Wildblood and Queenie: on music, radio, and getting married three times

Hello and welcome to season three of My Queer Museum, a podcast where we interview fascinating figures from our community about the dearest and queerest memories of Brighton and Hove and the objects that represent them. In every episode, we're going to invite our guests to pick three objects from their vast queer past and donate them to our imaginary queer museum. But before we start, let's get started. To help we meet today's guest, we want to tell you about our new community generated digital archive, queerheritagesouth.co.uk. You can visit the archive anytime you want and discover interesting local queer collections and stories, and you can contribute. So have a dig around in your boxes of memorabilia, maybe find the ticket stub, a picture of you at your first Brighton Pride, or a badge from a protest march. We'd love for you to photograph it and upload it to the archive.

We'd love for you to help you to find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the way you can find the

First of all, I'm going to remove the hound because it's going to start growling. Yes, well, we're Wildblood and Queenie. We are two separate people, which is... We have one brain. Yes, we do have the one brain. So, yeah, I'm Queenie Josephine for my full DJ title and my lovely Kate Wildblood is sitting next to me and I'll let her describe herself. I'm married to Queenie Josephine. There we are. Yeah, we're DJs, radio presenters and producers, occasional club runners and... Artists. Oh, yes, artists. Or round legends. Well, I wouldn't even presume to say that. We can, however. Thanks for being with us today. It's really exciting and I'm really happy that we could make this happen. And I have been to your house and I've had a look through your collection of amazing flyers and posters and got some stories of the fantastic things that you did in Brighton and the club nights you've put on.

So, I'm very excited to know which objects you've brought for us here today. Shall we begin with object number one? Oh, yes. It's Joe's bongos. Amazing. Yes, it literally is a pair of bongos from way back in, well, 1993, really. Yes. Do you want me to explain why? Yeah, what was happening in 1993? We want to know. We must know now. When she was banging bongos, that was the first thing. Well, basically, back in 1992 time, my previous girlfriend and I were percussionists. Well, she was a very good percussionist and I used to sort of drag along on her coattails and bash the bongos and shake my maracas at the Coco Club, which is at the Zap Club in Brighton, whilst Chris Coco was DJing. Where was that?

It was at the Zap Club back in 1992 at the Zap Club. And the Zap Club and the Coco Club. Coco Club was one of the first acid house, you know, it was leading the way. It's kind of where it was all born on the South Coast, really. Yeah. It was Chris Coco and Damien Harris and someone called Norman Cook, who turned into Fatboy Slim. It was quite big news at the time. And anyway, somehow or another, the lovely Chris decided that Michelle and I were good enough at playing live percussion to play along while he was DJing. So, we were doing that, did that for a while. And we didn't do very much going out on the queer scene in Brighton at the time because... It was rubbish. I mean, it was intense. Let's put it this way.

It was quite intense and the music was... Blimmin' awful. ...interesting. I don't want to offend anybody, but no, it wasn't really to our taste. So, we didn't do much of that. So, imagine our delight when we found out that a club which was very similar to Venus Rising, which was a legendary night at the fridge in Brixton that we used to go to and loved. Amazing house music, amazing female DJs. That a club night in Brighton called Shameless Hussies was going to start up and it was going to be in a similar vein to our wonderful Venus Rising. So, Michelle and I went along to the first of these shameless hussies and it was literally... It blew our minds. It was amazing. It was fantastic to have this incredible night which...

Oh, somebody called Kate Wildblood was actually one of the organisers of. So, after we'd been to the first one of these amazing nights, my then-girlfriend said to me, and she probably is delighted to this day, phone up that Kate woman and ask if we can bang our drums in her club. So, I literally found Kate, got Kate's number off somebody because you'd have to do things like that back in the early 90s. There was no emailing or anything like that. You probably phoned the phone line Tuesday. I booked a time to phone Kate and I phoned her up and I said, can I bash my bongos in your club, please, Mrs.? And she said yes and we went along and we played live percussion in the club and then we got to know each other.

