If you tuned into last Friday's Remix (or have listened back at xfm.co.uk), you'll know what an unusual show it was. 

An hour in, Eddy learned that Ou Est Le Swimming Pool frontman Charlie Haddon had committed suicide at the Pukkelpop festival earlier that day. The news rapidly changed the show, as it became an impromptu tribute to the musician. Sad though it was, there was also a feeling of positivity through a collective love of the music on the show.

Speaking of which, coming up next week is the first of Eddy's new nights at Proud in Camden, Club Remix. It takes place on 2 Sep with live performances from teenagersintokyo, Scoundrels, Captain Dangerous, Bryn 457 and a DJ set from the mighty Jakwob.

Here's Eddy with more...

I'm so happy to be able to support new artists at a club night again. Matter put on too much pressure to get big names. While I've got the likes of Krafty Kuts for our Christmas special, and old friends The Holloways and Dumb Blonde in the first month, it's great to see some emerging artists like Jakwob and Mr Fogg get stuck in. 

Come show support and say hi, it'll be a much more friendly, intimate experience than the Remix All-nighter at Matter. I'll miss that sound system, but I do like the idea of a smaller night with more emerging talent mixed in with the big guns and old friends who'll be showing up. Hervé is dropping by soon, and The Freestylers, Infadels and more.

One band I was so looking forward to having play was Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. I'm currently on holiday, camping in Dorset, and am still shell shocked over what unfolded on the show on Friday night. That was the hardest show I've done in a decade, by a mile.

I've had so many calls and texts from distraught friends and colleagues, this one has really hit hard. Even people who hardly knew Charlie have been struck dumb with grief. He really did touch a lot of people in a short space of time. I don't know yet exactly why it happened - it feels too early to ask these questions - so I'm leaving the boys alone and giving them space to grieve.

Meanwhile, almost every minute of every day I'm just cultivating a thousand yard stare and thinking why someone with that bright a near future would be unhappy enough to do that. I guess either poor Charlie was really hurting, or it was a silly accident after some high jinx - no pun intended. His light really burned bright. He's left a hell of a legacy with their record though, what a wonderful way to live forever.

Eddy xx

PS – Next week Eddy Says will be taking a short break. Nothing major, just one week, we'll be back again on (or at least near) 6 Sep.

Click here to see this edition of the Eddy Says e-bulletin in full

We hate the fact that while the res t of the world chills out in August, we here at CMU HQ are in our busiest period of the year because our sister media - ThreeWeeks - is the biggest reviewer at the Edinburgh Festival, which is on right now. That's a round about way of explaining why this and the last edition of Eddy Says have arrived a bit later than normal. And also a clever introduction to this week's Eddy Says, another list of the things that get even the most easy going man in music all riled up.

Many moons ago in Eddy Says, I put together a list of the top 20 things I hate. I remember people reacting with great joy that someone normally so positive could be so easily wound up. So I thought it's time I updated that list, with ten fresh bees in my bonnet. A new deuce of goat-getters. Meanwhile, check out the original list here.

1. Poorly labelled MP3s. I'm often put in the position of having to download multiple tunes, to spend an hour or two with ten simultaneous downloads chugging away on my laptop. The MP3s then land randomly on my desktop and if they just have the track name, I have to trawl through hundreds of emails trying to find one that tells me who the fuck made it. Even better, the MP3 will be labelled something like 'version 2' or '01 TTFK' or, in the case of the daftest MP3 ever (took me about six months to trace it back to my gorgeous pals, The Midimidis) '02 XXFGGDDGF0FDDRE3548555 V2 less comp.than V1 but more than V3'. It does happen to the best of us. When Pendulum sent me ‘Immunize' it was simply called 'track01'. Please boys and girls, it's not brain surgery, you wouldn't send me a blank CD would you? Actually, thinking about it, I have had a quite a few of those!

2. Fishes on the backs of vehicles. It's not the passive aggressive evangelism I hate, as much as the downright arrogance. "I've put this fish on the back of my car to show I'm better than you... after all, I'm going to heaven, while you are going to hell". No I'm not, Christian, and neither are you, because the FACT is we'll BOTH end up as worm-shit. There is no God, no heaven and no hell, only the hell you create on Earth before you die, forever, with only your children giving your genes any form of afterlife. Adam and Eve were not the first people on Earth and the Bible - as you know it - was written nearly 350 plus years after an alleged event, that makes it a novel, you fuckwit.

3. Pointy shoes. Extending the size of your feet only makes them less attractive. Clowns have long feet for a reason; it's funny. Those noughties witch-toed boots, ugh. Those men's shoes that make you look like you have a pair of canoes attached to your feet. If I was king, I'd have a special contraption made, like a cross between stocks and a guillotine, just to slice them cleanly off at the ankle. Interestingly though, in my opinion, there is a point beyond which the pointyness becomes so ridiculous that it's kind of cool, funny-cool, like those Turkish slippers, or Tom Losers gothy winkle-pickers, which rock on him, but anything else is just plain wrong.

4. Flip flops in the city. David Human, the wonderful wordsmith and front man of A Human has been ranting about this on Twitter and I'm 100% with him. Girls, flip flops are for beaches, not polluted cities... get your filthy, horrid, putrefying black feet away from me. Don't you put them on that chair, and don't even think about putting them on my lap, you beast!

5. Slagging your ex on Twitter. God knows (except there is no God - I refer you to point two) most of us have a psychotic ex, but slagging them off on Twitter is like shooting puppies in a shoebox. OK the puppies may lie, the puppies may be petty, evil little shits, but executing puppies in public, in broad daylight, is not a good look.

6. Promo companies that refuse to provide listen links. The other week I got another download link from a large, reputable company that plugs a lot of records to a lot of DJs. I politely asked if the plugger in question could send me listen links, as I was wasting so much time downloading stuff I didn't like, or that was more appropriate for Ras Kwame or Pete Tong. His reply was incredible. He refused. He said: "I only send exclusive shizzle, if you don't download it, that's your loss". I was incredulous. With the exception of a few records that have more than one plugger sending them out, ALL tunes are 'exclusive'. An 'exclusive' turd is still a fucking turd. Amazingly he could not seem to grasp that by using SoundCloud or Fatdrop he'd get instant feedback and I'd download only what I needed, making everybody a winner. I wrote this down a while back and I'm glad to report his company has now entered the 21st Century before losing all their business.

7. Not giving credit where credit is due. From Coco Sumner (that evil little spawn of Sting and Trudi Styler, who stole a track from Dead Kids, passed it off as her own, got busted, had to relinquish a portion of the song back to Dead Kids, and STILL doesn't credit them on her record) right through to MIA, who talked over a Suicide tune and left every teenager in the western hemisphere thinking it was hers: Politeness costs nothing.

8. TCP. God, I fucking hate that stuff. Savlon, yummy. Dettol, OK, a bit hospitally but acceptable. TCP smells like pure death. I'd put it on a par with a week old dead horse in the desert, or a tramp’s arse.

9. White curtains. I really hate things that FAIL in their primary function. Belts that don't have enough holes, umbrellas that turn inside out when somebody nearby coughs hard, hand driers that blow like a vole with emphysema, and curtains in bedrooms that let ALL THE FUCKING LIGHT THROUGH. Yes, they might look nice in the daytime but the whole point of curtains is to KEEP. LIGHT. OUT. In-laws' houses tend to be where you find these pointless, sleep-depriving, life-ruining, design-flawed, nonsensical pieces of ill-conceived bedroom furniture. If I had my way, I'd use World War Two black out curtains and gaffa tape the edges down, like a vampire in hiding, not one crack of light gets through on my watch. Not one shaft. Sensory deprivation. That's how I roll.

10. Deck shoes. I've just noticed that three out of ten of these are footwear related. I don't think it's anything more than coincidence, and I should point out that I have no footwear fetish that I'm aware of. But I digress, my focus on this tenth little rant are those white soled, preppy look, often tasselled, brown (or worryingly other colours now, as I saw in Shortlist Magazine the other week) 'yacht loafers'. I've always hated that US prep school look. I remember American mates and family extolling the virtues of a shop called LL Bean, which pretty much invented this barfworthy appearance, and it's unfortunately all the rage now. I can't move on Clapham Common without my gag reflex going like a cat with a hairball. When combined with rolled up chinos, or a jumper tied around the neck, they only serve to make the wearer appear like nauseating Ivy League graduate with pretentions of poshness. Look: there is only ONE scenario in which 'yacht footwear' is acceptable, and that is if you are, at the time of wearing said shoes, on board a yacht that is registered in your name. And even then, as someone posted on my Facebook wall, they are "still a bit iffy".

Rant over. Normal service will be resumed next week.

Eddy xx

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If you've ever lost anything at a festival, you'll know the feeling that descends over you. First you wonder if you're just looking in the wrong place. Next you realise that, in a space so vast and surrounded by so many people (even at a small festival), the chances of locating a lost item are low. Then you start to think of those shady characters wandering around the place - somewhere that's supposed to be fun and friendly - just picking up stuff and walking off with it. In this situation, there is just one thing you can do. Eddy here has the answer.

Friday afternoon, I was catching up with the work fallout after a difficult seven hour recording session for the Secret Garden Party 2010 highlights show, packing for Standon Calling and waiting for my girlfriend to finish work, having been strictly banned from packing on her behalf. During this mayhem I got a text from an old and dear friend, Danny McNamara, pride of Halifax and writer of some of the nicest tunes in my record collection, and singer with my son Tone's favourite band, Embrace.

"Hello Edward. How are you? Doing anything cool tonight? I'm in London".

This was typical. It happens several times a year. I'll be on my way to a random gig away from London, and Danny will be at a loose end near my home, so, frustratingly, we nearly always miss each other. Even the last time I was in Manchester (where Danny now lives) I called to find he was on his way to London and was about to call me.

Realising this was likely to happen once again - as I'd be shortly leaving for Hertfordshire - I texted back: "Yeah... I'm DJing in a beautiful pigsty at a great little festival, wanna come?"

I'd put the last two words in more as a joke really. At this point, it was already four o'clock in the afternoon and we were due to leave in two hours.

My phone pinged straight away.

"Yeah, why the fuck not? How/where shall I sort accomodation?'

Bloody hell. "You serious?"

"Yeah, I've had a stroke of luck and I'm in the mood for a celebration".

I was both delighted and slightly panicked. My guest allocation was long gone and I knew Saturday and Sunday were sold out.

I called Danny and we talked about it, I suggested buying one of the last weekend tickets, as it's a charity festival anyway. He said he'd try to find someone to come and look at buying a tent or something. It was looking less and less likely until I realised I had a little festival tent in the loft at home.

"Dude, you can borrow my tent and come with us!"

Amazingly, Danny had the cohones to say: "Yeah, fuck it. I'm coming with you, I'll get a cab to yours and let's do it!"

I explained the fancy dress element, and offered my Tuxedo, which Dan accepted gratefully, and then finished my packing. For my own fancy dress costume I went for an amazing turn of the century green velvet smoking jacket that I'd bought, on a whim, in an antique shop, years ago. I was hypnotised by its incredible pink shot silk lapels and a lining that shimmered like holiday water.

I also packed some fun games, remembering that Standon is a very small festy and there's not a huge amount of non-music things to do. Scrabble, boules, French cricket, all went in the bag.

We arrived around dinner time, in much better sha pe than last year, when I recall a torrential storm that soaked all our gear, duvet and all. Because I always support and help Standon, they very kindly put me up in a tipi, something the hippy in me always looks forward to. We got Danny's little tent up in the tipi area, settled in and started hooking up with friends while Liars took to the main stage and did their angular, at best mildly interesting but often unlistenable thing.

I do love the site, and this year I'd never seen so many people on it. It was a benchmark year for Standon, as in the past it's always felt like a posh, bonkers, fancy dress wedding, or something - an actual garden party - but this year it felt like a little festival for the first time. It felt to me like there were a lot more people, but there wasn't a proportionate amount more for them to do.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next, I think Standon has come of age now, and has to step up. They must encourage more random people and organisations to get involved, so there's a bit more madness, randomness and entertainment there next year, then Standon will grow exponentially and eventually become a lovely 'medium festival' like the Secret Garden Party.

My 1am set went well, even the rain that slashed down halfway through didn't dampen the spirits of the packed Alcatraz themed pigsty-come-dance-area.

It was interesting seeing the crowd reaction to dubstep this year. I'd featured it heavily in my deep Sunday set last year, and it had noticeably flummoxed most of the crowd. But this year, I'd say more than half of them loved it when I halved the beats and delivered some wobbly sub on the nice big woofers they have there.

I played until 3am, hung out until 6am and slept until they started testing the main stage sound system with a Bjork CD around five hours later. Harsh. Still, could have been worse. If I'd been woken up by, say, Muse, my day would have started in a less positive frame of mind.

It had honked down with rain most of the night but the site had been so dry for so long this summer, that it just sucked it right down. It's the opposite of Michael Eavis' farm, that only needs a light shower in order to turn into cesspool.

