Mancky

FunkyMutha was named after the Prince track ‘Sexy MF’, released in June 1992. The DJs Alf & Dale had worked at the Man Alive since 1989/90 when they launched FunkyMutha in mid-1992; Alf DJ’d Brazil and CarWash nights and Dale DJ’d CarWash and Pure nights at the club.

The picture below is of Dale, Alf and Winston in the Man Alive DJ box:

Winston (Mr Lowe) was a friend of Roy, the club owner, who had previously DJ’d at the Wigan Casino and often played records in the Man Alive. Roy was worried about rap and hip-hop attracting trouble to the club; he wanted Winston to counteract this by playing hi-life and carnival music, which he often did at the beginning of the night.

Alf played rare groove on the Thursday CarWash night, but on the Friday he and Dale tended more towards hip-hop, rap and Jamaican dancehall although still with acid-jazz and rare groove thrown in. These are some of my favourite FunkyMutha tracks but there were many others:

Mica Paris - I Should’ve Known Better (K-Gee’s Smooth Mix) (1990)

Carlton - Cool With Nature (1990)

Martine Girault - Revival (1992)

Shinehead - Try My Love (1992)

Warren G - Regulate (1994)

Alf and Dale also broadcast on Frontline Pirate Radio, based in Whalley Range, around this time. Frontline was originally a reggae station but the organisers branched out into soul music with a sister station called FLR Soul.

For a while Alf and Dale worked with an MC called Eugene who they met at Frontline; I drove all three of them round Manchester in September/October 92 so that they could give out FunkyMutha flyers in as many pubs and bars as possible.

Dale and Alf spent most of their takings each week buying new records; they were treated like royalty at Spin Inn and Decoy and the various other record shops in town because they spent so much on such a regular basis.

They aimed to be up-to-date with the American imports and all the new music out of London. In the days before YouTube they provided an important source of new music for the rest of us.

Unfortunately the rap and hip-hop did attract bad boys and there was occasionally trouble at the club on FunkyMutha nights as a result. Sometimes the nights would stop and start up again in an attempt to lose off the trouble makers.

I remember one night when there was some kind of clash between two men in the middle of the dancefloor - the music stopped and the doorstaff intervened. Alf put a Spearhead track on to diffuse the tense atmosphere (Spearhead were a rap band who opposed violent rap culture) but the track he chose began with a shriek and for a horrible moment we all thought someone had been stabbed…

Spearhead - People In The Middle (1994)

Roy, the club owner, preferred the CarWash nights because the bad boys never came down to that one.

FunkyMutha stopped when Roy sold up and moved to Jamaica in 1996. Alf & Dale became the regular DJs at the Revolution Bar on Oxford Road, which opened that year.