Well, you came to a lesbian strength meeting, didn't you? I did. And you walked up steps to my flat in front of me and all I saw was your cargo and your bongos. Yes, your bongos were walking ahead and I kind of fell in love, which didn't really work because I was with Melissa and you. I was with Michelle. But I was running Seamus Hussies with Tiz Cartwright as part of Lesbian Strength, which was an offshoot of Bright and Pride in 92, I think that started. Or 91 even. And then in 92 they wanted to do another cabaret fundraising thing. And I said, please, no. Don't. And so, not that there's anything we're getting. You'll notice in the interview, I'm the one without the filter. That's okay. We like that.

So, tell us about Lesbian Strength. Well, Lesbian Strength was an offshoot. It was just all the angry lesbians from Gay Pride. So, it's the Pink Parasol people who set up Pride in the park. Well, it isn't in the park. I mean, I think it came out of Section 28 marches and then there was a Pride. And then I think that was the first one was on Preston Park, wasn't it? And then it went to Queenie's Park. It was sort of, yeah, very low key. There wasn't many of us. I mean, it was busy. Yeah. Well, it was the level as well. It wasn't the sort of size of the Preston Park beast that we know today. It was much smaller. Yeah. Lesbian Strength was a side shoot. But considering most of the people involved with Pride were lesbians, it was kind of mainly

Pride again. Yes. But they wanted to have a Les bus. We had a double-deckered bus and we drove around town. I don't really know. All of all the Les bus? Yes. I don't really know what that was. Yeah. The Evening August loved that. Yes, they loved that. They got a bus. Arthur Law made us amazing banners. His name always crops up in all LGBT history of Brighton. But he made us amazing banners and we just were cross. We did a safe sex campaign with the dental dams. I do. Do you know, I nearly got decapitated by a flying safe sex kit when we were doing a gig once. I don't know why everybody was so frivolous back in the day. So, yeah, I'd been to Venus Rising, which was a women-only club at the Fridge, run by women,

music by women, DJs, everything frisked by women, paid all your money to it. It was quite an experience. And all we had down here were these kind of lesbian discos with music that just was no house. And you kind of only got that in gay clubs like Club Shame, which was amazing, which was at the Zap. But we wanted our own little something to do. So I kind of convinced them, along with Tiz Cartwright, that we should make Lesbian Strength should do a club night rather than a cabaret night. I think we'd ended up doing both. But we got hold of Fagin's, which is at the bottom of Middle Street. No, East Street. East Street. It's now Bubble Tea Shop, I think. It's where... Oh. No. I can't remember. Is it Paul Valley?

Anyway, there was a club upstairs there. Well, it wasn't a club. It was just a hideous bar. But it was the only place that would let the lesbians in to dance. So we set it up there. And Venus Rising and Vicky Edwards and Terry, they all sort of offered to help for no money. You know, said, oh, we'll come and play. We'll come and help you. We'll do this. We'll do that, which was amazing. So I set that up with Tiz. And then I got this phone call from someone saying they wanted to play their bongos. Amazing. This is a fantastic origin story of your relationship. Yeah. I'm not going to ask how you both broke up with your girlfriends and ended up together. It took a while. Jo was in this thing from 1972 called an open relationship.

I hadn't been in it since 1972. I'm like, I'm not told. It did feel a bit like it at the time. No, you've been with Michelle for a long time. You were a very respected couple. And she's an amazing woman. You've both done some incredible things. And then I came along and kind of ruined it. And I was with Melissa, but we hadn't been together. I mean, she's lovely as well, but it wasn't really what I wanted. And so we sort of split. But Jo and Michelle were still together. So I became the lover. But that, you know, I was supposed to have my place. And I took my place up willingly. But after a while, it wasn't very long. It's like, come on. We kind of realized. Let's put it this way. We did work it all out.

