Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. It's a production of iHeartRadio three.
Speaker 2: So fat fact, ladies and gentlemen, Sometimes you just have
Speaker 2: to go with the flow. Steve's looking Matt nervous right
Speaker 2: now because we're not following the rules of the show
Speaker 2: from an engineer standpoint. But I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: felt the need. We don't have to do row call
Speaker 2: every time, right. We don't know how, but I will
Speaker 2: say yes. First start is if you're if you're tuning
Speaker 2: in Leighton, this is a Quest Love Supreme on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And uh, we're we're still here with three Supremas because
Speaker 2: I haven't locked and changed. See what I did there, guys,
Speaker 2: Locked and change? Yes, Yes, Boss, Bill, Lion Sugar Steve
Speaker 2: are with us.
Speaker 3: Apparently unpaid.
Speaker 2: Bill met a woman named Lady Sunshine, and uh he
Speaker 2: left us a dear John note that said he ain't
Speaker 2: never coming back. Fanticolo apparently is still smoking very strong
Speaker 2: cigarettes and he said he'd be back for visitation Sundays
Speaker 2: in a month. So what I will say is that
Speaker 2: when time has passed and the smoke is cleared, I
Speaker 2: really hope that the storytellers and the history makers and
Speaker 2: the history tellers will be kind to our next guest,
Speaker 2: whether as a collective or as individuals as an artist, producers, songwriters,
Speaker 2: or just playing old session musicians or just three really
Speaker 2: talented musicians.
Speaker 3: Our guests today have made impact in.
Speaker 2: History, and they march to the beat of their own drum,
Speaker 2: their own weird drum, whether we know it or not.
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest, I think Bill can agree with me, Boss,
Speaker 2: Bill can agree that the gems of the Discovery for
Speaker 2: this episode alone rates ten on the OH meter. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: and we graciously thank them for doing us the honor
Speaker 2: of celebrating with them thirty years of truth, weirdness, cleverly
Speaker 2: hidden snark, Hellotle, Van of White, How you doing zero
Speaker 2: compromises as far as I know, Ladies and gentlemen, please
Speaker 2: welcome they want and only Peter Lord V, Jeffrey Smith
Speaker 2: and Sancho Saint Victor a special tree for all you
Speaker 2: music experts and nerds and connoisseurs out there, professionally known
Speaker 2: as the Family stand.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, Now every intro has to be like that. Oh right, right,
Speaker 2: I think a new I think a new standard has
Speaker 2: been said. And I really had a good roll call,
Speaker 2: but you know I had they had two of them.
Speaker 2: One of them was going to steal steal one of them.
Speaker 3: Now see I wasn't even going to do the obvious one.
Speaker 2: I have to say that, Uh, this is this is
Speaker 2: one that I didn't see coming. Really why I didn't
Speaker 2: see coming? I just now I see it coming. I
Speaker 2: appreciate it. You know, just when when your name period
Speaker 2: on the wish list of oh family stand want to
Speaker 2: do a question.
Speaker 3: Of supreme, We're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm happy, Boss, Bill's happy, everyone's happy.
Speaker 3: I'm not worried about the thing You're not worried about.
Speaker 3: That's what's up. So has this always been this way
Speaker 3: with you? Guys like you just pretty much? Yeah, no doubt,
Speaker 3: I'll break out. Is that the bond that kept you together?
Speaker 3: The music?
Speaker 4: The music has always been the thing. I mean, we
Speaker 4: we can hang out and have good fun and you
Speaker 4: know we we we are compatible outside of music, but
Speaker 4: the thing that always brings.
Speaker 3: Us back is that music.
Speaker 4: Because we are like I call them my musical soulmates,
Speaker 4: and I mean that sincerely.
Speaker 3: They literally are.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've never been connected to bonded with anyone
Speaker 4: one of the way I am with Peter and Jeff
Speaker 4: and I call them my powers, towers of powers, the talents.
Speaker 4: When I'm between them, I'm the safest that I am
Speaker 4: in the world.
Speaker 2: Okay, well here this is a tradition on question of
Speaker 2: Supreme because any guest that comes on the show always
Speaker 2: want to find out what brought them to where they
Speaker 2: are now. And you know the first question I always have. Well,
Speaker 2: there's three of you now, so this is going to
Speaker 2: be an extra long episode, this might be this might
Speaker 2: tie Jimmy Jams record.
Speaker 4: Can I take my shoes off?
Speaker 3: Six hours?
Speaker 5: That's why we watch you their home because.
Speaker 3: For radio.
Speaker 4: Thank you, so thank you.
Speaker 2: What what I'll do is, uh, I'll go from my
Speaker 2: my right to left.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: My first question for you, Pete is uh first or
Speaker 2: where were you born?
Speaker 6: I was born in Brooklyn, New York. Really, I'm from Brooklyn. Okay,
Speaker 6: same hospital as Michael Jordan's.
Speaker 3: Open Atlantic. Okay, wait what hospitals there? What I think
Speaker 3: it was Saint Joseph's or something.
Speaker 7: Like that, Off Atlantic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. And Sandra, where were you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: I know you were Big four?
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah?
Speaker 3: And all right, so you're the Big D and then
Speaker 3: the church is the day the D.
Speaker 4: That's another thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the big ride d Yeah, what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Hr.
Speaker 3: This is XM radio or Triple X.
Speaker 2: Uh V. Jeffrey.
Speaker 7: I was born in Harlem. Harlem Hospital. Really yeah, the
Speaker 7: old one. Okay, I'm a man of a certain age.
Speaker 3: So the old one as opposed to yeah.
Speaker 7: The one that's here, it was going on thirty one,
Speaker 7: thirty fifth and Lenox. No it's not Lenox. I think
Speaker 7: it's a little further overly. Okay, Yeah, it's the old one,
Speaker 7: said a man of a certain a. So I don't
Speaker 7: think people even know about that.
Speaker 6: That one an older Okayla Harlem Hospital, like Frederick Douglas
Speaker 6: was born there right same time.
Speaker 8: Were there? We go?
Speaker 2: So then so then I'll ask what year Sondra, Sondra,
Speaker 2: what year did you come to.
Speaker 3: New York City?
Speaker 4: Nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, visiting a few times or you you've just I.
Speaker 4: Just rolled up and it was a crazy roll up,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I rolled up in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2: Really it was crazy, kind of opening to a song
Speaker 2: that wasn't written yet, Welcome to the Jungle, like you
Speaker 2: got off the bus.
Speaker 4: It was freaking nuts, you know. It was a roy
Speaker 4: Ors roll up so he's had us set up, and
Speaker 4: it was there's a whole thing there, but yes, I
Speaker 4: got it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, we got time now. No, no, I'm gonna get
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 2: So then I'm just my big My first four questions
Speaker 2: are always just the basic foundations of who you are
Speaker 2: as individuals before we get in the collective. All right,
Speaker 2: so what is Peter? What is your first musical memory?
Speaker 6: Very first musical memory? This is gonna give away age,
Speaker 6: but this wasn't relate because we're we're already sure here here,
Speaker 6: I'm mature, that's right. The first song I remember hearing
Speaker 6: was hit the Road.
Speaker 3: Jack, Okay, Jack?
Speaker 4: And don't you come back.
Speaker 3: What you say?
Speaker 6: And that's my first musical memory, hit the Road Jack Okay.
Speaker 6: And then I remember being my sister having a party
Speaker 6: at around I think it was nineteen sixty eight or nine,
Speaker 6: and she played that Sly album and my life was
Speaker 6: never the same after that though I didn't realize it yet,
Speaker 6: but the really reason I got into music industry was
Speaker 6: was because of.
Speaker 3: Satan. And that was because.
Speaker 6: And I'll tell you I know a lot of us,
Speaker 6: you know, people of certain He would like to say
Speaker 6: that God, Jesus got into music, but Satan got me
Speaker 6: in the music because the movie The Exorcists. And I
Speaker 6: tell you why. Because the movie came out, I was
Speaker 6: so afraid to go to sleep. I started playing the
Speaker 6: radio every night, and agential, all right, yo, we went
Speaker 6: tangential all right. So so I was so that every
Speaker 6: shadow was like, you know, Linda Bleir, I turned the
Speaker 6: head around. So I started playing the radio every wait.
Speaker 6: In the one, I got this new song, I'm so
Speaker 6: tired of being alone. I thought about that all myself.
Speaker 6: That was out green, oh, you know, but then I
Speaker 6: kept hearing Stevie and you know, these people are doing
Speaker 6: the radio during and I'm like, oh, I think I
Speaker 6: like music because I'm hearing songs in my head.
Speaker 3: Wait, i gotta say something.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever shared the story before, but uh,
Speaker 2: now that would makes sense because when you think of
Speaker 2: the Boogeyman or whatever, the first thing you want to
Speaker 2: do is distract yourself from whatever you think is under
Speaker 2: the bed or in the closet. So you put music
Speaker 2: on to yea be an invisible roommate. Frank Zappa had
Speaker 2: did a film, a short film with Bill Plimpton nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three whatever, and it came on Midnight Special. But
Speaker 2: this thing, like he turned into a demon. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you know Frank Zappa's music, it's like, yeah, like
Speaker 2: four fingers turned into seventy five billion fingers. And I
Speaker 2: had nightmares of Frank Zappa forever. And so thus my
Speaker 2: mom I totally forgot that's how music really. I had
Speaker 2: her on twenty four to seven because I was scared
Speaker 2: of Frank Zappa getting me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was connected.
Speaker 8: Bro.
Speaker 2: So, Sondra, what was your first musical memory, in addition
Speaker 2: to the first music that you purchased or owned and
Speaker 2: the moment that changed your life and brought you to music.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, so the first and the last question, I'm
Speaker 4: probably about the same, and that's the first musical memory.
Speaker 4: My parents and my aunts tell me about stuff that
Speaker 4: I did when I was two, like playing the piano,
Speaker 4: and they said I was fiddling around playing scale and
Speaker 4: I figured out that the scale was joy to the world.
