A Guy Called Gerald is the stage name for musician, record producer and DJ Gerald Simpson from Moss Side in Manchester, United Kingdom. He has proven to be among the most innovative modern electronic music figures to emerge during the 1980s. He is perhaps best known for his early work in the Manchester acid house scene in the late 1980s and the track "Voodoo Ray". At that time, he specialised in techno music produced using equipment such as the Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser and the TR-808 drum machine (he sourced much of his equipment from Johnny Roadhouse, a second-hand music shop that is otherwise the haunt of non-mancunian students).

The result of heading back into his bedroom studio was "Voodoo Ray", played first at the infamous Hacienda in 1988 and then the underground clubs and entering the UK charts a year later. It was one of the first acid house tracks produced in the UK, and released on a small Merseyside independent label (Rham! Records). This was a time when musicians believed they needed to be signed to a major record company to have a hit but without the backing of the major label marketing machine and spurred on by the acid house fever sweeping the club scene, "Voodoo Ray" entered the UK charts in 1989 rising to number 12. It was also the best selling independently released single of that year.


The song contains samples of comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, taken from the first Derek and Clive LP, Derek and Clive (Live), specifically the Bo Duddley sketch. [1] [2] Voodoo Ray combines a sample of Peter Cook delivering the phrase "voodoo rage", truncated due to the recording equipment's lack of memory, and also Dudley Moore forcefully delivering the word "later!". In each case the samples are shifted in pitch, and electronically processed.- Wikipedia