Scruff and ready to mash things up

By SCOTT KARA


Music is like a good vegetarian pie for Mr Scruff. His favourite pie then? "It's like music really, I don't really have a favourite pie. There's loads of pies I haven't tried yet," says the Manchester DJ and musician who's known to his drum'n'bass loving mum as Andy Carthy.

He rates drinking tea and eating pies as the things he does most besides collecting, playing, and listening to music.

It's 6am and Scruff is in his tour bus only an hour after getting off stage in Amsterdam, and he's heading to Belgium for the third-to-last date of an eight-week European tour before heading to New Zealand. He plays tomorrow night at the Studio on Auckland's K Rd.

He confesses to being a little sleepy and he's trying to remember the name of the record shop he visited while in Amsterdam. He insists on digging out the bag of records he bought from the recesses of the bus.

"Here we go," he says, "it's called Record Palace. It's run by this old guy in his 60s who just has two floors of really well-selected used vinyl. He had a collection of late 70s roots-reggae 12 inches, which is something you rarely see in mint condition for a reasonable price. He had about 300 or 400 of them together. That was a find.

"I could spend my whole life listening to reggae and never know all about it - there's always knowledge to be gained.

"It's a hobby that's turned into a living," he reasons.

As you can tell, he's obsessed with reggae and talks most about that genre. But his music collection, and his albums - be it his latest mix album Keep It Solid Steel, or his last effort Trouser Jazz - are a history lesson told via sound. Some very funky sounds, too.

He's been "wearing headphones" from a very young age and discovered the music of Prince Buster - one of the founding fathers of ska, two-tone and rock steady - after finding his dad's collection of seven-inch records.

"Dad and I are into quite a lot of the same music - other stuff as well like blues, 60s R&B - so we have quite a lot in common."

He says he made the connection between his favourite band, 80s ska outfit Madness, and the ska of Prince Buster early on, but he's not so sure how important musical history is to people today.

It's something that fascinates him, but do others care?

"It's reliant on what you're exposed to as a kid. If all you see is MTV and listen to the charts you're just going to think it's supermodels who make music and all you need to do it is jewellery and cigars.

"But if you're exposed to a lot of different things, and you're aware, then you don't have to be taught the history of music to know that this stuff came before that stuff."

He uses an example from his own set list: "Say if you hear a house track that samples a disco tune and then you hear the original. Quite often in gigs I'll play Get A Move On and then I'll play the Moondog version, the original which I sampled, and everyone says, 'Is that a remix?' I say, 'No, this record is 45 years old'."

It might all sound a bit geeky, but Scruff set out to learn about music history, be it Latin, hip-hop, African, or jazz, which are all styles he mixes together to make his own sound - best described as a funked up mash of beats and pieces.

"Every music comes from other stuff and you can hear that in, say, drum'n'bass. That's happening with every type of music and music doesn't just arrive, reggae doesn't just suddenly happen one day - it comes from 100 years of history before that. For me, that's really fascinating and gives music a really human element."

But before you write off Scruff as one of those non-stop music geeks, read this: "There's more to a place than records, especially a place as beautiful as New Zealand."

He's heading here to see the country, not just the record shops.

Performance

* Who: Mr Scruff, DJ, musician, music historian

* Where: Studio, K'Rd, Auckland, tomorrow night.

* Album: Keep It Solid Steel (Pt. 1)