Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm from Raleigh, North Carolina. Man, you kidding me?
Speaker 1: And it starts right.
Speaker 3: I'm recording now, recording. Oh hell no, I ain't. Come on.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of West Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: It was quest Love with me of course. Uh, Team
Speaker 1: Supreme fon Tigelow in a new location.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, yeah, man came down to Charlotte.
Speaker 5: He gets working for a couple of days and yeah, bro, yo,
Speaker 5: yo man, I had to I'm meant to tell you too.
Speaker 3: I think I may be joining you. I ain't going
Speaker 3: as crazy as you going with.
Speaker 5: It, but I've drastically cut down my meat into.
Speaker 3: There you go bright like drastically. I still I mean,
Speaker 3: I still do my fish.
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 5: I can eat fish like every day of the week,
Speaker 5: and uh still do my you know, my chicken. I
Speaker 5: do like you know chicken, but uh like beef or
Speaker 5: like I think, yeah that.
Speaker 1: It might be wrapped. Bro, we might make it the seventies.
Speaker 6: Make sure you're replacing that iron. Just make sure you're
Speaker 6: replacing that iron with something.
Speaker 3: Man, I be drinking metal musle in the morning. I
Speaker 3: feel old.
Speaker 5: Keep doing George Loe Man listen to keep that cholestero
Speaker 5: all down.
Speaker 1: Speaking of what's up sugar, Steve? How you making out?
Speaker 7: Oh my god, you're just talking about meat? Makes me
Speaker 7: want a steak. You know, I don't know, I do
Speaker 7: everything bad, so I might I might not make it
Speaker 7: to seventy.
Speaker 8: But I love y'all, loveye, I'm everything's okay to be
Speaker 8: with with everybody here and looking forward to great.
Speaker 4: Everyone's fine. You just you just recorded an album for
Speaker 4: your label.
Speaker 7: We recorded, We recorded two full records in two days
Speaker 7: for David Murray was one of the records and London,
Speaker 7: a h Norwegian guitarist was another one. That's JMI Recordings
Speaker 7: dot Com. Everybody.
Speaker 4: We we joke, we joke about Steve's new Fountain celebrity.
Speaker 4: But Steve has definitely done a lot of pivot work
Speaker 4: in the last few years, developing really just living in
Speaker 4: his dream, like you know, recording and putting out is
Speaker 4: you know, after you collect every jazz record, I guess.
Speaker 1: The next thing is you have to be start making
Speaker 1: them start. Yeah, you're the new tailor, so that's right.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: The label started right around when this podcast started, about
Speaker 7: five years ago.
Speaker 1: Five years old. You have a new background. You look
Speaker 1: like you're on a tour bus right now.
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 6: I'm in my new spot, but.
Speaker 1: You just have tour bus curtains.
Speaker 9: Well, from this, this is way better than the paper
Speaker 9: with the paper clip.
Speaker 1: You just it looks it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: tour bus.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 9: These are the factory blinds they gave me at the
Speaker 9: new spot, and I'm real happy to be.
Speaker 4: At Okay, Well, you're making out everything's fine.
Speaker 9: Living good and the blackest and neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
Speaker 9: Holly Louijash shout out to a Stelle who took me
Speaker 9: around and showed me the good corner stores I am living.
Speaker 6: That's like, yeah, we'll just.
Speaker 1: Be careful because a lot's going on in LA that.
Speaker 6: Is happening to very rich people, very rich people who have.
Speaker 9: Say that to me, Like, because everybody who tells me
Speaker 9: to well, I'm being specific because people have said that
Speaker 9: to me a lot out from outside of LA and
Speaker 9: I don't think they understand that the people who are
Speaker 9: getting robbed are not in my tax.
Speaker 6: It's like criminals just figured out rich people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's what Well, Okay, let's hear everyone's moving
Speaker 4: to a pivot where we now you know, now, let
Speaker 4: me not even put that out there, lazy gentleman. I
Speaker 4: will say that our guest today is the founding member
Speaker 4: of probably one of the most legendary futuristic electric funk
Speaker 4: duos professionally and better known as The System. What made
Speaker 4: The System unique is the kind of space that they
Speaker 4: occupied at a time period in which new ideas and
Speaker 4: new concepts were happening in real time.
Speaker 1: And this is like the post.
