What was it like back then.....
kenny
1,024 Posts
back in your school days in the 80s or early 90s back when you would run to the records stores after school so you could cop that new 12" with the remix that ain't on the album ?? i ask cuz i never went through that phase, obviously cuz i grew up in a totally different culturewho's got some stories to share ? funny stories ? memories of an old friend ? bumped into certain DJ that you looked up to ? parents got mad at you for buying more records and not doing your homework ?i could remember the first time i went to an actual "record store" being in Australia studying my degree, that was only 8-9 years ago. i remember i was looking for Defari's album on CD, but then i saw all these 12" singles so i spent the rest of the day going thru the A - D section and I didn't buy anything cuz i didn't have turntable at that time! but the guy that works there was mad cool and would hip me to all these other 12"s he just got in which were all the Spinna and Fondle Em stuff...he would keep asking me have I heard of this or such and such artist and I would have no idea what they were, damn i didn't even know how to use the turntable at the time! but he would let me go thru all the records and would show me how to use the turntable...that was my uni days basically lol!so yea, anyways...
Comments
p.s. happy new year!
yea we used to have Tower out here in Hong Kong too, shame that it shut down and HMV took over. that would have been before I went overseas, Tower had the best music selection I would see Finesse's "Return of the Funky Man" CD and not knowing what it was.
too late to realise now how much good music were actually around when i was the Chinese kid listening to cantonese-pop lol!
Throughout high school I would buy things on new release Tuesdays, either waking up early and going before school or going right after school.
I'm no longer rushing to the store on Tuesdays.
Nah mayne. I could get lots of hot new joints on 12" in Lakewood, WA hommie! LOL. Unless it was some real regional stuff on smaller independent labels, I could pretty much find everything I was looking for at Penny Lane Records.
its also interesting to know people used to rush to music stores cuz i honestly don't think people ever do that out here in asia, or at least out here in HK they never did anyway...
i suppose music was never really a big part of the culture here.
Girls never ran to the music store when Jacky Cheung or Leon Lai dropped a new CD? LOL!
Yeah, I can't even imagine how much insane stuff you could find on 45 back then, or all the insane private records to be had for cheap. I want a time machine.
That's fresh... I saw Donald G play a big party out here around '95...he dropped all kinds of crazy shit in a big room, afrofunk and disco joints in with the house...he was pretty off the hook. Plus at the end of the night I found 100 bucks on the floor!
He is a great DJ and a really nice guy. We used to wild out on KUPS radio in Tacoma, WA in the 80s. I bought my first drum machine from Donalad. The Korg DDD-1. Old School......
even though i've picked up/replaced those singles over the years, i really wish i appreciated vinyl back then....as for the 90's...i didn't really get back into vinyl until i started working at rasputin's music in the late 90's....old school records were available pretty cheap...i didn't see a surge in prices (well rasputin prices) unti like 2004-2005...seeing all the early 90's mid 90's 12" for like 8-10 bucks was a trip...cuz i was buyin that shit up for like 1.95 when i first started
In the early 90s, when I got into more obscure stuff, I could go to the record shows and hit the 45 box of every dealer and none of the good soul/funk would have been touched no matter how late in the day. All of the crusty beatles/rockabilly/doowop guys would sell any black music later than 63 for $2. I found tons of killer shit at almost every show. Mint copies of Ron Buford, Cookin' Bag, The Counts, The Intrepretations on jubilee, etc.
I was buying records way before I thought about DJing.
There were a couple of shops in Liverpool that I used to hang out in all day on a Saturday. One was called Cheverton, who had a downstairs section with a load of Jap-import heat like the Kazu Matsui Project, and a great 12" section where I first copped Paul Hardcastle's "Rainforest" on Bluebird and the like. This would be like 82 or 83, like Dee says, there wasn't a dedicated Rap or Hip-Hop section - it was all Soul or R&B
When Cheverton closed there was a Penny Lane Records in Liverpool too, who were OK, good for fusion and P-Funk, and Stax or Motown classics but poor Trechcoat Soul 12" selection - you had to hit HMV up for that.
Then it all went CD... I think I was big into Roy Ayers and Mtume at that point.
