Speaker 1: Request. Loft Show is a production of iHeart Radio. As
Speaker 1: if nabbing Producer of the Year for Amy Winehouse's groundbreaking
Speaker 1: Back to Black wasn't enough not to mention to Record
Speaker 1: of the Year nods for rehab from said Back to
Speaker 1: Black and his own uptown funk with Bruno Mars, not
Speaker 1: to be outdone by the Oscar he won for Lady
Speaker 1: Got Got a Shallow for a stars Born And you
Speaker 1: can also add in the executive producer of the phenomenon
Speaker 1: known as the Barbie Soundtrack. Our guests can now add
Speaker 1: New York Times best selling author there you go. This
Speaker 1: is his love letter to a music era that's also
Speaker 1: near and deer close to my heart of the late
Speaker 1: nineties early arts New York nightlife. It's called night People.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend this essential reading. Our guest today, of course,
Speaker 1: goes without an introduction for his accolades and his roster.
Speaker 1: It will be all day saying it. Miles Cyrus, du
Speaker 1: Alipa A Dell, Paul McCartney, Wile Ronfest, Luli Allen, Christina
Speaker 1: Aguilera goes face killing most steph cute tip yea yea yeava, YadA, YadA, YadA. Ladies,
Speaker 1: and gentlemen once again, Mark Ronson, what's up? Hell, how
Speaker 1: are you? Thank you for doing this for me?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The great thing about the New York Times bestseller thing
Speaker 2: is what you only need one week on there. You
Speaker 2: can say for the rest of you.
Speaker 1: As long as you get that first week and they're
Speaker 1: like they weren't put the sticker on there, New York Times.
Speaker 2: Best to put the sticker on my grave anyway, No,
Speaker 2: I mean, you've kind of blazed the path of like that,
Speaker 2: I guess, pivoting the music writing that comes from a musician.
Speaker 2: There's plenty of great music writers that we love, and
Speaker 2: we know Nelson, George, Dan charnis all this. But but
Speaker 2: I definitely look up to you very much. Thin You've
Speaker 2: read such great books and they just cast a white
Speaker 2: net without pandering. And yeah, so anyway, I know you're
Speaker 2: congratchating me now I'm gone throwing it back at you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love books like these, and no matter
Speaker 1: how much I try to encourage our peer group to
Speaker 1: take note of things, especially now that I'm in the
Speaker 1: dock space, and it's really hard trying to extract information
Speaker 1: from a seventy year old, you know, in a way
Speaker 1: that's not revisionist history. Yeah, or just wrapped in a bowl.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, one day we you know, when the studio
Speaker 1: did this hit single and then went home and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so I love seeing how the sausage just
Speaker 1: made and kind of is a very fascinating read. So
Speaker 1: I thank you for giving me the pleasure to nerd
Speaker 1: out on you.
Speaker 2: I was really inspired by Anthony Bourday in Kitchen Confidential,
Speaker 2: was a book that I never caught when it came out.
Speaker 2: I read it much later on, maybe around the time
Speaker 2: that that doc came out about him, and I just
Speaker 2: thought it was listen, He's an incredible, like like hundred
Speaker 2: Thompson level writer. But what I really took more inspiration
Speaker 2: from was that writing about a high octane sort of
Speaker 2: occupation profession and all the crazy highs and lows of it.
Speaker 2: But also like, I'm actually not really into cooking and
Speaker 2: I'm not a great cook, and I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about kitchens. But like his second chapter was all about knives,
Speaker 2: and then I'm like, oh, now I give a shit
Speaker 2: about knives. Like I just was thinking about this, like
Speaker 2: he localizes yeah, and I was like, you can write
Speaker 2: about cartridges slip mats and the inner workings of a
Speaker 2: technique's twelve hundred, like in a book like this, because
Speaker 2: if you're going to write a tribute to DJ and
Speaker 2: as long as like, you'll get so bogged down. But
Speaker 2: I really wanted to make it. Yeah, part of that
Speaker 2: like when you're a kid and you see two turntables
Speaker 2: together for the first time and you have that like
Speaker 2: lifelong infatuation with it, and what some of those things are,
Speaker 2: as well as just what New York.
Speaker 1: Was like in the clubs. Do you remember the first
Speaker 1: time that you saw a DJ perform? I do? Who
Speaker 1: was it? I do?
Speaker 2: And it's amazing that I remember because I was on
Speaker 2: acid or ecstasy or maybe both because there was this
Speaker 2: all ages kids rave like in pre Giuliani New York
Speaker 2: and like ninety two ninety three, God bless David Dinkins
Speaker 2: that he was dealing with the housing crisis. He wasn't
Speaker 2: worried about like fifteen year old kids maybe like at
Speaker 2: a rave on ecstasy. I was at this club called
Speaker 2: The Shelter, which before that was Area Shelter. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Shelter was but on Friday nights. For about a year
Speaker 2: and a half, they had this all ages rave called NASA,
Speaker 2: and they didn't serve alcohol, so there was a reason
Speaker 2: that kids could get in and be up all ages,
Speaker 2: but they that certainly turned a blind eye to you
Speaker 2: know whatever else.
Speaker 1: I mean when you say all ages, you could be
Speaker 1: how old.
Speaker 2: I think that there were definitely, like we were fifteen sixteen.
Speaker 2: There were definitely kids that looked like thirteen. It had
Speaker 2: like a definite like Lord of the Flies vibe to it.
Speaker 2: Like but at least before they started bashing each other
Speaker 2: in the head with the shells.
Speaker 1: Would they raise an eyebrow if say a forty year old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, That's what was so cool about it. It was
Speaker 2: like there was It wasn't like there was this other
Speaker 2: scene going on that was a little adjacent, which was
Speaker 2: disco two thousand and Limelight, which became the party Monster.
Speaker 2: You know that that was much more debauch, and that
Speaker 2: was like older people going through the rooms trying to
Speaker 2: apply young kids with row hipno or whatever. But this
Speaker 2: really was just like schools out for summer, Like this
Speaker 2: was something about it, and that's why it was just
Speaker 2: so incredible. Was the first thing that like I lied,
Speaker 2: beg you know, borrow like whatever to get into this
Speaker 2: place because it was like Disneyland for kids. So what
Speaker 2: Disneyland is for kids, Disneyland for serotonin.
Speaker 1: Trade kids, I don't think so good. Yeah so yeah.
Speaker 2: So they had the big main room and they had
Speaker 2: big techno DJs playing, and I would alway, I go
Speaker 2: into those rooms of my friends and then after like
Speaker 2: five minutes be like, I know I'm supposed to like this,
Speaker 2: but I just really don't, and I would drift to
Speaker 2: this other room down the hall, this small room that
Speaker 2: was called the chill out Room. And the first time
Speaker 2: that I was in that room and we were on
Speaker 2: ecstasy or mushrooms or you know, depending on the night,
Speaker 2: and it did have this really fun vibe like at
Speaker 2: PG thirteen Caligular with glow sticks, like just kids making
Speaker 2: out everywhere. But I saw DJ Dimitri from d Light
Speaker 2: was playing in the corner and he was playing the
Speaker 2: song and I was like, it was like this girl
Speaker 2: singing about like Jamaica funk with these like beautiful lush
Speaker 2: chords and unlike anything I had ever heard. And I
Speaker 2: went up to her, I was like, what.
Speaker 1: Is this song?
