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WINSTANLEY ESTATE, BATTERSEA, LONDON, MARCH 2001
Following their recent show at Red Bull Music Festival London, two members of UK garage legends So Solid Crew revisit a moment that sparked their careers Harvey (1): “This was the very beginning of everything on the Winstanley Estate, where we grew up and used to congregate. The photo is a promotional shot for our single Oh No (Sentimental Things), introducing all the crew members.” Lisa (2): “I used to love photoshoots at the very 18
Lisa: “G-Man (5) and I bought a transit van for 120 quid, but it backfired and didn’t drive. We stacked the back with boxes of 12-inch records of the track and sold them from the van instead. We sold close to 100,000 copies.” Lisa: “Oh No did so well. It would have been our first number one single but, because it included too many mixes, it went into the album chart
instead. Still charted higher than most albums out there.” Harvey: “Oxide (6) & Neutrino (7) actually got the first garage number one [Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty) in 2000] before So Solid Crew. That goes over people’s heads, but they should get more credit. They’re a part of So Solid, but are still talents in their own right and their own entity away from the crew.” Harvey: “Garage has never died; our scene looks after itself. You might not see us on TV, but we’ve never stopped working. Between us, So Solid did 95 gigs last year. We worked for it. Unlike the lucky people today with social media, we had to get out there for people to find us.” THE RED BULLETIN
LOU BOYD
Solid foundations
beginning, because everyone was so shocked when they saw how many of us there actually were. On our first single, it was only me, Romeo (3) and Megaman (4), but when they came to our estate for this photo, every person who was part of So Solid was there – between 40 and 50 people.”
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FLASHBACK