We'll See Groove Ride Again

It’s been grim news all round for drum and bass DJ Grooverider. Sentenced to four years in a Dubai jail for possession of a small amount of cannabis and porn, plus all the other repercussions. His Radio 1 slot looking distinctly dodgy and promoters everywhere reaching for their lawyers’ phone numbers.

It’s desperately unlucky, especially considering Grooverider or Raymonde Barr to use his real name is by no means a chronic partier, certainly compared to some of his peers. It’s also ironic, considering when I interviewed him for the biography for his only ever artist album ‘Mysteries Of Funk’, he told me in the very early days of pioneering d&b night Metalheadz Sunday Session he and Goldie would personally throw crack users and dealers out of the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, East London to immediately distance themselves from the crackpipe associations that had haunted jungle.

Neither has there been little sympathy shown for the plight of the DJ and father from Purley in South London. Some news outlets have merely used it as an excuse to remind us of the grisly drug fuelled demise of Kevin Greening. But even in the usually slavishly adoring drum and bass forums seemed to have had a sudden moral outbreak, and one d&b press officer told me: “these DJs think they’re above the law.” It’s true that shortly before the smoking ban last summer another big DJ from the genre travelled two hours out of London only to refuse to play – while still demanding his full fee – because the bouncers at the club admonished him for lighting up a spliff.

But then I also know a big music industry name who genuinely flew to New York on a work trip with a gram of coke in the top pocket of his jacket, his complete ignorance of its existence until he reached his hotel in the Big Apple no doubt helping him sail through customs unmolested. Considering the court accepted Grooverider hadn’t intended to bring the drugs into Dubai, in truth the worst insult you could hurl at his actions is reckless dopiness.

Of all the countries to try and enter without checking your pockets before entering, you couldn’t have picked many worse than the United Arab Emirates. Having lived there as an 8-year-old child in the 70s, where by my parents fed me and my brother terrifying stories about the floggings and amputations that awaited shoplifters and other petty offenders, I’ve known it for a long time, but it’s hardly a secret. As a globally-travelled professional DJ as well as someone who, due to his colour, must have inevitably suffered more rigorous customs and immigration examinations than his white counterparts, you’d have thought he’d have had a little more of a clue.

But if this writer has anything to say on the matter it’s that despite the various reports of the demise of his career, we haven’t seen the last of Grooverider. Physically imposing and tough as nails from the years he spent growing up in the estates of South London, where he also cut his DJ teeth as one of the first generation of acid house DJs, he’s about the last person on earth you’d want to pick a fight with and it’s hard to see prison breaking him either physically or mentally.

The fact he’ll be well into his 40s by the time he’s released if he does serve four years, has absolutely no bearing on that either. Grooverider’s fame is not based on youth anyway. A vast proportion of the thousands of people who’ve seen him play in recent years are under 25, but his status in d&b circles is as a legend, a godfather figure who has been there from the very start. A populist who plays the very latest dubplates, definitely, but also a direct link back to the original vibe of d&b’s roots in rave and jungle.

While more mainstream news outlets will probably interpret the loss of his Radio 1 slot as a cataclysmic blow, the reality is he’ll always earn more money DJing around the world, something which might become more difficult but by no means impossible. Even if the worst happens and his appeal fails, with a reputation that stretches back 20, it’s hard to imagine he won’t still be a massive pull in 2012.

All the same, don't let that put you off signing the petition for his release!
http://www.petitiononline.com/gr00v3/

Check his '94 tune 'Kindred' on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6ZM3nhgZk