Speaker 2: And he just like points to a twelve inch like
Speaker 2: he's kind of smiling bobbing around, and I see Tom
Speaker 2: Brown funking for Jamaica. But at that point, like I
Speaker 2: knew Jamerica and brand New Heavies. That was the extent
Speaker 2: of my knowledge of anything like this, So that was
Speaker 2: really exposing me a lot of music. And then I
Speaker 2: remember this other kid getting on right after him, and
Speaker 2: where Dmitri had been like kind of smiling, bobby bouncy,
Speaker 2: like kippie energy, this kid looked like had this furious
Speaker 2: look of concentration in his eyes and just threw on
Speaker 2: his first record. I think it was main Source faking
Speaker 2: the phone, and he then he puts on a second copy,
Speaker 2: and then he starts bringing back the ba ba ba
Speaker 2: ba ba ba ba bah bah bah. And I'd listened
Speaker 2: to Stretch, Armstrong and DJ's on the radio, but I'd
Speaker 2: never seen somebody in person what he was doing. And
Speaker 2: the room started to fill up. He played this incredible set,
Speaker 2: and I was so like he was like slamming records
Speaker 2: in mixing others doubles. It was like this ballet of
Speaker 2: like the fucking brutish movements and and I just remember
Speaker 2: being like, holy shit like that, and it was just
Speaker 2: after the time i'd really fallen in love with like
Speaker 2: Pete Rock and Tribe and that was like I was like,
Speaker 2: this is what I want.
Speaker 1: To do, Like this is yeah, got it? So Dimitri
Speaker 1: who subsequently, I guess for our listeners if line of
Speaker 1: notes are correct, Dmitry also played a very instrumental role
Speaker 1: and the first Tribe album he gets credited, Wow, he
Speaker 1: gets a major shout out MB liner no idea, what
Speaker 1: was his I believe. I think I asked Tip about
Speaker 1: this once, like what was the delight connection? Because also with.
Speaker 2: Tip on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I believe that Dmitri was key in a
Speaker 1: lot of those obscure samples that they might have not
Speaker 1: known about, you know, because the thing is is that
Speaker 1: the quick version for our listeners out there, of course,
Speaker 1: is that you know, when hip hop starts, especially in
Speaker 1: the Africa Bambada era, DJ's will wipe off the label
Speaker 1: so you had no clue what they were playing. And
Speaker 1: of course, the proprietor of what we now know is
Speaker 1: the cliff Notes or the Wikipedia of Breakbeat Collections, Ultimate
Speaker 1: Beats and Breaks. It's like a twenty five volume set
Speaker 1: record of which they will put seven of those hard
Speaker 1: defined records that you couldn't you know, Shizam or people
Speaker 1: of the shoulder of whoever's DJing during the initial era.
Speaker 1: Now all these records are available at your helmet. You know.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we're listening to hip hop between eighty
Speaker 1: six and kind of nineteen ninety, you will hear a
Speaker 1: combination of all those things that are on those break beats, substitution,
Speaker 1: funky drummer, long red, just the breaks of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and even in a clever way like you
Speaker 2: take it personal like gangsters, like you know, they had
Speaker 2: definitely people doing these very clever starting to you know,
Speaker 2: manipulate and take these.
Speaker 1: Flipping yeah, exactly. So the thing is is that occasionally,
Speaker 1: I'll say, your first for araate outside of the confines
Speaker 1: of ultimate beats and breaks is your parents' collection, depending
Speaker 1: on how expansive they are, and then once you get addicted,
Speaker 1: then you start rummaging through your relatives collections. I had
Speaker 1: two uncles that were major collectors, So every Sunday dinner
Speaker 1: there or occasional barbecue, I'd go through the record collection
Speaker 1: and see deep stuff that my dad wasn't into. And
Speaker 1: then the last place is of course the library. But
Speaker 1: the level of digging that when I say the Renaissance
Speaker 1: era gave us. When I say the Renaissance, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the Pete Rocks, the Q Tips, the ARS professors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like kind of the sons of Paul Cy, if you will,
Speaker 1: Paul C being the what I say is the person
Speaker 1: that read and studied the SB twelve hundred manual and
Speaker 1: then taught it to Paul, who then taught it to
Speaker 1: everyone else. Yeah, it's like that era of hip hop
Speaker 1: is going outside the color lines of what was initially
Speaker 1: spun back in the Bronx. And so as a result,
Speaker 1: you know, cats like Dimitri Ta also from Delight being
Speaker 1: as though there their quest were funk was a little
Speaker 1: bit different, but they would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were bringing in like exotica. I think
Speaker 2: of that, and I'm still obsessed with and I tried
Speaker 2: to do something. Initially, I only wrote this book because
Speaker 2: I was making an album where I was going to
Speaker 2: like do some nineties covers and flip some nineties things
Speaker 2: that I loved and feeling a little nostalgic musically, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I'll write a book to go along
Speaker 2: with it, and I'll give context to like a friendship
Speaker 2: with the Leah and my relationship to these records, and
Speaker 2: then I wrote the book and forgot to make the album.
Speaker 2: That's a very flip and silly thing to say, but
Speaker 2: I got bogged down.
Speaker 1: I was home man, that this was a part of it,
Speaker 1: like a secret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hopefully it will be, but I you know,
Speaker 2: so I've been flipping all these things and versions that
Speaker 2: hopefully will come out some day of stuff mentioned in
Speaker 2: the book, and even that beginning of dntingly and ding
Speaker 2: ding ding thing we are going to dance like all
Speaker 2: that French exotica, that that silly spirit, which was also
Speaker 2: what you know, dale us so we're doing on three
Speaker 2: V Highlight. It was obviously very like you could listen
Speaker 2: to d Light and now having you see this like
Speaker 2: I can hear right, oh yeah, the thread between DJ
Speaker 2: Dimitri and some of.
Speaker 1: The tribes and stuff. Yeah exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, that's super cool. I wrote a bit about in
Speaker 2: the book as well, like I wanted to at least
Speaker 2: cover in the book all the touchstone things of being
Speaker 2: in New York at that time, and one of them,
Speaker 2: of course, is the Roosevelt Record Convention. And I remember
Speaker 2: this is a little bit later than when we're talking
Speaker 2: about maybe ninety four ninety five. But going there and
Speaker 2: seeing these amazing records on. You know, they would have
Speaker 2: all these record vendors around this room in this hotel,
Speaker 2: the Roosevelt Hotel, and everybody would go there, right. It
Speaker 2: was just where Q Tip and Large Professor and Diamond
Speaker 2: D and they would find their breaks and the more
Speaker 2: high end dealers would set up their crates and then
Speaker 2: that they'd make a makeshift cardboard wall behind them with
Speaker 2: like the top top records pinned up, and I would
Speaker 2: see like Roy Ayre's musical project Ramp like up on
Speaker 2: the wall, like one hundred dollars, you know, like kind
Speaker 2: of dream and then drooling as a kid looking at
Speaker 2: these records. But I remember, and I told C Tip.
Speaker 2: I don't think I even told him til I was
Speaker 2: writing the book. I was like, I remember seeing him
Speaker 2: one time at one of those record conventions and I
Speaker 2: was holding under my arm the Rotary Connection album that
Speaker 2: has the Memory band, the sample from the beginning of
Speaker 2: Anita apple Ball. Yeah, and I went up to him
Speaker 2: thinking like because I was so starstruck and geeked out
Speaker 2: of everyone does this. Yeah, right, I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go up to him and like say something cool.
Speaker 1: And pretend and then he'll bring you the Yeah. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: you and I are the same. All right, go ahead,
Speaker 1: finish your story.
Speaker 2: I went up to him and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: just like on the way out, he was wearing something
Speaker 2: like bright Tommy Hill figure jacket or Helly Hanson.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is the uh, this is the
Speaker 2: record you guys sample for Benita, right, like trying to
Speaker 2: be cool, and he just looked at him.
Speaker 1: I was like know and just walked down. I thought
Speaker 1: you were the FEDS and he was.
Speaker 2: Like he was like he said to me, when I
Speaker 2: tell this story, it's like, yeah, it was mercenary out there,
Speaker 2: like we weren't even giving away the stuff that we
Speaker 2: had already do sampled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we were first working with Bob Power at
Speaker 1: Battery Studio, when we were mixing do You Want More?
