QLS Classic: Tom Silverman

Tom Silverman, founder of the Hip-Hop/Dance label Tommy Boy Records talks about his early days in radio, how Disco never actually died, and the all important fifth pillar of Hip-Hop: knowledge.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora. What Up
It's Unpaid Bill.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
On this classic episode of Quest Love Supreme, we travel
back to March eight, twenty seventeen. Tom Zila, the founder
of Tommy Boy Records, tells Team Supreme about some of
the legendary music this company put out and creating a
pathway to make sampling more affordable for producers. Listeners can
also check out our twenty twenty two two part interview
with former Tommy Boy president Monica Lynch.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Enjoyed all here on uls.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Supremo, Supremo, Suprema So Supremo Ro, Supremo, Sun Sun Supremo
Roll So Supreme Sun Supremo Ro.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
This is your cult leader. Yes you are my sheep. Yes,
Tommy's in the place.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Yeah, Supremo Roll Call, Suprema Son Supremo Ro.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
The name. Yeah, here's an example. Yeah, let me clear
my throat.

Speaker 5 (01:15):
Yeah, but not no samples Supremo Suprema s RO.

Speaker 6 (01:26):
Good morning Tommy from Tommy Boy. Yeah, my name is
Sugar from Bagel Boys.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
Supremo, Supremo, Son, Son Supremo.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Roll pay Bill, Yeah, Steve say, oy, Yeah, about to
throw down.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, Tommy Ro Supremo. So you guys, Supremo Bill is frantic?

Speaker 5 (01:59):
Yeah, looking through my jacket. Yeah, must have misplaced on
my sex packets.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Roll Supremo Son Supremo, roll call Suprema Son Supremo.

Speaker 7 (02:13):
Role Yeah girl, Yeah, and I'm too excited.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah world Ro.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Supremo Supremo, roll call Supremo some some Supremo role ca.

Speaker 8 (02:31):
Yeah, I'm Tommy boy. Yeah, I wasn't prepared for this annoying.

Speaker 9 (02:38):
Supreme Supremo Rome Suprema Son Son Supremo, Roll call Supremo
Son Son Supremo, Roll call Suprema some Supremo ro.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
He said, come on, it's hard to promise things, ladies
and gentlemen. Uh, and welcome to you another edition of
course Love Supreme. How are you guys doing, say a
little Team Supreme? Yes, everybody, mama, okay.

Speaker 5 (03:17):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I have to say that our guest, in my opinion,
probably on paper, his his label probably spoke to me
more than because usually when you think of the consummate
hip hop label or the consumant label, of course, the

(03:40):
D word is always the first thing that comes to mind.
But uh, as far as pushing the boundary and innovations
and one of the greatest logos of all ties, one
of the most boy logos of all time. I have
to say that that for me, Tommy Boy Records kind

(04:02):
of pushes the envelope just a little bit further as
far as innovation and trying out new ideas. And that's
what I feel. Our our steam guest today is about
lady and gentlemen. Please give it up for mister Tommy Silverman. Yeah,
thank you. How are you today?

Speaker 8 (04:25):
Very good? Very good? Starting my fast Day one might
as well good day to start it. Wednesday?

Speaker 1 (04:30):
You're right, you're right. How long are you going for?

Speaker 8 (04:32):
How long it's humpty day? You know it's Wednesday. How
long do you go for? I don't know. I you know,
I as long as I still feel good. I'm drinking
water that you know. I'm starting out drinking water. We'll
see if I go to fancy restaurant, I might have
to eat. We'll have to see.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
But this is day one.

Speaker 8 (04:49):
Yeah, this is day one. Man.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
The crank is going to start.

Speaker 8 (04:52):
But it gets good. Yeah, you're turning about the detox, right, Yeah,
that's going to be pretty clean.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
I feel for you make well, okay, I know there's
a lot that I don't know about you, but I
mean I know of your your general story, but I
do know that your love and your appreciation for music
runs deep.

Speaker 8 (05:15):
So yeah, starting with your dad.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
That's that's how we first met. I have to say
that I didn't think that anyone in the current music
world even really knew of the do wop world or
any of that stuff. And that's the first thing you
came up to me and said, like, I know your
dad is I was really so am I to believe

(05:40):
that your first passion of music was duop.

Speaker 8 (05:43):
No. But you know, I discovered duop just like you
talk about how you discover things through sampling and that,
you know, I hear heard new things and I went
back and discovered roots, and so doop was a route
that I discovered. I was way way too young to
know doop, but I discovered it, you know, when it's
sort of the shinnan nah kind of a thing came
around and I wanted to know. Yeah, and you know,

(06:04):
I had Lee Andrews and the Heart's album, which, like
most people only know the singles, right, you know, I
got really deep into it and it's definitely one of
the top five or ten do op artists of all time.
And then to find that you actually played with those
guys in the garden when you were thirteen made me
have like a different kind of respect. I already respected,

(06:25):
of course hip hop and the people in the world,
you know, more than almost everyone else. But then to
hear that you also had that was you know, because
I when I started hip hop and I was working
with Ben Bada in the Bronx in nineteen eighty, it
was the same corners that duop started from where hip
hop started, like literally the same streets in the same neighborhoods,

(06:46):
you know, the Belmont Avenue. There was the Italian section,
and there was the Black section, and there were kids
singing on every street corner, and it was the same
corners that kids plugged in, you know, their mixers, into
street polls and started. You know, it wasn't that far apart.
So I thought there was a relationship, and I you know,
I always search for that relationship, even to the point
of signing the Force MDS, which I thought was sort

(07:08):
of the synthesis of duop and hip hop.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
So were you born into a musical family or a
musical collective family.

Speaker 8 (07:15):
Creative but not musicough. My mom is an artist and
my dad is a writer.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Are you Are you born New York.

Speaker 8 (07:20):
YA, Westchester, White Plains?

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Okay, okay, So like what are your first musical experiences
at least.

Speaker 8 (07:28):
Out early when I was Yeah, when I was like,
my dad was really into jazz and so you know,
he used to like play air saxophone to Coleman Hawkins
when I was like five years old, and those are
my earliest memories. And he used to play Miles Davis,
early Miles Davis records and he had like a big
high fight. This was way before stereo and built into
the wall and the house that we lived in, and
you know, and he was you know, they played Billie

(07:50):
Holliday and they were really into that kind of music.
So that was the music that I grew up with
at the time.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
So you weren't listening to the The Battle, Dave Crockett
or anything that Middle America was into.

Speaker 8 (08:02):
You guys were except for show tunes because that you know,
you know, that was the mut that had to be
in there too. That was a combination of like of
bebop and show tunes. It's a weird combination. But yeah,
that's what played in my house before I was had
my own musical exploration, which probably started in sixty five
or sixty six when I started buying my first records.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
What was the first record you purchased?

Speaker 8 (08:26):
Tommy James and the Schondell's Hanky Panky on Roulette, Ah
Roulette turned about forty fives? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, okay, okay, So was it an everyday occurrence like
buying bubblegum or was you like buying for forty fives
and records? Like was that like?

Speaker 8 (08:41):
Yeah? But it was expensive. I mean, you know, for
a little kid with you know, on a tiny allow,
how much were forty fives back competed? It was either
baseball cards or records?

Speaker 1 (08:50):
You know, how much were forty fives back?

Speaker 8 (08:52):
Now? Forty five is like sixty nine cents or something
like that, or maybe even forty nine cents if you
went to Corvette's, where would you go? I went to
the local store where I bought comic books, you know,
and they had records, some records on forty five's.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, But was there a place in New York that
was like the Holy Mecha center of.

Speaker 8 (09:10):
Not at that time, not at that time. I'm talking about, like,
you know, sixty five, sixty six, sixty seven. You know,
it's an interesting era too, because you know, then there
was New York radio then you know, it was all
I AM. There was no effort radio yet, so it
was ABC, MCA. Those were like the pop stations, and
then there was l I, B N r L, which
was the black stations, okay, you know, and I didn't

(09:31):
even find out about the black stations until I got
into junior high school.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So as far as your your foray into music, by
the time you started collecting, I mean, were you then
collecting the music of the time as far as your.

Speaker 8 (09:45):
I was into blues and duops. Those were the things
that were now cast your friends. Totally nobody knew that's
what I wanted to do. But by the way, that
wasn't just about music. That was about the way I
dressed and the things I was into. I mean, I
used to get kicked out of school for wearing a
Lenen pin or you know, carrying Mao's Red Book to
school when I was in ninth grade and stuff. I
would wore Bush jackets with American flag upside down on

(10:09):
the back, which was like the signal for distressing. I
wrote the underground newspaper with another couple of guys in
my junior high school. You know, I was like, kind
of whatever it was, I was against it. So you
know I was a contra against the against the system
even in high school. Well, you know, I looked look
at everything that is and say what isn't you know?

(10:30):
What's missing? What's not you know? And so I try
I look at I invert everything and say, okay, what
are the opportunities for change? And kind of that may
be the reason why Tommy Boy and the D label
have a different philosophy. I was always looking to do
something nobody had ever done before. I wasn't looking to
have the biggest hit today. You know, I was looking
to do something, you know, where there was no competition.

(10:53):
I wasn't trying to trash the competition. I wanted to
be the first.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
What makes a person want to do that? Because it
would have been so easy for you to just statisfied,
kind of blend in with the status quo and kind
of reap the benefits of the time and right off
into the sunset, Like what makes you?

Speaker 8 (11:08):
I guess when I was a little kid, I wasn't
the fastest or the strongest. I get picked last in
the sports team. I wasn't the best looking, so I
didn't get invited to the party. So I had to say, sorry,
I guess we have to make my own world, you know.
And so I kind of had to reject the status
quot because the status quo rejected me. And by the way,
if you look at the entire world, everything that moves

(11:30):
society forward happens because people are rejected.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
How many how many siblings do you?

Speaker 8 (11:36):
I have two younger brothers, Okay, Oh you're the oldest.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
I was going to say, were you the middle child
or the Okay? I was trying to get super over analytical.

Speaker 8 (11:45):
And my brothers aren't. Aren't this way I see. So
I don't know if it's karma genetic or if it's
the results of behavioral rejection when I was younger, but
I think, you know, like if Gandhi hadn't got kicked
off of train in South Africa, he wouldn't have gotten
to India and done what he did. You know, he
wouldn't even have thought about that, you know. But he

(12:05):
was seeing as colored in South Africa at the time,
and and he was going along. He'd gone to Oxford
or somewhere for law school, and he said, what's this about?
And when he became a reformer because of rejection, and
you you know, Jesus Christ, you know, you look at
everybody in history has been rejected. It's gone and gone
on to do great things.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So for me, so for you was music more. You're
you're calming, your your your your sanctuary.

Speaker 8 (12:32):
Yeah, I was also an exploration, you know, like so
I was into the Rolling Stones when I was really young,
and then I got into all the blues artists that
influenced them. So I started buying you know, old blues
albums and learning about blues that way.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
You know, it's easy now, especially with the with the
oncelot of the internet, to get information quick fast. But
you know, like if you're listening to uh, say, like
if you're listening to zep too, if you listen a
Whole Lot of Love or whatever, like who's there to
let you know about a Willie Dixon or Blind Lemon

(13:08):
Jefferson or.

Speaker 8 (13:09):
So I'm looking at the liner notes of course, and
you know when you're watching you listen to the record
in your room, you're listening to the record on a
record player in your room. You have plenty of time
to read liner notes, and the liner notes are big
because records are big, and you can see that Spoonful
by Cream was written by Willie Dixon, so I had
to find out what else Willy Dixon did or whatever,
you know. And then I got crazy into Muddy Waters

(13:30):
because you know, his songs were covered by everybody else,
and so you know, then I you know, and then
I said, oh, well, he's playing a telecaster, so maybe
I should try to get a telecaster. So then I
learned to play guitar, and that was like, I try
to be like Albert King or whatever.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
You know, So you initially wanted to start off as
a blues musician.

Speaker 8 (13:50):
No, I just wanted to be a musician. And actually
Albert King played the least notes, so it was easiest
to do.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
So no high school band experience, so you know, I.

Speaker 8 (14:00):
Wasn't you know, as I said, I wasn't picked first
for anything. I was picked last for most things, so
you know, I wasn't getting it. I wasn't the most
popular kid. So you know, if I could be, you know,
a guitar player, maybe I could get laid someday, you know,
there was that possibility.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
So by the time you're playing guitar, like, are we
talking about the seventies period or the.

Speaker 8 (14:20):
No still sick? Oh well early maybe sixty to sixty
nine and seventy. Yeah, Okay, this is the advent of
FM radio and you know, psychedelic rock and stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
So once FM, what was that? Okay, so Zeppelin one
the entire side. Okay, So I need someone who was
there in real time to explain to me because I
always wanted to know. You know, a lot of people
when they explained to me the power of AM radio
listen to music, when their transition radios and all this stuff,

(14:53):
how magical it was, Like was it really that foreign?
Once FM high fidelity radio came into play, Like the
clarity of it all, Like, was it a revelation to you?

Speaker 8 (15:04):
No, definitely not.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
I mean, yes, I hear some people actually prefer the
lo fi AM radio station sound as opposed to which well, at.

Speaker 8 (15:13):
The beginning, you know, AM radios were small. You know,
they're transistor radio, so you could almost put them in
your pocket. So that was the first portable music AM
radio and it was in the cars only AM. So
when FM came. They it wasn't in cars yet, it
wasn't in transistor radio. They didn't have AM FM transistor
radios for the first few years. So you know, it's

(15:35):
kind of probably like that HD channel now right. You know,
they exist all over the world, but nobody listens because
nobody even knows how to tune in, you know, so
you know, you had to you had to make it easy,
and it was hard. You know, you had to find
the stations, and everyone listened to the same station. So
w ABC was playing at one time Joni mitchell ty

(15:58):
Yellow Ribbon around the old I mean, the most wackist
mainstream kitty rock, and then they were playing Monosabongo Solamakosa
at the same time and a country record like behind
closed ABC. I think that Radio one in the UK
is a little bit like that. They play like diverse music,

(16:18):
you know, they would play like hip hop and rock
and all kinds of music and still do. So people
get exposed to more stuff, and as the band got
split and stations started to specialize, people gravitated toward one
kind of music as a way of sort of appreciating
that music but also avoiding every other kind of music.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
So you're saying at Efen radio actually started the idea
of genres or segregating music.

Speaker 8 (16:44):
Yeah, rock radio happened dead FM only, and you know,
people who listened to that only got rock, so they
didn't have to hear you know, Charlie rich anymore. So
now no more country influence, now, no more black influence.
Everything was that, you know, you know, Richie Havens was
as black as it got, or the Chambers Brothers. You know,
it was the only kind of things that would get

(17:05):
played on those radio stations. So that began the segregation.
And that's why at the you know, for years Rolling
Stone magazine never had black people and never on the
cover or even writing about them, except for maybe Slide
because they played at Woodstock. Anyone, if you played on Woodstock,
you were allowed in the club.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
You know, that was a wow. Okay, I never even
thought about that. I thought, you know, because the idea
of Eppen radio men playing like complete sides and playing
the full version of a particular song and that sort
of thing would have made it better.

Speaker 8 (17:37):
But you know, well it did. I mean there were
great things about it, and the quality was better and
people talk to you more in a different way. They
weren't shouting at you as much. It was a more
laid back kind of a thing, you know. And then
I got when I went to college, I got involved
in college radio immediately and became the music director of
the college radio station Where'd you go Colby and Maine.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Okay, so what was your vision for your college radio years?

Speaker 8 (18:00):
Like? So, you know, I did a So initially I
start started doing my own radio station, and I did
a du op show, you know, cruising Tom's College of
Musical Knowledge every Sunday night. And then I started doing
a party show, you know, by seventy four and seventy five,
and I play Party Records, which was you know, mostly
R and B and funky records. I may have been

(18:23):
the first person in America to play Lady Marmalade.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Really yeah, okay, So because DJ culture really wasn't a
thing in seventy three seventy.

Speaker 8 (18:31):
Four, it was just beginning.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
How do you Okay, So take me to what your
rider is. In seventy three, DJing for a college like
are the idea of big speakers?

Speaker 8 (18:45):
I mean, yeah, I mean you do this is radio DJ,
not live DJ. Oh Okay, live DJing didn't exist yet.
Like that, except maybe in cool Hair. It was happening,
you know, on Sedgwick, but there wasn't many other places.
It was just starting there really at that point in time.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
And so all just bands were still playing the music
of a day.

Speaker 8 (19:02):
And yeah, and I was in a fraternity house and
I used to book the bands that would come in,
and they were blues bands mostly that's what I could get,
or disco bands. So in seventy five, disco started to
take off. And then Saturday Night Fever came out, So
disco started, and then Saturday Night Fever came out. So
I was doing my a disco radio show. And then
a club opened, A disco opened in Waterville, Maine, and

(19:24):
I started djaing there with a mixture I built myself
from radio shack parts. Didn't have queueing, but just like
two giant knobs, and I had like two record players.
They weren't really turntables, you know, like you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
I listening to the record before with headphones.

Speaker 8 (19:40):
Well, I knew the record and I knew what it was.
But the first DJ, arguably the first American DJ in disco,
was David Mancuso, who just passed last year. At the
loft and he started playing in seventy two, and he
played every record to the end, and then he started
playing in another record, you know, And when disco started
around the world, that's the way happened. The idea of

(20:01):
mixing came much later. There weren't really mixers that had
queuing until probably seventy four.

Speaker 10 (20:08):
Is that when you started the disco news while you
were in college?

Speaker 8 (20:12):
Okay, so that started. We'll get there anyway. Yeah, so
I'm playing black music for a totally white college.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
You know, there was one What were they accepting of it?

Speaker 8 (20:24):
There was like eleven black people in the school and
there are only two black families or four black families
in the whole state of Maine, and maybe two record
stores in the whole state of Maine.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Was what was the outreach? Was it just the college or.

Speaker 8 (20:36):
Like it reached. We had a ten watch signal, which
is what most colleges had, but we were on the
top of a hill, so we reached like forty miles.
It was pretty amaze, and there wasn't a lot of
other radio stations interfering up there. So we used to
get We used to do crazy stuff and get away
with crazy stuff on the radio station. It was pretty radical,
but you know, playing black music was pretty radical, and

(20:56):
people would always call up and request me to play
Derek and the Domino's Leila, and I tell no. In fact,
I was the music director. I took the record out
of the stacks and no one could play because you know,
the idea here is we're supposed to introduce new music,
and you know, both led Zeppelin and you know and
Derek and the Dominoes, those were the most played records
and it was so every show would play them every time,

(21:16):
so it was like top forty radio, and that wasn't
the concept. So I pulled them out of the stacks
so nobody could play.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Did you feel like it was arm rustling. I mean
I usually when I hear stories of taste makers, and
especially like with Tastemaker DJs, it's always a moment where
it's like I'm the almighty, all knowing expert of music
and you're going to love anything I play and there's
no resistance. But you know, today if I go to

(21:47):
a club and play like an unknown demo or something
that I think is like really incredible piece of music,
it's it's a struggle, like, you know, half a dance
floor might clear. I know we live in a different
time now, but I mean, but to really get people
to get into something and yeah that only you're into.

