#303. DJ Fish56 Octagon, Glastonbury Madness & UK Rave Scene - DJ Fish56Octagon

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3:14going to be playing like house music progressive trance trance music progressive house hard house acid techno techno and but making music is much harder like much much harder than than physical djing to be a dj in those days you used to have to have a decent record collection you're investing quite a lot of money in it whereas now bar to entry is a lot lower and technically it is much easier than than playing on vinyl tell me about ibiza for you obviously going there partying for years i'd imagine going raving then to be flying over to ibiza and playing like you know in the big clubs i played cafe mambo i played in eden this summer i'm playing ibiza rocks high it's an indescribable feeling Glastonbury I've got three sets at Glastonbury on the main Glade stage just hold that for a minute you're playing at Glastonbury like a year ago you were a bedroom DJ you're playing at Glastonbury three times that's how very privileged I'm in a position I can do this now quick one guys I'll be recording Eventful Lives live on stage this year at EMC 2025 the Entrepreneurs Marketing Conference and it's going to be a banger we've never done this before so watch this space we're taking the podcast out of the studio and into a room with 800 real business owners at an event designed to give you practical, tactical marketing strategies that you can actually implement into your own business to get results.

4:22The lineup's massive. Google are speaking, Facebook too, and I'm also going to be bringing a special guest with me. It's all happening on the 19th and 20th of September at Tobacco Dock in London. Tickets are£145 plus VAT and the price will also be increasing soon. So if you run a business and want to be in the room and see me and the Eventful Lives podcast live on stage, then head over to www.emc2025.com and use the code DOGE20 if you want to get 20 % off your ticket. I'll see you there, guys. Fish, welcome to the show, mate. Hello, thanks for having me. Yeah, very much looking forward to this one.

4:55This role all the way back, how did you end up blowing up so quickly over the last 18 months? Well, I started making social content about four years ago, right at the start of 2021. So what happened was I was out with my friends for our Christmas lads session, which we would normally do around my house but it was like there were all those lockdown restrictions at the end of 2020 and my friend was telling me about TikTok and up to that point I was one of those people that sort of avoided social media and didn't really know anything about it and wasn't using it certainly wasn't creating any content and he was telling me all about TikTok and about how it's different to Facebook which was the only thing that I knew at the time because I'd used that when I was younger as a lot of us had and he said you know you just scroll through it really quickly and then the algorithm figures out what your interests are and it will start you know honing in on what your interests are and showing you stuff that's tailored to you and also and this is the bit that was interesting to me that sort of like stuck in my mind he said you can make some content on it and you can blow up like straight away and you don't have to spend years like building an audience or anything I thought oh that sounds interesting so I thought okay well I'll have a I'll have a look at that so I downloaded the app and um in order to set it up you have to put in a username so I was just putting like the stupidest stuff I could come up with like fish 56 octagon because at the time I just I was you know obviously we were on the session with the lads and stuff and I thought well I'm never going to make any content so it doesn't matter does it i don't have to put any thought into it right so so that was that um i'm actually five foot six tall and sometimes i tell people that it's 56 because of my height but i'm it's it was a coincidence so um and then i started looking at the videos that it shows you and the way that the algorithm works um i really didn't know anything about social media before i worked like the job that i had before was working in marketing which we talk about but it wasn't in social media i never did anything in social media within all the years i worked in that industry and it starts showing you the most popular videos on the app and then it observes the algorithm observes how long you watch them for and whether you like them whether you leave a comment and it starts to very quickly build a picture of what your interests are so it starts with the same ones for everyone which will be like you know like a girl doing a dance or whatever right and then it will show you it will then interleave those popular ones with some sort of special interest ones and then it will observe the ones you like the most so after a while um the the feed will transition from being like you know girls doing dancing and stuff to stuff that was more my interest which was yeah like a plumber showing you a really good technique for doing a bit of silicon down the side of the bath or like you know a roofer showing a good way of attaching like a joystick you know because i do quite a lot of diy at home and stuff and i was finding quite a lot of that and then every now and again the dance music and car car ones would come up and stuff and after a while you have a curated feed which is stuff that's more like more to your liking and um i was kind of watching a lot of this content at the time because we had those lockdowns and it tedious and people were looking for ways to fill their time and i just remember thinking like you know some of this tiktok was a lot smaller than it wasn't it wasn't such a big app and i remember thinking like you know a lot of this content is like you know stuff that people haven't put a lot of thought or care or attention into it's like angry man shouting at someone at customer service desk in asda um person falling over in road uh you know like that kind of thing and i thought like surely i can and there's good content on there as well right and i thought surely i could do something um that would be music led of interest to people not music led actually initially funnily enough I looked at Instagram as well but Instagram at the time was very aesthetic based and I thought well I'm slightly short you know five foot six um bald male um like you know Instagram's not not going to be my home right and obviously that was a little bit of miscalculation on my part but you live and learn from these things so I started making some content and actually this would be quite interesting not that this is like a motivational talk but for anyone that's thinking about or that struggles with social media or is thinking about getting into it or they need to do it for their job but they don't have the confidence if you actually put in tiktok like putting my name into tiktok search fish 56 octagon watch review and you can see some of that very early stuff because i've deliberately left it all on there so you so when you started you it wasn't purely music it was reviewing about watches so i didn't know what to do i had i had like they were really there were three things i was interested in right there's music which is by far my biggest passion as you can probably see yeah but i discounted that at the time because i just thought like these young kids aren't going to be interested in someone of my age like talking about it I wasn't big into social media I didn't look at podcasts I didn't realize that there was a like that much of an interest in it and I just thought it's not going to be that interesting to to these young people that are out raving and all that kind of stuff and and so I kind of discounted that at the time um I also had a watch collection which is what I've been doing in 2020 but it wasn't anything fancy right I'm wearing one now it's like a it's like a Seiko watch from the 80s it's quite cool but it was only like 65 quid on eBay but you spend ages hunting through for rare interesting looking things and you bid on them and stuff and at the time i had about 15 of these watches right and then the other thing was cars and i was a massive petrol head but i've i've had like three cars and i thought well i'm gonna go i'm gonna be limited if i do that because once i've talked about all of my cars it's like i'm you know that's the first three videos done or maybe like two yeah so i started off making these videos about watches and they were insanely shit right and you can see them all i've left them have you kept them on there have you yeah i've kept it all on there i'm proud of what i've done and also it's useful because people can see the journey and it's useful actually for people are trying to inspire people can't you to say hold on mate we're talking about that and look where it's blown up from yeah you know you pivoted straight away and gone boom i've gone into music but i started here i was so like meek and anxious and unconfident when i was doing this right and you can see it in my eyes i'm like fearful of then you know what's going to happen when i put this out there and stuff but you get on with it and you do it and you can see even technically you know there was writing across my face and you know i didn't know how to do any of that stuff but you you get better at it and after after a while um i realized that you that you can dip your toe in the water of trying other things and seeing what works and stuff and um i decided to switch my focus to cars because when i was doing the watch ones i realized actually you don't have to have the physical item in your hands to talk about it you can put a picture in the background yeah right i'd always been a lot more interested in like cars like the watch thing was never really going to go anywhere because a lot of the interest in watch thing is around speculation and investment and all that kind of stuff which is not as interesting so what was the point when you went hold on a minute i'm gonna flip this to music what year was that so i've done the car thing for about three years and i've been modestly successful with that i actually built it up to the point that was providing me with like you know quite a nice little side hustle income you know my wife's not really done a she gave up work when we had kids so she wasn't reproducing any income and it was producing some some nice uh like a nice little side hustle income out of a couple of brand deals and ongoing things um and there was always a little bit of a tie a little bit of a time with music because with the car videos i was doing a thing where i was um when i'd realized I couldn't you know I didn't have to have a physical car in front of me I was doing things where I would talk about cars that just come onto the market or helping people buy their cars so people go what's a good hatchback for 3k and I'd you know I'd go to Auto Trader and I'd find some ones I thought were good value for money or looked interesting I'd do some screen grabs and I'd always put some quirky choices in there as well to make it a bit more interesting and um but one thing that I did because I thought this is a bit boring right right it's some tunes in the background right always did that and I've always been like into dance music that was like my biggest passion ever since i was really young right and i sort of started off with drum and bass which was like because i thought you know it's obviously quite a young audience on tiktok and stuff and then i um tried some other stuff and everyone always used to go in the comment section like why are you playing drum and bass in the background of your auto trader car video right and i'd admit it's a slightly odd odd odd confusion of the two concepts but um but it was you know i used to say it was because i'm i'm really into it i've always been really into this music and then people would say well prove it so i go okay well here's my record collection i get record and the thing i noticed was when i did those posts and i was determined to stick with the car thing because i've been spending ages building it up and it was you know like i say it was bringing in like you know a couple of grand a month by the end right and i was going doing porsche journalist driving days and that was all really enjoyable right so i was thinking well you know i don't want to dilute it too much by doing the music stuff even though those like those ones when i when i do show some music or i show a record or whatever i was noticing that the views on those were actually like quite high and often doing better than the car videos so it was always sort of bubbling away that it was um there was something that people were interested in and then the the views the videos that went really berserk was if i was at music festival like i was at glastonbury or i was at a rave or an event in london or whatever and i posted up a thing of me and people would just be like mind blown that you could be my age and going along to these sorts of events and still enjoying myself or that you know there was a bit of personality beyond the book the guy that stands there talking about cars and stuff um and at that same moment in time and i was fairly confident that was going to work because i'd been already doing more and more music stuff and it'd been you know it had been doing really well getting really good views so um at that time i also started my instagram properly and started doing insta reels and the only reason i really did that was because i noticed that there were people that were taking my tiktok content and reposting it on instagram anyway so i thought well if they're going to do i might as well just do it myself right so i did that and i just i must have just caught the imagination of the algorithm or the public at just at the right time right place and it just really blew up what year did it really blow up for you on the music scene um so on socials on socials so i had about 200 000 tiktok followers right in january of last year so that's 2024 well you know half a million plus instagram now is at 632 right yeah and tiktok's kind of doubled So TikTok's like, you know, more like 450, right?

14:05But there were points in like February, March last year when the Instagram was growing. Like I think the best day was like 11 ,500 followers in a day, right? Which is just totally wild. Absolutely wild. But one thing that then was instrumental in moving the story on was that this guy contacted me. He said that he had a relationship with his club in Manchester called Hidden, which is a really good club, like credible club where they put on proper banging nights. 600 capacity venue and he said look we could do something like different there where it would just be you playing all night long and you could create your own vibe and take people on a journey and i just said to him i was like mate i don't think 600 people are gonna gonna want to come and see me and um and he and he was like mate you'd be surprised honestly you'd be surprised and at that point i'd started to have a few like big djs following me and stuff as well which was mind-blowing absolutely mind-blowing but like so the first one was a hard techno dj called azia right he was he was notable right but then you know after and and after that it was just there was just like a a torrent i've actually got like a little list on my phone because i don't yeah yeah so i grab it because i don't i don't want to miss like i inevitably will miss people off but it was it was after after the first couple like little trickle there was just like a more and more coming through just more and more and it was very surprising to me honestly very surprising but i've got like give us a list of djs who started following you so i've got like fat boy slim disclosure david getter chris stussy skrillex um orbital chris lake john summit ketamar josh baker basement jacks pete tong paul oakenfold ronnie size sub focus headaches hybrid minds dillinger wilkinson dom dollar sammy virgie um yeah there's there's loads loads loads loads more than that that's like my little list at the top you know judge jewels k class darren styles salado it just it's just it's a big list you know and then there's like loads of the guys in drum and bass Dom and Roland SS, DJ Rap, Logistics, Nero, High Contrast.