Speaker 4: Disco Leroy Burgess era of boogie, in which it was
Speaker 4: needed of a jolt. You know, It's like new wave
Speaker 4: was sort of coming in for a lot of the
Speaker 4: pop acts. And you know, of course, Prince finally had
Speaker 4: control of the wheel and made the entire world take
Speaker 4: notice of his vision, even made like Leon Silvers in
Speaker 4: the West Coast take note of his vision. Meanwhile, I'll
Speaker 4: say that in New York City, you know, club culture,
Speaker 4: dance culture sort of reached a boil where hip hop
Speaker 4: was slow creeping into We're dipping their toes in the water,
Speaker 4: and you know, for the first time you're hearing songs
Speaker 4: with a little harder edge to it, and R and
Speaker 4: B and funk you know, acts were slowly dipping their
Speaker 4: toes in the water using like futuristic synth sounds and
Speaker 4: harder drum programming, and you know, and I feel that
Speaker 4: that particular pocket is very influential.
Speaker 1: Duo occupied.
Speaker 4: Let me just get it, get him out of the
Speaker 4: way first, please, welcome to the cost Love Supreme Mike
Speaker 4: Murphy of the System, Thank you, sir, Thank.
Speaker 2: Your brother, thank you quest Love, thank you fam Wait.
Speaker 4: I wanted to know because you occupy there's there's a
Speaker 4: very specific period of New York City that I'm unaware of.
Speaker 4: Like we've had many guests that can sort of put
Speaker 4: me down with what was happening in Los Angeles between
Speaker 4: like seventy seven to eighty five. But for the first time,
Speaker 4: I think we're really going to dive into what R
Speaker 4: and B and what dance culture and what black music
Speaker 4: in general was going through in between you know, nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty eighty one, eighty two, eighty three or forty five
Speaker 4: for those that weren't under the Purple Umbrella and for
Speaker 4: those that weren't directly doing hip hop, like especially in
Speaker 4: New York City.
Speaker 1: So you know, thank you for doing the show Man.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Brother.
Speaker 1: So you're you're speaking to us now from.
Speaker 2: Where East Harlem, New York City?
Speaker 1: And okay, so you're still a Harlem resident?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I am. Okay, but well I grew up
Speaker 2: in Jamaica, Queen, so this I'm a I'm a twenty
Speaker 2: year transplant of each Okay.
Speaker 4: Well, before we started taping, you were letting Fonte know
Speaker 4: that you two are from the same hood.
Speaker 1: We're probably sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Wow, yep, crazy Morgan'll the.
Speaker 2: Cores, the Austin's, Yeah, we big, We rolled deep down there.
Speaker 5: That's so dope, some of them, I'm sure I do.
Speaker 5: I went to Central, so I went to kind of Central,
Speaker 5: so that was where I came from school. And then
Speaker 5: and uh, Raleigh. I mean I've moved to Riley in
Speaker 5: like five but been there ever since. But yeah, man,
Speaker 5: it's you know, cool city. Real it's going up like
Speaker 5: everywhere else, like the rent and all the property is
Speaker 5: going nuts.
Speaker 3: But but it's it's a beautiful city. Man, That's what's up.
Speaker 1: How long did you live there before you moved to
Speaker 1: New York?
Speaker 2: Oh? I was I moved up here when I was
Speaker 2: a baby. But every summer, you know, how mom, do
Speaker 2: you're gonna go down your uncle Jess. You're going to
Speaker 2: your uncle Jesse's this summer. So I did that till
Speaker 2: I was like thirteen fourteen. Once you finally was like
Speaker 2: all right, okay, you know, because I started, you know,
Speaker 2: playing in bands and stuff, and we were gigging a
Speaker 2: bunch and she was like, all right, I'm gonna let you,
Speaker 2: gonna let you get some okay.
Speaker 4: Was it were those good memories of having to go
Speaker 4: down south or was it always like I mean, I
Speaker 4: want to play with my friends in the summer up
Speaker 4: in New York.
Speaker 2: Or No, my cousins were friends. Bernard Fowler is my
Speaker 2: first cousin. Yeah, that's my first cousin.
Speaker 1: Of course. So is this the Queens as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's from Queensbridge, and you know, as kids, we
Speaker 2: would we were best friends, running back and forth to
Speaker 2: each other's house. Is our mother his My father and
Speaker 2: his mother are brother and sister, so so she was
Speaker 2: like my she's my real auntie. And we spend weekends
Speaker 2: together hanging out, playing and stuff. So we've tight. Wow.
