Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All Right.
Speaker 1: So I asked Quest Love Supreme guests about their first
Speaker 1: musical memory, because I feel like it's a great starting point.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone has a come to Jesus moment when
Speaker 1: it comes to when they discovered music, or how music
Speaker 1: liberated them or what brought them into music, And oftentimes
Speaker 1: I'll say that music plays an important role of helping
Speaker 1: you remember what your life was. You know, I remember
Speaker 1: my first car accident because I knew the Lanis Marset
Speaker 1: song that was playing as we crashed. I remember like
Speaker 1: the first heartbreak I had with a girl, and Anita
Speaker 1: Baker's Sweet Love comes on like sometimes. You know, Chappelle
Speaker 1: often jokes we turned the car radio volume down because
Speaker 1: no one wants to get their ass beat to a soundtrack.
Speaker 1: But you know, oftentimes music helps us remember what life is.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I ask them that. I believe
Speaker 1: the first episode that the public heard was the Maya
Speaker 1: Rudolph episode. Of course, our very first, and that was
Speaker 1: I believe September of twenty sixteen, and I asked Maya
Speaker 1: about it, and you know, it wasn't like the staple
Speaker 1: of QLs episodes until like twenty nineteen. That's when I
Speaker 1: realized that's a good deal breaker. Oftentimes you got to
Speaker 1: gain the trust of the artist that comes on the show,
Speaker 1: and I kind of want them to know in the
Speaker 1: first fifteen minutes what type of show this is. And oftentimes,
Speaker 1: especially with creatives, they often do interviews on the defensive.
Speaker 2: You know, we called that.
Speaker 1: Gotcha journalism, like you're asked an awkward question that you
Speaker 1: don't want to answer and you know, kind of puts
Speaker 1: them in a pickle. So sometimes it surprises people. I
Speaker 1: think the Steve Stout episode was hilarious because, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that Steve Stout walked into this interview knowing
Speaker 1: that we were going to ask him about the infamous
Speaker 1: NAS Hate Me Now video controversy between him NAS and Diddy,
Speaker 1: and we really didn't go there. Like he was genuinely
Speaker 1: shocked that we wanted to know about his life, Like
Speaker 1: he stopped the interview. I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is what you guys want to know about, Like
Speaker 1: he was shocked that if it were any other outlet,
Speaker 1: he knew that they were more or less there for
Speaker 1: the juicy gossip stuff, and you know, for anybody in
Speaker 1: a prominent position in music. I want to show the
Speaker 1: path that led to that, so that the listener you
Speaker 1: might get inspiration from that, like, oh, okay, well I
Speaker 1: went to high school and I try to start my
Speaker 1: band and da da da da. So if you hear
Speaker 1: the people that you admire going through a process, then
Speaker 1: that might spark an idea and you to do the same.
Speaker 1: And so I will say that when John Oates of
Speaker 1: Daryl Hall and John Oates Hall of Notates of course
Speaker 1: mentioned my dad, that was kind of cool. He said that,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up in Philadelphia and the dou wop scene,
Speaker 1: my father was definitely a pioneer, and that meant a
Speaker 1: lot to me to hear. So I guess I should
Speaker 1: share with you guys my first musical memory and rather
Speaker 1: apropos now that the slide doc is done. But my
Speaker 1: first musical memory is also my first memory in life.
Speaker 1: And I will say that I was two years old.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen seventy three. I'm in my West Philadelphia
Speaker 1: house getting my hair washed, and you know, I'm two
Speaker 1: years old, so I don't know the rules that once
Speaker 1: you have their eyes closed when getting their hair washed.
Speaker 1: My sister's hand accidentally hits the bath detergent or the
Speaker 1: cleanser ajax, and it sort of hits the marble tub hard,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like a cloud of smoke.
Speaker 2: It gets in my.
Speaker 1: Eye and I'm just burning, stinging, sting and sting and crying,
Speaker 1: having a fit, you know. And all I remember was
Speaker 1: I ran from the bathroom on the second floor to
Speaker 1: the first floor, just running. My dad grabs me, and
Speaker 1: all I remember was that they pinned me. It was
Speaker 1: like a wrestler, like I was pinned to the ground.
Speaker 1: My aunt Karen and my sister Dawn were pinning my shoulders.
Speaker 1: My mom pinned my ankles so that couldn't run, and
Speaker 1: my dad was trying to like you gotta think of
Speaker 1: it like a what's the movie, Oh, Clockwork Orange, Like
Speaker 1: the way they forced the eyelids open to stay open.
Speaker 1: My dad has a gallon of water and he's trying
Speaker 1: to flush my face and all this is happening while
Speaker 1: the second song on sly is very depressing.
Speaker 2: There's a riot going on.
Speaker 1: Album as playing called just Like a Baby, And if
Speaker 1: you know the song just Like a Baby, the ominous baseline,
Speaker 1: very spooky sounding song, that's my first memory in life,
Speaker 1: and that kind of made me obsessed with Sly and
Speaker 1: probably made me highly eligible to direct this documentary because
Speaker 1: of my relationship and obsession with the guy who created
Speaker 1: that song. Weird enough, I didn't hear that song again
Speaker 1: until like eight years later, and when I was like
Speaker 1: ten or eleven, I heard that baseline and instantly ran
Speaker 1: to the record player, and all those memories came triggering back,
Speaker 1: like you know, the scene and kill Bill whenever, like
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones's Iron Side Please. That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1: It was like triggering, like, oh my god, I remember
Speaker 1: that feeling and me being pinned to the floor and
Speaker 1: them trying to wash my eye out. So that's my
Speaker 1: first musical memory. So what was your first cognizant memory
Speaker 1: of music? Yeah, just of the environment you grew up in. Like,
Speaker 1: you don't remember that Soul Train episode in what you
Speaker 1: were crying through your mom's interview segment.
Speaker 3: Mmm, I don't remember it, but I remember that all
Speaker 3: that that era for me was, I mean, we were
Speaker 3: on the road with my parents most of the time
Speaker 3: until I started school, So I mean when we were
Speaker 3: little little sometimes they go out on the road and
Speaker 3: they take us with them. But pretty much, especially when
Speaker 3: I was a baby. I think my mom went out
Speaker 3: on the road for a minute and then she called
Speaker 3: my dad. She was like, you have to come with me.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't be without the baby and without you guys.
Speaker 3: And so we were on the road a lot. And
Speaker 3: I remember being on the road with my parents, like
Speaker 3: I remember somebody lost a tooth in like some town
Speaker 3: with a casino and we got like a chip or something,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I remember, like sound check.
Speaker 4: To me is like.
Speaker 3: I think it was it was me or my I
Speaker 3: think it's me, me or my brother.
Speaker 2: Even like a bar fight or something.
Speaker 3: No, like like the normal things that happened to a kid.
Speaker 3: But the tooth fairy brought me like a casino chip
Speaker 3: because we were in like Lake Tahoe or something. But
Speaker 3: like like being on the road was very normal. And
Speaker 3: then like seeing my mom, Yeah, like being being in studios,
Speaker 3: being backstage, and like seeing my mom before the show,
Speaker 3: like before the audience was there. All that is like
Speaker 3: tied together as one kind of large memory.
Speaker 1: That was my Rudolph And here is Daryl Hall. Do
Speaker 1: you remember what your very first musical memory.
Speaker 5: Was, probably seeing my well, my mother and father both
Speaker 5: were musicians. I see my mother in a band. I
Speaker 5: mean my mother was in it was in a band
Speaker 5: in post Town, and I was like, yeah, from the
Speaker 5: age of two years old, I'd watched the band, and
Speaker 5: I always wanted to be the band leader, you know,
Speaker 5: the guy that had the he had like a white
Speaker 5: coat on. Everybody else had red coats on. He had
Speaker 5: a white coat on. So yeah, I was I wanted
Speaker 5: to be that guy.
Speaker 4: What does Darryl Hall's mom's voice sound like? What is
Speaker 4: her singing voice?