Speaker 8 (22:08):
I have this discussion, by the way, with the founder
of Pandora on a regular basis, who's a friend of mine.
And mainly because you need to be able to play
an unfamiliar record enough times to make it familiar. And
the greatest records of all time have to clear the
dance floor. The records that change the world, nobody will
understand the first time they hear them. It's impossible because

(22:30):
if it sounds like everything else, it's not moving anything forward.
So something that's different, no one's going to like, right,
you know. So you know, it was that way in
the early days of hip hop. You know, Black radio
didn't want to play hip hop records, but when they
did play it, the phones would light up. And then
they stopped using the phones as a way of identifying stuff,
and they did call out research to you know, middle

(22:52):
aged women, housewives at home who hated hip hop. And
so there was always this negativity about hip hop at
black radio.

Speaker 7 (23:00):
What about those eleven students that were at school with you,
like those eleven black students. Did they ever communicate with
you to or did they add to it? Like, did
you hear his record?

Speaker 8 (23:09):
There was one guy who was a good friend of
mine who came from the Bronx who actually turned me
onto a lot of stuff. He was actually a DJ
in seventy five in the Bronx and he was a
year older, I think, and he ran track with me.
So I was I ran track and so that in
high school, you know, being on the track team was
sixty percent black. In White Plains High school. You know,

(23:30):
we had a silver medalist at the Mexican fist Olympics,
you know from you know, from our school, and he
was the slowest guy on the on the relay, the
quarter mile relay. He was the slowest guy. But he's
the only one who went to college. The other guys,

(23:52):
you know, got drunk or did whatever they did. But
you know, I remember joining the track team in ninth grade,
you know, and going to indoor tract the first time
and being like one of you know whatever twenty white
guys on a team of one hundred people and getting
to hear the music and getting to know what they

(24:13):
were into.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
And by the way, this was Black Power time.

Speaker 8 (24:17):
You know, this is when you know, you know, the
fifth pick was in everybody, at the back of everybody's head,
just the beginning of that era. And we had race
riots at White Plains High School and they took the
word planes off, so it's at White High School. And
the Italians would come to school with baseball bats, and
you know, the Blacks picketed, and you know, and I

(24:39):
was part of the resolution committee trying to you know,
get people talking to each other. And it was just
an amazing time to be alive, really because everything was changing,
and you know, it was the beginning of that revolution
that made today possible.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
When did you graduate college.

Speaker 8 (25:00):
I graduated high school in seventy two, college seventy six,
and then I went to graduate school thinking that there
was no way I could get into the music business.
So I you know, continued my path, which was environmental science,
and went to graduate school in environmental geology in Michigan
and Kalamazoo.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Was there any music as you do? That was out
of nowhere? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (25:22):
Right? And then after two years there, just before I
finished my masters, my old roommate from college called me
who was working for cash Box, which was the competitor
or Billboard at the time, he was doing the R
and B charts, and he said, hey, you're you know,
you were way ahead of it. You were into disco
back in seventy five. It's blowing up. It's a giant thing.
This is after Saturday night fever. Let's start a tip sheet.

(25:43):
Let's move to New York. And I had sent out
two hundred resumes to try to get a job in
water pollution and water quality and got two interviews and
no job offers. That I was super depressed about it
in the letters at that time, and I said I'm out,
and I said, I left school and I went to
New York. I set up this newsletter for DJs in

(26:06):
nineteen seventy eight in New York City. And then the
guy came moved quit cash Box and came and started
it with me, and we started and we ran it
out of our apartment, and then we got to know
all of the DJs who were doing everything. So that
sort of opened the door forward.

Speaker 10 (26:20):
Case it explain to me exactly you say it was
a tipsy, exactly what does that mean.

Speaker 8 (26:24):
So it means that we talked. We talked to record
pools who gave the records to the DJs and found
out what was happening from them. We talked to record stores,
we talked to radio stations when radio stations went disco.
We talked to everybody, and we had like regional representatives
from around the country in Canada that would tell us
what was breaking, and we would talk to people about

(26:46):
imports that were hot that were coming in. We did
a top eighty chart that we compiled when we took
everybody's information every week, and it was a checklist and
it had the beats permitted of every record. And in
those days beats it was really big because everything was
records and nobody knew what beats per minute were of
what was so they needed a mixing tool. So, because

(27:07):
at this point, you know, mixing was starting to become
really big, and in order to be great at mixing
you had to know what the bpms were. There was
a guy in Albany who had this disco Bible and
he'd run these computer reports and send them out every
once a month with all of the records bpms on them,
and people would pay this guy like one hundred dollars
a month for a subscription just to know what bus.

Speaker 10 (27:27):
He's still available, So y'all were kind of like a filter,
I guess, like y'all told people what was that We.

Speaker 8 (27:36):
Did the research because in that point there was no Internet.
There's no way else to find any information out and
DJs needed to know what they didn't have, that they
needed to get, what was coming up, what they needed
to play, and what was really big beats, per minut
it and things like that, and you know, records companies
would advertise and record stores would advertise, and we used
to sell it in record stores around New York like

(27:56):
Rock and Soul down the Street here and a few
of the other record stores here, and we were you know,
we got to like subscriptions and sales of over three
thousand or four thousand copies. We were reaching about five
thousand DJs by you know about you know, nineteen eighty
or eighty one.

Speaker 7 (28:14):
How much for each addition to a buck.

Speaker 8 (28:17):
Or something like that, it was maybe a dollar fifty
or something like that.

Speaker 10 (28:20):
They were the original too Dope boys, right, y'all were
the first blog, right exactly it was.

Speaker 8 (28:26):
And it was like a newsletter. We had to print
it and you know, and we type set it on
a typewriter at first, and then we bought a type
setting machine. We had all this stuff in the apartment
and we were running it that way.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
It's interesting, so much work was it? Was it completely
national or just like was international? Oh so you even
took we took information from you two cample, two people.

Speaker 8 (28:48):
You're calling all these details, three of us and yeah,
and we were all there were three of us that
all went to school at Kolbe and we were calling.
We were selling the ads, we were doing the editorial,
we were setting the type, we were doing you know,
we're having it printed and bringing it to the record
stores and putting the stickers on and you know, the
name stickers for each one, and you know, and keeping

(29:08):
the subscription list and all of that we were doing.
It was unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
So at no time did a bigger shark like Billboard,
you know, any any of these other music industry people
think like to lease you guys, or to purchase the
business to work for them wasndented other people.

Speaker 8 (29:30):
Billboard had a disco section that was very significant, and
they already ran a disco conference called the Billboard Disco Form,
which all the DJs would come to. And when I
first moved to New York. I remember August of seventy
eight going to the Billboard Disco Form, and disco was
very gay at that point. I mean it was you know,
the people who controlled disco music and the leaders in it.

(29:52):
It was a very gay thing. And you know, I
was one of the few people in the business that
wasn't so you know, when I would go to the
disco form, it was hard for me to get into
the label suites like the Kaza Blanc or the TK
suites because I wasn't gay. You know, I haven't launched
a publication yet, but anyway, you know, the publication, you know,
built up and built up. By nineteen eighty we started

(30:15):
the New Music Seminar with another publication to compete with
the Billboard Disco for him.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Okay, most people and our listeners know about Studio fifty
four and that, but I know there had to have
been for every Jordan. There's like twelve guys on the
playground that are justice talented and ready to whoop possess. So,
I mean, what were the other clubs in New York
City besides the Folkal or Studio fifty four or.

Speaker 8 (30:42):
So, there were probably four accesses in dance music during
the period of time there was that sort of studio.
Fifty four was the Si Shi Club set the international
people and you know, the stars, but it wasn't known
for music. Richie Ksor was the DJ. Didn't really play,
you know, played good music, but you know, nobody considered

(31:02):
him the best. Of course, Paradise Garage at the same
time was Larry Levan and he was playing the most
amazing music. And the sound system was a Howard Long,
sick crazy sound system in the place. You know, even to.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
This day year it was Paradise, it was like.

Speaker 8 (31:16):
Seventy eight to eighty one.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
And all the folklore of those speakers and the lights
and all that stuff.

Speaker 8 (31:24):
I used to do interviews and go to the house
of the guy who built the sound system, who built it,
Howard Long, Richard Long, Richard Richard Lungs Sociates RLA. It
was amazing and you know, the subworfs would you'd walk
by them, you know, your pants would flap from the
wind book and they moved so much air. And then
they had tweeters, those piez of tweeters hanging from the ceiling,

(31:45):
you know, and he had you know, in the booth.
He used to play on thor AND's belt drive turntables,
which is crazy because most DJs only play on direct drive.
And they had built some kind of a rubber band
or uh spring suspension for the so that they wouldn't
keep it from and usually and also from skipping, you know,

(32:06):
and even though they still would skip sometimes. And he
was the first guy who had like three turntables. And
I used to hang out in the booth all the
time and listen to the stuff he would play, which was,
you know, more amazing. And then there was another part
of the business that was Latin. There was clubs that
were more Latin oriented and they played more salsa oriented

(32:27):
dance music, which there was a lot of that too.
People don't know about it because if they were one
then you know, then there were the gay clubs, which
was you know, twelve West and you know Roy Thoade
and DJs like that, and they played much higher beat beat,
permantent euro disco. They were running, they were tweaking, so
they were running one hundred and thirty beats per minute,
you know. The black and then there was the and

(32:47):
there was and then there was so Pardise Garage was
black gay so they were playing a little bit more
down temple. Then there was straight black clubs, you know,
and they were playing even more down temple. But you know,
it depends, and then I would go up to nineteen eighty.
I discovered the Tea Connection in Africa, Benbada, and I
went up to hear him spin and he was doing
a whole nother thing that was a mine trip that

(33:09):
was made everything else that I had ever seen obsolete.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
So the Tea Connection, first of all, always wanted to do,
is there any connection to the band? Tea Connection?

Speaker 8 (33:19):
And t was the guy's name, I guess that owned
the space, and it was one floor walk up, just
a big space with like another like a balcony, and
then there was located. It was located on White Plains Road,
right near the l the elevated trains there. You can
Google it and find it on Google Maps, which I've

(33:41):
done recently.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Because I'm not in New York. White Plains is.

Speaker 8 (33:43):
White Plains Road the Bronx. It's it's kind of in
the Central Bronx. It's definitely not in the South Bronx.
Everyone talked about the South Bronx and maybe Cedric could
be considered the South Bronx, but this was you know, Africa.
Benbada was from Bronx River Center, which was more central
Bronx off off of the Cross Bronx Expressway. You can

(34:05):
kind of see it from It's just north of the
Cross Bronx Expressway and Knightsbridge is just south of it,
so you know, you could see. And I've learned more
about this only as I've sort of studied the evolution
of hip hop over the last five years and how
you know, the different parts, you know, the different crews
that came up, came up around them where the projects were.

(34:26):
So the projects concentrated people and then they made it
possible actually for gang the gangs to start, and then
the gangs turned into DJ Cruise also and they all
came out of That's why the early rap they always
talk about their their project.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
The one common thread that a lot of the guests
that are on the show that have experiences with early
hip hop, I think that the most common theme is
that no amount of fear will ever surpass their need
to you hear quality music or quality DJs. So i'man

(35:07):
in seventy nine eighty, when you're traveling to the Bronx
White guy traveling to the Bronx, Like to you, there
was no were you alone? Like was alone any and
for you the music was too exciting and the scene
was too exciting for you to even consider like maybe
I don't belong here.

Speaker 8 (35:27):
So I just never thought about it, you know, it
never It was a weird thing for me because I
just because I was rejected always myself. I never really
thought about us and them and I. You know, when
I went into these places, the thing I noticed is
I might have been like twenty twenty five or twenty
six at the time, and going up the steps to
the T connection because Ben Boda had put me on
the list, I was for sure the first white person

(35:49):
that had ever been there. And you know, so no
one looked at you where like everybody was You're lost.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
No, everybody was super cool.

Speaker 8 (35:56):
They must have figured that I was from downtown and
maybe I was a record or something like that. So
there's there was decent respect. But you know, I wasn't
thinking about it. I was just going up there. I
just didn't know where to go. I hadn't been there before.
I was much more concerned about getting lost and finding
the place than it was about that, and you know,
it's never been an issue for me. I never really
thought about it, you know, even when I'm in you know,

(36:19):
Harlem World and I hear shots go off, I really
never really was never thought that I could get hurt
or something like that. I mean, other people are think
about that shit a lot. I just don't think about it,
you know.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Now, I have a lot of those tapes from the
Tea Connection of you know, like Coal Crust Brothers and
flashing them performing there. How big is the Tea Connection.

Speaker 8 (36:39):
Like the size of it a little bigger than the
size of the sleep with a balcony up on top
where when I first walked in, I saw Bembodis in
front of the turntables and on one side Jazzy Jay
and the other side read Alert.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (36:55):
When I went up and Avengers and that was the
day I met them all cast.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Leave the Avengers over there. So I'm saying the average
club size is like one hundred and fifty maybe two
hundred people get get in. Yeah. See, when I'm listening
to it sounds yeah like And then it's just hitting
me that a lot of the game changing aspects of
the culture were slightly under three hundred.

Speaker 8 (37:21):
Yeah, the Grills was small, but the Bronx River Center
was a lot bigger, you know. And the other thing
you had to consider is that this is all ages.
You know. The kids in there were average age, probably
sixteen or seventeen, so they were making their dollar at
the door, three dollars or whatever it costs, you know.
And you know then I met ben Bada that day
and he gave me his business card that said Africa Bambada,

(37:43):
Master of Records.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Where did you first meet him? Was he?

Speaker 8 (37:48):
I was there? You're right there that day. That was
the day I had found out about him by going
to Downstairs Records to do an interview about this new
room that they'd open because they were one of the
reporters to Dance Music Report, uh, and they were talking
about they just opened a new room that was like
the size of a walk in closet that was called
the break breaks Room or the Breakbeat Room.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Is this the subway version of Downstairs or the boy.

Speaker 8 (38:11):
Right here on forty third and sixth Avenue down on
the mezzanine before you go into the subway.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
So am I too assume that I'm not too I'm
not too knowledgeable in the history of the owners of
Downstairs Records. But am I believe that they're the ones
that first started the idea of comping breaks and put
them on one record like the No, they're not the guys,

(38:39):
they're not. This was when they first sold it though right.

Speaker 8 (38:42):
They might have sold records, they weren't the ones who
made it. That was like record Lenny and Paul Winley,
those were the guys who did that.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
We had something to do with with the guys at
Downstairs Records.

Speaker 8 (38:53):
Like, no that that store had been there for years.
It wasn't it. It wasn't a black record store, but
it was in the subway, so you know, everyone went
by it anyway. That's where I bought my disco records.
That's also where I bought my duop records. They had
a huge do hop collection. They had, you know, all
of like the indie kinds of things. There was a
couple of record stores that were in the subways. There

(39:15):
used to be one that was around the Times Square
shuttle that was a Latin record store that used to
walk by all the time because there's a huge amount
of traffic that goes by, and that was in that
was in the subway. This one was before you went in.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
I think I'm gonna bring that back. It's it's still there.

Speaker 8 (39:31):
That record? Is that one there?

Speaker 11 (39:33):
The one by the the one Latin Times Square?

Speaker 8 (39:37):
I don't know what it's called a Latin name, right,
I think so.

Speaker 11 (39:39):
I think that's where you get have your jest stuff.
Now right now, I mean I went in there a
couple of times. It's weird.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
What's what do they sell in there? Now? They do
they sell wax? Do they sell a little old stuff?

Speaker 8 (39:51):
But yeah, yeah, they're still sell vinyl? Yeah, other stuff too.

Speaker 11 (39:54):
Where's this It's like in the time, it's right by
where you're saying, by the by the shuttle, yeah, by
the at the path shut up the s train in
Times Square.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I forget what it's called. Make a pilgrimage there, yeah,
I I think I'm embarking that. Like I have a
dream of opening a spot that sells forty fives in
the subway, like a small boutique, kind of like Jero
does in Japan. Like oh yeah, right, I mean he
charges fifteen milso forty five for five.

Speaker 7 (40:35):
Security New York.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
I'll make seers in the village somewhere so exactly.

Speaker 8 (40:45):
So, uh.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Are you routinely coming to the tea connection.

Speaker 8 (40:51):
I mean I went two or three times to the
tea connection, but that very night at the tea connection,
when I watch what he's doing. I watched how he
played the records. I saw the marks on the records.
I sort of label steamed off the records. I saw
the tape on the records. You know, all of the
things he did. You know, at that point I got
to know benbody. I asked him, I said, do you
want do you want to make a record that sounds

(41:12):
like this? Because he was playing you know, Billy Squire,
sly Stone, the Monkeys, you know, craft Work, all of
this stuff together and all of these kids were dancing
and it was just to me it was a revelation.
I'd never seen anything like it. I said, this is
what heaven is supposed to be. You know, everybody, everything together,

(41:33):
it's all okay. If you could dance to it, come on,
and you know that inclusiveness has been was Ben Boda's
theme with the Zulu nation throughout. You know, everybody was
always welcome to the party. He invited anybody who wanted
to come, and that would happen at the Bronx River
Center for all of the Zulu Nation anniversary parties every year,
people would come from every country the world. And that's

(41:54):
where all of the film crews came from Japan and
from France and from Belgium or Holland and brought and
brought video back and exposed the whole thing that was
happening with hip hop and the pillage of hip hop,
and you know, planted the seeds. So you know, if
anybody is the Johnny apple Seed of hip hop, it's
Africa Bambada. And I helped.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
So to start a label in in the early eighties.
What does it take? I mean, now, when people want
to do stuff, you just put it SoundCloud there it is.
But if you're seriously now that you you've studied distribution

(42:41):
and DJs and you have connections, how much does if
you're you know, starting a label, how much does it
cost to start a label today? In nineteen No, in
nineteen eighty.

Speaker 8 (42:51):
Well, so I borrowed five thousand dollars from my parents,
and because I already had my rent covered, you know,
I was doing the publication. I already had a medium
I could advertise in for free because I already had
the publication. So I had a connection to DJs, and
I could using DJs. I could break the music through
the DJs too, So I was dependent on that.

Speaker 10 (43:10):
But so by this time it's dance did discos not
Disco News?

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Is Dance Music Report officially?

Speaker 8 (43:15):
Yeah? I think so, yes. By seventy nine it became
dance When disco died in seventy nine, we changed the
name to Dance Music Report. Yeah, yes, definitely. And then
so yeah, you know this was by this is nineteen
eighty one. You know, I'm saying, like, let's start. So
I work with Ben Boda. I cut a demo for
what would become Planet Rock and eight track demo and uh,

(43:37):
and I was starting the label up and deciding what
to do.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Quick question. The effects of the disco sucks uh period?
The regulation Yeah, racism m no, but the after effects
of it, it was actually more homophobic than it was.
But did it did that effect or deter anyone from starting? Uh?

(44:06):
Independent labels? Because I assume that the independent labels of
the seventies were primarily to make disco records them.

