8.

Miles Davis – On The Corner

I’m not a Miles Davis fan but I came to this album from funk. In Bristol there were hundreds of us and we went to these heavy, heavy, heavy funk clubs from about the age of 13 or 14. We’d wear all these 50s clothes after we’d come up to the Kings Road and bought them in Let It Rock and go out dancing in funk clubs. And then with the Sex Pistols two years later all the punks started wearing these pegged trousers and mohair jumpers that we’d been wearing down the funk clubs.

The line is that through ultra funk to early Kool And The Gang to Eddie Harris, which was my early entry into the jazz thing, and then getting in to Anthony Braxton and then On The Corner. In The Pop Group we were constantly playing [Funkadelic’s] One Nation Under A Groove and then we’d have parties where we’d put on On The Corner. And then I got into Sun Ra and it’s just where you go. My life is kind of going between different genres in junk shops, you know? It’s funky as fuck!