Speaker 1: Tribe was in Studio C trying to remix Oh my
Speaker 1: God for the live show. So I would make these
Speaker 1: excuses to go to the bathroom to figure out right,
Speaker 1: and literally it's it's Ali and Tip and a turntable
Speaker 1: and a twelve hundred and fife is there too? Two
Speaker 1: other guys are there who I didn't know, and I
Speaker 1: know that they were trying to mix. What is it's
Speaker 1: the it's the second song on Manny Riperton's Adventures in
Speaker 1: Paradise after the check the rhyme saying, uh, the second
Speaker 1: song on that record, the dude, dude do doude do
Speaker 1: A feeling. I think the feeling is there's something that
Speaker 1: there was an issue, not an issue with sampling it,
Speaker 1: like even I tried to sample it, and I know
Speaker 1: what the problem that they were having with it. It
Speaker 1: speeds up, you know you hear the perfect loop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's not when you take it apart, it's.
Speaker 1: Right and it's not like now where you could just
Speaker 1: like manipulate it so it fits four perfect bars. So
Speaker 1: they actually I went to see them that show. It
Speaker 1: was New Year's Eve. It was day Last, Soul Tribe
Speaker 1: and Souls. I went to that.
Speaker 2: I went to that show ninety two New Year's e Yes.
Speaker 2: I remember watching Souls do ninety three till Infinity and thinking,
Speaker 2: is this gonna sound weird, like because it's ninety four
Speaker 2: now or something now thirty years later, still listening to it,
Speaker 2: but anyway, Yeah, I was at that show. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that was the last night that
Speaker 1: Tarik and I were like fans, right, We had a
Speaker 1: good four year streak of into like all of our
Speaker 1: favorite shows and beat in the front row like there's no.
Speaker 2: There was no like aware artists too. We better not
Speaker 2: like no no no.
Speaker 1: We were fans like the era of yelling go go
Speaker 1: go and jumping and jumping like I was off with.
Speaker 1: We were there for a caras One doing that Many
Speaker 1: a Day, last show, Many a Tribe show, whatever. But
Speaker 1: we were there that night and the first time I
Speaker 1: had notes, I was like, ah, man, they should have
Speaker 1: filtered the midsmore so we could hear the baseline better.
Speaker 1: You know, they tried, it didn't work. And also remember
Speaker 1: Raphael Sadik coming out to do Electric Relaxations and midnight
Speaker 1: to play bass on it and his base wasn't up
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, I was like I was in the
Speaker 1: front row. But then it was also like should I
Speaker 1: go to the sound? Yeah. So the first time I
Speaker 1: ever had notes was that. Have you ever had a
Speaker 1: DJ gig where it's sort of like everyone like, wow,
Speaker 1: look at him, go like you're really killing that Mark Ronson.
Speaker 2: I think I've definitely, I know I have. They all
Speaker 2: blur together a little bit. After thirty years of this,
Speaker 2: you know some of the highlight. There's nights that I
Speaker 2: remember something very special and transformative happening, like the night
Speaker 2: that like I decided to drop back in black by
Speaker 2: ACDC at Cheat on a Monday night, like like like
Speaker 2: something that had never been done and said like could
Speaker 2: have gone either way. I remember DJing in Japan at
Speaker 2: that hip hop club Harlem, and I remember I had
Speaker 2: never ever got on the mic because like at that
Speaker 2: point and in New York, like just white DJs like
Speaker 2: did not get on.
Speaker 1: The mic, like how's everyone doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, with the owner of a blue super has
Speaker 2: been parked at Double Park, Like that was the only
Speaker 2: time you got on the mic. And I don't even
Speaker 2: want to make it like a race thing. There was
Speaker 2: something just about we knew that we were sort of
Speaker 2: privileged to be in hip hop'space.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a voice. I don't think it's black
Speaker 1: and white, because I to this day, as much as
Speaker 1: I wanna.
Speaker 2: You don't get aius, Like I don't have the voice
Speaker 2: that's like what's that motherfucker? Like right?
Speaker 1: Right? So I just do sound bites.
Speaker 2: You could and you definitely have a lot of a
Speaker 2: much better voice for it than a lot of people
Speaker 2: who are presently doing it, but you observe that it's
Speaker 2: not something that you should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a busy concentrating the records and yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but I remember one night there was something
Speaker 2: I was playing in Tokyo and it was right as
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, right as my record UI with
Speaker 2: ghost Face and Nate Doggie came out, and it was
Speaker 2: a big record, and there's something you know what it's
Speaker 2: like when you go into the booth, like or you
Speaker 2: step on stage. Japanese crowds are so grateful, enthusiastic. There
Speaker 2: was this thing, but I could just tell I was
Speaker 2: ripping it doing all this stuff, and I could just
Speaker 2: tell the crowd was like in this weird nervous like
Speaker 2: purgatory between having a good time and and I just was.
Speaker 2: I just looked down at the mic by the booth
Speaker 2: and I was like, I know what it is. I
Speaker 2: know until I say something to this crowd, I haven't
Speaker 2: given them permission to let loose, like this is not
Speaker 2: New York White Go. Every week I'm going to see them.
Speaker 2: They need me to say something. And I remember getting
Speaker 2: on that mic and then the place just like fucking exploded.
Speaker 2: You know, listen, I've had some of my favorite ever
Speaker 2: performance experiences djaying like, That's why I keep coming back
Speaker 2: to it. That's why after thirty three years and I've
Speaker 2: beat up ears and back and all that stuff, because
Speaker 2: on any given night, you can just go into a
Speaker 2: into a room like I went into Gabriella's a couple
Speaker 2: months ago and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I hadn't played, I hadn't
Speaker 2: played a while, I hadn't played Vinyl and just like
Speaker 2: to play it again to remember, like, oh, not like
Speaker 2: in some way like, oh, thank god I still got it,
Speaker 2: but yes, in a little way, thank god I still
Speaker 2: got it playing for kids half my age or kids
Speaker 2: who weren't even around when Cares's Step into a World
Speaker 2: First came out, weren't even alive, Like, so I can't
Speaker 2: remember like the one gig where it was like the
Speaker 2: Peewee Tour de France experience. You talk, but there's just
Speaker 2: moments and snatches of these things that just kind of
Speaker 2: beat everything that It's why I keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then the other side of that coin is
Speaker 1: can you tell me the story of the worst gig
Speaker 1: of established Mark Watson's life. Yeah, I mean devastating. When
Speaker 1: you do a bad gig, you feel devastated or yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh it's terrible, and I go home and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna quit now, I'm gonna save face, Like why
Speaker 2: am I still doing this? I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of it, you know. Sometimes it's what happened to me,
Speaker 2: And I talk about this about in the book. You know,
Speaker 2: in the nineties and the early two thousands, before I
Speaker 2: was quote unquote Mark Ronson, I was just a gigging DJ.
Speaker 2: Eighty five ninety percent of my gigs were club gigs
Speaker 2: where I'm playing to a crowd, a crowd that I know,
Speaker 2: a crowd that I love, that has great taste, and
Speaker 2: maybe ten percent were corporate gigs or these kind of things.
Speaker 2: And then the shift starts to happen and you spend
Speaker 2: your time in the studio, you're not djaying out as much,
Speaker 2: you're not in the mix, and suddenly it starts to
Speaker 2: creep towards like, oh now it's like seventy five percent
Speaker 2: weird corporate gigs on one offs and twenty five percent
Speaker 2: actual gigs where you're playing for the love and whatever.
Speaker 2: And sometimes those, yeah, those corporate ones you'll end up at,
Speaker 2: like playing something for like I don't know, some luxury
Speaker 2: brand in Singapore, or just staring out into the sea
Speaker 2: of like mild disinterests like and then but somehow there's
Speaker 2: this thing because I come from the clubs in that
Speaker 2: mindset where you're like, I know, whatever costs, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: call my way through this scene till I play that
Speaker 2: one record that then gets you, and then for the
Speaker 2: next few hours we're all laughing and parting. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's so many of those. I do know that,
Speaker 2: maybe more often recently, like that terrible feeling of like
Speaker 2: that mixture of like that nightmare you have as a
Speaker 2: kid when you get up on staging you're naked. I
Speaker 2: never specifically had that dream as a kid, but I
Speaker 2: know the feeling, like you go to school and you
Speaker 2: stand up naked at the assembly.