Speaker 5: She was a soprano. She's ninety eight years old now
Speaker 5: and she still sings, but yeah, she's an amazing singer,
Speaker 5: amazing soprano. And my father was in a gospel group,
Speaker 5: a vocal group, and so I learned harmonies from him
Speaker 5: and his brothers and his friends and all that. So,
Speaker 5: you know, I grew up in the whole world.
Speaker 1: Were they closer to do Wop or more Mills Brothers
Speaker 1: or like harmony?
Speaker 2: Like what was their church harmony? You know, like.
Speaker 4: Gospel?
Speaker 1: Harvey, what was your first musical memory.
Speaker 6: My mom would sing at this park across the street
Speaker 6: with her band, and she had this big afro and
Speaker 6: bell bottoms, blue jean bell bottoms in a green shirt
Speaker 6: and some big hoops, and she had this tambourine but
Speaker 6: she would hit it with her hip all the time,
Speaker 6: and I just loved every time her hip would move
Speaker 6: or she'd sing, the audience would just I just saw
Speaker 6: them go crazy. I didn't know what that meant, but
Speaker 6: the sound of her voice always would do something here.
Speaker 6: So that memory always, I always remember that before I
Speaker 6: go on stage. But that was my one of my
Speaker 6: first memories of music. The other one is the h
Speaker 6: The band would record to the A track and it
Speaker 6: would sit in our room. We had a shotgun house
Speaker 6: to just go straight ahead and in the living room.
Speaker 6: The band would record in the living room, and my
Speaker 6: mom would record her vocal part with the A track
Speaker 6: in our bedroom, which was the next room. So I
Speaker 6: would stare at the A track and watch my mom
Speaker 6: record on the edge of the bed. And then when
Speaker 6: they pressed play and her voice came out of it,
Speaker 6: I was just blown away. And that's when I like
Speaker 6: those two memories. That's when I wanted to sing.
Speaker 4: Did your mother did she like make records of your
Speaker 4: recording artists or did she just sing?
Speaker 6: And she was a recording artist, She had her own
Speaker 6: band called car Nova in New Orleans. They had their
Speaker 6: own band. It was interracial, racial bass player guitar. My
Speaker 6: stepdad played drums. That's why I started on the drums.
Speaker 6: That's why I loved watching drummers. That's why I became
Speaker 6: a fan of me. And I would watch the way
Speaker 6: drummers set up their snares. It slanted, is it low?
Speaker 6: Is it below their knees, like every little technical thing.
Speaker 6: So I started on the drums, and I would watch
Speaker 6: them perform rehearse in our bedroom, but we were too
Speaker 6: young to go in the club, so they would have
Speaker 6: the car close to the side door so that my
Speaker 6: mom can babysit while performing, so she would do double duty.
Speaker 6: So I'm a kid from that kind of era where
Speaker 6: they did a lot of performing and recording at the
Speaker 6: same time. But she had her own band lead singer,
Speaker 6: and her and the bass player would write songs together
Speaker 6: all the time.
Speaker 1: Wow, I know you're probably obsessed with Darry Jones if
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out drummer angles. All right, that
Speaker 1: was Letusy and now this is Bonnie Rape. I start
Speaker 1: off every episode with the same question, so you're no
Speaker 1: exception to the rule. Could you please give me your
Speaker 1: very first musical memory.
Speaker 7: Oh, I think my dad, who was a Broadway leading man,
Speaker 7: singing the songs from his show, with my mom warming
Speaker 7: him up on the pianel. She was his musical director
Speaker 7: and rehearsal pianist. And I remember being really little and
Speaker 7: hearing this big, old booming voice singing these great Rogers
Speaker 7: and Hammerstein songs. So I'd have to say, my folks
Speaker 7: playing in the house.
Speaker 2: We also have Organized Noise.
Speaker 1: We begin with Sleepy Brown, whose father, Jimmy Brown, was
Speaker 1: the singer and flute player of a very well known
Speaker 1: funk band from the seventies called Brick. Of course, Brick
Speaker 1: gave us the classic song Dazz. I believe dazz is
Speaker 1: what they call a por dementeau of danceable jazz. They
Speaker 1: call it dazz. And then we're going to get to
Speaker 1: Ray Murray, and of course the late we go Wade.
Speaker 1: And this was recorded in Atlanta in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: very special episode Organized Noise. I know your lineage runs deep.
Speaker 1: I know all your lineage runs deep, but especially Sleepy
Speaker 1: being the son of the legendary Jimmy Brown Brick, I'll
Speaker 1: start with you, can you tell me what your first
Speaker 1: musical memory was.
Speaker 8: I was six years old, right, and it was my
Speaker 8: first concert I went to. And I was with my
Speaker 8: grandparents and we get to the concert and walk on
Speaker 8: side the stage and my dad, know start performing, And
Speaker 8: when I seen them do dazz, right, my mouth dropped
Speaker 8: and I look back at my grandmother when.
Speaker 2: I say, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 9: Wow.
Speaker 2: Period, I knew I want to do music.
Speaker 8: As soon as I saw my dad playing them ows
Speaker 8: and everybody screaming and going crazy. I was just like,
Speaker 8: I gotta do this is this is what I have
Speaker 8: to do. And plus you know, my mom would buy
Speaker 8: me Jackson five albums every Christmas, right, you know, so
Speaker 8: I was like the six Jackson. Plus I was in
Speaker 8: Break Right and Commodoors and I was in everybody group.
Speaker 8: So my first experience of music was the greatest era
Speaker 8: of music to me was the funk era and the
Speaker 8: disco era. No music has been made more beautiful than that.
Speaker 8: So that's my whole being, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: No matter what. That's why they called me funk or not,
Speaker 8: because if it ain't funky, I ain't doing.
Speaker 1: I function with that chewing dazz and music and ain't
Speaker 1: gonna hurt nobody. The captain obvious break is, do you
Speaker 1: have a favorite Brick song that isn't a hit or anything?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yep, fun one of them, Happy Happy.
Speaker 1: You know what I was gonna say, Damn, I always
Speaker 1: always say, but I've always confessed that I'm kind of
Speaker 1: working on Sultry, right. I was like preface with like,
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to say this, but no, I'm getting
Speaker 1: to the seventy seven episodes, and I gotta say, your
Speaker 1: dad was a charismatic motherfucker even when performing Happy on
Speaker 1: Soul training, Like I.
Speaker 8: Just but they always had the biggest smile. It's like
Speaker 8: we saw him perform. He was just excited and happy
Speaker 8: to perform for people. And he's always been that way.
Speaker 8: When he was younger, he had had a band in
Speaker 8: Savannah that did a couple of records, Jimmy and the
Speaker 8: Mighty Sensations, that did pretty good. Right, So he's always
Speaker 8: always loved music till this day.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 8: I'm working on the album right now with him. We're
Speaker 8: doing like an instrument Yeah, instrumental jazz. So he played flute, instrum, trombone, ato, sex,
Speaker 8: every hole you can put it front him and kill it.
Speaker 1: Living from the Mind was also one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: Yes that Baseline killed.
Speaker 2: Me and uh uh Somerset uh Summer.
Speaker 1: Telling them white album coming with Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that joint. Wait, like Brick Trivia. Have you heard this
Speaker 1: tip it about Prince? Do you know the story? So
Speaker 1: Prince was such a fan of Brick. What do you
Speaker 1: know that he wrote get it Up? He wrote that
Speaker 1: for Brick and they rejected it. We interviewed Mars, I'll
Speaker 1: do it for you sound effects sound Yeah, Mars and
Speaker 1: we I mean we've had damn near I remember at
Speaker 1: the time on except Terry Lewis, Terry Lewis. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when we asked Mars about him and Prince Craft in
Speaker 1: the first record, you know, he told us that he's
Speaker 1: playing drums on everything. He was like, when we may
Speaker 1: get it up for some reason, like Prince was really
Speaker 1: into not for some reason, I mean everybody was into it, but.
