“There’s a lot of people nowadays who are in the middle of their 15 minutes of fame…” Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson tells it like it is [October 1990]

Across a career that spanned close to four decades, Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson was one of the most respected selectors in the business – when the Kiss FM co-founder passed away in December 2018, the outpouring of respect from artists both old and new was a fitting tribute to the great man.

In the words of the great Tony Humphries, “In The Beginning there was… PAUL, and PAUL had a groove. A funky groove, a soulful groove, an underground groove. A groove ALL his own. A groove to be reckoned with. If you didn’t dance when he played, you looked out of place.”

Back in October 1990, Jocks magazine (later to be renamed DJ Magazine), caught up with Anderson at the height of the UK rave scene – a period in which house music was suddenly catapulted into the mainstream.

“Dance music has gone through loads of developments in the 1980s, you’ve had your lovers rock, your disco, your hip hop… but it’s always been relatively underground,” he explained. “Me and my sound, the ‘Troublefunk Sound System’ used to play all these styles, but the music was far more underground than it is today.”

As to whether the dance music ‘trend’ of the period would turn out to be a temporary phase, Anderson is considered about the future that lies ahead.

“There’s a lot of people nowadays who are in the middle of their 15 minutes of fame,” he said. “Take a lot of the producers/remixers who are doing the rounds at the moment – the only remix they can do is in the house style, and when that dies down, so will they.

“These people have only got famous because dance music has gone mainstream and they’ve jumped onto the bandwagon. Look at house music now, there’s so much of it because of its popularity that a lot of the really good stuff gets overseen. But while there is good house music around, I’ll still be playing it.”

You can read the full interview below [click to open in a new tab]