Speaker 1: See now I'll say that probably okay, I called the
Speaker 1: robin Hood theory, which is basically and you know the deal,
Speaker 1: like corper gigs good money. Now, usually those carper gigs
Speaker 1: are older people my age, So I take advantage of
Speaker 1: whatever was popping when you were sixteen to twenty six,
Speaker 1: that's memory. So for corporate people, forty and forty five
Speaker 1: year old people, Jesus to listen to Duran Duran if
Speaker 1: that was their thing. Well, if you're sixty, it's Duran Duran.
Speaker 1: If you're forty, might be the spice girl. So that's
Speaker 1: almost become too much of a comfort zone. And then
Speaker 1: when I'll do an occasional hole in the wall where
Speaker 1: it's just like I'm not doing it for the money,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing it just to sharpen up. Ah, that
Speaker 1: was a rude awakening me not knowing and the methods
Speaker 1: that I'm using now just to see what I should
Speaker 1: be spinning. Like I'm doing everything I promise i'd never do.
Speaker 1: I'm on every YouTube page of every DJ set seeing
Speaker 1: what they play, like, oh, that's it.
Speaker 2: And who are you watching when you go to those
Speaker 2: YouTube page? Are you watching like the Black Coffees? Are
Speaker 2: you watching like the open format guys, or like I'm
Speaker 2: just curious.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's now to the point where like a
Speaker 1: lot of the established like Black Coffee is now playing
Speaker 1: Madison Square Guard and he's playing a lot of his stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so unless the one thing I'm not doing, which
Speaker 1: I probably should be doing. Lord knows what all the
Speaker 1: masters I have and everything is my own remixes and
Speaker 1: putting on my own show. But just like to spin
Speaker 1: records to spin records, it's kind of hard. Like I'm
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I'm the most nervous I've ever been
Speaker 1: djaying like I just did Heidi Klum's Halloween.
Speaker 2: I saw you did that, And of course, because because
Speaker 2: we have such a shared things are a musical taste
Speaker 2: and where we are and like the kind of parties
Speaker 2: we play, I'm like, I wonder what he played at that,
Speaker 2: Like what is that? Is that Halloween?
Speaker 1: So there's thriller, I swear to god, you know what,
Speaker 1: there's the one year I didn't get the thriller. Okay,
Speaker 1: So based on your wedding, who's old boy that played
Speaker 1: your after party the wedding dj.
Speaker 2: Oh at my sister's. Yes, it was Charlie, that kid
Speaker 2: who was playing like all the fifty right.
Speaker 1: So I realized that it's been a while. I was like,
Speaker 1: do I know a good thirty records that have that
Speaker 1: shuffle jazzy right? And so I decided normally when I
Speaker 1: was DJ, sometimes I have to be my own opening act.
Speaker 1: So for me naturally, and I think you feel the
Speaker 1: same because we come from hip hop. The magic spot
Speaker 1: used to be ninety three bpms to like one hundred
Speaker 1: and three bpms, Right, that's where you can get all
Speaker 1: the classic hip hop stuff.
Speaker 2: Out of your neap tins and tribe and everything.
Speaker 1: Right, So normally I would start off, I'd let like
Speaker 1: ten records, go slow until the place starts to fill up,
Speaker 1: and then my first records really the tenth record or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So normally I'm a slow starter and then faster and
Speaker 1: faster and faster, and the end of the night you
Speaker 1: end up in house and disco. Lie, this is the
Speaker 1: first time where I decided I'm gonna go backwards and
Speaker 1: start at one hundred and seventy one bpm. So I'm
Speaker 1: like starting with you know, you got to start at
Speaker 1: least three Teflon records.
Speaker 2: So for me, like, hey, I will never die no
Speaker 2: matter what. So like, hey, y'ah, I don't worry. I'm
Speaker 2: not taking notes or anything. Hey you are, Hey still
Speaker 2: is still working?
Speaker 1: Okay, Hey ya is a Teflon song? Okay, Okay, someone
Speaker 1: took chapel runs hot to go and shop the song
Speaker 1: in half. So set a ding. It's like did so,
Speaker 1: which kind of feels like Pressen is bigger than hip
Speaker 1: hop dolls. Yeah, like I started that fast and slowed down.
Speaker 1: I'll say that half the stuff where I'm really ignorant
Speaker 1: is I should be really knowledgeable. I shouldn't know twenty
Speaker 1: awesome reggae tone song, especially now with the way that
Speaker 1: is willing. You know, I'm doing the worst things. I'm
Speaker 1: going on chat GBT, I'm gone on right, I'm calling
Speaker 1: people in a way it's exciting that I have to
Speaker 1: start all over again. How was that party?
Speaker 2: Actually?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Did you have a good time teaching at? I was relieved,
Speaker 2: I survived, Okay, what was the biggest record?
Speaker 1: Like the biggest record of the night?
Speaker 2: Surprised?
Speaker 1: You see, I cheated because there are tefline memory records
Speaker 1: that will never die. I wouldn't necessarily play want to
Speaker 1: be by the Spice Girl in a normal setting, So
Speaker 1: it's almost like I'm a dude totally to take notes.
Speaker 1: I need a confirmation that I'm right, Like Lady Mama
Speaker 1: a lot works. Want to be by the Spicy.
Speaker 2: Original LaBelle or Lady Marmalade, like.
Speaker 1: Oh the original, Little the original. Many of my Latino
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters used to tell me that Suave Mine
Speaker 1: was like a joke to them, which it's almost like
Speaker 1: the irony records, the records that you would never play
Speaker 1: in this lifetime, like even twenty years ago. Like Ice
Speaker 1: ice Baby works now, whereas we would never play that bad.
Speaker 2: Play Ice ice Baby sentimes. If it's the right crowd, I.
Speaker 1: Will play under pressure. Yeah, and under Pressure now gets
Speaker 1: the same response that Troy used to get for Peple Rockets.
Speaker 1: You remember when you yeah, it plays me like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's playing Oh my god. And one time
Speaker 1: I was like, oh wait a minute. I know they
Speaker 1: think I'm playing Ice ice Baby and I play Underpressure
Speaker 1: and then it dies down a little bit because it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's playing the original.
Speaker 2: And then you hit and I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: let me just see what happened, collaborate and listen.
Speaker 1: And it works. So we we are in a very
Speaker 1: weird upside down where the wackest thing. Yeah, I almost
Speaker 1: feel now.
Speaker 2: Would you know, Mama number five, I'm not I would
Speaker 2: go to lie. That's the line you're not willing to cross.
Speaker 1: Also, but it works.
Speaker 2: I can see that it's no offense, Bega, No, it
Speaker 2: was I'm in the no worse than Vanilla. I say, promise,
Speaker 2: I'm in the.
Speaker 1: Game of what works. And the thing is, I'm about balance.
Speaker 1: I've never been like anti commercial. The reason why people
Speaker 1: are like I men, I want to spend that commercial
Speaker 1: stuff or is because it's almost like that's all that spun.
Speaker 1: Got a balance.
Speaker 2: What was Hayi Klum wearing. Isn't her outfit always like this?
Speaker 2: She wore in a jab of the hot one year.
Speaker 1: She was Meduca this year and she did she put
Speaker 1: like hair jail or dippity dew on her body suit.
Speaker 1: I was dressed up as Randy watching first of all
Speaker 1: to be on the red carpet, and everyone's like, so
Speaker 1: you're right. I'm like, look at me. They're like Rick
Speaker 1: James and I was like, oh god, so you've never
Speaker 1: seen Coming to America. They were like yeah, And then
Speaker 1: I realized I'm the old guy at the club. So
Speaker 1: I was dressed up as Randy Watson from Coming to America.
Speaker 1: She was Medusa and she had all this slimy stuff
Speaker 1: and she gave me a big giant hug. So I
Speaker 1: had like, yeah, I've been in your head. What's the
Speaker 1: theme song that is played in your biopic when you
Speaker 1: walk into a room. Okay, let me take the biopic out.
Speaker 2: It just in general and I can hear right now,
Speaker 2: which is the curve your enthusiastic Okay, got excited to
Speaker 2: let you finish.
Speaker 1: What's the song in your head that plays when you
Speaker 1: walk into the room people are looking.
