Simon Andrews

Simon was brought up listening to Soul legends such as Funkadelic, Bobby Womack, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Roy Ayres, George Benson, Leroy Burgess, Luther Vandross and Alexander O’Neal – mainly due to his older sister’s musical taste. Young kids often look up to their older siblings for inspiration and a sense of identity. Simon’s love of soulful music was most certainly derived from this point.
In his early years, Simon used to tape various shows on the radio. At the age of twelve, he was taping Electro Sessions on Capital Radio, London on Friday nights/ Saturday mornings. Within a couple of years, Simon was recording ‘The Soul Session’ every Saturday afternoon, again on Capital Radio London. This weekly three hour show was hosted by none other than Pete Tong.
“I used to edit the tapes every week! The show was 3 hours long and I used to condense it down to one 90 minute tape for the walkman for that week’s school bus journey etc”
It was Pete Tong’s show that got Simon into the West End’s ‘cooler’ record stores via the weekly ‘Capital Nightlife Ten’ chart. From the edited tapes, Simon would often hit [a certain record shop] to get hold of his favourites, often bumping into Mr Tong himself there.
Becoming a dj, for Simon, was an accident. It ended up a natural evolution from being an enormous music lover with finely tuned taste and ever growing collection. As a kid, never parted from his walkman, Simon used to buy records and record them to tape for any time spent out of the house. It wasn’t long before his friends were requesting copies of these tapes for their own listening pleasure – however, at this point they were pure back-to-back ‘twelve inchers’ with gaps between each track!
After a year or two, Simon bought a mixing console in a bid to cut the gaps between the tracks to a minimum, thus fitting more music on a cassette tape. Exactly that was done, but before long, a second turntable arrived and experiments began.
“It was all trial and error. Mainly error. I ended up humming the next song that was lined up and waiting. The next logical challenge was to get the next record to start when I wanted and stay in time!” The rest is history.
At sixteen Simon went to Henley College to study his A Levels and began playing regular college parties. He also started travelling down to Southampton where his sister was studying and began playing at The Beehive as well as on Glenn Radio – The Southampton Uni Student Radio station. It was around this time that Kiss FM went legal and taping radio shows moved away from Pete Tong, and across to Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson’s ‘Advanced dance Mixshow’ This was a whole new world for Simon. Pete Tong never mixed any records on radio, Paul Anderson mixed his whole show and Simon was inspired by the whole soul undertones of his music.
To cut a long story short, this ensued in countless visits to Trouble’s House at Legends, later to be The Loft in Camden.
After passing his A-Levels, at the tender age of 18, Simon got on a flight with £50 and a box of records to Magaluf and ended up spending ten weeks djing 8 hours a night, 7 days a week, in Papi’s Bar, Sounds Bar and eventually the largest club in Europe, BCM, alongside resident DJ Des Mitchell. Time spent there included warming up for UK dj’s brought over including Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling and Trevor Fung.
Returning to the UK and deciding to go to Uni himself, Simon packed up his stuff, left home and hit Bournemouth. Aside from the college work, Simon carried on with his passion of playing his music to the masses, playing every single club within the first 18 months of arrival. Having had many residencies, Simon found himself resident alongside Aiden The Funky Chile and Wildchild (Loaded records). Aiden later went on to become a successful producer under the pseudonym ATFC and unfortunately Roger ‘Wildchild’ unexpectedly died a year or so later leaving me and the dance world in disbelief.
Simon continued his radio presence during these years and worked on Red Eye FM based in South West London - a pirate radio station that broadcast over the majority of London. The station's theme was mainly old school hardcore or early drum n' bass but the owner was more than happy to add a further musical dimension to the station by including a certain amount of US garage and house music. Broadcasting every week Simon and friends ran a weekly radio show where the mixes were long and the shout-outs were frequent. Over the next 3 years or so Simon mixed it up live on air at Red Eye 106 FM and even joined the Red Eye crew on a special 'Bug Jam '93' outside broadcast. Red Eye was the official 'unofficial' Bug Jam event radio! With all its pressures and eventually, with the birth of Virgin Radio on 106 in around '96, Red Eye ceased to span the airwaves, but will be forever fondly remembered. A great station, great listeners, great music all coated with a great sense of humour.
Simon finished in Bournemouth at the age of 23 and moved back to London. Shortly after moving back and settling in, Simon started his own night with his pal Laurence Baker who he met in Bournemouth. Safari Music was born and the night was called ‘Safari So Goody’. After running for a year, they invited Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson down to join them, having become good friends over the course of going to The Loft consistently for the previous 15 years. Safari So Goody ran for three years.
Shortly afterwards, Simon began helping Paul Anderson out with his Troubled Soul stuff and still is to this day.
Simon also returned to pirate radio, joining Point Blank (now 90.2 FM), having been established since 1994, it was a well respected South West London station. You can catch Simon’s ‘Troubled Soul Safari’ show on Sundays, 4pm-6pm weekly on 90.2 FM, also currently streaming from www.pointblank.fm
"Still, as said at the beginning, its not about being a dj, its about loving music. I will play wherever people want to hear my music. My heart is an open book and you can read it with your ears when you listen to my music. Phew!" (Simon)
Thanks for taking an interest.