Weird ??? I was just about to mention Cheverton! It used to be on that little walk-through between Williamson Square and Whitechapel, on the way to the o.g. Probe shop on Button Street. Basically, this was the spot where I discovered rap beyond "Rapper's Delight". I remember buying Kurtis Blow???s debut album on import from there in about 1980 and, in the shout-outs, there was a mention for Grandmaster Flash. I thought this was such a cool name that, when I came across 12???s of ???Freedom??? and ???The Birthday Party??? in Cheverton a few months later (as well as that Great Rap Hits compilation), I bought them on spec. I figured that if they were anything like ???The Breaks???, they???d be great, and they were. What followed was a period of buying anything I could find on Sugarhill or Enjoy, anything with ???rap??? in the title, or anything which looked as if it might be a rap record. At one point, I was even taking trips down to London to visit Groove Records on Greek Street in Soho (back when Soho was still pretty gully) because I???d heard that it was the only place in London that sold rap singles at the time. I remember copping a bunch of stuff down there, including a copy of ???Rappin??? and Rockin??? The House??? by Funky 4 Plus One More (as I think they were still calling themselves then).
I remember my dad returning home from a prolonged business trip to Japan in like '82 and he brought home 2 Walkmans. One was only a radio and the other had both a radio and a cassette player. I was one the first kids in my neighborhood to have access to a Walkman...and once I bought a copy of Rick James' Street Songs, I was pretty much in my own world from then on.
Even before that though, it was all about boom boxes and the cassettes you'd play in them. I already had records before I ever touched a cassette, but the functionality and portability of cassettes was really where it was at back then for your average everyday music listener.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's fresh... I saw Donald G play a big party out here around '95...he dropped all kinds of crazy shit in a big room, afrofunk and disco joints in with the house...he was pretty off the hook. Plus at the end of the night I found 100 bucks on the floor!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I used to cop that next ish at Penny Lane too. I remeber sweating dude, week after week, to get me the Tim Dock "F*ck Compton & the AMG "B*tch Betta Have My Money" tape singles. I think Donald used to have a different name back then. He was called DJ Dominator[/b]. And he played at this club on the Ave in the U district where the new Tower is. He played hip-hop, hip-house(lol), disco, breaks, house ... pretty much everything... He was dddope..
For me, it was all about Paradise Music (big up Fayetteville, NC) after-school on Tuesday afternoons. As Dee Rock said, this was the era before there was a rap section for records. I was up at Paradise Music like clockwork to pick up the new releases. This is where I picked up the one and only Kaos LP, "Court's in Session." I also copped their "Kaos Era" single, which I first heard on the "Rap it Up" radio show. This is also the show on which I first heard "Plug Tunin'" and "Step Up Front." Like Harvey said, I was also big on cassettes, ridin' around pumpin' in dad's Nissan truck (then the '79 Pinto I bought). At Paradise, I also found my Bill Deal and the Rhondels joint with "Tuck's Theme" on it, and a bunch of other joints that I've sampled from over the years. I would also hit up Record Bar, Record Exchange, and Camelot Music for new 12"s. I was also DJin' house parties back then and I just started making beats on this:
I later got into sampling and bought a Cascio SK-1 then upgraded to a Cascio SK-5. I would speed up the records super fast with my hand so that I could catch enough of a sample (2-bar loops) to make beats. Around this time, I also bought Ultimate Breaks & Beats, Super Disco Breaks, and Drum Drops on a trip up to NYC, hanging out with Mister Cee at Music Factory. Eventually I copped the mighty Ensoniq ASR-10 which I roll with to this very day. The big thing was for my homies from NYC to bring down KYS-FM or WBLS mixtapes with the new exclusive shit and promos on 'em. This is around the time I heard shit like "My Mic is on Fire," "They Call Me Puma," and "Ego Trippin'". This was a great time because there was some much great hip-hop on the airwaves and on white-label 12"s like "Classic Concepts."
I was also diggin' real hard at "Muzik Hut" in the flea-market mall in Fayetteville, "Nice Price Music," "Reader's Corner," and that guy that sold LPs in Dorton Arena in Raleigh, and "The Record Hole" in Chapel Hill, NC. I also found some funky joints up in Greensboro hangin' out with Ski and Roland from Payroll Records. I miss these days!!!
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak