From Jocks to DJ: the editor years

Chris Mellor, aka Chris Coco, was editor of DJ Magazine from 1990 to 2000. DJ Mag's own history of the title tells the story: he led the relaunch of a magazine called Jocks as DJ.

A dinosaur called Jocks

DJ Mag's retrospective quotes him on the starting point: "The dance music revolution was happening and there was this dinosaur magazine called Jocks." He was DJing and wanted to cover the emerging scene he was part of.

Choosing the name

With advertising manager Charles Ward, freelancer Helene Stokes and designer Michele Allardyce, he kicked around new names. "I'd wanted to call it BPM, but in the end we went with DJ because the publisher thought it was better, more inclusive," he told DJ Mag. The first issue of DJ came out in the middle of 1991, with Frankie Knuckles in its first issue.

Then the rest of the CV

• Saturday night residency at The Zap in Brighton, late 80s to mid 90s (Wikipedia).
• Coco Steel & Lovebomb, with Lene Stokes and Craig Woodrow. Their first album, It!, came out on Warp in 1994.
• Co-presenter of BBC Radio 1's The Blue Room with Rob da Bank, 2002 to 2006.
• Tour DJ for Robbie Williams, and a long run of chill out and Balearic albums (chriscoco.com).

A former magazine editor now has a magazine again. This one is built to be read on a phone at sunset.