Speaker 8 (44:15):
And sees, yeah, Prelude, TK, you know west End that
you know, Yeah, they were serving that community, the DJ
community because it was so hard to get records played
on radio, just as it is today. In fact, it's
worse today. But as you know, there were less radio
stations then and it was hard, but there were no chains,

(44:36):
so each radio station made their own decisions. So you
can go to one radio station and convince that programmer
that it would be a good idea for them to
play that record, if you know what I mean. Wink wink,
and yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Hit man. What's his name of Frederick Gan Records Stories.

Speaker 8 (44:55):
Yeah, he was one of my mentors. You know, I
have plenty of more the shows to share worse right now.
But so was dominated again and you know Chris Blackwell
and mal Austin.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
So you've worked with Mars Levy.

Speaker 8 (45:09):
I didn't work with him, but you know I spent
some time in his office, you know, having meetings.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Can you can you give us some Marris Levy wisdom
that you're allowed I saw while I was So does
everybody know the.

Speaker 8 (45:27):
You know, what's the what's the famous movie where where
the guy owes him five bucks and he wants to
chase him across the Bronx tails, you know, in that
Bronx tail and he is I want to get my
money back, and he says, forget it for five dollars.
It's the cheapest way to ever get rid of somebody
you don't want in your life. So I'm sitting in
follow that rule. So so I'm sitting in in Morris

(45:50):
Levy's office and a guy calls and asks him to
borrow ten thousand dollars or something like that, or five
thousand dollars. And he says, okay, I want it back
in a week. If I don't get it back in
a week, don't ever call me again. I don't know you.
And he hangs up the phone. He gets he calls

(46:12):
his assistant or somebody said, have have somebody write up
a check for five thousand dollars for this guy. He's
coming to pick it up this afternoon, just like that,
not a question. And so that was that rule. But
he tells the guy in advance, which was the honorable
thing to do. And then he pays the guy, gives
the guy money that it's not money he owed him,

(46:33):
it's money the guy needed. And Morris Leeve he's always
helped people who had gambling debts or other things not
get killed by paying the debts off, but taking you know,
George Goldner's catalog and why the Fool's fall in love?
And that's why it says Lymon Levy, but it used
to say Limon Goldener, by the way, so he just
took George Goldner's share of the label. It's why the

(46:54):
Beatles that were originally signed to their first record came
each of the black owned label out of Chicago. But
because they didn't have their business straight, they lost the
record to Swan and then Capitol picked it up after that.
You know, history could be different if the Beatles had
been signed for their entire career to a black.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Old Left Chair Records, right.

Speaker 8 (47:16):
Or a VJ would have been could you imagine?

Speaker 1 (47:24):
So were you at all worried about what the climate
was going to bring in the eighties by starting your
own label, especially with the idea of killing off disco
culture or the backlash that it was facing, like for
the independent label.

Speaker 8 (47:41):
At least, What do you mean no, Because I think
disco never really died. That was a press thing because
in nineteen seventy nine the music business had a recession.
It was the first recession the business had been growing,
I guess off the back of cassettes and then all
of a sudden, maybe it was I forget what it was,
but for some reason, catalog peaked and the record sales

(48:04):
dropped and they needed a escapegoat and they used disco
as the scapegoat. Ironically, the same year, disco died out
of the top ten records of that year in nineteen
seventy nine, like seven of them were club hits, club
dance records, including Michael Jackson Jackson's and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
So I'm always hearing about like this is the worst
time for music, Like even when Quincy Jones and Michael
and Bruce Udina starting a thriller, their first mantras We're
here to save the music industry. So I'm always hearing
of this time where like sales are down or we
need to save the industry. I mean, in your mind,

(48:41):
when was the quote the glory years of the industry.

Speaker 8 (48:47):
Well, there's two ways to answer that question. There's the
aesthetic way in the financial way. The financial way is
easy because twenty or nineteen ninety nine two thousand was
the peak revenue. By twenty ten, the combined revenues of
the US record business were about the exact same after
inflation as they were in nineteen sixty six, so we
lost about sixty percent of all of the employees in

(49:09):
the music business and all of the value of the
music business during that period of time. So but now
this year the business is up between eight nine percent
for the first time since nineteen ninety seven, and last
year it was up two percent. So we have two
years of growth, the first two years of growth since
two thousand and one. Two thousand, really two thousand, actually yeah,

(49:29):
two thousand was the last year of growth, any growth
at all. Okay, So yeah, and then aesthetically, I can't
really say because you could say nineteen fifty four when
rock and roll started, you know, you could say nineteen
forty nine when bebop started, or you know, a certain
kind of jazz started, you could say, but in your
heart of hearts, nineteen seventy five when disco started. You

(49:52):
could say nineteen eighty one or eighty when hip hop started.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
But in your heart of hearts, what's your My passion
lies with this year, like what's your.

Speaker 8 (50:04):
Well because I'm in the duops that era and I
was born in fifty four, so that was my ear
like of shit, you know, that really touched me and
made me cry. And made me feel like love you know,
through music and connected to me. But the same thing
happened to me when that day at tea Connection, when
I saw what Bam Boda was doing in the Connection,
I said, this is going to change the whole game,

(50:26):
you know. And people talk about the four pillars of
hip hop, you know, because it wasn't it wasn't just music.
It was obviously it was this introduction of rapping on
sort of a formalized way, and you know, turntable to them,
you know. And then clearly, you know, there was a
dance element and there was an art element to it.
But there's a fifth element that nobody talks about, and
Bamboda always talks about knowledge is the fifth pillar. But

(50:49):
the fifth pillar also is sampling, the idea of taking
something old and recontextualizing it and making it something new.
Bamboda did that live, Cool, Heirk did that live. You know,
the early DJs, you know, Theodore and those guys took
little bits of things and made them into elements that
you know, became famous later. And so sampling is clearly

(51:12):
the fifth I don't know if there could be hip
hop without sampling. I think I can't even imagine the
first ten years of hip hop if there wasn't sampling,
you know, or you know, the sampling equivalency that happened.
I don't even be derivative.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I mean, but that's with music, I mean, because that's
what everything really, that's what's Samplin and Lollen Stones was doing.

Speaker 8 (51:32):
And cover records are that, but you know even more
interpolations which have happened before. So before I prepared for
the show by going online because I know we were
going to talk about sampling here. And I want to
quote Isaac Newton from sixteen seventy five, Sir Isaac Newton
who said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. I'm

(51:53):
only here because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants,
and every sample is a sample of a giant that
came before. And even if you go to that song,
there was an influence. They were on someone else's shoulders.
So you got the ripples fifty people that go back
till the first guy was hitting something with a stick,
you know. So you know, it's a really it's a

(52:15):
real big issue that we can't find the past and
give today's creators access to the past to create new futures.
That's what hip hop is about. And to me, that's
the revolution of it. To add new context to old
content is to reinvent the world. That's the ultimate recycling.
That's you know, it's a divine science and art, and

(52:37):
I think it needs to be liberated.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So when was Tommy Boy born? And why did you
name it.

Speaker 8 (52:44):
Eighty one Tommy Boy?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Well, no, no, no, I mean what were the other options? Like,
did you have any other options for label names?

Speaker 8 (52:53):
So I was studying a lot about this and and
you know, the label that was existing since seven nine
that was sort of inspirational for me was sugar Hill.
And you know, in nineteen eighty when we started the
New Music Seminar, we you know, at that point we

(53:15):
were sort of looking at what was happening and what
the changes were happening. And that's when I was, you know,
sort of discovered Bambada and jumped into what hip hop
culture was becoming. Because, by the way, in nineteen eighty
it wasn't called hip hop yet. Nobody talked about hip
hop till nineteen eighty two. You know, it was break
music or breaks or bee boy music or something like that.

(53:39):
Bambadas told me I wrote an article in Dance Music
Report and interviewed Cool Hurricane in Africa Bambada, and it
must have been writing in nineteen eighty. I have to
find that article still when and he was. You know,
they were telling me the story of the roots of
this music and how this music evolved, because to me,
I thought we covered every kind of dance music, and

(53:59):
you know, we covered reggae, dance oriented rock, every kind
of music, and you know, this was a new kind
of dance music, at least to our readers, and you know,
I wanted to cover the evolution of it. In nineteen
seventy nine, when Rappers Delight came out, it changed the world.
It's you know, it was a game changer everywhere. That
was like lightning in a bottle. That record, you know,
was a real wake up call. And that's sort of

(54:20):
when I started building my business plan for Tommy Boy.
You know, if they can do this, you know, then
it's possible that others can. You know that I could
possibly do it too. You know, I didn't think there
was a special magic between Joe and Sylvia Robinson. You know,
they might have had more pull with Frankie Crocker or
something like that, but I didn't really think that, you know.

(54:42):
I was also influenced by reading books about the drifters
and how how labels didn't pay artists in the duop era,
you know. And one of the reasons I wanted to
start a label was I wanted to try to say
is that could you start a label and do the
right thing and pay people and do what you're supposed
to do and be fair, you know, with artists, And
so that was like a driving you know issue for me.

(55:02):
But it was, you know, I knew I wanted to
do something, but until I saw what Ben Boda was doing,
I didn't see a path to do it. And then
Ben Bod actually gave me the first record, you know,
he was sort of the A and R guy, you know,
he said, this is a great record. You should put
this record out. And it was Cotton Candy, which was
the first record I released that wasn't a hit.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Who did Cotton Candy?

Speaker 8 (55:21):
Cotton Candy was the group. The name of the song
was having Fun and it wasn't really a record. That
was TB eight eleven catalog number, first Tommy Boy release.
The second one was Jazzy Sensation, was was the first
Bemboda record, so Bam Boda found like you know, three
or four and then I'd go to the you know,
to his things and I'd discover the four c mds

(55:44):
at the Zulu Nation anniversary party that Bronx River Center
or you know Cold Crush Brothers, which I didn't get tough.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Uh you know, Scott, were you there for the Jazzy
Sensation sessions? Who was that? Do you know the house was?

Speaker 8 (56:01):
I don't remember who the house bend was there was
it was Pumpkin and All Stars, I don't think, so, okay,
it was it was Arthur Baker that produced that. And
after I had given Arthur already the demo that I
had cut for what would become Planet Rock, which which
had like replays of samples that were built into it
more than the ones that were ended up being on

(56:22):
Planet Rock, and I gave it to him and he, uh,
he said, can I produce this? And I said, yeah,
that'd be great. But it came up that we wanted
to do sort of a take on Funky Sensation, So
we did that one first.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Because that's night and Day. If anything I can, like,
I consider enjoying sugar Hill. It's like Okay, are they
the first hip hop labels? Are they last?

Speaker 8 (56:47):
Right?

Speaker 1 (56:47):
The last of the disco labels? And like I'd consider
Tommy Boy really the first hip hop true like modernized
between you and Profile, like the Real established a modern
hip hop label, which.

Speaker 8 (57:01):
Is another story. Is I brought Corey Robbins to the
Tea connection to see Benbo to spin he wasn't a
hip hop label before he was. He ran a label
called Panorama before that, and then he started, uh, Profile
Records and Profile Records. Was it like Tommy Boy was
supposed to be a dance label because I had a
dance publication and my DJs were you know, everything in

(57:23):
hip hop was disco the beginnings of people don't think
they think hip hop is something else. It's not. It's
like it's just like Jesus was a Jew, you know,
hip hop was this? Is this the last supper? Was
the say come on you know yeah on ash Wednesday?

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Exactly? So so one with Planet Rock and what it's
done for technology and really just taking hip hop's leaves
and bounds above, I mean really starting modern electro music.

(58:10):
How what's what's this? The story behind it? Like how
it was it just like hey, I have this craft
work record, and how can we make it sound robotic
and futuristic like this? And Arthur Baker's like.

Speaker 8 (58:22):
Oh no, because I told you I already had the
demo that had been done a year and a half.
A year before that.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Was an A Rock was done in eighty.

Speaker 8 (58:28):
No, there was an eight track demo that included the
elements that ended up being in Planet Rock, plus just
the instrumental part and three other things that we ended
up not using, you know, besides craft work.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
You're saying the track was done a year, but.

Speaker 8 (58:43):
I originally had envisioned using I like it by BT
express the beat from that exactly, and Rick James give
it to me baseline, you know so, and those things
were worked into the original demo as well. Really yeah, okay,

(59:04):
and then we decided we didn't need that much. It
was too confusing. Does that exist? Does that the original
deal will still exist anywhere? I don't have it. It
probably does. Arthur Baker might have it as a cassette.
It must have. It must exist.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Some last question.

Speaker 8 (59:20):
Search, Let the search begin. We got to find it.
Everything exists somewhere.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
He still alive. Yeah, he's doing great.

Speaker 8 (59:27):
He just produced the eight oh eight movie, the movie
on eight o eight, which is getting ready to be
the story thank you. So what we're talking about here
is we had no money, so we decided to buy
one reel of two inch tape and record at fifteen
ips because thirty would have been too much. And the
idea here with Arthur was that we're going to make
a rap record with what we're doing here, and then

(59:47):
we'll also do a vocal record with the same tracks,
you know, because there was too yeah you got it, see,
And so so we go, we go into the studio
and it's a studio. It's on eighty fifth Street in
an old school building that has that we have to
walk up five flights of stairs with all the equipment

(01:00:08):
to this recording studio called what was the name of
the studio, Intergalactic, which was a perfect name to start
electro musical and and uh, I think with the engineer
and everything, all of the costs, I think it costs
eight hundred dollars to make the record, you know up there,
and the studio had a fairlight synthesizer in it. We

(01:00:29):
rented in eight oh eight. I remember with Arthur looking
to try to because there was this guy record Lenny
that I saw, you know that used to record all
of the sessions he recorded, like a famous section at
Lincoln High School which was Flashed the Beat. It became
Flashed to set on sugar Hill. But originally it was
a plate that a plate means yeah, yeah, we have

(01:00:52):
to explain to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
I'm sorry, did you explain? All right? So Flash to
the Beat is uh okay. You would probably not as
the drum genesis of gang Stars, you know, my Steez
the real but it's really grand Master Flash flashes on
the bead box Plane play on a very primitive drum machine,
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five doing routines.

Speaker 8 (01:01:18):
It started out as a plate. We used to call
them plates, but their acetates and those place you used
to go to to get an acetate made of a
tape and so some people but they'd wear out fast,
but people would play acetates.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
And then a label independent Bonzo Mika which I have
no idea, eventually released it. And that's that boot leg
of a boot leg of a boot leg like that
just made the rounds across the Tri State area. Gotch
which when even when Mattel invented uh since since sonics yeah,

(01:01:52):
back in nineteen eighty one, Like I got that for
my tenth birthday so I could do pretend flash and
the beat. Yeah, so in your mind you was that
you're I mean, besides the whole idea of slashtone, there's
a rite going on and what Eure was doing with technology.
In your mind, you wanted to bring that sound to

(01:02:16):
the studio.

Speaker 8 (01:02:17):
Well, I used to play craft Work on my radio
station back you know, back in nineteen seventy three, so
I was already into craft work. That's why it blew
my mind so much that Ben Boda could play it
in front of a sixteen year old black audience and
get away with it work and make it work, and
so you know, that's what changed the game. So that
was the one that stood out as the most radical

(01:02:39):
departure from what you know, black music or funk music
would have been considered at that time. So you know,
that's the one I thought we should go with, you know,
for that, But it wasn't. It wasn't because this sounded
like that, because this doesn't really sound like craft work
at all. Ben Boden's style is very different than flashy style,
and I really only just recently gotten to meet Flashing,

(01:03:02):
you know, through the get down and being on panels
with him and stuff over the last two years. You know,
I don't really know him very well at all, but
I have mad respect for him. You know. There were
two different universes. There was the Flash universe in the
Banbodi universe, and I never really entered Flash's universe. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
But even at the time when you're constructing this, like,
you have no idea that you're metaphorically speaking, getting in
a delurean and going ninety years into the future because essentially, like,
all the elements that are in this song will determine
thirty years later with EDM music, with trap music. I mean,

(01:03:42):
all the ingredients are there. And so at no point
was this like a meeting like, yo, we got to
go to the future because it would have been easier
to just get a house band to recreate the next.

Speaker 8 (01:03:59):
Would have been more expensive though we didn't have enough
money to pay for a base.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
See, I would have thought it was more because That's
why I wanted to know how long did it take
the craft because first of all, it's a seven minute song,
like Who's essentially like putting the pieces together.

Speaker 8 (01:04:13):
Okay, so Jaa is the is the engineer.

Speaker 11 (01:04:17):
Engineer was always the person playing together we have learned anything.

Speaker 8 (01:04:23):
But but then there's the assistant engineer was Bob Rosa,
who went on to become super famous himself as a
as an engineer and a mixer, both of those guys.
And then you know, we had a synth player that
we brought in, you know who, who played the lines
on it, and and Arthur Baker was the you know,
the producer, you know, and all of us were up

(01:04:44):
there just contributing whatever ideas we had using all the technology.
There was a massive amount of technology. And I started
playing around with this fairlight synthesizer that was in the
room and it had like a light pen and a
green screen you had to touch to change the things.
And I was I found this orchestra sound and you
could play polyphonic orchestra hits and create this giant sound.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
That's why I wanted to know where did that?

Speaker 8 (01:05:06):
Yeah, So I just said, can we figure out a
way to use this? And then Robie John Roby was
the you know guy who did all the keyboards and
stuff on that and played the melodic parts, came over
and did that. And so you know, we utilized that
we had rented an eight o eight because we couldn't
find Flashes drum machine, and we brought that in And.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
Did you guys think for a second, like can we
ask him if we could borrow it?

Speaker 8 (01:05:28):
Or But they don't, I mean, because they were different.
It was the castanover crew. That's the castanover crew. You know,
it's like gang stuff, you just you don't. I wasn't
going there, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Like Africa. I wasn't afraid to go.

Speaker 8 (01:05:44):
And I probably wouldn't have been afraid to go to
see Grandmaster Flash either, because you know, I wasn't thinking
about that either. But I didn't want to create a con.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
To ask like, oh, I know, Flash, he'll let me
borrow Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:05:55):
I don't know. I mean I don't know that that
he had. They both had relationships with Kurt with herk
but I don't know what kind of relationship they had
with each other. I mean, even watching the get Down,
I still learned how because because Flash was you know,
consulting and a producer on the get Down, so to me,
I learned a little bit about you know these that
was written from the Flash perspective more than the banbody perspective.

(01:06:19):
You know that there are two different you know, there's
a world according to def Cham where you know, Russell
has his vision of what hip hop was and where
it came from, because he used to hang out at
Sal's place, which was disco Fever, and I never went there.
I mean that was where the drug dealers went, you know,
I went where the kids went. And to me, the
hip hop, the dancers, the creators, they were all young,

(01:06:40):
really young. The older guy the guys that were wearing
suits and drinking drinking splits of moet where all, you know,
and they had like, you know, velvet pictures of James
Brown on the walls and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
By the way, were these afternoon parties or night parties?

Speaker 8 (01:06:54):
The night parties, but they were.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
They weren't cardon back then, that's hard.

Speaker 8 (01:06:57):
And they had day stuff two in the park. But
I didn't go to those because I was working. But
you know, i'd go after I worked, I'd go out
at night and and and see him there. The Bronx
river ones were even earlier because they were in a
wreck room in in the project.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
All right. I own an eight o eight drum machine
and it as hard as hell too program it and
really get it to do what you wanted to do
execution wise, Who was the eight o eight monster? Was
that author?

