Remembering Whitney Houston... her amazing voice could make just about anything sound spectacular, hard to believe there were only 2 songs of hers I would pump in the club... The David Morales RMX of "Love Saves The Day" & Yvonne Turner RMX of "I'm Your Baby Tonight"... I do play them a lot, but wish there were more.
Read MoreCan't Shake Your Love
always loved this song, especially when I heard it in the Garage, as Larry had a special remix, he had done that he apparently never shared with anyone & I never heard it anywhere else. When The Garage finally closed I never heard it again... until one day a few years later.
Read MoreCompared To What
My mother being a Jazz singer & father Chet Baker's manager certainly put Jazz very prominent in my musical upbringing. As a kid, I respected Jazz, but especially the traditional jazz my parents were into... was for me an acquired taste. My father's next venture "The Ninth Circle" started out as a bar/steak house, & I had a lot of odd jobs there as a kid. Like every other bar in NY at that time, they had a jukebox, & like every other bar was pre stuffed with the current top 40 pop music... with little variation, as you would suspect, it was pretty tiered.
Read MoreLabelle
The first time I saw Patti Labelle was Patti Labelle & The Bluebells Summer of 1969, opening up for Sam & Dave at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park. Their singing was off the hook... but they didn't have any actual songs I was really that interested in. By the next time I saw them in 1974, again in Central Park, they were opening for Mandrill... but this time I was coming to see them.
Read MoreTouch & Go
Touch & Go:
Ecstasy, Passion & Pain had a number of hits in the 70's on Roulette records, "Touch & Go" arguably their best. By the 80's, surviving Disco Sucks as a beloved classic, I still couldn't get enough of it, so I made my own extended edit. Around the same time, Roulette records was acquired by Sunnyview records, where my friend Claudia Cuseta was in charge of Club Promotion. Claudia surprised me one day saying she had the master tapes of "Touch & Go" & said she wanted me & Tony Smith to remix it. This is about 1985, & I had only done a few less memorable low budget remixes, so I was looking forward to this.
Give It Up Or Turn It Loose
James Brown... I did have a lot of key music influences growing up, but maybe none bigger than... JAMES BROWN. In the late 60's & early 70's, whenever I went to a house party, (a party at someone’s house) they didn't have a DJ, they just had someone in charge of the music. Usually that was one automatic turntable with a tall spindle that you could stack 4 or 5 albums at once, no singles, just long playing albums. Typically, most albums had only one or two popular songs & the rest... party killers. So most albums you would hear were greatest hits or variety hit's, like Motown 64 greatest hits & Sly & The Family Stone's greatest hits. But the better party's for me seem to use a lot of James Brown, which really made people dance non stop.
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