Speaker 2: Man, you just blew me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Way, Prince had wrote get It Up for Brick Brick
Speaker 1: to be whatever the album is with with the Green
Speaker 1: where it's like it's like the Green Leaves for that album.
Speaker 2: They rejected it. You gotta talk to your dad about that.
Speaker 2: What you're doing.
Speaker 4: There?
Speaker 2: You go, that's crazy?
Speaker 9: All right?
Speaker 1: So, Ray, what is your first musical memory?
Speaker 10: Me and my brother and sister used to turn the
Speaker 10: lights off and dance around to flight time.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, the airplane land.
Speaker 2: Just nos New York state of mind.
Speaker 10: Uh So early on, I kind of like my father's
Speaker 10: jazz head. So he he had all of this music
Speaker 10: which was like everything that we ever heard in hip hop.
Speaker 2: You feel me?
Speaker 10: All of this ship to cat sample, that's the ship
Speaker 10: that I grew up with playing in the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all three of you were born in Atlanta. I
Speaker 2: was doing Savannah. Okay, Yeah, I was born and you
Speaker 2: where were you born? About to say you gotta have
Speaker 2: me swag?
Speaker 11: Boys?
Speaker 2: I know it's where are you born? Where are you?
Speaker 10: I was going to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yes, my mom is
Speaker 10: from Pittsburgh, but I grew up before we came to Atlanta.
Speaker 10: We came to Atlanta with Mayna Jackson when he took
Speaker 10: over the city when he became the first black mayor.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 10: My father and mother were in Tuskegee, Alabama, So I
Speaker 10: grew up in Tuskegee pretty much Alabama.
Speaker 1: Okay, what I got roots there too, shout out to Mobile,
Speaker 1: not Texig, but Mobile.
Speaker 2: All right for you, Rico, what's what's your first musical memory?
Speaker 12: Oh Man, Even with listening to their memories, I was man,
Speaker 12: is as simple as that's good now. It's as simple
Speaker 12: as hear music on the radio. Because you know what
Speaker 12: I'm saying, I didn't really hit it. We didn't have
Speaker 12: a car when I was younger, so I didn't really
Speaker 12: hit the radio until like Mama was cleaning up or something,
Speaker 12: or or when I finally went into that back room.
Speaker 12: We had an extra room, and I just kind of
Speaker 12: went to digging, Yes, the guest room and all the
Speaker 12: junk sits in the man. I ended up finding more
Speaker 12: than records back there one day. But the records not.
Speaker 13: A bunch of fact.
Speaker 12: Yes, yes, money, but like Donald Summer and uh like
Speaker 12: ring my Bell and all that kind of stuff with
Speaker 12: some of the records and Iley Brothers. Yeah, I was
Speaker 12: seeing that stuff as records. But but on the radio
Speaker 12: when she was it was just the energy of the house.
Speaker 12: She would be a different person when the music came
Speaker 12: on and she turned up loud and she cleaning up.
Speaker 12: So people always made that I always say you know,
Speaker 12: I like to play my music when I'm cleaning up.
Speaker 12: I really understood what that meant. It's like I feel
Speaker 12: good today today is this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I'm going I need to.
Speaker 12: Be a good right, you need to feel good wile
Speaker 12: I'm getting this.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So so my examples of music.
Speaker 12: And another one at a young age was my first
Speaker 12: little job when I was like ten years old, just
Speaker 12: unloading the back of an eighteen or like a truck
Speaker 12: or whatever. They used to play the radio, and I
Speaker 12: just remember that made it go by. So the music
Speaker 12: music was always a I didn't never think I could
Speaker 12: necessarily be able to make it. They never think I
Speaker 12: would be a part of the business. But I knew
Speaker 12: how important it was and how much I did, how
Speaker 12: much it did for me, just at that young age,
Speaker 12: and didn't even know who, didn't know exactly who, none
Speaker 12: of the artists was. Just knew that at that time,
Speaker 12: being a man of my age, which is fifty. During
Speaker 12: that time nineteen eighty, I was eight. So like what
Speaker 12: he's talking about, like soaking up, sir, at the right time.
Speaker 12: It's the end of the seventies, so we but they
Speaker 12: still loaded as far as the albums. I could still
Speaker 12: see an album. I still saw eight tracks, you know what
Speaker 12: I'm saying. I still rode in cards. What we did
Speaker 12: that actually had an eight track in.
Speaker 2: It, So I collect them. Wow, but.
Speaker 12: A brick is amazing because even when when I found
Speaker 12: out who his father was or whatever, you just thought
Speaker 12: about that's ice cube song.
Speaker 2: Vasoline, that's the song that asked you got back? That
Speaker 2: was deep. I was so happy when they did. How
Speaker 2: did you think about vacine?
Speaker 12: Cool?
Speaker 8: Ye, Like a lot of other artists have sampled before that.
Speaker 8: You know, kid played it ain't gonna hurt nobody, you
Speaker 8: know him with did he did?
Speaker 2: It's all good? It was yeah good.
Speaker 8: So well when I heard q on one of the
Speaker 8: coldest disc records.
Speaker 14: Ever all the time, bro my heart like Jenny, So
Speaker 14: I was, man, that's still one of my favorite Man.
Speaker 8: I still play that records and like I'm in the
Speaker 8: mirror and I'm cute and let me shut up.
Speaker 2: That first batch of QLs.
Speaker 1: Guest reflects on how their parents shaped their first musical memories.
Speaker 1: In some cases, those parents were professionals, known recording artists
Speaker 1: with their own careers. My parents were also professional recording artists.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a family act nightclub act. My
Speaker 1: father was an oldies du wop singer. By the time
Speaker 1: I was born, my entire family was part of the show.
Speaker 1: So a lot of my musical memories were, you know,
Speaker 1: help shaping the nightclub lounge act. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: musical memories of all time is my dad taking me
Speaker 1: being shopping to record stores.
Speaker 2: Twice a month.
Speaker 1: We'd go to King James on fifty second Street and
Speaker 1: my dad would basically just you know, going to a
Speaker 1: record store back in the day was like a religious
Speaker 1: experience to me, like this is where you first know
Speaker 1: the smell of incense, this is where you first see
Speaker 1: like black light, and you know those zodiac signs that
Speaker 1: are fluorescent colored and they look good in black light
Speaker 1: in your bedroom, and seeing like the wall display of
Speaker 1: how they creatively displayed the records and whatnot. So pretty much,
Speaker 1: I'll say that for me, Ben, shopping with my dad
Speaker 1: every other month in West Philly was kind of a
Speaker 1: dream for me. My dad would go to the hippies
Speaker 1: guy in the store and say, all right, give me
Speaker 1: all the forty fives I need. And you know, my
Speaker 1: dad needed these forty five so that his band would
Speaker 1: know the latest songs to play, you know, and the
Speaker 1: guy would just grab a box and say, all right,
Speaker 1: you need Casing, the Sunshine Band, you need the Commodores,
Speaker 1: you need the Manhattans, you need Wild Cherry, you need
Speaker 1: the Ohio Players and the New Earth Went and Fire.
Speaker 1: You know I meant to them. They saw my dad
Speaker 1: coming in and knew that this was going to be
Speaker 1: an instant three hundred dollars sale. But you know, they
Speaker 1: would just grab all the forty fives and then Dad
Speaker 1: would just use his instincts to see what he should
Speaker 1: invest in names so that he was familiar with, like
Speaker 1: BT Express or Gene Carn or the OJ's whatever, and
Speaker 1: just buy Binge Binge Binge, and we come home. You
Speaker 1: know that started my being shopping addiction throughout the years.