As with all those things, it was a little bit complicated at the time. But that's what I'm trying to do with the bridge now. Classic lesbian story. We're friends now. I know. So at least we are all friends. We're friends. We're all friends with the two M's. That's nice. And Melissa ended up being my best woman at our first wedding. Yes. Made the best speech I've ever heard in my life. So your first wedding, how many times did you get married? Three. We had to wait for the law to catch up with love, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We first got married. It was an illegal one in our back garden in 1997. You know, friends, family, et cetera, et cetera. But it wasn't recognized by anybody apart from us, but we did have a lovely day.

Although your sister was sick in her handbag. My sister was sick in her handbag. Apart from that, lovely day. Yes. That's because she had a migraine, not because she couldn't bear the sort of marriage. Maybe she had a migraine because we were getting married. And the rice was really hard. I remember it really hurt. Oh, that hurt. But, yeah, we did that in our garden. Made it up. Yeah. Had a, didn't even have a proper, it was just our mate Sarah was the officiant or whatever that's called. Officiando. She was very good, yes. She got everybody, told everybody where to sit and everything, including us. In 2008, the entire family came. Everybody turned up. Civil partnership, that was. We did a civil partnership and we ended up at Patterns at the reception.

Yeah. And then we did, yeah. With Trevor Love was our registrar, which was lovely. He was magnificent. Big hit with the mums. Yes, yes. I mean, how could you not love somebody called Trevor Love? Let's face it. And then when they said you could become married, married, we did that. Just converted. From a civil partnership to an actual marriage. So that was just a conversion with two witnesses. In an office. And a nice slap-up lunch afterwards. Because your mum said, no, not another hat. She's not very good at hats. I said, no, you don't have to come. I mean, your commitment is incredible. Three times. I think we did. Dressing up. Yeah, I like the dressing up part. Actually, I think that's it.

We're not going to do another one of those. Oh, let's just me do our bows or something. I think it's interesting because it's, you know, it's taken that long for queer couples to be able to, if they want to, get married. Yeah. And, you know, we had to make it up in 97. And we did it officially because Cameron let us in 2008. But that wasn't enough. And so, you know, when you talk to people who often say, oh, why do you marry me? They laugh at you about it. It's like, well, it was, that was the only way we got to where you got. You did it easily. Straight up. William Henry, yes, please. Off you go. However, it does make it really difficult to remember when anniversaries are. Because, you know, you have a first snob-up anniversary, first wedding anniversary, second wedding anniversary, third wedding anniversary.

That is lovely. And, yes, it really is telling, isn't it, that it took you three goes to get to. Just being recognized as citizens, really, that's all it is. And legally. So this is a fantastic object. I'm going to take these bongos and put them in our museum. And it's a really beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. So it's my job to now ask you what your second object for the Queer Museum is going to be. Well, it's a building. It patterns on 10 Marine Parade Brighton BN1. It's also been known as the Escape Club. And audio. It was the Royal Escape at one point, a pub. But I think we started frequenting it when it was the Escape Club. Yes. I made my Sunday Sunday debut there and joined the Wild Fruit Paul Kent family.

Hooray! And, yeah, we ended up getting married there, actually. And seeing as we DJ'd at a few weeks, I think we might end up there as well. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. We seem to have done every form of entertainment and stuff at that particular building. So it means a lot. If we're allowed to stick a building in the museum. I think you did. Did she? Yeah, she did. What a building? Did she? Well. Of course you are. Yeah, definitely. So tell us about your first memories of this building and the Escape Club. As far as I can remember, very hazy. Very sweaty. And they always had a rotating front door and it was quite difficult to get out. It was much more easy to get in than it was to get out. And I can remember a couple of times thinking, I'm never going to leave.

I'll just stay here until the next event. Why not? They got rid of that, thank goodness. So it was one of the places we went to for house music. And Dolly Rocket, Dolly Mixers, Dolly Rocket, I've got her on my brain. Dolly Mixers was a club run by Tula and the girls at the Escape Club. And that was the first time I saw an all-female line up. They were very groundbreaking, actually. That was a long time ago. So we go there for recreational purposes. Yes. Saw DJ Paulette there, another heroine. Yes. But then having been at the Candy Bar and done a couple of Pride gigs, etc., etc., I still really wanted, all I really wanted to do was be part of the Sunday Sunday family. And Wild Fruit, because Sunday Sunday was the place to go at Centro.

