20 Years To The Day!
RAJ
tenacious local 7,783 Posts
On this day in 1999, I created an online community dedicated to the art of "crate digging" (unearthing under-appreciated lost vinyl gems). I had no idea the impact it would make and how many lives and careers it would affect. 20 years later, I would simply like to say thank you to all who has supported Soul Strut past and present. After much deliberation, I still plan to be involved with keeping the web site and archives afloat. Leave a comment with your fondest Soul Strut memory. Cheers!
Comments
Some of my favorite SS memories have been the heatrock auctions and nzshadows jizzmop stories from his days as a porn store clerk
It's really impossible to pick a fondest soulstrut memory - it was a daily barrage of hilarious, insightful banter. Revisiting epic threads still makes me laugh to this day (e.g. in a thread about Israel, "Rock[adelic], I get the feeling that if it were up to you, you would have simply nuked the whole Middle East just to be thorough about it."). Anyone who checks the Temple of the Dog thread and doesn't LOL is not a friend to me.
The two best collective moments on the site were (1) SecretChimp finding Mingering Mike (both at the flea market and later IRL); and (2) the Hurricane Katrina auctions. The latter raised over $30,000 to support New Orleans and the former is now in the Smithsonian. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/mingering-mike-30363
My memories of Soulstrut are not complete without the legacy of our best beloved strutters lost along the way, including these three passionate and authentic visionaries:
DJ Stef - RIP 2017 https://soundcloud.com/mike-manewitz/dj-stef-hip-hop-94-side-a
Breakself - RIP 2011 https://www.soulstrut.com/Mixes/aaron-anderon-on-jazzman-radio
Matthew Africa - RIP 2012 https://www.soulstrut.com/Mixes/matthew-africa-dj-b.-cause-soul-boulders
If you didn't have the chance to know them, I'm sorry for you, and sorry for us all that they are gone. Listen to the mixes linked above and join me in wishing they were still with us.
Huge thank you to Raj for the vision to put this site together and the fortitude to KEEP it together. The world has changed quickly over the past two decades. Genuine community endures. Soulstrut por vida.
This summarizes what I miss about the
currentold strut - poasters who aren't here anymore (so many people i appreciated to name) and the general stunts and saltiness.Have you started thinking about transition planning for your inevitable demise?
FB is a shitshow, a dumpster fire - with even less chance of finding anything meaningful than an actual dumpster fire.
Keep the fires burning and the tables turning. SS RHYDD OR DIE.
My memory number 1 was being the teenage little dude looking up "funk music" on altavista or some shit and discovering you could download mixes of music that wasn't on the radio... I wish I could remember more but the one that always sticks out to me is the "Rockin' With Seka" porn OST mix. I think that was a Raj mix maybe from before other DJs were posting any? '99?
Number 2 was realizing, later into my teens, that my favorite college radio DJ (I had since discovered non-top-40 radio), in fact several of my favorites, were all posting in the same place I'd just been visiting for the flamewars and/or small tastes of the boundless music knowledge I'd never fully possess. Like, Matthew Africa, Dollar Bin, etc. Oddly enough I did end up meeting both those guys in brief stints at their respective stations but I didn't geek out over having lurked the Strut. The mid 2000s were not a time for recognizing somebody from the internet and saying "I know you from the internet". I didn't really know him personally but I still miss Matthew - his show, his podcast with Serg.
But reading SS at this time was like inside baseball for me. This was a time when I was obsessively taping off the radio, not just when something good came on, but also making, basically, pause-button collages and mixes using live radio as the sample source. I would stay up late making these damn things and getting to know the schedules of the Bay Area stations. But it was still a time of absolute musical mystery for me. The main way I found new stuff to dig for was somebody would play a track on the radio, I'd miss the back announce and I'd never find it. Or I'd hear it and never be able to find the damn album.
So stuff like the original Salma Hayeking of Monty Stark was mindblowing to someone who'd otherwise just hear like an absolute basic, like, Ohio Players song or something and lose my shit trying to figure out who it was. Especially when I didn't know anyone else who was at all into what I was into. The number of bands I've started first, and then sheer force-of-willed into my genres later, now stands at 3.
Heatrocks for Katrina was a special moment, edpowers "fuck the previous dj..." post, the anal-fixation of ap, the "record days" where I'd discover loads of stuff in one day that I'd only see discussed otherwise, the one time HarveyCanal seriously claimed that Juvenile's "Slow Motion" was the single greatest song of the 21st century, supertoaster/poaster, there are loads of moments, but I think it's worth bringing up the current day too.
We're fast reaching a point where everybody is starting to see the facebook-insta-twitter nexus for what they are, data mining operations and surveillance for the most banal and stupid of reasons - advertising - and the incredible detrimental psychic side effects of mass social media networks. It's not to say these things don't have their place and positive purposes. But I was wondering the other day why I still check forums and I think the format of a BBS, while still totally capable of driving somebody mad, by nature can never, say, drive an entire generation of over-65s mad the way facebook minion memes and Fox have destroyed the minds of millions. The sooner we realize that anything posted on facebook, video or text, is to be treated with the same trust as any trash from 4chan or whatever, the better. I don't know that forums will have some kind of rebirth after people realize that, but the status quo won't last and I really think it's healthier for me to check a few topics on a few boards than scroll forever through 40% commercial messages. I hope I'm not the only one.
@dollar_bin on IG
Congrats!
That makes at least two of us.
thanks for the DECADES of great memories and lasting friendships.
James
The epic salt between Frank and Amir
The deep and endless music knowledge
The humour and intellect from some posters on here
The Strut-isms (I still use “please be serious” IRL)
It’s amazing how fast time flies.
Thanks for everything, Raj, and all of you who have contributed in one way or another ❤️