16:00It just goes on and on and on this list, right? So how did that make you feel when all this was coming through then? Just, I just couldn't believe it because they're just like my heroes or people I've respected or people I've been, you know, followed or listened to for decades and stuff. And the fact that they wanted just to watch my channel and then some of them started sending me their unreleased music as well. And this gave me a little bit of confidence and spurred me on. And I thought, you know, maybe I can do it. Maybe I can do it. So I bought some CDJs so that I could brush up on that. And I bought some really shit ones, actually, like the really old ones.

16:32But it was fine, right? They were fine for the purpose. And I agreed to do a club night with this guy in Manchester. And I said to him, whatever you do, just put the ticket to like a fiver ago. Because my biggest fear is having no one turning up. Everyone, like having a party and no one coming to. But he wouldn't listen to me. And he was working with the club, we're promoting it as well. and they put the tickets are more like 25 quid a pop and it sold out almost as soon as it went on sale right which was like which that was a real moment for me when it got real because i thought i'm gonna have to do it now and i was obviously bricking it because i haven't performed since i was in university right that way when the doors open for that gig um i was playing it was like 11 p.m i played for five hours and there was like a torrent of these like young people that charged towards the front and started like chanting like fish fish fish i couldn't believe it i just couldn't believe it i was like it was just um it was unbelievable i've never seen anything like it before in my life and um and it was it was really bang i played all of my favorite tunes i played some stuff that was you know big classics i played some tracks were big underground tracks that that these guys would never have heard before um and and some stuff that they would have recognized and just wove it all together and went through the genres and got a little bit faster towards the end and ended up some really like quite banging like kind of acid techno like the I used to listen to when I used to go to free parties when I was a lot younger in the 90s.

17:51And right at the very end, I stood up on the decks because in Hidden, it's one of those clubs where you're level with the crowd. So you can only really see the people that are in front of you, especially if you're only five foot six. So I stood up on the decks at the end just to literally just to see what the room looked like and how many people were in there. And of course, everyone like cheered, which was amazing, a real piece of validation for me, you know, in this build up on this story. But the thing I noticed was that the room was still full all the way to the back and i just thought like you know well maybe maybe there are people that are going to want to come and see me so i put on two more little nights myself which i just promoted myself via my own social channels that were a little bit smaller than that one in newcastle one in birmingham and the same thing happened they both sold out at a time when people why did you if you're based in surrey whereabouts in surrey are you um well it's like southwest like kind of towards london okay so you're based around there why did you want to go and pick up newcastle and pick up somewhere else why don't you base it around southwest london so no i did i did do um I also arranged to do a night in London as well at Night Tales.

18:45There wasn't anything that I saw. I wanted to do a proper rave venue. Southwest London is not exactly that kind of thing. Like East London is more where it's at, right? So I organized one at Night Tales as well, which I did later in June as well. But that was once I'd come under professional management. So it was different. The club got more involved in promoting that. So I did London. But Manchester was the first one that just came my way because of that guy. That gig there, that first gig you did in Manchester, what month was that? That was in March. So it was March 24. so you were still a kind of social media bedroom dj at that time yeah you were doing it for probably a year was it a year leading up no no it wasn't it wasn't that long because well i mean i was doing the tiktok lives to be fair i'd be due for about two years yeah but that was the watches and the cars and stuff but if you if you i want to i want to sort of get to a point to find out how quickly you blew up to actually then going right i'm doing this full time and leaving my job so i switched the channel to entirely music around christmas that year so it was like you know so it's been that was as in at the end of 2023 yeah right so a year and a half ago yeah the first gig that i played was in march okay right so three months after that and that one sold out i did two more which sold out and at that point um i came under professional management from a guy that took a chance on me um who was also involved quite early on in the rave scene um he used to own united dance um and he normally deals with people that are you know kind of quite advanced in their career yeah bigger and stuff but he saw the opportunity as well and um what's his name and gave a chance that's chris brown chris he was half of rough drivers the trance act in the uh back in the 90s yeah um did hits such as he's got some stories yeah yeah dreaming don't stop all that you know those those tracks but yeah he owned united dance before that which is obviously a big rave organization i'd like to get chris brown on the podcast 100 his name popped up a few times so when so how did you get the phone call was it a phone call was it a dm how was it from chris so I had played a record that was written by one of Chris's co-workers um a guy called DJ Ham and he got in touch with me and said oh thanks for playing my record and then he said I work with a guy who's a DJ manager would you like to speak to him and I thought oh I can't see the point in that and that's not going to go anywhere is it but then I thought well you know it's only yeah it's only 10 minutes and I spoke to this guy and honestly he was probably as skeptical about the whole thing as I was I was thinking you know I thought I'd done this night I was about to do night in Manchester I thought well you know what's the best case scenario is I'll do one of those every two months you know that that will replace the money that I lost from not doing the car channel anymore I didn't really care about that anyway but it was you know it was like I thought I'll do that and then I'm not gonna get in trouble with my missus if I'm just going away once every eight weeks and doing a you know doing a single club night or anything I mean I think should be very glad to take that get you out to take no quite the opposite I think should be glad to take that back now but compared to sort of how infrequently around around now but yeah so um And then once I came into professional management, you know, like Chris would speak to other promoters, you know, people who are established and work at events and stuff like that.

21:36And, you know, there'll be a degree of some people who have a degree of cynicism and other people that are more kind of, you know, got their ear to the ground again. Like the promoters that are, you know, they've already seen me. They've seen the story unfold on social media and they took a chance on it. And the events that I did went pretty well. I took lots of footage when I was there. So were you getting paid to the DJ there or did you have a cut at the door? So the nights I promoted myself were ones where I took a cut of the door. Okay. But then after that, it just switched to being paid a fee to perform like a normal DJ.

22:05What do you prefer? Do you prefer knowing how much you're getting up front, or do you prefer the risk of taking the door? No, now that I've quit my job in order to do this, I'd rather perform for a fee just like a normal DJ, like promoting, as Billy Daniel Buns said. And, you know, I did three myself. It's fraught, you know. It's nerve-wracking. It takes balls to be a promoter. It takes balls to do it. And I've got a lot of respect for people that are doing it, that are keeping the scene going. And it's, yeah, it's not easy. And there are great rewards to be made. And there's also great fortunes to be lost doing it as well.

22:40I mean, you know, doing it on the DJing and on the performance side, obviously you're not exactly taking that sort of risk, but it's very volatile what you do. You know, if you're a promoter and you have a couple of events that don't go so well, you can dust yourself off, you know, get yourself back together and try again, you know, six months later, a year later, whatever. However, you know, with the music thing, you know, people go in vogue, go out of vogue. And it's, you know, you don't know when that's going to happen or how that's going to happen. It's a constant pressure to stay on top of things, to stay on top of trends, to be putting music out and stuff, which is something I'm just getting into at the moment.

23:09It's been quite a long lead into that side of things. But yeah, it's... It's been some journey. It's a rollercoaster, right? You think about March 24 and we're now June 25. Yeah. And I look before you come and I look to the amount of gigs you've done. You've been like back to back to back, flying here, flying there, going around the country, back to back on that one, staying a night there, going there. It's been a whirlwind, right? Yeah, I've done 130 gigs since I started. In the first three months, I only did about four as well. So it's in a year. Yeah. Roughly 10 gigs a month. Yeah. I mean, I've got some weeks this summer where I'm doing like eight, right?

23:43It's like, you know, all over Europe and Ibiza and stuff like that. Eight in a week. In a week. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's heavy. It is heavy, but I love it. I absolutely love it. I mean, I'm really living the dream, right? You are. And, you know, one thing, you know, I've kind of, I don't really drink much alcohol when I'm performing and stuff now because it's hard, like at my age especially, but like, you know, when you've, if you're getting in at five in the morning, you have to get out of here. You feel like groggy the next day and sort of down. 90 minutes to get a flight somewhere else and stuff.

24:08But also, you know, I don't want to kind of let myself down. I don't want to let the people down that have come to see me. Yeah. And I know that I'm going to perform at my absolute peak when I'm completely clear, like level-minded, level-headed and sober and stuff. um so that's you know which is an interesting thing because it's um i think if i'd started doing this properly when i was a lot younger i might not have had that discipline and you know i think it's quite an easy life you've got a new lease of life yeah yeah you've gone from a tech marketing job where you're thinking what am i doing i don't know what your job was like but you must have been the back of your mind going what am i doing my life i'm earning good money but i've got more to give you and all of a sudden you've got this opportunity it's just landed on your plate it wasn't so the job i was doing before was it was a good job and it was enjoyable and it had good perks with it and all of that and i'd never denigrate that but it was i always felt that i had the capability to do something a little bit more interesting for myself and also that i could bring more to other people as well and i tested that with social media and it was a massive privilege to be in a position where you have people that are interested as you know as well that are interested in hearing you and you can stand up in front of and do stuff and people are genuinely like interested in hearing what you've got to say or they're entertained by you they find you an enjoyable person to to follow and watch and that's that's that's a huge privilege and that's something that this is that that has come to me as a result of doing this social media and it was to answer your question we've gone right around the house on the beginning it was in august august was my last time i quit my job in july right so it really didn't take very long if you think my first gig so it's not even been a year then my first gig no no it's not been a year since i quit my job i did my first gig at the end of march and i and i handed my notice in in towards the end of July.

25:41So that's four months later, April, May, June, July. So when did you, when did you find out that you were covering the salary? The month is you've got a kid, two kids and you've got a missus and a mortgage to pay and bills. When was it when you started in August last year that you go, do you know what my bill, everything's getting covered just as if, just as if, as if I had a full time job? I mean, when, when I handed my notice in, right, I wanted to have enough of a buffer behind us that we could live for like, you know, three months or something like that. right and i knew i could get another job like things are quite tough in the job market at the moment as i'm aware but um i wanted to have like a bit of a buffer behind me but really when july came around the truth is i didn't have that buffer behind me at all and it was a leap into the unknown to some extent i did have ford ford gigs but so i knew that i did have some revenue guaranteed money coming in there yeah because it's contracted right and it's like you know it's so i knew that it wasn't you know necessarily it was like an act of god or that you know there's another covid or something like that but you can't live your life worrying about stuff like that and really the reality is being truthful I wasn't able to give either of the things I was trying to do the focus that they deserved at that time because you know my job I'd always done well at work you know I got I know these things sound silly now but I got nominated for MVP you know like most value player twice in the last four quarters at work and I know my team at work like working with me and I was you know I was efficient I was good at my job and stuff but I could see that it was hard to again hard and hard to focus on it not just because I was tired from like smashing gigs out of the weekend but also if you've like you know played on a massive festival stage, right?

27:07That buzz. On Saturday night. Yeah, and then on Monday morning, you're talking to some customers about some cardboard point of sale to send out to their stores. It's hard to get like... Yeah, mate. And then the other thing that was getting a bit tricky at customer meetings was like the people wanting selfies and stuff like that, which was a bit of a distraction going and have a tough negotiation about some marketing spend or some activity that hasn't happened or, you know, talking about some stock that's going to be delivered late. You know, those kind of tough business conversations. And at the end, they're like, can I get a selfie?

27:31My kid's a big fan or my brother follows you or whatever, right? And, you know, even when we're doing corporate hospitality and taking customers out, and I was always trying to keep it on the lowdown to my boss that, you know, that my social media had blown up because he wasn't following me. So I didn't want him to realize that it had got to the point that it wasn't. I was doing all this DJing and stuff. And, you know, some people knew about it, but were cool about it, and other people didn't know about it at all. And I just wanted to keep it well on the lowdown. So I didn't really talk about it at work.