Speaker 2: Why I'm about to DJ or just like when I'm
Speaker 2: going into in general? Well, now I can't really, I
Speaker 2: think whatever the answer that question is, it's a good
Speaker 2: psychological exercise because it's like what you think the world
Speaker 2: thinks of you, or what you like to project, or
Speaker 2: maybe it's just like the music you need to hear it.
Speaker 1: Like, all right, make it a too. What's the actual
Speaker 1: song in your head versus what's the song that you
Speaker 1: think people hear in my head? Earth Wind Fire is running? Okay,
Speaker 1: is the song that I walk to that's in my
Speaker 1: inner walk man, when I like walk into a room,
Speaker 1: and it's not notable at all, right, but that's the
Speaker 1: running by earth Wind and Fire. Maybe it's because I'm
Speaker 1: doing the movie, But for you, what is it?
Speaker 2: I think in my head it's I'm just gonna the
Speaker 2: first songs that kount of my mind are just songs
Speaker 2: that I've made, because I guess it's like that is
Speaker 2: sort of your theme music.
Speaker 1: In a way.
Speaker 2: In my head, I hear like probably like ghost Faces
Speaker 2: in Nate dog OUI like la la la la la
Speaker 2: la la, like big break beat, like fanfare strengths, and
Speaker 2: in reality people probably hear do Dude do dude or
Speaker 2: dot shot. So yeah, but that's our whole line that
Speaker 2: we walk, you know, sort of credibility versus commerciality. It's
Speaker 2: it's the entire conversation that we're having the reason that
Speaker 2: it gives me some solace to hear you talking about
Speaker 2: DJing because you're synonymous with like impeccable tastes. And the
Speaker 2: fact is, I think of myself as like a serious
Speaker 2: hip hop DJ in downtown New York who was playing
Speaker 2: parties for everybody from Q Tip to to Puff to
Speaker 2: jay Z to whatever. Who the same kid who was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, fuck it, I'm gonna play ac DC
Speaker 2: because no one's playing that and it'll be fun. And
Speaker 2: maybe there was a tiny bit of like not troll mentality,
Speaker 2: but like let me just see how close I can
Speaker 2: get to the fire. And now, because I don't DJ
Speaker 2: as much, my own credibility is so much in question,
Speaker 2: like do I still have it? I still in touch
Speaker 2: that I'm afraid to play those, which maybe it's just
Speaker 2: in my So.
Speaker 1: See, I thought, now that you are Mark Ronson, you're
Speaker 1: allowed to, Oh, I take advantage of this.
Speaker 2: Well that's what I That's what I mean. So now
Speaker 2: I'm like, and yeah, side means that's what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, oh, yeah, that's what I used
Speaker 2: to do when I was a kid. I loved seeing
Speaker 2: what the line was and all this stuff. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's fair to say both of us have earned our
Speaker 2: right to play Happy Frog or whatever. But and I
Speaker 2: love playing those kinds of records because some of them
Speaker 2: I actually do love. I can completely appreciate what spice
Speaker 2: girls want to be able to do to a dance form,
Speaker 2: looking at them and seeing the joy. And I always
Speaker 2: tell you the story. I remember walking into one of
Speaker 2: the naughtiest Thanksgiving parties that you used to always play
Speaker 2: on Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Still do it?
Speaker 2: Still do Nadia? And I remember you playing rhannav and
Speaker 2: Calvin Harris and even that just being like, oh, you
Speaker 2: can play fun records that people want to hear and
Speaker 2: not they're not guilty pleasure. I don't believe in that
Speaker 2: term because I think if you like something, you like something.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, so's it's even comforting, Like I have
Speaker 2: to play some eighties party on Saturday night. Like as
Speaker 2: we're having this conversation, I'm like, oh yeah, like I
Speaker 2: can lean and i can play Betty Davis Eyes and
Speaker 2: I'll be fucking worried about any of this shit.
Speaker 1: Wow, you were worried about that.
Speaker 2: I still think about those things. It's so weird. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's just my own pow.
Speaker 1: No, I'm about tabooing to death. Yeah, I'm about tabooing.
Speaker 1: What is the first things that you do in the
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of your day, the first twenty minutes, what's
Speaker 1: the first twenty minutes of your day?
Speaker 2: Like, well, now that we have an eight month old
Speaker 2: and a three year old, so like the it's definitely
Speaker 2: waking up with one of them, Like it's probably the
Speaker 2: youngest one is screaming. So the first thing is like
Speaker 2: going down to get her out of the crab quickly
Speaker 2: giving her the bottle, or sometimes my wife will do it.
Speaker 2: I'll walk the dog, come up, and then the older
Speaker 2: one is getting up. So I also squeeze at an
Speaker 2: entire lemon into a glass of hot water, and I
Speaker 2: have coffee, and that's pretty much like that's the first
Speaker 2: twenty minutes a day. It's like a walk in the dog,
Speaker 2: waking a baby and drinking hot water and lemon.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm only asking this based on Tarik's answer.
Speaker 1: In your household the way it is now, when is
Speaker 1: your alone time zone? Tarik now lives life where he
Speaker 1: will go to bed at eight thirty pm just to
Speaker 1: have the alone time first, just so that he wakes up.
Speaker 1: For him, he needs to be completely alone to write.
Speaker 1: So Tarik will go to bed at eight pm and
Speaker 1: he'll wake up at three am. So from three am
Speaker 1: to five thirty before the kids wake up, that's all
Speaker 1: his time. That's how he knocks out projects and everything.
Speaker 2: So but for you, what's lucky for me is that
Speaker 2: I have much more time during the day to do that.
Speaker 2: Like once I dropped my daughter at school nine and
Speaker 2: go to jam. Maybe I'm done at noon, and then
Speaker 2: I'll go to the studio straight to like whatever Ben
Speaker 2: and bath time is, go home, do that and then
Speaker 2: if there's if I need to, I'll go back to
Speaker 2: the studio after but I am fortunate that I have
Speaker 2: I can carve that like you guys are constantly obviously
Speaker 2: because shows foul and everything. I can see why his
Speaker 2: his day he doesn't have that in the middle.
Speaker 1: Of the day.
Speaker 2: But when I was writing this, because one of the
Speaker 2: books that I read when I started to write was
Speaker 2: the Stephen King Book on Writing, and it's just you know,
Speaker 2: it just gives you all the rules you need for
Speaker 2: like the stoic carving out That book I literally went into,
Speaker 2: like McNally Jackson, I was just like, oh, where are
Speaker 2: the books about writing?
Speaker 1: Books?
Speaker 2: Like I was so green? Picked up that and then
Speaker 2: Mary Carr's The Art and more on a few other things.
Speaker 2: But it was like, He's very much like knock yourself
Speaker 2: in the basement, no windows whatever, five hours a day,
Speaker 2: And you know, I realistically I could find three or
Speaker 2: four hours a day, but I had to have that.
Speaker 2: So like the number of times that I've been at
Speaker 2: thirty Rock and been walking down the hallways and seeing
Speaker 2: you like just like on the floor like on a laptop,
Speaker 2: knowing that you're writing your like ninth novel and being like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know how you are able to do that,
Speaker 2: And cram that in between what I only knowing half
Speaker 2: of your life, and it's one of the craziest schedules.
Speaker 2: I had to find that, Like, yeah, I had to
Speaker 2: find that, carve out that alone time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just getn't wear fit in now. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: what was your first creative project in your life? Your
Speaker 1: first thing?
Speaker 2: I would go in my stepdad's studio a bunch when
Speaker 2: I was a kid and he had like this eight
Speaker 2: track tape recorder that I sort of learned how to
Speaker 2: use when I was like thirteen fourteen, and I would
Speaker 2: record little demos. I remember he had a sinclavier, the
Speaker 2: crazy programming sampling, giant keyboards in that era. Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: it was insane. I mean he was like a successful
Speaker 2: garner when it's a barn, the money.
Speaker 1: That owns. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember that I fucking around with it and hearing
Speaker 2: the calliope sound from wishing Well that does the boooo yeah,
Speaker 2: and I remember, oh fuck that that. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's where they got the sound, but whatever it was.