Speaker 8 (01:07:31):
Uh? I think Roby figured it out. He was the
more technically savvy guy. But and Arthur Baker both worked
on it together and and figured out what they wanted
to do, and they might have actually had done some
programming in advance. I can't remember a lot of that
happened all spontaneously there, including the you know, the guys

(01:07:55):
had written their rhymes, and a lot of the stuff
that happened with the rhymes was spontaneous too, like, yeah, exactly,
I forgot the lyrics. How I forgot the lyrics? And
you know, Arthur wanted to take it over again. I said, no,
that's good, let's just leave that. You know that was better.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
So when it's over and said and done and mixed,
are you too involved in it to really realize that
you guys might have read Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:08:23):
You never know until you play it in front of
an audience. The first time we had an inkling that
something was going to be crazy, you know, was when
you played it in front of an audience. By the way,
this was the second bout of Tommy Boy record Jazzy
Sensation had come out already the year before and was
a hit. It did like forty thousand copies, which for
me painted by parents back alone right away. And you know,

(01:08:46):
I remember, very important thing to remember is bringing that
record to WHBI to Mister Magic show, because Mister Magic
was the first person in the world the radio was
he polite to you, He was cool, he was you know,
he was he was super cool. And I went up
there and there was in the fantastic Alems were up
there at the same time. Wow, Twins, they're bringing their

(01:09:09):
record up the same day, Hooked on Your Love or
whatever on Near Records, which was their label, and you know,
those guys were from the hood, and I was totally
not for the hood. So I was going into you know,
and they already knew Magic and I was just meeting them,
and they played both records. But Benbada had such an
audience in the Bronx that the phones went absolutely nuts,
and I got orders for five thousand records the next Monday.

(01:09:32):
That's when I knew I had something one spin ten
thousand watt or fifty thousand watts station that had you know,
hasidic jews. Afterwards, doing Talmut time and you know Brooklyn
Rasta's doing you know whatever deep reggae before and you know,
he had his little three hour splot. So it wasn't
like a radio station people tuned into. It was a show,

(01:09:54):
the only show, but it was the only place you
could hear hip hop. So everybody listened into it. And
who was into it?

Speaker 10 (01:10:02):
And at this time, like there was simple clearianicses. Even
the things like with the craft Work sample, it wasn't
a sample, it was played.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
So did the guys that did the Mexican were they like, hey,
that's our melody.

Speaker 8 (01:10:15):
Or so we didn't have an issue with that one
because they probably stole it from the Good to Bad
and the Ugly and it was really any of morricone,
you know. So I don't know what. So that's the
only reason I can think that after all the years,
nobody ever came out. But you know, after Planet Rock
became pretty big, I got a letter from the publishing

(01:10:36):
company of uh of kraft work. I didn't know. I
didn't I didn't really understand copyright law. You know, I
wasn't that you know, I was pretty young, I was
just starting my company. I got a shock treatment when
I got the letter and we had to figure out
a way to settle, and you know, it was like
one of the early settlements.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
What is your distribution game?

Speaker 8 (01:10:59):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Is are you in a position now where you're getting
more orders than you have and you can handle that?
You can handle? Are you like I need a full
time staff now to.

Speaker 8 (01:11:11):
I had two employees I had once I got the
letter from craft work to hire a lawyer full time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Well not even I'm talking about to even get the record. Yeah,
forty thousand records and that many records.

Speaker 8 (01:11:24):
Just tell the pressing plant we need more, you know,
and you know, and we have to pay up front.
So yeah, we need to get cash. So we had
to go sell records directly to the record store for
two dollars instead of two fifty, and we get cash
so we could pay for the presses, you know, so
you could turn cash flow around fast. Or we give
the distributor or a discount and they would pay us
up front instead of paying or half up front. There

(01:11:47):
were ways in those days where you could get money
if you had a hit and it was a big demand.
The distributor is happy as hell because it was the
big record driving it for them, and they needed to
make sure that we had cash flow to pay the
pressing plan, so they'd squeeze us for an extra discount
and give us money upfront so we could pay the
pressing plant.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Were you your own distributor?

Speaker 8 (01:12:05):
Or?

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Who were you using?

Speaker 8 (01:12:06):
No, I had twelve distributor to cover America in those days,
you had to have twelve distributors. There's we had a
New York distributor, Philly distributor Universal in Philly. We had
a distributor in Washington, Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, you know, Cleveland, Boston, Hartford.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
I'm telling you it's crazy.

Speaker 8 (01:12:29):
San Francisco, La Texas, and New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
And then what about a nationally Shreveport is separate one
in Shreeport in New Orleans? What about internationally?

Speaker 8 (01:12:39):
How did you do it? And nastually? We didn't know
what we're doing. We licensed the record internationally to a
PolyGram subsidiary called twenty one and they gave us whatever
like a twenty thousand dollars advance for the world.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
As a president of the label. How are Africa, Bimbata
and the Sonic Force doing this song and concert? Are they?
Is there demand to bring them like is I mean,
how are you guys dealing with your statics.

Speaker 8 (01:13:09):
Of Like we had to make it, we made it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
How do you make it work on Well, I saw
the video, but how do you make it work on stage?

Speaker 8 (01:13:16):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Are we getting a band to try and recreate this?
Is there?

Speaker 8 (01:13:19):
No? The bembodis DJ it Because the other thing the
time we boy did was we were innovating in the
records themselves. First of all, a lot of the twelve
inches at the time were forty five, so we only
did thirty threes. We put the beats permitted on the
record so the DJs would know what the beats permitt
It was, By the way, what's the beats permitted in
a plant Rock? Anybody? On twenty nine? Very good? Yeah.

(01:13:46):
But we also put bonus beats on that record, the
first record ever that had bonus beats, because we wanted
to give DJs tools because we knew who our audience was.
Sugar Hill didn't think that they thought their audience was
record bised. We thought our audience DJs, and the DJs
became record biers, and record biers followed started buying with
the DJs. But even though they weren't DJs, so you

(01:14:08):
know twelve inches, which were just a DJ market until
like seventy eight or seventy nine started becoming Planet. I
think the first record that really probably went multi platinum
off twelve inch was probably Wrap His Delight or Heartbeat
by Tony Gardner.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
Do you know the Heartbeat story with Larry Levan? I
wanted to say this earlier when he mentioned down tempo
how he played So Larry Levan defiantly oh yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:14:38):
Yeah, yeah, how he played it like twenty times in
a row.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
Well they said three hours, but I feel like he
it might have been under twenty times in a row.
That's how he broke it at Paradise. Yeah, he literally
was going to force them to dance to down tempo
as opposed to disco, and their thing was to have
a sit in. So for the first or five times

(01:15:01):
people were sitting under dance. His audience was like, no,
we're leaving, and Larry Levan was like, no, I'm I'm
the controller here. You don't you know you're not hold
me hosted.

Speaker 7 (01:15:11):
Don't try that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Don't try to sell me.

Speaker 8 (01:15:12):
A few people can get away with that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
He was like, I will, I will play what you
want to hear after I see them dance to this,
and so after the twentieth time, they're like, all right,
damn it, and then they started and then they have
been He literally stock him, cindered them into.

Speaker 7 (01:15:27):
That's good to know though, but that heart that heartbeat
record was the transition and so that is not it's
not disco, but it is downbeat.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
And then yeah Tuesday, Yeah, like he literally forced them
by gunpoint to you know, it was radical at the
time because it was like ninety one bpms, where the
average record was disco fied and so yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:15:47):
Yeah, but and he already played dow tempo compared to
the White Gate you know discos where they were playing
one hundred and twenty ninety thirty so Africa. So the
other thing we did was we had an instrumental B
side and a version that had Tina Bee on it,
which was Arthur's wife, Tina Baker.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Okay she be yeah, oh crap, I did not know.

Speaker 8 (01:16:08):
And that allowed us to get play on in clubs
that were gay clubs because it was the right tempo
and they weren't going to play a record with a
rap on it. So that so our record got played
everywhere everyone could play our record. Also, you know, punk
rock was fast, so a lot of the you know,
people who liked to play rock music couldn't play early

(01:16:29):
hip hop because it was too slow for what they
were playing, but they could play Planet Rock. So Planet
Rock was a breakthrough record on so many levels. Also,
Latin kids went nuts, Asian kids went nuts because this
whole you know, this was the Pa pac Man Asteroids
versus pac Man kind of period where people were hearing
these electronic sounds in video games and going crazy over

(01:16:50):
them and you know, hearing electro music. We also had
real support in Detroit, which was like the funk capital
of the world, from the Electrifying Mojo, who was the
big DJ who broke all the early George Clinton stuff
on the air and he was god in Michigan and
so you know, he broke it through the whole funk
you know scenario. So we got really great support from

(01:17:13):
the record because we put elements in it that were
inclusive that look, this record isn't just for the Bronx.
This record is for everybody. If you're gay and into
euro disco, play the B side, you know, if you're
having trouble getting into it, use the bonus beats to
get into it. We gave everybody everything they needed, and
to me, that was a breakthrough part of the record too.
It made it easier for the record to catch on

(01:17:35):
when you only have two employees in the company.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Jo Top.

Speaker 7 (01:17:37):
Not to jump the gun, but because you keep talking
about how well versed you were on the diversity of
the gay community, is that when you like ran into
like a young RuPaul, because I mean that's a person
of a certain age.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
I was just curious.

Speaker 8 (01:17:49):
Because I was much later.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Paul was right.

Speaker 7 (01:17:52):
I didn't know because he's certain.

Speaker 8 (01:17:55):
He used to intern at the New Music Seminar for us.
He used to perform perform at a show at the
Saint at the New Music Seminar once, you know, uh,
and he was an amazing performer. But you know, Monica really,
you know, Monica Lynch was the president of Tommy Boy,
actually not me, and she, you know, she was the

(01:18:15):
one that brought that in. And you know, because she
understood that, you know, she was came from Chicago and
she came out of that culture, you know, the the
gay disco, the ball culture and stuff like.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
That, coming out of a Planet Rock.

Speaker 10 (01:18:28):
A lot of the stuff y'all followed up with I
guess it fell under like the I guess theyould call
it freestyle at the time. Was it like the Latin
hip hops? Yeah, Latin hip hop? Who was first they.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Called it Latin hip hop? Then they called it freestyle? Okay, okay, gotcha?
Who was some of those artists?

Speaker 8 (01:18:43):
T K A. That was the big one. We had
K seven t K A. So the K K seven
is the K and t K A Tony K.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Society, I mean didn't really start with Information Society.

Speaker 8 (01:18:54):
Was the Information Society which was salabout Yellow who had
the fever, had a club called it Devil's nest Alnido
del Diablo in the Bronx also, and Louis Vega used
to spin there, and Louis Vega discovered this record and
brought them in from Minnesota. These guys are like Vikings
from Minnesota, and they came they came in the you know,

(01:19:15):
this white group came in and played an all Puerto
Rican club in the Bronx and.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
They were white. Never saw the video, not only white
way original white.

Speaker 8 (01:19:27):
They weans from.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
You know, because Silent Warning like all that stuff just
sounded and all the Puerto Rican kids in my high school.
I just thought they were Puerto Rican because I guess
Puerto Rican.

Speaker 8 (01:19:41):
So yeah, So that was probably eighty four, like two
years after playing Rock, or maybe late eighty three because
Running was the first record which used a eight o
eight in it. Also, so when you know it was
discovered and Louis played, these guys thought they were playing
to a rock odings because they thought they were a
rock band and when they saw they didn't know who
their audience was, and we sort of had to do

(01:20:03):
an adjustment so they can understand you can try and
play rock music or you can embrace this this audience here.
It was really amazing to see.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
Well imagine that a group going against their will, playing,
playing and surviving off audience. They who would ever have
thought that would ever happen to a group. Again, I
feel as though everything that you've brought to the table,
uh from Tommy Boy Records, especially in the first ten
years of the label, was a foot forward as far

(01:20:35):
as the culture and innovation, and of course you know
you are established that as the natural contrarian, you were
trying to go to the places other people weren't going.
And I guess probably the second most notable signing of
your label ghost. That's no the ford the MDS tell

(01:20:59):
me about. Well, first of all, changing the four sim
C's from Staten Island to the four m.

Speaker 8 (01:21:06):
DS was doctor Rock and the four sim C's.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
Yeah, so how did you how did you run into
them and and sort of groomed them and like did
they already come package as they were swetters? And because
I feel like that's.

Speaker 8 (01:21:21):
You, that's me, you know, I already said that, you know,
but I saw I saw him perform at one of
Africa Bambadi's Zulu Nation events. They were Zulu. I mean
there were people that were affiliated with the Zulunation in Olbers.
They're from Staten Island, so you know, all of the
Staten Island hip hop that came out of Staten Island

(01:21:42):
grew up on four m DS. And you know, they
had Jesse d who was the singer who used to
do Michael Jackson invitations on the on the Staten Island
ferry and raise money that way. And yeah, they were
but they were super talented and I heard him sing
a song that blew my mind at this show. It
was hip hop and hip hop beats, but they did

(01:22:04):
this beautiful four part harmony or five part harmony routine
to the f Troop theme song, which was really amazing for.

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
Our listeners out there. Like a lot of early hip
hop routines were just based on TVs do ron Stone,
Cowboy and and by yeah exactly. So a lot of
these early hip hop routines are based on uh u

(01:22:36):
h F whatever that is u HF channel uh reruns
and about the weird out who wants to be on
Quest Love Supreme way he bring it? Yeo, yeah, I will.
So back to the Foursome ds. So you saw them
do this routine and you.

Speaker 8 (01:22:56):
Yeah, I thought that, you know, they were super commercial
and and I thought that this concept of harmony over
hip hop beats might be another departure point because you
have to understand also at this time, the DJ was
the main person in a rap group, not the rappers,
and the DJ usually had the musical idea and their

(01:23:19):
name always was first it was Africa Bembada and Grandmester
Flesh and Eric B. And you know it was because
the person with the records was the master. You know,
the the DJs were fungible, I mean the MC's were fungible.
There's everybody wanted to be an MC. Also didn't cost
money to be a MC. It costs money you had

(01:23:40):
to invest to have the equipment, the records and all
that stuff. So they were the guys, and often they
came with a musical idea. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh
Prince and again, you know, so these are the guys
and then things. There was a point in the music
industry where that changed and they went to outside producers
and that was sort of a to me, a sea

(01:24:01):
change in the music business. But timmy boys strength came
from self contained groups that had a sound of their own.
That came where the vision came from the DJ slash producer.
You know, whether they were a great producer or not
was something else. But they usually had a musical vision
that we had to interpret. You know, Baan Bada had

(01:24:21):
a musical vision. Arthur Baker interpreted it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
Where they easily sold on the Frankie Lineman approach of.

Speaker 8 (01:24:30):
Yeah, they were open to whatever. At the point they
wanted a record deal and they weren't going to get
a record dealer. It wasn't like there was a lot
of competition. Maybe they would have thought it, but I,
you know, I said, look, you know, it's the same
street corners. There's a great story here. Let's do this thing.
And also maybe we can you know, get girls really
into this group, because you know girls, you know, and

(01:24:52):
so that would be, you know, a way to expose
it and break it. And also I was dealing with
radio because I was the guy actually called Radio two,
So I was working radio and talking to radio DJs
trying to get them to play hip hop, which they
didn't want to play. They hated it. They you know,
if they played hip hop, they had one slot on
their playlist or two slots on their playlist. So it

(01:25:13):
was very hard to get them to play it. And
even though I didn't have any major label competition for
ten years, during this period of time, there's plenty of
indie label competition. We were all chasing the same guys
with hip hop records, and you know, the record had
to be really good. So you know, I thought that
a record that was allot, you know, a vocal record,

(01:25:35):
would would not be considered a hip hop record. But
because it was on Tommy Boy and we had hip
hop hits, they didn't even listen to the I can't
play this hip hop record. It's not a hip hop
listen to the record you could play.

Speaker 7 (01:25:47):
At what point did crush groove come into the picture
for them and did it have like an effect on
the records?

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
Actually they were right.

Speaker 8 (01:25:58):
I remember O n and I saw the eighty five.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
I saw it in the theater.

Speaker 8 (01:26:05):
Call it eighty six indo eighty five eighty beginning eighty six.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
Yeah, I think I think for some d's performance and
rapping was the that was that was the highlight of
the movie.

Speaker 5 (01:26:17):
Of the film, or Griffin Dunn's rap at the end,
the horrible rap.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
What was the But they weren't, I mean, they weren't
cush with tender love was. They did It's and force
scratching and.

Speaker 8 (01:26:27):
That was earlier. Rapping was first, So that must have
been eighty four eighty five.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
Yeah, I mean It's and for scratches, I mean, let
Me Love You was it was a good introduction. But
really I know that b boys got to open on
It's and for scratch and even when they opened for
a new edition. I've seen three full force new edition
shows and I always felt like full force or forced
my god, I said, full force cracker for some ds

(01:26:55):
opening for a new edition, I could tell that they
were out for blood, like they performed harder, and you
know they were doing all the invitations.

Speaker 8 (01:27:04):
Yeah, they have dance routines.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
Yeah, way way past. I mean they were rhyming, they
were singing, they were imitating Michael JACKSONI wack costumes.

Speaker 8 (01:27:14):
We have to talk about I think that was me
on the record.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
That was you exclusive. I don't know my sound effects
this stuff, just that part, Okay, I see so well. Yeah,
because I always wanted to know why did they By
the time Chilling came out and Tender Love had had

(01:27:37):
made noise.

Speaker 8 (01:27:38):
Tender Love was like the first top ten record for
Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Yeah, it was, so were they because the cover of
Chilling was like them in Offers and they was chilling.
I know literally that. But were they telling you, as
an executive, like, we don't want to go the bubblegum?

Speaker 8 (01:28:01):
We were over that right away because it didn't work.
We tried it, We tried to connect to that audience
and it didn't connect, so we went a new way.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
My dad actually liked that. He liked the Chilling record
because I had to Let Me Love You twelve inch
and it looked the way that the photo was positioned,
it looked just like the Frankie Liman thing. So my
dad instantly got, oh, that's what they're they're coming from,
and so damn that did he like the music when
you listen to it? Forgive me, it was my It

(01:28:32):
was my music, not a music. But I definitely know
that harmonies at least, you know, I know that he
saw the cover and was like, oh, that's Frankie Lion.

Speaker 8 (01:28:39):
By the way. He broke with the cover too. His
first record was the record somebody had done before.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
Really No, no, no, I mean literally the photo.

Speaker 8 (01:28:46):
Yeah, I know what you're talking the cover, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
With climmcfetter, that's what you mean. Who orchestrated them getting
with jam and Lewis? Like was that a thing for
the Cruss Grooves soundtrack?

Speaker 8 (01:28:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Also, this time you're about to go to One Brothers right, Like,
at what point are.

Speaker 8 (01:29:01):
You in the middle of the in the middle of
making that. We had already made that record. Then I
was talking to my Austin about about doing a joint
venture with Warner Brothers where we maintained our independence, but
we were half owned by Warner.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
M So did you were you executive of the Crush
Groove soundtrack because it was on Warner Brothers.