And they moved over to the Escape Club and I was desperate. And Dulcy Danger, who was working with us at the Candy Bar, got us a little bit of a way in there. Well, she got you a little bit of a way in, let's face it. And I started off playing chill out at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. You could have been up all night. So that was nice. I had forgotten that this was such a big thing, was you doing the chill out for hours. You played for three or four hours, eight or something or other. Goodness. And so, yeah, that sort of started the history there of kind of becoming a Sunday Sunday resident and DJing there and going from playing to nobody. What, one man and his leather chaps. Yeah, tell us a bit about what was the crowd for Sunday Sunday?

Who was going out? Who were the people you recognised? Around this time. Lots of queens, lots of leather queens, lots of just gay boys. I mean, it was perfect because you could go home by 11pm and go to work. Yeah. After a weekend of celebrating at various other establishments, it was like the last port of call for lots of people who worked on the airlines and lots of people who did, what was that? Did all sorts of amazing other jobs. They sort of finished up on Sunday Sunday, tops off, dancing. Absolutely. It was always wonderful. It was such good fun. But, yeah, I did wonder for the people going on their flights for Monday morning. What wonderful service they got from their cabin crew. But, yeah, it was good.

And, obviously, Kate was playing at Sunday Sunday for probably, I don't know, maybe a year, two years. It was a year or two years before I started. I can't remember. And then I managed to worm my way in as well. So, they let me play as well. So, we used to have fun. Really nice sets there. It was really good fun. And the fact it finished at 11 was quite a relief. But then they started to do their Pride Sunday Sunday reunion parties, which were huge and lots of tears at the end of a set. And I started at the beginning and then eventually was allowed to do the closing set, which would be very, very emotional. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And so, and then it became audio, I suppose. Gosh, was it still these days?

Yeah, it was audio for ages and now patterns. It's been patterns for a while now as well. Anyway, still a wonderful place. I just wanted to kind of ask you, because I guess this place has had queer lives. It's had non-queer lives. Yeah. What's your relationship with it? How has it kind of evolved over time? We're now, what are we called now? An origin, on the website they describe us as origin DJ. Heritage DJ. Origin. We are origin. Along with Charles Green. And it's kind of become, I remember someone saying at one point, or you're too gay for the straight scene and you're not gay enough for the gay scene. For the gay scene. Thanks. Is it because you play house music or is it because you play?

Yeah, because we don't, yeah, sorry, because we don't play house, because we don't play sort of poppy remixes of, yeah. Yeah, because we play nice music.

It's a particular type of music that we play. But Patterns is kind of, Patterns Audio, it's just, it's usually, I don't know, it's sort of run by straight people with gay people involved, queer people involved. It's always been a safe space. I don't know any club, gay or straight, that isn't as safe as that one, actually. I think it's basically, it just feels like they're allies. And so it has always felt so comfortable there. You know, we still play there. We still play there at the moment, doing every Saturday lunchtime. And I don't know, probably third generation staff now. But it's always, it's just the most welcoming place. It's brilliant. Oh, we do. Yeah, Horse Meat Disco turned up there.