We had four seasons in one day, and during 'summer' in mid afternoon, I decided it was time for boules. I was excited about seeing Etienne de Crecy's 'Beats And Cubes' show, and probably the most brilliant man in the UK record industry, Korda Marshall, had tipped me to go see These New Puritans. Given that the last band he signed was The Temper Trap, these were a must see.

I was losing at boules. Both Clare and Danny were deft players and I was getting hot and bothered in my antique, silk lined jacket, so I took it off and hung it up on the fence while we finished the game. Clare won. Danny came runner up. I didn't really care, it was a lovely afternoon. I was relieved of work duties so could cut loose and drink in the daytime, and do the mad little things you do at these places. We were all falling about laughing, fuelled by a combination of cider, blackcurrant liquor and nitrous oxide balloons, when my feet felt hot in my big boots. I needed trainers, they were locked in the car boot.

I went to retrieve my smoking jacket.

Then I froze.

Shit.

It's gone.

FUCK.

OK, keep calm, retrace your steps.

Back to the hanging out tree. "Anyone seen my jacket?"

No.

"Um... OK... here's the bad news... that jacket is worth a small fortune..."

"And here's the even worse news... my car keys were in there... and my house keys..."

"And it gets worse... they were my ONLY set of car keys..."

The gravity of the situation sunk into the smiling throng of friends.

The next few hours were spent hunting high, hunting low, talking to artist liaison, production, the security office. I filled in a form and walked around the festival again and again and again, looking for that familiar shimmer of antique velvet and shot silk. My friends were astonishing. As if it were their own baby, they searched every nook and cranny, cruised up and down the site looking for either a munted punter who'd just taken a shine to it, or some dark predator who'd secreted it about their person.

All the time, the horror of the situation was unfolding: It takes an AGE to get a new Saab key. They're very security conscious. I'm supposed to be going on holiday to Wales for four days on Monday (today, as I write this), with my car. We're stranded at this festival now. We bought a pop star with us. He's now stranded too.

Shit.

Fuck.

Shit-fuck.

I saw lots of nice people, friends and colleagues old and new, all very sympathetic and helpful with ideas of things I'd mostly already done. Then it got to a stage where we were all really bummed. Danny was getting all protective and northern about it: "If I see this guy I am taking him out. He's gonna find out what it feels like to cross a northern man - I'm gonna fucking 'ave him".

We'd built up a picture of this festival predator, someone out of kilter with this lovely crowd, who stalks about, preying on unusually relaxed and trusting people. The thought didn't sit well, as it's a nice place full of nice people, but we were in a real pickle and somebody had put us there by taking this jacket.

I could feel the weekend descending. Everyone was fixated by my loss and our predicament. We were all obsessing about it, and it was set to ruin what could have been a really special weekend.

I made a decision.

"I have to let go of this jacket... we all do. We have to stop looking for it. We've done everything we possibly could do, but unless we let go this is going to ruin everything".

One of my friends, Garfield, offered two of us a lift. Alison, another lovely old friend, offered to help by taking stranded Danny back to town. We were thinking positively and things were looking distinctly better.

We still had to flip a psychological, internal switch, to literally FORGET about this jacket, to let it go, and move into another (head) space, where we could relax and enjoy ourselves, free of this obsession.

Somebody mentioned Deepak Chopra and his 'gap' theory, which made sense in this context. I knew that unless I put an end to all this well-intentioned-mentalness, all of our weekends would be ruined. I just had to embrace the fact that I'd have to hire a car to go on holiday, and put up with the massive pain in the arse of having to leave my own car in a place where they're dismantling a festival, and coming back with a fresh key a week or two later. My record bag was locked in there, so this week's show would be compromised, but fuck it, we have to let all this go, and there was only ONE thing left for me to do, that I hadn't already done.

I needed to get totally und utterly off my tits.

My friends liked this new theory. But we were all still a bit twitchy. Always looking around for a flash of green velvet, leering at anyone in anything velvet or anything vaguely resembling a smoking jacket.

We saw These New Puritans, but were uncomfortable, still scanning the crowd for 'this fucker'. The band were like a breathe of fresh air. Unique. The had a very British, dare I say English vibe about them. They had a woodwind section, rasping out throaty notes to augment the layers of synth noise and very Jane's Addiction drums. I loved them.

Half way through, I was shattered. Weary from lack of sleep and from the emotional drain of it all, I retired to the tipi for a disco nap. Other friends had arrived, the Saturday massive, and we all congregated at 11pm to watch Etienne de Crecy's mesmeric live show. I say live, it's not really, but it's an amazing experience, which most of us have seen on YouTube. Nine Japanese hotel room sized extended cubes, stacked like noughts-and-crosses, and hooked up with LED lights in front, and clever projectors, that filled the blank white muslin walls with light and a sense of movement, all synched up to the music.

By the end of that set, I had achieved something. We all had. We'd let go. Nobody was rubber-necking, scouring, scanning, suspicious. We'd all got off our trolleys and were in synch with most of this festival crowd.

We ended up spending most of that night in The Story Yurt, a nice Mongolian tent where you'd pay for your shelter by telling a story. We must have stayed there for hours, going round and round, hearing great stories that each teller knew to be true.

I remember proclaiming that I had now "let go" and honestly couldn't care less about the jacket or the keys.

"The only way I'll ever get that jacket back is if I've let it go".

I went to bed smiling, albeit aware of the nightmare ahead, but knowing there was nothing more we could have done about it, and that literally forgetting about it, and just concentrating on having a good time with the little time we had left at the festival, was the most important thing by far.

The next day was beautiful. A perfect day.

My mission in the morning was to locate my friend, Garfield. Garfield was an old skool festival nut and Maida Vale legend cut from the same cloth as Barry Ashworth. He'd been too busy to come to a festival for four years and was making up for lost time. Garfield had enjoyed a nutritious breakfast . On Thursday. That was the last time he had eaten, and the last time he had slept... it was now Sunday.

He'd offered me his car, to drive ourselves back to London. He could get a lift with somebody else, he said, and was clearly in no state to drive anything more than a bumper car. Maybe not even that. I told Danny the good news and we cancelled the various lifts we'd been offered.

I had to follow a weary and confused Garfield to find his car in the car park up the hill, a task that was made heartbreaking by the fact I could hear Mr Fogg playing my favourite song of his on the second stage. I begged Garfield to stay for this but he maintained it was a now or never situation as he was likely to crash at any moment, after three days of non-stop 'flight'.

Mission accomplished. We found the car, mentally marked its place, asked Garfield how to work his satnav, things were looking up. A beer and lunch before leaving seemed right, we just had to ask for some help with all our stuff, as our ride was miles away, and my car was yards from the tipi. The lovely Standon staff said "no problem", and Clare said, "let's just have one more check at security. You never know..."

"I do know", I thought to myself. "Why are we taking fifty more pointless steps to this portacabin?". But Clare is an almost ceaselessly positive person, so I went with it.

"Just checking because we're going soon, in case anyone handed in my jacket..."

Security guard looks up.

"Oh yeah, we meant to call you... it's been handed in".

"WHAT!!!??"

Yeah, a security guy found it and brought it in cos he thought it would be nicked otherwise.

We could have hugged the security guard there and then. The keys were still there.

Our holiday schedule suddenly reset itself. All was right with the world. I went to find the security dude to give him £20 to buy some drinks. He refused, but I insisted and we agreed he'd buy a round of drinks for his security mates and thanked me.

Everyone was cock-a-hoop with the news, I'd already had an offer of several lifts and one car; Jim and Monty, two bosom buddies, even offered to come back and get my stranded car if I could get a key made while on holiday. But all was restored to normality, and most importantly that dark, lurking predator that we'd imagined preying on us was just a figment of our imagination.

It had been an over zealous security guard who had taken my jacket, not the shady predator we had built such a horrid picture of. The thought that such a nice festival could have a dark side like that never sat comfortably with any of us, so it was doubly comforting to have things end so well.

I was £60 down. £40 to a penniless Garfield and £20 to the guard, but I was, all things considered, up considerably. We'd had a brilliant weekend, recharged old friendships and ignited new ones.

Thank you, Standon Calling. See you next time!

Eddy xx

Picture of Eddy in the all important jacket by Jim Hanner

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If you know Eddy, then you know the Secret Garden Party. The two are inextricably entwined. But how? And why? These are questions the answers to which are known only by a select few. Until now, that is. With this year's edition of the festival a still chiming memory, and a highlights show ready to hammer that bell again (is this bell analogy working? It was the chiming, see? The chiming memory. Oh, never mind) on this week's Remix show on Xfm, Eddy casts his mind back to when he first met two men with an idea and a field...

One spring day, the lion's share of a decade ago, two very nice young men asked if they could come to my home and pitch an idea they had for a festival. It had started as a private party and they wanted it to become public. One of them was from an old Huntingdonshire family, with a beautiful bit of land behind their ancestral home on a working farm, the other was interested in big events and tents and suchlike.

They turned up with a MacBook and we walked to the Regents Canal where they showed me pictures of a big lake, a huge fire with sofas around it. Gleeful, pie-eyed revellers were dancing until daylight to unknown beats... and smiling. Everyone, in every picture, was smiling. This was my kind of crowd. I was sold.

"Please play for us - we love your show and think you'd be perfect for our crowd", they said. "Groove Armada are headlining".

They had me at "here's the first picture". I had a feeling that a) these two guys were genuinely nice people and that b) they were in this for the right reasons and this was going to be an amazing little festival. They wanted to call it the Caukus Secret Garden Party. They didn't have much money but said I'd be well looked after and could invite as many friends as I wanted. I told them I was fine with the low fee and thanked them for their generosity.

Some time afterwards, I was approached by an old friend, who was booking acts for a big corporate show. He offered me three times the fee these nice boys had come up with, but I politely declined as I loved the idea of this festival and I'm old fashioned in many ways: a deal is a deal.

As the festival approached, one of the boys, Freddie, the one whose land it was, called me, sounding like all the blood had drained from his body.

"It's Groove Armada", he gulped. "They've pulled; they were offered a corporate gig that paid them twice as much, so they've cancelled us". The poor boy was clearly heartbroken. "What am I going to do? They were the headliner".

"Don't worry", I reassured him. "You've planned what is sure to be a wonderful party, I'll make some calls and find a worthy replacement for you".

Of course, the irony was delicious. I'd been offered comparatively even more to play elsewhere but chose to honour my booking. More than that, I felt a connection to Freddie, and to the idea, so I put my thinking cap on. It was so late in the day that nobodywith the weight of Groove Armada would do this; especially at 'mates rates'.

'At The River', I thought to myself. What matches that musically? What's on all the same Ibiza chill out compilations? Kinobe? Hmmm. Or AMillionSons? They were part of that Nottingham crew, with Crazy Penis and Bent, they'd just had 'Essential New Tune' on Pete Tong's Radio 1 show. Yes, Bent were hot and, more importantly, I was friends with them, I had their numbers. One ecstatic phonecall later and we had headliners, and more, they'd agreed to bring Crazy P with them, too.

I called Fred and told him "I have bad news and good news. The bad news is, I've been offered a gig that's paying me three times what you've offered. The good news is, I'm not going anywhere - wild horses wouldn't keep me away - and I've got you a couple of names to replace Groove Armada. Similar ballpark musically, but a fraction of the fee!"

I think it was at that point that Fred anointed me 'Patron Saint' of his festival.

At that time, year zero, the Caukus Secret Garden Party was in September. Bestival didn't exist in those days, and it stood alone at the close of the summer. Where the main stage now stands was the camping field, and what is now Where The Wild Things Are was the 'main' stage - little more than a scaffolding platform.

The dance 'area' was under an oak tree, with disco balls hanging from the branches, and the booth was in a treehouse (now Feast Of Fools). There were four hay bales around a mudpit (now the enormous Collisillyum) and there were 800, yes, 800 beautiful, smiling people there.

I had THE. TIME. OF. MY. LIFE.

I remember thinking it could never get better than this. I loved it so much, and felt so bad that the organisers had clearly lost a fortune that I gave back my fee (I did that in year two as well. I had such a brilliant time I could not justify adding to the debt).

The nice pair split up, with Tim, the 'Caukus' one, going off to start Lovebox, and Freddie becoming 'Head Gardener'. The Secret Garden Party - as we know and love it - came into being at this point. My good turn earned me the right to invite like minded souls to play the following year, and before I knew it I was hosting a stage and became part of the furniture.

At this point you probably think I'm going to get all wistful and say "those were the days, nothing beats year one..." But you'd be wrong.

What has consistently astonished me is that, hand on heart, every year I think: "THIS is the best year yet, it will never be beaten, we've reached the zenith of festival experiences". But every year, I'm proved wrong. The same thing happened this year. The attention to detail is just staggering. Every nook and cranny of that wonderful site was dressed up, fanciful, colourful, had love put into it.

Freddie's steadfast refusal to have any logos on site ensures that the festival stays close to its roots, that the spirit of that first year is still there. Everyone who goes maintains it is the best festival out there, and I know this to be true. Not just because my gut tells me, but it's pretty much a mathematically provable fact: If you take the amount of money you spend on the festival - the production, back end, marketing and talent - add it all up and divide it into the number of people there, you get a 'per capita spend'. It's effectively what everybody on site has spent on them by the organisers. The last time we looked at this, our nearest rival spent HALF what we do on our punters.