Speaker 8 (01:29:23):
Had we had one record on there and it was
gonna the album is going to be on Warner Brothers,
but this was going to be the single that drove
the album. So this was the single that was going
to sell their album for them, so that there was
a natural conversation anyway to talk to him about doing
something bigger together.

Speaker 10 (01:29:39):
So was that song ever officially on A four C
and d's album.

Speaker 8 (01:29:42):
It was on Chilling.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
It eventually became on Chilling, but after the Fat Got You.
But I thought because you were had one foot in
Warner and one foot at Tommy Boy, that.

Speaker 5 (01:29:53):
Didn't the single come out on both labels though like
the Warner, it wasn't the twelve inch on time.

Speaker 8 (01:30:00):
Yeah. The deal that we made with Warner was all
the twelve inches came through Tommy Boy and they had
the albums. So actually Warner released the fourth MD's album Chill,
and I think came through Warner and we had the
twelve inches. That was the deal. We kept the twelve
inches and they kept the forty five's in the albums,
and that was important. That was important for you to
keep the twelve inches for the branding. And also we

(01:30:21):
were independent. We want we also had international We could
make international deals. We had our own licensing ability to
make licenses, We did our own promotion. They did promotion too.
But you know, one of the reasons I did a
deal with Warner was I wanted access to top forty
radio and they had access to the Indie network and
the Indian network. We couldn't. It was so expensive and

(01:30:44):
we were so small we didn't have the leverage or
the scale to access it. So once we made the deal,
the pale investigations happened and Warner stopped choosing indies, so
I never got that advantage, which was one of the
reasons I made. Well year did that stop eight right
eighty six?

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Right when we moved over there?

Speaker 8 (01:31:03):
Who knew?

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
So how do you how do you curb the enthusiasm
of an artist signed to the label that you know,
because because by this point, you know, Thriller has gone
full bloom and you see the potential of Michael Jackson
selling forty million units and Prince is out there like now,

(01:31:33):
black artists are finally getting there just due to live
in the or at least the perception of it, because
I know a lot of that is smoking mirrors. So
you're on an independent label and knowing what I know,
I know that the expectation factor of some certain artists
are way high and above what the reality is like.

(01:31:56):
They don't take into account. You have to do a
show in Cleveland and it's five of you, So that's
hotel rooms and there's a tour manager. What do you
mean rooms? Okay, well, I mean, well just the idea.

Speaker 8 (01:32:16):
Look, we could drive back from Cleveland. We don't need
to stay over.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
Yeah, I see, I'm taking my nineteen ninety five life
this before. But you know it's.

Speaker 8 (01:32:26):
Business was ruined by then.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
Show. You never knew Hunger. I know. I'm so glad
I got on the complete of that train boy, But
how do you what's what's an what's an artist expectation?
Especially an artist that's not aware of Hey, I gotta
pay for this Billboard magazine ad to make sure that

(01:32:53):
you're promoting, and that costs forty thousand dollars. I gotta
you know. I'm sure that you've been on the many
ends of an argument of an artist versus record exec
Weren't we rich.

Speaker 8 (01:33:06):
Only after the majors got into the business and fucked
it up for everybody else. It wasn't in the in
the eighties, that was never an issue. We had to
figure out, how do The issue isn't to get on
the charts. The issue is to get exposure. Exposure leads
to sales, that's it. Word of mouth leads to sales.
Those are the things that we cared about. So how
do we focus on maximizing exposure? So Tommy Boy invented

(01:33:29):
the sticker. Tommy Boy invent started doing front page strips
and billboard on every record we released. We treated twelve
inches like albums. We worked them as if they were
album projects. You know. We also worked our artists internationally
like they weren't. We did the back page of the
Source every week. We controlled the back page of the

(01:33:50):
Source for ten years. We advertised in the Source when
it was still staple together, tip sheet and out of
Harvard University.

Speaker 7 (01:33:56):
How do you control the bat means that nobody can
outbid you on the back.

Speaker 8 (01:34:00):
We had a subscription. We paid for it all we
had it, you know, we paid in a FIR three
and if in advance when they needed cash flow, and
then we just we we had a contract with him
for the back page. So you know, there were things
that we you know, there are things that Tommy Boy did.
You know when Greg Mack left the radio station, well

(01:34:21):
when he when he left Houston where he was a
hip hop radio DJ in Houston and we knew him
and supported him. He came to K Day and he
remembered that we supported a show a K Day. We
supported you know, everybody's you know who had a hip
hop publication when they started, and as their businesses grew,
they remembered that we were always there at the beginning.

(01:34:42):
So there's massive love for Tommy Boy all, you know,
from the beginning because we nurtured everyone. And you know,
there's very few people you could talk to in the
business that don't have love for Tommy Boy, which is
not a usual thing in hip hop, which is the
world of haters mostly.

Speaker 10 (01:35:00):
That sound bite for Yeah World Wood that was on
the Forces D's Unsung, they told a story I don't
want to get your side of it about the they
wanted to work with Teddy Riley and Teddy Rally was
going to do tracks on I can't remember it was
the I think it was maybe the third album and
the label just didn't want to pay for it because

(01:35:22):
Teddy was charging at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):
What was Teddy something that Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:35:26):
It was exorbitant, But what was your what's your side
of that? And was it something that just didn't make
sense or how did you determine what to pay for it?

Speaker 8 (01:35:36):
I don't know, you know, I can't remember specifically. I
do remember trying to get him, but availability and the
kind of you know, like, would I pay fifty thousand
dollars to clear a sample on one track? No, I'm
not doing that, but you know Kanye will do that everybody.
You know, there's economics in the music business, and the
difference between indies and majors is the indies are have

(01:35:58):
to make a profit or they go out of business.
They just don't have to make a profit. They've been
losing money for ten years. They're still here. They're not
you know, they don't have to and their business is
based on market share. So they will spend ten dollars
to make five dollars as long as they can control
x amount of the chart.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
We aren't.

Speaker 8 (01:36:13):
We aren't even in the same business that they're in.
So when they got into hip hop, it changed the
nature of hip hop, and it made it very corporated,
you know, and kept some of the sort of the
street creativity that came from discovering something on the street
and starting with nothing and bringing to something to something
where the second you signed, you know, the mayboch pulls up,

(01:36:37):
get a bag of money.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
You know. So okay, being as though you're you're it
was front loaded instead of so being as though you're
one of the last execus that built this reputation off
of the idea of groups. Now, in hindsight, I hear
people say, especially in documentaries, that it's way more easier

(01:37:01):
to control solo artists than it is a group, which
leads to uh, I guess my my question about statso
Sonic as an independent label owner, are you at any
point thinking about the financial hindrance and the burden of

(01:37:23):
dealing with six to seven people. I mean, you're dealing
with a group, and I'm thinking.

Speaker 8 (01:37:29):
Live I think stet was right six oh with the drummer.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Yeah, Robby, Well yeah to me, that's their anger. Sorry,
so well, of course whoever he is. No, But it's
just like if I'm if I'm pretending i'm you, I'm
thinking about oh, God, a band that's back line, that's
a twelve passenger van. If that uh I was saying hotels,

(01:37:56):
You're like, so oh, I mean what I know, there
weren't limitations back then, but clearly that was the last
of an era because in the next ten years, the
really of the next six years, the idea of a
band or group, uh will become an endangered species thing.

(01:38:19):
So why.

Speaker 8 (01:38:23):
We weren't thinking about touring because we're the label. We're
you know, we're only contracted to make money when the
group sells music, so we don't profit from their touring.
I never really thought.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
But you never thought like, okay, well, touring will build
up their popularity and thus we can make more records.

Speaker 8 (01:38:42):
And you know that hasn't always been the case for us.
In fact, every group we signed, we we had never
seen live till after we signed them, and they never
really got gigs, significant gigs. I mean, I saw for
some d's that made mean is exception for that. But
Stets of Sonic, we heard the record, we signed them

(01:39:03):
off the record, you've never seen them live, Dyala Soul.
We saw there was not at that time, you know,
they were developing their concept and Prince Paul you know,
was involved obviously was the DJ in that group too.
But mister Magic brought us that group. So mister Magic
brought me the demo. I liked the demo, you know,
and we brought them and we recorded them and actually
in my apartment, we had a twenty four track in

(01:39:24):
the second bedroom. When we moved Dancing Musical Report out,
we moved the studio into the second bedroom. We had
twenty four track and we recorded them in the bedroom.
We put Mike's in the living room and.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
In an apartment.

Speaker 8 (01:39:36):
Yeah, they weren't home. We recorded during the day.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
What song was that? Did you recorded?

Speaker 8 (01:39:46):
Apartment? Just say stet. We tried to re record, but
we tried to re record it because they had done
it tape in the studio in Brooklyn and all they
had was a cassette and something happened, they didn't pay
their bill or whatever, and there was no master tape,
and we tried to replicate it, and we ended up
just using the cassette master from the cassette because we
couldn't make it better. That's so dope, like you know,

(01:40:09):
like sugar Hill was flashed the.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
Beat, No you chasing the demo?

Speaker 8 (01:40:13):
It's like literally, But we did record other tracks up
there as well, and I remember Freu kwand Falling Sleep
and uh and also mixed machine Wise, who was like
amazing human beat bucks at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
Now, okay, the I feel like the idea of Statso
Sonic and the legend of stats of Sonic was bigger
than what they actually were because and you know, for
history sake whatever, I've been respectful on this stuff like okay, yeah,
we're the second hip hop band whatever. I never, truly,

(01:40:48):
I never really considered Stetso Sonic a hip hop band
because when I listened to their records in instrument, it sounded.

Speaker 8 (01:40:56):
Like Bobby wasn't in the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
Well it sounds well no, Well, I mean he was
for the three or four important songs he was drumming on.
But I always thought that was a marketing angle more
than even when that.

Speaker 8 (01:41:09):
I think that was Daddyo's idea. By the way, oh
yeah yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:41:13):
The Beastie Boy issue of Spin magazine.

Speaker 8 (01:41:15):
They were very interesting. Daddyo was very involved in the uh,
you know, the marketing ideas and the concepts. We used
to actually fight about it sometimes because we didn't always agree,
but a lot of the ideas that are in stets
sonic h are those. But you know, records like talking
All that Jazz to me is still a classic. The

(01:41:35):
first record about sampling really you know.

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
It was it was so I'm saying, like, when you're
doing this and by the time did they make their
debut at the New Music Seminar?

Speaker 8 (01:41:50):
Maybe I can't remember which we're.

Speaker 1 (01:41:52):
Kind of skipping that you started the New Music Seminar.

Speaker 8 (01:41:56):
I co started it with a bunch of other people.
There was another there was an so the DJ culture
was exploding. There was a there was a rock oriented
thing called rock Pool that serviced rock DJs, rock music,
you know, post punk, you know, new wave and stuff

(01:42:17):
like that. DJs that played specifically rock music at the time.
And because rock was so big with the labels, they
got big support from the record companies. Uh and disco
was always like the bastard child of the music industry.
That's why she just got rejected for the eleventh time,
broke the record for the eleventh you know, of being

(01:42:40):
I'm trying, I'm trying rejected. But Nile will get in
this year on a special award, but.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
We're going to get Sheik in.

Speaker 8 (01:42:47):
Well, you gotta get Nol Rogers specifically because he he'll
tell you the story about rappers, the light and the sample, and.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
He's a friend of the show. So for the New
Music Cement, when was the very first.

Speaker 8 (01:42:59):
One in SII Rehearsal studios. It was a one day
event in nineteen.

Speaker 1 (01:43:04):
Eighty Do you who performed?

Speaker 8 (01:43:06):
No, No, There were no performances at night. The first
one was just a one day thing, the same day
as the Billboard Disco Forum and the disco form fell off,
and we packed like one hundred and fifty two hundred
people in the room, and we're talking about issues with
radio and issues DJ issues. We talked about remixing and
things that nobody really was talking about elsewhere. And we

(01:43:28):
didn't see disco as one hundred and thirty beats per minute.
We saw dance music or DJ culture is something different.
So we took the perspective, the DJ perspective, because both
of our publications pooled our resources and reached out to
the DJ community. So it was the DJ community and
finally getting access to the music industry through the New

(01:43:49):
Music Seminar, and then that built and built in nineteen
eighty one, it grew. We went to a club, and
then in nineteen eighty two it went to the Sheridan,
and then it went to the Hilton for two years,
and then to the Marriotte. You know, and I know
that there's going to be an episode of of the
Breaks where this giant fight at the New Music Seminar,

(01:44:09):
the music episode. Yeah, yeah, are you sure the New
Music Seminar that was like in the in the pilot.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
Yeah, that was in Oh yeah, yeah, that was in
the pilot.

Speaker 10 (01:44:16):
But now we have an episode where it actually takes
place at night.

Speaker 8 (01:44:19):
No, I saw the Coming Attraction store and it looks
just like it. They did a fantastic job, Thank you man.

Speaker 10 (01:44:25):
We take We shot that actually at the what's the
hotel across the street from penn Station the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:32):
Shot and shot at the Hotel Pennsylvania. The rats over there, boy, yeah,
they got tales to tell. That's why we shot it.
That's crazy. So what was your I guess when I
first started hearing about the New Music Seminar? Well Search
has his tales of that's when Russell first saw him.

(01:44:57):
The night I remember with the infamous Craig g Versus
Supernatural battle, like, what are your what are your fond memories.

Speaker 8 (01:45:05):
Of well, because I was running it. You have to
understand that I I was dealing with registration, I was
dealing with planning.

Speaker 1 (01:45:17):
And everything myself like, and I was.

Speaker 8 (01:45:19):
Doing Tommy Boy at the same time and Dance Music
Report at the same time, so imagine all of that.
And when this thing was happening, I would move downtown
to our office and uh on Lower Broadway and we
would uh you know, and I would work there for
like three months of the year, and I'd come to
the Tommy Boy offices two days a week and being

(01:45:40):
the Seminar offices like three days a week. And then
when the two weeks before, I wouldn't even come to
the Tommy Boy offices. So you know, it was that
kind of thing, you know. So it was it was
so my memories of it are you know, the few
panels that I got to see because I had to
go to all of them and run around and do
everything and sort of manage the stuff that I was

(01:46:00):
trying to manage, Like you know, who was the keynote speaker,
was Frank Zappa or whoever was going to speak. I mean,
you know, the press and what was happening, people trying
to sneak in which was happening. There was so much
stuff going on. If there was a fight, which that
happened at one time, that became legendary.

Speaker 1 (01:46:18):
Versus Lynch mob one. Yeah, that's I think.

Speaker 8 (01:46:22):
And I think also Miami was involved because I think
what's his name was, Luke was involved with that as well.
They were throwing tables. I was told in the panels clubs,
and then I had to stay in the green room
the panelists ready room to talk to to set up
all the people, because I helped put all the panels together.
So I had to tell explain to the moderator what

(01:46:43):
we're trying to achieve from each each panel discussion, so
that the level of discourse would be high enough and
we would achieve what we're trying to achieve from each one.
It wasn't just go up there and do whatever you
want to do. It was like I was producing all
of the events that were happening, and then at night
then other people people were doing the showcases and the
you know, all of the shows that would happen.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
Who were some of the most notable debuts that happened
at the New Music Seminar that now our household names or.

Speaker 8 (01:47:13):
At least Nirvana. I wouldn't call it a debut, but
they played a tiny little club and they played this
and it was one of his last gigs before he died.
Also was at the New Music Seminar, and there was
a bunch of rock groups that came and did their debuts.
You know, so much stuff happened at the seminar, and
there were so many people that would come. I'm still

(01:47:33):
hearing stories I didn't know about about people who got
their start. Yeah, people met, you know, I know, a
big producer at one point was the president of Atlantic,
Danny Goldberg met his wife on the panel he was
on at the New Music Seminar. Other people like Craig
Kalman is the you know now the CEO of Atlantic
used to come to the seminar before he really got started.

(01:47:57):
And when you know, people used to head enter at
the seminar. I didn't know if somebody told me RuPaul
was an Internet I didn't know Rupol was an intern
at the seminar, but I know I saw him at
the seminar. Maybe it was that year or some other year.
I mean, it's all a blurb because you know, there
were there were like, you know, twenty five panels over
three days and three hundred or four hundred speakers and

(01:48:17):
five hundred bands performing. It was just so much happening.
We had a team of like twenty people just to
produce that event. Year round, we had like eight people
year round working in an event.

Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
So what point are you now expanding, Tommy boy? When
does Monica lunch coming too? The situation? When do you
get a full staff?

Speaker 8 (01:48:36):
Monica was there almost from the beginning, So I started
with Jazzy Sensation, and I think sometime I met Monica,
probably around eighty one or eighty two, I can't remember
which year. Okay, she started right around then, but almost
from the beginning, it was just me and her first

(01:48:58):
that were the only two people that worked there. And
then we had we got another person as an assistant,
and we started to grow it a little bit after that.

Speaker 1 (01:49:07):
What were your I mean, did you guys share the
same aesthetic, like what the label should be or is
it just like you know, is it her job just
to hear with the.

Speaker 8 (01:49:16):
And by the way, we were also running Dance Music
Report at the same time, so we were still putting
the stickers on and writing the articles. And that while
we were doing Tommy Boy too. So when she started,
she was doing both things with me.

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
Okay, she was.

Speaker 8 (01:49:27):
Doing everything I needed to be done, and that's I
needed to do everything, So she did it all.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
What were your feelings towards the competition at least def Jam?
Were you guys looking at them like.

Speaker 8 (01:49:38):
Well, Jeff, we were before deaf Jam started, right.

Speaker 1 (01:49:42):
But I'm saying once def Jam comes and it's like, okay,
now the car is getting crowded.

Speaker 8 (01:49:46):
Well, I think run DMC was. It was it was
more rush than it was deaf Jam. So run DMC
was the first one and that was profile really that
stepped into our territory in a significant way. And and
you know, I had mad respect for what they're doing.
And I'm very close friends with Corey Robin Steele who
had that label. And so I don't know, it's you know,

(01:50:11):
I don't know that. I never really was competitive. Really,
I'm not a I'm not a good competitor. I'm much
more a better innovator, you know. So I'm just I
would look at what they would do, just so I
wouldn't do that. You know, whatever they're doing, I want
to do the opposite. Of that. That's sort of the
contrarian thing I was talking about before. It's like, okay,
so Russell's doing this and this, what can I do?

Speaker 1 (01:50:32):
He's not doing it? Brings us to day.

Speaker 8 (01:50:35):
Well, he used to call my music frantic because his
music was more R and B influence. You know, he
was the guy who would be hanging out at the
you know what I would go to. If I would
go to the T Connection and Bronx River Center, he
would not be there. He would he would be drinking
splits of Moe at at you know, at the Fever.
You know, he was a fever guy.

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
You know, wait, it just hit me. You had interactions
with Jake King. Would you consider Club Nouveau a Tommy
Boy artist or was that just adition?

Speaker 8 (01:51:07):
We put out all the twelve inches, so yeah, we
broke all those records with our team.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
What about was tom like Social Club also in that?
Are they okay?