I mean, Queer Prom have done some, I think Trampfire, have Trampfire done things there? Yeah. Yeah, it's just a space that's sort of a mishmash of everything and the best of writing, I think, rather than, oh, you're allowed in here once a month or something, or we're allowed in here. And get out the rest of the time. Do you feel like that sense of allyship and almost like being queer adjacent with Patterns, it has to do with like the long history of the gay scene and house music, you know, going hand in hand. Is that the connection? Absolutely. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, I mean, we, I don't know how to put this gently, but we did invent disco and house music. But anyway. Not us personally. Please. You know, if you look at the history of house music in Brighton, whether it's the Coco Club or the Escape Club,

you know, and you'd see those photographs of back in the day, half the crowd are queer. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, you know, now there's an explosion in house music again with gay and queer kind of part of it. And it's, you know, everybody's coming to our clubs now. So, I mean, in a good way, we're sharing it and it's kind of Patterns has always, I think, been like that. Yeah. Yes, definitely. How does it feel when things kind of sort of drift in and out of fashion and you're the kind of, but you're the kind of stalwarts? Like, how do you feel in terms, because I mean, I guess you have seen this sort of rise, you've seen taste change over time, but you've always been quite sort of like committed, I guess, to the music, to your music.

I think it doesn't go out. Disco particularly hasn't really gone out since it arrived and its influence is all over the place and it's still there. And everyone has a disco corner in their head, I think. We were playing Horsemeet Disco down in the Rave Cave at Patterns, which is dark and hot. And really loud. Really loud. And lots and lots of very young people. Horsemeet Disco have a very young, they have this sort of gay boys on Sunday night at the Eagle and queer allies and stuff. And then they have very kind of straight, student-y kind of, I don't know, just a young crowd. And there was a little lad right at the front, absolutely losing it to Luther Vandross. I was like, blimey, he looks about 12.

So I grabbed him later and said, oh no, it's my granny's favourite. I love Luther Vandross. And it's my kids' comfort thing. Which is good though. It's granny's favourite. It was my mum's favourite. But I think it's so heartening, actually, the fact that Disco is so loved by so many young people. You know, our nieces and nephews, honorary nieces and nephews, they all love the Disco. They've gone from wanting ice creams to guest lists. It's become quite expensive. It's already expensive. But, you know, when I was growing up, if I wanted to feel comforted about my granny and grandad, I'd listen to Nat King Cole. But now they're talking about Luther Vandross or Sister Sledge or, you know, I don't know, it's kind of become...

And I think people appreciate where it's come from. We have to make more noise sometimes about the queer roots of house music. Yeah. That Disco was totally forgotten about. Sometimes when you're asked for something and everyone, the person has just not got a clue what's going on. I do feel like cracking out a quick PowerPoint presentation on the walls of the club. Please, I want to see that happen. Well, you do get that. But you play three hours into a Disco set and somebody will come up and say, could you play some Disco? And you'll say, well... So there's a little bit of education. What would you like? I don't know, freed from desire. Yeah, that's not Disco. That's not Disco, darling. So we've got audio, we've got patterns, we've got Escape Club, we've got its many different geysers,

but we are going to put this building into the Queer Museum. Hooray! And now I'm going to hand over to Roni. Roni.

Right, that was fantastic. Thank you so much. And I'm very curious about object number three so far. It's not been a disappointment. Oh, well... Oh, is this still time? Well, object number two... Three. Object number three is this. It's a radio mic. And because of its shape, we'd like to put two little Disco balls on the side, in homage to the first ever Wild Fruit Flyer, which was a banana and two rasp. Yes. So yes, it would look very similar. Sort of electronic... Oh, electronic banana. Banana. Oh, my goodness. Right, don't... Try to cut that bit out or not. The electronic banana. Keep the electronic banana in. No, we wanted to get a radio mic in because I think one way we've managed to stay connected

to these grandchildren dancing to disco is by not having to do gigs where we don't play what we want to play. And the way we do that is by doing a radio show. That keeps us connected up to the community that want to hear what we want to play. Also means, you know, if we feel we haven't been able to play some disco for a while, we just go into the bunker at one BTN. We play three hours of disco. Yeah. And also, I think it's given us just a different part of our life, which as an autistic person who's been struggling with... who struggles with social interactions and times and eye contact and the rest of it, radio has worked out perfectly. Yeah, I have to say, radio's been such a wonderful thing.