27:55But it would be a corporate hospitality type thing. I remember we were at Ascot, for example, and we were sitting at the table with customers talking about business and stuff. and you've just got like people coming over the whole time asking for selfies and stuff and it's a bit it was a bit distracting and i just knew that i wasn't able to give that as much of my focus as i was and then with the djing stuff as well you know a lot of it's about music production now that's really the path that you have to take it's very unusual to come through in the way that i have with social media i'm very grateful that i managed to do that but it's unusual and normally the normal route is music production like djing social media you know with music production being the biggest thing you have a hit record or you have a record that other DJs start playing and you've got it the other way I've yeah not intentionally that is what's happened but I'm focusing very heavily on music production at the moment and I wasn't able to do that in the early days which is why it's taking me so long to get my music out now because I was still working a day job okay I was working a day job how's it affected how's it affected your relationship with your missus and family because if you're banging in social media and you're doing five in the morning and five in the evening were you losing time with your family yeah massively like social media was probably take my screen time was like sometimes like 14 hours a day yeah right at the time when i was also doing a like a serious career type job yeah and ever since i started my social media as soon as i started getting that growth when i started doing the car stuff and i started gaining followers much faster um like my family thing has you know i'll be honest with you taken probably a little bit of a back seat more than i would have liked right i'm still there i still spend time with my family i still see my kids and you know it's not the same as the as you know my friend's dad when we were growing up he used to go out to work every morning at six o 'clock in the morning and would be back at eight o 'clock and they had a fantastic lifestyle in a massive house and blah blah blah but he never saw his kids when he was growing up because they were you know always asleep when he was in the house so it's not like that and i do spend quite a bit of time with my family but i've not been as present as as i would have liked and in the early years when i was just doing the you know doing the tiktok stuff and making the car content and stuff there was never any guarantee there was never any guarantee up until august really that this was going to go anywhere and actually turn into a vacation and something that would actually replace my revenue so yeah it was a massive risk even though i did have four gigs booked for a few months and some cover it was a massive risk when i quit my job in august when you quit your job that first gig how much did you get paid can you remember i don't want to talk about that we're talking more than less than the grand do you know what honestly i'd rather not say because it just engenders negativity in people to talk about that sort of thing but you know i was earning a decent salary before and we were able to sustain i'm just trying to get my head around how long it took you because you took a gamble, you said, if I've got three months under the belt, fantastic.

30:25But actually, if you went August, September, October, and you go, I'm onto something here now, I'm getting more and more bookings, because I've seen your bookings. Yeah. And you're talking a serious amount of bookings here, which is amazing. Yeah. Has most of that all come through Chris? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Basically, everything's gone through Chris. He's opened up the whole door. He's your manager. He's my agent, and he's my manager. And you know, the truth is, if I hadn't gone down that route, because you hear these horror stories about people in the music industry getting taken advantage of, probably more on the recording side of things where it's complicated.

30:52But, you know, at the start, I was thinking, is this the right thing to do? I could just carry on doing it myself and stuff. But, you know, the reality is if I hadn't gone with management or with an agent at that point in time, I probably would have still got some festival gigs and played on some stages here. But you wouldn't have done 130 gigs? No, there's no chance. There's no chance of the headline gigs and stuff. Massive shout out to Chris to identify in that as well. Yeah, he's... For both of you, because you were a bit anxious. He was probably a bit anxious going, what's this fish... And you've gone, you know what, boom, look at it now.

31:15We just... It was a meeting where we both had a very well-matched skill set. You know, he's got an absolute ton of industry experience going back several decades and contacts. Huge amount of contacts. Huge amount of contacts. But also, you know, I've got the ability to, you know, to kind of to create and nurture an audience in a community. And that translates into people that want to come and see me, hopefully, which is which is where I'm at, which is, you know, like I said before, massive privilege to be in a situation where you're able to do something you love and the people want to come along and support you.

31:44What do you reckon your biggest USP is? I think it is probably there's I think it's probably the um it's quite dynamic what I do right and that's unusual right so I've always been into a wide variety of different types of dance music so it's not you know a lot of DJs because of what we said before you know get into it as a result of having a hit record or doing you know making some really good music in in a genre and that's what they become known for and that's what they perform in but because I didn't take that route not not consciously like because i i came through inadvertently through this route of growing on social media i've always been into the wide range of dance music now it turns out that you know a lot of these djs that i talk to actually do like all the different genres but you know once you're you know once you're nailed on as a drum and bass dj or a house dj or whatever it's like you it would be unusual to go off and start creating stuff in those other genres whereas with me i've i've been i'm more of a selected dj than a um than a producer at this stage although that is changing now and i'm getting very serious about you can go out as fish 56 octagon as a house dj as a drum and bass as a garage yeah you can do a set on each one yeah and i have done that so for example really enjoyable oh it's hugely enjoyable because i love it all and i've gone to loads of drum and bass robes and garage robes and house robes and trance robes but but i've gone you know for example i played um i played blackstone warehouse um which was a hard techno event for second speed 10 000 people and i played a hard techno set hour and a half of that including loads of my own productions and edits and stuff that i've done myself um and then i can play like worried about henry at drum sheds in the y room like 5 000 people with harry shotter on bars like doing the emceeing and stuff um and then i played last week and i played at trance in the words did back to back with ferry causton and yeah and that was good wasn't it oh absolutely dream total dream but the thing is it it's you know at glastonbury last year i played a garage set in one of one of the stages i was on hour and a half of garage and stuff um but the normal set and that's it keeps it really interesting for me um it means that i can you know i try not to do too many single genre events because i want to leave that for people in the industry that are established that are breaking through they're making music so i don't want to start sucking up doing loads of i'll do like three drum and bass gigs a year that's it okay three hard techno four hard techno events a year one of which is um like terminal v which is another massive one i did in edinburgh a few weeks ago and they've got one in cro got one in croatia coming up but which i'm doing as well um what sort What are festivals Terminal V like?

34:01So Terminal V, like, so the one in Croatia is, I'd imagine, is very much going to be on the harder side of, like, techno and hard dance and stuff like that, right? Croatia's got developing a bit of a reputation for being a cool place to go for these, like, rave-type events. I'm sure you're aware. You know, the reason being is, you know, people look to alternatives away from just Ibiza. Ibiza's very house music-focused as well. And it's, you know, Malta and Croatia are places that have, you know, over the last, I guess, kind of 10 years or so, been increasingly focused. There's always been an alternative because there used to be Ionapa as well.

34:34Do you remember? That was like a garage thing because the garage wasn't so big. The urban music thing wasn't so big in Ibiza. So it's nice to have alternatives. And Croatia's got a few really good places where they've got some great festivals going on there. You know, you have hospitality on the beach, you've got Hideout, you've got Terminal v Croatia. There's, you know, all different genres of music and stuff. But, you know, just going back to your question, when I do my headline shows and I'm performing for like two hours, three hours, three and a half hours, I'll play a set where I take the audience on a bit of a journey through all of this stuff that I play on my channel.

35:02And it's not all over the place. It's not like a hodgepodge of music. It'll start off with house music. It's always kind of quite driving stuff. I don't play so much of the more chilled out stuff, although I do like that, you know, the more progressive house. But it's not really where my audience is at. Play some house music, and then I'll transition into some garage and play some garage because that's a bit more punchy, a bit more banging. And then I can go from there into some hard groove, a little bit of hard groove techno, and then some trance. and then I'll play some of the heavy techno, you know, the hard techno is popular and then I'll finish off with a bit of drum and bass.

35:31And when I was younger, going out raving in the nineties, you'd mainly, you'd go to an event, you wouldn't get, in the early nineties, before I was on the scene at the old raves, you'd get, you know, the house and hardcore and, you know, stuff all mixed because there'd usually only be one arena and stuff. But, you know, then the scene got a bit bigger and you'd go along to an event and you just have trance in one arena or drum and bass in one arena and stuff. And I always used to think, you know, people would, my experience is people typically, would follow one scene right now you know that isn't i'm not saying that's universal and everyone everyone does that because i've gone through phases where i was only really into drum and bass or i was only into trance yeah yeah exactly you just go every week you go to a garage garage whatever right or drum and bass whatever it is um all i find now is that i think spotify's played a part in this actually because it's a bit more random what you get on your feed and you know the the artist album thing isn't such a big thing anymore it's more um i think young people now possibly a bit more open-minded about what they'll listen to not entirely you know people are really into techno and won't necessarily like drum and bass or whatever i'm not saying this is like a universal rule but i've been doing these sets since the start you know and i've done at least a hundred of them where i do this journey through all these different genres doing that journey or do you wait for the promoter to say right fish i want to book you for a garage fish i want to book you for a trance and you said i'm open to that i'm open to that or i can do this set which i can take people on a journey do you give them an option i've never had a promoter like advise me on what to play but i'm not you know i'll look at where i'm playing so for example on park life i'm playing on sunday yeah i'm in the house tent i've got dod before me there's arman van helden's playing later on you know i'm not going to go in there and start playing techno and drum and bass it's going to be a house set right i may like venture into garage for a little bit in the middle of the set and then go back into house music okay something like that but you know it's it's you have to you have to look at the situation if it's a headline gig and i'm just playing um you know it's just me i'm playing like a two-hour set and before that you've got um you know like kind of the local support DJs playing what they know the crowd likes and stuff and it's not a themed like room or a themed night then I can go in there and I can take the audience on a bit of a journey but you know if I play the garage and it doesn't get a big reaction I can move on.

37:32Flip it slowly, okay. Yeah, I can move on to something else and it's great actually having all those different genres but the one thing that the one negative around it is like the homework that you have to do right in order to stay on top of them all is significant because you know I'm fortunate as I said to you before a lot of a lot of the guys that produce in these genres follow me which is a massive privilege right but they will also sometimes send me their music so i sometimes get dubs and you know unreleased music ahead of time but i have to do that in house garage techno drum and bass hard techno and it's you know that's that's a lot to keep on keep on top of you know when i go on to it but you absolutely love it oh yeah yeah i can hear the passion in your voice yeah i love it and i've tried producing in all of these genres as well right and you know my production's coming on but music production is you know it takes a long time to get good at it but i've got to the point now where i've got stuff that i'm comfortable releasing that i think's like you know good enough to put my name to and um yeah and it's it's it's nice when you play your music that you've produced in front of a crowd of people not so nice when you play something you've produced and it goes a bit like yeah yeah you know like i played uh i played two of my own tracks at a festival gig a few months ago one of them got one amongst the biggest reactions out of everything i played which is amazing and the other one went absolutely flat and i thought i will never play never play that one yeah that one's in the bin yeah but you know so that's you got a trial though you got a trial and error haven't you it's the most see what works yeah 100 % and then it's the most honest judge of whether your music's good or not forget what your you know what your mate says or whatever and you know like Chris my manager and my friends and Angie my wife is you know very very honest with me about my music and 90 % of the time Is she into her music as well?

39:02Yeah she loves it we used to go raving together What in the 90s? Yeah yeah we used to go to like the gallery and the cross and turnmills and fabric and all of them all them places like Club UK Yeah I used to love Club UK Wandsworth Yeah that was that was an interesting place wasn't it? It was very what's what we're talking i think we'd i used to go there that was our regular like 95 96 93 94 95 96 97 yeah we used to go to final frontier on a friday night and see likes of like carl cox and um like sometimes danny rampling would be down there and then on a saturday night it was that we used to i've even got my little membership card at home right yeah yeah you know because you could sign up as a member and then it was like it was a tenner to get in sweat from the ceiling wasn't it and you're going to fill up your water bottle and it'll just be hot water just hot water come now you go i've got going by a cold one from behind the bar those blue square bottles do you I remember them, Blue Square Bottles Club UK.

39:48And they had, well, they also started a Club UK Midlands as well, which didn't, I think, well, it was in like Ipswich or something, which didn't work. And then there was the pop art room in the back, which was like more techno. And the DJ booth was like a cage. And they had all like pop art prints on the walls. And then there's the middle, that little room in the middle. All black ceilings. Yeah, that's right. There's a little room in the middle called the Barbarella, which was tiny. And then there was that main room, which was just like a normal, like kind of club type room, where you'd see people like Loved Up and like Graham Park and it was like Milo and Biko and all that long back in the day.

