ok, for starters allow me to clarify (hopefully not pedantically) what ‘hip hop’ means. hip hop is rap music(and culture). in fact, ‘rap music’ was a term invented in the early 80’s by and for white people who were confused by the term ‘hip hop’. so the two are synonymous, but ‘hip hop’ is to ‘rap music’ what eric b and rakim are to vanilla ice.
i bought my first hip hop record in 1982, ‘the message’ by grandmaster flash (coincidentally the same day i bought my first minor threat 7″, ‘in my eyes’, on red vinyl). and by the time i started dj’ing in 1984 i had a few hip hop records that i would sneak into my set, like ‘the message’ and ‘white lines’ and ‘renegades of funk’ and ‘planet rock’, etc.
as the 80’s progressed i became less and less interested in new wave and punk rock and more and more interested in hip hop and dancehall and house music. it seemed as if during the 80’s white music stagnated and black music was exploded, sonically and technologically and creatively.
a lot of white music in the 80’s was very conservative and retro sounding (green on red, rem, the blasters, etc), whereas a lot of black music in the 80’s sounded like the future (eric b and rakim, public enemy, ultramagnetic mc’s, transmat, etc).
so by 1987 and 1988 i was pretty much playing hip hop and dancehall and house music exclusively (much to the chagrin of the new wave kids who wanted to hear erasure and the cure. nothing against erasure and the cure, they were nice, but they didn’t excite me nearly as much as eric b and rakim and derrick may).
i used to go out to hip hop clubs (oftentimes being the only white person there) and gay house clubs (oftentimes being the only white/straight person there) whenever i could. these clubs were amazing. and genuinely underground. there were hip hop and house music anthems that no one outside of new york had ever even heard of (‘the 900 number’, ‘break for love’, ‘i promise’, ‘who the cap fit’, etc).
i also used to drop off hip hop mix demo tapes at all of the hip hop clubs and labels and radio stations (wbls, kiss, wild pitch, jive, etc). at the time it seemed completely normal to me, even if i was the only white person sitting in the lobby at wbls waiting desperately to talk to a dj or a program director to try to get them to give me a dj’ing gig.
i would spend hours and days and weeks walking around manhattan with a bag full of mix tapes and demo tapes, desperately trying to get dj jobs or a record deal. again, at the time it seemed perfectly normal to be eating pizza that had fallen on the street and sleeping on the subway and buying clothes from homeless people when it started to rain, all so i could potentially get someone to listen to the music i was making or playing.
i was also at the time dj’ing in connecticut at a club called ‘the cafe’ and a bar called ‘the beat’. i felt like an evangelist, as if it were my holy duty to bring hip hop and house music to the new wave kids of fairfield and westchester counties. they came for erasure, they got hip hop. they came for rem, they got house music.
i’m surprised that:
a-i was able to keep my dj’ing jobs in connecticut for as long as i did
b-that i wasn’t lynched by the perpetually annoyed club/bar patrons.
and here’s the very, very embarrassing part… not only did i feel as if it were my duty to bring hip hop and house music to the white kids of wealthy connecticut, i also felt that it was my duty to represent hip hop culture on a sartorial level. aka-how i dressed…
yes, embarrassing but true, but for a couple of years in the late 80’s i tried to dress like a rapper. but i was broke. and white. and lived in stamford, connecticut. so i did the best that i could.
my girlfriend at the time went to columbia university and was on the columbia women’s tennis team, so i borrowed her sergio tacchini warm up jacket cos i’d seen krs-one or someone from stetsasonic wearing a sergio tachhini warm up jacket and i thought it was cool (even if mine said ‘columbia women’s tennis team’ on the back…). my girlfriend at the time (god bless her) also bought me a $10 thick gold chain with a mercedes medallion attached to it… (again, i saw rakim wearing one and i thought it was cool).
so i would put on my columbia womens tennis team warm up jacket and my thick gold (fake) rope with the mercedes medallion and, being a skinny white kid from connecticut, do my best to look like a rapper.