I mean, I love it. I love it, but I'm... I love everything. You love anything with a microphone. I know. As soon as there's a microphone there, I'm right all over it. But yeah, for Kate, I know it's been an absolute... It's been... I was going to say groundbreaking. That sounds like, you know, just discovering the next little penicillin. Well, you know, you can get a little bit nudied sometimes. But no, it's been wonderful being able to keep that connection going. And, you know, we were able to do radio all through COVID and stuff like that, which has really, really helped because that was a difficult time. Because community, I think, is... You know, the disco community was taken away from us during COVID.

And radio kind of stepped in there and filled a gap. And I think that's actually... You know, people have talked about that. It's been written about a lot how local radio, independent little radio stations have sort of helped people when they couldn't get into the clubs and couldn't be part of a community like that. Yeah, I mean, we had that lovely woman, I can't remember her name, unfortunately, who said the very thing that actually listening to our radio show kept her sane, which is ridiculous, really, because I thought it would drive everybody absolutely bonkers. But, yeah, it kept her sane during COVID because it was something she'd look forward to. And it just felt her connected with... That there were some people talking the same sort of language

that she wanted to hear. So that really warmed my heart. But also for me, radio has... Disco has... You know, the clubbing community is wonderful. It's great. But it often is got alcohol and the rest of it attached to it. And it's all come Monday morning. It's not part of your life anymore. You have to wait till you go back out again. Whereas radio seems to have had this extra effect of creating a community that's there after the event. Yeah, yeah. Kate, if it's not too personal, I'm really interested to hear about... I guess it sounds like radio offers a sort of safer shelter, being able to play your music, but without having to have that sort of compulsive social interaction. Yeah. Which must be really hard work.

It is. I stopped drinking about a year and a bit ago. And after the initial, well, this is good, I don't have a headache. I started to notice that that was my filter to get through Clubland. And so Clubland is difficult now. I sort of manage it by prepping in advance and taking my time and wearing earplugs and the rest of it. But radio is just... I don't have to worry about what that person was thinking or saying. It's also very planned. It's very organised. It's kind of... Yeah, usually everything works, Mickey. Thanks to Leggy for keeping it on. But yeah, it kind of... It works. And it gives... I don't know. I think Cathy Caton, when she introduced us to radio and got us on board at Radio Reva in...

Was it 2014? 2016, I think. 14. Oh, was it 2014? Yeah. Oh, sorry. She kind of... She gave us the confidence to do that and to feel safe in a radio station, even if there was someone selling apples and pears out the window. Yeah. Or peering in through the window and making faces, which used to happen. It was quite public, that station. But yeah, so it's definitely given us a space. Yeah. And then it's just... It's kind of like listening to us at home, but without the bickering. Or sometimes some bickering. No, no, it's bickering. This is exactly the way I'm going to do it now. This is the thing. Everybody says it is literally just like we're having... They say, do you speak like that to each other at home?

Yep. It's very much the same as when we're in the kitchen together. But yeah, thanks 1BTN for letting us do that. And it's also connected... Yeah, it's connected us up to this community as well, which has been really important to me. Yeah. Club Barbara, Suze, Kerry, the gang of them, Brighton, Suze. And then the Love is the Message crew. We do it with Hannah and Kieran and Tim. And then there's... You know, we do an International Women's Day takeover every year at 1BTN. And it started off with a few hours. Now it's over 25 hours. There's so many DJs involved. Yeah. Suze Rosser was really important in bringing many female, trans and non-binary people on board the radio station as possible. And now we have this amazing day.