40:20And it was, yeah, it was a cool, it was a cool place. Like I was, before I was with Angie, right? I used to go to that with my mates and then I got together with Angie when we were at university and we used to go because we were at university in Norwich. So we used to go to Pam's house, which was like, that was like the big promoter up there or go to nights at the waterfront where I've now played, which is again, a bit weird playing somewhere we used to go yourself. But then my parents lived in London. So we used to like come down to learned to stay at my parents' house in the summer holidays or in the holidays between terms and go clubbing.

40:47The gallery was a favourite as was like Bagley's Freedom at Bagley's on a Saturday night. It was unmatched. Amazing. Unmatched. Literally unmatched, wasn't it? Yeah, it was good. It's kind of weird going back to Bagley's now and seeing what they've done with it. Because you meet at Dishoom, right, and as you step out of the restaurant, you're sort of in the same space that was like the smoking area, right, where sometimes when it was very cold, the bounce would lie afar in a That's right. A steel, like dustbin type thing. And it was like a little van, they're selling coffers where you could buy a quadruple espresso.

41:17And it's kind of weird because you're standing in the same place, but it's obviously massively gentrified now. But it was, yeah, there was some happy days in that. There's some good memories when you go back there, isn't there? But it's all been gentrified. You're like, wow, that used to be there. Wow, it's all gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sad. It's actually sad. I see a lot of clubs over the years. And we used to go raving. So for years and years, I'd go back and go, that's gone. That's gone. Where's that club gone? Gone at flats or whatever it may be. or Turnmills is horrible when you see where I've done that now that's all office blocks isn't it yeah they've totally redeveloped it it's a bit of a shame really but you know it is what it is like the end was another good one actually do you remember that in West Central Street by Tottenham Court Road and yeah so many good nights because I used to do those like the Friday night was drum and bass I think it was players in there and then Saturday was all techno ultimate bass was in there on Saturday night I want to go back to your sesh what was your sesh you had when you come up the name fish 56 okay so so me and my friends from 2005 onwards we've done a thing called men's christmas party which is a short uh shortened to mcp yeah which was basically just like a lunch i did at my flat um a little flat in london i had it there was my friends that at the time we were friends from work um but they're now like my core friendship group because we're like i think we're coming up to the 19th or 20th one this year and um and we'd always do men's christmas party and then we'd like we'd have a christmas meal which i would do but the thing is i'd just do it increasingly shit every years i got more and more i wasted like one year i just come back from andora from a snowboarding holiday and i'd bought some bottles of absinthe back because in those days that alcohol was really cheap in andora i don't know if it is now but it was dirt cheap like you buy a bottle of absinthe like it was like a few quid right brutal isn't it brutal and i was like every time someone came into the house right i had like about eight eight lads come around double i was like have a double shot right but i was doing a double shot with them so by the time like by the time that i was trying to serve the meal i was like almost paralytic in the kitchen served this turkey up there was like we literally had to carve it and then like go back into the kitchen and fry it a wok to get the to get it to get it to look cooked and um and then and then after that we'd go to fabric and have like some massive like massive night and we did that quite a few years running right and we've we've never ever not done a men's christmas party every year we've done it right but the last couple of years right it's like i've just had to accept that like i'm not capable in that state of mind of like doing a good meal and i'm not willing to not like to not drink or anything so so what we've done instead is we've like we've had a meal and we've got like a place in london like you know like a restaurant where we've got like a little private dining room yeah and we've had a lad's meal in there but we've always played the same mix right which i'll tell you about in a sec it's a speed garage mix that i did um like years ago and it's got all them old tracks on it like double 99 rip groove and um like sugar is sweeter and a sneaker pin spin spin sugar and you know those tracks with the bass on him from when speed garages re-blowing up like 97 98 right always the same mix right we always listen to that when we're eating so even when we're sitting at a nice restaurant in London in our private dining room we've still got this speed garage mix playing and then what we do after that is we then get in the um getting like a getting like a nice car and we go back to mine which is takes about an hour and we'll stop in a couple of places on the way down to southwest London like stopping stopping Putney and stopping like Richmond going to steam into a pub have a quick drink in there so that we don't you know have a bit sobered up for a minute and then we'll go into my house and then have like a massive session in my house right where I've got the deck set up and all of that which is quality and it's Way better than me like messing around, like trying to cook a meal and stuff.

44:34I'm actually not a bad cook, but none of my friends are aware of this because it's like, I think the first couple of years were okay, but it just went downhill so rapidly, right? So that's men's Christmas party. And at the end of 2020, we weren't allowed to congregate because of those restrictions that were in place. So we went to that place. I can't remember what the name of it is, but it's a rooftop bar opposite. You know, when you come out of Waterloo Station and there's like a place, the name will probably come back to me. It's like, it's a rooftop bar right opposite Waterloo Station down the little side street that goes towards London Bridge.

45:00and we were just sitting there and that's where the conversation happened when my friend told me about tiktok my friend adam so so where did the fish 56 oxygen come from were you all spangled at the time well yeah yeah it was men's christmas party yeah so where did that come from there was three names it must have it must have been linked to something there was absolutely no link with anything honestly i was just like i was like what am i gonna put i was like i've got i didn't want to put my name in yeah because it was like and then when i started making content the funny thing is when i started making content it was like you know watch content i was like or maybe I should change it to like, you know, Watch Love of Five or whatever, you know.

45:30Watch Love has already been taken, so that's no good. You know, like the real time or something, that's a bit, you know, a bit wank. So I just thought, well, the thing of my name is it's transferable. And then when I, you know, when I'd exhausted my collection of 15 watches and realised I wasn't that interested in talking about the values of stainless steel Daytonas and, you know, like gold day dates or whatever it is, you know. But Fish 56 Octagon, it must have been on another level there, thinking, well, that works. It must have been linked to something. surely was there nothing you've got an old one i've just seen that fish that'll do 56 and octa means something it's honestly it's just random i'm sorry to disappoint but but then when i switched you know when i switched into a car channel i thought well maybe i need to change it now i was like okay so i put in like car lover now that's already taken so i thought well you know people know and recognize it's a point of difference right you know i do i do work in marketing so i was like it is like a brand name that sticks in people's mind rather than all of these generic names it works though fish it works people call me fish now and actually what is your name well i I don't really want to say to be honest because when people it's the one thing I promised Angie when I set it up she was like I just want to like you know just have a degree of privacy you've shared so much of your life and you know keep your family separate keep your family separate and you know you can see my kids sometimes on my channel and they've seen inside my home and I've shared a lot and it's just the one thing and the one thing that I like that I wouldn't that I would find unnerving is people shouting my name when I walk down the street and I do get people like and they shout fish and I know that it's going to be like someone that knows me from social media that's like a music lover or whatever.

46:55And that's just one thing that I kind of quite like. And I know it's very mundane, but there's this little tiny, tiny little bit of mystery around it. I get it. I get it. It's nice. It's like a bit of protection. And you know if someone's saying fish, they know they're a music head. I know that someone probably likes me from social media. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to fish, and I'm going, you wanker. Did you get any, you know when you're on social media, listen, what's with the dressing gown, the silk dressing gown and the Crocs and the Weetabix? is that just is that just you oh no from the start that's just you it's not like oh i need to dress up as to be someone is that just you no that ties into what i was saying before actually so when my boss had this conversation with me about you know make sure you're not seen to be posting during the hours of work i woke up the next morning and i thought well how am i going to deal with that because i was nervous at the time i was like i don't want to fuck things up at work i've got you know a good career here right and i'd worked there for a good nine years right as well you know so yeah i thought what am i going to do i thought well i'll just get up i'll do my do my content really early in the morning that's when i started doing posts in the morning right because up to that point i've been thinking like most people think posts in the morning don't really do anything people aren't awake and you post in the afternoon or even five six o 'clock when people are getting in from school or work or college or whatever right so i thought well i'll do something in the morning and just see what's the worst that can happen so i got out of bed and i tried to find some clothes and you know long-suffering and she's like shut up shut up so she's like um so i was like right okay i think i've got i think i've got some clothes like I think I left my tracksuit outside actually, so I'm going to get it.

48:19Went outside, went to go to the loo. And it was cold because it was like, it was January and I was just in the toilet and I was just looking at the back of the toilet door and there's this dressing gown hanging up. Like that one of those moments. Oh, yeah. But you know, the thing is, right, my mum had given Angie that dressing gown. My mum had bought it the year before and she didn't like it because it was too heavy. Right. And it's a very thick garment, that red one, right? And Angie didn't want it. And I didn't want it. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, right? This isn't one for me. So we hung it on the door.

48:46you know these things like the drawer that you've got full of old mobile phone charges and stuff yeah stay there for ages and um and i put it on and it's actually very comfortable and warm on a cold morning and then i thought i've always presented myself as i am and i hope you can see that now and i'm talking to you i'm not like it's not like i'm not like putting on an act of being like a quirk you couldn't do that and keep it up anyway right yeah um and i thought i've always just presented myself as i am you know warts and all and you know if i'm sort of used to make one's posts when i was like really drunk and stuff like that people really enjoyed that but I don't do that so much anymore.

49:14But, you know, I just thought, right, I'm wearing this now, right? I haven't put it on specially. I'm going to do some morning posts. Also, it will make it very clear, pardon me, to my employer that this is before the hour of work. I'm on Zoom straight away, half eight, nine o 'clock in the morning, you know, my professional outfit. Not that professional, but, you know, not wearing a dressing gown. So I just did that. And it just, I think that might have been one of the things that caught the imagination of people differentiated me and caused some of that, like, organic growth that we talked about before because it wasn't a contrived thing.

49:42but obviously when you realize that something's working that is driving metrics yeah you don't change it now it's irrelevant right and i wear it occasionally because like people expect it but it's like you know if i'm wearing in the morning i wear it but i don't get up so early anymore now because i'm working like you know doing or i don't make my content so early when i first when i first saw you yeah i was like is this a parody like genuinely i was like good luck to you mate you're banging up amazing tunes you did but i thought is it a was it a parody but it's actually not It was just you being you.

50:10No, I've got really bad arthritis in my feet, right? So I can't walk around. And on the floors of our house, we've got wooden floors, a hard floor. So I can't walk around barefoot or it just aggravates and it really hurts. So you whack the old Crocs on. The Crocs are perfect. They've got a really thick sole, right? I can't be putting socks and trainers on and stuff to wear with a dressing gown. And then they'll be getting fully dressed, right? So it's like the Crocs are perfect. And also, you know, when you're in and out getting things out of the garden or getting things out of the car, they're just convenient to kick on off.

50:34If I go upstairs, I take them off. and it's easy just to kick them on and off and stuff. And I know that Crocs have got, Crocs have got very much as a double-edged sword, their image, because they do look a bit naff up to a certain point, but they've also kind of reinvented themselves over the last few years and brought these other products out and stuff. And now they're starting to get worn by people who recognize that they are actually comfortable and convenient to wear around the house, especially if paired with a pair of socks, which, you know, I don't see any shortage of young people wearing like slip-on shoes with socks out and about now.

51:00So, you know, that stigma seems to have gone, which was a thing that people like us would have been acutely aware of It was an embarrassing thing your dad might have done when we were younger, you know. Funny how these things come around. But yeah, and then I've always eaten Weetabix. Well, I used to eat Weetabix. So you're eating dried Weetabix out of a bowl? Yeah, that's right. It's not a dog bowl, though, although people think it is. It looks a bit like one. It's the bowl from a weighing scale. Yeah. And it's got a rubber base, which is actually really convenient because if you bang into it.

51:23No noise. It doesn't make any noise. It doesn't knock over. It's quite shallow and it's got quite a wide lip at the top. Why dry Weetabix? Is that something you've had since a kid? Yeah. Well, let me show you a photo of what I looked like when I used to eat them with butter on, because I used to eat them with butter on back in the bad old days. And I wasn't in very good shape back then. I'll just have to keep talking and I'll dig the picture up. I should have, to be honest, I should have got it up in advance of this interview. So you're putting butter on wheatabix, dried wheatabix? Yeah. That's your brecce?

