RS: You did one of my all-time favorite songs and I've always
had a question about it, Angelic's "It's My Turn." I know it's
related to a Sunscreem record, now I'm wondering what the basis of
that track was.
Judge Jules: There was an instrumental that they did that Darren
Tate sort of worked on. I wrote the song, the lyrics, the vocal
melody, and got my wife to sing it. So the plan was to get my wife to
sing on a record and I kind of chose a track which I didn't at the
time know was Sunscreem, but that's sort of the way it worked out.
RS: OK. When you're in the studio do you normally write a track
then put a song on top of it, or what's like your songwriting process?
Judge Jules: It depends. If you're doing something of your own from
scratch, then you'd probably do some very basic chords and then write
the song, and then you'd probably only do twenty percent of the track,
then write the song and then sort of do the remaining eighty percent
of the music afterwards. But quite a lot of songwriting stuff I do is
collaborations or submissions for writing stuff over things that start
life as an instrumental, an instrumental that maybe does well that a
record company wants a vocal version to give it more radio
palatability. In that case, obviously you write over an existing
backing track.
RS: So, you have this show on BBC. Do you have a harder or
easier time getting your music on the radio, do you think?
Judge Jules: Well, every track on the BBC of my own that I play has
to be submitted to the Head of Music for approval, and I can't be seen
to be showing a disproportionate amount of support to my own stuff,
any more so than I would do as a club DJ. As a club DJ, I probably
play about two of my own records per hour, maybe three. On my radio
show I would play a maximum of one per show, so out of twenty-five
tracks in an average two-hour show. So I'm lucky that I've got, you
know, I've got a radio show with more than a million listeners that
I'm able to play my own records on, but at the same time I certainly
can't do it too much.
RS: Cool.
Judge Jules: I can't take the piss, but I don't know if you
understand what that means, that's what we say in English.
RS: Explain the term please?
Judge Jules: We say I can't take the piss, which I mean I can't, you
know, make laughingstocks of them by basically…
RS: Being… OK, I understand. OK, you can't make a mockery of
them by being too self-serving.
Judge Jules: You can't make a mockery of them, that's it, yes, exactly.
RS: Did you come over for Miami this year?
Judge Jules: I didn't because I had a family wedding to go to this
year. I've been there for the last, at least ten years, probably
more, so I felt I could skip it for one year, and I'll definitely be
back next year.
RS: What would you like to say to all your fans out there?
Judge Jules: Just, hopefully you enjoy the music that I'm making and
please eMail me via my website because I try to be one of the most
approachable DJs and I can't think of any of my peers who would answer
every eMail they get sent. But sometimes it can take me three or four
days to get back to people, but I will literally answer everything,
because I think it's an invaluable sort of feedback.
RS: Talking about the feedback, do you ever hear about songs
from the people writing to you?
Judge Jules: Frequently. Sometimes it's difficult to see the wood
from the trees, you know, I can pick out the records I'm going to play
and I can look on the dance floor and feel the chemistry and know that
this is getting, it's generating a great reaction. But then there
might be one or two records that just… there's a stream of eMails from
people asking about it. And very often it tends to have great legs
and great longevity.
RS: I've also curious, I know you kind of get flooded with music
every week from all kinds of sources. (1) How long does it take you
to filter through what you get and, (2) how long does a record stay in
your rotation?
Judge Jules: I mean I get about three hundred new tracks a week, so
I actually employ somebody to narrow that down to about a hundred
because, you know, he can recognize the two hundred that are
inappropriate for my style. And then it's the remaining hundred I go
through. And then there isn't really a golden rule to rotation,
anywhere between, well anywhere between sort of three weeks and three
months. If I've got sometime exclusively and I know not many other DJs
have got it, then I might play something for a very long time.