Speaker 1: And we get home, and then when it was time
Speaker 1: for rehearsal, my dad's band would just rummage through all
Speaker 1: the forty fives and all the records and they'll be like,
Speaker 1: we'll take this, we'll take this, we'll take this, we'll
Speaker 1: take that, this, that and the other. And the weird
Speaker 1: thing is pretty much whatever wasn't desirable, whatever my dad's
Speaker 1: band didn't like, I got to keep. So I'll say
Speaker 1: that I'm probably a rare case in which the flop
Speaker 1: single was, you know, my favorite song. So you know,
Speaker 1: I always joke that, of course they would keep like
Speaker 1: whatever stylistics hit there was, but you know, the stylistics
Speaker 1: would also cover, like the reggae cover of a song
Speaker 1: called like Shame and Scandal in the Family, and that
Speaker 1: was a flop, and of course I would get that record.
Speaker 1: I'd get the Casey and the Sunshine Band single that
Speaker 1: was not a hit, and kind of that became part
Speaker 1: of my vocabulary. So I think I'm in a rare
Speaker 1: case in which a lot of the music that I
Speaker 1: took in from like ages three to eleven or not hits, which.
Speaker 2: Explains my creativity.
Speaker 1: Okay, so sometimes it's not the parents as much as
Speaker 1: records a QLs, guest parents or relatives had laying around
Speaker 1: the house. Next you'll hear some of those stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys already know that I grew up in a
Speaker 1: house with about three thousand records and three very distinctive
Speaker 1: record collectors. Like my father was straight ahead. He liked
Speaker 1: vocal and he loved the yacht rock of his day,
Speaker 1: but mostly like vocal stuff like he loves Streisand and
Speaker 1: Nat King Cole and the Beach Boys, anybody with harmony.
Speaker 2: That was his lane.
Speaker 1: My mother was really esoteric, and she would have been
Speaker 1: a cret digger if she were like of age now
Speaker 1: in the hip hop era. So she would judge albums
Speaker 1: based on how funky they looked and whatnot. So my
Speaker 1: mom was very hip, and my sister pretty much wanted
Speaker 1: to keep up with her her school friends, her friends
Speaker 1: in school, so she came home with like a really
Speaker 1: diverse record collection and kind of put me onto stuff
Speaker 1: that I wasn't hip to. I didn't know about Kiss,
Speaker 1: I didn't know about David Bowie Queen, you know, just
Speaker 1: like a lot of yacht rock stuff, a lot of
Speaker 1: AM pop. We used to listen to Wizard one hundred
Speaker 1: back in Philly. And so I'll say that, if anything,
Speaker 1: my sister is really really responsible for my elastic kind
Speaker 1: of tolerance for all types of music, you know, which,
Speaker 1: of course, once hip hop comes then everything's wide open. So,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up in a house where a thousand
Speaker 1: records really helps. What was your first musical memory?
Speaker 15: My first musical memory, My memory is very bad, but yeah,
Speaker 15: you know, driving in the vw vand with my dad
Speaker 15: and my brother and sister, and my dad would just
Speaker 15: blast music eight tracks always and sing along really loud,
Speaker 15: and it.
Speaker 1: Were you allowed to curate the selections or was it
Speaker 1: like don't touch my stereo?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 4: No, No.
Speaker 15: He would drive, he'd you know, be driving really fast
Speaker 15: and rereaching for the eight tracks and trying to push
Speaker 15: you know, the one, two, three four thing. And that's
Speaker 15: when I really got into music as a little kid,
Speaker 15: especially from the radio. But I also knew. I was like,
Speaker 15: what is it? What's the deal with Neil Young? Like
Speaker 15: my dad would scream sing Neil Young songs?
Speaker 2: Got it? Okay, It's a tough thing to listen to.
Speaker 4: It's like a five year old.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was gonna say that.
Speaker 1: I two lived in a don't touch my stereo household,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the music that I went touch
Speaker 1: with the ten foot pole suddenly you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a great example. So my dad was
Speaker 1: like pre pre yacht rock, pree am radio pop. Like
Speaker 1: he liked vocals like Johnny Mathis, Barbara Streissan, Nat King Cole,
Speaker 1: anyone that flexed harmony as well. So we have pet
Speaker 1: Sounds in the house, but I'd never touched it. And
Speaker 1: then when I read a review that wasn't the Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone Lever review Paul's Boutique, someone said, oh, this is
Speaker 1: Sergeant Peppery. He's like, I disagree. This is the pet
Speaker 1: Sounds of hip hop. This is more pioneering, And I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, dad has that record? So actually, like
Speaker 1: Paul's Boutique opened my mind to something I would otherwise
Speaker 1: resist before the age of eighteen, I'm now open to.
Speaker 1: So I'll ask you, like, because if you're listening to
Speaker 1: all of the music that you guys and all your references,
Speaker 1: and if you're familiar with the rapid fire way that
Speaker 1: you guys craft records, I would have thought that coming
Speaker 1: out the wound that you guys were just like music
Speaker 1: savants that you know, grew up with the pedigree at
Speaker 1: the age of one of all this music. So I
Speaker 1: might have believed that, at least for the first ten
Speaker 1: years of your life is more like forced learning or
Speaker 1: Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 4: Like no, no, no, no.
Speaker 15: So that's an ingrained memory, you asked, like, my first memory,
Speaker 15: that's an ingrain.
Speaker 4: It's it's not a pleasant.
Speaker 15: One, but it's a memory. But I have an older
Speaker 15: brother and sister, and this is, you know, early seventies,
Speaker 15: when forty five's, you know, forty fives and I.
Speaker 4: And the AM radio.
Speaker 15: It was a certain time in the radio where it
Speaker 15: wasn't like this type of music was played on this station.
Speaker 15: This type was played on this station. That you know,
Speaker 15: the music being made in the early seventies was a
Speaker 15: little taste of all of this different stuff, right, And
Speaker 15: you know, the radio kind of reflected that for a minute.
Speaker 15: And so we had a sort of lesson from the
Speaker 15: radio for a very brief time. And also, growing up
Speaker 15: in New York City, just walking down the street, you
Speaker 15: hear so much different music that you're you're being taught
Speaker 15: every day.
Speaker 1: And that was Adam King ed Rock Harowitz of the
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys. What was your first musical memory of your life?
Speaker 16: My first musical memory. My mother was a classically trained
Speaker 16: opera singer. And wow, yeah, she sang in the New
Speaker 16: York full of minors. She sang in Lincoln Center.
Speaker 1: Like it's crazy.
Speaker 16: I did Cornegie Hall a couple of months ago with
Speaker 16: d Nice, and everybody was like Yo Way and Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 16: Way and Carnegie Hall, and in my mind, I'm thinking,
Speaker 16: my mother laped this place three times, like this.
Speaker 1: Is not until I know it four times.
Speaker 16: Until I do it four times, I've done nothing, you
Speaker 16: know what I mean? Because because I looked, I would
Speaker 16: go see my mother at connegeyall. But again, she was
Speaker 16: a classically trained singer, so around the house she sang
Speaker 16: and played the piano. Since first and then my real
Speaker 16: real like music a ha moments was when I stayed
Speaker 16: with my grandmother and I was since I was like six,
Speaker 16: and she had this record that she played like every
Speaker 16: day when she came home for work. It was Happy Landing,
Speaker 16: and I would watch her be happy playing this song,
Speaker 16: and then I would just sit there and try to
Speaker 16: figure out how to play all the records in the house.
Speaker 16: But when she's coming home, I would put on Happy
Speaker 16: Landings for her to walk into the house too. And
Speaker 16: I realized, like maybe like a year later, like I
Speaker 16: am actually doing something to her emotionally by putting this
Speaker 16: record on when she walks through the door. And that
Speaker 16: made me always want to be the person in the
Speaker 16: house that played the records. So I didn't know that
Speaker 16: at five and six and seven and eight that I'm
Speaker 16: becoming this DJ until I heard records being mixed and
Speaker 16: I was like, Yo, what the fuck is happening right now?
Speaker 1: And that was the late great DJ Clark Kent back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. Could you tell me what is
Speaker 1: your first musical memory in life?
Speaker 17: My first musical memory is when I was in Ohio,
Speaker 17: which is where I'm from.