It's like El Bulli, the best restaurant in the world. It IS the best restaurant BECAUSE it loses money. So much love and so much time goes into giving the people who go the absolute best experience possible, it is impossible for that restaurant to make money. I know the Secret Garden Party has sold out four years running. I also know I've never seen a penny in dividend... it's ALL put back into the festival, to make sure it remains the best out there.

We refuse to make it bigger, and go down the same route as other former 'boutique' festivals, because we know this will dilute the experience, literally cheapen it, with every person there having less spent on them. The Secret Garden Party has never been about making money. That is what I saw in Freddie all those years ago. It's about LOVE. He wanted to put on THE BEST FESTIVAL in the UK. He has. We have. It is.

You can listen to highlights of The Remix Bubble at SGP10, with interviews and music from almost everyone on the bill that weekend, this Friday on The Remix on Xfm. 

Don't miss out next time. I know it will be the best one yet. It ALWAYS is, because we are the worst festival at making money, and long may that continue.

Eddy xx

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Drugs and music are closely linked, but if you don't want to dabble in one, do you need to abandon the other? No, says Eddy...

Early this summer I shared a bill with a couple of very nice young DJs. At the start of the night, one of them said something very flattering about getting into DJing because of The Remix on Xfm.

I never cease to get a massive kick out of that, I feel so inspired by others that when anyone says they are inspired by me, I'm quite mind blown by it. At the end of the night, I gave him a lift home and he confessed to me something that was worrying him, that he wanted my advice on. He said he was thinking about giving up DJing "because of the drugs involved". He felt under so much pressure to take drugs that he was actually considering giving up what he loved in order to "save his sanity".

I was incredulous, and reassured him that, firstly, it was entirely possible to have a wonderful career as a DJ without touching any chemicals, and that he was clearly giving up the wrong thing.

I guess if you love drugs more than you love music or DJing, then your career path is an obvious and potentially catastrophic one. But here's the thing: the last line of cocaine that went up my nose was years ago, in Ibiza at Manumission, the year before I started hosting Ibiza Rocks there. Like this nice chap, I felt under peer pressure to do drugs there, because - I thought - it was part of the experience.

The ensuing panic attack certainly wasn't part of any experience I'd ever wished for. Glistening with sweat, ashen faced and lost like an unaccompanied child in an airport, I had one of the worst nights of my life.

I ended up, to all intents and purposes, as a Manumission resident the following year, and managed an entire season there - as well as an entire DJ career afterwards - in a personal cocaine-free zone. To my young DJ pal, I say that it didn't affect my enjoyment at all. In fact, I rather enjoyed NOT talking bollocks for hours and chewing my own lips off from the inside out.

I still hung out with some legendary imbibers. I stood next to Pete Doherty while he repeatedly filled his lungs with foul-smelling crack before forgetting the words to his own songs at the first Ibiza Rocks show, I took over the decks after friends had lost consciousness in the boothe, I partied 'til dawn, 'til lunchtime the next day, and OK, I was knackered, but I slept like a baby and didn't feel like slitting my own throat with a rusty butter knife the next day.

What really helps in these situations is the fact I gave up caffeine in the 1990s. As a result, all I need is one Jack Daniels and Coke and I am flying until dawn

I'm not going to get all preachy and say "I gave up drugs, you should too"; drugs clearly work for some people, and it's entirely possible to have a happy and healthy life while smoking, drinking and doing recreationals in moderation. The key to it is the 'moderation' part.

I'm thinking about all this right now because next weekend is Standon Calling, a lovely little festy which raises money for a charity that helps families affected by drugs.

It's a cause close to my heart, as my son's mum hit the downward spiral years ago and basically abandoned the poor little mite, leaving him alone with me for several years. In the last awful year she got to see her son in a church hall for one hour on a Saturday morning each week, along with other (mostly fathers) alcoholics and drug addicts guiltily catching up with their kids.

This was all presided over by volunteers and funded by charity. If they didn't do that, these parents would never see their kids, and more importantly the kids would feel more abandoned than they already do. It was this sense of abandonment and hopelessness that hit my Tone the hardest in those years and he still has issues about it. I do Standon every year, for 'mates rates' and encourage my colleagues to do the same, in support of this worthy and underfunded cause.

But back to my young colleague who was actually entertaining the idea of giving up DJing because of drug pressure: don't give up music, you clearly love it. It's also obvious you loathe the habitual use of class As, so try this...

Never do it when you're DJing, it's such a poor look. I remember watching Fatboy Slim years ago, in the days when he was caning it, he could barely mix a gin and tonic and looked like a mess behind the decks, it's deeply unprofessional and awful to watch.

Use drugs medicinally, not habitually. If it's 4am, you're in a different country than the one you woke up in, you've had a one hour disco nap and you're going to fall asleep mid set, then that is the time to possibly say yes to a little picker-upper. I go for the fizzy pop option, but that works for me. I'm just trying to let you know there is a middle ground, that life doesn't have to be black and white - there are some nice shades of grey which could work for you.

I used to smoke all the time, now I'm more of a social weekend puffer. I never take cocaine, ever, I hate the anxiety it gives me and I've seen too many friends and family lose their character, home, friends, partners or sanity because of it. I look forward to the one or two weekends per year, when my little boy is far away and in someone else's care, that I relax my rules and go 'nine sheets to the wind'. This works for me, and I hope you find your happy medium, your equilibrium... if you're even half as happy as me, then you'll have a wonderful life.

Lastly to everyone that couldn't get a ticket to Secret Garden Party, or anyone looking to have a great weekend out, get one for Standon Calling, it's a lovely little festival and your ticket money will do a whole world of good. I can personally guarantee that.

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Last Friday, as those of you who were there and those who tuned into The Remix will know, Eddy and his merry band of Losers went on a jaunt down to Suffolk to headline the Sunrise Arena stage at the Latitude festival. It was show that, by all accounts, was a bit of a high point for the band. But it also reminded Eddy of a problem facing many of the UK's festivals, one which has already forced one of our favourites to cancel this year, and one that needs your urgent attention.

Frustratingly, there was next to no phone signal at the lovely Latitude, so my usual volley of festival related tweets were missed. Thanks for the many prods and 'oi - why so quiet?' messages.
The drive to this part of England is amusing for me because it's like being in a timewarp, or the Twilight Zone. When I was in bands decades ago, journeys to far off gigs in jam packed transit vans were a gastronomic void. All you could get en route were Ginsters Cornish pasties (if you were lucky) or those awful motorway service stations that just served 'heart-attack-on-a-plate'. There were no M&S food-stops then, no Waitrose, just cigarettes, sweets and crisps from petrol stations. This was the world I came back to on Friday afternoon, along the A12, my flashbacks fuelled by Cornish pasties.

Along the way Losers + Midimidis + Losers PR Ben + Roberto Pieroni, our incredible sound guy for these big gigs, listened to Empire Of The Sun, to get our juices flowing for the performance we'd hopefully see if we got there on time.

We did. What a site! The lurid allegations we heard on the news seemed unbelievable looking at the crowd and feeling the atmosphere. It came across like a slightly older, more swollen Secret Garden Party. Lots of mums and dads and kids, and enough grey hair to make me feel much much better about myself.

"Let's find the main stage... Empire Of The sun are about to come on".

The main stage was HUGE. There was stadium seating around the back of the field, so the oldies had somewhere to sit down, and it made the place look classy, like how I imagine a classical music festival.

The massive LED screen flickered into life and the stage was suddenly awash with silks, billowing in the strong wind. Multi-coloured, shiny silk flags, mad costumes, dancers filled the stage... we got ready for the spectacle Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele had been promising for over a year.

I remember asking about them playing at SGP and being told (this is last year) that they were turning down offers of below £100,000 because it "didn't cover what they had planned".

Whatever this was, it had been toned down and made more realistic, but it was still quite a show; the dancers were skilfully choreographed and made fresh costume changes for each song - the costumes were wild, colourful, stylish and outlandish affairs. Luke had his mental headpiece on, and the drummer looked like the one of Fisherspooner (but on steroids) when they had that mad stage show.

To be brutally honest, which those who know me well know I am in the habit of being, I was a little disappointed: For starters, no Nick Littlemore. I'm sorry but that's really not good enough... that's half the fucking band! And there was way too much backing track. The drums weren't even mic'd up. Luke sang live. Drummer pretended. Guitar player writhed a bit but I couldn't hear any evidence that what he played was coming out front. Even the lovely acoustic guitar on 'We Are The People' was already there.

Still, the spectacle kind of let them get away with it. You could forgive the 1980s Top Of The Popsishness about it and just get lost in the visual extravaganza. The computer graphics on the screen behind them were very cool, too. There was no denying, this was a SHOW, and for a few moments there, when your disbelief was suspended, when the dancers were in full flow and their costumes swished in the breeze that carried those beautiful melodies across that field, it was the greatest show on earth.

We saw the whole set before we had to go find the Sunset Arena. I was told it was "the other side of the lake, in the forest". The words 'lake' and 'forest' are especially welcome when spoken in the context of a festival, especially 'forest'. Secret Garden is based around a gorgeous lake, Rockness has its amazing lochside setting, but neither of these has a forest. It's that, I think, which makes Latitude so special.

There is something so calming about being in a forest. It's a feeling not unlike the rush you get when you get to the seaside and the salt and ozone in the air just instantly lift your soul. Maybe a forest does that with oxygen? I do love it so. As we walked past the lake and into the trees, one of the Midimidis said the word 'Ewok' - and that hit the nail on the head. We were in the Ewok forest, from 'Return Of The Jedi'!

There was so much going on; soundstages, bars, camping area, little random art installations, all in this forest, and the paths all led to this massive tent in a clearing: behold the Sunrise Arena.
In slight disbelief that we'd be playing the same slot as Tom Jones the night before, and Darwin Deez two nights after, we found the stage manager and got put in a river taxi (a fucking river taxi!) to pick up our gear. This was a first. Beats a golf-cart hands down.

The good things I'd heard about Latitude were all born out. Nice, mixed crowd. Lovely organisers and nice crew. While it's no Secret Garden in terms of randomness and attention to detail, when it comes to the site, or the wonderful sense of otherworldliness that comes with the fancy dress element, it's a really good festival experience. One of the very best out there.

Our set at midnight was something we'd been looking forward to for a long time, and I think we did ourselves proud. We've never played better, even though we'd not played several of these songs live before. Up to this point we'd played our remixes for about 40% of the set. Now we're doing almost all original material.

We were very chuffed by a text from Goldierocks, who was in the crowd, saying "AWESOME - please give me your album!" and by one crowd member who stopped me and used the word "mind-blowing". Thank you, good sir, for that.

But there was one thing on my mind before and after the gig. Glade festival. This was the weekend Glade would have been. I've played at almost every one since year one, I love it, and I miss it very much.

You probably heard the festival was cancelled but you may not know the inside story why. It was due to a massive rise in the cost of policing the event, imposed by Hampshire Police, from £29,000 last year to £175,000, an increase never justified to the promoters, nor based on any past incidents at the Glade. The increase was due to the insistence on a disproportionate level of policing for an event of its size, and also due to a new police chiefs directive that UK festivals are to be charged 'maximum overtime' for the police officers.

This left the Glade having to pay £55 an hour for a standard uniformed bobby - that's over £400 a day, more than most of the DJs playing there! - this despite the fact that they knew about the event eleven months in advance and had plenty of time to plan ahead for it and so have no reason to charge overtime rates.

The most worrying point, which has echoes of the Thatcherite clampdown on raves back in the day, is that this year the police have now reclassified music festivals to being 'serious risks to public safety' - in other words the same as a football match. This is astonishing. Unbelievable that anyone could seriously argue that thousands of like minded souls wanting a shared artistic experience could be the same as two huge gangs of opposing fans spoiling for a fight.

Interestingly the same 're-classification' has not been applied to events like Reading and Leeds, only to the non-corporate festivals, run by individuals, or collectives, who don't have the massive weight and legal teams the big boys do.

It is capitalism at work, and on that level, you can't blame the police, who do a brilliant job on the whole, while being underfunded and underappreciated. But unfortunately, by doing this, they are jeapordising our cultural heritage and depriving good people of something they thoroughly deserve, while depriving artists, musicians, actors, crew and support staff of the work they need in a seasonal industry. It's really very disappointing and I hope the police will reconsider this move, as they are hurting pro-police taxpayers, and that must surely go against the grain.

We must spread awareness of this issue, otherwise ticket prices will go through the roof, and the festival calendar will be homogenised, with only the big corporate-sponsored ones surviving, and all the lovely little ones, that make our festival scene so special in this country, all falling by the wayside. That would be awful.

Talk about it. Tweet about it. If you know somebody in the police force, talk to them, lobby and bring it home that we're on the same side here, we are citizens of a country we're proud of, with a music and arts culture that is the envy of the world, and we don't want that to be choked to death at the point of actual delivery.