And it's kind of created a sort of a slight strange WI effect. But we sort of support each other throughout the year now. It's just this little group. The Sisterhood, as Jane Winstanley goes... Well, the Sisterhood has grown from being just a... It seems like a handful of women non-binary folk. And now there's 28. And I know there's 28 on this current year because I drew every single one of them for the poster. So, yeah, 28 is a very good number for 25 hours a day. Yeah. So that's the advert for 1BTN, Don. Thank you very much. Amazing. Well, that's great. I'm going to take your mic and put it in our museum. Thank you. And I guess maybe there's a little question there about... You mentioned the scene changing throughout COVID

and so how radio is taking up more space and, I guess, digital things and that void that the pandemic created. What did you find a scene to be like on the other side of that? Skint. Skint? Yeah. Well, there was like a huge explosion of joy. Everyone was thrilled and happy and spent what tiny savings they had. And now it's kind of gone very kind of... It's gone quiet again. But things like Tramfau are a little golden... Oh, they're an oasis. Tramfau is an oasis. And it's wonderful. And there are odd moments where it's great. But it's definitely... It's not a wild and crazy place. At least it was pre-COVID. It's not the hedonism of the old Wild Rift days. But then I think, you know, we... I don't know.

I think it probably is for younger people. But for us, we've sort of moved into another gear now. And there's things like Camp Bliss and We Are Love festivals, which are sort of cheaper and more low-key, but just made with love, really. They're all sort of held together with bits of string. But everyone has... But very good, strong, sturdy bits of string and always absolutely marked. Gaffer tape. Yeah, gaffer tape. That's it, no string. Especially that gaffer type you get for Lidl. It's loads of different colours. Yes. Oh, yeah. The fluorescent gaffer tape at Lidl. I guess I'm curious because as we've done these interviews, you know, we've encountered so many stories of the wild days of wild fruit and so on.

And, yeah, maybe it is because we're older, but it does leave you wondering where the, like, queer synhedenism has gone to. If it's still around and we don't know about it or... I don't know. Do you know... I think there will be couples like us just getting together, doing inappropriate things in the bathrooms and running away from Wheatfield Saturday night and... And wondering what on earth what Paul Kipp was doing, booking me to play in the R&B room when I'd never played an R&B tune in my life and booking the R&B DJ to play in the house room. That sort of thing used to happen. We were crazy in those days. I mean, I've never believed it. I've never been one to say, oh, it was best in... They don't make it like they used to

or it was better in the old days. Because I think if you're going out now at the age of 16, 17, 18... It's brilliant. At Girls Don't Sink were playing at Patton's the other night. I looked at all the footage and just thought, oh my goodness, I couldn't do that. Knock my head off. But everyone was having their most incredible time. The time of their lives. And it was carnage and it was hot and it was sweaty and it was dark and it was... And all those faces. Yeah, and it was incredible. It's like, you know, that will be a memory like we have of Wild Fruit, of various other things, Club Shane. Yeah. The youth is fine. The youth is fine. Yeah. You have spoken. And now I've got earplugs I can occasionally dip in.

That's nice. I'll go back home for a cup of tea. Now it's 10 plus 10. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. It's been really, really, really great. And yeah, I mean, I look forward to hearing more when I come and engage with your collection. Oh, the archive. Oh, yes. Is that happening on the 21st? Well, I've just actually answered... When I went off to answer the door, it was to have a parcel delivered, which is a video of Jo. What? In 1980... Was it Jack? Which one? Oh, which one? Another Jack one. 1984. Well, stand by your beds for that one. Rubber sighting shorts I used to wear in those years. Amazing. Thank you so much for talking to us today. It's been Gorge and we really...

We appreciate you and everything that you've done for clubbing, for the community, for everything over the years. It's amazing. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, that was such a fun conversation with Wildblood and Queenie. What absolute local heroes. I really enjoyed that. We played a conversation to a local community archivist, Rowan, and I think he's got some really interesting things to say. Hi, Rowan. How are you? Hi, Rowan. I'm good. That was a great conversation. Yeah, those two are great fun. What's your hot take from that conversation? I love them being described as heritage DJs. I think that's a fantastic term that I used in the interview from Patton's and it really encapsulates their enduring influence on the DJ scene but also pointed to how much of queer history, queer music history is so recent. And I think the clear thread that connects all of the interviews

is obviously music, whether it's Queenie's Bongo's patterns or the microphone. And music has been at the heart of their lives for such a long time through their serendipitous meeting and through their careers now as DJs and as radio hosts. And it's obviously, it's more than a profession to them. It's a real passion. It really is. It really is. If anyone has ever seen them play together or like as a solo DJ, they'll know that they are absolutely in their element. And if anyone has caught their show on the radio, they'll know it's just, they just love connecting with audiences and with people. And under the Church of Music, it truly is their home. Exactly. And as an archivist, music is really hard to preserve.