Speaker 8 (01:51:16):
That was on my Cola Records? Social Club Don McMillan, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:51:23):
Liquor that guy the guy who like the last that's
the unmalcol record, not Malacola. Yeah, that was digital, that's
the West Coast.

Speaker 8 (01:51:38):
Underwater Rhymes was on my Cola. You know, all all
of those records. He had also had what's his name
from Miami, he had Luke Skywalker was there. You know,
all of the Bay Area groups were on the because
he owned the pressing plant on Santa Monica Boulevard, so
everybody went to him to get records pressed. So he
became the default label. He was a tugboat captain from Alaska.

(01:52:01):
Don McMillan. He didn't know to say no, He just said,
all right, I'll press it. So you know, he ran
the front door and the back door in the pressing plane.

Speaker 1 (01:52:09):
Ah.

Speaker 8 (01:52:11):
So you know he he could have been the biggest
record company in the world if he had paid people
and done things right. But you know, everybody complained that
he wasn't. He wasn't straight with people.

Speaker 1 (01:52:22):
So he just got people to the next level, which
was well.

Speaker 8 (01:52:25):
He got the record out and got them established.

Speaker 1 (01:52:27):
You know, I see so because I guess, well, you know,
me wanted a Grammy. I believe were at least who
did deal with it. I'm still lean on Manuva. So, uh,
what was it about them at you know, did you
feel like we should expand to the West coast and no,

(01:52:49):
I think or did they come to you.

Speaker 8 (01:52:51):
Well, we had a relationship with Warner So that was
a record label that was signed to Warner that I
liked because I was a big fan of Time at
Social Club, which I think was one of another one
of the biggest twelve inches of all time. It was
one of those record of the year records that never
got the credit that it due. And I went and
found them, and you know, I said, let me do

(01:53:12):
this because I know what to do. You guys aren't
going to know what to do on Warner Brothers really
wasn't like a black music label. They didn't really break
very many black artists at all, and they definitely didn't
know what it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:22):
Is that odd to say that for at that point
nineteen eighty five, eighty six, that they still don't know
how to like. So that Harvard report stuff was just
for not at least the Harvard report from the seventies, like.

Speaker 8 (01:53:36):
I don't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:53:38):
Well, okay, well there was there was a Harvard report
in nineteen seventy two that specifically told the majors that
you should start investing in black label. So as a result,
Philly International gets inquired acquired from CBS Labels start you know,

(01:53:58):
Echo to Atlanta.

Speaker 8 (01:54:00):
I never saw that report.

Speaker 1 (01:54:01):
It's yeah, it's too bads Harbor report.

Speaker 10 (01:54:05):
So but the thing is, I don't think Warner Brothers
ever recovered from that though, Like they never really, I
mean even when you talked to DJs and they would
just tall you straight up. If we saw Warner Brothers logo,
we knew it was whack. Like when it came to
like hip hop or whatever, like.

Speaker 8 (01:54:17):
That Graham Central Station that was imprint and they had
some didn't that at some period that had some George
Clinton stuff for a minute, didn't they?

Speaker 1 (01:54:28):
Uh for the Funkadelic, the Funkadelic stuff, Parlotte Parliament, some
of that stuff. One Nation Undergroove and and Uncle Jim.
But yeah, I would have thought that that. So you
actually went to mo Austin just said, yo.

Speaker 8 (01:54:44):
Let me do this. You know I can do it.
I can handle the guy, and I can make it,
you know, make it work and break it for you.
So I got the twelve inches on that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:52):
Which leads me too while you treat me so bad.
All right, So my favorite hip hop group of all
time day Los Soul.

Speaker 8 (01:55:02):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:55:04):
First of all, just the marketings unprecedented. I mean shit.
The first time I almost got suspended from school was
hanging those damn day Loss stickers all over all over
where I shouldn't have h in school.

Speaker 8 (01:55:21):
That was our second sticker, by the way, the first
one was st e.

Speaker 1 (01:55:24):
T Stet stickers were first.

Speaker 8 (01:55:27):
That was the first sticker, and it was you know,
it was orange and they cost three cents each. And
that was sweet market the beginning. It was a crazy
street market.

Speaker 1 (01:55:34):
Yeah, yeah, you were the first. I guess, yeah, your label,
because that's no other label I recall really.

Speaker 8 (01:55:41):
But everyone so I innovated, and everybody took the stuff
and out competed me, you know. You know, they went
from stickers to giant stickers, to wrap cars, to wrap vans,
to wrap whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:55:53):
They're basically giving you credit for come creating the promo, right.

Speaker 8 (01:55:57):
Like, you know, we just little things, you know that
to get to get exposure to me. A three and
six sticker that's fluorescent, that just has a few letters
on it, if you put it on a payphone or
on a latrine at the right club, you know it's
going to be seen by a lot of people. We
did one for opp Those were the three big ones
that I still want that opp sticker. I remember where

(01:56:18):
they went at Magic City during the Jack the Rapper conference.
That made everybody, every program director was in the audience,
and when they saw that on that the booty slap
with the OPP on it, they went back and every
time they heard opp there was that connection that was
the originative.

Speaker 1 (01:56:44):
So when you when you get Daylight, is it you
that's trying to sell up the angle of hippie daisy? Yeah,
the hippie image. It was.

Speaker 8 (01:56:56):
It was an obvious thing that they you know, I
did to find what the front arc cover was with
Monica and somebody in the press said that, I mean,
there was a review that said that, of course the
alliteration saying the hippies of hip hop makes so much sense,
you know. But then they got reactionary about all that stuff,
which is really what really pissed me off a little

(01:57:18):
bit more than the react than people saying that who
cares what people say? Do you think the whole idea
with me, myself and I is that you're not influenced
by what other people say, and now you're influenced with
other what other people say, and you come back with
Dala soula is dead.

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
Well, it's my favorite don't jump the gun just yet.
I mean, let's talk about the happy period. So uh,
I mean, what do you what do you? What are
your thoughts?

Speaker 8 (01:57:46):
And it came up with the daisy age? Do you
think I came up with that? You think that was
a marketing idea? Of course, the sire of the phones,
all of that stuff, everything was them all we do.

Speaker 1 (01:57:57):
But it's set a precedent because what because this is
now the first time. I mean when Nation of Millions
came up, that's the first time I heard white critics
salivating over hip hop. But when three f On Rising
came out, suddenly kids in my geometry class are having

(01:58:17):
hip hop discussions minus me, Like suddenly, it's I see
the I've seen the first hand effects of how that
album worked brilliantly. So I'm just saying that, like, at
what point did you feel as though, like instantly? Was

(01:58:38):
it when you first signed them for Pluck Tuning or was.

Speaker 8 (01:58:41):
It I mean when we signed them at the beginning,
we didn't know. I remember hearing the record through the wall.
They were playing it for Monica and I heard it
through the wall and I came in to see what
it was. Because usually when a record sounds great through
the wall, it has a good shot of being a hit.
If it doesn't sound like anything through the WALLBB he
doesn't have. I mean, you know, you need to be

(01:59:02):
able to hear a hit two cars away, you know,
if you're in a driving kind of a situation, And
that was one of you know, it's something that is
so different from everything that's the status quo. You know,
something that penetrates the noise floor is important for indie
labels to have something that nobody else is saying that

(01:59:22):
can go beyond and that I heard it, A nice
heard it, And when Monica and I talked about it,
and I said, this is either going to be really
big or it's going to be nothing at all. There
is no in between with the record like this. This
could not connect at all because it's so bizarre and different.
Most stuff that's bizarre and different doesn't connect or it
could connect. So it was our job to try to say,

(01:59:43):
all right, how do we tie it together and connect
the dots to make people get it.

Speaker 1 (01:59:49):
You know, do you remember the Bill Coleman right up
in Billboard about that record? Yeah, it's again because the
late eighties and just the overall disdain of hip hop
with music critics really not treating it as for art.
For him, I'll say that Nelson George and Bill Coleman

(02:00:12):
at at Billboard wrote to like major like these three
paragraph love letters about the record, which I felt was
a game changer, at least for the At the time,
I was working at a record store. So even like
rock critics were like which one, I was working at

(02:00:34):
Sam Goodies and in Philly, Uh, shout out to Sam
Goodies on nut. They fired me afterward, but you know,
and then they're putting up the display. Suddenly it's like, okay,
we're hearing buzzz about this. They read Bill Coleman's article
and suddenly like the main walls having a dayl out

(02:00:56):
display all of a sudden, like I see the effects
of it to you. I mean, so this wasn't a
thing like a Mastermind meeting. I don't know, maybe in
my head I'm just having a Uh.

Speaker 8 (02:01:10):
There were a lot of meetings at Tommy Boy where
we talked about how can we penetrate you know, culture
with this, in the media with this, and Monica had
a great relationship with Bill Coleman and you know, and
most of the media it wasn't just that. Also it
was the Village Voice, because the Village Voice reviewer was

(02:01:33):
the you know, grand dame, the main guy who everybody
else followed, and when he wrote it up, everybody he
was the guy that wrote up Also Africa Bambada, and
everybody wrote out to what's the guy's name.

Speaker 1 (02:01:49):
Oh, Robert Chris Gal.

Speaker 8 (02:01:52):
Yeah, Chris Chris was you know, he still is, you know,
but in the era of rock journalism, he was one
of three guys, maybe the number one guy. He was
so important. Whatever he said everyone had to take seriously.
So he wrote wrote it up positively, and he had
written up and bought it positively, so he was open
to what we're doing because he knew we had interesting

(02:02:15):
stuff and he was interested in that, in that kind
of thing. So it was the combination of all of that.
I don't really think that many people read Billboard, you know,
outside of culture, but it was mainstream. New York Times
gave it an amazing review. It got crazy reviews from
everybody is you know, So press was one of the things.
But before that, we had already put out Potholes in

(02:02:35):
My Lawn as a video, which, by the way, the
record wasn't successful.

Speaker 1 (02:02:41):
The Potholes was, but that video was crazy.

Speaker 5 (02:02:43):
It was crazy, and that was my first exposure to Dayla.

Speaker 8 (02:02:47):
With the motorized skateboards and all that stuff. It was
a new concept at the time. Yeah, and we shot
that with the Super eight or something like that eight
millimeter video camera because you know, we didn't have We
weren't making videos yet. It was till early days and
no one was really getting play yet on videos. Also,
I think MTV might have embraced Dyala Soul early and

(02:03:10):
they weren't embracing that much black music at the time.

Speaker 1 (02:03:12):
But d TV Wraps was out, so by the time
it was kicking in.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
The one discussions to do that. To appeal Dayla to
white audience never never can And I say that only
coming from a place for me.

Speaker 1 (02:03:25):
The early.

Speaker 2 (02:03:28):
Hip hop groups that appeal to white audiences were Dayla, Tribe,
clal Quests, and a few years later was the Roots,
Like those were the We never actually talked about that.
I mean, I just I just wonder about because because
that was a lot of a lot when I first
started getting into tip hop, the white kids were talking
about Dayla, soho on try calal Quest. I feel like
those somebody somebody somewhere said something or I don't know
how that, How did that happen?

Speaker 8 (02:03:48):
That's why I so penetrating into white media is what
did that? So we were trying to get on MTV
because we wanted as much exposure as possible, but we
didn't label it white exposure. That's what you're saying, we
don't want we don't. Like I said when I went
into the Tea connection, that's just not the way we
think about it. How much exposure can we get wherever
it is, if it's white or black. I don't really

(02:04:10):
give a shit if it's Latin or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:04:12):
And I'm not trying to label it. What I'm saying
is how did it happen? Because that was the college
and that's that's what I'm interested in. I don't care
what you call it. I just I just think that
to me that that that was a.

Speaker 8 (02:04:22):
So we did a lot of things that we did.
We had a we had a show at the Ukrainian
National Home that was the first promo show to introduce them,
and we invited the press to that show and they
did a thing live there where they did the Bob
Dylan thing where they held up the cards, the cards
and dropping the cards. So that made a connection to
people that this wasn't the an ordinary rap group that

(02:04:43):
they're thinking about things that maybe are you know, at
a different level than other rappers are thinking about things.
And you know, but we didn't penetrate radio. We had
no luck at radio and till Me myself and I
so and it was it was that song that really
made them, that took them over the hump. We were
getting pressed, and we were getting some interest and people

(02:05:05):
were finding out about it, but we didn't have a
record that was really connecting until Me, myself and I
came out.

Speaker 1 (02:05:10):
Did you know, was it when you heard it or
was it like, Okay, of these twenty four songs you
gave me, this song number eighteen is the one I
could probably work well.

Speaker 8 (02:05:20):
So we have to talk about Prince Paul. And this
is because Prince Paul produced the record, and Prince Paul
was responsible for many of the samples on the album,
and Prince Paul's style is obscure samples and it was
I used to have fights about that as much with
Prince Paul as it is with the rest of the group,
because the cost of a sample is almost the same

(02:05:41):
whether you sample something that's unknown or something that people
would know. And what we're always looking for, especially because
I know I have to bring the records to radio myself.
When I bring the records to radio, if there's this
familiar bridge, something that can take people from the unfamiliar
to the familiar, we can speed up the number of
listens it takes to make an unfamiliar record familiar. This

(02:06:04):
is like behavioral science, I suppose you know. But so
if you sample knee Deep and people have already played
Knee Deep, you know, one spin and people will go,
I know that sounds familiar. I get it. That's the
spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of intellectual lyrics
go down. So if we're trying to do something that's set,

(02:06:27):
that's really forward sampling and really forward lyrically, at the
same time, we could be just it's the tree falling
in the woods and no one hears it. You know,
we need people, we need to get exposure. So we
needed something to get people over with that. And there
was a little bit of debate because the group doesn't
really like me. It's myself and it's not their favorite song.

(02:06:47):
I've seen them say we hate the song, we hate
the song, we hate the song, while they're singing to.

Speaker 1 (02:06:51):
Song, here's our hit.

Speaker 8 (02:06:53):
We hate the song, but it you know, and you
know you could talk to Mason, you know about it.
He was a proponent because he's a DJ's a proponent
because he knows what that means for the dance. For
he claims that he pushed the group to make that happen,
or allow that happen, or to even use that and
let it beyond the record. But to me, that was
the semil record. And you know, you talked about led

(02:07:17):
Zeppelin before. If it wasn't for a Whole Lot of Love,
we wouldn't know about Zeppelin. A whole Lot of Love
crossed over and it was a giant hit across many formats.
You know, you need a record that takes takes an
artist beyond and then they have the poetic license to
do whatever the hell they want to do. And so
that got day Less sold the right to do anything
that they wanted to do. And to this day they're

(02:07:39):
doing everything that they want to do the way they
want to do it. They don't always sell a lot
of records, but or generate you know, an enormous amount
of excitement, but at least they're doing what they want
to do, which most artists don't get to do.

Speaker 10 (02:07:52):
What is it that's keeping daylight off the streamer services?

Speaker 8 (02:07:56):
I mean the Tommy Boy because Warner Brothers controls those masters,
and those masters are no they have samples on them
that they they don't have the contracts or something like that,
and they haven't recleared them or they're not comfortable that
they're covered. But it's you know, the same people that
clear those samples, cleared Naughty by Nature, House of Pain,

(02:08:19):
and Digital Underground samples, so and all those are available.
So I don't understand why what the reason is, but
I'm in there.

Speaker 1 (02:08:27):
You're not personally, you're not responsible, you're not holding it hostage.

Speaker 8 (02:08:31):
I haven't owned the old Timmy Boy catalog since two
thousand and two when Warner bought it. I'm trying to
buy it back right now. Hopefully by the second half
of this year, I'll have it back. And that's my
first order of business, Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (02:08:42):
When all is said and done, this is what three
Feet High and Rising has at least achieved, which is
every sample on that record has made music experts out

(02:09:04):
of anyone who was between the ages of twelve and
twenty two at the time of that album came out.
Now I'm searching for it. I mean, did I really
care about Houses of the Holy by led Zeppelin and
my sister's recollection? Second I heard that break, I was like,
oh shit, that's a day long soul. Now I'm a

(02:09:25):
led Zeppelin expert. I'm going through their whole catalog. Tore
recontextualized all the rock stuff right before Can You Keep
a Secret? Like all those things, it's packed. It's an
education pig. So at no point was it ever told
during the negotiations or whatever, like lawyers are talking to

(02:09:46):
each other. At no point was it ever explained to
the Turtles but to flowin Eddie that hey, guys, this
is actually a great thing for you because now your
music is getting reintroduced to a whole new audience. Was
it just like fuck you pay me? Or are you
really even dealing with Floe and Eddie? Is it their lawyers?

Speaker 8 (02:10:06):
Their lawyers? But evidently I found out what happened is
that one of the daughters heard the record until dad,
have you heard this? Now you have to understand the
song is called You Showed Me by the Turtles, and
I was a Turtles fan. I bought Happy Together when
that came out, and I you know, I mean, I
liked it. I liked the Frank Zappa version better. But

(02:10:27):
the thing I really thought was interesting about it is
that Prince Paul slowed down the record from forty five
to thirty three and used it at thirty three. So
he used a very tiny amount and an interstitial piece,
So he figured, why should I even clear this? Nobody's
even gonna notice, but they noticed, you know. That's the problem,
even if you use a little bit and they notice.

(02:10:49):
You know. But there are people who have won cases
in the last two years about deminimus uses, and probably
today that case they wouldn't If somebody had wanted to
take that case and appeal it, they probably wouldn't win it,
depending on who the judge would be, because there have
been a few that for something that small and that
the minimus what would not be would you know, would

(02:11:13):
not be recognized.

Speaker 1 (02:11:14):
Because it's it's not even that loop, isn't even the
sample that loop is. Actually you did a thing.

Speaker 8 (02:11:24):
I'm looking at an instagram that you you posted last
September saying, this is what's beautiful about hip hop, and
this is what I wish publishers and record labels realize.
This is this is you quest love by making unattainable
and only an option for the rich.

Speaker 1 (02:11:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:11:40):
But but what these what these greedy lawyers uh and
corporate leeches don't comprehend, is that sampling is an education
and it gives back. And you said, driving home from
Brooklyn Bowl and I hear on the radio a song
that sounds like a familiar sample, I just am it
and I copped the original. Actually the entire album evidently

(02:12:03):
was a Jazz Crusaders record, right. Yeah, I get enlightened
with more great music, and the labels get another investment
in its product for me forty years after its release.
This is when the music is beautiful. It isn't beautiful
when you don't reinvest in your crops for real label
and publishing house presidents of you meet hip hop halfway,
and I'll do and it'll do some good. I love

(02:12:23):
to have that conversation because I'm deep in the middle
of that and I've been trying to reach you about that.
So I'll do it on the air.

Speaker 1 (02:12:30):
Let's do it. Yeah, I mean, I know for a
fact that I've purchased at least I mean, I'm now
a guy that collects covers of songs. I know I
have at least ten to fifteen copies of you showed
me done by other people. You know, so they've actually
gotten the return off of that use in other ways,

(02:12:53):
but not really realizing the ripple effects of it. But
I just feel as though because it's such an it's
such a litigious atmosphere now and only the rich will
be able to truly benefit from sampling that it's it's

(02:13:13):
it's literally killing the music game right now. So thank
you thanks for the setup.

