Hip Hop Be Bop

Broken Glass were Manchesters premier street crew in the early 1980’s and were formed in 1983 by brothers, Steven, Michael and Kevin Morris together with Paul ‘Kermit’ Leveridge and Raymond ‘Babyface Ray’ Campbell. There were several additions along the way including Tim ‘Bones’ Forde, Brian ‘Fiddz’ Fidder, Royston ‘Swift Swanny’ Swanston, Danny ‘Spaz’ Price, Kevin ‘Krazy K’ Lowe, Dave ‘Dave The Wave’ O’Conner, Benji Reid, David Chinn, Patrick Booth, Paul Brencher, Michelle Adae, etc. Apologies for any of those I’ve omitted.

They made their home dancing at a club called Legends which featured the legendary electro funk DJ, Greg Wilson. Greg became the crews manager and persuaded them to visit a club named Hacienda where he was a resident DJ on a Friday night and they quickly became the clubs resident dancers. Street crews from around the country regularly visited to battle them.

Taking the idea from the Rock Steady Crew and hoping to gain similar success, Greg joined with Martin Jackson and Andy Connell to produce a single which featured Kermit and Fiddz from Broken Glass. They made a demo of Style Of The Street and started approaching record companies in the hope of a deal. On the strength of the track and a few other ideas, Morgan Khan offered them a deal on his Street Sounds label.

Morgan had the idea of releasing an electro compilation album which would highlight a developing electro scene in the UK. However, with the exception of The Rapologists aka Mastermind, all the tracks were produced by Greg, Martin and Andy under various group names. Three singles from the album were also rush released, of which Style Of The Street was the first, quickly followed by singles from their aliases,  Syncbeat and Forevereaction. Tracks using the alias of Zero-G were the only ones from the album that are unreleased as singles.

Please note that the members and aliases I’ve listed above only refer to the actual people involved in the production of the music and not the entire b-boy crew.

Kermit went on to form UK rap group, the Ruthless Rap Assassins, in the late 1980’s together with brothers Dangerous Hinds (Anderson Hinds) and Dangerous C (Carson Hinds). Following the groups split he formed the group Black Grape in the mid 90’s with Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays.

Check out the 7 part YouTube documentary on Broken Glass here.