a one trick pony…
It’s hard for me to explain the story of Amateur At Play, my production alias, without referencing 95 North. They were a DJ and producer duo who consisted of two friends called Doug Smith...
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2 Minutes
As press reports over the weekend say Britain could scrap its £159 annual TV tax in 2027, the music world goes apoplectic at the news – but how much does the BBC actually help to break new tracks these days?
Here in the UK, the newspapers are frequently filled with stories attacking the BBC. This isn’t terribly unusual in itself. The corporation has a guaranteed income each and every year from the licence fee,...
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Aren’t this lot spending £37billion on a test and trace regime that doesn’t work? Sacha Lord’s freedom of information request on the Downing Street parties has been turned down – because it would cost too much to answer it..
The journalists who are meant to be covering British politics have been shown up over the past month as being almost as useless as those in the dance music press. They were hesitant to...
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Jeff Mills is doing an online concert this week from the religious Greek island of Delos “in a concert of ritualistic power” – but how much money does it cost for the Wizard to offer his brand of sacrament?
Pomposity and grand language can be used to make events look almost any way you’d like. If you or someone you know has been blessed with the abilities of a skilled orator or a...
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EXCLUSIVE: “I feel like I’m playing plague raves right now, but I’m also f***ing skint, I can’t live on fresh air” – the words of one British DJ speaking to Amateur’s House under a cloak of anonymity…
Last year, this blog ran a two-part series after being contacted by a DJ who admitted he’d been doing plague raves. Part one had the DJ – who only agreed to speak to me...
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