Speaker 8 (02:13:18):
So besides still running Tommy Boy and still signing hip
hop groups today and artists, I am also involved with
a new startup business from Sweden called Buzz that's called
track lib, and track lib is a company that's designed
to make sampling fast, easy and affordable. We're going to
all of the labels and publishers and getting all of

(02:13:42):
the rights for masters, especially the older stuff, on a
pre cleared basis, so people can download and sample a
record for one hundred dollars, five hundred or twenty five
hundred dollars in five minutes online without you.

Speaker 1 (02:13:57):
Okay, can I believe this song real quick? This is
one of my favorite all set. That's all. I just
wanted to play the air horn for that might get
them a.

Speaker 8 (02:14:10):
Towel, so you know. And we're deep into it. We're
very close with all three majors. We got twenty two
label signed, we signed VP Records, Regae labels, we're putting,
we're loading masters up now. It's in beta, private beta
until October. It's going to be a revolution because for
two dollars, you can download a wave file, drop it

(02:14:30):
into a new mix. When you're ready to do it,
you can you go back online. You can get a
license in five minutes or three minutes online for as
little as fifty dollars or one hundred dollars. And you
have to agree to give up x percent of the
derivative work on the publishing and the master's side, either
ten percent, twenty five or fifty percent, depending how much
of the original, how much you master you use. If

(02:14:52):
it's over fifteen seconds, it's fifty percent. If it's under
it's if it's under two sets, if it's two or less,
it's ten percent. It's up to fifteen seconds, it's twenty
five percent. That's it, so people can start sampling again
and they'll be able to open up.

Speaker 1 (02:15:07):
We're I've been dreaming of this moment.

Speaker 8 (02:15:11):
That's why I've been trying to reach to reach go
on your radio show.

Speaker 1 (02:15:15):
To talk to you. Someone sees it, So listen.

Speaker 8 (02:15:20):
Let me tell you who's The creative Advisory board already
includes Prince Paul Large, Professor, Pete Rock, Peanut butter Wolf.
You know, I wanted to talk to you about joining
it too, because you're the perfect eye. You're already outspoken.

Speaker 1 (02:15:35):
I'm there. Wow, this is the greatest news. What's what's
the name of.

Speaker 8 (02:15:38):
The track lib like track Liberation? Thank you?

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
Where was this in two thousand and three? Wow?

Speaker 8 (02:15:43):
Well, and I talked to these labels, you know, when
I talked to Aaron Fuchs or I talked to armand Balading,
who controls the Old Judge's Parliament, And you know they're
telling me. You know, arm ensued four hundred and seventy
seven people for foot sample infringements and at the end
of all of it break even. He didn't make any

(02:16:04):
money from it, So if it had gone through track Live,
he'd have made a ton of money. Because it wouldn't
cost anything, and nobody would need a lawyer to clear
a sample again or sample, and a replay even costs
thousands of dollars, So to use the original it's cheaper
now than to even do a replay, except that you
have to give up part of the deriver of work.
But I think that's a fair thing, and I'm telling

(02:16:25):
all the rights holders you'll make more money because the
only person who can afford to clear samples now is
Kanye and maybe eight other people. There's like literally ten
people who can afford fifty thousand dollars per track to
clear a sample.

Speaker 1 (02:16:38):
Now, I'm glad you see it the way that I
meant it, like it came from a heartfelt place. One
of the aforementioned executives that you talked about actually tried
to call my boss's boss's boss at my current job

(02:17:01):
to get me dealt with because he felt as though
I was trying to, first of all, be anti Semitic
and disrespectful to his way of practice, which was never
the case whatsoever. But this is a guy that, as

(02:17:21):
far as I know, has made a living suing rappers,
exactly rappers just for b boxing, just for using even
half of his even a cake or a snare of
his work. I mean, I understand it's a business, but

(02:17:43):
you know, George Clinton once explained, he's like, yo, the
reason why it wasn't by design that you know, I'm
part of the West Coast g funk fabric. He's like,
I came in cheap. He's like, right, I came in
so cheap that I made you want to come back
from more. And my prices were fair, and thus people

(02:18:03):
always came back to me. And I just never understood, how,
you know, in any type of music. I doubt that
any no type of music, I mean even something as uh,
let's let's pick fleet You told me, Steve that either
you or Captain Kirk told me that Fleetwood Mac's uh dreams.

(02:18:29):
If you look at the original reel on uh of
of of of of the real the track listing, it's
still called spinners. I'll be around sound alike, you know
what I mean? Wow? So it's like no, but that's wow.
It is a sound like yeah, exactly. So there's no

(02:18:50):
song that's created that doesn't start at least with playing
another song and figuring out, okay, now, what's my version
of this? If I just take the Rubik's Q but
the fabric and mix it up. But I feel as
though the music business, which is catalogs, are suffering right
now because no one's going back to those catalogs and

(02:19:11):
using them unless it's being marketing.

Speaker 8 (02:19:13):
That's my argument. When I'm talking to all of them,
I said, you've got hundreds of thousands of tracks, and
in the case of the majors and even indies, tens
of thousands of tracks that you don't get sync deals for,
you don't get licenses for, nobody knows about, and they
sit there collecting dust. That's the stuff we want. We
want create diggers to be digital and find stuff fast

(02:19:35):
and use it often so that you can have a hit.
And I got the list of the one hundred most
sampled records of all time.

Speaker 1 (02:19:41):
Here hit me.

Speaker 8 (02:19:42):
The first is the B side of a record by
the Winstons. It's called Ammon Brother, you know, and that's
the most sampled record of all time. The second one
is Cheanze labat by B side. The third one is
Lynn Collins. Think which is it takes two? Right?

Speaker 1 (02:19:56):
Wait?

Speaker 8 (02:19:57):
What'll second B side change? Labat?

Speaker 1 (02:20:00):
Oh Fresh of course?

Speaker 8 (02:20:02):
Right? James Brown, Funky drummer. And by the way, the
James Brown catalog is already in for track lib. The
guy who controls the estate wants it to be in Yeah,
he does, and universal and I warn a chapel who
controls the publishing are you know, are happy to make
it available because the artist wants it. Some of the times,

(02:20:22):
the problem is that the artist wants to approve each
and every sample, and that won't work in track lib
because everything has to be preapproved.

Speaker 1 (02:20:28):
Sorry, Bob James.

Speaker 8 (02:20:30):
Yeah, when you're shopping, you want to be able to
know what something's going to cost before you buy it.
People who sample have no idea what it's going to
be cost or even if they have permission to you.
So I'm telling people that ninety eight percent of the
sampling that happens now is unauthorized or replaced. So you're
losing all the money. And everyone's telling me, hey, our

(02:20:51):
sampling business has gotten way down. Duh. You know at
some point, you know there's five people left that can
afford the sample. You got it exactly right. Dougie Fry
is number five, Lotty Dottie, James Brown, James Brown with
funky presidents yep. Then public Enemy bring the noise, which
got to have samples on it already too. So the

(02:21:12):
other thing with track lip is we can't put samples.
We can't sample a sample. So what we need to
do is get stems of the acappellas for the hip
hop stuff, so people could sample the wrap stuff without
resampling the samples. You got to go back to the
original sample to get the samp. But we can direct
people then honey drippers and Pizza the President.

Speaker 1 (02:21:32):
I was going to say, Pizza President. I thought that
been number one. Well that's the one.

Speaker 8 (02:21:38):
Pizza the President is probably going to go to number one,
considering the President today.

Speaker 1 (02:21:48):
So here here's a question for you.

Speaker 5 (02:21:49):
Let's say I buy a track off of the service,
but it sounds too clean, you know. Let's say I
have a vinyl copy that sounds dirty and I want
the dusty and all that, you know, I want all
that that that sonic character in the sample. Am I
still allowed to buy the track online and still use because.

Speaker 8 (02:22:07):
The one that you're gonna get especially fingerprinted and watermarked,
and you can always add vinyl crushy sounds as an effect,
if that's what I mean. I remember buying Dala Soul
a record cleaner so that they could clean the records
for the samples, but they never wanted to do anyway.
They were also according to a dot which was another thing.

Speaker 1 (02:22:28):
Where do we go to get it? What's the site?

Speaker 8 (02:22:31):
Tracklib dot com?

Speaker 1 (02:22:32):
Tracklib dot com?

Speaker 10 (02:22:32):
Okay, right, I think we're going I forget the show. Wait,
we still got lots even we got a lot to cover.

Speaker 8 (02:22:43):
And number nine was Melvin Bliss synthetic substitution. And the
number ten was run DMC. Here we go Live at
the Funhouse.

Speaker 1 (02:22:51):
Ah yeah, oh damn, I can't tell you.

Speaker 8 (02:22:54):
Another one I thought was really interesting. Number eleven was
Mountain Long Red.

Speaker 1 (02:22:58):
Oh yeah, of course I love that. That was a
coup I used to go see play when I was
a kid. Yes, absolutely, that makes sense. I never would
have thought, Wait, you have your top one hundred?

Speaker 8 (02:23:07):
Ye?

Speaker 1 (02:23:08):
Can I hear the bottom ten? Can I hear ninety
to one.

Speaker 8 (02:23:13):
Ninety? Led Zeppelin? When the levy breaks? Von Mason bounced
for Rock Skate Roll, Herman Kelly and Life dance to
the Drummers beat, which I can't believe is that low
knee deep Funkadelic. We just talked about Detroit Emeralds you're
getting a little too smart, Rob Bass. It takes two

(02:23:33):
already a Linn Collin sample, so it must be a
part that's hit. It is often used Blowfly Sysame Street,
that's funny. The Brothers j ain't we funking now?

Speaker 1 (02:23:48):
It was.

Speaker 10 (02:23:50):
Okay, okay with that, Yeah, Curtis blow Tough, uh Dja
Trace and Pete Parson, Sniper and Dyke.

Speaker 8 (02:24:00):
But and the Blazer's lot of woman be a woman
that I let a man be a man, which is
we used it with sets to sign it.

Speaker 1 (02:24:07):
Yeah. I was about to say that the Sally thing
that's number one hundred, that's I think, well, okay, at
least in the especially in the case of when the
levee breaks. Yeah, a lot of people just gunsy about
using certain publishers because they know that they're going to
come for the loot. Yeah, like a lot of that stuff.

(02:24:27):
I mean, there's no reason why in Peace to President
is the number one sampled number eight, But there's no
reason why it should not be the number one because
that's the well.

Speaker 8 (02:24:40):
Yeah, and when it gets to be part of Track Live,
it'll go to number one.

Speaker 1 (02:24:43):
Then oh my god, what happens?

Speaker 7 (02:24:45):
You know?

Speaker 8 (02:24:45):
The thing is everybody uses it. So what we really
want to encourage is great, we want to have as
much of this stuff as we can get, but we
want to drive you know, if we can't get Dyke
in the Blazers, what sounds like that, So we want
to direct people to. If we can't get it, we'll
still have an there and direct people to something that's
close enough that people could still use affordably, because we

(02:25:05):
don't want people to go away or cheat because they
can't use exactly that, especially if they're using this as
a musical creation tool, which track Club will become. Eventually,
they'll be built into all the digital audio workstations. It's
gonna be in logic, it's gonna be in the fruity loops.

Speaker 5 (02:25:19):
And wouldn't it be cool if questlov had you know,
some custom drum breaks available on track lad for sale.

Speaker 1 (02:25:27):
You know what what you don't know is happening right
now is like I'm doing my own I'm doing my
own homemade version of that now because as we speak,
my phone is probably buzzing to death. Ever since late January,
I've gathered the entire gods of hip hop beat making,

(02:25:49):
from Primo to Pete Rock to Lars Professor to not
to just Blaze the Swiss Beats, to Kareem Riggins to
DJ Harrison. Those guys are like He's blowing their minds
right now as we speak on this phone, Like I
literally in ninth wonder like I've I have on my
text chain thirty one beat makers and I've been giving

(02:26:13):
them a break beat a day. But as of now,
of March first, they've done turned it into like I'm
still giving them a break beat a day, but now
they're just on some next shit. They are now making
records together, they're collect they're producing Conway's record like they're

(02:26:35):
so something's happening. Even right now as we speak, like
my battery is probably going low because now not Pete
Rocket Notts are having a isolated baseline contest. It's like
name literally like that's going on right now. I know
there has to be at least three to four acts
that you almost had that you didn't get, Like, are

(02:26:57):
there any that comes to mind, like I almost signed them,
or we almost had.

Speaker 8 (02:27:00):
Them, or I dropped them before they got big? About that?

Speaker 1 (02:27:03):
Forgive Prince Rocky.

Speaker 10 (02:27:07):
You're talking about Yeah, I know you guys are geniuses here.
You gotta realize that there's a lot of people listening.
If you listen to that beat, that is classic rizz joint.

Speaker 1 (02:27:18):
I mean it's weird though. It's like based off a
George Michael hook. I got to Ladies, Wait that wasn't that?
Was that? On Faith? It's the song is based on
a George Michael and Jody Wattley songs on the Jody
Watley album. Oh okay, the first or the second one?

(02:27:40):
Was the first one? Okay? Well, I knew it was.

Speaker 8 (02:27:44):
You guys are scary man, you know everything.

Speaker 1 (02:27:47):
It's literally a collective of of music nerds right here.
So so, so who did you Who was a close
call for the label besides the Roots New Addition? Yeah,

(02:28:08):
I was going to say, you had Arthur Baker, Like
why not?

Speaker 8 (02:28:11):
So no, we had the Johnson Crew. So Michael Johnson's
brother is Maurice Starr. Maurice Star produced New Addition. They
brought it to me a Candy Girl right. And this
was right after I got the letter from kraft Work
and I was shell shocked and I listened to it.
I go, well, if Kraftwork has a problem with Planet

(02:28:31):
Rocky Jack, we got a big problem with the Jackson
five on this and they're ten times more powerful. What
will I do? So I passed, And that was one
of the dumb dist threads. Definitely, never act out of fear.
Always just do it and figure the shit out later,
you know, go for it, you know. And then the
other one is there was there were a couple of

(02:28:51):
them that I came close to getting, but I can
get I wanted. I really wanted Dougie Fresh. I never
got that.

Speaker 1 (02:28:59):
Lottie Dotty. Yeah. Wow, that was when it was One Records.
Well it was Dana's last Fantasy.

Speaker 8 (02:29:08):
Yeah. No, actually it got sold to Fantasy. Later it
was Donya. I don't think it was Fantasy. Originally it
was Donya as an independent label out of the Bay Area,
and then I think it went into Fantasy.

Speaker 1 (02:29:20):
So's an odd choice.

Speaker 8 (02:29:21):
I know, it's really weird.

Speaker 1 (02:29:23):
You pursued him and he was like, nope, I'm going on.

Speaker 8 (02:29:25):
He performed at Tommy Boy offices. He came to our
offices up on ninety second Street, and we used to
do this Wednesday night thing where groups could come up
and audition and do stuff. You know. We did it,
didn't do it for very long, but one of the
people who came by, and I remember him beatboxing in
the office. Was was him, and there were a few others,
you know. I sometimes I don't always know about him

(02:29:46):
because especially after nineteen ninety when the company started to
have a lot of employees and got really big, sometimes
people come in or different A and our guys had
stuff Like I just was talking to Lord Jamar the
other day, was by the office and he said brand
Nubian was supposed to be on Tommy Boy, but Dante
was the A and R guy, Dante the scrub, and he.

Speaker 1 (02:30:08):
He was our second He went to a lecture. He
was our second guest on the show. Oh yeah, so yeah,
I mean, where was your relationship with Dante?

Speaker 8 (02:30:17):
He was then one of the A and R guys.
He's the one who brought in Queen Land TeaF so
we're talking about Queen the t for that, that's the expression.
So he's the A and OUR guy, the one an
R guy and Tommy Boy who brought in the most
stuff we got. We had a lot of a lot
of A and R guys, dozens. He's the only one
I can remember as actually having impact in bringing in
artists that actually made money.

Speaker 1 (02:30:36):
So did you trust this year? Yeah, and I mean
I know that with A and RS they have to
watch the budget make sure that that doesn't go over
any of those things. Like was he like your trustworthy,
your best student, or however you want to he was.

Speaker 8 (02:30:55):
He was his own best student. You know, he knew
what he wanted. He wasn't really interested. You know, he
has his own way of seeing things, at least at
that time. He's let's call it impetuous.

Speaker 1 (02:31:04):
But at the time, did you know that he was
bringing you history?

Speaker 8 (02:31:08):
Yeah? He did with I mean he was he was
our trusted A and our guy. So yeah, he brought
some stuff in, so that was great. He brought in
a couple of cool, really great things. And I can
tell you I appreciate him more ten years later, after
I went through twelve other A R people who didn't
ever bring anything I could really think. You know, what
he did was pretty great, you know, but you know,

(02:31:30):
he was short tempered and impatient about stuff. He also
didn't always want to hear the other side of you know,
the corporate shit we have to deal with, you know,
his corporations to get things through and to the cost
and making things happen. So we could always do everything,
but you know, and they're all also there are other elements.
And he also wasn't a guy who liked to bring

(02:31:50):
the record to radio and get exposure for artists. And
so when whenever we looked at artists, we looked at
their unique appeal and then we look at what what
is their route to exposure for them? How can we
get exposure? I mean we signed artists that had like
Dala Soul. There was no route to exposure when we
signed Daala. So but sometimes you just do things because

(02:32:12):
you love it. If Dala Soul was half a million
dollars to sign, we wouldn't have signed Daya so we
couldn't have.

Speaker 1 (02:32:19):
I was gonna say, uh, Poss told me that the
recording budget for three feet High it was like twenty
eight thousand dollars exactly. Wow, how's that? How's that even
able to have?

Speaker 8 (02:32:32):
I think we might have cleared the samples on that
budget too in those days.

Speaker 1 (02:32:36):
That tells you how bad it is today. No, no,
but I'm just saying just in comparison. You know, I'm
feeling like my early years was like nightmares.

Speaker 8 (02:32:46):
But if I if you know, when you're an independent
label I always think about, you know, the days of
Morris Leeve. We were talking about before seven inches is
all that's sold in seven inches label sold seven inches
to stores for twenty nine cents, and they cost twelve
sense to make, so the margins were really tiny. So
a gold record might have meant, you know, one hundred
thousand dollars in those days. You know, in this era

(02:33:08):
we were selling twelve inches, and twelve inches at four
ninety eight was how we made most of our money.
The album sales were ancillary. Most of our artists, we
did deals for twelve inches and an option for an
album that we would pick up later when we had
to make we I think with Dala we made a
firm option for an album. If we didn't, we picked
it up right away, even before we released Me Myself

(02:33:29):
and I, because we knew what it was. But the
deal was economical enough that we could justify it taking
a risk. And so what you said about sampling is
also true to artists. An artist that's saying something very
different than what everyone else is saying right now, or
has a sound that's unique and doesn't sound like what's
out there, shouldn't expect to get the kind of deal

(02:33:51):
that somebody that sounds like Rihanna is going to get
because people who think it's the next rounda will pay rion,
you know, next round of money. People who are saying, look,
this is a fifty to one shot, but I love it.
That music should still come out. We need more crazy
records coming out that break expectations and that we don't
have to have sales expectations. When an artist signs for

(02:34:13):
half a million dollars or even for two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars are way high. And if you don't
if the first single isn't a hit, you're dropped. I mean,
you heard all the Interscope stories about these artists. They
were signing for a million dollars and dropped before the
album came out the first single didn't hit. It's too expensive.
There's taking gigantic advantages. Advances is not really the best

(02:34:36):
advantage of the artist. The artists really should say, how
do I get a bigger piece in the back end
than a giant piece in the front end. But managers
commission that piece, lawyers commission that piece, so everyone gets
bad advice. Artists that are super creative hold on to
as much of the equity as you can hold on
to it and get paid a bigger piece and take

(02:34:58):
a smaller advance and always get more times at bat
like more times it.

