Dec. 1979 when I auditioned to DJ at ROXY Roller Rink NYC, I actually played 2 PRINCE songs in my brief 45 min. set. I got the job!
PRINCE was still huge in the ROXY, especially women... loved him. & were always claiming to be his girlfriend.
DJing at ROXY one night in 1980, an unusually pretty girl came to me with a request. Even with skates on, she wasn't very tall, but she was stunningly beautiful. She introduced herself as Denise & said, "I love PRINCE!... could you please play some PRINCE?", I said "sure" & she went to the floor.
Read MoreIn all the years I went to the Garage… I was good friends with Larry & yet, I did feel uncomfortable to ask him to make me a tape from the night, I knew he thought of recording as not only a distraction, but also a distorted view of that actual moment in real time in the club. But once I just couldn’t resist & asked.
Read More"I'll Do Anything For You" written & produced by Bert Reid. I first noticed Bert in 1974 as a member of Crown Heights Affair, who not only played trumpet & sang, but also co-wrote a number of their best jams, "Say A Prayer For Two", "You Gave Me Love","Far Out", "You've Been Gone" & "I See The Light". One night In the booth of the Garage, Larry introduced him to me & we quickly became close friends. Bert was also producing & writing a lot on his own, for groups like Unlimited Touch, The Jamaica Girls, Raw Silk, Abdul Tariq, Denroy Morgan, a few for himself & even a remix of a song called "Must Be The Music".
Read MoreGrowing up in the 1960's it easy to say The Rolling Stones had a huge influence on me, & when I first started DJing there was a lot of rock in my sets, including The Rolling Stones. In the end of the 60's & early 70's I went to a lot of legendary top rock performances at places like the Fillmore East, Madison Sq Garden, & even Central Park. But I never got tickets to see the Stones live, as their US performances were expensive, & difficult to see.
Read MoreRemembering 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 Morealways 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 MoreMy 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 MoreLike so many people, my first Betty Wright record I bought was Clean Up Woman, the same year I started DJing in 1971. It's hard to imagine now how few TV channels we had to choose from back then, but just flicking the channels by chance, I just happened to catch the 2nd half of this same performance of Betty Wright on the Mike Douglas show:
Read MoreThe 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 MoreBohannon @ The Beacon...
In the early 70's the Beacon Theater on Broadway sometimes had these incredible star studded shows. In 1975 I remember one very well featuring The Stylistics, Mandrill, Betty Wright... & Bohannon.
Read MoreIn 1969 at the age of twelve, I was already record collecting, even thinking a few crates of records was a lot, never dreaming 50 years later I'd have 80,000+. This was pre disco, house, hip-hop, we didn't even call it dance music, what we called it was rock n soul, as that's what it mostly was. It's easy to say I preferred soul, that's what stuck as my base... but I was always open to a lot more... even pop.
Read MoreTouch & 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.
Read MoreJames 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.
Read MoreToday I was thinking about DJ Larry Patterson... someone you really don't hear about very often, but a truly exceptional DJ & wonderful person. The picture below has been circulating for years as just a garage dance floor moment, but actually a very special picture for me. This was taken on one of the rare occasions I DJ'd at Paradise Garage, when I was playing "We Got The Funk" & Larry Patterson & David Todd ran to the dance floor, Larry Patterson in the red T-shirt, David in brown. Having these two dance to my music was almost as important to me as playing at the Garage itself.
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