Speaker 4: So they said, but dude, I was they said, I
Speaker 4: was two. I'm okay, I don't remember this whether they
Speaker 4: tell me said you were too, and you said, and
Speaker 4: I said.
Speaker 3: George to the world, the Lord It's come.
Speaker 4: So it was George to the world. I don't recall that,
Speaker 4: but my first musical memory is I was I had
Speaker 4: chores and I had to clean dust the these these
Speaker 4: coffin looking dazzled lamps and in the living room, and
Speaker 4: uh as I was consoling myself while I was cleaning,
Speaker 4: I started singing. And as I was singing, I said,
Speaker 4: I'm a singer. I was like eight. I said I am.
Speaker 4: I didn't say I don't want to. I didn't say
Speaker 4: I want to sing. I said I am a singer.
Speaker 4: And it's new from that and it's never changed from
Speaker 4: that moment, never anything else. And uh so, yeah, that
Speaker 4: was the first that's like the real solid memory. And
Speaker 4: that also is the last question when that's the thing
Speaker 4: that changed my life as far as it was no
Speaker 4: question at that point who I was in my own
Speaker 4: you know, and my own you know, skin, I knew
Speaker 4: from that point I forgot your second question.
Speaker 2: The first record you purchased.
Speaker 4: Okay, so yeah, the first thing I probably purchased was
Speaker 4: Songs in the Key of Life or Larry Graham's Mirror.
Speaker 4: That's the first thing I probably purchased. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 4: I was young, but I had a little allowance and
Speaker 4: and that was about that time, and those were the
Speaker 4: first albums I had, songs of Kill Life and Mirror Mirror.
Speaker 3: Jeff, what was your first musical memory?
Speaker 7: Around my house? There was a lot of music because
Speaker 7: my mother, she sang, and she used to have like
Speaker 7: these parties. Well I don't want I don't know exactly
Speaker 7: what to call them now because uh, you know, there
Speaker 7: was a lot of stuff going on, and there was
Speaker 7: a lot of stuff going on. Me my sister was
Speaker 7: under a chair and watching them play music all night.
Speaker 7: But at the same time, the music that we would
Speaker 7: listen to was things like Brooke Benton and the first
Speaker 7: thing that the song that I remember is Booker t
Speaker 7: and the MG's what's the song that but green Onions?
Speaker 3: Right until this day.
Speaker 7: I say Stevie probably caught that with ground, because when
Speaker 7: I first heard higher Ground, I said, Stevie, Stevie jack
Speaker 7: that song, you know, I mean he added his little twist.
Speaker 7: But that's probably the first memories. And also I was
Speaker 7: made to love her. That was but the but the
Speaker 7: music that really changed my life was music.
Speaker 3: In my mind.
Speaker 2: Really, there's another observation I'm making right now that's rare
Speaker 2: for our guests. It sounds like that at a very
Speaker 2: early age, music isn't an obstacle in your households. Usually
Speaker 2: with our guest on the show, there's like Charlie Wilson,
Speaker 2: like people have to sneak to listen to records, like
Speaker 2: the only secular record they're allowed to listen to is
Speaker 2: What's going On or that sort of thing. So you're saying,
Speaker 2: even at an early age and discovering music, your parents
Speaker 2: were more than Okay, well, what type of parents did
Speaker 2: you guys have that were so open to.
Speaker 6: Well, I had a parents, Well can you hear me? Well,
Speaker 6: my mother was a nurse and my father was a Communist,
Speaker 6: so that creates an artist. So he was always he
Speaker 6: was open. He was open minded to begin with, a
Speaker 6: little bit too open minded, but so and my oldest
Speaker 6: sister was into music and my father's sang, so we weren't.
Speaker 3: We weren't.
Speaker 6: And I was baptized Catholic, so we weren't like a
Speaker 6: religious Baptist. You know, music is evil type of fan,
Speaker 6: you know, So you had our alternative semi altern different
Speaker 6: for what Yes, black people at the time, absolutely because
Speaker 6: my father, my father was actually he went to he
Speaker 6: graduated from Harvard, He was a lawyer, he was a
Speaker 6: columnist of major paper and a professor. But he was
Speaker 6: seriously a communist and got caught up in the nineteen
Speaker 6: fifties scandal. So his whole career end up being a
Speaker 6: teacher in Jersey City. So my parents got divorced around
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty three. It's when the violins come in and we'll.
Speaker 3: Explain explained to me the repercussions of that.
Speaker 2: If you if the the government was trying to vent
Speaker 2: out who was a communist.
Speaker 3: Based on so even though we had he was.
Speaker 6: He had a Harvard law degree and was a doctor
Speaker 6: philosophy and wrote books about history, the fact that he
Speaker 6: was a kind of he got outed and was and
Speaker 6: he was started to school in Aubany and was forced
Speaker 6: to leave there.
Speaker 7: And is your dad Paul.
Speaker 6: No, you know, there's a picture of him, and there's
Speaker 6: a picture of him and Paul Robinson and Joe Lewis
Speaker 6: and this big you know party, uh, back in the
Speaker 6: late forties.
Speaker 3: He had me like late later in his life. I
Speaker 3: member he believes that he was just anti capitalist.
Speaker 6: Or he was he was an atheist and in fact,
Speaker 6: but my mother wasn't even though she wasn't religious, but
Speaker 6: she went just and my grandmother, Jamaican and very religious,
Speaker 6: wanted to make sure I didn't say, yeah genius, yeah yeah,
Speaker 6: crazy crazy, so sore Gemini, I'm lea. Yeah he's a
Speaker 6: Gemini because your album.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So so they were open minded in terms of terms
Speaker 6: of in terms of that, in terms of music, so
Speaker 6: they you know, they love music, and she actually wanted
Speaker 6: me to. I think she wanted me to get a
Speaker 6: music But my sister was actually went to music and
Speaker 6: art and I didn't go. I went to Erasmus High
Speaker 6: School in Brooklyn and oh, actually no, I didn't. I
Speaker 6: was went to wal Women Junior High School in Brooklyn
Speaker 6: and to make sure I'd have to fight the same
Speaker 6: people I did and woll Women when I went to Erasmus,
Speaker 6: I made sure I passed that test to go to
Speaker 6: Stuyvesant High School.
Speaker 3: So that's what isn't that tip story as well? That
Speaker 3: sounds familiar, that's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So yeah, so I ended up going, but I wasn't
Speaker 6: in music. But music wasn't such a There wasn't a
Speaker 6: block to music in my house in that so that
Speaker 6: was fortunate.
Speaker 2: So was there a uh, most the sort of hip
Speaker 2: hop narrative is basically with gang activity in New York
Speaker 2: in the seventies and sort of waiting out in the eighties.
Speaker 2: But was that an everyday thing in your your teenhood?
Speaker 2: We heard a lot in the West Coast, but you rarely.
Speaker 3: Hear what the what the thing is? Uh this say?
Speaker 6: I was a different type of kid, so so yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know how you survived? Yeah? Navigated.
Speaker 6: Actually I kind of ignored a lot of stuff and
Speaker 6: not a conscious thing. I mean, I just wasn't into it,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. So I was I just
Speaker 6: wasn't definitely into gangs of fighting and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: The following you avoid it because normally they choose you.
Speaker 6: I guess they thought I was so weird they didn't
Speaker 6: know what to do with me. And I just didn't
Speaker 6: you know, you know, the mirror route, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean. I was just yeah, I was just just
Speaker 6: so kind of out, you know, and that I had
Speaker 6: like a weird kind of childhood like in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 6: so there was a lot of fights and stuff, and
Speaker 6: but I was as opposed to get into the fights.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 6: I was kind of stupid kidding away because I was
Speaker 6: scared of people I should have been scared of because
Speaker 6: they had a bunch of brothers and I had no brothers.
Speaker 3: But one day, one.
Speaker 6: Day I found out later it was the biggest bully
Speaker 6: in the neighborhood took my We used to play this
Speaker 6: game people don't play anymore, called punch ball. It's kind
Speaker 6: of like baseball, thought about punchball. So this guy, this
Speaker 6: guy took my ball and I said, give me my boy.
Speaker 6: He said no, And I punched him in the face.
Speaker 6: And then anybody said, do you know he just punched you?
Speaker 8: President?
Speaker 3: I punched it in the face.
Speaker 6: But but but then it was but then it was like,
Speaker 6: do you know he just hit him? And then I
Speaker 6: have to realize that who I hit? Then I was scared.
Speaker 6: But then the guy became friends with me and looked
Speaker 6: out for me. But he looked out for me for
Speaker 6: a bunch of the other kids were really tougher than
Speaker 6: even worse.
Speaker 2: He was, so, well, I'm glad you had that, because
Speaker 2: I I can't imagine a childhood growing up where you
Speaker 2: don't have that one person that's like I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: the fuck you up. Oh no, I mean yeah, I've
Speaker 2: never had that.
Speaker 3: So I just ran home with the quickness. So Sondra
Speaker 3: in Dallas, Okay.
Speaker 2: Ish, what was Dallas at the time in your childhood,
Speaker 2: because I think of Austin as a blue city in
Speaker 2: a red state, or at least they would like to
Speaker 2: paint that or now it is sure, we don't even
Speaker 2: know now, but Texas trying to go blue.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: But but I'll say that the times that I've went there,
Speaker 2: at least with my gracious hosts, the l Head Rappo
Speaker 2: that me, yeah, oh my god, l Head Rapo. She
Speaker 2: showed me signs of Dallas that I didn't even know exist.
Speaker 2: And I've been there plenty of times, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: there are people like me down here. What was it
Speaker 2: like for you growing down there?