The music and arts festival is a really important part of our landscape now. We've saved 6music. Now we have to turn our attention to this. It's just as important.

Eddy xx

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I think we've all been aware, dear readers, that something has been missing from our lives for some time now.

Sure, we can listen to four hours of dance music that rocks on The Remix every Friday night, but where do we go to experience a bunch of the acts who make this music live, all under one roof? The last time there was such a thing was at last September's Remix All-nighter at Matter. Broadcast live on Xfm, The Whip, Mixhell and Crystal Fighters played live, while Pendulum, Zombie Nation, Stereo:Type, Hervé and Streetlife DJs all put in awesome DJ sets. It was amazing. Sadly though, that was our final jaunt to Matter and, with the venue now out of action, work has been going on behind the scenes to bring that monster of a night back elsewhere.

At the same time Eddy has been looking to start something else, something more regular, and it's that something else we bring you news of this week - our own weekly hang out where we can all get together, drink a few of beers and check out how those bands, producers, DJs and remixers we listen to on the radio every week do it live. Ladies and gentlemen, it's over to Eddy Temple-Morris with a special announcement...

It was with a heavy heart that Remix walked away from Matter, I loved that place. It always had such a bad rep transport-wise, everybody ragged on about how far away it was, so much so that I was shocked the first time I went there for Remix Night, and it took me 20 minutes by car from Archway, where I lived at the time. It took me longer to get to flipping Shoreditch!

And that soundsystem was the best one I ever heard. Standing on that piston-driven dancefloor was like nothing on Earth, outside a soundman's wet dream. The people who ran Matter were lovely, and the staff were nice, even the security guys were polite and helpful... I shall miss that place very much.

We've since been trying to find a home for the Remix All-nighter and I won't lie, it's been a proper ball-ache. We found a great venue in Shoreditch, recce'd it, the deal was done. It took months but everyone was happy, then - kapow! - the venue told us they couldn't get the 6am licence they'd promised. Back to square one. We found another place, again in Shoreditch, a natural home for Remix after all those years at Cargo, but that was scuppered within a month when our venue contact was made redundant. Finally, we found the perfect place, but in the riverside hinterland that is Vauxhall. On the surface it seemed ideal, but again we were scuppered after much to-ing and fro-ing when the venue told us we couldn't have live bands there.

The latest chapter in this saga unfolded last week. My agent called me and asked if I'd like a residency in Camden. That's interesting, I thought, subversion has always been my thing, and the current generation of Camden indie-kids have long been much more open minded than their predecessors. Proud Galleries, he said, and I smiled at the thought. I'd played there several times, at either The Playground or Bangers & Mash, and had a great time at both, with Losers and DJing.

Then came the punchline:

"It's every Thursday"
"What?! Weekly?!"
"Yep, they want you to do a weekly... Thursday is the new Friday"

Initially I was horrified by the idea. All the negative points hammered home: I have to get up and take my son Tone to school on Friday morning, plus the stress of running a weekly night is a killer. I remember my bosom buddy Danny MacNamara doing one in Manchester and coaxing out several new grey hairs as a result.

But then I thought about it properly, and I remembered what a pain in the gonads filling out Matter was on a Friday night. I could never persuade the 3000 people who came to the last Remix Night at SeOne to come to Matter,and we were always under such pressure to book big acts that I was forever having to turn down little acts I love, the Fenech-Solers and Killaflaws of this world.

The fact that Matter was such a big venue also made booking big acts a nightmare, even those I was pivotal in breaking to a wider audience, like 2ManyDJs. Their agent simply refused to let them play because she claimed it would interfere with their plans to play Brixton Academy. That happened again and again with pretty much every huge band I was friends with. The fact it was on a Friday also exacerbated this.

Thursdays at Proud Galleries would be much easier, I was told. Midweek gigs are much easier to book talent for, and I could go back to supporting up-and-coming bands again - The Remix has always been primarily about breaking new artists and bigging up unsung heroes. That combined with the thought of subverting that Camden crowd by slipping the proverbial E into their pints, well, that made me smile.

I also thought it'd be a great opportunity for those 'secret' shows, where bands like Alex Metric's may find themselves playing a warm up gig before their big Friday show somewhere more high profile, or Vince Frankmusik could come and play a set to a really receptive crowd. I also love the idea of bringing some leftfield beats to a traditionally indie home-turf. I'll be looking to get the likes of Jakwob, Skism and Nero to play there, and will be interested to see how the crowd react.

We'll see pretty quickly, I think, what works and what doesn't. It's always been a very eclectic night. Tom Middleton, the greatest eclectic in dance music, told me it's his favourite night to play because he knows he can get away with ANYTHING. I really hope we can continue this along the same lines.

So there you have it, it's called 'Club Remix'. It's on Thursday nights at Proud Galleries starting in September. The Remix All-nighter is still on the shelf and can be brought out and dusted off when the need arises and we want to do something huge.

I'm also going to get these sets recorded, thanks to the nice people at Jägermeister, for live session tracks and live mixes to be played on the show.

So, if you're in a little band that wants a gig get in touch, we're even programming indie bands towards the front of the night. If you're in a medium band, get in touch, because this is perfect for you. And if you're one of my famous chums in a big band, then come have some fun with no pressure, on a Thursday night. It's the new Friday, didn't you know?

Eddy xx

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In the early days of 'Eddy Says' I wrote a Top Ten Things I Hate list, which, as I recall, went down rather well. It seems that a large dose of negativity from someone normally so positive came as a breath of fresh air.

So, last week I started updating this list with a view to publishing it here in Eddy Says. But just as I was writing about people who put the sign of a fish on the back of their car, it occurred to me that everybody who follows me on www.twitter.com/eddytm knows I hate Muse; in fact it's become a standing joke. But very people know the reason why, and just assume my vitriol is reckless hatred for no good reason, because I've never publicly said why. So here, my friends, is exactly why I hate the band that my pal Alex Metric perfectly describes as "overblown wank".

In my recent piece about Stuart Cable, I touched on the fact that we produced TV shows from the same building in the noughties. That building was The Pop Factory, in Porth, Rhondda Valleys, south Wales. He did a BBC show called 'Cable TV', while I produced and presented a youth magazine programme on ITV1 Wales, called 'This Way Up'.

In the first show of series one we'd booked Muse, who at the time had established themselves as a hot new band, but had yet to ignite into the stadium-filling act they are today. They were about to release their cover of Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good', which would prove to be their big, breakthrough hit. The show was all about promoting new music, with a few characters from established bands, like Afrika Bambaata or Black Grape, making appearances alongside new, unbroken artists like Bent, Nextmen or Frou Frou. Muse were clearly in between the two points and hungry for exposure to help take them to the next level. You'd think this would make for a good interview? Hmmm.

Because it was the first show and I really wanted it to go well, I hired, for the first time ever, a researcher to help with the interview questions. I'd always done these myself throughout my whole career, but this time I wanted to get the best value out of my guests, so I persuaded The Pop Factory to pay for Robin Bresnark, my favourite writer from the legendary and much missed (and far more enjoyable to read) NME rival, Melody Maker.

Robin was a MASSIVE Muse fan. I mean, he lived for this band. He knew them, had interviewed them a bunch of times, followed their gigs, he was almost part of their team. So Robin furnished me with a load of conversation starters based on information he had up his sleeve. We had lot of random props in the studio, like an old convertible car, in which I did a 'road trip' interview (years later and I notice Jo Whiley does one that's exactly the same, same format, same questions, but on radio). Among the assorted retro items, was one of those old skool fridges.

Robin suggested we fill the fridge with items, each of which would lead to something he knew they'd have plenty to talk about, and we'd pick these things out of the fridge rather than following the usual Q&A interview format. For example, he knew Matt Bellamy had been in trouble with the police back home, so we purchased a small plastic police helmet and popped that in there with the other stuff.

I should explain that, at the time, I was the 'John Kennedy' of an Irish radio station and was supporting Muse heavily. I'd played their demo CD before they were signed, and I thought they had massive potential - despite their singer sounding like a spoilt kid having a hissy-fit - and were clearly very accomplished musicians.

They did their several performance takes and sat down in the interview area, where hordes of bands and celebrities would sit in the coming months, and love it or loath it, would 'play the game' for the purposes of valuable PR.

Muse loathed it. Matt, I think, took an instant dislike to the format of the interview and his back went up like somebody had stuck a broom up his arse. His body language was twitchy, stressed and impatient. His mind was on something else and he clearly wanted to be somewhere else. The other two stayed silent and stone-faced as Matt answered every single question with either the word 'yes' or 'no', depending on which of these words killed the conversation more effectively.

Here is a snapshot of that interview:
We take the police hat out of the fridge
ETM: So, Matt, ever been in trouble with the rozzers...?
MB: No.
ETM: [fully aware that there was a good story here] Hang on, are you sure?
MB: Yes.
ETM: [feeling increasingly uncomfortable] Erm, are you absolutely sure about that? Not even a little spot of bother with a local bobby in Teignmouth?
MB: No.
ETM: Wow, you really don't want to be here do you?
MB: No.

I had, up to that point, interviewed some difficult people, but there was usually always a sense of professionalism, a feeling of acceptance that we'd both rather not be in this awkward situation but we're 'playing the game' for our mutual benefit. Bell(end)amy, had no such sense of propriety. He just ruined the interview, and, I sensed, rather enjoyed ruining his bit and the while opening show of a new series on ITV.

It turned out he wanted to get back to London to see Soulwax. Ironically, they were my pals whom I'd seen blow Muse off stage, as their support band, at University Of London Union.

The most horrid, nastiest piece of work I'd ever met up to that point was Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet, who were in their death throes when I had to work with him at Radio One. Marti was, on the surface of things, even worse and actually attacked me verbally with a long stream of abuse. But when I think back, at least he had an excuse. It's a pretty shit excuse, one that is, in a sense, inexcusable - he was a heroin addict at the time. Yes, I know it's a lame excuse but nevertheless there is a chance he would not have acted like such a cunt if he'd been straight and clean at the time. Matt had no such excuse. He was a cunt, pure and simple: no smack, no coke, he was just a pure, unadulterated, total and utter cunt, with no strings attached.

His best efforts to knobble the show came to nothing, as the series as a whole rated as high as 'Eastenders', the biggest audience share that ITV had ever seen for a 'youth/music show'.

Sometime afterwards, I covered for Zane Lowe on his MTV show 'Gonzo'. One of the videos played was by Muse, and I, in my usual overly honest way, told Zane's audience how my TV interview with Muse had gone so tits up, and how Matt was so horrid that I'd gone home afterwards and thrown out all my Muse CDs, including their demo and first single. Basically, I went on a bit of a rant, a vehemently anti-Muse rant.

The show was not live, like my old MTV show was. It was what they called a 'links and clips show' - we recorded links, then they inserted the music video clips later. But in a gorgeous twist of fate, some probably coked-up idiot at MTV (and my god there were a lot of them to choose from) played out that ONE link about Muse in between every single music video on the entire show.

Picture it: Muse video. Eddy rants about Muse. Beastie Boys video. Same Eddy rant about Muse. Oasis video. Same Muse tirade etc etc ad nauseam.

I remember being at Xfm shortly after this MTV cock up, and seeing Muse at the end of the corridor. Bellendamy was about to walk towards the lift, clocked me, turned around and walked in the polar opposite direction as fast as his little legs could carry him.

Since they were ruined for me by that interview, they've done nothing, musically, to make me rue my decision to abandon them totally. I think Alex Metric's description is poetic. Matt's histrionics, combined with that awful, overblown, post-Queen tribute band thing have only served to make me hate them more. They are The Darkness, minus self awareness.

Back to Alex Metric again, for the parting shot, and his last marvellous tweet on the subject: "Muse? Fucking Muse?! Stop shitting in my ear Bellamy, you knob". Couldn't have put it better myself.
Eddy xx

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So, you've all been watching the World Cup, right? I say that like it's obligatory, most of Team CMU haven't watched any of it. We're very good at keeping up with all things music, less good with all things football.

However, this time round we've been able to keep track of the main developments via Twitter, largely through Eddy's impassioned outbursts, which I'm sure many of you have seen. Through him, we've got all the ups, all the downs, and some of the casual xenophobia thrown in too.

But it's all come with a spirit of global friendship, and has, actually, made Eddy even more internationally minded than normal; and acutely aware of how our desire to support the underdog comes to the fore at times like this. Especially when your own team is doing so badly.

So, this week Eddy considers the bad and the good of World Cup fever.

The past fortnight week I have been mostly making bold, sweeping statements loosely based on racial stereotypes, and offending people in the process.

This is something, that, in all seriousness, I'm becoming increasingly aware of during the World Cup. I'm not preaching here, more trying to show self-awareness. I have a terrible habit of grand sweeping statements and watching the World Cup brings out the worst in me. Of course it all spills out onto Twitter, so apologies if you've been offended, and biggups if you've got in to this peculiar spirit and enjoyed the daily tongue-lashings.