Speaker 4: Yellow Springs, Yellow Springs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I'll say that. You know Chappelle,
Speaker 1: he could talk anybody into anything, because that's the type
Speaker 1: of gift he had. But during the pandemic, those trips
Speaker 1: of Yellow Springs, you know, it was such a welcome
Speaker 1: relief to sort of the stress of what the pandemic
Speaker 1: was in twenty twenty. So there was half a second
Speaker 1: where I was considering getting a house in Yellow Springs.
Speaker 1: I'm still not against the idea, you know, I know
Speaker 1: that quality lives out there. I know Dave convinced a
Speaker 1: few people in this community to buy property out there
Speaker 1: and whatnot. So was it always a hippie friendly town
Speaker 1: since the get or was that a recent development?
Speaker 17: Oh no, it's always been that way. It's always been
Speaker 17: a really cool little oasis in a very conservative state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like.
Speaker 1: Those nine blocks exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a taste of heaven. Like, oh, I
Speaker 2: was like, I can get used to this.
Speaker 1: And then I took the wrong yeah, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: saw the wrong president. I was like right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, uh, let me, let me get back to
Speaker 1: the to the blue blue section.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what was your first musical memory there?
Speaker 17: Well, there were a couple with my dad because he
Speaker 17: didn't play an instrument, but he had a collection of
Speaker 17: records because he liked jazz. So it was me sneaking
Speaker 17: into his collection.
Speaker 18: And listening and hearing the drums and not knowing what
Speaker 18: that was because I was, you know, like three and four,
Speaker 18: but really liking what I heard and being drawn to that.
Speaker 1: So you know, what were those records.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he had a lot of Ama Jamal.
Speaker 17: He had some and that was probably one of his favorite.
Speaker 17: He had Miles records. He had some Coltrane records. Those
Speaker 17: were his his like favorite three artists, you know, which
Speaker 17: was a great introduction for me. He had Modern Jazz quartet.
Speaker 17: You know, he had a kind of a nice little
Speaker 17: niche of stuff, and so I would sneak in there
Speaker 17: and you know, listen to probably scratch some of the
Speaker 17: albums because I was too young to really, you know,
Speaker 17: take care of him well. But yeah, that's probably my
Speaker 17: first and you know, maybe my second would would be
Speaker 17: taking a piano piano lesson with my grandmother who was
Speaker 17: a classical pianist, and hanging out with my uncle who
Speaker 17: was a musician as well.
Speaker 1: Were drums the first weapon of choice for you or
Speaker 1: what was the first instrument that he gravitated towards.
Speaker 17: Oh, definitely drums. Yeah, and I took a lesson on
Speaker 17: piano with my grandmother, But yeah, drums was always the
Speaker 17: thing that attracted me.
Speaker 1: That was Cindy Blackman, Santana. And next up you're going
Speaker 1: to hear Tjer Moses. Can you tell us what your
Speaker 1: first musical memory was?
Speaker 19: Teen Marie, my cousin was moving into a house behind
Speaker 19: my tet's house, and we cut a gate in because
Speaker 19: everybody in you know, in the South, we all live
Speaker 19: around each other.
Speaker 17: Family lives around each other, so we would cut gates
Speaker 17: or cut like little paths to go to someone's house.
Speaker 19: And we tore the gate back from my tet's house
Speaker 19: to my cousin who was moving to the house behind.
Speaker 19: And the whole time she was unpacking, she was just
Speaker 19: playing that square bands out. I was really little, but
Speaker 19: that shit was hard. I loved it. I just I
Speaker 19: was a little kid loving Teena Marie. That's my first.
Speaker 19: I guess gospel was my first, because church. But the
Speaker 19: first time I really was.
Speaker 2: Excited was teen Red because it must be magic album.
Speaker 19: That was your yeah, that one, Yes he loves you
Speaker 19: that yeah, it's so good. And she was just unpacking
Speaker 19: and dancing and like all in her zone. It was
Speaker 19: her first place.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 17: And I was just watching that.
Speaker 19: I was loving the music, and I was.
Speaker 17: Supposed to help them, but I was a little kids.
Speaker 17: I couldn't really help.
Speaker 18: But that's all first in.
Speaker 2: Music, all right.
Speaker 1: So here's Dave Matthews first with the memory involving family,
Speaker 1: and then another one involving the radio and his mother.
Speaker 2: What, oh my god? Twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1: Yo, he waits.
Speaker 4: Can we each have one word of the question?
Speaker 1: What she got?
Speaker 17: Go ahead, Steve, you go go ahead.
Speaker 1: Okay, what was your first musical memory?
Speaker 2: Wait a minute? Time out?
Speaker 1: The first question we asked. This is the level of
Speaker 1: comfort I have with Dave Matthews. I legit forgot. I
Speaker 1: was doing a podcast. I was totally I let a
Speaker 1: half hour go by it. I didn't even start the process.
Speaker 20: No.
Speaker 17: I was like, maybe he's doing his remakes, remixing. I'll
Speaker 17: start from the beginning.
Speaker 21: I'm here, so, uh, you know, if we have to
Speaker 21: start again, I'm happy.
Speaker 2: No, no again, but I will I will say this.
Speaker 2: But the question was what was your first musical memory.
Speaker 21: I would like to say my first live music that
Speaker 21: I remember, Like, I think it was my first memory
Speaker 21: because I think I was sitting between my mom's knees.
Speaker 21: I was a little kid, you know, sort of, and
Speaker 21: on the back of a flat bed truck. Pete Seeger
Speaker 21: was playing the band really and I remember thinking that
Speaker 21: guy's awesome and he was so weird. He was such
Speaker 21: a weird, but he was so he had he was
Speaker 21: so friendly, and so that's my first Like, I feel
Speaker 21: like the.
Speaker 17: Country was this, Dave, because you've lived in a lot
Speaker 17: of places. Where were you when we saw.
Speaker 21: Up upstate not upstate New York, but you know, north
Speaker 21: of New York City. So he was in Croaton quite
Speaker 21: a bit, and uh in that area and uh.
Speaker 1: Was it turn Turn Turn or I can't remember what song.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was.
Speaker 21: I can't remember what songs he was playing. I just
Speaker 21: remember thinking this, and people were you know, it was
Speaker 21: relaxed and everything. But then I think, my when I
Speaker 21: was five years old, I remember liking the Jackson five.
Speaker 2: So I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 21: Whether that was because why I fell in love with
Speaker 21: him was because they had a five, ye right, But
Speaker 21: then I really did love.
Speaker 2: Them.
Speaker 21: And then I've I've fell in love with the Beatles,
Speaker 21: and I became I would say, a bore until my
Speaker 21: brother opened my brain when I was about ten, and
Speaker 21: my brother was turned me onto other kinds of music,
Speaker 21: and and then I and then it was the seventies,
Speaker 21: so I could listen to the radio and you could
Speaker 21: hear you know, in the seventies, you could have the
Speaker 21: radio on and it could be like at least well
Speaker 21: PLJ or.
Speaker 2: Whatever it was.
Speaker 21: You know, it was like, uh, it could be it
Speaker 21: would be like John Denver and then Marvin Gay and
Speaker 21: then and Paul Up and format and then you know,
Speaker 21: Donna Summers and then you know, I remember my mom
Speaker 21: would always go to the radio when Donna Summers came on,
Speaker 21: and she'd be.
Speaker 2: Going, ah, love to love you baby, my mom, like I.
Speaker 21: Don't like this song right right, And then she waits
Speaker 21: for it to be over. But I married my mom
Speaker 21: always running to the radio and turning off the and
Speaker 21: that was the only song I could remember.
Speaker 2: Her response.
Speaker 21: I think it was just it was too much was
Speaker 21: there was too much love making in that song for
Speaker 21: my mom.
Speaker 1: Okay, So a lot of QLs guests grew up around
Speaker 1: New York City and at least to cite the Apollo
Speaker 1: as a place of musical memories. Then first we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear from Mike Murphy of the System, and the next
Speaker 1: Larry Blackman of Cameo. So the question I usually start with,
Speaker 1: can you tell me what your first musical your first
Speaker 1: musical memory was?