So different formats like vinyl, CD, even digital formats require so much preservation and so much upkeep to keep them kind of stable and usable. And that's why I know they talked about how difficult it would be to put a building in the museum. Well, I think go ahead. Like you should put that building in the museum because patterns, what that really encapsulates is the atmosphere. And you can't really take that. You can't take that just for music alone. So they talk a lot about disco and how much they love disco. And the point of disco is that disco isn't just a genre of music. It's not just what is played, but it's what's going on as well. So it's a dance culture. And with disco music that emerged in the US

in the 1960s and 70s, particularly for between queer, black, marginalised populations in New York. So it has such a queer history embedded in it. And playing disco specifically, it's such an atmosphere that can't really be captured by one object alone in a museum. So let's put the whole of patterns inside the museum and we can keep that atmosphere. I agree. We always come up against, you know, when we digitise photographs or even aura histories and we put them up in our archive, we always come up against that sort of tension between an object that used to be so alive and also collective, you know, it's like the individual, our history is so collective as a community. And so it's, and we used to,

you know, archive the museums as the objects of one famous, important person. But as a community, we're really trying to archive, you know, our activism and our fashion and our events. And yeah, how do you put what patterns is for Wildblood and Queenie and that beautiful disco community that they've got around it in a two-dimensional website? Well, I don't have an answer, but that's, that's definitely up for exploration. Yeah, that's really difficult. And particularly because the, the music side of it also really informed the protest side of it and the active and live and fight. There's so many other objects and items that link together. So we both know that Queenie and Wildblood have such an amazing collection

of flyers and posters from their gigs in the past and, and before the internet spending so much time flyering to, to gain audiences was really important part of their then activism and then DJing as well. So I think one way we could go about it is we have this whole collection of their things that all integrates together. It comes up this constellation of, of items that might be able to capture a bit of the atmosphere of patterns, but I don't think we can really capture the whole thing without putting patterns itself directly in the museum. No, or you just have to go and look on their Instagram and find out when they're playing next. Oh, definitely. Yeah, music is, yeah, music is so hard to archive

and atmosphere is so hard to archive and, and I guess Wildblood and Queenie had a, had a, you know, a rough time of it during the pandemic, but they discovered radio, which was really, I mean, a silver lining, really discovering the outside of live events, you can still reach out to so many people and, yeah, and, and, you know, there's still that power of the, the microphone. Yeah, during the pandemic, especially if your career was, uh, doing live events that had such an impact on, on people and on queer people and taking those events away really impacted, uh, people in terms of social isolation for lots of people. I was really interested with Kate talking about the microphone and the move towards radio

as her also discovering this side of, uh, neurodivergence. And I think within queer history collecting, we're quite behind the times in terms of neurodivergent and disabled people's experiences, especially of queer music culture as well. We associate queer music culture with live events in crowded places and often, um, neurodivergent people particularly create their own spaces and these spaces change over time for lots of different reasons. So I was really glad that Kate put their microphone into the museum because I think this is an object that could spark a lot of conversations around what a queer neurodivergent archive or museum would look like, especially in terms of changing cultural spaces

when seeing a move towards more sober queer spaces. Um, and it would be really interesting to develop this in terms of a neurodivergent eye to the archive as well. That's really interesting and yeah, I'm sure Kate would be amazing to lead up on this sort of conversation because they, you know, they bring that understanding to the, uh, experience of a DJ which is, you know, really, really interesting in itself. Robin, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure talking to you and yeah, I look forward to more. Thank you. Thank you so much, Janine. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.