Gary Charles

I’ve had a love of music from early childhood. I was brought up in the sixties and seventies and have had a wide variety of influences. Rock’n’roll was my favourite but was influenced at school with Punk Rock, Ska and Reggae. I fell in love with the alternative and electronic scene of the early eighties and then went on to explore the soul and funk of the era. I was a DJ from 1981 to 2008 working in clubs and private parties. My guilty pleasures are Andy Williams and Jaques Brel. My show Doo Wop and Beyond explores the harmonies, riffs and rhythms of the genre and goes beyond to take in much more. The early pioneers of the Doo Wop scene were very much the punk rock of its day, having little or no funds for instruments, the voice was king. I play a variety of Doo op, R&B, some Soul and lots of other interesting vocal tunes. There’s a lot of the popular songs, some rarities and I always tell you a bit about the song or the singers, that gives the genre life.