Speaker 22: You know, as a kid, my mother loved music, so
Speaker 22: we used to go to the Apollo all the time.
Speaker 22: And it was at a time when you could see
Speaker 22: five shows in one day. You could just sit there,
Speaker 22: hang out and watch all the shows. And so I
Speaker 22: did that a lot. Those are my earliest, my earliest memories,
Speaker 22: you know, in music in the house of course to
Speaker 22: Jackson five, who I emulated in my first band, and
Speaker 22: kind of that's how I got my start.
Speaker 1: Because you have so much history, man, I might as well.
Speaker 1: I got immediately dive in can you tell me in
Speaker 1: your life what was your first musical memory? My first
Speaker 1: musical memory, yes, in your life.
Speaker 9: I was about five years old and my aunt was
Speaker 9: staying with us in New York. She was from Augusta,
Speaker 9: Georgia and bother's sister, and she always talked about the
Speaker 9: Apollo and she took me to my first show there.
Speaker 9: So my first musical memory was I guess being about
Speaker 9: two rolls back from the stage and observing Sam Cook.
Speaker 9: That was first musical memories. And then she tells me
Speaker 9: the story about after leaving there, I broke away from her,
Speaker 9: running down the street and almost ran across Seventh Avenue, uh,
Speaker 9: and came close to being met by a Greyhound bus.
Speaker 9: And she didn't think it was that funny, but she
Speaker 9: said I would lapse and let her catch up with me,
Speaker 9: and then break away and run that much more. And
Speaker 9: that had nothing to do with music. But being that
Speaker 9: my first musical experience was there, I was like And
Speaker 9: then after becoming old enough to make it there myself,
Speaker 9: I used to play He'll keep from Church and cause
Speaker 9: the Manes on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Four years Okay, so do me a favorite, because this
Speaker 1: this is like a rabbit hole show where we nerd
Speaker 1: out on information like that, could you please walk me
Speaker 1: through like a typical day where you go to the Apollo?
Speaker 1: Like how much did it cost? Like where would you sit?
Speaker 1: The acts that played? Like can you walk us through
Speaker 1: a typical apollo? What year are you talking around?
Speaker 2: Is this the sixties?
Speaker 1: Seventies?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 9: My god? This this had to be the sixties. Okay,
Speaker 9: A typical day was you know, parents would give us
Speaker 9: these envelopes. We were members of the Union Baptist Church
Speaker 9: on one hundred and forty fifth between seventh and eighth. Okay,
Speaker 9: we would go to church. I would take my sister, Shoot,
Speaker 9: about five years younger than me, and we'd go and
Speaker 9: we'd wait until the offering time, which we would take
Speaker 9: the envelopes and put it in plate, and up to
Speaker 9: the plate went around and everything there was something else
Speaker 9: that happened. They would play music and do something. But
Speaker 9: I would give her the signal and then we meet
Speaker 9: in the back of the church if she wasn't sitting
Speaker 9: with me, and then I would take her across the
Speaker 9: street to my cousin's house, leave her and take the
Speaker 9: eighth Avenue bus to one hundred and twenty fifth Street
Speaker 9: and go up to the Apollo. But anyway, they had
Speaker 9: mad names. On Sunday. There were two shows on Sunday,
Speaker 9: and I would catch the earlier show and my seat
Speaker 9: was if you're on the stage, you look to the
Speaker 9: left and the first balcony right there, that was my seat. Okay,
Speaker 9: it didn't have my name on it, And strangely enough,
Speaker 9: I was never challenged about where I sat. And that
Speaker 9: went on for years. I've seen every late great performer
Speaker 9: of color. I mean everyone from Okay, Sam Cooked, Jackie
Speaker 9: will Flip Wilson, of course, James Brown now I mean,
Speaker 9: and the lines went around the corner in both directions
Speaker 9: all the way to the rear of the theater. Became
Speaker 9: acquainted with acquainted with a couple of the massive ceremonies.
Speaker 9: Goodness names. I can't think of some of the names
Speaker 9: right away, but I don't think and I've seen everybody, Ray, Charles.
Speaker 23: B B.
Speaker 9: King, Benny King, Joe Text.
Speaker 1: For you, who was the act that really grabbed you
Speaker 1: the most? Like when you saw them? Like for you,
Speaker 1: is it just like on board, let me go see
Speaker 1: what's at the Apollo? Or you know, was the music
Speaker 1: calling to you or was it just something to do
Speaker 1: on a Sunday?
Speaker 9: I did that? I was, I was. I was totally
Speaker 9: captivated by everything that happened. And I don't know if
Speaker 9: you have any memories of the Apollom, but they used
Speaker 9: to show a movie before the live acts. It just
Speaker 9: it just grabbed me. I mean, every Sunday that's something
Speaker 9: I did, Like clockwork, wasn't discussed. Didn't feel as if
Speaker 9: I had to. I just had to see whoever was there.
Speaker 9: The one show I did not see was the Jewel Box.
Speaker 9: Review didn't even know what it was until some years later.
Speaker 9: You know, I never questioned that, but man, I was
Speaker 9: there and you know turned into friendships with five Stairsteps,
Speaker 9: with Kenny and Clarence and family, and man, I mean
Speaker 9: I remember times when the Jackson five were there, when
Speaker 9: Michael was running around backstage, up and down the stairs
Speaker 9: and Jermaine you know, you know, if you know Jermaine,
Speaker 9: you know he was the protector and you know, just
Speaker 9: to get to know those guys on a one on
Speaker 9: one basis was was. I enjoyed that in a great deal.
Speaker 1: So you would you were just allowed lee way like
Speaker 1: throughout the theater or just.
Speaker 9: The more the more people noticed me. I was allowed
Speaker 9: to enjoy what I enjoyed doing, and that was you know,
Speaker 9: it was a weird thing. I cannot even remember how
Speaker 9: certain things turned into friendships, but I did that.
Speaker 1: That happened a lot at the Apollo. How many of
Speaker 1: these shows would occur a day? Is it just one
Speaker 1: long concurrent show from like what a typical show just
Speaker 1: be like a two hour experience and then they get
Speaker 1: rid of people and then you come back or yes.
Speaker 9: It was like that. I believe at one time. I
Speaker 9: understand there were several s was a day okay, prior
Speaker 9: to my attending, but I would remember at least two
Speaker 9: shows and they would add a show according to whatever
Speaker 9: it was going on. I watched the documentary on HBO,
Speaker 9: and a lot of it I remembered, but some of
Speaker 9: the acts that were there prior to my going, I
Speaker 9: heard a lot of things. And then Amateur Night I
Speaker 9: believe it was on Wednesday, and that was a guest
Speaker 9: within itself. It was Apollo to me was a finishing school,
Speaker 9: if you want to call it that. But that's where
Speaker 9: I really cut my teeth. I remember George Clinton Parliament
Speaker 9: before it became Funker Delicment I remember the first show
Speaker 9: when it became that, and of course George was wild.
Speaker 9: We've always gone over the years. But there was a
Speaker 9: group called Flamingos then had a song called Funky Broadway,
Speaker 9: and that was the group that, as far as drumas
Speaker 9: were concerned, that turned me out. That solo at the
Speaker 9: end of Funky Broadway was the solo you had to play.
Speaker 1: If you were wait not dying. The Blazers.
Speaker 9: Dyke in the Blazers, and there was was a not
Speaker 9: called the Dyke in the Blazers was one thing, but
Speaker 9: the Flamingos. It was called the Battle of the Bands.
Speaker 9: Groups from the Manhattan's Parliament's Parliament, and a lot of
Speaker 9: other acts.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the records in the house are children's records, and
Speaker 1: they provide a foundation for folks, especially in the days
Speaker 1: of kitty turntables. One of the records that I hold
Speaker 1: near and deer. My first kid record was you Know.