Speaker 4: It was it was it was like the two sides
Speaker 4: of the tracks, you know.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: And my dad who came from him and his brothers,
Speaker 4: him and his brothers. I mean the first gun I
Speaker 4: saw was my dad's. Okay. My dad was like a
Speaker 4: pimp back in the day, right, And you know, I've
Speaker 4: I stumped stumbled on those pictures. But so Dallas when
Speaker 4: I was gonna was very divided. So he had he
Speaker 4: had decided at some point that he was gonna, you know,
Speaker 4: leave the gang life behind a little bit, you know,
Speaker 4: at least at least on the front.
Speaker 3: I wanted to use.
Speaker 4: You can't you can't. You can't trust because we're tells
Speaker 4: my dadd didn't really leave that shit behind.
Speaker 3: So what I'm telling you is.
Speaker 4: What I'm telling you. So he kind of like, you know,
Speaker 4: so he we got great job. He you know, moved
Speaker 4: up first black supervisor at the phone company, all kind
Speaker 4: of crack. But but my like my mother's family lived
Speaker 4: on the other side of the tracks. So when we
Speaker 4: had to go visit them, we's, oh, snap, this is
Speaker 4: the real.
Speaker 3: Real, right.
Speaker 4: So they lived in West Dallason, South Dallason, you know,
Speaker 4: and the little trailers and like twelve people in one house.
Speaker 4: And you know, we went to vision visit our country cousins.
Speaker 4: They didn't have shoes, so like, you know, we was like,
Speaker 4: oh damn, we're middle class. I mean, I didn't know
Speaker 4: the term for it then, but I now look back
Speaker 4: on it. You know, I grew up middle class, well
Speaker 4: you know, I would say lower to middle middle class,
Speaker 4: in the upper middle middle class life. But dad, dad
Speaker 4: Dad's Dad's dad's like, you know, sort of gangster side
Speaker 4: never left. I mean, for example, I remember I was
Speaker 4: with this dude.
Speaker 2: Oh no, here we go.
Speaker 4: Let me just tell us cute. I mean so and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, he wasn't treating me right, and he actually
Speaker 4: like he actually slapped the ship on me one day
Speaker 4: and I like.
Speaker 3: And I was so stunned.
Speaker 4: So I got on a flight. Now I was in
Speaker 4: New York. So I got on a flight. I just
Speaker 4: went back call my dad always picked me at the airport.
Speaker 4: And he picked me up with airport and I was
Speaker 4: just quiet, and he was like, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 4: I'm like nothing, and he was quiet. It was forty
Speaker 4: minute ride almost home.
Speaker 3: He said, did he lay his hands on you?
Speaker 4: He just guessed it. And I was like, son, So
Speaker 4: so we got home. He was I never saw him
Speaker 4: get that read. He was like, lights came. He was
Speaker 4: like he got home. He picked up the phone. Oh
Speaker 4: he called dude, he'd just say ship to me. He
Speaker 4: just he just picked up the phone. He brought my
Speaker 4: suitcases and picked up he said, he said, because the
Speaker 4: name Clark said Clark, this is mister Matthews. He if
Speaker 4: you ever lay your hands on my daughter again, New
Speaker 4: York won't be big enough.
Speaker 3: I was like, I just want to know we ever
Speaker 3: heard from Clark again? No, actually did not.
Speaker 8: Know.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, is he alive?
Speaker 4: He could not answer that question. Honestly, I do not know.
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 4: He shut him down, So I mean he's done that
Speaker 4: kind of that's kind of thing he does. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, he got cute when he got older, when
Speaker 4: he would just meet ladies. All my girlfriends who I introduced,
Speaker 4: he would flirt with and tell them I'm not a
Speaker 4: dirty old man. I'm just a sexist senior citizen.
Speaker 3: Even now I'm making to use that line. Put that
Speaker 3: one out.
Speaker 4: That was my dad and his brother.
Speaker 7: Did you learn how to handle the pistol?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 3: I did actually see from Texas?
Speaker 2: I don't want to is that I don't want to
Speaker 2: make any assumptions about Texas whatsoever. But can I assume
Speaker 2: that that's is simples breathing air or water at least
Speaker 2: we're talking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 4: I would say seventy percent. I'm not gonna say everybody,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean because everybody most people don't
Speaker 4: know how to don but knew how to shoot or
Speaker 4: the parents definitely had guns. So you you you come
Speaker 4: across it, you know what I mean. So I came
Speaker 4: across the gun in my house. My dad used to
Speaker 4: keep it on top of the refrigerator. I'm like, why
Speaker 4: is it on top of the refrigerator.
Speaker 3: The gun was.
Speaker 4: When he saw me like find it, he was like, okay,
Speaker 4: well you're gonna do the gun. You're gonna you know,
Speaker 4: let me show you how.
Speaker 2: So were you the only sibling?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, I had three. We're all adopted by the way,
Speaker 4: three siblings. Yeah you were chosen, Yeah, three chosen kids.
Speaker 7: I almost shot my sister. Let me tell you what happened?
Speaker 7: Were kids, right? And me and my sister were in
Speaker 7: my my my stepdad. I mean, I wasn't like familiar
Speaker 7: with my biological so my mother had me married, right,
Speaker 7: Me and my sister was playing in her in their room,
Speaker 7: and uh so we was reaching the you know, trying
Speaker 7: to look for things, and we see this gun and
Speaker 7: I think, and it's a toy gun. So I pointed
Speaker 7: at my sister and klick and then I pointed at
Speaker 7: the ceiling and it went off. They came in and
Speaker 7: they said, I didn't know what was happening, and so
Speaker 7: they was wondering if something had happened upstairs. I was
Speaker 7: wondering why they were They were tripping, so I didn't
Speaker 7: know it was a real gun, you know. I was like,
Speaker 7: that's one of my earliest memories because I don't remember
Speaker 7: much before I was nine.
Speaker 3: Well, that's question of supreme lasion. Good night, Steven Silver.
Speaker 5: Now, yeah, nobody carrying, right? You got to ask now?
Speaker 3: Scary?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's that's scary. I mean I remember, that's
Speaker 7: like kind of a weird kind of thing.
Speaker 5: It's a blessing, like you're blessed, like seriously want to
Speaker 5: win differently, Well, I.
Speaker 7: Don't, you know, I don't believe in love or anything
Speaker 7: like that, but that was a yeah, I mean, somebody's
Speaker 7: looking out.
Speaker 2: Bring you guys to New York. Now, what year did
Speaker 2: you guys meet? Not even as eighty six?
Speaker 7: Okay, you're talking about all of us. Let me take
Speaker 7: let me let me take this.
Speaker 4: I go ahead, break it down.
Speaker 7: Peter and I met through a mutual friend, Will Downing. Yes,
Speaker 7: me and Will Downing. We used to do a lot
Speaker 7: of work together. We were writing sessions all that stuff,
Speaker 7: and you know, Will used to come over my house
Speaker 7: and you know, we used to write, and so he
Speaker 7: one day he told me that he knew that this
Speaker 7: guy needed a flute player on a song that he
Speaker 7: was writing. Right, and I never forget the song was
Speaker 7: in the thick of it, right, that's the name of it.
Speaker 7: I never forgot the name of that song. So he
Speaker 7: let me hear the song. I said, man, I gotta,
Speaker 7: I gotta meet this guy. So he said, I'll bring
Speaker 7: him over. So, uh, Pete came over my house. You know,
Speaker 7: I said, that's Pete.
Speaker 8: He's weird.
Speaker 7: He looked like he had this like Larry ninety six
Speaker 7: to five. And I'm like, So we started working together.
Speaker 7: And uh, at the time you were, you had a group.
Speaker 7: You were with Renee and Angela and Angela.
Speaker 2: Right, I can't wait for the stories. We're not We're
Speaker 2: not even going to get to the family stand yet,
Speaker 2: collective experience.
Speaker 3: Oh she's shaking her head.
Speaker 2: No, already, every Renee story. Yes, I'm ready for I'm
Speaker 2: ready for the So.
Speaker 7: It was Renee and Angela right, they were producing the Yes, yes,
Speaker 7: So somehow I convinced p I said, Pete, man, you know,
Speaker 7: we could do this ourselves because I was always into,
Speaker 7: you know, having being in control of our music. So
Speaker 7: you know, we started working together doing a lot of
Speaker 7: productions and stuff, and so we had a bunch of
Speaker 7: singers coming and doing demos for us because at the
Speaker 7: time we were doing stuff for Silver your Own, Marilyn
Speaker 7: Bob and Mickey Howard. You know, we did Mickey Howard
Speaker 7: all yeah, yeah, yeah, mac Man, we did. We did
Speaker 7: productions on them, and we had different singers singing our demos.
Speaker 7: So Lisa Fisher was one of the one of our singers. Now,
Speaker 7: I knew Lisa from I met Lisa in nineteen eighty
Speaker 7: eighty three on a session that I was doing for
Speaker 7: Billy Oshan, right, so she was in the studio, she
Speaker 7: was in the Zach So you know, I met Lisa then,
Speaker 7: So we kind of established a relationship over the years.
Speaker 7: And then she she did some demos for us too.
Speaker 7: And so did we get it offered a deal or
Speaker 7: we just studied first.
Speaker 4: First, we met before you guys got the offer for
Speaker 4: the producers deal because Lisa, Lisa had to go do Luther,
Speaker 4: she had to go, right, and so then she she
Speaker 4: pulled me in because I met Lisa when she was
Speaker 4: doing the Crystals and I still lived in Texas and
Speaker 4: I was doing Lazy Fair and so we hooked up
Speaker 4: before I moved to New York and Doug Crystals. She
Speaker 4: was she was in the Crystals. Yeah, yeah, she was
Speaker 4: doing the Crystals back in the day, traveling as not
Speaker 4: as the original No, no, no, I know that's my era,
Speaker 4: like yeah, no doubt. So there was like one original
Speaker 4: Crystal and the other two and Lisa was one of
Speaker 4: the other two.
Speaker 5: Ship I did shows with Lisa when you were with
Speaker 5: your dad, we didn't.
Speaker 3: My dad was like a dup legend.