I'll confess to loving the catastrophic situation which the French team found themselves in, just because of every moody bastard waiter that was rude to me and my girlfriend in Paris earlier this year. As the ball swished against the netting, I found myself swearing in particular at one specific son-of-a-bitch who put a menu in front of his face and actually had the fucking gall (or is that 'Gaul') to make rude gestures at us, via the next door table, when we ordered some duck 'a bit pink'.

Elsewhere, when Nigeria lost you could find me complaining that we'd all be getting harsh parking tickets as a result. When England played that shocker against Algeria, I got more retweets than anything I've ever put out there, when I pointed out that I could have "filled my motorcycle helmet full of bees and sat in front of a freshly painted wall" for pretty much the same experience.

I offended a nice Uraguayan by pointing out, after that ludicrous decision to disallow England's second goal against Germany on Sunday, that loads of Germans had moved to South America in the mid to late 40s, and that the referee's Grandad may have been the proud owner of an Iron Cross. It was just a mixture of historical fact and humorous conjecture, not meant to offend at all...

Cheeky stereotypes aren't the only thing that come out during times like this. I always say to friends "never play football during The World Cup". Because of the beneath-the-surface tension, people are too keen, too excitable, and tackles are made far too hard, leading to many more injuries than a normal week. Lord Fader, of The Loose Cannons, is painfully aware of this, as his last Sunday afternoon kickabout left him on crutches.

But these, and the other negative manifestations of the World Cup are, for me, far outweighed by the positivity, the unbridled joy, and the generosity of spirit. For example, I saw an Italian football fan hug a Kiwi after their match, when I watched the highlights on the iPlayer. Has a Spurs fan *ever* hugged an Arsenal fan throughout history? Has a Celtic fan ever eyeballed a Rangers fan and given them a great big man-hug when the team have drawn in a cup competition?

Just as I thought I was drowning in my own bileousness, I realised something. In the middle of a ten hour journey back home from a Losers live gig in Aberystwyth earlier this month, it dawned on me that there was, as with all things, a positive side to World Cup Fever.

New Zealand, my newly adopted side because England were performing so awfully at the time, were facing the World Champions, Italy. As our 'tourbus' sliced through the Brecon Beacons, the Kiwis went 1-0 up against the might of The Roman Empire. As I was punching the roof of the transit minibus, I realised that the World Cup is more about the positive things, the underdogs having their day. I'm forever showing love for 'losers'. Always cheering for the African side to triumph, or the amateur team to kill the giant. That's the real beauty of this competition, having a snapshot at the lives and cultures of little nations and showing them heartfelt, unfettered love and support.

The Losers ethos is perfectly reflected in The World Cup - underdogs championed, unsung heroes sung loud and proud. When Mexico beat France, in emerald green, I thought of all the t-shirts currently being worn by every Irish man or woman on planet earth, that reads 'Anyone But France', and felt my one sixteenth of Irish jump for joy. When the Kiwis scared Italy shitless I remembered that Maoris have fifty different words for 'family' and are among the kindest most noble people I have ever met.

As I cheered Ghana on, I remembered that one of the nicest people I've ever met is Ghanean, and I remembered my accountant is from a Ghanean family too, I got in touch with both of them to big them up and wish them luck, and was overwhwlmed with the positivity that the World Cup was instilling in me.

So this week, aside from the thinly veiled racism, nationalism and xenophobia, I shall also be practicing openess, unity, internationalism, harmony, generosity of spirit and the embracing of foreign culture. The vuvuzelas shall cease to be the source of annoying sounds that kill the match vibe, in my mind from now on they will be a dvice for creating a glorious and unique atmosphere, an aural barometre of the collective crowd's emotion...

I shall be enjoying, and getting involved with my every pore, a competition which demonstrates, literally, that despite the fact we all look different, think and act different, wear different clothes and like different music, we are the same. Vive La Difference (as those French twats would say - haha, see what I did there ;). Enjoy the rest of this wonderful competition and maybe see you on Twitter during one of the games.

Now I'm going to call an old German friend and congratulate them, and catch up and roar with happy laughter.

Eddy xx

Click here to see this edition of the Eddy Says e-bulletin in full

Last week Eddy brought us a tale of the point in time where Kasabian were just beginning to emerge as one of Britain's biggest new bands. This week he's casting his mind back fifteen years to a period where a not dissimilar band were just beginning their ascent into rock legend.

Okay, musically Kasabian and Oasis may not be entirely alike, but both arrived with a certain swagger. In the case of Oasis, an actual (rather than metaphorical) swagger which many of you will remember caused a great deal of men on the streets of the UK in the mid 90s to apparently partly lose control of their arms and legs as they attempted to copy Liam Gallagher's famous walk.

Some did it in an attempt to emulate the then new rock star, others purely to mock those guys who thought they could reach anywhere near the levels of cool given off by Liam at that time. Here, Eddy remembers one occasion when he joined that latter group of mockers and ended up giving a spelling lesson.

The year was 1995 and I was Senior Presentation Producer at Radio One. In layman's terms this meant, as part of a two man team with the brilliant Gem Godfrey, we made the jingles and promos, all the mad soundscapes and audio glue that held the station together.

Part of my job was to ensure that programmes produced OUTside the R1 building sounded like they were produced INside it. So, I'd go and meet up with the likes of Tim Westwood, Danny Rampling, and, in this case, Mark Radcliffe and Mark Riley. Or Mark n Lard, as they were known in the roaring 90s. Their brilliant show came from Oxford Road, Manchester and it was time to pay them a visit. So I grabbed Hannah, my lovely assistant, and we headed for Euston Station to catch the train north to meet up with the boys.

At that time, we - and I mean the UK, not just Hannah and I - were in the grips of Oasis fever. 'Definitely Maybe' had been the fastest and biggest selling debut album of all time, 'What's The Story, Morning Glory?' was about to drop and take them to the status of gods. Everybody was talking about them, all the time. With that in mind, picture me walking down this long ramp on the way to the platform, with Hannah. In front of us are two men heading for the same train. The one on the left had the kind of Ian Brown walk, that loose limbed monkey swagger, that was - I kid you not - exactly like 'the Liam Gallagher walk' we all know and love now. From behind view, he looked like a stereotypical Liam-like Manc scamp, larging it with every stride.

Hannah and I'd had a lunchtime drink, because we'd got out of the office and it felt like a holiday, and we were both genuinely thrilled to be going to the centre of the indie universe. So, fuelled by the Dutch courage provided by our celebratory tipple, I began to take the piss of this guy in front of us. I started walking like him and pretending it was Liam Gallagher in front of us. I said to Hannah, with quite some bravado, and in a mock Liam accent: "Hey, dat's the Manchestoh train, it goes to Man-chest-or, and I'm aah kid, goin 'ome to Manchestoh to see me mam and that, in ManchestOH".

Our fits of giggles and pisstakes carried down the platform, volume increased by alcohol, but as we neared the train, the two manc lads peeled left towards the First Class carriage. Hang on, First Class? I gulped. Monkey-boy on the left turned around to catch our eye, and to both our horror and delight, we got a flash of those gorgeous eyes topped with that neanderthal forehead moustache. Hannah and I looked at each other and gawped, as we realised the full horror of the situation. I'd just been rampantly taking the piss out of the most exciting and iconic new frontmen on Planet Earth. And he'd busted us.

At that point I wanted the ground to open and swallow me, as we headed to our normal, riff-raff class, licence-fee paid seats and took stock of the situation.

"He smiled at you", said Hannah. "He thought you were funny". Okay, there had been an undeniable smile-type facial movement there, but that could have been misconstrued, a simian-like 'teeth bearing when threatened'. "You should go and say hello", she continued. "Tell him who you are. For God's sake, you took 'Shakermaker' into the playlist meeting, you're a supporter, he'd be chuffed to meet you".

I wasn't so convinced. "I'm not so sure H", I muttered. "I was taking the piss, and I hate invading famous people's space. Besides he might twat me for being cheeky and I LOVE his band".

In those days there were two kinds of people in the UK, Blur people and Oasis people. I was Oasis people.

"Look, fuck it, I'm going to go to the buffet car and find him", said Hannah in that no nonsense way that girls like Hannah do - brave, independent, and slightly maternal.

"Noooooooo", I called out as she stood up, but she was already on her way, leaving me with my head buried in my hands.

A fraction of eternity later, Hannah reappeared with a grin the size of Berkshire:
"He wants to meet you".

"What the fuck?!"

"I've been talking to him, he wants to meet you", said repeated. "I told him who you are and what you do, and that you're too shy to say hello. He said to tell you not to be daft and come say hello, he's at the buffet car hatchway".

I swallowed some air.

"Fuuuck... really?"

"Really".

I swallowed some more air.

Then inhaled a deep breath of it.

"OK, let's do it..."

We got to the opening where soggy British Rail sandwiches and cups of shit tea were being handed to people for the price of a small car in eastern Europe. There was the inevitable queue, as the train pulled away from London.

Liam was just standing there, talking to his mate, at the front of the queue. I didnt want to interrupt but Hannah brokered our meeting: "Liam, this is Eddy, my boss, the guy I told you about... Eddy", she motioned between us. "Liam".

"Alright, our kid?" He flashed a knowing smile and continued: "Thanks for the support man, means a lot".

He said he thought my pisstake was funny, because he WAS on his way back to see his Mam, and had a sense of humour about it. The touchpaper had been lit, and we spent the next two or three hours hanging out, shooting the shit, and leaning out of the window smoking cigarrettes. I smoked Camels daily then, and Liam took loads off me.

He talked about how 'mad' life had become now they'd started to blow up. Every now and again, we were interrupted by people who had got to the front of the buffet queue and recognised Liam. A really random selection of people, from one guy who said "Hey, I was at school with you... remember me?" to a bloke in a posh suit and voice to match, who said "I think you're marvellous, I have your CD in my car". Each and every approach was met with the same wide eyed wonder, genuine enthusiasm and gratitude. Liam was the same with the scalleys and the poshies, there was not a trace of bitterness or egotism.

We talked about the band, and he kept saying "I'm just a singer me, I don't write songs, I'm just a singer".

I had two overriding thoughts when talking to him, the first was that he was, in the academic sense, as thick as pigshit, but that he had an extremely intelligent trait: self-awareness. This was a man who knew his limitations and had no pretentions. He was totally charming, witty, self-deprecating, approachable, chatty and unspoiled by the ravages of money and success.

Towards the end of the journey he said: "My man, I've ponced so many cigs off yer, what can I do for you? Guestlist at any gig? Album? You name it, man".

"I already get all those things from Dylan, your radio plugger", I responded. "But there is one thing you could do..."

I'd told him about my girlfriend, and that I was planning on proposing the next time I saw her. She was a big Oasis fan, so I asked if he would write her a note asking her to marry me.

Liam looked nervous.

"I don't like writing, I'm not very good with words..."

"That's OK, I am!" I grinned, not wanting to miss this opportunity. "I can say the words and you just write them down and sign your name".

He agreed, and I found a worthless banknote from Laos in my wallet and gave it to him with a scrounged pen.

"OK. Here goes: 'Tai, please marry Eddy, definitely not maybe, love Liam'", I proposed.

"Good one, like it", he said and set about transcribing my words.

He wrote like one of those kids who can't help but chew on their tongue when they write, and when he got to the the word 'definitely', he hit a wall.

There was a slightly awkward pause...

"How do you spell definitely?"

"Dude, it's the name of your album!"

"I know, but I told you I'm shit at writing stuff. I can't fooking write!' He said, smiling with an awareness of how amusing this situation had become.

"D-E-F-I..." I began.

To this day, I cannot remember if it was my fault or his, but when he handed the note back to me, it said: "DEFINTLY NOT MAYBE - love Liam X".

"Defintly".

Priceless.

The note is now probably buried in a landfill somewhere, after my wife's handbag got nicked on a London bus. I've since had a child, separated, divorced, had a bitter custody battle and I'm on the other side, happier than ever.

Liam, sadly, has lost all that wonderful boyish innocence now. I've not spoken to him since, but he did send me a nice message when I was on MTV, saying that I was "their top man on MTV".

I often see or hear his words on radio or telly and think back to that time, when the novelty of it all still hadn't worn off. I won't hear a bad word said about him, despite all the knobbish things he's said and done, because I know that, at heart, he is a good soul. A simple soul. But undoubtedly a top banana.

Eddy xx

Click here to see this edition of the Eddy Says e-bulletin in full

I just wrote this account of the early days of Kasabian for a nice, shiny, coffee table book that Xfm are putting together in time for Christmas. I have no doubt that, while my honesty and candour may be appreciated, most of this will end up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. But you, my dear friends, colleagues and kindred spirits, deserve the full story:

There is a big box at Xfm where people in the office dispose of CDs they don't want. Back around the start of the new millennium I'd often trawl through it because, at that time, Xfm was particularly anti-dance, and electronic music of any kind, in daylight hours, so I'd often find discarded gems in there. On such a trawl I discovered a CDR, blank, save for the word "Kasabian", in between two squares of white card, held together by a pair of grey rubber bands.