Speaker 1: So he's your actual first cousin.
Speaker 2: He's my actual first cousin.
Speaker 1: That's incredible, all right.
Speaker 4: So for our listeners out there, like Bernard is pretty
Speaker 4: much you know, he's who's the who of background singing.
Speaker 4: You know, he's known for his work with the Little
Speaker 4: Rolling Stones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and lead singers and lead singers. She's he's definitely
Speaker 2: one one of the absolute best.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I gotta say the infamous House classic, well Peach
Speaker 4: Boys don't make Me wait?
Speaker 2: Maybe it won't make me wait. Yeah, that's all Bernard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not to mention like the work that he's
Speaker 1: done with Bill as well and and Herbie.
Speaker 4: Hancock and the recently departed HYBYI.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, absolutely.
Speaker 4: So the question I usually start with, can you tell
Speaker 4: me what your first musical your first musical memory was.
Speaker 2: You know, as a kid, my mother loved music, so
Speaker 2: we used to go to the Apollo all the time,
Speaker 2: and it was at a time when you could see
Speaker 2: five shows in one day. You could just sit there,
Speaker 2: hang out and watch all the shows, and so I
Speaker 2: did that a lot. Those are my earliest, my earliest
Speaker 2: memories you know in music in the house of course,
Speaker 2: the Jackson Five, who I emulated in my first band,
Speaker 2: and kind of That's how I got my start.
Speaker 6: What did your mom do for work, man, My mother.
Speaker 2: Was my mother. No, my mother was a a plan
Speaker 2: reader engineer for Ma Bell for Bell Telephone Company, and
Speaker 2: she was a rebel, like she was the original liberated woman.
Speaker 2: She really was community leader and she used to give back.
Speaker 2: In the day, there were a lot of social groups
Speaker 2: that gave dances. So whenever they'd have a dance, of course,
Speaker 2: my little band, the Soul Shakers, we'd be like the
Speaker 2: floor show. So they would have like a well known
Speaker 2: kind of orchestra. One was Ron Ron Williams and the
Speaker 2: Band of Renown, so they would be the big band playing,
Speaker 2: and then we would come on and do like a
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson James Brown floor show.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to hear normally a lot of our guests
Speaker 4: on the show, if their formative years were in the
Speaker 4: sixties or seventies, nine times out of ten secular music
Speaker 4: is taboo.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like to hear like was was. Were
Speaker 1: your parents strict with music?
Speaker 4: You're not allowed to listen to any music but gospel
Speaker 4: or any of those things.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't have any of that pretty much. I
Speaker 2: mean in my house it was like Brooke Benton was King.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like the Black King, Cole was King,
Speaker 2: the smooth, the smooth r and b love the Love
Speaker 2: of Boys singers. So I kind of grew up really
Speaker 2: actually loving Brooke Benton, those kind of classic songs with
Speaker 2: the strings, with the deep, deep melodies and the deep lyrics,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of what I cut my teeth on.
Speaker 2: And later it developed into more more of the funky stuff.
Speaker 4: Okay, how many siblings do you have? Where do you
Speaker 4: fall in your family line?
Speaker 2: I'm I'm firstborn, so the only of three.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm the leaders passing it down to you.
Speaker 4: How do you because normally, if most I noticed that
Speaker 4: most of people in MU are usually the younger person.
Speaker 4: You know, there's always an older sibling that's passing the
Speaker 4: music down. Here, listen to this. This is James Brown.
Speaker 2: This is kind of nobody. But my aunt Jennis. You know,
Speaker 2: like I told you, my mother worked for mob Bell.
Speaker 2: My aunt Jennie, who moved up from North Carolina, would
Speaker 2: keep me during the day and she could sing like
Speaker 2: Aretha Franklin, real real talk, but she would only sing,
Speaker 2: and she would only sing in church. So during the
Speaker 2: day when my mother would be at work. She'd be like,
Speaker 2: Michah Micah Owen is what you call me, get up
Speaker 2: on the table and put on a show for me.
Speaker 2: And she put me on the table and you know,
Speaker 2: have me sing different songs, the Jackson Five particularly, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know that's kind of where my love for music
Speaker 2: and performing came from my aunt Jenny.