51:50Yeah, I used to have three with like a good old half centimetre of butter on, right? Delicious, right? And obviously, you know, that goes down very nicely. But, you know, it's kind of, it's not very healthy, is it? It's not good for the derby, is it? Not very good for them. No, no, exactly. What's Darby? Darby Rummock. Darby Rummock. Okay, that's a new one for me. But yeah, so I've always eaten them. And the thing is that, you know, people say, why are you eating whilst you're doing it? But you think I'm making these social media videos at half seven in the morning, making five of those before I start work at half eight.

52:19I haven't really got a lot of time. Right. I don't really want to be getting up extra early so I can sit down at the table at seven o 'clock at the morning sitting eating a bowl of wheat. And because you can just pick them up and eat them. Do you know what I've got to say? What I'm listening here, mate, massive respect. massive respect to you fish oh thank you just in terms of the five tracks you're banging out on social before you start work and then coming home and do exactly the same and being consistent and look what's look what's happened the consistency is is key with social media it is absolutely key right and i see a lot of people give it a bit of a go and then they don't get the results they expect and they give up and the thing is right you know with time people expect the results to be proportionate to the effort but you know that it's not that way actually what happens is same as podcasting yeah exactly same as podcast when did it take off for you how many have you done we've done 303 episodes oh so i'm not 303 303 today might be 303 that's cool because 303 is like a synthesizer that's like symbolic you know like very instrumental in dance music but yeah 303 but again for the first two years i didn't look at any metrics because the first two years it was just apple and spotify so as you're doing a podcast we launched in 2020 my festival wasn't allowed to be put on because of the pandemic.

53:29So we sold 30 ,000 tickets for our festival, Bournemouth Sevens. On the March the 24th, Boris said, sorry, no festivals this summer. So we had to postpone it. That wasn't allowed on. And we postponed it the next year and we finally got it on in August the following year. So we're like, let's just set up a podcast. I don't know what a podcast was, but I'm well connected. I've got a load of people I could get on and then just have these chats. And it's been every single Wednesday for the last five years. But going back to my point in there as you talk about not blowing up, you've got to remember, at least you had metrics to see.

53:57there was no metrics to see you know no one could leave comments you couldn't leave a comment on spotify and you couldn't leave a comment on apple right so we were just doing this and it was just your mates and everyone telling me people are liking this mate i'm like oh great that's great so i didn't look at anything it's only when we went on to youtube two years ago and went on to tiktok and instagram and it's all just blown up yeah you know 100 million views in what last six months like wild do you know what's interesting about that is by the way i've just found the photo so don't don't laugh too much but yeah this is that was that was me when i used to have the the Weetabix with butter on.

54:28So if you want to... Jesus Christ alive. Can you share it for the... Mate, you were a big lump back then. How long ago was that? I don't know. That was probably about four years ago, five years ago.

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57:02So that's when people go, why don't you have butter on your Weetabix at least? I can't go back to that. So with what we were talking about, what we were talking about with the... Metric, just like blowing up and not blowing up and anyone out there listening, this takes time. Business takes time. I've been throwing parties and events and festivals the last 30 years. It takes time. Business takes time. Social media takes time. Okay, TikTok can happen a lot quicker. But if you're doing a podcast, it takes time. You have to be consistent. You've got to be obsessed. if you want to be successful in business you have to be obsessed but you know it's not an overnight thing people people see the success at the end they go it's an overnight thing because they weren't aware of something before right but with what you're just talking about there at the point when you suddenly realize you know when you went onto youtube and you started getting the metrics or whatever and you started realizing that it was successful the thing is the build-up to that is is invaluable just as with the stuff that i did with the watches and the cars because when i blew up on instagram and when when instagram started really succeeding i knew how to deal with it i knew how to capitalize it and i knew that it was important for example and i see a lot of people not doing this now to always be in the comment section responding to people responding to dms because you get opportunities coming your way you get feedback about what you're doing you get ideas for content and things like that and it's by doing all of the car content which ultimately didn't really leave you just nailed it you just nailed that on the head that one line you just said there opportunities come your way now i was i've always had the i was hid behind the businesses for years and everyone said four years ago dodge tell your story tell your story tell your story and I put myself on the forefront and said do personal branding and set up TikTok and Instagram and Facebook I've done that and it's taken time but the opportunities that have come in after blowing up it's like my god that wouldn't have come in if they didn't know anything about you it was exactly the same I wouldn't have been doing the co-host of the Harry Redknapp show if I hadn't I had a podcast I wouldn't have been on the Sidemen is it the Sidemen those lads Sidemen Sidemen YouTube show is a a Dragon's Den person on there All these things have happened, like business, more opportunities, more sponsors coming in.

58:59Like it happens for our festival. People see what we're doing here and they might be grenade. And again, we want to sponsor your festival or just opportunities by putting yourself out there. And that's what exactly what you've done. And it's blown up very, very quickly. Yeah. But you just, you know, like we were saying, it's the lead up to that where you're gaining the experience. So like learning how to use the apps and learning what content works, learning what doesn't work, learning how to engage with people, you know, learning about, you know, kind of being positive. and how to present yourself and all that kind of stuff.

59:27And whilst you're doing all of that and you're not getting all of the results, you're thinking, you know, is this going anywhere? Well, no one's clapping for you. Yeah. And that's the key to it. The key to it is keep going when no one's clapping because one day you'll just pop and all of a sudden all the people who weren't clapping for you will be clapping for you. But going back to what Adam told me at the beginning, having your viral moment. So that was my friend that told me about, sorry, my friend that told me about TikTok in the first place that then inspired me to download the app. I'm a good friend of mine.

59:49But, you know, Having your viral moment, this is, I think, a mistake that people make as well. Having a viral moment isn't enough because you've got to be ready to move once it happens. Now, if you've done 200 podcasts and then once you've done 201, suddenly it pops, then you're ready to go because you know what you're doing and you've got a schedule and you've got a studio set up and you know how to talk to people, you know how to organise it and you know how to market it. And then you can grow it rapidly. If you just do a viral video, you know, that takes off and you have, you know, you have a little bit of a moment.

1:00:15A one-off hit and that's it. A one-off hit, then you've, you know, you can... But we went down a very different route, Fish. We went down a route. I said to him, it's easy for me to go and get loads of different celebrities on when we first started. I said, I don't want to do that. We've called it eventful lives. I want people who have lived eventful lives. People with real stories are real people. You know, so it's taken longer. What's happening is people look back at all the episodes you've done and go, wow, SAS. Wow, criminal underworld. Wow, entrepreneur. Wow, top comedian. Wow, top DJ. And we've done it that route.

1:00:42And what's happening now is when we've blown up such a point, you make it a business that's sustainable. You know, it's quite easy. I've seen people, podcasters coming in, just want to do celebrities. Bam, bam, bam, bam. But I was always told about a podcast, people come for the guest and stay for the host. And when I got told that when I first started, I was like, wow, they come for the guest, but they stay for the host. Because if they don't enjoy the host, they'll end up leaving. It doesn't matter what celebrity you get on. You know, and it just goes to show that consistency is key. Yeah, it is.

1:01:09But the diversity you talked about there is interesting as well, where you've looked at people from all sorts of different categories. Because once you've done 300, you can look back if you can be bothered. I'd set up an Excel or something. And you look at the numbers by the style of celebrity. Like, you know, like what were they? Were they a gangster? Were they a footballer? Were they a DJ? Were they a musician? Whatever they were. And you'll clearly see a pattern. You see what your genres are working. And you'll see what's working. And you'll see what's not working. And it doesn't necessarily follow that you stop doing the stuff that's not working.

1:01:33Maybe you look at something and say, right, that didn't work. You know, gangsters didn't work. DJs didn't work. Whatever. Why didn't it work? Is it because we didn't play any music? Is it because we weren't in an inspiring environment? Or is it because I didn't ask him about this or whatever, right? and it always gives you the opportunity to tune and tweak what you're doing. That's the bit of my marketing background that's been useful to me in terms of what I've been doing with this. Not like, you know, I didn't learn anything about social media when I was doing marketing. I didn't learn how to do engagement or how to create a following or anything like that.

1:02:04Nothing like that. I never touched social media once. But what we're constantly doing, we're constantly tweaking. Every day we tweak, we tweak, we tweak to improve. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. You're looking at what worked, what didn't work, what the factors are that drove the results. and new tests that you can do to try and push it further. And it's also interesting to see different audiences. Like a YouTube audience is very different to Apple and Spotify. They're very different audiences. People who want to sit there and watch this on YouTube for an hour and a half is very different to someone who's in the gym, who listens on Spotify, who's going for a dog walk.

1:02:32They're different audiences, even though we've only found that over the last couple of years. That's interesting. Really interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. Because you could do like, if I've had an international drug smuggler on, that will blow up on or Michael Jackson's Bodyguard or whatever it may be. They blow up on YouTube and then other ones blow up on Spotify and Apple, don't they? Oh, that's interesting. It's fascinating.

1:02:52DJ Fish56Octagon: Yeah. But this is all new. This is all new to us. We're like coming into our fifth year and podcasting is new to the UK. I know it's been going for 10, 15, 20 years in America, but really podcasting has only really taken off in the UK. In my eyes, really 2020, people started in 2020 and 21, 22, 23, and people say it's saturated. I don't think the market's saturated whatsoever. whatsoever people start but about 85 90 percent of people stop after the 10th episode because they realize it takes time it takes a lot of energy to go and get a guest it takes energy to have this conversation it takes energy for the team of doing the post-production and cutting everything up and away they go to go across tiktok instagram facebook you know and most people probably give up before the results come agree you know the results the results come results come later yeah i've always kind of had this philosophy that if there's something you want to do and you want to do it badly enough right and you persisted it that you will probably be able to do it in some way shape or form maybe not everyone would be able to like you know get get up to the level of having the sort of guests that you've had on your podcast or whatever but anyone that wanted to do it that really put their mind to it persisted and stuck with it same as with music as well will be able to do it in some way shape or form right it's just a matter of how far will they be able to take it and how long will they have to do it for before they start to get the results that will make it worthwhile in their mind you know if if all you want to do is kind of you know produce music and get your music played by people and stuff and whatever then i think most people have got it within them if they've got you know the basic capability to you know to learn how to use the tools to do that right but it's if you know if you actually want to take it to like a really high level then that's going to result on a that's going to require a whole lot of other skill sets and a big degree of luck as well but that's why you have to love what you do and if you love what you do and become obsessed you will be success because i know people who obsess about something but they don't really love it.

1:04:34They're the ones that crash and burn. Do you know, if you're obsessed with something, but you don't love it, there's going to be a point where, there's going to be a point in your business journey in that sort of curve, that five years to break the back of something. You know, because people talk, I always talk about the thousand days breaking the back of a business. If you can break even after a thousand days, you have done really, really well. If you hit five years and break even, you've done well. But a lot of people give up in that period, in that time period. If you get to 10 years, only 2 % of businesses get to 10 years, by the way.

1:05:01Is that right? Yes. Yeah. But you also have to temper that. I mean, that's a really interesting number, right? But you have to temper that with the fact that some people, and you just see this yourself, are not capable of running a business, right? And that's not necessarily through a fault on their part, but running a business is, you know, something that requires a lot of different skills and a lot of different plates to keep spinning. And just because you're good at doing the core function, like you might be absolutely fantastic cook, right? Doesn't mean you can run a restaurant, right? Because that requires managing staff, managing premises, marketing, all those kinds of things.

1:05:32You might even be good at two of those, but without four of the five really important ones, you might still find that it crashes and burns. And we all have experiences of dealing with businesses, large and small, where you look at them and you just think, how are they still in business? Their attitude or their approach isn't commensurate with long-term success, right? And a lot of the 98 % that you just talked about there that don't succeed will be ones that fall into that category where you've got maybe people that are passionate, maybe they're not passionate. Maybe they're good at what they do.