When I played it I was immediately blown away. It was 'processed beats'. I played it on the show straight away, declaring it to be the best demo of the year and one of the best I'd ever heard. I did some digging and found they were managed by the same person who looked after Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and so I booked them to play at my free rock night, Kill All Hippies. It was obvious to me that these men would be stars, and I championed them on air and in clubs over the next many months.

I could hear audible whoops of joy from the dancefloor at Remix Night when I dropped 'Reason Is Treason', and was getting masses of emails from newly converted fans. And yet my counterparts at Xfm, and elsewhere, failed to respond. The band even got my pal Garret 'Jacknife' Lee to do a special radio mix because nobody was supporting them.

I sent regular emails to the then Xfm Head Of Music, giving positive feedback on this band I'd discovered; but, strangely, he never got back to me, not even once. My emails got more and more passionate, because Xfm, at that time, were simply not supporting this great band. In fact, the only airplay they got anywhere back then was on my show.
 
I was incredulous, as I'd never heard more of an "Xfm band" - they had the swagger of Oasis, with the beats of Primal Scream and Stone Roses-esque melodies... you couldn't have genetically engineered a band more perfect for the station in a mad indie laboratory.

But, despite all this, the next single that came out from the band charted at number eleven. With no airplay to speak of (save Xfm's The Remix), and because of a legion of rabid fans (called 'The Movement') who were as motivated as Jehovah's Witnesses.

Kasabian supported Chikinki at Remix Night, and I could tell there were more people excited about the support than the headliner. People were slapping me on the back and saying "nice one for introducing me to these guys, man" - there was such a warm feeling of community around the boys, and we all had the sense we were part of something big.

Having been ignored by Xfm's Head Of Music for about a year by this point, I squared up to him in the office and said: "What is your problem with Kasabian, man? Did they eat your hamster when you were a kid or something?"

He looked at the floor, then he sighed and said: "I just HATE them, Eddy".

At that point I could have quite happily hurled him from the fourth floor window but tried to be more adult: "Do you think it's wise to let your personal feelings cloud your judgement?"

"Look, I just hate them, OK? I'm sorry..."

"Come on", I said. "You are in charge of programming music on the most important station in the UK for new music of this type, and you're being subjective about something you HAVE to be objective and professional about. This is not cool. I've sent you email after email giving you genuine feedback from clubs and on air which clearly shows this band are on fire. Every time I go on air I get a hundred texts all saying 'biggup for playing Kasabian, Eddy!' And they just charted at number fucking eleven - what more do you want?'

"That's just hype, RCA hype. Don't believe it", he feebly ventured.

"If that was the case, then why aren't The Cooper Temple Clause in the charts?" I questioned.

"Erm, OK", he stuttered. "Maybe their next single is a bit better ['LSF'], maybe we can support that. But I can't make any promises".

"Alright", I relented, and left it there.

When the next playlist was published, he'd ignored 'LSF' and it was clear that the UK was about to be gripped by Kasabimania. Rather than come to blows in the office, I went over his head and told his boss the whole story. The boss was flabbergasted that his music chief had ignored what was such straight and honest feedback and, more importantly, had let his personal feelings affect such an important issue.

'LSF' went on the Xfm playlist the following week. Months later they played our big Xmas gig. They were, by this point, officially the biggest, brightest new band in the UK.

The music chief soon left for Radio 1, clearly a much more appropriate home for him, and we got the awesome Mike Walsh, who's steered our mighty ship ever since. I have to say Xfm has never sounded better than right now, and I can sleep at night knowing that the next time I find someone like Kasabian, I won't have to think about hurling anyone out of anything!

Eddy xx

Click here to see this edition of the Eddy Says e-bulletin in full

I have a tendency to get over emotional when I've had less than five hours sleep, and Monday, when I wrote this, was such a day. I also get quite emotional over my fatherland, Wales. So look out, it's a double whammy today.

The first thing I did on Monday morning was log onto Twitter to check the situation vis-à-vis the two last slots I was booking at the Secret Garden Party, which I was giving away in a competition. While there I saw a tweet, from my pals Utah Saints, actually a 're-tweet' of Chris Moyles, who was shocked at the "news of Stuart Cable". "What the fuck?", I thought. "What happened to Stuart?" I called the Utahs, who confirmed, to my utter horror, that Stuart had been found dead at his home at 5am and that the circumstances surrounding his death were "not suspicious".

I've since heard, unofficially, that it may have been a stupid accident; simply that, after a great party, Stuart fell asleep on his back and, in classic rock tradition, drowned when he puked in his sleep. This is pure conjecture but seems plausible. Like most big, barrel chested valley boys, he loved a jar with his mates, same as most of us.

I'm long enough in the tooth to have lost half a dozen friends over the years, but, for some reason, this one has hit me really hard.

Many of you will be incredulous that I would be in any way moved by the death of an ex-Stereophonic, but a few of you who used to watch 'Up For It' on MTV UK in and around 1998 will know how close I was to this band. When I got my own show on MTV - before my boss Christine and I discovered Zane Lowe on a VHS tape, before Melody Maker packed it in, before I'd ever done a radio show or remixed a single tune - I championed a little three-piece band from Cwmaman, near Aberdare, in the rolling valleys of south Wales. I had fallen deeply in love with a track called 'Traffic', and I got progressively more and more emotional about it, and them, on air.

At that time, every single radio station was ignoring them. Every major one, anyway. I remember when they played Barfly at The Monarch (before the Camden venue simply became The Barfly), Steve Lamacq, then co-host of the excellent 'Evening Session' alongside Jo Whiley, was there. After the gig he said, and I quote: "The lead singer's not a star, they've got no songs, and they won't get further than The Monarch". Not long afterwards, I found myself on MTV every single day for two hours, live. 'Traffic' affected me deeply, and I'd go on air, and make these passionate speeches about the band, and why they deserved to be huge. Kelly Jones's dad, Oscar, told me sometime later that he was watching, and that he shed a tear at the time.

Happily, Steve Lamacq got this one horribly wrong, and my emotional outpourings on MTV served as a spark to a tinderbox. Not long afterwards, Stereophonics were headlining Cardiff University, where they sweetly invited me up to say thanks. Not long after that, they were playing their biggest gig to date, in Cardiff Castle, and asked me to introduce them on stage, and to do the interview for the video (yes, VHS video, one of the last before we all got DVDs).

I smile to this day when I think that within twelve months of my igniting what became a forest fire, that Stereophonics were performing at Steve Lamacq's Christmas Party in BBC Maida Vale Studios, and Steve had conveniently forgotten his wayward prediction of how Stereophonics' career would pan out.

Suffice to say, I got to meet, know, hang with Stuart and his wonderful family a lot in those days, and after he was sacked from Stereophonics. Stuart's Mrs, Nicola, had just had their first child and he wanted to spend time with her rather than do a promo tour of the States etc - thereby causing Kelly to question his commitment. In retrospect, of course Stuart just had his priorities straight, family first, then work, such was his commitment to his family life.

We both subsequently produced TV programmes in the same building in south Wales, so I knew Stuart before he was famous, during the height of his fame, and afterwards, and here's the point: in all that time HE NEVER CHANGED. Stuart was a colossal character. The embodiment of everything that is great about the Welsh. That huge, booming, baritone voice, the big smile, the cheeky banter, and the ability to light up a room when he entered it. He was a great hair-bear of a Celtic man-god. I was looking forward to him becoming a Welsh version of Brian Blessed; universally loved for his cartoon like character, positivity and ability to take life on with a lightness of heart.

But in all seriousness, the strength and breadth of a character can, in my experience, be best tested by showering it in money, success and fame. I have seen so many people fall, fail, turn, as soon as they come into contact with these things. I've seen men turn inside out, lose their friends, their loves, their sanity, all because of the pressure that comes with success. You see this with some Lottery winners. You know, those stories with headlines like "winning the lottery ruined my life". When you chuck money and fame at a weak character, the cracks begin to show, they open up and before you know it, that person, who you thought was nice, has been shattered and replaced by some horrid, negative, paranoid, hideous shadow of their former self.

The fact that Stuart's wheels never came off are absolute proof of the iron-cast strength of his character, and the fact that a total arsehole like Damon Albarn woke up this morning, but Stuart didn't, is proof of what Richard Dawkins knows. There is no God.

I just chatted with Perry from Pendulum, who was a mutual friend, and the words that kept coming up were "lovely" and "nice", (remember "nice" is Damon Albarn's least favourite word). Stuart was one of the nicest guys on Planet Earth, and he kept it real. He'd headline a festival one day, then take his family swimming in the local pool the next. He was affable, and more to the point, approachable. If you see Albarn in the street, cunting around W10 on that ridiculously expensive looking bicycle he rides, the one that says "look at me, I'm a multi-millionaire", and you ask him nicely for an autograph, I have no doubt he would ignore you, or tell you to fuck off nine times out of ten. Stuart, on the other hand, would NEVER show disrespect to a fellow human being, because he knows we are all the same when you take the money and the flash bike away. We bleed the same blood, we feel the same pain and we shed the same tears.

The entertainment industry is famous for being full of sharks, hyenas, snakes, vermin and pond-scum. Stuart was proof you didn't have to follow suit. You could be, if I follow this animal analogy, a giraffe. Giraffes have the biggest hearts in the animal kingdom. Stuart's was huge. He was a genuine, loving, lovable, huggable great galoot with comedy hair and a smile that could light up Wembley Stadium. That's what he leaves behind, a legacy of niceness. Something to balance out the bitterness, aloofness and falsity of people like Albarn.

Keep smiling. Don't lose your faith. That is the path to the dark side. Keep smiling. We have to keep the force strong for what Stuart represents. Stay approachable, be nice to strangers, don't fuck people over on the way up, because you will see them again on your way down. Keep smiling. When news like this comes it's hard, but we must keep our chins up and we must "live well... that is the best revenge". I'm now taking the rest of the afternoon off, in memory of Stuart, and doing something he approved of more than anything else, something he would be wholeheartedly behind and encourage every person in a similar circumstance to do. I'm going to hang out with and play with my son. And we will smile together. Keep smiling.

Eddy xx

Click here to see this edition of the Eddy Says e-bulletin in full

It's been a really mixed week. A couple of crushingly disappointing things happened, but one or two utterly ace things balanced that out. And the weather? Jesus, Clapham Common is astonishing when the weather is good. It seems like the kind of place you'd take a picture of to wave under the nose of a wannabe suicide bomber, saying, "This is what you'll get if you do what we ask, this is heaven my brother, you will be here as soon as you push this button".

The week started badly. I'd been waiting for an album I've been looking forward to for literally years, by an artist I was the first to play and who I have been bigging up here and in my DJ Mag column for ages. It was such a crushing disappointment, so mediocre, that I almost wept with the frustration of unrealised potential. I'm not saying who it is, because I genuinely like the guy and want him to do well, and more people read this than some established dance music magazines. So let's just chalk that one down to bad A&R and hope he gives us something as good as his amazing remixes next time he makes an album.

Meanwhile, somebody at the Latitude Festival got hold of some Losers tunes from our skillful and fabulously hot drummer Camilla, and loved them so much that we got booked to headline a stage there. Now this is awesome news, I've heard so many good things about Latitude from friends, colleagues and fans alike. "A huge Secret Garden Party with more trees" was perhaps the most intriguing review. So, we're playing at midnight on Friday in an arena that's in a forest, I'm told. We could all literally explode with excitement over this.

We're almost at a position where we can announce the release date for, and the label that will be putting out, the Losers album and a couple more singles. I'm hoping that the next time I put digit to keyboard for you, it will be with a grin the size of Liverpool.

Finally, a huge sorry to those who came to see us at X-Posure live, only for us to be cut off at the last song by some tool of an in-house sound guy who wasn't able to communicate properly. John will play a track or two on his show, so at least we have that to look forward to.

Sorry it's such a short one this week and it doesn't really say much. Truth is I'm about to go pick up my boy from school and I want to go play Frisbee with him and have a barbeque together for early dinner.

Til next week, eat lots of British asparagus, not that Peruvian muck that makes your wee goes fluorescent green. And cook on coals wherever possible. And, in the words of Bill S Preston and Theodore Logan, be 'excellent' to each other.

Much love,
eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

I remember when MIA came on The Remix years ago, around the time of her first single 'Galang', a real 'London street' record, ironically produced by a member of Pulp, probably in Sheffield. She was undeniably gorgeous, and there was a sharp sassiness about her, which was born of massive confidence, almost bordering on arrogance.

I recall playing 'And Down' by Jacques Lu Conte, from the 'Two Culture Clash' record on Wall Of Sound (which, looking back, ended up as the precursor to the Major Lazer album) and marvelling at how Stuart Price (aka Jacques) had successfully blended acid with dancehall. MIA was, like, 'I done that ages ago', her eyes rolling ceiling-ward slightly...

She was extremely wrapped up in her coolness, and wanted everyone around her to know that she was an envelope pusher, a maverick, a style leader, not a follower. I did have a feeling that a few of us were lighting her touch paper and retiring to a safe distance.