Speaker 7: And so so anyway, yeah, we were using Lisa and
Speaker 7: a bunch of other singers and we told Lisa that
Speaker 7: we needed a singer and she said, oh, my girl,
Speaker 7: Sandra lives in Dallas and I can hook you up
Speaker 7: with them.
Speaker 9: Man.
Speaker 7: At the time, we were producing this group called the
Speaker 7: mac dand who I think Babyface? They produced Roses are
Speaker 7: Red right, So we were producing some songs on that record,
Speaker 7: so we had to go to Dallas to produce them,
Speaker 7: and that's where we hooked up with Sondras show and
Speaker 7: I will never forget Lisa invited us to lose Evangels.
Speaker 3: What year was this eighty eight eighty like eighty six.
Speaker 7: Had been eighty six, eighty seven, eighty six because I
Speaker 7: met Pete in eighty five.
Speaker 3: Was there air conditioning on in the stadium?
Speaker 8: When yes, yo, I'll forget, never forget.
Speaker 3: She was shading. I was minding my own business.
Speaker 6: She you know, she she we said hello, and maybe
Speaker 6: because she was used to men melting over her as
Speaker 6: rightfully so, but she just said he and I said
Speaker 6: how you doing? And she thought I was being cold,
Speaker 6: But I think I just had some interigestion that day.
Speaker 3: I like that story. I mean, my stum was hurting, like,
Speaker 3: who do you think he is? I'm sorry to say,
Speaker 3: it's good to see.
Speaker 6: I'm six five.
Speaker 2: She's giving you come on.
Speaker 4: He looked down his nose at me. Jeff was like, hey,
Speaker 4: how you doing exactly? You know, he could like look
Speaker 4: at me, but not look.
Speaker 3: I was looking at the rest of your baby going on.
Speaker 7: Shoes hr.
Speaker 3: But it was the eighties that kind of Okay, this
Speaker 3: is the thing.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited that you guys are on the show
Speaker 2: simply because the one story that I'm not story, but
Speaker 2: just the one narrative that I never ever got to
Speaker 2: wrap my head aroun round was what was the environment
Speaker 2: like for I guess the black musicians in trying to
Speaker 2: navigate through the mid eighties, like the Marcus Miller's, the
Speaker 2: Bernard Wrights, the Tawatha G's, Like what is the stratosphere
Speaker 2: of you guys?
Speaker 4: Well, see, you know all those people you mentioned so
Speaker 4: but basically all those people came out of the session scene,
Speaker 4: right right, So so the session scene was thick. It's
Speaker 4: not anymore, right, but back then you had your West
Speaker 4: Coast session folks and you had your East coast session
Speaker 4: folks and all the people you mentioned. Maybe Marcus was
Speaker 4: more west but.
Speaker 3: Ended up going back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but so so, I mean those people are mostly
Speaker 4: East Coast people, and they came out of sessions, and
Speaker 4: record labels were looking to like you know, put push
Speaker 4: people to the front like Mt. May and Tawatha out
Speaker 4: of into m two May from these from that session scene.
Speaker 4: So that's why you got the McK murphy's and you know,
Speaker 4: the Bernard Rights and those folks that came from that
Speaker 4: scene and also Pete Jeff you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They they were offered this producer's deal out of the
Speaker 4: because they were doing all these sessions.
Speaker 2: But was there a collective where like I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: talking even deeper, like with Shaka's brother, like Mark Stevens,
Speaker 2: and then like all these monsters, Lay White and all.
Speaker 4: Those we used to hook each other up.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 4: Definitely, there was a real camaraderie with folks. I mean,
Speaker 4: like Lisa and Brenda White King put me on, you know,
Speaker 4: because Lisa knew before I moved, before I moved here,
Speaker 4: and she usually Brenda and they all sort of took
Speaker 4: me under their wing and they put you into the
Speaker 4: situations you need to be put into.
Speaker 3: So what was your apprentice situation?
Speaker 2: Like if you say that Lisa was a Luther disciple,
Speaker 2: who was your apprentice situation?
Speaker 4: That would probably be Roy Yers then, because you know,
Speaker 4: that was how I first got up there up here,
Speaker 4: that's where I am I now New York. So yeah,
Speaker 4: so it was Roy.
Speaker 3: Started to tell me a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got a lot of Roy story.
Speaker 5: But you said something like when you came to New
Speaker 5: York and you were with Roy, like that's when you
Speaker 5: knew things were different.
Speaker 4: Like the way you entered New York was different than
Speaker 4: was wild as here. Okay, okay, yeah, it was definitely closed.
Speaker 4: We have to keep closing. Darn I was trying to
Speaker 4: let the girls free, or to.
Speaker 3: Mean, moments which.
Speaker 4: To me, songs come up right there.
Speaker 3: Okay, so but.
Speaker 4: So so Roy so Roy uh he I met him
Speaker 4: in when I was in playing with a group of
Speaker 4: Zachary bro I don't know if you know who he is,
Speaker 4: and we had used his equipment, so we got He
Speaker 4: came to our show and stuff and after the show
Speaker 4: he was like, I want you to come to New York.
Speaker 4: You wanna be in my band? I was like, uh,
Speaker 4: dirty old man. You know, that's kind of what I said,
Speaker 4: That's kind of what I know.
Speaker 3: I was like, I.
Speaker 4: Was like, girl, yeah, but yeah, I thought he was,
Speaker 4: you know, just you know, pushing up. Really. So I
Speaker 4: went and told the band I'm like, Roy Ers asked
Speaker 4: me to, you know, come to New York. They were like, yo,
Speaker 4: let's go. And so I was like wait, I wasn't
Speaker 4: really planning accepted. They were like, no, you got it.
Speaker 4: This a So then I reached out to Roy and
Speaker 4: I said, Roy, yeah, so the whole band was He says,
Speaker 4: I don't need the whole band, so so wow, that's
Speaker 4: gonna be I was like, that's gonna be awkward. Because
Speaker 4: they got the band, they got the transportation to get
Speaker 4: me here. So so right, that is all story. Oh
Speaker 4: I got oh, okay, so so I went the whole
Speaker 4: man decided to come, I said, but he said he
Speaker 4: doesn't really need So we got there and he took
Speaker 4: me and Zachary bro But when we got there, he
Speaker 4: had set us up to stay at William Allen's house.
Speaker 4: William Allen is an arranger, string arranger for all of
Speaker 4: those beautiful ubiquity arranged songs. He did all those string arrangements.
Speaker 4: And we were staying I was no Zach and I
Speaker 4: was staying at William Allen's apartment in Harlem. And it
Speaker 4: was February twenty first, nineteen eighty two, and it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, forty seven inches of snow on the ground,
Speaker 4: and the cab like picked.
Speaker 3: That a gift of yours to the recall dates.
Speaker 4: I remember this definitely.
Speaker 3: Oh, just this story.
Speaker 4: I remember a lot of things like that that, Like
Speaker 4: you're like, well, things that terrify you. You have a
Speaker 4: tendency to okay, yeah, because we we we passed. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm from Dallas. We have nice large streets and stop
Speaker 4: signs and lights. Everybody fallows the rules. So we got here,
Speaker 4: we passed by like blocks. I'm like, so I think
Speaker 4: we passed it. I think it was back there. He
Speaker 4: just said, okay, put it in reverse and and just
Speaker 4: like bed backwards, you know, like two and a half
Speaker 4: blocks in the snow, and you know, on a one
Speaker 4: way street. And I was just scarceialless. And we got
Speaker 4: there and we stayed at Williams and and you know,
Speaker 4: there was he didn't have a bed for us. He
Speaker 4: could barely walk to his house because he was a hoarder.
Speaker 3: He had no food.
Speaker 4: And we were like, he said, whatever you find in
Speaker 4: the pantry, open the pantry.
Speaker 3: Roaches jumped out. It was like, this is mine. That
Speaker 3: was like my.
Speaker 4: Introduction to the off I imagine story back off. No,
Speaker 4: I got a freaking story for right, but that's later.
Speaker 4: That's a whole mother freaking roy story. He's crazy.
Speaker 7: You heard the story, go ahead and tell it.
Speaker 3: Nuts.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that was okay, right, that was just my
Speaker 4: introduction to New York story.
Speaker 3: That's all right.
Speaker 2: So you I mean, this was obviously just a conversation
Speaker 2: between the three of you, and you're saying that you
Speaker 2: met at this.
Speaker 7: Lutheran show, met Sondra and Pete met okay a few
Speaker 7: years before that.
Speaker 6: Well, we were going to try out different singers. But
Speaker 6: I mean, I want to back a track actually because
Speaker 6: you as the person was kind of really my mentor
Speaker 6: in a way was Jeff because he didn't know that,
Speaker 6: but he was kind of.
Speaker 3: He's finding out right now. You know how many interviews.
Speaker 6: Have you he talked about. I think it's because like
Speaker 6: I just come out of with the Howard University.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what the how Ward you know?
Speaker 6: And uh so I was there around the same time
Speaker 6: as Wayne Lindsay and uh some other people and uh.
Speaker 3: You graduated. I graduated in eighty two. Hudson. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: was he a teacher there as well? Was a teacher.
Speaker 6: He was a teacher there, Le Hudson. I think I
Speaker 6: think that guy I think you're talking about. Yeah, I think, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think it's if that's what you're talking about. But
Speaker 6: I wasn't even the jazz band, but i'd been, uh
Speaker 6: have the Renee and Angela thing, right, I think right,
Speaker 6: graduated or write something like that. I was working with
Speaker 6: a friend who was it was the It was a
Speaker 6: singer named Raymond Reader, a great singer.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I remember, right and right, yeah, and uh
Speaker 7: he had a female to right.
Speaker 6: They were going to turn this into another Shalomar. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: so that's who.
Speaker 2: That's who. That's who.
Speaker 3: We're going to be another Shalomark. All right. As you
Speaker 3: can see, they didn't quite work.
Speaker 6: But uh, pope six y five popping really you know,
Speaker 6: uh look like Pinocchio or whatever trying to pop block.