Speaker 2: And then he taught me a little bit how to
Speaker 2: program and sequence on it. And I was like twelve
Speaker 2: or thirteen and I recreated Urnce Jurnt Darby's wishing Well
Speaker 2: by doing like the drums first and then the bass
Speaker 2: and listening to it to hear like what the base
Speaker 2: going doom doom doom doom, doom doom doom doom doom do,
Speaker 2: like starting to understand what arrangement was. So that wasn't
Speaker 2: that's not so much creative because I was almost just
Speaker 2: making like a crappy karaoke version of wishing Well. But
Speaker 2: the times that I spent in my stepdad's studium making
Speaker 2: demos and then recording my band's demo, that would be
Speaker 2: the thing that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm gonn apply this also to djaying and
Speaker 1: beat making. So when you first get your turntables, and
Speaker 1: this is the thing, like most people don't know that
Speaker 1: when you first get your equipment of choice, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that you do, probably the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is mirror and sort of shadow whoever inspired you to
Speaker 1: do in the first pet. You know, I got a
Speaker 1: drum machine by the time, like the bomb squad was
Speaker 1: really hidden with the public enemy productions and all those things.
Speaker 1: So of course I'm trying to recreate revel without a
Speaker 1: pause and base heads like as practice. Yeah, but for
Speaker 1: you like when you're djaying, what's the amount of hours
Speaker 1: that you're practicing in spending like yeah, before you're actually
Speaker 1: testing in this autum.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing was that, and I talk about this
Speaker 2: a bit in the books. So I didn't know anybody
Speaker 2: who dj' There was this one older kid in my school,
Speaker 2: this cool kid who graduated by the time I got
Speaker 2: my turntables, and I somehow I think I stole the
Speaker 2: alumni list from this. The alumni office got his number
Speaker 2: and called him and he was like, this cool kid
Speaker 2: named Manny Eames is sadly I think passed like a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago in COVID and he used to
Speaker 2: work up at the stretch and Barbido show was like
Speaker 2: an intern and he DJ'ed and I called him up
Speaker 2: and I was like, Hey, would you come over and
Speaker 2: give me lessons? And he was like amazingly disinterested, like
Speaker 2: who are you again? I was like, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm Mark Ronson and he was like like, did you
Speaker 2: have that weird blonde streak in your hair? Because my
Speaker 2: mom made me get diet blonde streak per oxide scheeking
Speaker 2: my hair like right before my bar mitzvah, because she
Speaker 2: said like so you won't look boring like all the
Speaker 2: other boys. And I remembered that and I was like,
Speaker 2: I chose to take it as an identifier, not an insult.
Speaker 2: So I was like, yeah, that's me right. So he
Speaker 2: was like, well, what do you know about DJing And
Speaker 2: I was like, well, I listened to Stretch arms and
Speaker 2: he's like, you know, Stretch went to our school, right.
Speaker 2: I was like what, I was like, Stretch went to collegiate.
Speaker 2: I had listened to Stretch of Armstrong. I just discovered it,
Speaker 2: listened to it on the radio and he had that cool,
Speaker 2: deep baritone voice and I was like, there's no way
Speaker 2: that I would have ever put that together with our weird,
Speaker 2: buttoned up school in two and I was like, no,
Speaker 2: no way us and he was like, yes, Stretch of
Speaker 2: Armstrong is Adrian Bartow's like class of whatever eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I was like, and then I was like, Stretch Armstrong
Speaker 2: is white, Like it was so stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This kid finally decided to come over and teach me,
Speaker 2: and he was like, just do me a favorite before
Speaker 2: I come over, and make sure you have two copies
Speaker 2: of the same record. And I was like, oh right,
Speaker 2: because I just got my turntables for graduation. I had
Speaker 2: four records, but they were four different records. I didn't
Speaker 2: understand that you needed. He got me to the same records.
Speaker 2: He came over showed me the basic thing how to
Speaker 2: mark up the records with tape to know where you know,
Speaker 2: how to play doubles, and I started to practice all
Speaker 2: the time. I spent every waking hour practice. But the
Speaker 2: thing was instead of maybe spending my first six months
Speaker 2: or a year in the bedroom practicing, Peter Geishin, who
Speaker 2: owned all the big important nightclubs in New York at
Speaker 2: the time, he was literally called the King of clubs,
Speaker 2: lived in my building and his daughter and I were
Speaker 2: good friends, and she got me a gig opening for
Speaker 2: the opener of the opener of what like a one
Speaker 2: night at a club USA on a Thursday. So I
Speaker 2: was already getting pretty insane gigs really early. So I
Speaker 2: always kind of regret that I didn't have that extra
Speaker 2: year of like just only practicing in the bedroom, because
Speaker 2: my skills would be so much higher. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, I was just like I wanted to be
Speaker 2: in the party. I wanted to be rocking it. So
Speaker 2: probably what I lost a little bit in like that
Speaker 2: bedroom skill thing I gained in crowd reading because it
Speaker 2: was just like I was just straight from the frying
Speaker 2: pan into the fire as a seventeen year old kid.
Speaker 2: And then a year later I was, you know, opening
Speaker 2: for stretching some of these guys downtown.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you mentioned Club USA. So a lot of
Speaker 1: my for the first four Roots records, we would always
Speaker 1: stay you know, like midtown any Ian Schrager Hotel, so
Speaker 1: we would like live in the Paramount Hotel. I believe
Speaker 1: Club USA might have been around the corner.
Speaker 2: It was, yeah, forty seven between Eighth and Broway.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I never went to Club USA, but I
Speaker 1: remember one night coming home. I remember this so well.
Speaker 1: We we just we just finished mixing Da Scat And
Speaker 1: normally Bob Power is a daytime person. He is starts
Speaker 1: at eight am and we might be done at six pm.
Speaker 1: Because this thing is like I want a life. I
Speaker 1: want to leave here at seven and have a life.
Speaker 1: And you know, but I remember we had to recall
Speaker 1: like two songs or whatever. But whatever the case was,
Speaker 1: like it was like eleven o'clock and I'm getting back
Speaker 1: to the Paramount. There used to be an arcade, like
Speaker 1: I don't know New York as I should. I'm doing
Speaker 1: things like getting a Turkey's sandwich at the Howard Johnson's
Speaker 1: on the court, going to be arcade like I didn't.
Speaker 1: And one time I decided to rnch around the corner
Speaker 1: and I saw Tupac and all this Tupacnis leaving.
Speaker 2: That's a famous night. There's pictures of that. So you
Speaker 2: saw the night that Tupac was at Club USA.
Speaker 1: Wait? Was that the one time he was? Like?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I know that there's this one night
Speaker 2: that it's like one of the most famous pictures of
Speaker 2: the club. So I don't know if he was there
Speaker 2: many times. He certainly wasn't there many times. He might
Speaker 2: have been there two or three times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this was his ninety four ninety three, ninety four.
Speaker 1: I just remember seeing I was on the corner of
Speaker 1: a bodega and it just felt like you know when
Speaker 1: you see a tornado coming or whatever. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a clip of Tupac walking out of court where he's
Speaker 1: like strutting like this or whatever. Like Tupac was walking
Speaker 1: out of what I later found out was Club USA,
Speaker 1: because I was like, what's going on here? They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: Club USA's down there. Tupac had just left the club
Speaker 1: and it was just like how you imagine what the
Speaker 1: life would have been in ninety four? Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: bevy of women. I think Trench might have been with
Speaker 1: him or whatever. And I never went in the Club USA.
