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>> Montreal producer and phone-freak Fred Everything breaks into the global house scene by MIREILLE SILCOTT When Fred Everything (Frederic Blais) moved to Montreal in early '97, I don't think anyone in the club scene thought for a second that he would become The Guy. He was just a DJ, 22 years old, who was big in his native Quebec City (which, as you can probably deduce, doesn't mean terribly much). A well-liked kid who fiddled around with samplers and keyboards when he wasn't on the decks. Once here, he started working at In Beat Records, got himself the odd spin-session around town, and drove people like me bonkers with crazy amounts of phone calls every time he had a new mixed tape or gig. His telephone-terrorism should have been a tip off. This was one resolute Fred. So in retrospect it really shouldn't have come as a surprise at all that Fred became The Guy--the long-awaited house producer to break out of the Montreal scene to wide European and American acclaim. Listen to his funky, bumpy tracks--they're amazing. His persistence, however, is nothing short of mind boggling.
"It was weird. Like, I come into a city that has a lot of history in terms of clubs, a history that goes back to disco... and why do I come here and get all this? I don't know. I guess it's because I never concentrated on the local, I have always had a more global head." But a man of blimpy ego this is not--please don't think it--it's just, at the moment, Fred's got reason for talking like this. His props in a nutshell are like so: last year he got one track onto venerable UK label DIY ("They were my heroes. I sent them many tapes...") which was subsequently remixed by the DIY crew. And the rest is snowball-o-rama. Fred has now released EPs on Vinyl Peace and Ralph Lawson's very important 20/20 Vision imprint, he's signed for records on Tag UK, Earth, and Afro Art (Ashley Beedle's label). He's working on a DJ-mixed CD. He's booked to play the hoity-toity Plastic People club in London and the holy Sub Club in Glasgow. He's visited DJ magazine's Hype Chart at #3(!), Tony Humphries plays his records and hell, he's even gotten pat-on-the-back faxes from Laurent Garnier. But ridiculously, predictably (insert "you never know what you have" adage here) he doesn't have a residency at any club in Montreal, even though he's getting close to having his record boxes carried for him in Europe. "The last time I was in the UK, I couldn't believe it," says Fred. "In some of the places that I played, kids would come up to me and say, 'Hey man, I love your records.' They knew them! One night, I went out to [culty, trend-setting London house club] Space at Bar Rhumba, I walked in and one of my tracks was playing! I went to see the DJ, left an acetate of a new track in the booth, went to get a beer, and by the time I reached the bar that track was playing! I think it was then I knew I would have a good year." And that the phone calls paid off. May Fred's fingers--god bless 'em--never leave the dial pad.
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Everything's coming up!
"People were a little surprised, yes," says Fred of his ascendancy. "I've always been quiet here, doing my homework, as they say. People in Montreal didn't talk to me much, they didn't know me. So it was funny to see--I'm not saying people were greedy or anything--but all of a sudden it was like, 'Oh yeah, that guy? That's him?'