http://www.dancestar.com - Dirty Vegas perform their global hit 'days go by' with the legendary Bootsie Collins! Paul Harris, Steve Smith and Ben Harris are three lads from Kent and the South London suburbs with very different musical backgrounds, united by a shared love of a good tune and a passion for partying.
Paul Harris started clubbing in his early teens and blagged his first professional DJ gig when he was 17, just before acid house took dance culture mainstream. He gradually began spending more time mixing and making records than playing them, but has continued to be successful as a DJ, now mainly playing the kind of celebrity parties you don't even know about unless you're part of the elite. Which is how he has friends like Helena Christiansen, who appeared in the video for the single Simple Things and later photographed Dirty Vegas for a charity fund-raising exhibition.
A drummer since schooldays, Steve Smith gave up his job in the print trade during the rave explosion when he realised he could make more money playing live percussion in clubs at weekends. By the mid-90s he was playing in a band called Higher Ground, and when the singer left he reluctantly stepped in, discovering with some surprise that he had a fine voice. When the band fell apart he went to Ibiza to write, but then a chance meeting with Paul at an airport on the way to a club event led to a wild weekend, and the idea of making music together.
Ben Harris (no relation to Paul) played guitar in indie rock band Fluid until they did their first demo and he saw how the engineer worked the mixing desk. He got a job in a recording studio, "got bitten by the dance bug", and ended up running a specialist dance record shop in Bromley with his brother, using the profits to build up a studio set-up of their own. After producing a string of successful one-off club tunes he began working with Paul, who a few weeks later bumped into Steve and invited him to join them.
The first fruit of their collaboration was Days Go By, a track that became a surprise hit in the US when it was picked up for a Mitsubushi TV ad and people began calling into radio stations requesting it. As a result their debut album Dirty Vegas went into the US charts at number seven. "And then we didn't stop for the next 18 months."
It was a baptism of fire. Their first live TV appearance, for instance, was on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno to an audience of more than six million. They toured the States with Moby, the UK with Groove Armada. They played festivals from V (where the tent was so packed that security had to turn people away) to Coachella in Los Angeles (where they held their own against the White Stripes and Primal Scream on the other stages). They played at Kid Rock's stag night in Las Vegas before his marriage to Pamela Anderson, and caused mayhem onstage and off everywhere from Singapore to Serbia, Moscow to Milwaukee. This constant touring paid off, "Dirty Vegas" sold over three-quarters of a million copies.
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