1:06:00Maybe they're not. Maybe they once were. maybe they're good at some of it or not all of it but you know if you strip out the people that aren't really suited to running a business and may be absolutely fantastic at cooking and work really well as a chef and all that kind of stuff but just running a business running a business as a restaurant just wasn't for them if you stripped all of those people out you'd probably find that that stats would be much more in your favor of succeeding because um you know it's not everyone's cut out for doing something that requires well no one teaches you business yeah true you don't go GCSE business you don't get a level but no one teaches you real business the people teaching your business at university are there just reading from a book was regurgitating crap that was written 20 30 years ago no one's really teaching your business you have to you know as an entrepreneur you're finding it out yourself you're working it all out like when we started serving parties in the 90s until now last sort of 27 years you're working it all out that works that business model work if i take the door money i've got 2 000 people at three quid okay that's six grand i've got 12 of those nightclubs each week all around the country you know that's what we did for 10 years then you go right okay most people in that nightclub world in the 90s go what's the next step most of them would go buy a bar you know they go they go and buy a bar or go buy a nightclub and very few few of us went and did festivals because of the risk you know when you're putting on a festival you're going hiring like we are 67 acres of land you're turning to a mini town two weeks to build the site three days to put your festival on and then one week to bring it down but that three days is all your money you earn for that whole year that risk it's massive It's massive.

1:07:25And I feel sorry for a lot of festival promoters out there. I think there was 60 festivals that went bust last year. It didn't happen last year. And what's happening again this year? It's just getting tighter and tighter for people out there. And festival promoters are massive risk takers. And I find it really upsetting to see what's happening at the moment. Yeah. I was due to play a few last year that got cancelled. There were a couple. And the events industry, there's a cost of living crisis that's been going on for some time. we've had two years of inflation at nearly 10 which has obviously calmed down a bit now but it's obviously made things much more expensive for people just anecdotally you know i was um uh i was snowboarding at i was at snowbox and i went for lunch um you know on the restaurant in the mountain when i was younger when we used to go we always used to take sandwiches up because restaurants were so expensive and um we had a basic meal you know just like a you know chicken schnitzel and chips or whatever and the bill came in and i paid for it i thought bloody hell this is cheaper than my local pub now yeah you know and it used to be the bill used to be opposite didn't Yeah, you'd think, bloody hell, that's 50 % more expensive than my local company.

1:08:25Yeah, you'd go and get a plate of chips up on top of the mountain. It was like 15 euros. You're like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But now... Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, that's affecting everyone. And then obviously you've got this thing where I think a lot of businesses are affected at the moment by changes in national insurance as well. Well, it's employer's tax. This national insurance thing is confusing for your normal bod. It's another tax. It's employer's tax. If I employ my managing director 100 grand, I've got to give the government 15 ,000 pounds a year to employ someone. that's not incentivizing entrepreneurs to keep employing it's so you know i'm sure that i'm sure that's affecting employment levels and also people that are entrepreneurs or small business owners probably got less cash in their pocket as well they have there's also a degree of oversaturation in the events industry as well i think there's like you know there's a lot of events there's a lot of things going on and it all it all everyone's competing it's all coming together isn't it and it is hard but the festival scene now you know is is in my opinion better than it was you know like In the 90s, you know, the rave scene, people talk about it.

1:09:21I wasn't, like, going to those kind of field and warehouse type raves. It was a bit before the time. Just before the time, wasn't it? Club UK in 1995 is around where I started, right? And the, you know, the stories and the pictures and everything, and the aura of that era is, you know, is untouched in the early days of the rave scene. But, you know, if you look at the production that you get and the lineups and the way that festivals are organised and set up now, to me, it looks like it would be quite a bit better. I went to the first ever Creamfields, right, in, I think, 1998, which was actually not far from here, the Mattelie Bowl estate where Boomtown is now, who's had one year there before it went up to the north.

1:09:52Did Creamfields do it at the Mattelie Bowl, did they? The first ever one, yeah. Where Boomtown is? Yeah, and then it became Homelands after that. So I think that was 1998, and he had headliners like Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Man With No Name, Sasha Ndigui, you know, all that lot that were just absolutely killing it. And then it moved up to, I think it went to Speak Airfield, and then it moved on to its present site at Daresbury in Chessington. But, you know, that was a one-night event, right? and there was no camping there. And there was, you know, the festivals like Glastonbury did exist, but it was, you know.

1:10:19It was very small. There's only like 15 festivals back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had your Red Inge, your Leeds, your Glastonbury's, you had Best of All, you had Isle of Wight Festival, V Festival. That's right. Homeland, Cream Fields. There was like about 10, there was about 15 back then in 19. I launched mine in 2008 and it's still going now 18 years on. I reckon that's mid 2000s. Mid 2000s, probably 15. Now there's hundreds. Hundreds. And that's good. And it's evolved well. Yeah. But I think it's getting tighter and tighter. Yeah. Well, you said it yourself, there's a lot of them now. And they are competing for the same consumers.

1:10:58And those consumers have unfortunately been somewhat squeezed over the last couple of years by circumstances. So it's tough. It's a tough time to be a festival provider. Well, they can choose one. Maybe pre-pandemic, you go, well, I'm going to, best of all, I'm going to three or four. I'm going to go to Secret Garden Party. I'm going to go to Wilderness. and whatever it was, you'd pick three maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now people are picking one if they're lucky. Yeah. Because it's actually coming to a point where it's like, I could actually go on holiday cheap in a festival these days when you think about your accommodation, your travel, your food, your ticket.

1:11:29You know, you're probably all in for what these days? A grand? Yeah. 800 quid? I mean, it's like, it's still... But it's the best experience in the world. You cannot beat being in a field, meeting new people that you're connecting with on another level via music or sport or wherever it may be. I think, yeah, I think you've nailed it there. I think if it hits just right, you know, you're with your mates, you're with the right people, especially if you get a bit of good weather, that always helps. Glastonbury's been quite good for weather the last few years. But yeah, it's unmatched. But also it can be good value for money, depending on how you look at it, for the number of acts and the amount of entertainment that you get over that time.

1:12:02But it's not a thing that you can opt in on and just do like, you know, a little bit. You've got to be all in. And it is like a grand by the time. If you do like a bit older like me, I do the boutique camping thing. Clamping and stuff, yeah. Right, where it's, you know, you pay like another couple of hundred quid, but you have a tent set up for you in a little field that's got toilets and showers and stuff like that. Which is nice. Which is nice. And you also get a little car park that's nearby. You know, I appreciate not everyone can afford that, but at my age, it was like, I don't think I'd be able to do it otherwise, because it would just be a bit too, like, I'd just like to get a good night's sleep, you know.

1:12:32The thing is, you come back from a festival, if you smash the festival for three days or four days, you come back, it takes a week to recover. Yeah, although interestingly, actually, I used to always come back from Glastonbury, and then I'd be ill for a week. and my colleagues at work were just like, they just knew it was coming every single time, right? And then after COVID, when everyone went potty for using the hand sanitizer all the time, I was like, right, I'm going to, I used hand sanitizer every time at festivals after that, every time before I ate, right? And that was the first time I went to Glastonbury and came home and didn't get ill for a week afterwards.

1:13:02So it must be, maybe it's something to do. You know, you sit on the ground and put your hands on the ground and all that, and then you eat and stuff. It's a bit manky on the side. You think there's one part of that, Glaston, as you know in the toilet you're in the toilet you see people's legs dangling down but the

1:13:15DJ Fish56Octagon: height of the toilet long drops the long you look i saw a phone in there once that's it it's gone forever yeah horrible horrible oh i've seen some proper states of clay i love glass though yes i love glass that's special glass is my favorite festival yeah same 100 percent name me another festival you really like boomtown yes i love boomtown yeah boomtown's a good festival i went So actually, I played there last year, but I actually bought a ticket to go. Really? Right, yeah, because I bought a ticket in November. So that was before I was actually DJing. So by the time it came around, I managed to give my ticket to my friend, Adam Guy, who told me about TikTok in the first place.

1:13:54But that was a bit of a weird thing. We were in the boutique camping bit, Skylark, where we were in a tippy. But just staying. I haven't stayed in the artist bit in a festival yet. I normally just stay in the normal. You will do this summer. Yeah, I will do this summer because this summer I'm so busy, I'm just in and out, right? So it's a bit different. I'm not like Glastonbury, I'm staying out. I'm going Thursday to Monday this time. That's why I'm just insisted on that. I do have another gig on the Saturday in Margate, so we're leaving there. So you're going to go Glastow to Margate and then back again?

1:14:21And then back, yeah, yeah. Fly? No, no, no. Just drive. Okay. Just going, yeah. Get a chopper out, chop a land. No, no. Not at that level, mate. No chance. No, no, no. Save you a lot of hassle. I tell you, there's nothing worse about going from Glastow is those windy roads coming home after a four day or three day. You're like, oh my God, get me home. But that's why it's good to do the boutique camping because you get a car park that's separate to the other bit. And then when you leave, you at least don't get caught up in that like mayhem trying to leave the site. But yeah, it's... Well, the middle bit, the VIP middle bit.

1:14:53Do you know the... Between the pyramid and the other stage. I've never been there actually. Have you not? It's brilliant. Oh, it's amazing because you haven't got to walk all the way around. You're just in there. You've got a cocktail bar. You've got a load of faces there. Everyone just getting on. Everyone's meeting new people and just connecting. yeah yeah beautiful feeling it's nice when you meet it's nice when you meet people i love meeting new people yeah well actually funnily enough actually when i was at glastonbury last year um i went had an absolute banging night at the temple right i saw like dillinger and simula and spy and 4am crew it was like wicked yeah and then um and then i left like my mate had gone i was you know it's like i was i was last leave left about six in the morning and i was walking back and i thought i'm not quite ready for bed yet so i'm just gonna see if i can find some people that look a bit chilled out because there's people sitting around chilling and stuff and i walked past this like ramshackle bar that was closed but there were people on the sofas and all that outside and this guy was like oh fish is that you is that you come and chill let's come and and i looked at them and they were like in their 30s and i was like they look like they'll be all right yeah like normal people so i went and sat with them and chatted them for about two hours and it turned out that they were in ibiza the same time i was djing there a little bit later in the summer so i said to them i was like look just give me your name and i'll put you on put you on the guest list to come down right and um and i typed her name into my instagram and as it popped up we had a mutual and she was like oh how do you know that person and i was like i was like that's my cousin and she was like that's my best friend right and i was like so my cousin was actually due to come to that festival to glastonbury but she cancelled at the last minute for whatever reason and um so i would have hung out with these people anyway because that was like all of her mates and the funny thing is i'd already spoken to her about my cousin about ibiza and i'd already agreed that i'd put them all on the guest list so i'd actually already like organized yeah so it was one of those weird things but i'd spent like a good couple of hours chilling out with these people who were well sound.

1:16:28Yeah. And it turns out they were like my cousin's mates. How weird is that? That's quality, yeah mate. Of all the people on the side. 200 ,000 people. Tell me about Ibiza for you. I've been going there partying for years I'd imagine. Yeah, so I first went to Ibiza. So my grandparents had a villa there in San Antonio before it was really well developed. And we used to go there every summer for our family holidays. And I actually went back there recently to look and it's always totally developed this tiny little villa. I remember it being massive but I was only like a kid when I went there. So I first went to Ibiza in 87 when, you know, the scene there was like in its infancy and it really wasn't that developed at all and what was quite funny was there was a program on the tv about Ibiza and my dad videoed it and he goes oh we can find out a bit about the island and all that we all sat down for a family thing and it was just a load of people talking about going raving and going to go and doing ease and all that kind of stuff right and I was sitting there with my grandparents my parents and they were looking at this like look of confusion on their face going we haven't seen a single thing about the history of the island so so that was but that's where it kicked off and um and then I started going with my mates um around it was about 2005 was you know in earnest when i could first afford to go because it's like you know it's a bit spenny out there um and i went out there and i just absolutely got the bug i was like i'd kind of got to the point where i was a bit like i wasn't going clubbing quite as much my career had started so i wasn't going out every friday saturday going out like smashing in london because i was like i was working doing a serious job um so you know doing going to ibiza and then like you know going to a festival or whatever was a bit more kind of where i was at with things and i just totally like fell in love with the place like and it was like you know i remember the first we went for three nights to start with we stayed in pasha hotel yeah um i was and there was massive group of us there's about 20 of us and the first night we went to it's uh called uh it's gone pete tong on a friday night at pasha and then on the saturday we went to head to head candy at el dovino and then on the sunday we went to went to bora bora to start with that place yeah of course and then we went to follow that straight on to we love space because you know space used to be open from eight in the morning back in those days and i loved it so much i insisted on going back again at the end of the summer but taking andrew because andrew and come on that trip because it was like a lad's trip.

