You were born and raised in Philly, and spent a lot of time in the barber shop. Tell me about that.
When I was five years old one of my first jobs was to play records for everyone who came in. The whole neighborhood comes into a barbershop – mostly men. Not only to get their hair cut, but it's an entire experience. Watching the game, listening to the newest records, and talking about lady troubles... general men talk. My father would take me to the record stores every Friday to get all the new releases. I learned there were times to play certain songs. Maybe you needed to make people relax, or get people talking. Some guy comes in stressed out from life, I would put on [Martha and the Vandellas'] "Heat Wave" or some Jackson 5 song, and it got people in a joyful and celebratory state instead of being negative or getting angrier. That was my first experience observing how music can affect people's emotions. I also learned about various styles of music. My dad was all funk and soul music. However, at home, my mother was all jazz and jazz vocalists. And she was friends with Sun Ra.
Didn't he say he was a spaceman?
Yes, he was a pioneer. He lived all over: Alabama, New York, and Chicago. He moved to Philly in the late-'60s. His group, the Arkestra, moved into Germantown here on Morton Street. When you're five, six, or seven, Sun Ra is too much, from a musical standpoint. However, visually, it was mind-blowing. To see black people running around in costumes, looking like superheroes, and making this otherworldly music; it blew my mind. That was the first time I ever saw a [Moog] Polymoog [synthesizer]. Owen Brown used to play with them.
You were young, but had an eye on a Moog?
It wasn't until the '80s that I noticed Owen Brown and the Moog. My mom didn't believe in baby sitters. If there was a show, I was going with her. When I went to high school, it was: school, work, shows. Homework was easy. I was a good student and got that done. In sixth grade, I had a teacher, Mr. Fell. Every Friday we would do music appreciation. This was in southwest Philly, which is still pretty rough today. I had a great childhood. I had everything; toys, an Atari, you name it. But the neighborhood was on the fringe of madness sometimes. In the early 1980s, gang wars were an issue in Philly. There was the mafia in south Philly, and everywhere else were these little gangs. I mention this because my mother was adamant that I did not go to school in the neighborhood; she made sure I went to school downtown. You apply, and you get bussed. Luckily for me, James "J.T." Taylor's (the lead singer of Kool & The Gang) grandma lived in Philly. She would drive myself and her niece, Yvette, to school. For three years, I went to Albert M. Greenfield Elementary. Mr. Fell's class changed my life. This was the first time I got to focus on other music that was not funk, soul, or jazz. The kids downtown were predominantly Jewish. They were bringing in Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and Billy Squier – music I hadn't heard. Zeppelin and The Police blew my mind because of the drums. [John] Bonham and [Stewart] Copeland were beyond anything thing I assumed drummers could do. Keep in mind, this is before what we know now. Hip-hop had started in New York, and some people were passing around tapes, but I was too young for that circle. Meanwhile, I was bringing in Michael Jackson and Heatwave.
You mean Rod Temperton's band, Heatwave?
Yes, the band. I was bringing in Parliament [-Funkadelic], and those kids were like, "Whoa!" I also gravitated to Yes, Rush, and King Crimson. I know people call that "math-rock," but it was jazz to me; just different instrumentation. In high school, I met like-minded individuals. We would go to shows on our own. At 13, I was allowed to go to shows. I loved the math-rock, but... PUNK! A friend of mine, Doug Bennett, goes under the name Dr. Israel. He lives in Brooklyn, and he's big in the reggae dub scene, but back then he was a punk rocker. He was in my homeroom in ninth grade. That's how I got introduced to the Dead Kennedys, Trained Attack Dogs, Black Flag, Fishbone, and Bad Brains. I couldn't believe what Fishbone were doing. Bad Brains were incredible. HR [vocalist Paul "Human Rights" Hudson] later moved to Philly. At that time, seeing black punks was unique. It was well before Afro-punk. It was rhythmically insane. Tenth grade was the turning point; I was into punk and rock. Still into jazz, but keeping that more at home. I was rebelling when I was out. My best friend's sister was in the Army, and she brought home a 45 from this band, Kraftwerk.