Speaker 6: But anyway, so so I was in that bad but
Speaker 6: that situation didn't work out. I won't get to the
Speaker 6: gory details of it. But then they didn't work out,
Speaker 6: and I went back to New York. But I wasn't
Speaker 6: really necessarily in the New York scene like Jeff was.
Speaker 6: You know, I would sometimes I would hang with Jeff
Speaker 6: and he was he was working with Ashif and I
Speaker 6: went with him up there, and a lot of people
Speaker 6: who were there were like, who's who's the guy over there?
Speaker 6: You know, and he's a weird guy. Who's the weird guy?
Speaker 6: You know? Jeff said, no, he's cool.
Speaker 3: That was the question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they only let me up there once. But but
Speaker 6: but I when I was up there once there was
Speaker 6: a cause she had a whole bunch of songwriters and
Speaker 6: they were like working and said, we can come up
Speaker 6: with these ideas and they said you write songs, right,
Speaker 6: I said, yeah, I know, I write a little bit,
Speaker 6: so so right now and then were of the kind
Speaker 6: of gym to the idea and I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: I came. I started singing up and then they're like,
Speaker 6: that's all right, that's cool, and I left. I think
Speaker 6: about maybe a year later I kind of heard what
Speaker 6: I was singing that day.
Speaker 10: But but but h so there was a like a
Speaker 10: so I knew some of the people from Howard University,
Speaker 10: but in terms of like the New York crew and
Speaker 10: hanging all the sings and stuff, I didn't kind of
Speaker 10: really know as much as Sondra and Jeff.
Speaker 6: But as we got a chance we producing records, Like
Speaker 6: Jeff was saying, we got do some stuff with Merlin
Speaker 6: Bob and said we were on in Atlantic and they said,
Speaker 6: I once you do, guys do a producer album. And
Speaker 6: that's how it came about finding saying. But the thing is,
Speaker 6: since I was the outsider and the and the most
Speaker 6: fucked up one of the group, all right, they didn't
Speaker 6: know people. You know, the interesting you're talking about that
Speaker 6: times and how people related and because yeah, it was
Speaker 6: a kind of a clique. I was never kind of
Speaker 6: any any clicks and I'd be like, Jeff, can I
Speaker 6: can I go with you?
Speaker 3: Said, yeah, no, he's cool.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 6: But but but it affected kind of our sound of
Speaker 6: music because the eighties was a very unique time. I'm
Speaker 6: a unique times, like the kind of bridge as you know,
Speaker 6: between transition, transition and all and all I know is
Speaker 6: whatever the funk was going on in the eighties for
Speaker 6: me personally, I wasn't fucking digging and I hadn't really
Speaker 6: but I hadn't really realized what that was yet. So
Speaker 6: so there was these things were really great, but there
Speaker 6: was a certain sound. So we started to make our
Speaker 6: album Why Sandra fit in all these singers they were
Speaker 6: like and came feel a little bit from the Kashif school.
Speaker 6: He made some real dope records. It was like it
Speaker 6: was the type of singing back then with background singers,
Speaker 6: love come down and all that kind of you. And
Speaker 6: then well, this ship was tight.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite episode, this, this is my dream.
Speaker 2: It was like talking to three and mirrors all this
Speaker 2: random information to say.
Speaker 6: She was like, I know who but you know, but
Speaker 6: but Sandra, when she said you're like she was a siren.
Speaker 6: She was that fucking Tina Turner kind of like, my
Speaker 6: shit is unbridled.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to be he who who? But I wasn't
Speaker 3: really into that. She didn't like the sene.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I didn't know what that thing was. We were
Speaker 6: doing backfrons of the album and be like, you guys
Speaker 6: not making it so clean. They'd be like, that was
Speaker 6: that was? That was a Jackie Deson double take. For
Speaker 6: those on radio who couldn't see what I just did,
Speaker 6: it was Jackie Lison. But anyway, so uh so in
Speaker 6: terms of Sondra just fit into an energy that that
Speaker 6: we had and we knew naturally and we need and
Speaker 6: even with our first album chapters, we had really locked
Speaker 6: in quite do what that thing was. But all I
Speaker 6: knew was I didn't want to hear the ship I
Speaker 6: had been hearing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, okay, well let's get to that. I think.
Speaker 2: We could safely assume that the most defined sound of
Speaker 2: what the eighties was, at least for the beginning of
Speaker 2: the eighties to the mid eighties, I mean, was the
Speaker 2: kind of sound that Prince crafted that there was Bookie
Speaker 2: with with with the work that she did and everything
Speaker 2: and in Brooklyn, uh he did big time with James uh.
Speaker 3: Leroy Burges and I mean Leroy Burgess.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: Well, if you work with everyone, did you.
Speaker 7: My life is a blurring terms of that. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 7: I have worked with a lot of people. I mean
Speaker 7: the eighties to me, I mean I thought, I think
Speaker 7: the seventies to me was like the best time for music,
Speaker 7: of course, but the eighties was transitional to me because
Speaker 7: the sound just changing, and I thought people were just
Speaker 7: trying to figure things out in terms of of the sound. Sonically,
Speaker 7: everything kind of just sounded stiff and and and and
Speaker 7: perfect and we just kind of had to go through that.
Speaker 7: I mean, even today, as much as we can get
Speaker 7: to anything that we want, sometimes sonically things just sound
Speaker 7: kind of over quantized to me. Hell yeah, yeah, everything
Speaker 7: just sounds kind of over quantized. And it's too It's
Speaker 7: not bad, it's not good. It's not a bad thing
Speaker 7: or a good thing, but it's a thing.
Speaker 3: So it's numbing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it's numbing, you know. Because the funny thing is,
Speaker 7: I want to visit my son over the Christmas holidays,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. I don't really celebrate Christmas,
Speaker 7: but you know, I had to go see my son.
Speaker 7: So he was taking me back to the airport, and
Speaker 7: we were listening to all this music, right, and I'm
Speaker 7: hearing one song and everything sounds perfect, everything, you know, harmonies,
Speaker 7: big drums, everybody's into the loudness and the you know.
Speaker 7: So this one song comes on by this girl I
Speaker 7: forgot her name, but it sounded so soulful, harmonies. As
Speaker 7: soon as the song finish, me and my son started
Speaker 7: laughing at the same time. We started laughing at the
Speaker 7: same Now, you know, he's my son, but he realized
Speaker 7: that everything sounded the same, and there's always like just
Speaker 7: kind of one song that will kind of stick out,
Speaker 7: and you realize how fucked up things have kind of
Speaker 7: gotten in every everybody's kind of just playing the you know,
Speaker 7: I got to sound like the last thing, you know, So,
Speaker 7: you know I was I making a point here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything sounds the same. Well that's the thing though,
Speaker 2: But in the eighties you have to choose a path.
Speaker 2: And for sure, it's like there's Bookie, there's the Minneapolis
Speaker 2: Prince sound, there's also hip hop. How are you guys
Speaker 2: wrestling with what hip hop has becoming? The fact that
Speaker 2: you're developing a craft. But yet were people that just
Speaker 2: seemed to.
Speaker 6: Well, I think what the what the key transition was
Speaker 6: for us, and then how it leads musically is that
Speaker 6: there was this link with sixties and seventies children music.
Speaker 6: So but then the music got electronic and slick, but
Speaker 6: what the bridge was was hip hop. So hip hop
Speaker 6: was feeding off of that rawness from the James Brown,
Speaker 6: the drums.
Speaker 3: And all that kind of stuff. And in the late eighties,
Speaker 3: in the late in the yeah.
Speaker 2: It was yeah, in the mid eighty like have you
Speaker 2: guys dealt with Larry Smith or I'm just throwing out
Speaker 2: New York names, like.
Speaker 7: I know him.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I don't know personally.
Speaker 7: I don't know him personally, but I know of him.
Speaker 7: I know of him. I know of him.
Speaker 6: I think the thought was what I was getting to
Speaker 6: is like we did a session, I went to it.
Speaker 6: I was fine to Jeff carrying the Jeff's bags to
Speaker 6: a session one day.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 6: It was and I would just, you know, a lot
Speaker 6: of times I would just sit there and be quiet
Speaker 6: and listen to people that they were doing a hip
Speaker 6: hop record, hip hop record, and I was listening to
Speaker 6: and I was like, you know, at that particular time,
Speaker 6: I hadn't really heard yet somebody being no sensibilities of
Speaker 6: hit hip hop of the drums was happened underneath with
Speaker 6: a melodic song kind of at that particular time. So
Speaker 6: that concept of bringing that together, and plus there was
Speaker 6: a there was starting to be on the East Coast,
Speaker 6: certain rock records that I heard that I liked and
Speaker 6: just and then listening to more like soulful stuff. And
Speaker 6: since we were called the Standard, we're going to become
Speaker 6: the family Standing change her name because Evon Jefferys and
Speaker 6: the stand was too confusing.
Speaker 3: Uh that story, we can get to it the latest time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but.
Speaker 6: That's what led to Ghetto Heaven. That the idea of
Speaker 6: let me sing a song over this within the context
Speaker 6: of this hip hop, raw ish type of beat.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna tell him how Ghetto Heaven came to be?
Speaker 3: You know what is Ghetto Heaven?
Speaker 2: Now that we're gonna break down the song before you
Speaker 2: even get to how you guys got your group name.
Speaker 3: But okay, let's go.
Speaker 7: You want me to tell you how the song came
Speaker 7: to be? You know salam REMI, yes, we do. He
Speaker 7: was kind of the inspiration for that song because when
Speaker 7: we were on our first album, you know, we did
Speaker 7: the first album the record company. You know, we were
Speaker 7: like that group that they didn't exactly know what to
Speaker 7: do with us, so they kind of fucked us around.
Speaker 7: And you know, so I said, I knew Sir Maryland,
Speaker 7: Bob right elect.
Speaker 3: It was Atlantic first. Yeah, I remember with Sylvia. Sylvia
Speaker 3: they both went together.