So, fast forward several years, and I hear there's a new MIA record that people are getting excited about. In fact, John Kennedy played it on Xfm before I'd managed to get my hands on a copy, and I got an excited text from an old friend with great taste in music blurting out: "OMG - have U heard that MIA tune - I NEED IT!" This had me excited.

At the first opportunity I went through my post bag and, sure enough, there was the promo, from XL, of 'Born Free'. By this time I'd read about the "amazing video" featuring exploding ginger people. I was well up for this.

When I put it on, I thought there must be some mistake. Why would my great-taste-mate be so into this? I just heard a seminal tune by Suicide, with MIA kinda shouting, or nonchalantly talking over the top of it. It was a ham-fisted MC mixtape talk-over. Blimey, even Dizzee makes his samples his own somehow, puts a little bit of songwriting effort in, but this...? It struck me as incredibly lazy. Like Tinchy Stryder, no effort, nothing big, or clever, just talking over someone else's record, plain and simple.

OK, Tinchy would never pick a record as cool as 'Frankie Teardrop' but the point still stands. So, I start asking around, and it seems this record has sliced everyone down the middle. Half of my mates are enthusing: "Yeah this is really cool" and the other half are ranting: "What the FUCK?! Rip-off alert!" Or, in the words of the marvellous DJ Wrongtom: "That MIA track sounds like it should've been bottom of the bill at the Phoenix Festival the year 'Maxinquaye' came out".

When I played it on Xfm for the first time, I saw the same polarised reactions. I saw a text from a seventeen year old, saying: "This is GREAT! What is it??!!" through to one, from somebody old enough to be that seventeen year old's parent, saying: "Play the original - this is shit". Predictable, but the most interesting thing for me is that the seventeen year old had no idea that MIA hadn't made this track. She'd certainly never heard of Suicide, Alan Vega or Martin Rev, and assumed this was a MIA original.

Now, there is no way that MIA is actually nicking this track, there will have been a pain-staking clearance process undertaken, and Messrs Vega and Rev will undoubtedly be recompensed for having their track used. I'm positive MIA would not 'do a Coco Sumner' and try to pass off somebody else's song as her own, as Coco did with 'Ceasar' (more on that in this Eddy Says here).

BUT, if I was talking over somebody else's track, I'd go to greater lengths to make damn sure everybody, especially those seventeen year olds with no reference points to draw on, knew that is was somebody else's song. I'd have called it MIA Vs Suicide, and physically thrown people towards that incredible, trailblazing record.

One person out there who, like myself, always calls a spade a spade, and doesn't give a fuck what anybody thinks, or for the consequences of such painful honesty, is Paul 'El Hornet' Harding from Pendulum. I remember dubstep DJ Plastician saying, quite rightly, "Paul ALWAYS says EXACTLY what he thinks on Twitter and doesn't give a damn". And that that is "SO GANGSTA!"

So, what does Paul think about the MIA single? What does this one person with nothing to lose or nothing to gain from his honesty think about this very interesting and divisive record? I'll tell you:

Tweet 1, straight back after I'd compared Miss Arulpragasam to Mr Stryder:

"Video amazing. Talentless shouting, not so good".

I laughed like a drain. And was really quite relieved that it wasn't just me. I tweeted him straight back, which led to tweet 2:

"It's like the girl at my local Carphone Warehouse got a record deal!"

Ever since that tweet, I can't listen to 'Born Free' without laughing. OK MIA, you are gorgeous, and cool, and you've been out with Diplo, and been the toast of NYC, but on THIS particular record, you've been busted by an Australian DJ which, in my experience, is the closest thing you can get to a piece of litmus paper, in human form. You DO sound like a girl from Carphone Warehouse talking over a very cool record.

When teachers put "could do better" on your homework, it's because they are intelligent enough to know that you're not trying your best, or that you're just not trying. That your potential is, on that evidence and no other, unrealised. They know you are capable of something brilliant, but this isn't it. I bet MIA saw that phrase a lot on her report card... I know I did.

eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.  

I can't write a big splurgey piece this week, as I'm in the middle of a run of Losers gigs. We supported Shy Child in Kingston on Thursday, and Gary Numan on Saturday (the latter was named by Tom and Marcus - from Midimidis, who regularly sings with us now - "the best gig of their combined lives") plus we're supporting Shy Child again tonight at John Kennedy's X-posure Live at The Camden Barfly.

Which reminds me of something. Both Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip texted into the show on Friday, they were each in different cars, heading in opposite directions after a gig. Funny that they both put on Xfm rather than Radio 1 and got involved.

In our texting we shared our mutual admiration and gratitude for John Kennedy, as we both know the warm feeling of being championed by this great radio maestro. Dan confessed that he pretty much owes his entire career to him. I can't say that, but John's amazing and genuine support for Losers has made me realise how some of the bands I champion on The Remix feel about that support. Which reminds why I do what I do, and why I accept such a laughably low fee to do it! Some things really aren't about money but about love and about helping others.

Speaking of which, I'm also working on a pilot at the moment, for Xfm, featuring an old Kiss FM legend, a very funny man, and I hope it works. It's taking up all my time before I have to sound check, hence this poor excuse for a column. I really should get back to it, but before I do, I have to share one thing with you: the over-riding feeling I have at the moment, which is one of betrayal. Yes, it's time to talk politics.

The only box on a ballot paper I have ever put a cross in, my whole life, was the one next to a Labour candidate... but this time around I genuinely thought that the Lib Dems had a shot at really shaking things up, so I gave them my support, as did many of my friends and colleagues, all natural Labour supporters.

To then have that vote usurped and turned into a Tory one has left me feeling sick. I have a special loathing reserved for the Conservative Party, as I'm old enough to remember what they did in the 80s and 90s and never want this country to go down that dark road again. Nick Clegg's dealing with this shower of bastards has made me so upset, so angry, I feel like I've been peeled and rolled in salt.

Hopefully, by next week I'll be feeling a little less upset by all this, til then, please forgive me, and let's hope that by next Monday we'll have got a bit closer to knowing who on Earth is going to help get us out of this political cluster-fuck. Or who is going to get us even deeper in the shit. My feeling is that there's a storm coming, another financial cataclysm.

My God, I have a feeling we're really going to need things like Xposure and The Remix just to take our minds off this nightmare for a few precious hours each day.

With love and respect,
eddy

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

Writing this is harder than normal. Much harder; the index finger has become a very important digit for non-touch-typing types, and mine looks like one from a Tom & Jerry cartoon since I gashed it, really badly on Friday. I was flicking the water out of a big, balloon glass, and holding it by the quite thin stem... it broke, mid flick and the glass basically exploded in my hand, leaving me with a three stitch cut in my index and a nice boxer's gash in the third finger.

So, anyway, it's my birthday today - my actual birthday, rather than the show's decade anniversary that has caused a rather nice and positive kerfuffle of late. So, given it's that special day when you should be full of joy for the world and all those in it, typical me that I'm rebelling against that and feeling full of rage and bitterness, aimed squarely at one particular "spoilt rich kid".

Let me explain.

Remember 'Bitter Sweet Symphony'? One of the best songs ever. Remember how it controversially borrowed from a Stones track? My ex-girlfriend used to manage Richard Ashcroft at that time, and she told me that he was so stoned all the time that he had literally no idea he'd broken any rules in the way he used the Stones melody in his track. The point being: there was no darkness, no malice, it was a genuine mistake.

Of course Alan Klein, the Rolling Stones' legendary manager, made it a mistake Ashcroft would pay for, in demanding 100% of the royalties for the whole song. There's a lovely story, I don't know whether it's true, that the first deal from Klein once the dispute over the song went legal came back to the band's manager, Jazz Summers at Big Life Music, via a phone call. Klein proposed a 50/50 split. Summers responded: "Wow, that's cool, pretty fair, better than I'd thought", to which Klein replied: "No, you don't understand, I mean 50% Jagger, 50% Richards".

Remember 'Come As You Are' by Nirvana? Nirvana had to pay a portion of the royalties from that song, retrospectively, to Killing Joke, after a musicologist (basically a lawyer who can hold a tune) agreed that Kris Novoselic's bassline was more imitation than inspiration.

Music is full of these 'magpie' stories, some true, some not so, all interesting... here's the latest one that has got my blood boiling.

Dead Kids. One of my favourite bands. They were befriended by Coco Sumner, Sting and Trudi Styler's daughter. She raved about them at Standon Calling last year. She hung out with them, socially and in the studio. Then she 'disappeared'. Sometime later, after this falling off the radar, she resurfaced, with a major record contract and a debut single called 'Caesar'.

Now, before you read on, just have a quick peek at the first verse: www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9LAEf-EGdQ

OK? Now look at the first verse of Dead Kids 'Into The Fire': www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYIC3JXPHo4
Am I the only one that thinks, surely anyone that isn't completely unmusical can see that crosses the line?

The sad truth is that, if she'd asked Mike from Dead Kids, who wrote 'Into The Fire', if she could cover it, he would, of course, have said yes. But no, much like those rich people you hear about who get caught shoplifting, when they could afford to buy the entire shop and all its contents, she went a different route and chose to try and pass the whole song off as being entirely her own.

But she's been caught and busted. Well, she's had to agree to give a portion of the song's royalties to Mike in an out-of-court settlement. Though it's a portion of nothing, as the single failed to find its mark in any sort of chart.

It is such a shame, because, for starters, she has a really good voice. The vocal on Sub Focus' latest single is hers, and it's a great vocal, sounds almost like Perry Farrell, but I hate myself for liking it, because of this whole sordid business.

When you get mugged, or burgled, or robbed in the usual way, by some scumbag you don't know, you kinda know where you stand, it doesn't hurt beyond the obvious... but being robbed by someone you know, and trust, that hurts like hell. I know this from personal experience. It never had to happen this way.

So, back to my phrase "spoilt rich kid". There's nothing wrong with being rich, or a kid, but it seems to me that this one has been a little too spoilt somewhere along the line. And that's a real shame. Lovely voice. The voice of a siren, you could say... but didn't Sirens lure sailors' ships onto the rocks in classical folklore? Yes, that's exactly what they did.

Much love,
eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

So did you hear Remix weekend? In the words of the marvellous Andy Malt: "It was brilliant, I didn't realise they'd play so many!"

The official rotation is three tunes per hour on any themed weekend, be it Blur, Oasis, or Arctic Monkeys, but we managed to lift that to nearer four, with some remixes of current playlist tunes, that I urged them to programme, for flavour. I found the whole thing quite humbling, and immensely entertaining. To hear such fine work, by such talented producers, who go largely unsung, and to hear it in the daytime, was quite something.

The most interesting thing to me was how galvanized it made the station sound. Normally there is a sense of detachment in daytime radio, because you know that DJs are playing a lot of tunes that they don't feel strongly about, they may even hate what they're playing, and even the ones they love, they have to play so many times in the course of a week that they may end up hating songs they liked in the first place. It was incredible hearing the levels of enthusiasm about the music soar to volcano dust cloud level.

It's obvious, yet subtle at the same time: Specialist shows are so great because there is a direct link between the host and the music they play. More often than not, the show becomes an extension of that person, and if, like me, you only play what you really like, or love, then the presenter cannot fail to sound enthusiastic.

I've never heard Dan O'Connell so audibly excited, Marsha, too, was glowing on air. Dan told me it was his favourite radio show he's EVER done, and that is amazing, and because of such a simple reason... he loved the music. It was DIFFERENT. Radio programmers and bosses take note, the audience loved it, too. Xfm was bombarded with texts in support of Remix Weekend, people excited to hear something a bit different, but at the same time a bit familiar (which is the whole point of the Remix show concept).

I heard so many references to Pendulum fans, Prodigy fans etc being so excited to hear these tunes on the air at a time when they were actually listening to the radio. The Friday night time-slot has always been uncomfortable for me because most people who WOULD listen to a show like The Remix, are OUT, like any self-respecting lover of our kinda music. Sometimes I feel my live audience is a tiny fraction of those who tune in via the 'listen again' player - workers, parents, revising students and the like.

The whole experience left me with no doubt that Xfm should support the specialists more, in much the same way; imagine if me, John Kennedy and Ian Camfield, picked a track, each week, and did a little intro to it, then it was scattered about through daytime, weekdays and weekends, to promote our shows and the music we play. It'd sound great, and again, get daytime DJs excited about playing something of unquestionable quality and interest.

While we're on the subject, I think there should be MORE specialists, like the old days. I'd have a hip hop show, a reggae show, Flomotion back in the fold, and put some excitement back into late nights and weekends. If you guys all get in touch with the powers that be at Xfm, they would, I think, give this a serious look. Come on, we got Rage Against The Machine to number one and we actually have a chance of getting Nick Clegg into Number 10. Amongst all this excitement, let's sort Xfm out in the process!

eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

It is really weird meeting a hero. For starters, it's so fucking nerve wracking. Last week, on Tuesday, I was vexing majorly about co-hosting the show with Gary Numan. What would he be like? Would he be dark and moody, like a lot of his music? Would we get on? Three hours is an eternity if the situation is uncomfortable. What tune should I play first? Will I piss him off if I play 'Are Friends Electric?' I know Thom Yorke is pissed off by 'Creep'... all these myriad thoughts, worries and insecurities were swirling around my brain and preventing me from sleeping, so I was a mess when I got to Xfm the next day.
I had Tone, my ten year old pride and joy with me, as it was the Easter holidays, and I had to tell him on the way to the studio who Gary Numan is.

