The breakdown (that old familiar feeling...)

I love vinyl. That reason amongst all is the reason why I began deejaying. I love performing in front of people. That reason amongst all is why I continued deejaying. I'd always collected things and bought records from the earliest age I can remember. I remember that one Christmas. As I was right in the grip of the first wave of Hip Hop hysteria to hit New Iberia, Louisiana, I got a fingerless glove, the Chaka Khan "I feel for you" Lp single, some studded bracelets, and the Breakin' and Beat Street cassettes, and a shiny new Magnavox dual tape cassette "Jambox". I think it's fair to say Christmas 1984 treated me well.

Christmas 1985 was all about GI Joe. Christmas 1986 was my the Nintendo Christmas. And who could forget Christmas 1987 when I got my first skateboard. As my pre-occupation for "breakdancing", rapping, and graffiti faded out as my adolescent mind grew to discover new subcultures and technology. It wouldn't be long before puberty and High School would make it so that every decision I made had something to do with girls.

The one thing that remained constant was Hip Hop music. I loved it. Run DMC, Eric B and Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Melle Mel, the Sugarhill Gang, the Beastie Boys, the Fat Boys, L.L. Cool J and the other artists of the time spoke to me in a way that Pop music or bands like AC/DC, Motley Crue, and Van Halen never could.

Once in Sixth grade Mr. Collins, our hip math/science/phys. ed teacher, singled out a Run DMC lyric in a lecture about the evils of this new rap music.

"I met this little girly/ Her hair was kind of curly/ Went to her house to bust her out/ I had to leave real early." he dryly recited the verse as if he were reading it from the Bible.

He then began to launch into a tirade about the adult themes contained in this music and why we should go to Church every Sunday. These were the days before the "Parental Advisory" stickers. While I'll admit the lyrics were adult themed, I didn't truly understand them. I didn't find this anymore objectionable than the slasher flicks or Ninja movies I was allowed to watch. It was fun music for the most fun time in my life, a time I would try the entire rest of my life to re-capture.

Fast forward to Junior Year. My sister threw a party, and with my swollen tape collection and hand full of CDs I deejayed the party. We had one of those all-in-one jobs with the turntable on the top. At that time I didn't have any records. I tricked one of my sister's classmates into thinking that I was scratching the tape, by slickly tapping or pressing pause while he watched my hand touch the empty turntable platter. Yeah, he totally believed it.

Then came my voyage of self exploration. I started discovering punk rock via skate videos. I finally got my own car and would expand my small world out into Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. It seems that my love for hip hop had begun to grow up, as I started to discover groups like Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, de la Soul, 3rd Bass, Digital Underground, and Del the Funkee Homosapien. Hip Hop had found a new companion in punk, but it was still there and always stuck with me.

I began going to these warehouse parties in New Orleans. I remember being pretty mystified by the deejay up there on stage and how he would have hundreds of kids completely absorbed in his music. I was already absorbed in the burgeoning psychedelic drug craze that had reached into my rural Louisiana town. So this was a new and fascinating aspect of this culture that would combine things that I'd already become acquainted. I was also conflicted by the fact that none of these deejays scratched. Growing up listening to Jam Master Jay, Grandmaster Flash, and Grandmixer DST I thought that scratching would have been Lesson One. I felt like these cats were getting over on me.

It was a party in New Orleans, and a trip to Tower Records that changed my life. On these frequent trips to the city while everyone would go to some "afterparty", I would hang out at Cafe du Monde. I would buy a magazine, drink coffee and eat beignets as I waited for Tower to open up. At this point, I stumbled upon a graffiti magazine called Subculture and inside there was an article with Rob Swift. It intrigued me, but I was more interested in the styles of the AWR/MSK expose' on Krush and Tyke.