There was no Amazon, no internet. No way to obtain that easily.
She was stationed in Frankfurt, and she brought the single for their track, "Autobahn." I was like, "What is this?" Simultaneously, hip-hop started to explode. In Philly this meant block parties popping up. People were out in the streets, getting together and jamming to tunes. I'm very close to Jeff Townes [DJ Jazzy Jeff] now, but back then I didn't know him and I was always at parties he, or Jerome "DJ Cash Money" Hewlett, would run. That was the first time I saw a DJ manipulating vinyl in front of an audience.
Your whole life, you're collecting and respecting records, and these guys are grinding the stylus into them!
Not just scratching; they were manipulating two records while keeping the breaks entirely in time. The breaks Jeff was using? Billy Squier's "The Big Beat" and Rush's "Tom Sawyer." I was screaming, "These are rock records I love!" They're incorporating them differently, and out of necessity. That's how hip-hop happened. Philly has some of the best DJs in the world.
Do you think that's a result of the block party phenomenon?
These were battles, and the bar was high! With Jazzy Jeff and Cash Money? Right away, those guys were the standard, and if you wanted to DJ you had to compare to them. Even if you were going into techno or house music, your technical skills had to be on point. Obviously, we didn't have the tools, software, or other things that we take for granted now.But not having access to everything, and needing to be unique, sparks innovation beyond measure.In New York all they had were turntables, a microphone, speakers, and manipulating vinyl – that birthed hip-hop. Now 100 miles southwest, we had Grand Wizard Rasheen [David Roberts] and many talents battling neighborhood by neighborhood. And it was free!
What did they do during the Pennsylvania winters?
They started doing gymnasiums and the YMCA. Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff would play my high school. Getting back to new records, the Kraftwerk single made me wonder what else was out there that I needed to hear. I would go to Third Street Jazz [record store] every Saturday, and sometimes we would skip school because two or three test pressings might be coming in. Today, kids use the internet to get anything – we had to stand in line. If Depeche Mode had a 12-inch coming in, I cut school for that! I know this is going to sound bad, but no one could get these records, so I began to tape them and sell the tapes at school. We were kids. We didn't have money, and people couldn't even get a copy of the music, so that's what we did. Cassettes got me thinking. As I was making those tapes, I started to experiment with loops. We would take a breakbeat. Say it was Harvey Mason from Carole King's record, Fantasy. We didn't have drum machines, or access to samplers, but we had some of these world-class drummers, and we made "pause tapes."
Could you explain for those who haven't dealt with that?
We called them pause tapes. Play the beat on one tape, record that on the other deck, pause it, and rewind the source beat. Play it again while lifting pause, and now you have a beat that is twice as long as the original. I had friends who would come over and rap over the breaks and music beds we would make. I was making breaks that nobody else had, because I had all these jazz and rock records. I was familiar with so many styles of music that I could draw from. I had been listening to everything. I didn't have the money for a Fairlight [CMI sampler], but I did have two cassette decks and a turntable.
Where did it go from there?
The Yes album 90125 came out; a rock album that used samples. I wanted to know who this producer, Trevor Horn [Tape Op #89], was. He changed my outlook. What I was doing may have been perceived as a side thing, or a club thing, but the Yes album showed there was a bigger horizon. For people who don't know, the minds behind this – Gary Langan, Trevor Horn, Paul Morley, Anne Dudley, and J. J. Jeczalik – were in the studio fooling around with all the sounds and the Fairlight CMI sampler. They came up with what would become [the group project] The Art of Noise. They took a scrapped drum riff and sampled it into the Fairlight. This might have been the first time an entire drum pattern had been sampled into a machine. "Moments in Love" became a Philly anthem! It was released on ZTT [Records], and people noticed. Then beatboxing blew up because of break dancing. It was the right time for all of this to hit.
Did it make you crazy that you couldn't get your hands on the tech they had?