Speaker 1: I did the tunnel once, like I don't know why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, the tunnel was almost like what I imagine
Speaker 1: general population being club in as what was Club USA? Like?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 2: Club USA? Was much more so like all the Petergations
Speaker 2: clubs had this like specific like they had, like the
Speaker 2: Limelight was this sort of gothy, debauched thing played in
Speaker 2: was a little bit more high end and had the
Speaker 2: Keith Harringham baskeat Murals. Club USA because it was in
Speaker 2: Times Square like really lent into the camp and Broadway
Speaker 2: sleeves and there was a three story slide that went
Speaker 2: down the middle and people would ride down it and
Speaker 2: come out there naked, and they had these money drops,
Speaker 2: like they would drop ten thousand dollars from the from
Speaker 2: the ceilings and they'd be like people clawing at it
Speaker 2: like you know, dressed say what yeah, Like it had
Speaker 2: this very camp, decadent silly There were photo booths that
Speaker 2: like definitely doubled as like you know, blowjob havens, and
Speaker 2: and they had all these crazy it was like that
Speaker 2: adult fun house vibe that was very much like doesn't
Speaker 2: really exist. It was like it was very silly. And
Speaker 2: and then also you know, there would be nights where
Speaker 2: they'd have Leonardo DiCaprio or Tupac and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Jessica Rosenbloom had a hip hop night, so that was
Speaker 2: probably the night that Tupac was there. Yeah, it was debauched,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't dark. And then all those clubs when
Speaker 2: Giuliani started his warn club Land and he really went
Speaker 2: after petere Gation was like public enemy number one, really
Speaker 2: and he went after him, and they closed down Club
Speaker 2: USA first, and it was you know, because of the
Speaker 2: way that these clubs are run, it was pretty easy
Speaker 2: to get them all on technicalities and stuff they would do.
Speaker 2: Giuliani would do this thing over at Limelight where he'd
Speaker 2: send his dance police or whatever to make them close
Speaker 2: the door so they weren't allowed to let anywhere, and
Speaker 2: they make up some bullshit reason we got to look
Speaker 2: around the place. So the line would grow and grow
Speaker 2: and grow and grow longer to for after two hours,
Speaker 2: so there were a thousand people on it, and then
Speaker 2: they would slap the club with the summons for unruly
Speaker 2: behavior on the sidewalk like they were just doing whatever
Speaker 2: they could. They finally got him on some tax evasion shit.
Speaker 2: But this was that's also in the book. You know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to Like, I had this really brilliant editor
Speaker 2: named Hannah Wilentz who works at The New Yorker, and
Speaker 2: she kind of put me to task to really put
Speaker 2: stuff not just my own experience, but like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and then these clubs closed and then bottle service came in.
Speaker 2: She's like, no, put this against the climate of like
Speaker 2: what Giuliani and what policies in New York and gentrification,
Speaker 2: how that affected what was going through. So it was interesting,
Speaker 2: like I did a deeper dive to put that stuff.
Speaker 1: In the book. Okay, this is a weird question. One.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a car crash? Yes? What
Speaker 1: song was playing when you were in your first car crash?
Speaker 2: I actually can't remember the song, but I remember driving
Speaker 2: back from visiting a girlfriend at the time who was
Speaker 2: working at MassMOCA and the Taconic State Parkway that goes
Speaker 2: Upstate is quite famous, I think for the way it
Speaker 2: has these windy turns and at night. It's like when
Speaker 2: it was first built, I think quite a lot of people,
Speaker 2: like there were quite a lot of deaths and accidents,
Speaker 2: and I think this could be like urban myth that
Speaker 2: whoever designed the Taconic committed suicide out of like guilt
Speaker 2: or something, but it's true. There's something about the turns
Speaker 2: and the thing that will lull you into a sleep
Speaker 2: if you're if you're tired. So I just remember like drifting.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, but I remember waking up and there
Speaker 2: were tree branches slapping the fucking thing. I'd driven up
Speaker 2: the divide into like where the trees were, and I
Speaker 2: look back at my dog. My poor dog's being thrown
Speaker 2: around in the back, and I came to just quick
Speaker 2: enough to like straighten out the car. But luckily, if
Speaker 2: I if my arm had like slipped going this way
Speaker 2: as I was sleeping, as opposed to going to the
Speaker 2: left instead of going up the divide, I would have
Speaker 2: gone off the fucking ravine. So I don't remember, and
Speaker 2: there wasn't a song playing. I don't remember if there
Speaker 2: was a song playing, but that would be crazy actually,
Speaker 2: because have you been in a car crash of the songplane.
Speaker 1: To this day, I can't listen to Atlantis marsis ironic
Speaker 1: without thinking of my first car Cress. Oh whoa.
Speaker 2: She's in a car in that video, which is also ironic.
Speaker 1: She's literally driving on the black My farm is now Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just found out she shot up steps but weird enough,
Speaker 1: the same conditions. I think I've told the story before
Speaker 1: about driving thirty miles per hour to It took me
Speaker 1: three hours to get to New York in the icy conditions,
Speaker 1: so I can do hand collaps on Valerie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, I remember that. I didn't realize
Speaker 2: that you like risked your life to like come cy.
Speaker 1: I was not the second you said yes, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: this will never happened again in this lifetime.
Speaker 2: The greatest hand claps of all time. Like I still
Speaker 2: sometimes like get psyched out and clap the wrong rhythm
Speaker 2: on it when it's when we're playing it live because
Speaker 2: I break down the to just to the vocal and
Speaker 2: the clap stem sometimes when I DJ it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like You're a Amy was the first time
Speaker 1: where like a phenomenon to me was happening and I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. One I was glad, like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: there's something out there that moves me that I didn't
Speaker 1: have to yeah you know, yeah exactly, but also like
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a part of that magic. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me what are the challenges of coaching Old
Speaker 1: Dirty bastard? Wow? In doing vocals, he.
Speaker 2: Was just, to be completely honest, he was pretty like
Speaker 2: medicated at that time, So you'd come to the studio,
Speaker 2: wasn't a lot of erratic behave. It was also sad
Speaker 2: to see he was a little bit you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: but he and you know who he really loved. He
Speaker 2: loved Rhyme Fest. Rhyme Fest. There was a little bit
Speaker 2: of like crazy recognized crazy in the most sweet artistic
Speaker 2: way thing. And then Ryan Fest was such a fan
Speaker 2: of Old Dirty and Ryan Fest was writing the rhymes.
Speaker 2: I'd done the beats and I was like, oh, you
Speaker 2: got to say this, like you know, And he really
Speaker 2: channeled classic ODB like a great writer would Ryan Fest
Speaker 2: when he's coming up with it. So we had fun.
Speaker 2: And I remember watching that weird Old Dirty Basket documentary
Speaker 2: that came out after he got out of jail, where
Speaker 2: he's singing blue Moon in the car, And that's what
Speaker 2: gave me the idea. I was like, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: for better or for worse, I was like, we should
Speaker 2: get him to sing build me Up, butter Cup. I
Speaker 2: bet he loves that song. Yes, So so that was
Speaker 2: something I wish the track was a little better. Maybe
Speaker 2: what I should do is just take that a cappella
Speaker 2: and actually do it properly with band, right, and and
Speaker 2: it just take him singing build me U about it?
Speaker 1: Hell ya, you just solved your yeah right? Theah? Okay,
Speaker 1: what the hell is a glass mountain? Trust? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: just give me the genesis of that D'Angelo collaboration. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was while I was working on my record collection
Speaker 2: album and I'd written that song with a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: Anthony Russelmondo, who like played in the Libertines and Dirty
Speaker 2: Pretty Things. He was like an indie guy, but he
Speaker 2: had this chord sequence that I really loved. And in
Speaker 2: that era before I met Bruno and Jeff Basker and
Speaker 2: kind of got like a little bit of like realigne
Speaker 2: or I thing like you can't just jam with your
Speaker 2: friends all day and necessarily think that like HiT's all
Speaker 2: they're gonna come out of it. But at that time
Speaker 2: I was just bringing all my friends down to work
Speaker 2: on music, and there was also something beautiful about it,
Speaker 2: that spirit of jamming. And so we had this working title,
Speaker 2: you know, like in the back in the era of
Speaker 2: like you would make an instrumental and you would burn
Speaker 2: it on a CD and you'd write some silly working
Speaker 2: title on the CD, and it was just it was
Speaker 2: just said Glass Mountain Trust. And at the time, I
Speaker 2: hadn't seen our friend Dominic Chreneer in a while, and
Speaker 2: he drifted back into my life and I was really grateful.