As I went back to my apartment in Baton Rouge, I got back to my life. It was all about school, my part time job, and yes, GIRLS. I would buy records at the record store by Chimes and at Music Treasure Chest on Acadian Thruway. I was just a record collector then, just as I had been a comic book collector. Records were art. It wasn't until one Saturday morning when I had an early call at work and I had stayed up particularly late partying that it all came together. I accidentally left my 100+ CD book on top of my car as I drove away. Almost ten years of music collecting went down the drain in one thoughtless moment. This was the moment I went from record collector to deejay. Something inside me snapped, and I began to exclusively buy vinyl. I would go to thrift stores, flea markets, out of the way spots, garage sales basically anywhere I could dig. I bought a record bag and I would carry records out to every afterhours spot I would hit. My reasoning being that maybe one day one of the deejays would let me play if he were sick or someone didn't show up. Surprisingly it happened, and I did eventually get to play records in front of people occasionally.

These were the days before I owned turntables. These were the days when I became acquainted with my something completely new... depression. What I'm sure was a side effect of all of the random drugs I was ingesting at the time, I began to have severe battles with depression. This was when I first got on Paxil. Paxil worked for me. It returned my brain to a state of manageability. It stabilized my moods and allowed me to think clearly again. In these early days of anti-depressant medication there were no real rules. No one ever told me not to abruptly quit taking my medication. The weeks after I stopped taking my Paxil began a rollercoaster ride that lasted for the next five years. I reached some of the darkest places in my young life. It made it impossible for me to keep a steady job, concentrate on school, or make any personal spiritual progress.

I did eventually cure myself, to a greater or lesser degree. Completely off of meds, I began watching what I ate and started exercising. Things started looking up and I began to get completely absorbed in Turntablism. Scratching, beat juggling and eventually battling became my new passion. At this point I wasn't concerned about making a career as a deejay. I refused to play Top 40 music, and I most certainly wasn't going to pander to club owners for gigs. I just wanted to get better, smarter, and win battles. The gigs would come.

Since then, my integrity has remained intact. Deejaying well, had never been more than just a side gig for a little pocket money until I moved to New Orleans. Once in New Orleans, I met Ed Maximillion and Melissa Weber and I started to think that I might have a chance in this larger market, to really make it as a deejay. With myspace allowing me to really get my name out globally and develop a following, I had a new mission.

I started a business. Consequently, it was deejaying that allowed the business to remain open for the first 6-8 months before it got it on it's feet. I got a manager/booking agent. He not only was my biggest fan and supporter, but he handled the parts of the business that, frankly, I hated. He was getting me good solid paying gigs, and I was seemingly picking up steam. My music knowledge began blossoming in this music Mecca, and I began to further expand my record collection.

Then he died.

I was saddened, but like Jamie always said "keep it moving"...

Keep it moving I must. The show must go on.

The Nightmarish Saga of my ISP (AT&T)

It is over... I got my internet back and I'm calling tomorrow to get some money credited back to my account. Sorry folks if it seems I've been slipping, but I haven't I have some things on paper that need transferring and some interviews that need unearthing once I can clean the trash out of my Facebook inbox.

Grandmaster Roc Raida RIP! (1972-2009)

This summer has been tough for me losing idols. First it was Michael Jackson, a man I emulated from adolescence throughout my teenage years. Then we lost DJ AM, an incredibly dope dj I had just seen five weeks earlier with another of my idols Dj Jazzy Jeff. Next Raida, WTF God?

I've taken a lot of time to mull over this, and actually wrote unpublished blog entries on this very subject. The one I wrote for Raida on my phone at a bar, got completely deleted... Sweeeeetttt! So I'll begin again, and maybe republish the one about AM tomorrow.

Raida e-mailed me days before his accident about possibly bringing Roc Raida's Gong Battle for Supremacy to New Orleans. I never returned the e-mail fearing that he wouldn't want to be bothered with business while he was recuperating. The next few weeks were shrouded in mystery as to exactly what happened. There was report that he had to have surgery, and was in recovery; but no specific details on Geo's board. Then out of the blue, I get the news.

