RS: With both nights and going to your website, I love all the graphics and visuals. The little punk boy character that I see on your records, who drew that and is that supposed to be a caricature of one of you guys?
George: That was originally designed back at the beginning of the Sharp label kicking out in '94. We were looking for a sort of identity like the logo man from Nervous records who would be changed for each style they released. We wanted something that people would identify with our name and music. The designer was a chap in Manchester we had never met and we did it all by fax. We said we want a little man to look sharp, and he came back with fangs and ears like a Dracula type of thing. We said no, but it gradually got to the final stage of the man you see now. He's got a thing in his mouth, he's either just popped an E or he's looking as he's either going to throw-up or he's done something naughty. Strangely enough, people have said it does look a little bit like myself actually which was never planned because he'd never met us. It was the best £100 that we ever spent. It was never based on either of us because he'd never met us, but it does strangely and freakly looks a little bit like me.
RS: So where do you see the UK club scene going next?
George: The last couple of years it UK scene has went a bit downhill, like clubbing around the world went. London has definitely become a lot more funkier and the Midlands of the UK is still holding on to the hard house, a much harder scene than it's in London. We were in a club on Saturday night in Blackpool, which is like a mini Las Vegas. It houses the biggest club in the UK, four and a half thousand people, and it's a very straight night, with a cross section of DJs playing there from the hard house scene to the funky house scene and every week's different.
The UK clubs are certainly on the way up. The last couple of years it was suffering from a lot of young kids moving into different directions of music, from rock to rap, it didn't go down really well and a lot of kids have moved away from dance. Unlike your sort of late 80s, early 90s, when the drugs and the Summer of Love was a big thing. The UK dance scene is OK, but I think it's definitely on the way up.
Steven: We heard that the sales of MixMag were sort of dropping, they'd dropped about thirty percent, forty percent in the last year or two. Whereas Kerrang sales, which is the biggest selling rock magazine in the UK, has soared. I had a discussion with somebody in the industry a few years ago and they actually said they felt that kids now, instead of dropping pills and dancing like in the acid house days of 1988, are popping pills and going to see Eminem or Linkin Park. They kids are thinking, well my brother who's five or eight years older than me, they were doing the dance scene and if you think about when you're that age, you want to rebel against everything your parents or your older siblings probably did. So maybe dance isn't as significant to a fifteen year old as it was ten years ago. I also think that Eminem, who's one of the most creative producers the music industry's ever developed, has filled the gap for the kids who want to rebel against anything that's gone before
George: I'm feeling happier about the music scene in London at the moment, it's better than it's been probably for the last five years. Last year was a little bit of quiet year for us and we've got our passion and our energy back again, so we're really going for it. I think the things we've done in the last couple of months are probably the best things we've ever done. That's saying a lot after we've done so many records. You've got to regard your original stuff as the best and I think there's so much original production gone into our recent stuff and we're really happy with it.
RS: Very cool. So anything you want to say to the people out there who'll read this, all the dance music lovers?
George: We'd like to say, that we love America. We're fortunate enough that we've DJed all over the states, New York, Miami, Las Vegas and we've always had an amazing response from America. Its probably because we've always embraced American house music, since its really the basis of what we're doing today. When we started up the label we were famously quoted in MixMag or DJ Magazine as 'The Sharp Boys sound is American influenced house music, a bit like Armand Van Helden with a bottle of poppers up your nose'. We loved that because Armand an amazing influence, he's come back now and his latest single My My My is in our record box. He was so much at the top of the game when we were starting off our DJ and production career. He was a huge influence as was DJ Sneak.
We're very honored when we're asked to DJ in the States because we always get great feedback, love our crowds and American house music has been so important to us.