I explained that when I was a little older than he is now, I saved my pocket money to buy his record. More importantly, it's a record that helped change my life, for it was at that point, listening to 'Replicas' by Tubeway Army and 'Quiet Life' by Japan, that I realised that synthesizers were just as sexy as guitars.

In telling my son about this man, I realised that in my lucky life, I have met, interviewed, worked with, or even become friends with some incredible people who have sold millions of records: Lovely ones like Michael Hutchence, Elton John and Gary Lightbody, to horrid ones, like The Cranberries, to the ones who behaved like total cunts, Marty Pellow from Wet Wet Wet or Matt Bellamy from Muse.

Yet I had never met and interacted with someone for whose record I had saved up my pocket money to buy, someone who had helped shape me when I was at my most malleable and absorbent. I mean, what if you meet your hero and they don't like you...? Or even worse, if you meet your hero and YOU don't like THEM? What a disaster that would be? That's something that could seriously spin you out. Suffice to say, I was worried.

I needn't have been. Gary Numan, in real life, could not have been sweeter, more normal, friendly, polite, on time, all the things you expect someone like that not to be. Do you know what I mean? It's like, somebody who has put in that much, paid that many dues, been that famous and that influential, kind of has the RIGHT to be an arse.

He sensed my discomfort straight away and said: "Don't worry, I'm very..." He paused and thought about the word he wanted to use... "Unnasuming... that's what a lot of people call me". Good word. He didn't assume, or presume, there were no airs and graces, and I like to think I'm like that too; approachable and without a veneer of industry bullshit that so many feel they must have, so we got on like the proverbial house on fire.

I'd decided on a really obscure track - with Gary on it - as the first tune, 'Metal' by Paul Daly of Leftfield. A brilliant, forward-thinking bit of electronica from years back. As the opening electro-rasps hit the studio speakers, sounding awesome, he asked, "What's this?" (In a good, inquisitive way, like "ooh, what's this?" rather than, "what the fuck?")

"It's you", I smiled. "Remember that track you did with Paul Daley? It never came out here did it?"

"No, it didn't", he replied. "But there was a cool mix by Trent Reznor". That name cropped up so many times in the next three hours we ended up joking that the show was becoming an open love letter to the Nine Inch Nails frontman and greatest ProTools programmer of his generation.

We kept dazzling each other with our choices. He hit me with Deftones, Snake River Conspiracy, Sunna, all played, or even championed by me on The Remix over the years. And I laid on him, for example, Trent Reznor's mix of David Bowie's 'Hearts Filthy Lesson'. I somehow knew that he'd like it; it was the first non-Numan record I reached for in planning this show.

He looked at me incredulous as I pressed play. He'd brought the original with him, to play. He joked that my one was loads better and thanked me for playing it. I can safely say that no three hours have gone by faster. We both enjoyed it so much and vowed not to let this be the last time we do this.

So they tell you never to meet your heroes... that's got me thinking. Certainly, if you're a Muse fan, then I'd strongly advise not going down that road, just worship from afar and never be disappointed, same goes for arseholes like Damon Albarn (don't get me started on him, I'm saving my rant about Damon for another of these), but if your heroes are people like Gary Numan, Gary Lightbody, Michael Hutchence or the boys from The Prodigy, then meeting them will only renew your faith in human nature, as it did mine.

Much love,
eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

That 'Joy Of Compilations' special that aired while I was in Andorra earlier in the month really got me thinking. Yes it was a gloriously random bit of radio programming, and it triggered some really nice messages from the extended Remix family, which ranged from "really interesting" to "radio gold". But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

While I could single out several of the compilations that featured on the show and talk about them for hours, it was one particular tune I played - Anthony Johnson feat Charjan's 'Every Day Is A Gunshot' - that has left an echo in my head, and which has resonated through til now, and connected with some other thoughts and tunes to make a single thread.

That tune is from a little known compilation on Fresh Records, a division of Freskanova Records, which reflected a movement in youth culture in the late nineties that, much like dubstep now, ignited and galvanised urban youth, then spread through the country and left its legacy, like a time capsule, buried in the minds of kids who would go on to discover Pro Tools or Logic years later and resurrect those sounds.

The original is on a compilation called 'Orijanahl', put together by a chap called Simon Smugg, who I remember appearing on Nick Luscombe's Flo Motion show years ago, and is a tune loved by reggae-weaned trainspotters like Dan Le Sac and Iain Baker. But, more to the point, the version on Fresh Records' 'Hype The Joint' album is a remake, a DJ mash up, using beats from a scene which, at the time, I had virtually no love for but which, interestingly, I am now increasingly looking back on with much more fondness: UK garage.

When I see the phrase written down now, I still recoil slightly, remembering the waves of awfulness perpetuated in the name of that genre years ago. I remember the loathing I had for many of the characters involved in it, but the interesting thing for me is how all these things can be changed by one powerful, all conquering force: Time.

Music, and indeed pop culture, which it is a part of, are so cyclical, and I'm finding myself now fascinated by the positive echo which started with UK garage, and which you can hear right now in the most gloriously post modern productions of Jamie from The XX (his version of Florence & The Machine's 'You've Got The Love') or Doorly's wonderfully wonky version of Marina And The Diamonds' 'I Am Not A Robot'. You can hear those crisp snares in productions by Skream, and be reminded of the very best the genre had to offer when you hear Nero's luscious remix of MJ Cole's 'Sincere'. Amazingly, I'm finding myself missing something I didn't think I liked.

All of this has, as I say, got me thinking, mostly about time, and how it can really, profoundly change the way you feel about something, or someone. It's obvious, I guess, in the context of an old flame, or an old argument, or an injury, that time heals... but less so with a perception of music.

I do love a good turn around. Robert Miles proved this, unknowingly, when he remixed The Loose Cannons, years ago, and ended up on my show, and at Remix Night. Same for Enter Shikari. Both went from being loathed to being loved in a short space of time. I love how a simple thing like a bit of time, plus a few random variables to do with the Remix show, can inexorably shift emotion and feeling.

In my head, all that shit I used to hate about garage has fallen by the wayside, gone into the fire I lit last weekend at Persian New Year, which my family celebrates each year at the vernal equinox. Without fail, we gather, build a fire and ceremonially jump over it, giving all our bad thoughts and feelings from the year to the fire, so we can start the year with a clean slate.

It's my favourite time of year. Proper new year, from before the time organised religion showed up and ruined everything. The winter is entirely behind us and the summer is entirely ahead of us, and that optimism is embodied, for me, right now, by the fact I'm now feeling love for a genre I hated. Just time plus the positivity garnered from looking at something through somebody else's rosier tinted eyes, has effected a marvellous u-turn in my musical memory, and made me a better person as a result.

Enjoy this time, it's so short, but so wonderful. It starts the week before the equinox, when you get a little glimpse of warmth, a reassuring hand on your back, after the seemingly endless winter, and it ends when Wimbledon is around the corner and you're enjoying delicious Cotswold asparagus.

Spring. It's here. It's maximal, it's sexual. Love it and live it. Breathe it in, smile, and share that smile with everyone around you.

Much love,
eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

Last week, I had to get up at a soul crushing 4.30am to make the Gatwick red-eye flight to Barcelona, and then endure another three hours on a coach to get to the principality of Andorra, the infamous tax haven atop The Pyrenees, and now officially the home of the Big Snow Festival.

The coach trip was made that much more fun by travelling with Mickey Slim, one of those infectiously funny DJ characters who had most of us in paroxysms. It was also interesting to meet Eddie Halliwell, who'd flown in from Cork, having had zero sleep from the gig the night before - that horrible DJ-booth-to-check-in journey I had in Ibiza a few times. He played the Big Snow and then flew straight onto San Francisco, again with zero sleep. Jesus, who said DJing was an easy life?!

The early start was worth it. My early arrival in Arinsal meant I actually got kitted out and made it up the mountain for three or four runs before the lift shut down for the day. Chris Stereo:Type, by this point, had become the first casualty of the weekend, whacking his head so hard that he ended up in hospital getting checked up for a brain haemorrhage (he's fine, thank the gods).

I got my first serious air during one of my snowboarding runs - the photographer from Loaded Magazine got a shot that I'll hopefully be able to share with you soon. Andorra is a fabulous place to learn to snowboard or ski, or for intermediates like me. And it was so nice going to a bar and buying a four pint round for six euros, when in Tignes that same round would have cost 44 fucking euros!

Unfortunately, by the time I arrived I'd already missed my new chum Calvin Harris and older chums Anne Savage, Matrix + Futurebound and Zinc. But I did run into Kiss FM and BRIT Award busting legend Brandon Block, which made my day. I also met the very nice Wickaman and the utterly gorgeous Phil Brookes, who comes across like a naughtier, street-er, version of Kaiser Saucy of The Loose Cannons. It's like they were separated at birth, with one sent to posh Battersea and the other to somewhere like Bethnal Green. I hope our paths cross again.

One of the early highlights of the trip was watching the joke video that Stereo:Type made for YouTube, comparing and contrasting the palatial luxury hotel they were given in Moscow to the Spanish gig the next day, where the promoter didn't even bother booking them a room and just drove them to the airport and dumped them there instead. The resulting hilarity (you must check it out) made a lot of people in the UK laugh, but unfortunately the Spanish race, as a whole, have had a serious sense of humour failure and the duo are now getting death threats daily in relation to the video.

My two favourite threats so far are these:

"Stereo:Type, come to Spain, I kill you"

"Stereo:Type, you are dead to me, fuck you, fuck your music, fuck your arse, suck my bitch".

In actual fact, Stereo:Type were the best DJs at Big Snow by a mile. Nobody but 2ManyDJs can touch them, and ver Type have the scratching dimension that Steph and Dave don't.

I played a gig on the mountain on day two, with Gaz Pendulum and MC Jakes. The advertised El Hornet and Verse were in Vancouver, so my drinking buddy from the first big Pendulum tour, Gaz, showed up. My heart was happy but my kidneys were audibly screaming: "Please God no, not Gaz".

Actually, Gaz played the best set I've ever seen him do, Jakes was his usual reliable self and the crowd, lubed up with cheap alcohol combined with high altitude, went crazy. Literally the happiest snow festival crowd I've ever seen. Around 50 skiers came snaking down the hill at the crown of Gaz's set, carrying flaming torches. It was a moment. Reminded me of Secret Garden Party.

I played again, after Gaz, and had an amazing time before we all headed down to El Cau, the club venue down in Arinsal near our hotels for another dose of dance and drinky-poos. I do love the whole balance of these trips: extreme physical exertion combined with liver bashing alcohol abuse and the sociability that comes with it.

Whatever happened, I was up at 8am every day to get up the mountain, usually leaving my cohorts asleep in their hotels. My view is that you can get shit faced pretty much any time you want to, but when can you snowboard down a mountain? So, I really try to make the most of it, working hard and playing hard. The mountain air is very good for blasting off the old cobwebs from the inevitable shots and beers the night before.

Later in the trip, I ran into Leeroy Thornhill. It was lovely to catch up with him for the first time since being on tour with The Prodigy. He showed me footage of his mate, Jamie, who managed to so beautifully cock up a 20 foot high jump, and somehow land it on his back some rib-crushing 50 feet away from where he took off at terminal velocity. I almost cracked a rib laughing from sheer schadenfreude.

Leeroy was playing at El Cau later with myself and Stereo:Type. People had come from far and wide to see us. Well, actually, more to see Stereo:Type, whose mountain conquering set had spread through the Andorran grapevine to other resorts.

I had a disaster that night. My friends and colleagues Chris and Lee, from Universal Talent, took me for a double fondue - the classic Swiss one and a raclette. I discovered in the process that it is possible to overdose on cheese. The results are horrible. It was as if someone had stuffed a hand grenade up my arse. The gig was very difficult, but still, I got up the next day at eight and went up the mountain to shake off the cobwebs.

On the last night I saw Eggsy from GLC play his best ever gig with Adam MC-ing, plus the revolting Dirty Sanchez boys doing what they do best. The only disappointment of the whole festival was Jaguar Skillz, who just played an Ableton/laptop set and cut a kick drum over the top to make it look like he was actually mixing. The overall impression was of a man in a mask and comedy chain answering his emails.

Even with Jaguar Unskillz and my exploding arse, on balance, the festival was a roaring success. All who came had a brilliant time, saw some quality music and had an extraordinarily good time, while The Big Snow established itself as a wonderful boutique festival in a place where anyone can afford to go and have a great time. Next year's festival is already in planning stage and it'll be even better.

Right, back in the saddle, have you checked out that Losers video yet?! Oh, and don't forget, there's still time to create your own version of the track using the acapella. Details here.

Much love,
eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.