Speaker 2: And he actually came in while I was working on
Speaker 2: that record collection and gave me really good like just
Speaker 2: help steer the ship. I was I little lost what
Speaker 2: I was doing, and he said, he's like, this instrumental
Speaker 2: is kind of oh, like you want me to play
Speaker 2: it for D? And I was like, of course, but
Speaker 2: like would he ever do anything? And this was at
Speaker 2: the time in between you know, Voodoo and Black Messiah,
Speaker 2: you know, I was he's working on his own record,
Speaker 2: this's long white the fuck makes me think that he's
Speaker 2: going to work on something for me. So he played
Speaker 2: it for D and then do you really. He said,
Speaker 2: he loves the track, he's working on it, and then
Speaker 2: he was working at that time with that lyricist that
Speaker 2: he worked with a lot, the girl who wrote a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff with George. Yeah, so you know, he
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, you'll get back something back pretty soon.
Speaker 2: And then you know, we turns to a month, and
Speaker 2: a month turns to two months. I've started to maybe
Speaker 2: let go of the probability of this happening, and then
Speaker 2: three months later he sends this songback with this incredible vocal.
Speaker 2: That's that's way.
Speaker 1: That's three months, so that's like five I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, and it's so.
Speaker 2: Much it's it's the vocal is so amazing that it's
Speaker 2: it's sort of the track is sort of now like
Speaker 2: unworthy of this vocal, which is another reason that might
Speaker 2: be nice to revisit that vocal and give it something
Speaker 2: that it deserves. But he said, he left me this
Speaker 2: voice message that said, like, yo, man, I'm sorry it
Speaker 2: took so long. I was really just trying to get
Speaker 2: to like the heart of like what Glass Mountain Trust meant.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh my god, it's like that
Speaker 2: was just like this silly working title. But yet also
Speaker 2: so touched that, like he felt the honor the thing
Speaker 2: of this like made up working title that that's what
Speaker 2: it was. And it was just like and it's actually
Speaker 2: kind of cool, like what he found in and it
Speaker 2: is amazing. I'm going to break out to take all,
Speaker 2: like all the things in it. It was just cool.
Speaker 1: It's weird to me. So when a person does pass away,
Speaker 1: and this happened with Prince, this happened with Like this
Speaker 1: happened was that everyone, like I go back and listen
Speaker 1: to their work again and it's a it's almost like
Speaker 1: hearing it for the first time, Like I'm listening to
Speaker 1: Brown Sugar for the first time in my life, and
Speaker 1: same with Voodoo And despite me being there, I'm actually
Speaker 1: outside myself listening to it. And I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: great of a lyricist he is because this time I'm
Speaker 1: listening to it, I'm not distracted, I'm reading the lyrics lyrics,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize like what a mark, like what
Speaker 1: an awesome lyricism he was. And so on the other
Speaker 1: side of that coin, I was talking to him, and
Speaker 1: what's weird is that he had a little bit of
Speaker 1: doubt of his ability and Selo made him very nervous,
Speaker 1: like three thousand made him nervous, but Celo really made
Speaker 1: him nervous, like oh no, like I'm not someone else
Speaker 1: is in the house with us or whatever. And for him,
Speaker 1: I know, the motivation to get through that it was
Speaker 1: almost like a person that had to Okay, I gotta
Speaker 1: be in fighting shape in six months for this event,
Speaker 1: so I got to get to the gym and work out.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what he did to get but
Speaker 1: I know the beginning of that process when you know,
Speaker 1: when I was talking to him, it was like I'm
Speaker 1: about to do this thing for ronson and but we
Speaker 1: were just always talking. There was a point where he
Speaker 1: just thought like, oh well, people now have a new
Speaker 1: soul leader and I'm not needed anymore. So a lot
Speaker 1: of that fourteen years was also just you know, the
Speaker 1: obstacles we put in our heads, our own heads that
Speaker 1: are not a factor at all. But for him, like
Speaker 1: when he said he finished it, yeah, I was like, great, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we can get to your record and get that,
Speaker 1: you know, get it out.
Speaker 2: But god, I can't even believe that, like that record
Speaker 2: was like that. Now I feel even more guilty that
Speaker 2: like him working on that. I thought like maybe he
Speaker 2: was working out it alongside working on Black my side.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, oh my god, my thing was like a.
Speaker 1: But like you could delay, you got to get out
Speaker 1: of your own way, right.
Speaker 2: I still think about lyrics that Dominic Chaneer like, and
Speaker 2: you would probably know this song because you played on it.
Speaker 2: There was a song that I know that was probably
Speaker 2: left off of Voodoo that still lives in my head,
Speaker 2: just dom singing me like what the hook was that?
Speaker 2: There was something like I used to get high and
Speaker 2: I only get a buzz. I wish things could go back.
Speaker 1: To the way way it was.
Speaker 3: Now it's on Uh it's on a blacks go back back,
Speaker 3: so it is it is a refrain, right, okay, But
Speaker 3: that well, it's he changed part two the malady a
Speaker 3: little bit or from what.
Speaker 2: It was on.
Speaker 1: He disguised it. And that's the thing when you now
Speaker 1: listen to it, like in Voodoo, I had no idea
Speaker 1: he was singing this is my testimony on player player,
Speaker 1: like at the very end, right before Devil Pile comes on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're this rules, And I just thought that was him
Speaker 1: making a stupid voice. And then I was listening he
Speaker 1: was like, this is my test deimony, but like seventh
Speaker 1: part harmony, like who does you'll hear? There's a lot
Speaker 1: of subliminal things that I didn't catch the first time
Speaker 1: around that now I pay attention to. But uh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so real quick and this is sort of a rapid fire.
Speaker 1: What are your three teflon will Never Die songs? As
Speaker 1: a DJ? No matter what, these will work?
Speaker 2: Did Dimitri in Paris want you back? Rework?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Valerie and music Sounds Better with You by Stardust?
Speaker 1: Okay? What one song are you a little dismayed that
Speaker 1: might not make it to the next generation? Like for
Speaker 1: me the moment where I did that Troy intro and
Speaker 1: it didn't work right. Oh that broke my heart so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to cry you what was that song?
Speaker 2: There have been some songs that I've played recently and
Speaker 2: like been like, oh, like I think Sound of the Police,
Speaker 2: like still Rings off by Carros. But I remember playing
Speaker 2: Step into a World and I'm like.
Speaker 1: Oh this and the scream didn't happen in the beginning.
Speaker 2: The scream like that does that could have just been
Speaker 2: the crowd? But then I'm listening. Caros has so many bangers, Like,
Speaker 2: I'm not worried for him, but yeah, that was one
Speaker 2: that happened recently.
Speaker 1: And finally, will you do an adaptation of this as
Speaker 1: a series.
Speaker 2: Or well, it's been an option. The book was optioned
Speaker 2: by Plan B and Warner Brothers have picked it up
Speaker 2: for to be a film.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: So it's exciting, Like, listen, there's part of me. They'd
Speaker 2: be so happy if there wasn't didn't need to be
Speaker 2: a protagonist called Mark Ronson. It's this film about the era,
Speaker 2: it's the DJ film. We all know that there hasn't
Speaker 2: been the you know, the definitive DJ story, and we're
Speaker 2: an entire culture of DJs now.
Speaker 1: So it'd Beef last Night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So it would be wonderful if it that
Speaker 2: all facilitated that I plan be you know my friend
Speaker 2: Jeremy Kleiner who I grew up with, Like, they make
Speaker 2: such incredible films as Warner Brothers. You know, obviously I've
Speaker 2: worked on Barbieing Stars Born with them. It could be
Speaker 2: the thing to make the nineties Saturday Night Fever. It
Speaker 2: would be very exciting and we'll see how it turns out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the music man, you know, that's all it
Speaker 1: counts I know, Mark, thank you very much for doing
Speaker 1: this for me.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I appreciate having me and of course always
Speaker 2: Mark Ronson.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Quest of shows hosted to by me
Speaker 1: a mere quest Loove Thompson. Executive producers are Sean g
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