THE WORLD FAMOUS BLACK MARKET RECORDS
Record shoppers in London may have noticed that the shop formerly known as Black Market Records has recently changed its name to BM Soho. The store had licensed the name from Black Market's original founder Rene Gelston, but the license has now expired. Frontlines caught up with Rene to find out about the history of Black Market and see what he plans to do with the brand, now that he is back in full control.
He began by filling us in on how it all started: "It goes back about 23 years, so there's a lot of history there. I started Black Market in 1983/84, first as a night we ran at the Wag Club in London for five years, where we broke rare groove in the capital. We had Barry Sharpe playing there, then Norman Jay joined us when he was just starting out. We also did Black Market in Paris, Milan, and other cities as one-off parties, and that's what really started the brand. The night was packed for five years and was completely based around the music. I think that's what Black Market has always been about, it has always been cutting edge and about new music."
In 1986 Rene went to live in New York, and put on Black Market parties over there as well: "We were one of the first places to start playing house music, alongside the Paradise Garage and one other club. Black Market was still running in London playing rare groove, with Black Market in New York playing house. We had people like Liz Torres playing there, Cultural Vibe, all the early house people."
When Rene returned to London, he decided to open Black Market the record shop: "I saw a store in New York called Vinyl Mania, and I'd not seen anything like that, with a big soundsystem and decks; London had nothing like it at the time! I first opened the store with one of the DJs that was playing all the rare groove stuff for me, Steve Jervier. We ran it from the end of '87 to 1990, during the period that there were more and more clubs starting to play house like Shoom, Delirium, etc. We mainly focussed on house music, and the store was one of the first fuels to the fire of the scene. There was no connection before, in any movement there has to be a flow through where all the pieces fall into place and it happens, and I think that's what Black Market did. In those first couple of years we were so busy in there it was untrue. We were selling tickets to all the raves, and we were even on the front cover of The Sun newspaper for fuelling the rave scene! They thought we were selling drugs in there, but it was just the tickets for these events. We did all the tickets for Biology, Energy and things like that."
In 1990 Rene went to work for Universal (MCA at the time) and no longer had time to run the record shop. "I sold half of the store to Steve, and there was a young guy used to come in and buy a few records every now and again called Nicky, and he wanted to buy half the store as well. I went to work for Universal, sold Nicky and Steve the shop, and they licensed the name off me to use at the store, and started running it as Black Market."
Rene has never been away from the scene though and has more recently been putting on parties in Canada, where they won promoter of the year in 2004. "Since we've been in Toronto we've had Dillinja play for us, Hype, Total Science, Calibre, Intalex, Micky Finn, dozens of people," Rene revealed. "We also deal with a lot of the new electronic music with people like Jeff Mills, Derrick May and then a lot of the stuff like DFA, and groups like that. You probably know a lot of people who think Black Market is just about drum & bass but it's not, Black Market has always been about a much wider range of music."
Rene is now working with Darren Jay on the return of Black Market as a club night and label in the UK (although Rene is now based in Toronto, Canada). Rene met Darren Jay whilst working at MCA: "I've known Darren for years, he's a good guy. We are going to start putting some events on in the UK first and then we'll look at the record label again. We've got some ideas for a compilation series and then we'll look for individual artists to sign. We'll first come with a series of compilations across the genres, for example 'House Music Series', etc. Then as for the events, we're starting to look at cities now to do monthly's in, whether it be Manchester, Sheffield or London. We'll start with the new website for downloading, merchandise, all things like that."