Speaker 2: Okay, I forgot.
Speaker 7: I forgot they were getting us all, me and Pete
Speaker 7: all the production work. You know. But anyway, after that
Speaker 7: first album, I knew uh Salaam Remi's father because him
Speaker 7: and I grew up together. We did the Chitlin circuit,
Speaker 7: you know, we did a lot of sessions together. So
Speaker 7: I said, Pete, we need to go talk to my
Speaker 7: friend Van van Gibbs. Right. So Van was over there
Speaker 7: on fifty fourth Street and eleventh Avenue. I said, I
Speaker 7: set up a meeting him so we could kind of
Speaker 7: talk because we were getting kind of frustrated with what
Speaker 7: the record company was not doing for us. And uh,
Speaker 7: we had a little talk and then we heard this
Speaker 7: music coming and coming from the basements. I said, what's that?
Speaker 7: He said, that's my son. His name is I knew
Speaker 7: he that's my son, Salam. He's going to be a producer.
Speaker 7: He said, you want to He said, you want to
Speaker 7: go down and listen. So we went down and listened
Speaker 7: to the music, and then listen to the music. He said.
Speaker 7: He came home and listened to me. Say I got
Speaker 7: an idea. He said, I got an idea. So after
Speaker 7: we left Fans, we went straight back to Ebesfield and
Speaker 7: worked on hither came up with a drum beat. Came
Speaker 7: up with a drum beat. Now, if you remember the
Speaker 7: original version of red Frog, drummer came up with a bassline.
Speaker 7: Good dogg, A dogg, A dudegg.
Speaker 4: That's that came from because I was in love with
Speaker 4: d And I said, yeah, I was a cool more
Speaker 4: what's that? He had the wild wild West? The doom
Speaker 4: boom boom. So then that's why I said, I didn't
Speaker 4: even know you. Remember I said, like that.
Speaker 3: Base each other right now, I didn't know that baseline.
Speaker 3: So then you you changed.
Speaker 4: You said boom boooom. So so he was like a
Speaker 4: boom boom boom, Yeah, boom boom. I was, I love
Speaker 4: that baseline. So then you like.
Speaker 7: So to twisted little the record company heard it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but see here's the thing. Here's the thing. See
Speaker 4: that this is the piece of the piece that I
Speaker 4: always remember about the inspiration of Ghetto Heaven because the
Speaker 4: salam thing was part of that.
Speaker 3: But also the.
Speaker 4: We had gone to the label, we had submitted the
Speaker 4: whole record. We submitted the whole album, and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is dope, it's dope. We didn't hear no singles.
Speaker 11: Yeah yeah, So we were like son of them, and
Speaker 11: so we were like so excited, excited about the album
Speaker 11: and disappointed that they didn't hear you know, because we
Speaker 11: felt like they were singles, you know, change, change, So
Speaker 11: we were like, remember, I remember, you know.
Speaker 4: Eventually getting back to the studio was like, you know,
Speaker 4: it was just like they just want nursery rhymes. They
Speaker 4: just want nurse rhymes. We were like, I love my baby. No, no,
Speaker 4: I remember.
Speaker 3: Rush Rush, Rush Rush was.
Speaker 2: There time out was Rush Rush the last song done
Speaker 2: for a spell Bound the first I was the same
Speaker 2: formula exactly.
Speaker 4: No, No, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Well, well you want to hear a rush Rush story.
Speaker 3: I asked you that.
Speaker 4: I said, you can't, you can't play you can't write
Speaker 4: a song with just two chords.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, that wasn't it. That was what was
Speaker 6: that was was no at the time. What happened happened
Speaker 6: was usually what happens is. You know, at the time,
Speaker 6: Babyface was writing a lot of songs. We would go
Speaker 6: back and baby Faces a great song. Right of course
Speaker 6: I loved him, but I but I would say to her,
Speaker 6: I can write those songs in my sleep.
Speaker 2: So did you purposely use the d X seven patch
Speaker 2: just as a point of sarcasm.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't.
Speaker 6: The sarcasm was I literally said, because I knew what
Speaker 6: his thing was. The thing was there was the way
Speaker 6: he hit the beat. So I was like, I jokingly
Speaker 6: went to the piano and I said, yoo is a
Speaker 6: something trees yo, look kiss that puts my soul that ease.
Speaker 6: And I was I was like, oh that sounds good.
Speaker 6: And that's the first two things I said. But there
Speaker 6: was a way he used. He would write songs that
Speaker 6: kind of go I wanna run, I wanna try, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna take the yeah, yeah, own.
Speaker 3: My heart myself.
Speaker 6: It's it's a it's a it's a pocket to us
Speaker 6: to a song, and every songwriter has that pocket. So
Speaker 6: once you figure out what the mofos pocket is, he'd
Speaker 6: be like, oh, you wanna that type of song you
Speaker 6: wanna that.
Speaker 3: That's the pocket of that thing. So it's all up.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So that's my brother, yo, who you texted?
Speaker 2: I gotta do this, I gotta do this.
Speaker 3: I gotta do on the show. I gotta do this.
Speaker 3: Hang on, please pick up? What time is it on
Speaker 3: the I was just pick up please. I meant to
Speaker 3: tell him that when I met him too, but he wasn't.
Speaker 3: It's not a but.
Speaker 7: Odd time six o'clock.
Speaker 3: Damn it, damn it, damn it, damnit.
Speaker 2: I'm officially calling Jimmy Jam to let him know that
Speaker 2: he's officially my second favorite.
Speaker 3: Got all back. I think he thinks that I'm butt Downald,
Speaker 3: but I got I got Jimmy Jam.
Speaker 6: Just bring him, bring them No, I know, I look
Speaker 6: because it really was for Jimmy Jam because the first
Speaker 6: song that I did, we kind of did it together.
Speaker 6: But I did this, this track with this song for
Speaker 6: this girl named Janis Christie. All right, heat strokes. It's
Speaker 6: one of the worst songs I ever wrote, but it
Speaker 6: came a little bit of a him, but it wasn't it.
Speaker 6: Here was this this nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
Speaker 6: something like that. Yeah, So Jenny Jackson's record to come out,
Speaker 6: so everybody was trying to do that. What have you
Speaker 6: done for me lately?
Speaker 7: And what was that?
Speaker 3: What was what was that song by that group?
Speaker 7: Album?
Speaker 6: Nobody was another group because another one that came out
Speaker 6: Alice be My Girl, Full Force, Full Force, Full Force
Speaker 6: had a record, right, that was really dope.
Speaker 2: I want you just for me?
Speaker 6: Yeah, but so so the baseline for heat Stroke was
Speaker 6: a kind of a combination of reboff for Jimmy and
Speaker 6: it was like, so it was like.
Speaker 9: Doom doom, but do doom, but do do doom doom
Speaker 9: doom doom, but do do but boom boom, you know.
Speaker 3: So, so it was that and the song was horrible too.
Speaker 9: He stroke up.
Speaker 3: The moment, it was kind of fly. It was flying
Speaker 3: for the time. But usually my jokes songes and and
Speaker 3: being his I'm trying to be all that's what happened. Yes,
Speaker 3: ghetto Heaven Rush Rush Promise. I was serious. Notice he
Speaker 3: put that one under another name, no noticed, Alice Smith.
Speaker 6: Yeah that was really dumb too, because at the time
Speaker 6: till now because in two thousand, around two thousand and four,
Speaker 6: like they're not checking for us anymore. I'm chicking my
Speaker 6: name to Joshua now picking up my new young hip podcast,
Speaker 6: which was the dumbest ship I ever did.
Speaker 3: My fucking sorry, stop stop editing.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, josh yeah, so I wrote, he did, he
Speaker 6: is and but the thing is but inspired. That was
Speaker 6: again going back to hip hop. What was there was
Speaker 6: this record I Love Broken Language and Broken Broken Language
Speaker 6: by Smooth. Yeah, you get that track like so so
Speaker 6: so he was like the mind. So I'm like, he
Speaker 6: is the dupe pleecta, the due protector, that's all. So,
Speaker 6: so that's what I so when you can motherfuck it? Yo,
Speaker 6: when did you hear her that song?
Speaker 4: You're right up the cocaine cooker, the hook cup on
Speaker 4: your hookup, hup the thirty five cent shorts on my
Speaker 4: two for five's overlooked.
Speaker 3: The rat turn off. The team turner asked, whipp I
Speaker 3: learned the man, the money earner, Jack.
Speaker 7: The un Protector, the song band.
Speaker 6: Of Anything, I fear, the baby can shave, the.
Speaker 3: Make believe the joke. Oh god, So that's that's the
Speaker 3: connection between you know, the soul and him.
Speaker 2: But just telling your arm bead Broken Language by Smooth
Speaker 2: the Hustler.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically, now it's your number two.
Speaker 7: Now you know what The interesting thing about that project
Speaker 7: that I remember too is that I remember them taking
Speaker 7: a long time to get back to us about doing
Speaker 7: the song because and we almost thought that they didn't
Speaker 7: want to do the song, and we almost thought that
Speaker 7: maybe they were trying to get somebody else to produce
Speaker 7: the song. And it was like it was just kind
Speaker 7: of a weird thing, and I think we almost gave
Speaker 7: the song away.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what the problem was, they didn't They didn't intend
Speaker 6: for the first single to come from exactly exactly.
Speaker 7: They didn't intend for the first single to come from us,
Speaker 7: and so they made the right choice.
Speaker 3: They made the right choice.
Speaker 6: But finally, but about that album though, is and and
Speaker 6: and and go back to Jimmy and Terry because we
Speaker 6: love Love loved and one of the but that's the
Speaker 6: second single was I Wish so.
Speaker 3: Sing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's called I Wish or something. But
Speaker 6: there's a song we had on there called Forwards from
Speaker 6: a Heartbreak. There was a really dope song that actually
Speaker 6: should have been should have been the next thing, but
Speaker 6: it was but it was a tie, so it was good.
