Starsign Blog: 2011

89 State of Mind...

De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, NYC crate diggers. Public Enemy, The Bomb Squad, Dust Brothers, Prince Paul, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Marley Marl, Run DMC, Rick Rubin. Those are my primary heroes. The beat diggers, the loop makers, the groove robbers. I grew up in the era of the MPC, of Cypress Hill, Ice Cube, Nas, Special Ed, Biz Markie, Wu Tang, Large Professor, Main Source, Organized Konfusion, Gang Starr. I discovered the old records... Groove Holmes, Eddie Harris, Maceo and the Macks, Jimmy Smith, The Meters, War, Sly Stone, Donald Byrd, and so many others.. I studied up on the masters and the pioneers of hip hop culture... Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Flash, Baron, Crazy Legs, Fab 5 Freddy, Krs One, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Red Alert, LL Cool J, Treacherous 3, Spoonie G, Busy B, Crash Crew, and of course, the Godfather of it all, James Brown.

I loved the creativity of the music, the spontaneity, the naivety when you could be experimental and create something new. Phase 2 for me was the Mo Wax years, mainly DJ Shadow. That's a whole other era but the long and short of it is a path of discovering more obscure music that ranged from jazz and Latin to 70's ambient and German experimental, and eventually disco, house, techno and balearic. This music spoke to my soul and I lived for it and loved every second of it. I djed periodically but finally decided to try to see if I could get paid to play at bars/clubs. Luckily I did, but I soon discovered that I had no business djing at the more popular spots b/c my taste in music seemed to always clash with what the crowds wanted. They wanted Nelly, Brittany, Justin, Snoop, Kanye, Gaga. I was definitely in the wrong scene. Then records were no longer a requirement to dj. Laptops, cds and ipods became acceptable forms of "djing". Cheap technology enabled anyone with the skill and time to remix or re-edit to become a producer. Lots of really poorly engineered music with little attention to sonics or proper EQing invaded the web. Those of us who preferred vinyl as a format seemed to shrink in numbers. Eventually, I lost touch with the new and I retreated into my own personal studio and dove head first into the music I loved... the 89 state of mind, where the dusty grooves and beats were in abundance. Hip hop is so digital now. It's a completely different sound from what I grew to love. A lot of the rappers aren't even skilled at rapping. It's as if a skinny kid who did a few pushups and sparred a few weeks made his way into the ring and became heavyweight champion... and I don't mean that in a good way.

So basically, just like the older generation was so tied to the Woodstock era when I was a kid and I felt like they were so out of touch and old fashioned, I have become that "Woodstock dude" to the young generation. I'm that dude who has a pony tail talking about how great the Jefferson Airplane was in the 60's and how disgraceful Starship is, and that kid (the young me) who used to shake his head at how wack that dude was is the collective 20 something crowd who finds it increasingly irritating why I won't play that latest track or why I have such an aversion to "insert latest underground quasi-electronic, offbeat, nerd music". Right now, I'm watching old videos of the Beastie Boys in their G-Son Studios, before any of them had grey hair, and am so at peace with that. Maybe I'll eventually figure out how to use that MPC I got a few years back.