1:18:25Just so you can experience it. A romantic clubbing holiday. We stayed in Hotel Argos on Talamanca Beach and went for five nights, went out five nights in a row. Talamanca Beach is lovely. Yeah, it's really nice. Location-wise, amazing. Nice pizza place there. And you've got Sapunta at the far end. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Ginger as well in Sapunta. Yeah. Yeah, right at the end. Right at the end of the... And there's an amazing one right at the end there. They've got this like shack. The fish place. Fish shack, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know it.

1:18:50DJ Fish56Octagon: Mate, amazing. Yeah, yeah. The whole fish coming out here, whole fish, sea bass is like 15 euros with a bottle of beer. Like it's not, not been just how it has been for the last 30 years. A family run business. It doesn't look like much that place. It's got like white plastic, got like furniture, right? That's right. Yeah. It's just, it's just basic, but very nicely cooked food. So yeah, that was 2005. And then after that, just every year, that was all I wanted to do. So we go for 10 days for our holiday to Ibiza, gone with mates, gone, gone just with Ange, gone with big groups, small groups. You know, as, as I got a bit older, and my career had taken off a bit.

1:19:23We started getting villas and stuff rather than staying in little places. The hardest thing with getting villas is getting home, is getting a cab to go, mate, can you tell me where our villa is? Where is it? It's so hard getting back to your villa. Yeah. Yeah. One of them was like, it was a nice villa, but it was like you had to navigate to the electricity substation to San Jordi or whatever. Down a gritty road. Yeah. I remember my mates nearly gave up and just checked into a hotel at one point because they couldn't navigate to this place. Right. But yeah, Yeah, but the villas then, it brings in a whole new dimension.

1:19:53You can have little parties at the villas and all that stuff. And it's a bit calmer as well. Yeah, yeah. You can go mad, but it's also, you can carry on the next day and it'll be calmer around the pool when someone's knocking up a bit of a barbie and a couple of beers are opening. But I've seen social media clips where the police are now and people that rob villas. They're stopping them. They're using drones to check up and see if there's parties taking place at villas and stuff. And then there's like criminals that are using drones to see. Mate, we had our, we were staying at a villa. My pal's birthday, I think it was like 16.

1:20:18I actually was staying at another villa, but there's 16 people in the villa. Everyone went out and someone left the back door open. They've gone in there and robbed all the iPads, girls' watches. Everyone's come back at six o 'clock in the morning and gone, mate, unbelievable. There was a safe there. They didn't touch the safe. So the next night, everyone went out. The police were there all day. We had a bike tweet there and we went out about 11 o 'clock, 12 o 'clock. Come back the next day, been robbed again. they've come in and got and took the whole safe but none of us none of us know how to use the safe there was nothing in it do you know what I mean so they reckon there's more more robberies and villas in Ibiza than anywhere in the world really yeah well you imagine it if you are if you are a tea leaf you're clocking load of English people coming in beautiful big villa they go right there's going to be plenty there they leave they complain to the old bill the old bill can't find anyone they leave new people come in they're just watching new people coming every week for those 14 week period it's horrible isn't it Horrible.

1:21:16On a holiday. Horrible. Just horrible. But, you know, I guess it's a fact of life, isn't it? I'm lucky that I haven't experienced that. But my trips to Ibiza are a bit different now than what they were because I'm playing there now. And that's like... Nice feeling for you going out and knowing you're playing. Tell me the feeling for you. Someone's booked you to go Ibiza. If you're like a year in and you're going, right, I'm jumping on the plane. They paid for my flight. They paid for my accommodation. They're playing me to DJ. I'm landing. People are recognising. People are on selfies. I'm on stage.

1:21:43Explain the feeling. It's hard to put into words how it feels to be doing stuff like that because it was a dream that I'd had when I was younger. I'm obviously very passionate about dance music. I've always spent all my money buying records when I was a kid and I've just been so into that side of things. So to be in a situation where I'm doing it for my job is one thing. But then to be flying over to Ibiza and playing, in the big clubs I've played Cafe Mambo, I've played in Eden. This summer I'm playing Ibiza Rocks, Amnesia, High. You're playing High? Yeah, like absolutely. It's an indescribable feeling.

1:22:15And I'm so, you know, I still have these pinch me moments, you know. I mean, I used to, I had a good sort of few months at the start where I just used to wake up every morning and think it was a dream. Yeah. Right. And then, you know, after a while you get a little bit used to it, you know, could you check my phone and go, no, it wasn't a dream, right? Unless this bit's a dream as well. But you know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah, so going over to Ibiza and like the first time I went over there that I played, first was Eden last year, I think it was in maybe July. And I got absolutely smashed as soon as I landed on the island.

1:22:43It was the most ill-advised thing imaginable, right? I just couldn't... Couldn't help yourself. I couldn't help myself. I got to the hotel, bumped into a guy just by chance at the swimming pool of our hotel, who was a guy who was a producer that made a record that I really liked back in the 90s. Got chatting to him, ordered a Negroni at the bar, which came as a pint of Negroni. Had three of them. Ended up going out for a meal with Danny Howard from Radio 1, but like, you know, kind of carried on drinking. got to the club. I was playing at Eden. I wasn't playing until about four in the morning or something like that.

1:23:15So I'd had a bit of time sober before I played. It was a drum and bass night. So I was chilling out with Hybrid Minds and Boo on the smoking terrace on the top of the club. But I was, yeah, in a bit of a state. Ended up having a little nap in the VIP artist bit. Like literally got all of the scatter cushions off the sofa and set myself up like a little makeshift bed. And then I played my set. But it's like, it was fine. I think the thing is in the dance music industry, from what I can make out, Not that I do this at all anymore now anyway, but you're okay doing that. But if your performance is subpar...

1:23:45Yeah, as long as you're nailing it. Yeah. If your performance is subpar, it's as bad as turning up to any job in a state. But you're allowed to do it. But I prefer to stay sober because if I do make a mistake, which happens every now and again, you haven't got that guilt the next morning or the judgment of other people. I turned up, got trashed. It's serious now. I gave up my job to do this. I'm not going to fuck around just for the sake of having a drink or whatever. Getting on it. much as it's enjoyable but there's a time and a place Is there a time and a place where you look at your calendar and go okay well if a gig comes in are you saying yes if the price is right are you saying yes I'm in I'm in I don't care where it is I don't care if I've got to Edinburgh I don't care if I've got to go to Edinburgh I don't care if I've got to go to Snowbox in France wherever it is Ibiza I'm in So there's a strategy behind the gigs that we're taking there's things that we'll do that are a good fit for my audience and there are things that we don't think such a good fit for my audience and some of it's trial and error some of it you get by looking at the demographic dashboard that I've got on the apps, you know.

1:24:40So, you know, typically the audience that comes to see me are a certain like makeup in terms of their age and stuff like that. So you look at the events and you go, is this likely to be one where the audience are going to want to see me and it's going to be a good game because I don't want to turn up and people will be like, oh, didn't expect to see him on the line up. That's not the right look, you know. Just because I've got a following doesn't mean that I can turn up to any event and play a set. It's got to be something that the data supports where people are going to want to see me. Yeah, so yeah, but I mean, I'm working hard at the moment because I don't know, you know, let's be honest, I don't know how long this is going to go on for.

1:25:12I'm producing music at the moment and I'm sometimes spending 14, 16 hours a day doing that. I've just, my studio at home's now got to professional level, you know. So have you invested heavily into your studio at home? Yeah, I've invested in that, you know, it's all been treated. I actually got, the guy came around only yesterday to finish doing that and he's the same guy that set up the studio for Leroy and Maxim out of the Prodigy. Oh, okay, so it's a real deal. Yeah, I mean, I've not spent like silly money on it. I've been sensible. How much would you spend on something like that? All in, would you say?

1:25:38I've probably spent maybe in the area of about 10K in total on the studio, right? You can spend like a million on the studio, right? So I've not gone silly with it. It's not a recording studio with like, you know, with like a vocal booth and all that kind of stuff at the moment. It's just set up so that I've got the tools that I need in front of me. I've probably got a little bit more than I need at the moment because I used to collect synths when I was younger. You don't really need that anymore. You can do it all in the box on a computer, right? but it's about having a nice space having a really good desk having good um acoustics in the room um you know like that kind of having good audio interface for your computer and i do have a few synths because i like to play around with them and i'll have an opportunity to do that a little bit more when i get a bit more time but the stuff that i'm producing my first records have just come out you know the last few months and that's stuff that i was writing about five months ago right and the stuff i'm doing now is just another another level in terms of its like technical polish whether it's any good or not that's up for the public to decide um you know i'm not going to blow my own trumpet in that respect but i can certainly say that technically it's a big step up from what i've been doing before who's your go-to who's your go-to fish to go i've just created i've produced this track have a listen be honest with me so i'm very fortunate in that the people that are around me are just very open honest and transparent people and you know if i play something to angie right or chris they will tell me if it's good or not right and i played something to Chris the other day and he said he said yeah it's good and out of the 120 tracks I've made in the last 18 months or last year um that you know started off very amateurish that's probably the first time he's actually said something not not tempered it with but this or whatever but he just said yeah that's good okay right so to hear that from someone is that good enough for you when he said yeah that's good he's not going oh my god that's you're going to smash it with that he's that he's going no yeah that's good okay no it's it takes time you know like you know notions just done that track with crystal now right he's been producing for about 10 years right you know it's it's it's not something you can force it's going back to what we said before it's not something you can force i mean i've accelerated it by just making that's why really why i quit my job in august right i've been doing all day every day doing music production every track is slightly better than the last every time you learn something new tweak tweak tweak get a little bit better better technically musically explain to me what how you're producing a track what goes for your mind from start to finish and how long would that take so it takes it probably takes about like three or four hours to get to the point that i've got like a eight or 16 bars of a loop that will be like the shape of the track right and then from there you know like what kind of direction you're going to take it in is it going to be dark is it going to be banging is it going to be synth led is it going to be a vocal head track is it going to have a riff in it and up to that point you know i'll usually start off with some beats and i'll start you know i'll mess around with with some synths and find a bass sound that I like.

1:28:16And, you know, from there, is it a rolling bass or is it like a hard, aggressive bass? And from there, you start to decide what other elements are you going to bring in. And then, you know, and then at the point, you know, one thing I do at the moment is I work with quite a lot of vocals from Splice just because it allows you to quickly and easily pull samples from a sample bank, put them in and just hear how it sounds. And that will often define like the shape of the tune. If you're using like a trancy, floaty, ethereal sounding vocal, then, you know, that will define the kind of synth sounds that you put in, you know, like is it going to be a trancy track with like, you know, synth melody in it.

1:28:46If you're putting in something that's a lot harder and more aggressive kind of sounding, you know, like, you know, like you've ripped a vocal from a hip hop track or it's just, you know, a little phrase that's repeating over and over and you're using it like that, then you're going to use harder sounds and harder instruments in it. So if you're grabbing something from a hip hop track, are you looking at it going, I can't use that or I can use that? Is there a certain rule that if you use it for a lesser time of five seconds or something? Or what is there? You can't use anything commercially unless you get the clearance to do that, which then usually involves giving most of the publishing money away to the person that originated it.