Speaker 6: But we but you know, it was a lot of
Speaker 6: times with the music, it is politics, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 6: and we we get it though, but and the name,
Speaker 6: and we actually had offered that, so I think we
Speaker 6: had tried to get it to Whitney Houston, and then
Speaker 6: I think, Satan. I'm sorry, Chris Clive Davis.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that MySpace is still thing. Well, I
Speaker 2: mean maybe in the archive world wherever that thing is. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: my uh whatever the bio in my mindspace thing is
Speaker 2: like Clyde Davis is the devil.
Speaker 3: Someone from Arrison the album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Clyde, don't know now, I just said it.
Speaker 3: Though I wasn't inviting in the first place.
Speaker 2: That's why.
Speaker 5: The same night.
Speaker 2: Everybody wait, uh oh yo, my mind is about to
Speaker 2: explode right now because we're all over the place all
Speaker 2: right since since no, no, we're just being sporadic. This
Speaker 2: is why I want to know, because when I got
Speaker 2: word that you guys were producing Spellbound second album, Yes,
Speaker 2: her second album, her follow up to her, I mean her,
Speaker 2: it was a massive record. Yeah, I mean Forever your
Speaker 2: Girl was more like an industry that built virgin and
Speaker 2: opportunities like that, don't they don't That story doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: When when I heard you guys were producing it, and
Speaker 2: the line share of the record.
Speaker 4: I was like, yo, like yeah, that's from him playing
Speaker 4: in her house, playing a piano, And.
Speaker 3: How did that happen? How did it happen?
Speaker 2: Because I would have thought, okay, uh well okay knocked out,
Speaker 2: that was upstart la baby face. But now that they're
Speaker 2: the ship, let's listen, like she's an industry now Aftershock.
Speaker 7: First she wanted to do She wanted to do something
Speaker 7: different she was.
Speaker 3: She wanted to make an artistic statement. She wanted she
Speaker 3: didn't want to see the machine.
Speaker 7: No, she didn't want to do She wanted the big.
Speaker 4: Enough to move past that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that she was big enough to make.
Speaker 6: And she's really underestimated in terms of her artistic and
Speaker 6: intellect and discipline, so she was.
Speaker 3: She heard Rush Rush, so she flipped on with that.
Speaker 6: And then and we were working with a group called
Speaker 6: after Shock that we did album for versions, and that's
Speaker 6: how she kind of heard about us. And after she
Speaker 6: heard Rush Rush, she loved that. And then what else
Speaker 6: did we write?
Speaker 3: Then? I think Blone kisses new promise of a new
Speaker 3: day and then.
Speaker 2: The new day was so dark the way those dissonant
Speaker 2: strings came it. But but but the juxtaposition of the
Speaker 2: video being so sunny and everything and everything.
Speaker 4: I was like, yo, but listen the coolest song on there.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry it was vibology.
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 3: I think the MTV Award performance did it?
Speaker 4: Because literally the next day we were watching it, watching ship.
Speaker 4: So the next day the radio the managers told us
Speaker 4: you already is literally saying you're not sending us the
Speaker 4: fat song, are you?
Speaker 8: Yo?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: It was just I can in context look at I'm
Speaker 3: googling the video so she no, it's not even the video.
Speaker 2: If she performed at the MTV Awards, And because you know,
Speaker 2: I mean pre social media, I don't even know how
Speaker 2: people managed to Like I knew, the collective thought was that,
Speaker 2: oh my god, what happened to Paula exactly?
Speaker 3: And they blamed the song, right, they blamed it. I
Speaker 3: like that was the single they like.
Speaker 6: It was cost you know when you have like the
Speaker 6: costume on wireless, but it was a wireless microphone. I
Speaker 6: think something on the back of something that kind of
Speaker 6: made it jet out funny angles and made it look
Speaker 6: she's two pounds if that, and it made it look
Speaker 6: like she was she's like three pounds three exactly.
Speaker 4: So literally, the radio was because they were sending the
Speaker 4: sing little next day they were like, you're not sending
Speaker 4: us the fat song and just it just it killed
Speaker 4: the momentum of that song. And honestly, I mean, if
Speaker 4: I'm if, I'm gonna tell you that that form that
Speaker 4: the backgrounds on that song, for me, is the most
Speaker 4: proud I am of any background I've done recorded in
Speaker 4: my career because of the fact that I got to
Speaker 4: use my classical training.
Speaker 3: All of that. I did all of them voices from
Speaker 3: the bar to the I did all of those.
Speaker 5: Can we can't ask you about that? Because Bill sent
Speaker 5: a video audio of when she was in high school
Speaker 5: and I was like, this can't really be.
Speaker 3: It was like the opera.
Speaker 2: I knows we're the government, the government tape.
Speaker 3: That's that's now.
Speaker 4: Wait range man, Well, no, I mean I was trained.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I went to like music and art,
Speaker 4: where Erica went, where Roy Hargrove went, Nora Jones, all
Speaker 4: that ship went out. They told me to stop being
Speaker 4: so perfect, and I was he you know, it's like, oh, really, okay.
Speaker 3: Did it race? Can you still hit the you still got.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that's in you.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: So the classical training never leaves you. But the that's
Speaker 4: what I got. The best training I got isn't being
Speaker 4: in the studio. Pet and Jeff telling me the feel
Speaker 4: is the most important, the feel. Don't lose the feel.
Speaker 4: I'm like, can I do that again? They're like no,
Speaker 4: I felt good, You're not doing it again.
Speaker 3: I'm like, please gotta do it again? Like nope.
Speaker 4: So yeah, they didn't let me, you know, perfection. They
Speaker 4: don't let me perfect perfect it. So you know they're
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: Whatever to take is right.
Speaker 4: Whatever to take, I want it to be like something else.
Speaker 4: But if it feels right, and they both like, you know,
Speaker 4: they're like that, and Mark Batson is like that, these
Speaker 4: are those producers don't care if the note is right,
Speaker 4: if if the if the pronunction. They want the take
Speaker 4: to feel right. That's the prime objective. So you know
Speaker 4: that's important because you know, I listen, I was actually
Speaker 4: today listened to a bunch of like, you know, seventies
Speaker 4: and eighties stuff like Jeane carn and you know, infinities,
Speaker 4: and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, she ain't singing it. Then it ain't like perfect.
Speaker 3: It's about the field.
Speaker 4: It's about you know, it's about where where she's where
Speaker 4: she's coming from with the note. It's not about where
Speaker 4: to note, where to know lands where she come from.
Speaker 5: But it's funny because she still has a similar background
Speaker 5: as you were. She knows how to do it classic.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, she's classically trying to h Jeff, you're not
Speaker 4: getting away with us.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I have to at least back up the
Speaker 2: tree in at least fifteen years just to start with.
Speaker 2: Or first for starters, you were taught by you, step
Speaker 2: latif No.
Speaker 7: I studied with him for a second in college for
Speaker 7: a second, and I wasn't taught by him. I went
Speaker 7: to Burrough of Manhattan Community College for about a year.
Speaker 7: That was just my extent of college because once I
Speaker 7: made it out of high school, I don't know how
Speaker 7: I said, yeh, college to try. So I got in
Speaker 7: there and and I studied with him for a little while,
Speaker 7: and he was you know, he shown me some things.
Speaker 7: In fact, I didn't even know he played flute. I
Speaker 7: didn't know what the flute was his thing. And you know,
Speaker 7: I just once a week I go and he you know,
Speaker 7: just do some private lesson things. And you know, that's
Speaker 7: about my extent. The extent of me studying with him.
Speaker 2: What is your preferred weapon of choice as far as
Speaker 2: your arsenal is a soprano alto tenor.
Speaker 7: I've been playing a lot of soprano lately. I don't,
Speaker 7: I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I mean, gun to your head? What do you what's
Speaker 2: what's your acts? Because you have so many? Don't say
Speaker 2: with the sky.
Speaker 3: That one.
Speaker 7: But I've been playing a lot of soprano, probably the
Speaker 7: last maybe maybe four or five years. I've been playing
Speaker 7: a lot of soprano, a lot of sopran on Barry
Speaker 7: though I love you on Barry too, but that doesn't
Speaker 7: make me enough.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna ask you. Okay, So here's the question
Speaker 2: I asked. So our particular sex player, Uh, Ian, Uh?
Speaker 2: What's Ian's last name?
Speaker 3: And Hendrickson Smith Ian hendricks and Smith formerly of the
Speaker 3: Dad Kings. And so the thing is that Ian hates
Speaker 3: when I make him break out the soprano.
Speaker 2: He doesn't now for us, it's hilarious, but he hates
Speaker 2: the sheen associated with the soprano. Well, I mean that,
Speaker 2: And you know it's almost like I guess the Unwritten
Speaker 2: rule is like after Coltrane.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know it's done with it?
Speaker 2: Who else wants to and more power Wayne Shorter, more
Speaker 2: power to you know, I know there are other greats
Speaker 2: that have touched.
Speaker 7: I didn't like Coltrane's sound on soprano.
Speaker 3: You serious sound, You're you are one of a kind.
Speaker 7: I didn't like his sound on soprano. Tanna, He's my
Speaker 7: favorite all time, but soprano I didn't like. I didn't
Speaker 7: like his tone on who did you like?
Speaker 3: On soprano?
Speaker 7: I like Wayne Shorter?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, so you feel the definitive sound of
Speaker 2: the soprano sacks is Wayne Short, but.
Speaker 7: Not the definitive sound. I just his sound just connects
Speaker 7: with me more on soprano cold training because I think
Speaker 7: he got if I remember correctly, that was something that
Speaker 7: was a gift from Miles, right, yes, yeah, so you
Speaker 7: know he picked it up. I guess he was trying
Speaker 7: to do something. But I wasn't crazy about his sound Sonically,
Speaker 7: his sound, I wasn't crazy about it.
Speaker 3: What were you looking for, Leary?
Speaker 7: I wasn't looking for anything. It just wasn't connecting me.