Speaker 10 (02:35:01):
Yeah, it's like, yo, if my first one don't pop,
at least let me get exactly.

Speaker 8 (02:35:06):
My thing is, what if it's the third swing or
the fourth swing. All those artists that signed to the majors,
they don't get a third swing. It's strike two, you're out,
Strike one, you're out. You know what if their best
record is on the second album, You're not getting to
the second album. It's just not going to happen in
this economics. So you either let your lawyers and managers

(02:35:27):
from the old days still convince you got to get
the biggest upfront deal because it's good for them, for
the biggest you know, from the biggest labels, or you
signed to an indie or put your record out yourself
on tune core. But if you know, you still need
a team that's got to help compliment and build a
marketing plan and execute and try to get you exposure
and help you with a reality check and you know,

(02:35:50):
guide you through the process. You know, I don't know,
you know, it just seems to me like that. There's
I think that in this day and age, artists should
be smarter. They shouldn't be taking traditional record deals anymore.

Speaker 10 (02:36:03):
You said, you have a meet coming up out there,
you have a meeting with Naughty by Nature and there's
a story about trech and some wildlife in the offices.

Speaker 1 (02:36:19):
Was that real?

Speaker 8 (02:36:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:36:20):
Okay, that was real?

Speaker 8 (02:36:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:36:23):
What happened?

Speaker 8 (02:36:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:36:25):
How did what? What was that situation? And how did
that situation go?

Speaker 8 (02:36:28):
First, I want to say, now, Tommy Boy only ever
had to have guards or any kind of armed anything
in our office two days. In the history of the company,
we never had bulletproof glass. We never had beef with
artists or anything like that. But there was a time
when Trench wasn't in touch with KG and Vinnie or whatever,
and we were working trying to work something out where

(02:36:49):
they can do something on somebody else's record, and by
the way, it had already been worked out and with
everybody else, Buttretched didn't know, and he was pissed off.
So he came and he but he let some garter
snakes and mice from the pet store loose in the office.
And I found out later that were you in the
office with Now. A lawyer told him to do it.

(02:37:13):
Paul Marshall, who passed a few years ago, who was
actually the lawyer that represented the Beatles when they went
to VJ. I actually told him that they should do
it full Marshall told me this, which I found.

Speaker 1 (02:37:24):
I just want to read one an hour before when
he's at like pet Co. Yeah, are you looking at this?
A whole house pit something like that by the Snakeable.

Speaker 10 (02:37:41):
But now y'all are cool, now, y'all? Yeah, okay, cool, Now, okay,
you're trying to work with them.

Speaker 1 (02:37:47):
You know. The thing about Naughty is all right, so
we're There have been some times where we've done shows
with Naughty and between the audience reaction and just the
orange slaught of hit after hit after hit after hit
anthems like I mean, Naughty by Nature is catalog bar none.

(02:38:07):
I mean, I'm so At the time when I was
playing it, I was like, Wow, when they came out,
I didn't show my full appreciations as I should have.
But now in like, there should be no reason in
the world why they don't work until they're ninety. I mean,

(02:38:29):
not until they're they're they're long gone, Like these songs
still work and as long as Naughty is willing to
do it. I mean I almost feel as though, like
Naughty is probably the most credible pop hip hop act.

Speaker 10 (02:38:48):
I would say maybe either them what I'm with you
them and like Wu Tang because like the first Wu
Tang album, but I don't think.

Speaker 1 (02:38:57):
Wu Tang knew That's the thing. It's like, like Wu
Tang's first record is full of all these modern yeah,
like they're referencing Donnie Marie and Underdog and the Flintstones
and you know, a schoolhouse rock like real. I mean,
they're like day La Soul, but it's so grimy that
you forget that they're coming from that. But just in

(02:39:20):
terms of Naughty by Nature, it's like they're giving you
anthem after anthem after anthem. How come? And I'm asking
this kind of is two short questions. How why weren't
they marketed as like pop hitmakers? Well, no, no, no, I mean.

Speaker 8 (02:39:47):
Because that is death if we had done that, if
we had worked there, I mean, that is Flames the Machete.
I mean, they were pop back, but they had to
be disguised a little bit harder, you know, otherwise it
would have come off as whack.

Speaker 1 (02:40:07):
So you're saying that that's were they aware of it,
because yeah, I mean, hip Hop Array isn't a pop
song per se. I mean as a Curtis Mayfield breakbeat.
He's arguing with you kind.

Speaker 5 (02:40:22):
Of look at Cage's production though, because you always have
those nice little pretty keyboard lines, piano lines and stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:40:26):
So I mean, yeah, but so did Tribe and Slum Village.
But it's just mightn't have hooks. They didn't have hooks.

Speaker 8 (02:40:31):
That was an arena anthem. And you have to understand,
at the same time, Tommy Boy was putting out.

Speaker 1 (02:40:36):
Jack jams about Saya.

Speaker 8 (02:40:38):
And so we had a relationship with all of the
arenas in the country and all of their music directors,
so we could get when we whatever we put on
that record would be played in all the arenas. And
so when Hip Hop Array went on that record, it
got played in all of the arenas. So one of
the reasons that got big and it's still big now,
is because a lot of Tommy Boy acts became arena

(02:41:00):
anthems because we controlled jock jams. And you know, I think.

Speaker 1 (02:41:08):
Just discovering that right now, but I mean, I guess
House of Pain.

Speaker 8 (02:41:12):
Will fall into that too, because we didn't talk about
that which that album was the.

Speaker 5 (02:41:16):
You know, you didn't talk about my favorite, one of
my favorite hip hop groups of all time.

Speaker 1 (02:41:19):
Underground. Yeah, one question I had the Tommy Boy was
it a Tommy Boy Black Black label and Hilver label? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (02:41:26):
What was?

Speaker 1 (02:41:27):
What was that era?

Speaker 8 (02:41:28):
That was for the underground beats we had, We had
Silver and we had Black and Black was supposed to be,
you know, for a bunch of twelve inch singles where
we were prospecting for things but that we're going for
sort of an underground hip hop audience and trying to
find something that would be able to launch through DJ
specialty shows, you know, and college radio. That's what you know.

(02:41:50):
That was. That was that attempt. Nothing that actually really
can't ended up coming through, but we could sign. We
wanted to increase our bandwids so we could sign more music,
and so we did it that that way, and Silver
was disco, dance, orient and more stuff because you know,
Tommy Boy was always a DJ label, so we you know,
we while we were putting out all this hip hop,

(02:42:10):
we were also putting out EDM electronic music that's not
necessarily hip hop. We put out eight o eight State,
you know, Information Society, which you did mention before. But
then there's a whole bunch of things like we put
out Cold Cut and and LFO you know so, and
those were like the first electronica records in America we

(02:42:31):
put out. So it's not just in hip hop where
we pioneered. We pioneered in other genres as well.

Speaker 10 (02:42:36):
So what made the artists leave Tommy Boy? Because I'm
looking at all the people you name and like once
they left Tommy Boy, like that was kind of it
for them.

Speaker 8 (02:42:47):
Maybe that was their time. I guess, you know, everybody
thinks that if they're only on a label that spends
more money or that's more powerful, they should do better.

Speaker 1 (02:42:57):
But you did you ever have aspirations to turn Tommy
Boy into a major? Uh?

Speaker 8 (02:43:04):
Like I said?

Speaker 1 (02:43:05):
Or you always had an independent spirit.

Speaker 8 (02:43:07):
I like to be the innovator more than the you know,
the competitor. I like to you know, be the first
one in and try to do something nobody else didn't have.
People say wow, you know that, that's you know, a
turning point for me in my life. And people can
say Planet Rock was that for a lot of people
day all I was that for a lot of people.
You know, I'm sure there are a lot of women
who could say Latifa was that for even though her records,

(02:43:30):
you know, never went gold for us. You know, her
music video gold. The only gold record she had was
after she left, Like wow, ladies first all they were
claimed and you know, but you know, part of it

(02:43:51):
was females and hip hop. You know, females and hip
hop never sell as much as males and hip hop.

Speaker 1 (02:43:57):
That's the whole show.

Speaker 8 (02:44:01):
And I don't want to keep track. I know what
could happen, man, I got to get there.

Speaker 1 (02:44:08):
Well, thank you, Tom, I appreciate your wisdom. Just one
last question, where do you feel music, dance music, hip
hop culture, Like do you still feel that it's thriving,
has some life left as this.

Speaker 8 (02:44:23):
Which one dance music.

Speaker 1 (02:44:26):
Just in general?

Speaker 8 (02:44:27):
Like, well, when track Live is successful, it'll be a
whole renaissance because if you can unleash all of the
catalog in the world and let people access it, we're
going to see a musical renaissance like we never did before.
And I think if it can happen, well Trump is president,
so much the better because I think we're going to
have a lot of great music over the next four

(02:44:47):
years in.

Speaker 1 (02:44:49):
Your mouth to God's yours. Well, thank you very much,
Tom Silverman, I appreciate it. Man, I'm sorry after he
up the the the bomb about the sample clearance. Yeah,
that was I just absolutely lost the script to the
entire show. I have regrets. I don't have reflections. I

(02:45:10):
have regrets because I you know, there there were some
Digital Underground stories and man, damn, I didn't get to
ask about AI part one, two and three, and ye
did we get put three? We never well I wanted
to know what happened. But we can, you know, have

(02:45:32):
Prince Paul, we can have no but Prince Paul was
also working on part three. He was he was supposed
to yes the return. So uh, you know, I've learned
that I have to ask more concise questions on question.
You know it only took you twenty five episodes.

Speaker 10 (02:45:59):
Here, you know, yo what it is because this is
what I learned in this episode. Yeah, yeah, it's okay,
this is what it is. This is our dynamic, this
is what this is what we gotta be. Okay, I'm
the video, you're the pop up bubbles, Like this is
how we So it's like if we do it for

(02:46:19):
moving on, or you can meet a video and I.

Speaker 1 (02:46:21):
Can be whatever.

Speaker 10 (02:46:22):
But we have to have just like a continuous track
where it's just beats, just boom boom boom, boom boom,
and in those beats it's like hey, pop up, bubble
for like two minutes and then okay, back to the beat,
because like.

Speaker 1 (02:46:33):
We never even get to like I forgot, where do
we get lost? Where did I lose?

Speaker 7 (02:46:38):
I think we did good this time.

Speaker 10 (02:46:39):
I mean, whoa cool, But we didn't get to get
to like the meat like an audience.

Speaker 1 (02:46:45):
But the thing is, I don't think I also don't
think that Tom is full of the stories we really
wanted to, you know what I mean, like Latin quarter stories.
There was that time when you know they had a
machee at my neck.

Speaker 10 (02:47:00):
Well, I don't think you would have those stories. I think,
like with people like him, like what we have. I mean,
three hours sounds like a lot of time, but when
you're dealing with a motherfucker like that, it's really not.

Speaker 1 (02:47:11):
Get on Q tips. So give ourselves some credit. Yeah,
so it's like you kind of gotta I think, just
have him.

Speaker 10 (02:47:17):
If we just went just beat the beat to beat hell,
that's two hours easy, just right there if we just
want to see with me.

Speaker 1 (02:47:25):
The first the first hour goes by so slow, and
usually when it gets to like one hour fifty minutes.

Speaker 5 (02:47:32):
Yeah, yeah, this is your tweeting right now.

Speaker 1 (02:47:39):
I can see the tweets coming in. Yeah, listening to
like a fucking well, First of all, anyone is still
sticking with the show. They are die hard. Thank you,
Thank you. The best twelve of y'all. We can only
build up from there. Thanks mom. I still feel as though,
you know, there's there's major knowledge that we game from

(02:48:00):
the show. But I will admit that once he started
talking about the idea of sample clearances being a thing again,
that's amazing. I absolutely just threw the script out the show.

Speaker 5 (02:48:14):
I knew that was gonna happen to because we were
actually talking about that before before we started, and.

Speaker 1 (02:48:20):
I was like, when he's this, the show is over. Well,
ladies and gentlemen on behalf of I'm sorry, did you
learn anything.

Speaker 7 (02:48:33):
I'll just keep it short and simple. I was just
gonna say I appreciated what he said. He was an innovator,
not a competitor, you know what I mean? And I
just not for nothing. That's dope, and it's good to
know that you can. You know, fear is a powerful thing.

Speaker 10 (02:48:44):
And the fact that he was like, you know, the
common threat I kind of run through his career is
that he's like, I mean, he's essentially a filter. Like
he's a person that's saying, hey, like with the dance
the discold mag like this is what you need to
get on, you know what I'm saying, like kind of
being just the you know, just kind to be in
that conduit of like helping people sift through all the
garbage and saying, Yo, this is what the fuck y'all

(02:49:05):
need to be on. And uh, he's a filtering like
a facilitator. That's what I picked up from his career path.
Like even with them doing the track lip stuff, that
is something that I mean, it can make a lot
of money, but it is also something that again.

Speaker 1 (02:49:20):
It filters through all the bullshit.

Speaker 10 (02:49:22):
So if you already know there's no in hell I
can clear this sample, let me give you a list
of samples or library samples that you know you can clear.

Speaker 5 (02:49:30):
I'm just waiting to find out how the major labels
are going to screw it all up, because they always.

Speaker 1 (02:49:33):
Forge, always do.

Speaker 10 (02:49:36):
I'm saying, imagine, it's gotta be some kind of scale,
because I mean, you can't tell me that like they're
gonna charge Kanye the same thing is Rihanna Wright, right
right right, It's gotta be something.

Speaker 1 (02:49:44):
It'll be a jig. And I think, but I feel
as though if we just come up with and the
thing was he was doing percentages, if it's minimum usage,
because what what I was trying to explain was the
main loop of transmitting line from Mars is really the
hay Jude Wilson picket loop. That is just that's the

(02:50:11):
one second turtle thing. And so it's like, you know,
if there is a fair percentage thing going on, then
you know it's free for all. But you know, now
you deal with publishers that just say, you know, I
want seventy five percent in bet and if they use
the second one, I want seventy five and there's no
one hundred and fifty percent pie. You know, so it's

(02:50:34):
for me that is the best. I mean, even if
it doesn't come to fruition in my lifetime in a
way that's like fair and like quote back of the day,
I mean, just the fact that someone else is thinking
of it because I spend every waking moment wishing that

(02:50:56):
one of these publishing house people would just get on
they crack dealer ship. Yeah, because I know they're not
making money. They're just sitting on on publishing and not
making it work. So you know, let's let's keep keep
shout out the track. Hopefully they make it work.

Speaker 10 (02:51:12):
They need to get mad live and Mad live for
track live, like just that could be.

Speaker 1 (02:51:18):
A market for the mad Lib DJ Harrison Yes, my
man shout out to him, Richmond v A. So, but
I think what he's thinking about that kind of ship,
that's hot. I thought I needed.

Speaker 2 (02:51:30):
I thought it was interesting how he looked at the
artist as a whole. It was about marketing and promos
and whatever. It wasn't just about whether the music was good.
The music understand had to be good. And then his
ability to exploit everything about it was sort.

Speaker 1 (02:51:44):
Of amazing to me.

Speaker 2 (02:51:45):
I thought, I just I don't think like that at all,
you know.

Speaker 10 (02:51:47):
So, yeah, the way he thought about it as a
label guy, because that was something that I had argued,
you know, whereas like back in the day, it's like, okay, well,
what if we take a smaller percentage up front? To
a smaller advance to ensure that we can get more
on along. And like every manager, every attorney they're all
like they.

Speaker 1 (02:52:06):
Want to get as much you can up front because
that may be the only money you see. And it's like, well, well, ship,
if you take five hundred dollars, that it is gonna
be the only money you see. You know what I mean?
But I don't know. It was it was good to
hear him, hear the.

Speaker 2 (02:52:18):
Stickers and things like that, Like you see all those
stickers fucking everywhere, and they were all about it was
a visual thing as much as an audio thing, which I.

Speaker 1 (02:52:25):
Thought was very interesting. It's called branding, thank you.

Speaker 7 (02:52:30):
It's like a fifteen year old word branding.

Speaker 1 (02:52:32):
Yeah, it's branding. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:52:33):
They were more famous like they were was probably next
to Death Jam. They were like the only label I
can remember that I could I would buy based on
market on Tommy Boy if it was a Tommy Boy record, Like, okay.

Speaker 1 (02:52:46):
They could be official. That was the Cold Sign exactly.
This could be official. Uh Any thoughts, Bill, I.

Speaker 5 (02:52:53):
Mean, I kind of really want to piggyback off of
what everybody else has said about about tom being a
label guy. Excuse me, and thinking of the track, think
in the way that he thought of it. I mean,
I hate to say it, but it reminds me of
thoughts that I've had, you know, coming up. I mean
actually his whole interview, you know, just from the fact
that he was doing tip sheets and stuff like that
when he was younger. I mean, I was coming up
with making up charts of my own when I was

(02:53:14):
like ten, twelve, thirteen.

Speaker 1 (02:53:15):
I meant your own chart.

Speaker 5 (02:53:16):
Yeah, I was making up charts because no, I was like,
when Jet Magazine needs to come home, I read, I read,
I read back to the front. I read Jet magazine
back to front. I ever read Jet from front to back?

Speaker 1 (02:53:28):
I don't know, I always read it back to front.
Did from no, no, no, Did I take the Beauty
of the week, Beauty in the week in the back?
She was in the middle. She was in the middle.
She was like a Beauty of the week. I didn't
read it past that. He's like it was a society,
it was the same week. And than the quotes, the
celebrity quotes that.

Speaker 5 (02:53:48):
Yeah, but from like doing the tip sheets and and
just the way that he was, you know, pretty much
said that he's contrarian and it's always thinking about what's
missing and what's not there. It reminds me a lot
of myself paint with and makes me realize that I
just wasted thirty seven years of my life.

Speaker 1 (02:54:07):
Gentlemen, I'm paying Bill wasted, Boss Bill Franzigelow. Why are
you and Sugar Steve any words? Sugar Steve all the people?

Speaker 12 (02:54:17):
Any words he's supposed to ask me for you, Engineer.
That's it, Ladies and gentlemen, come back for next week's question,
Love So Free When I'll.

Speaker 1 (02:54:33):
Tell you what I learned last week Quest Love Supreme
is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced
by the team at Door. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,

(02:54:57):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.