Speaker 1: As a Sesame Street fan, big fan of Ernie and
Speaker 1: Bert Bert's Blockbusters, I would listen to that record religiously.
Speaker 1: So when I get to school second grade, I would
Speaker 1: sing doing the Pigeon or La La La La, like
Speaker 1: all of Bert's greatest hits. So yeah, man, that was much,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Shout out to Bert bro Gangster. All right,
Speaker 1: and here is Bruce Springsteen. As if you couldn't tell
Speaker 1: by the voice the local sicasty space right now, Like, wait,
Speaker 1: we interviewed Bruce Springsteen. Damn right, we interviewed everybody on
Speaker 1: this show. So since this album is essentially kind of,
Speaker 1: at least the spirit of it is a return to
Speaker 1: the music that you kind of fell in love within
Speaker 1: your childhood, sure, I guess I'll start with the first
Speaker 1: question I asked every guest on the show, even though
Speaker 1: this is like the fourth question. What was your what
Speaker 1: was your very first musical memory.
Speaker 24: My first musical memory was Disney Records. What was these
Speaker 24: seven Snow White and the seven Doors?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 2: Hi ho hi hole.
Speaker 24: It's so my first recollection was something like that, you know,
Speaker 24: or you know those little yellow records that played on
Speaker 24: seventy eight speed. I don't know if you guys are
Speaker 24: old enough to remember these, oh no, whatever, little seventy
Speaker 24: eight s's, you know, little kid colors, red, yellow, blue,
Speaker 24: and they played at seventy eight and they were basically
Speaker 24: themes from movies. So that would be my first real
Speaker 24: musical memory as a child. But after that, my mother
Speaker 24: was young, she had me when I was when she
Speaker 24: was in her early twenties, she played the radio. She
Speaker 24: had the radio on all time every day, you know,
Speaker 24: in the car and in the kitchen, and she listened
Speaker 24: to Top forty and so right from a very young age,
Speaker 24: I was exposed to like the great music of the fifties,
Speaker 24: and that sort of was where what kind of inspired me,
Speaker 24: you know, And really I'm basically a Top forty influenced musician.
Speaker 24: That's how I kind of grew up. And I started there,
Speaker 24: and then I went searching in blues and folk in
Speaker 24: a lot of different other places for influences, but really
Speaker 24: I started out just listening to the Top forty on
Speaker 24: the radio.
Speaker 25: That's a little unusual though, because I would think, I mean,
Speaker 25: I would consider you maybe like the second generation of
Speaker 25: rock and roll.
Speaker 1: So you're not, I mean, you're not exactly a greaser.
Speaker 1: And I know that you in your teen years. You know,
Speaker 1: it was the late sixties.
Speaker 2: But it's very.
Speaker 1: Unusual for me to see not not agreeable, but least
Speaker 1: an amicable musically amicable environment in the household, because normally,
Speaker 1: like the music of the kid is rebellious music and
Speaker 1: turn that you know, right, But you're you're saying that
Speaker 1: your your parents weren't like that at all, like bab.
Speaker 24: Well, my dad was a bit like that, but my
Speaker 24: mother no, she was a young woman and she was
Speaker 24: into uh, you know, we're Southern Italians, which means we
Speaker 24: like music, we can sing and we can perform.
Speaker 1: Next up we have Deborah Harry and Christine known as Blondie.
Speaker 1: I would like to know, oh, I ask them both
Speaker 1: of you. I'll start with Debris. What was your first
Speaker 1: musical memory?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 20: Wow, I know, Well that's it really goes back, doesn't it.
Speaker 20: I had, you know, children's record, it's back back then.
Speaker 20: I had a Victrola, at least that's what my dad
Speaker 20: called a victrola, and it was in a box, you know,
Speaker 20: a little suitcase, and it had a speaker that was
Speaker 20: attached to the arm where the you know, where the
Speaker 20: needle was and you would just drop it down onto
Speaker 20: the record. And so that those were my earliest things.
Speaker 20: And I think one of my one of my favorites
Speaker 20: was a thing, oddly enough called Little Toott.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that a Disney record?
Speaker 8: Or enough?
Speaker 4: Was a Disney record?
Speaker 20: It might have been, might have been, but it was
Speaker 20: a really great little song that went through a lot
Speaker 20: of different emotional interpretations because it told a story up
Speaker 20: this little tougueboat and you know the worthlessness of this
Speaker 20: little and little togueboat and how the big togboats always
Speaker 20: you know, pushed it around. But then a little front
Speaker 20: of it, yeah, little too became like the hero of the.
Speaker 1: Day and so basically off the Retins Reindeer. Chris, what
Speaker 1: was your first musical memory.
Speaker 26: Well, I don't I don't really remember locking onto any
Speaker 26: little kid music.
Speaker 4: My first affinity for music started when I was like,
Speaker 4: I guess, you know, around ten.
Speaker 26: Or eleven, with movie scores, which was and man, some
Speaker 26: of those novelty songs, you know, like the Chipmunks and
Speaker 26: Purple People, Eater and stuff. But I, you know, I
Speaker 26: don't know how much that move me, that stuff. But
Speaker 26: then I started, you know, like Laurence of Arabia and
Speaker 26: West Side Story. I mean, I I it's very hard
Speaker 26: for me to explain to younger people what a huge
Speaker 26: cultural touchstone West Side Story was. West Side Story was
Speaker 26: as big as the damn Beatles, There's no question about it.
Speaker 26: I don't think people people don't get that nowadays.
Speaker 20: My oh god, my mother got so mad at me
Speaker 20: because I took my sister, who is seven years younger
Speaker 20: than me to see West Side Story and she almost
Speaker 20: had a heart. Oh no, you took her, You took
Speaker 20: her to see that? Oh no, how could you? But
Speaker 20: it was fabulous. It was so wonderful. And you know,
Speaker 20: Leonard Bernstein was never better.
Speaker 1: Really, I was going to say that, I'm currently reading
Speaker 1: uh little Stephen Stephen van Zant's autobiography, and he too
Speaker 1: has an immense obsession with West Side Story and pretty
Speaker 1: much described it as the way that you guys did
Speaker 1: like when it came out, it.
Speaker 4: Was a huge deal.
Speaker 26: I don't know, I mean, you're probably all your soundtracks
Speaker 26: that I was praying more obsessed with Lawrence Arabia soundtrack,
Speaker 26: mauriciol are you know great?
Speaker 20: And the other thing that I listened to a lot
Speaker 20: was like the Cowboys sing, which is you know, Western,
Speaker 20: not even country western, it was really Western music and
Speaker 20: those were those were great, you know, great songs and
Speaker 20: people like Burl Lives and stuff lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now that you you know, declared your love
Speaker 1: for Lawrence of Varibia, I gotta ask. You know, it's
Speaker 1: important because the very first Okay, So, I grew up
Speaker 1: in the household with an older sibling who, you know,
Speaker 1: because of my sisters, because of her school situation. You know,
Speaker 1: she was fitting in with her girlfriends what they were
Speaker 1: listening to at the time. So you know, she's bringing
Speaker 1: in a lot of you know, the classic new wave
Speaker 1: of punk stuff or whatever. But the one album that
Speaker 1: I remember, even though she had like you know, each
Speaker 1: of Me and all that stuff, like, I remember the
Speaker 1: day that she brought Auto American.
Speaker 26: Okay, okay, okay, okay. So, now, in on the orchestral session,
Speaker 26: there was a bait one of the bass players played
Speaker 26: on the Lawrence of Arabia soundtrack, right, So that.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask, is your obsession because you
Speaker 1: know the way that you open up Auto American with
Speaker 1: the Europa score.
Speaker 26: Yeah, I mean you know you know that by then
Speaker 26: I was at Adito Roda very deep and all this
Speaker 26: other stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, I always had a thing for soundtracks.
Speaker 26: I think soundtracks nowadays that's a whole other topic, are
Speaker 26: way overused. Uh They're becoming like laugh tracks, you know,
Speaker 26: where they steer your emotions in the direction, right, of where, whoever, whoever,
Speaker 26: the committee.