We were getting close. The E-mu Drumulator came out. It was E-mu trying to take on that Roger Linn LM-1 [Drum Computer]. We would go to a record store, a place called FunkO-Mart, and they actually sold Drumulators. I needed to get a Drumulator, but they were about $200 or so then. [That'd be $600 today. -ed] It wasn't crazy money. I had a summer job, but for a city kid, that's still some money. However, the big thing that came out was the Casio SK-1. It was $99. Christmas came; my dad paid half, I paid the rest, and I had my first sampler.
Your parents are amazing!
Tell me about it. That Casio SK-1 still works. I had it modified; now it can do glitches. I sampled kicks, drums, this and that. I sampled water running, anything. I was trying to make it work and see what happened. I was a junior in high school, and I was heavy into Depeche Mode and Scritti Politti; these Brits. It's jazz, but alternative dance, with guitar. I'm thinking, "Anything from the UK is cool." There was a show, "Rock Over London," that was simulcasted here on Sunday nights on WXPN. I would stay up listening on my Walkman. I had my head under the covers – I was supposed to be asleep; it was a school night. Or I would be recording it. They mentioned this thing called "sequencing." I wanted to learn what this was. Jamaaladeen Tacuma, now a famous bass player, is a mentor to me. We both worked at the mall. He was playing with Ornette Coleman at the time. At lunch, we would talk. He and my friend, Earl [Johnson], said, "You need to get the Yamaha QX21 sequencer."
How did Earl know this?
He's a producer. He discovered Pink, who is from Doylestown, PA, 30 miles north of Philly. He was all over the latest technology. Earl told me it had this thing called MIDI, and that I would need a keyboard that also had MIDI to control it. My other buddy, James Poyser, was also working at the mall. He sold me his [Yamaha] DX100; the small version of the [Yamaha] DX7. James went on to work with Adele, Erykah Badu, Mariah Carey, John Legend, Lauryn Hill, and you can also see him on NBC's [The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy] Fallon as a member of The Roots.
What was in the water in Pennsylvania?
I know! Then they said I needed to get a PortaStudio.
Tascam PortaStudios; the real gateway drug.
I know, right? [laughing] I would record the drums, sequence other parts, and build demos on the 4-track. By today's standards it was basic, but back then it was not something many people could do without going to a big studio. Right out of high school I got a job at Tower Records; the job had benefits, and I got to work in music. The Tower store was big, with floors for each genre, and they had a separate store across the street to hold classical music. My boss said they wanted to start selling more 12-inch dance mixes, and they needed me to choose the stock. I became the 12-inch dance buyer. Richie Hawtin and Carl Craig were starting out; no one outside of this small circle knew their names. Now they're world-renowned. They were sending test presses and promos...
Promos you can't sell, so you have no choice but to take them home.
Don't tell! My collection is insane. I saved and bought a [Moog] Minimoog. I saw Herbie Hancock after I got his Sunlight album. I wanted to buy every keyboard on the back of that record; he's my hero.
Record credits would sometimes list the synth the person played as their instrument, rather than "keyboards."
That's how we learned. You wouldn't know what was out there without those credits. The first time I heard a Fender Rhodes, I was like, "What in the world is that? How is that sound made?" The Minimoog I bought in '88 is still here. Since Tower had turntables, they would sell their old ones when they replaced or upgraded them. I got these two Technics SL-]1200 [turntables] for a very affordable price. At this point I was obsessed with Tears for Fears – The Hurting, Songs from the Big Chair, and The Seeds of Love – to this day. Going through the credits, I asked, "Who is this Bob Clearmountain [Tape Op #129, #84] guy?" I wondered how a mixing engineer could have such an impact on the result. I moved to a new place, and it was so small that I had to use the neighbor's bathroom. I didn't have room for a bed; I had gear everywhere. I couldn't stop working. I sampled the intro from Tears for Fears' "Mad World," some African Head Charge, put a drum loop on it, added a bass line, and that became E-Culture's "Tribal Confusion." I sent it to Strictly Rhythm [Records], who only had two releases at that time. And [label head] Gladys Pizarro said, "This will do great in Europe." So she signed it. At the same time, Josh Wink [Joshua Winkelman] and I had just met. He had a drum machine and a keyboard; he wanted to collaborate with me and learn production.