1:29:17Also, it's not by any means a given that you'll ever get the permission to do that because the act's got to like the music, the track you've done. So this guy did a flip of Groove Armada Super Styling, which was actually the first record that I signed on my label, which was really good. And we managed to get the clearance for the sample because Groove Armada listened to it and they still own the publishing rights. And they liked it. They actually asked for it to play in their own sets. Did they? So when that happened, we were like, yeah, maybe we'll get this one cleared, right? So how do you do the finances on that then?

1:29:43Are they wanting a cut of that? Yeah, they'll get most of the publishing. They get most of the publishing. Yeah, they get the majority of it because, you know. What do you get from it then? The credibility? So, yeah, essentially. I mean, like normally it's a lot of people doing edits and flips and remakes, right? And really what you do is you use them in your set as a tool, right? And if you get other DJs playing as well, you go, oh, he's done a really good edit of that track, a really good flip of that. And people want it and it creates like buzz. And you use that as a platform to further your own DJing career.

1:30:08but also you have to be making your own original material as well. You can't just be relying on that. You can do it and you can get one. There are a few people that do it, that do it so well, but that's all they do. But the majority of people, you don't want to get known just for doing that, just for doing flips and edits. You have to do original music too, but it gives you a leg up because people are like, oh yeah, that's that guy that did that really good flip of super styling or he did that really good edit of whatever. And if other DJs are asking for your music, then you've potentially got a little bit of a foot in the door when you then start producing your original music that you can then go back to them and go, this is my new track, do you like it?

1:30:37but it's very hard yeah you know it's not do you enjoy collabing it's of i'm i'm really i'm really at the moment having to like forge my way as a producer in my own right and the collabs will come yeah i've done a little bit of that i did actually did one for dj raps bought an album out to celebrate 30 years of um of her career and she was asking people to do remixes of tracks from uh from earlier on in her career and i did one which i worked on with heist it was a track called jeopardy yeah which is one of my favorite one of the first records i ever bought and i collabed with him and I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot from sitting like with someone that's a really experienced producer but it's not a way to um establish yourself as a credible producer just by doing collabs because it probably quite easy for me to jump on people's bandwagon yeah but you don't want that no it's not I definitely will be doing that but at the moment you know the first few records I put out they're underground records they're good records they're decent they're never going to blow up and be like huge huge records but I'm I'm very focused on establishing myself as a credible producer and just by immediately starting working with people who are really big in the industry isn't really the way to go about doing that because people will always look at it with a cynical angle i wonder how much fish did you know he's probably sitting in the car doing his tick tock yeah you know as if you do it entirely yeah yeah okay doing it entirely yourself even if it's not you know and that's why you have to do that thing where you have to all of these guys that are big record producers everyone like you know gorgon city is an example right you know years and years and years doing like doing like releases one of the guys um it's called fomo putting out underground releases that gradually grew you know that's the way and then suddenly you have your record that couldn't breaks through and you have your cuts through and you have your hit just like what we were saying earlier with you have your moment or i have my moment with my instagram thing you have to be ready for it you can't you can't expect just to sit down and within the first few days weeks or months have a hit you've got to be ready for it keep at it keep at it keep at it until something pops yeah yeah and you're always learning music production you're always learning i mean like you know mom i'm so advanced now compared to where i was six months Your music knowledge is unreal.

1:32:30Oh, thank you. Like, unreal. Like, I wonder how many people are out there, like you, who had all the decks at the age of 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and they're carried on to their 40s now. They've just got this unbelievable music brain, but they can't use it anywhere. Is there any advice you'd give those people out there? I think, you know, firstly, the most important thing is to enjoy what you're doing and to do things that you enjoy. I think for people that are looking to get into it, you know like it all over and this is just that you know it's like kind of a bit of a dirty word but social media is is so important right i think it's a misconception that people think that you have to be like an influencer in order to be successful in something you don't have to be an influencer is you know like people that do brand deals and just follow trends it's all about the creators now yeah creators is where it's at right and i've always seen myself as a creator i've done a few brand deals but they were only ones where i felt that there was a brand fit and i wasn't going to alienate my audience but i'm in the luxury position of having had a good career and not i wasn't doing it for the money i didn't need the money from doing that so i turned down absolutely tons of stuff especially when i was doing the car channel people with like hokey products and dodgy insurance products and you know you know the products that could you know do carbon clean terra cleaning on your engine and you know all these snake oil salesmen looking for credible people and you obviously get approached by people that do the the binary trading and all that kind of looking to legitimize their programs and stuff and you could make a quick 500 quid or a thousand and 1500 quid, but then your credibility is gone.

1:33:52No longevity in that. There's no longevity. So, you know, content creation is key. You've got to be persistent with it. You've got to be consistent, you know, share a passion and build it over time and don't expect results to come really soon. If for people looking to get into music or DJing, music production is so important now because DJing, as we said at the start, you know, DJing on digital, the actual act and the, you know, the technique of doing it is much easier than the non-vinyl days. and it's less expensive. You know, this is another thing. You know, in the vinyl days, you know, records were four or five quid a go, but that's, you know, going back 30 years, that's like 10, 12, 15 quid in today's money.

1:34:2715 quid for an import, right? So, you know, to be a DJ in those days, you used to have to have a decent record collection. You're investing quite a lot of money in it. Whereas now, you know, yeah, all right, the equipment's expensive when you buy a laptop or a controller or, you know, CDJs. But after that, the music's either free or a pound a go, right? So the bar to entry is a lot lower and technically it is much easier than playing on vinyl. So a lot of people, every man and his dog's trying to do it not to say that people can't get into it and break through but making music is much harder like much much harder than than physical djing and that's the routine really and it's it's long long hard yards as i'm finding out you know i've i've always like i was doing music production in the 90s as a hobby i had like you know i had a commodore amiga with octamed on that probably be more me more to some people than others right but you know and i always did it as a hobby but i've actually kept all of that music and i've got it and at some point i'll I'll play it again.

1:35:15It's shit. So I don't want to play at this point in my journey. I'll wait till I've actually done something good first. Tell me where you're playing this summer. Tell me the festivals you're doing. Tell me the things that are really exciting you right now. I mean, it's, yeah, it's like, it's a big old list. I've got like, I've got, so I've got, I'm in Croatia three times. I'm doing Terminal V. There's, I'm playing Worried About Henry and Malta. I'm playing Hideout. I've got two sets there. I'm playing Park Life. Up in Manchester. Yeah, up in Manchester. That's good. That's this weekend. And I've got, like, Glastonbury.

1:35:46I've got three sets at Glastonbury this year. So Glastonbury's, like, the big one, right? So on the Friday, I'm playing on the main Glade stage. Just hold that thought a minute. You're playing at Glastonbury. Yeah. Like, a year ago, you were a bedroom DJ. You're playing at Glastonbury three times. Yeah. Like, this is just genius. This is someone who's just gone, boom, we're going to make you a star. Well, you've made yourself a star by being the character you are and your music knowledge. But Glastonbury. Yeah, it's wild. The creme de la creme. It's wild. But, you know, the thing is, the gigs, I had three sets there last year.

1:36:15Genius. And they were all, like, really rammed. They were, like, you know, they were really popular with loads of people coming down to see it. So it's not, it's, yeah, it's just, it's a proof point. You know, it's one thing to land a gig and for someone to give you a bit of a chance. But for it actually, for people to come to it and for it to be busy is a different thing. And I'm just very, I just consider myself very privileged. I'm in a position that I can do this now. On the Friday, I'm playing on the main Glade stage. So there's now two stages for Glade. there's the the smaller one is the dome stage which is still a big stage i was on that last year that's that's got a cap of about 5 000 and then the main glade stage is about like 25 000 so that's the sort of stage of like camel fat that's right and uh what's that and groove on hardwood playing on like and uh corrupt ephemera on last year so i'm playing on that this year at half six on a friday not to give it a plug or anything and then on so for that i'll be doing i've got one hour set so i'll be focusing mainly on like house and maybe like playing some garage but you know i won't i won't work through all of the genres on axis too much you know you've just become a bit of a jumble sale so i'll just keep it quite focused but then on the saturday night i'm playing on a smaller stage the green piece stage which is a wicked stage and they've got such a diverse range of acts on there it's really exciting you know they've got like mph on the garage side of thing idris elba yeah um sarah story just like a real mix so i've just decided for that one just to niche down i've got an hour and a half i'm just going to play trance and nothing else because there's not a lot of trance at glastonbury yeah there's not a lot and it's um do they know you're going to be playing trance do you would then do you announce it before you going okay guys i'm gonna be doing a wicked trance set on that on that time so i've i've we've asked them to add it to the app so it's clearer for people i'll also announce it on my social channels as well but again i've never been asked by a promoter or an event to like play in a certain style they know you're good enough and then you know you'll work the crowd to do whatever you feels right i just don't think it's the etiquette that the promoter will tell the dj what to play i think if you know if i'm going along tonight like i played at eden uh two weeks ago at q which is really banging tech house tonight but i knew when i turned up they actually did put brackets tech house set on the flyer just in case people were worried that i was going to turn up and start playing drum and bass but you know i know i know i'm not stupid right if it's if it's a tech house event i'm just going to play tech house but you know glastonbury you know the big festival stage you know i'm playing um i'm playing uh park life i'm on the house stage like i said before so i'm i'm gonna turn up there and just play a house set right but yeah with with the trance thing it's just you know there's a lot of love for trance it's a it was trance was kind of like a sort of second wave thing you know you had the hardcore rave thing early on in the 90s right and people really really passionate about that and understandably so it's a very exciting time there's acid house then there's the hardcore and all that and then i feel like trance is one of those um pockets where you get again like people that are just very very passionate and look back on it because it's very emotive music right and it's got a kind of special thing not that other music isn't emotive but trance has got a special ethereal quality to it right so i thought yeah i'll just i'll just do that because um people like it and as i looked at the lineup and there's not a lot of trance on there so you know there's a lot of other sorts of dance music has techno drum and bass like in garage if you were to pick your top three genres what would they be so i do get asked this question and i really i really don't want to opt out but i do struggle with it because i really i really really like them all and i'm i really love playing a set where i where i get to play them all i drift in and out sometimes on lots of trance i'm really like you know really enjoying at the moment i'm really enjoying house music at the moment because i'm producing a lot of it as well um i would struggle to i would struggle to pick but the sets that i play really are like house garage trance techno and drum and bass yeah right and it's yeah it's nice being able to dip in and out of those and play ones.

1:39:33Amazing. Fish, I've absolutely loved this, mate. Oh, it's been great. Mate, this is amazing. I really, really enjoy it. It's like an hour and 35, hour and 40 minutes. We're going for another hour easily. Mate, this is fascinating. I didn't realise it was that long. Yeah. No, it's been great. Really nice chat. Thank you. Yeah, you're a proper gentleman you are. And I couldn't think of anyone nicer for this to happen to. Oh, you know, I really appreciate that. Thank you. I really appreciate that a lot because, you know, So there is a lot of pressure around doing stuff like this and giving up the job.

1:40:04And I've got wife and kids and mortgage and that kind of stuff. And just to have you say that is a really nice thing to say. And I really appreciate that. So thank you. I wish you all the best, mate. Thank you. You're a good man. Lovely. Nice one. Cheers, Fish. Cheers, mate. Woo! Mate, that was fucking brilliant. Oh, mate. Thank you so much. That was brilliant. Wow.

1:40:23DJ Fish56Octagon: How good is that? Mate, I've done 300 episodes. That is right up there. Oh, thank you. Yeah, mate. That's at the top. Yeah. Wow. Mate, that was really, really good. Mate, I've never seen you smile so much. Mate, this is what, on my street. This is what, on my street. Music festivals, Ibiza parties, DJs, music, da-da-da, promoters. Yeah, mate. That was brilliant. Oh, thank you. Hi, guys. I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Can you do us a favour and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show? Cheers, guys.

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