Boy George And Marc Vedo
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10.10.2012

Boy George And Marc Vedo

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“Phuket,” Vedo confirms. The two have enjoyed a long professional and personal association, and the calibre of their music together makes this fact totally plain.

“I used to be a promoter in the UK when I left school, and I started putting on events when I was 18,” Vedo explains. “I booked George to play at my event when I was 19 and he was one of the first guests that I had.” Vedo’s career unfurled from there, and he was signed to DMC at an incredibly boyish age.

“When I was 20,” he laughs. “I had a really big editorial feature in Mix Mag when I was 19 actually. I used to put on really big shows and they were really quite successful; people used to travel from all over the country and come to the night, and it started attracting a lot of media attention.” The breakneck pace of the current tour has made things difficult for VG, because although the two love touring, there’s barely a crumb of time left to produce acts for their own label. “George and I have had so many gigs in the last few months, which means very little time for producing music, writing music, or even finding lots of new music. For us, being out on the road is where we want to be, but we’re missing the production.”

One of their coolest tracks is a remix of Daytona Lights’ single Here At Home (My Place), which Vedo and George completed with The Kinky Roland. Vedo hands the phone over to George who says “I think it’s funny, because [the song] has that line ‘I don’t feel like dancing,’” he laughs. “A reluctant dance anthem. Dan [Lawrence, singer for Daytona Lights] did a really lovely job for us, and we’ve got a track called This Pain Is Beautiful which he sung for us, so we did a little swap. And that happens a lot now.” He elucidates: “A lot of rock bands are kind of reluctant to do dance stuff and I think the smart ones embrace it… although it might not be the noise [they ideally want] to make, it opens up their music to a whole new crowd.”

Conversation turns to The Boy’s opinions about how music is released, and while he laments the death of vinyl as removing the “sensory experience” between record and listener, he is interested to see where the ‘net takes the industry. “It’s all changing, which is exciting,” he says. “For me, I haven’t really released a record through orthodox channels in many, many years. The thing about social media is that it gives you direct access to your fans. I’ve got 225,000 followers on Twitter, but none of the fuckers have bought my record,” he laughs cheekily. “It’s a weird, weird, voyeuristic experience, social networking. But I don’t know whether it really makes any different to one’s career.” George and VG Records as an entity are both rather active online, with updates and messages posted regularly. “If I like a record, I will promote it whether it’s mine or not,” George says simply. “I’ve been going on about the new Sharam Jey record, Over Me, which I love. I actually put a tweet out saying ‘This is one of the best dance records I’ve heard since Groove Is In The Heart, you know, and you should buy it.’”

Culture Club as a rite of passage and the resurgence of the New Romanticism movement aren’t things George comments on directly, but he has an insightful take on where youth culture is going. “I think you’ve got a lot of men my age who are kind of straight and have kids, and who are quite trendy. So their kids are looking at them and thinking, ‘How do I avoid being like dad?’ So I think there’s going to be a return to the androgyny; you’re going to see a lot more boys in makeup, a lot more coloured hair, I think things are going to go back to a little bit more adventurous, because you have so many parents who are uber-trendy, and there has to be a reaction to that. And that’s great for me because I’m the kind of grandmother of the whole thing!” He kills himself laughing and then unfortunately the operator’s back online to say the gasbagging’s over. The final word is uplifting. “Where I am right now I have a kind of renewed respect for what I do. A few years back I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Wow, I get paid to do this? This is amazing, and so much fun.’ I’ve come back to what I do with a whole different attitude.”

BY ZOË RADAS