Official Statement from family

Roc Raida was particularly significant because if not for the X-Men. I would have never become a dj in the first place. Who knows where I would be or what I would be doing. I remember the first time I heard X-Men Style Beats from the Return of the Dj Compilation. I couldn't begin to understand exactly what he was doing. All I knew was he did it using turntables and records and nothing else. This began my infatuation for beat juggling. I spent months and months trying to do "that thing that Raida did". I had never seen a video, I just kept listening to it over and over and over trying to make sense of this new and seemingly impossible concept. Soooo much money spent on double copies of records. That became my crack. "Yo man you got two copies of that??" All trying to duplicate, unsuccessfully I might add, what the X-Men were doing.

Then I bought X-Men in Xercise... It finally began to make sense. Wow! I was still waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy far away from their skill levels, but at least I had the first set of stepping stones. Watching them candidly break down each particular routine, the level of showmanship they displayed while doing these routines, the body tricks, and the overall musical composition was just mind-blowing.

"So this was the footage that led up to the Raida's 95 World Championship??"

Over the years, I would get more and more videos, Xecutioners 97 European Tour was another mind-fuck... This was some next-level musical instrumentation. It all really seemed impossible as if these guys were from another more advanced musical planet. These guys really fueled my obsession for what had been deemed "Turntablism", and I as a young man I was looking for something to fill a void in my life that had been occupying itself with recreational drug use (yeah I said it). So I delved deeper and deeper into this world and deeper and deeper into hip hop culture.

I was never in this for fame, or girls, or money. I was becoming a musician for music's sake. I was tired of being just a casual listener, a consumer, a wall-flower. I wanted to contribute. In my little sugarcane hometown, there wasn't much for me in the realm of dj inspiration. I had to move to Lafayette before I would even meet someone else that was a dj, much less a scratch dj. So I continued to create in a bubble, that's when met the first members of the crew Beauregard Breaux and T-Mike Girouard, these guys shared my love for all things hip hop and were down to help me figure this turntablism thing out. So for the longest time it was us in a room with three turntables and two mixers, just figuring it all out. I would learn scratch-drumming, Mike would learn a simple juggle breakdown, Beau would learn a scratch. We fed off of each other, and learned. It began to snowball until we all felt confident enough that WE could actually battle and win.

All of this wouldn't have happened if not for Roc Raida. I only met him once, to ask he, Rob Swift, Mista Sinista, and Total Eclipse to sign the jacket of X-Pressions at the State Palace Theater in 1998. So I never really knew him besides the correspondence I had with him through emails. But the emails meant a lot to me and he helped me on the path into what I am today.

So Raida, you meant a lot to me. If it wasn't for you, there truly would be no me.

Rest in Peace Brother Roc Raida, you were the personification of a Grandmaster.

Hey, It's a brand new day...

So what's up everyone... I hope you guys have read the DMC NOLA blog. Well, it seemed inappropriate to continue with the DMC theme for any longer. Since that fateful day the world has lost two important figures in djing DJ AM and Roc Raida RIP, but that's another post. It is my mission to give my readers not ONLY information on deejaying, music, or whatever, but a real portal into my day to day life, my opinions, things I like, my hopes and dreams, setbacks, failure, success, joy, madness.

I am a lover of all things done well. I am a soul searcher, and this blog is just as much for me as it is for whoever reads it. This is therapy... a sort of live public journal, which is what I believe the original purpose of the "blog" was meant to be. There are so many different types of blogs and all have a certain amount of entertainment value. Mine will be no different. I will offer you something more valuable than entertainment. I will offer you a portal into my mind and thoughts, a real piece of me for you to take, digest, and regurgitate however you like. If you keep reading, I'll hold up my end of the bargain and continue to crank out intelligent, legible things.

If you were a fan of the DMC NOLA blog, I've imported the posts from so you can go back and reflect. I was very proud of that blog, and I will be returning to it when the time comes to do DMC NOLA II. Now it's time to get to work on the new baby.

Thanks,

Management

Reflections of the love you took from me...

