Simply put, this clubland sensation is quite a bit different than your granny. The only golden era around her is the bling she fronts at her gigs. Romain Raynaldy from Yahoo News takes a look at her amazing career.
Giving a whole new meaning to Lady Gaga, a British granny is proving you’re never too old to get down, rocking top clubs on both sides of the Atlantic as a DJ at the grand old age of 69.
Ruth Flowers, aka Mamy Rock, is a politely-spoken grandmother from Bristol in southwest England who has just taken Los Angeles clubland by storm after moving across from Europe.
“I love people, I think that’s what carries me through. I love the young ones too, because they get such a bad press often. And I haven’t find them to be anything but wonderful,” she tells AFP.
Forget the cliches of retirement homes, afternoons in front of the TV and knitting: although well beyond pensionable age, Flowers seems to have more energy than most of the 20-somethings dancing to her pumping rhythms.
“I am still awake when the younger people around me are sleepy. I don’t have a problem with night work,” she says. “It doesn’t seem so strange for me because I’ve always been a little bit different.
“I have good health. I am fortunate with my health. If I had many of the complaints of other older people, I couldn’t do it.”
She came to California to record her new single, “69”, and to make her US debut at an electro festival in Anaheim, south of Los Angeles.
The gig in front of 3,000 young clubbers went so well that she has been invited to DJ in New York on November 29, before heading for China and Japan at the end of the year.
From a musical family, Flowers always sang but once married devoted herself to her work in a fabric shop. “I had a wonderful life,” she says, adding that she has ‘no regrets of any kind.”
But after retiring to Portugal for 10 years and being widowed, she started to grow bored — and that’s when electro entered her life.
“I went to a party for my grandson, and after the party he took me with his friends to a disco. I was quite impressed by the enjoyment, the energy. And I thought, ‘Could I do this for young people?’
“And so I said to my grandson ‘You know darling, maybe I could do this,’ and he told me ‘It would be so cool!'”
At first it was just an interesting thought, but it developed rapidly: through a mutual friend she met French producer Aurelien Simon, who told her about his idea to launch a “mamy” (French for granny) DJ.
“I said: ‘You know, that is one of the craziest ideas I’ve ever heard.’
“And here we are,” she says with a smile.
Her only US gig this year will be on November 29th in New York, if you’re up for a road trip. Otherwise, you’ll have to settle for all the cool stuff she has on her website to get you through your day.
Until then, sing with me now, “Play that Funky Music Grand-Ma, Play that Funky Music Noowwwww….”