By the mid 1980′s, most compilation albums were a collection of similar sounding tracks – like a Motown Greats collection of oldies or a label profile of new material. Piller and Peterson decided that they needed to create a compilation series that could quite simply be put on at a party, and left to play the whole way through – mixing old funk and soul classics with cutting edge new-jazz or modern material.

Peterson had, to an extent, tried this with his highly successful Jazz Juice series through Street Sounds – but this was a 100% oldies compilation. The pair wanted to make something completely different and the Totally Wired series was born.

The name wasn’t borrowed from punk band The Fall’s album, and neither did it have anything to do with cocaine – No, the truth was far more interesting: Piller remembers “When we started the label the hostility from the existing jazz scene was extraordinary. We felt that the traditional London based modern jazz scene was about 20 years behind what was going on in the streets. They hated the idea of jazz that young people danced to and failed to understand that for us, jazz was about a feeling, not technical playing…This set us at odds with the establishment from the beginning. Every Acid Jazz release was crucified in their magazine, called The Wire – a pretentious, pompous and oh-so-uncool monthly that ran us down constantly. While we were making volume one of our new series, we read one particularly awful review of the young tenor player Ed Jones’ album – Gilles immediately said ‘Ha!, they’ve done it again – we always get totally wired by those bastards!’ – the name seemed perfect and just stuck!

There have been 15 series one collections (we omitted number 13 because it is bad luck!!) 2 series two collections, three Totally Wired/Old School New Cool compilations, Totally Wired Sweden, Totally Wired Italy and two Totally Wired in Dub reggae releases. The label plans to bring back the series at the end of 2011 with Totally Wired 25 – which celebrates the label’s 25th anniversary…