So, I've just taken some time out to reflect on things. Basically things are good, but you know life is really what you make of it. I'm struggling and striving to do more every day. Maintaining focus and clarity are probably the two hardest things for me to do besides, quitting smoking and quitting procrastination. I'm glad to be alive to be going through it with all of you. I don't really have anything profound or even interesting to say today, except:

RIP Aaliyah!!! I wish I could have known you...XOXOX!!!!!!!!


Sincerely,

A Fan

The Skateboarding Analogy

So I've been having a lot of discourse with my non-deejay friends, about my open letter to deejays blog. I don't want to be jaded, so I felt the need to better understand exactly what has happened. Was I really over-reacting?? Was I right on the money?

The feedback I got was overwhelming from my deejay friends. They all applauded it. But it was my non-deejay friends that still didn't get it. After a lot thought, I've come up with what I think is the most appropriate analogy. So ladies and gentlemen, I give you my skateboarding analogy...

The following was pulled from my post on the the turntablist network's message board...

Read original thread

My problem with the current paradigm is that somewhere along the way someone came along and altered the rules... Your "look" or "image" became more important than your skill set or your talent as a producer/composer. DVS systems have only stood to reinforce this trend, because no longer did your average dj have to start at the bottom, spending lots of money buying records and countless hours learning how to mix. He could simply jump ahead in the line over the djs with superior music knowledge and the collections to match. It made it easy for them to learn to mix records. It's also allowed promoters to start calling the shots instead of the djs themselves. Even worse is the promoter/dj who thinks he's a better dj than anyone he could possibly book. Somehow, someway the integrity has been stolen from us.

I believe it happened so fast we didn't even have time to react. Or we possibly just blamed it on a "new trend" as we all scrambled to get Serato, Final Scratch or whatever else was commercially available at the time. While most of us were spending our time arguing about traditionalism or purism on message boards such as this one, these people were re-writing the rules to include themselves.

This has been a sore subject with me lately and I've done plenty of arguing about it.

The best way to understand what has happened is by using a skateboard analogy.

A skateboarder starts out at the bottom of the sport. Then by practice, dedication, and lots of studying, he begins to progress. As he is progressing, the sport is also progressing along with him. Therefore, it becomes a lot harder with each passing day for the skateboarder to become recognized and a whole helluva lot harder for him to become famous. Eventually once he has matured or developed his own style, he begins to seek out the approval of his skateboarding peers. Either he starts going to contests or he makes his own "sponsor me" video to send out to companies. That becomes his first foray into marketing. Not until YEARS into his career does he ever become concerned with trying to market himself. And he surely wouldn't have anything to market if he hadn't spend a good chunk of his life dedicated to the sport. If he couldn't do any tricks or he didn't have any style do you think he would ever win a contest or get sponsored or gain any sort of acceptance from the "Old guard" skateboarders????

Why is skateboarding like this? SKATEBOARDING is run and policed by other SKATEBOARDERS or former SKATEBOARDERS. There is a system in place to prevent outsiders from changing the rules.

Essentially what has happened here, is akin to a gang of skateboarders that become pros and took over modern skateboarding simply because they bought skateboards. Instead of learning tricks, they just learned how to market themselves. Instead of going to contests or making sponsorship videos, they just started acting like they were already pro. We've essentially been gotten over on by a bunch of posers. A whole bunch of people who walk around holding their skateboards that are talented enough to ollie onto a curb have basically taken over and made doing fancy tricks and actually having talent obsolete.

Think about it. Prior to the DVS trend, it was the dj who had the most talent and or records that would get to dj the big parties. Why? They earned their position. What we've got to figure out is HOW DO WE TAKE THE POWER BACK?? How do we change the rules back to the way they used to be?? What do we have to do to restore the natural order in the dj game??



Thus is the crux of my argument... Now let's get to work on fixing things...

Michel Gondry, your videos are awesome...

I feel the need to big up one of my favorite music video directors... He's the director of The Science Of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind... He's brilliant!









Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!!! Also check out the Daft Punk's Around the World video. I would've added it, but I couldn't embed it.