Speaker 4: That wrote the thing, they think you should be feeling,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 26: And then, you know, gradually I started assimilating the pop
Speaker 26: music that was around me, like locomotion.
Speaker 4: Everybody loved the locomotion no matter what, you know.
Speaker 26: And you know, this stuff like the Shambra Laws, I
Speaker 26: didn't really appreciate till later when we were doing the band.
Speaker 4: I was kind of like commercial to me at the time.
Speaker 20: You know, well, I'm older than Chris and I remember
Speaker 20: this thing. I used to listen to radio a lot.
Speaker 20: I had a little radio and I always had my
Speaker 20: ear right next to the speaker. The speaker was only
Speaker 20: at this big and they had a radio thing called
Speaker 20: the Hit Parade. Yeah, and all those like crooners and
Speaker 20: you know, band singers and stuff like that. There was
Speaker 20: a lot of that. It was kind of great yeah
Speaker 20: before yeah.
Speaker 4: And then it was.
Speaker 26: And then I went into folk music, of course, you know,
Speaker 26: because I was fifteen and sixty five and by that
Speaker 26: time I've been playing I've been playing guitar for since
Speaker 26: I was twelve, and folk music was it. And I
Speaker 26: remember learning how to play house at the Rising Sun
Speaker 26: was such a big deal to me.
Speaker 1: The one and only Mark ronson Mark, What was your
Speaker 1: first musical memory?
Speaker 13: I have like almost snapshots in my head, like partial memories.
Speaker 13: I remember having a little trap drum kit when I
Speaker 13: was three or four. I remember also having it was
Speaker 13: either a Sony or Fisher Price record.
Speaker 2: Player that was like plastic, like.
Speaker 1: A brown joint or like a little tan one, like
Speaker 1: a little tan joint.
Speaker 13: Whereas no, this was like primary colors.
Speaker 1: It was like red.
Speaker 13: Maybe it was just like an English one. It was
Speaker 13: like red, yellow, green, And I just remember lifting the
Speaker 13: needle and putting it down on the record and just
Speaker 13: that excitement when the first like crackle happened, and then
Speaker 13: like just being like whoa, I can control this. I
Speaker 13: mean it's so not I mean it's not even deep
Speaker 13: enough to compare it to DJ because it literally is DJing.
Speaker 13: But yeah, those are some of my first first memories,
Speaker 13: all right.
Speaker 2: So instruments are important too.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 1: The drums chose me because my birth doctor and cur
Speaker 1: my mother to let me be as creative as I
Speaker 1: want to be. You know, he's one of those hippies
Speaker 1: like let him play in his food, let him draw
Speaker 1: on the walls, like things that you should not do
Speaker 1: in a black household with a bunch of plastic on
Speaker 1: the furniture. But my mother pretty much took his advice
Speaker 1: and let me just run rampant, but kind of drew
Speaker 1: the line when it was like beating up the furniture.
Speaker 1: So pretty much, I'll basically say that after beating the
Speaker 1: furniture to death, my parents got me my first drum
Speaker 1: set in nineteen seventy four when I was three years old.
Speaker 2: What is your actual first musical memory that you.
Speaker 23: I think for me, I was like a kid who
Speaker 23: like who had you know, you know, you have to
Speaker 23: be outside playing with individuals and your friends and am
Speaker 23: I really great friends. But I think mine was when
Speaker 23: I first got my first bass amplifier, had this univox,
Speaker 23: I had a copy Fender Jazz called the Orlando, and
Speaker 23: I opened up the case and I thought it was
Speaker 23: real fur. I thought I was rich because I had
Speaker 23: this bass guitarist fur was the fur inside of it.
Speaker 23: That was my first musical experience, experience really, And then
Speaker 23: I played trump. I played first trombone and jazz man too,
Speaker 23: so I wanted to play saxophone, but they I wanted
Speaker 23: to play saxophone, but.
Speaker 21: They didn't have anymore?
Speaker 17: What age is this again?
Speaker 4: This isn't just in grade school?
Speaker 23: Well, grade school I was just starting to play. But
Speaker 23: by the time I got to high school, I sat
Speaker 23: in the first chair playing trombone.
Speaker 2: And that was Raphael Sadec.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, here is bass God, Nathan East.
Speaker 2: What was your first musical memory that you had.
Speaker 27: Yeah, there was there was always a piano kind of
Speaker 27: around the house that uh, pops and moms both would play.
Speaker 27: But you know, it was like, you know, music, music
Speaker 27: filled the neighborhood and you know, so you'd hear gl
Speaker 27: Oudys Night, Marvin Gay out, you know, blasting through the
Speaker 27: homes of this of the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: But it was really I'll never forget.
Speaker 27: My first forty five was more Love by Smokey Robinson.
Speaker 27: We were just always gathered around the radio and listening
Speaker 27: to music. And I remember when I played cello for
Speaker 27: three years and then I discovered the base and it
Speaker 27: was it was actually in church my brothers and I
Speaker 27: were doing that. They were doing like these folk masters
Speaker 27: back in the day when all that started, and uh,
Speaker 27: and then there was a base on the altar and
Speaker 27: I went up picked it up and nobody claimed it,
Speaker 27: and I picked it up and I said, oh lord,
Speaker 27: what was your first musical memory?
Speaker 11: My dad was in my ass because I wasn't practice
Speaker 11: my piano in my ass because I had to practice
Speaker 11: a half hour every day. And sometimes I would like
Speaker 11: wait till he fell asleep, and after sleep and then
Speaker 11: and then I would say, yeah, practice and he did.
Speaker 11: I would get a whooping if I if I didn't practice.
Speaker 1: If you didn't practice your skills, yeah, man. So wait,
Speaker 1: how old were you when you first started playing piano?
Speaker 11: Seven?
Speaker 1: Was this like a church requirement thing or like just
Speaker 1: something to do to pass the time, or no, it's
Speaker 1: my mom.
Speaker 11: My mom had this thing for signing me up for
Speaker 11: activities so she could go do what she was gonna do.
Speaker 11: That was like my babysitter. So if I was at
Speaker 11: the y MCA all day, then you know I was coming.
Speaker 11: That was just or like after school I went to
Speaker 11: piano and then she would drop me off and she
Speaker 11: would like go grocery shop like that was her, Like
Speaker 11: you know that those were all my babysitters. But but
Speaker 11: I learned, you know, I learned how to play the piano.
Speaker 11: And she had me an archery swimming. I could do
Speaker 11: anything when.
Speaker 16: I was little.
Speaker 11: Oh wow, okay, you guys didn't have the white the
Speaker 11: white mom just dropping you off on sething.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boys and girls, summer time.
Speaker 23: Yeah yeah, basketball, gymnastics, everything I know in gymnastics, Forward Road.
Speaker 1: Get dropped off with the y and got dropped off
Speaker 1: at Hebrew School on Sundays.
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, yeah, schools are why really? Yeah?
Speaker 17: We had that.
Speaker 11: We had a Jewish center and I had to go
Speaker 11: to that too.
Speaker 12: Why'd you have to go to that?
Speaker 11: Because they had What class did I take?
Speaker 2: That's why I took a cleaner? Why a cleaner gym?
Speaker 13: I took?
Speaker 9: This?
Speaker 11: I took That's why I put swimming lessons.
Speaker 6: You're right, that's funny, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Because it wasn't tho swimming pool that.
Speaker 4: Was nice like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't go to the fifty second Street. Why
Speaker 2: I could go to the Jewish y on Broad Street
Speaker 2: but not fifty second Street? You get to ask the
Speaker 2: second Street why that's really?
Speaker 1: And closing out the betch that is Mason Gray, another
Speaker 1: one of a kind voice. Thank you guys for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Come back next week and check out your podcast feed.
Speaker 1: Part two of QL's first musical memories as we kick
Speaker 1: off a new year, new season, and more great episodes ahead.
Speaker 1: All Right, What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.