for a while i actually thought of myself as being a relatively good scratch dj. i learned the tricks, and knew how to transform and scratch and cut quickly back and forth between two pieces of vinyl (the trick to that is to read the label like a clock and not actually listen in the headphones…). then one day i heard clark kent dj and i thought to myself ‘i could practice for 5 hours a day for the rest of my life and i’ll never be as good as him.’
my first big break (without which i probably wouldn’t be sitting here writing this) was to get a job at mars. mars was a club on the west side highway at 14th street in the meatpacking district (an aside; now the meatpacking district is like little miami, filled with uber trendy hotels and nightclubs and restaurants and shops, but back in 1988 the meatpacking district was filled with meatpacking places and tranny hookers. i have such distinct memories of walking around trying to avoid the blood and intestines on the sidewalk while also trying to avoid the tranny hookers having sex in between the dumpsters. classy. remembering the smell of the meatpacking district in the summer in the late 80’s still kind of makes me sick to my stomach).
so my girlfriend at the time (again, janet, god bless her) called me up one day and said ‘there’s a new club opening, it’s called mars and it’s being run by rudolph and it’s going to be huge and they’re looking for dj’s.’ so i raced down to mars and gave a dj demo tape (hip hop on one side, house music on the other side) to yuki watanabe, the dj booker.
new york at the time was very nepotistic, and the only way to get a dj gig in nyc in 1988 was to already be a dj and to be friends with the people who ran the nightclubs. i was a nerd from connecticut, and i knew no one even remotely cool in nyc who could nepotistically hook me up with a dj gig. but yuki watanabe didn’t know about nepotism and he gave me a job (dj’ing in the basement of mars) because he actually liked my demo tape.
it still counts as the most exciting day of my professional life when yuki called me up and i found out that i was going to be dj’ing at mars. mars was the ne plus ultra of clubs in 1988. it had 5 levels and the best sound systems and the best dj’s and the coolest clubgoers and lines around the block of people trying to get in. and somehow i got a job dj’ing there. amazing.
i eventually moved from the basement to the roof, then from the roof to the 4th floor, then from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor, then from the 3rd floor to the 2nd floor, and eventually ended up on the main floor (although the 2nd floor was cooler).
everyone went to mars. madonna, prince, the chili peppers, etc. and then mars became a hip hop destination, and all of the rappers started showing up. 3rd base, ultramagnetics, big daddy kane, run dmc, etc. i would keep a microphone by my mixer, and whenever a rapper showed up i’d start playing instrumentals and let the rapper freestyle. it was amazing, being a 22 year old nerd from connecticut playing hip hop instrumentals while darryl from run dmc was freestyling. and mars was incredibly eclectic. house music and beautiful tranny’s on the first floor, hip hop and rappers on the 2nd floor, reggae and african music on the 3rd floor, ecstasy dealers on the 4th floor, old soul on the roof, new wave in the basement. it really was an amazing place. and the sound system, especially on the 1st floor, still stands as the loudest, cleanest, best sound i’ve ever heard.
i remember walking in for the first time and hearing ‘this is acid’ on the 1st floor soundsystem and i thought that i had never, ever heard anything sound that good or that loud, and that i was home, if they’d have me. mars eventually succumbed to late 80’s/early 90’s crack fueled violence (it wasn’t uncommon, sadly, to show up for work and find out that one of the doormen had been shot the night before), and eventually shut down (along with the building and red zone and the palladium and mk and nells and etc and etc…).
maybe now i’ll go into my studio and see if i can find one of my dj tapes from the late 80’s… if you want to hear public enemy and jvc force and eric b and rakim badly mixed into one another i’ll make you a copy. and no, i don’t have any pictures of me wearing my columbia university womens tennis team sergio tacchini jacket with gold dookie rope… maybe that’s for the best, all things considered… oh, i also had a pony tail.
yup.
this has been a long blog, so i’ll stop for now, hopefully to be continued later.
thanks
moby