Speaker 7: It just sounded kind of no, not even contrived. I
Speaker 7: think he was sincere about what he was doing, but
Speaker 7: it just didn't sound it wasn't for me.
Speaker 3: That's so, what's your favorite period of COULTREYMN.
Speaker 7: Giant Steps, spiral or no, that the stuff when you
Speaker 7: don't like the stuff when he started I mean I
Speaker 7: liked I mean the stuff when he started going out,
Speaker 7: it just got a little bit too out for me. Okay,
Speaker 7: but uh the era of Giant Steps before that, you know,
Speaker 7: stuff he was doing in the sixties with Miles was.
Speaker 7: I loved all of that stuff. I mean, he had
Speaker 7: like a sound to me, he just had his sound
Speaker 7: just connected.
Speaker 3: I remember, so, who's your sex guy then?
Speaker 2: Because I just naturally assume that everyone worships the culture
Speaker 2: no matter what.
Speaker 7: Yeah, culture ain't no matter what.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 7: I like Michael Brecker. He was like that cat to me.
Speaker 3: Song hero Okay, you know.
Speaker 7: I mean those two guys. I mean, there's just so
Speaker 7: many guys. I mean, I could go back to Dexter
Speaker 7: Garden and pres had his own sound. You know, this
Speaker 7: smooth thing. Uh Bird was just Bird was fast. I mean, ah, man,
Speaker 7: Bird was just.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, Manka, So explain to me, because
Speaker 2: the thing is that you managed to capture the one
Speaker 2: the one thing I always hear about when uh An
Speaker 2: iconic solo is captured in the song. It's always the
Speaker 2: same story, and the story is okay, guys, I'm ready
Speaker 2: to cut it.
Speaker 3: Nope, we got it already. That was very much.
Speaker 2: I know that's your story. Yeah, but are you once
Speaker 2: did you know that you captured lightning in a bottle
Speaker 2: with your sexophone and solo carabing.
Speaker 7: No, no, that that I have to give credit to
Speaker 7: the producer, Keith Diamond at the time, because he was
Speaker 7: the one that he knew pretty much what he wanted
Speaker 7: in terms of.
Speaker 3: The song, so we.
Speaker 7: Would just take sections because I mean, I went into
Speaker 7: the studio and I was just kind of trying to
Speaker 7: get a feel of what the song was, and they
Speaker 7: had the tape rolling. He told Bob Rosea to roll
Speaker 7: the tape while I was playing and I was in
Speaker 7: front of the mic. They were trying to get a sound.
Speaker 7: So I said, okay, I think I got something, and
Speaker 7: then he said, no, come on in. I was just
Speaker 7: warming up.
Speaker 3: Let me just do a take of it.
Speaker 7: And no, No, that song, that song was pieces because
Speaker 7: he had the whole tape rolling and he took pieces
Speaker 7: of what I played throughout the from the beginning of
Speaker 7: the song to the end, I want you to play
Speaker 7: this part here, and we just kind of constructed the
Speaker 7: solo and the and the interesting thing about it is
Speaker 7: like after that song blew up Man, I was getting
Speaker 7: calls leg everybody and their mother was calling me and
Speaker 7: my friend Van. He said, yo, Jeff, you need to
Speaker 7: start charging people because I was under charging people. He said,
Speaker 7: you know your ship is hot, you need to get
Speaker 7: paid for it. So I just started charging people. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I ran up a lot more.
Speaker 3: Ste to this.
Speaker 2: So when Billy Ocean finally agreed to come on the show,
Speaker 2: this is after six long years of begging, please come
Speaker 2: on the Tonight Show, Please please please Tonight Show. And
Speaker 2: he finally agrees to to the show, and we're losing
Speaker 2: our ship. And then I'm looking at Ian, our sax player,
Speaker 2: and we were like, dude, you have to do it.
Speaker 3: Note for fucking and do we spend two hours just
Speaker 3: singing that ship to him?
Speaker 5: I don't know that between that solo and Carolin's whisper.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing though, It's like I know.
Speaker 2: A lot of Tarik's lyrics. Tarik, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: Tarik will let me let me not misrepresent him. I
Speaker 2: think the average person knows like can can retain like
Speaker 2: maybe seventy five songs or seventy those things. But it's
Speaker 2: just like, I mean, I know that song because I
Speaker 2: DJ it so much. I you know, watch TV.
Speaker 5: An American Americans who were born before eighty have to
Speaker 5: know that that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she feels like like she means Chief is like deep,
Speaker 2: like he's like Doug carn He's free.
Speaker 5: Jazz, jazz, boozie, jazz, boogie.
Speaker 2: Is like he's more avant garde. That's where his heart is.
Speaker 2: I mean, he made his meat and potatoes as the
Speaker 2: Dap King, so.
Speaker 5: All that, Like you don't think it's boogie when you
Speaker 5: all know the solo Caribbean.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, you know it.
Speaker 2: But I don't think like any anybody that's on the
Speaker 2: Tonight Show now. Like again, my story is that I
Speaker 2: didn't grow up saying, hey, one day I'm gonna be
Speaker 2: the new Doc Severson of the Tonight Show.
Speaker 3: It just happened and I'm prepared for it.
Speaker 2: But part of the job of being on the Tonight
Speaker 2: Show is that you all the pop culture sponging that
Speaker 2: you've done your life, everything you've learned now gets utilized
Speaker 2: on the show.
Speaker 3: So I mean you know that solo. But it's like,
Speaker 3: now you got to execute a perfect you.
Speaker 4: That's different.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's no, that's.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I love that little bit.
Speaker 3: Wait wait.
Speaker 2: You still when's the last time you had to play
Speaker 2: that still verbatim? Or don't tell me thirty five years
Speaker 2: ago after I did it?
Speaker 7: That was it when I had to play it?
Speaker 2: Yes, I can't.
Speaker 7: Oh no, no, no no. The only two times I
Speaker 7: really played with him was one night the week the
Speaker 7: night he was on Saturday Night Live. He did two
Speaker 7: nights at Radio City. Those were the only times that
Speaker 7: I ever played with Billy, And ironically, the the last
Speaker 7: night that I him was when I lost the horn
Speaker 7: that that I had because we went out.
Speaker 3: You literally lost that horn.
Speaker 7: Let me tell you what happened after the show, you know,
Speaker 7: because he sold out Radio City two nights. I sat
Speaker 7: him with him two nights. The second night we went
Speaker 7: and we after the show, we went to kind of celebrate,
Speaker 7: you know, went up, got a couple of drinks. I
Speaker 7: went down into the after we were done, I went
Speaker 7: down into the garage to get my car. The guy
Speaker 7: brought my car. My horn was in the back of
Speaker 7: the car. I didn't put it in the car. Yet
Speaker 7: I paid, went and paid for the car and drove
Speaker 7: off and left my horn. When I got home, I
Speaker 7: looked in the trunk. I was like, oh shit, So
Speaker 7: I went back to the garage. Of course, they didn't
Speaker 7: see nothing. They didn't see they didn't see nobody saw anything.
Speaker 7: And so the only time I ever see that horn
Speaker 7: for reruns of Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 2: And if somewhere in life there's like some grandkid that
Speaker 2: got a saxophone for church, not knowing what they just got.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well somebody, Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: I think she'd be in a black Sonian.
Speaker 3: So Sondra, okay, so your journey is just as rich
Speaker 3: as well. I tell you.
Speaker 2: We're not even going to get properly get to the
Speaker 2: family stamp. This is almost like a nine part episode.
Speaker 2: How much pounding of the payment did you do in
Speaker 2: New York?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Oh wait, can you wait one second please, we're getting
Speaker 2: a phone call.
Speaker 3: We're getting a.
Speaker 2: Phone call right now, James Harris the third, Yes, sir,
Speaker 2: how you doing. I'm currently right now taping an episode
Speaker 2: of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: Okay, I regret the form.
Speaker 2: You of this, and I've I've made a public I've
Speaker 2: declared my loyalty, my allegiance to you since the history
Speaker 2: of my show. But but you are now officially in
Speaker 2: second place.
Speaker 8: As you're you you've been, You've you've been.
Speaker 2: You've been demoted to second place because the Family Stand
Speaker 2: episode is the craziest thing I've.
Speaker 3: Heard in my life? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm currently right now with with v Jeffrey, Sounder's name,
Speaker 2: Victor and Peter and yeah, I have.
Speaker 3: To tell you that live on the air, that love
Speaker 3: you know that, thank you for giving me give me
Speaker 3: the hands up on Friends Radio. They're going to do yourself.
Speaker 7: Yes, I know, yeah, yeah, we want to come on you.
Speaker 6: More sympathy love.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, this is the craziest the stories I've heard. It's,
Speaker 2: you know, like we're very organized, we're going to chronological
Speaker 2: order now.
Speaker 3: It's just going all over the place.
Speaker 9: I can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 2: Man, yes, man, anyway, I just want to let you
Speaker 2: know you're number two, but you're still number one.
Speaker 3: But you're number two, you know, would you say number one?
Speaker 3: I'm still number one as a solo acto.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna get my category.
Speaker 2: Together, all right, You're still the number one solo Act
Speaker 2: on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: Think perfect, Okay, all right, bro, all right, God'll.
Speaker 2: Hold up, hold up, wait a minute, all right, you
Speaker 2: know when you hear my voice, sorry you're disappointed, but
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to wait seven more days to get
Speaker 2: This is beyond team this is this is wow. I
Speaker 2: can't even describe what you're experiencing right now. I think
Speaker 2: this is probably shaping up to be one of.
Speaker 3: My favorite episodes.
Speaker 2: And I know I went on record to say that
Speaker 2: Jimmy jam had the absolute best episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: But this might be neck and neck. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to ask the rest of the Team Supreme.
Speaker 2: So please join us next week for part two of
Speaker 2: this legend already legendary classic.
Speaker 3: Instant classic episode of the family stand on Quest Love.
Speaker 1: Subprime, Quest Love Supreme. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.