Paul Weeks and The Gipton Removal Firm
East Leeds Magazine, Issue 5 , March 2010
Is this the best name for a band... ever? Well, not really a band but a Hip Hop Collective put together by Paul Weeks aka Weeksy. Rather than banging on about a musical genre I know very little about, I'll just hand the mike straight over to him:
"I was brought up in Gipton and when we were young 'uns we used to play out on this big patch of grass and every now and again you'd see people carrying a sofa, a wardrobe, a tv or whatever. They'd either be moving from one council house to another or they'd be on the rob! Everytime we saw them we would be shouting and laughing and calling them The Gipton Removal Firm! The best one I ever saw was an old bloke on his own trying to manoeuvre a huge sideboard on top of a shopping trolley over a duel carriageway with a 3 litre bottle of cider perched on top! The sideboard never made it to the otherside, it lay in pieces in the middle of the road whilst he's sat on top of the shopping trolley flicking the v's to ongoing traffic.
About 20 years later I’m upstairs in me bedroom and I hears a bit of a commotion outside and theres two blokes pushing a wheelbarrow down the street with a sofa on top! I shouted out a bit of abuse calling them The Gipton Removal Firm, and it hit me... what a bloody great name for a band."
Now in his 30’s Weeksy has been on the Leeds Hip Hop scene, more or less since there was a Leeds Hip Hop Scene: "I started out DJ-ing as Doctor Strange in 1988 on Leeds pirate radio LFM - Lethal FM, and in 1990 ICR - Inner City Radio where I became the UKs first DJ to play a weekly British hip hop only radio show. I was involved in various other projects such as Take No Toys & Extrement as well as DJ-ing at Happy Headstrong in Leeds. I linked up with the Geordie Gabba Mafia before setting up a Hip Hop project called The Gipton Removal Firm in 2005, with the help of producers Lithobolia (Bubbz), Vinny Van Bommel and DJ Bageera."
It's easy to label Weeksy as a Northern Mike Skinner but anyone over 40 would probably hear influences of The Fall and John Cooper Clarke tucked away behind the Ben E King & Manu Chao samples: "My earliest musical influences were story tellers like Slick Rick, KRS1, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane but these days im more influenced by comedians like Russell Brand or Ricky Gervais. I'm also influenced by boredom, drunken nights out but mainly by things that just hack me off.....which is a lot! Sometimes my music can get labelled with a comedy tag but that's not what I intentionally set out to do. It's just I do have a sense of humour and it can come out in a song as it would in a conversation. Im not gonna start rapping about cars and how much money and women I've got cos I haven't bloody got any! My songs are more about what I haven't got than what I have got."
The Gipton Removal Firm have just released their first album, the splendidly named The Jimmy Saville Experience: "I called the album The Jimmy Saville Experience cos he is the original hip hop b.boy! He's got the tracksuit and he's got the bling and he is credited as the first DJ to put two record turntables together so you could have a continuous mix between two records and that was in 1947! Never mind bloody DJ Kool Herc & his sound system in 1973, Jimmy was mixing with his tracky on and his gold chain long before then! Sir Jimmy Saville is a legend who still carries an air of mystery around with him, he's raised a lot of money for charity and he's even been a wrestler.... enough said!”
The lyrics to the songs are down to earth, sometimes dark, often humorous and sometimes you can't help but think, 'Poor Weeksy, he's had a right time of it!’: "Cigarette Encounter was written cos I worked in a supermarket on the fruit n veg and the cigarette counter was at the end of the isle and it provided a good selection of nice looking lasses for me to gawp at so I came up with the idea of 'Obsessive Stalking Song'.
'When I’m 65' is about my frustration of not been able to get a council house or flat! Being a single male with a job and no kids (blah di blah) I’ve got no chance and I cant afford a mortgage either so I’m loving all that.
'Karm Down' is based on someone I used to work with who always landed on his feet no matter how horrible he was to people good fortune would always come his way. He would always be going on these holidays to Thailand to sample the local dishes if you know what I mean so I just thought it would be great to make a song where he finally gets his comeuppance.
'Wheels On The Bus' speaks for itself. You take your life in yer own hands getting on one of those things! It cant be just me all mentalists sit next to. You live in fear of either getting get happy slapped or catching a virus from the millions of germs which are coughed and spluttered everywhere.
'Hell In A Cell' came about from one of those drunken nights where you wake with a stinking hangover and you cant remember the night before. Then bit by bit your memory starts to return and the more you remember the more you want to forget. Most of my nights out are like this but you get used to it in the end.In today's modern climate of Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor it's really hard for bands to break through. It's a total circus out there with reality tv puppet masters pulling the strings on the music industry with the resulting product more in line with WWE wrestling.
Susan Boyle is now one of the most famous people on the planet and dont get me wrong I know she can sing but she looks like a dinner lady!
Lets not forget DJ Talent as well or as I like to call him DJ NO-Talent.....he's the sort of person who ends up sitting next to me on a bus and starts singing!
Hip Hop is not everyone's cuppa but the Jimmy Saville Experience has an ecletic mix of humour, world music and utter madness which makes it a great listen. Have a look at ‘Lookin 4 Luv’ on www.eastleedsmag.net in the ELM video section. Also have a look at www.myspace.com/thegiptonremovalfirm plus there’s a fair bit on You Tube.
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