Speaker 4: So I assume that at one of these concerts you
Speaker 4: saw the Jackson Five perform, Like, would you say that
Speaker 4: that was like one of the more memorable concerts that
Speaker 4: you've saw or.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well the Fought. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: There were a lot of young groups. The Five Stare
Speaker 2: Steps may have been the first group that I saw
Speaker 2: at the Apollo of Young Guys, and Black Ivory actually
Speaker 2: performed at the r KO on Jamaica Avenue in Queens.
Speaker 2: When I saw them perform, I'm like, Wow, I can
Speaker 2: do that. I can do that because I don't I
Speaker 2: think they're just slightly older than me. And when I
Speaker 2: saw that they were able to perform and and actually
Speaker 2: make a living at it, I was like, wow, I
Speaker 2: can do this.
Speaker 4: Were the Stairsteps actual musicians in concert?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, I know that it was studio musicians. But
Speaker 1: I know that Kenny.
Speaker 2: Kenny, Kenny Burke played, Kenny Burke played on stage. My
Speaker 2: memory doesn't serve me how well he played at that time,
Speaker 2: but he was definitely he was definitely playing on stage
Speaker 2: back then at the Apollo.
Speaker 4: Did when did you start your well you talked about
Speaker 4: as far as your musical development was concerned. Was that
Speaker 4: a school thing that school encouraged or did you get
Speaker 4: her on your own?
Speaker 2: No? I was. I was really I went to egghead schools.
Speaker 2: I was busted to schools, and you know, I was
Speaker 2: very much into magnet kid math and science. To be honest,
Speaker 2: I was really an egghead. But my best friend, this kid,
Speaker 2: Robert Fontaine. He and my mother a Rain Fontaine and
Speaker 2: Shirley Austin. They could not be separated, and she was like,
Speaker 2: they dressed the same, they hung the same. So rob
Speaker 2: was her child. So we became close friends, even though
Speaker 2: it was a couple of years older than me. He
Speaker 2: had a band, and of course he didn't want to
Speaker 2: let me in the band because I was too young.
Speaker 2: I was like a little perp. But eventually two of
Speaker 2: the band members, especially the singer, they started getting into
Speaker 2: drugs and everything, and my mother's like, you should hear
Speaker 2: Michael sing. I'm telling you you'd hear him sing. And
Speaker 2: so I started singing with that band and that's how,
Speaker 2: you know, initially got my start singing and performing. And
Speaker 2: the band was the Soul Shakers. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know Ronnie Drayton.
Speaker 1: You know that name, Yes, Ronnie, the late Ronnie Drayton.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, the late Ronnie. Yes. Indeed, he was the
Speaker 2: drummer in the band.
Speaker 4: Wait, isn't Ronnie related to FLAVEO?
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, we don't know if he.
Speaker 4: Okay, I might be mistaken because there was another Drayton
Speaker 4: that I met that used to work at Tower Records
Speaker 4: that is related to Flave.
Speaker 1: I know that Flave came from a large family.
Speaker 2: But no, Ronnie's not related to No no no. But
Speaker 2: we grew up two blocks from each other. He lived
Speaker 2: around the corner for me, and also growing up, he
Speaker 2: was kind of inspirational for us because he left the
Speaker 2: band as a drummer and said, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: a guitar player. I'm gonna start playing guitar. We're like,
Speaker 2: I want to stick to drums because you're such a
Speaker 2: good drummer. But eventually he kept going at it. He
Speaker 2: got a gig with the Chambers brothers and so they
Speaker 2: were going on the road and we were, you know,
Speaker 2: we were kids in pro keads and we were go
Speaker 2: around the corner and watch him being picked up by
Speaker 2: the band the station Wagon with his amps and everything,
Speaker 2: and we're like, wow, he's really he's really doing it.
Speaker 2: So he was an inspiration at all as well.
Speaker 1: It just hit me that Ron used to play with
Speaker 1: Noah Hendricks.
Speaker 2: That's right, he was really her band leader Edvin Bird's
Speaker 2: song Noah Hendricks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeaeah.
Speaker 4: He's a legend, you know, very very sad to see
Speaker 4: see him past.
Speaker 2: He was at our age, he was like the most
Speaker 2: serious musician. I mean, I grew up around a lot
Speaker 2: of really talented funk bands, like in my neighborhood and
Speaker 2: Jamaica Queens. Literally every other block there was a there
Speaker 2: was a band. There was a funk band, Mother Night,
Speaker 2: you know Eddie Eddie Martinez.
Speaker 1: Of course, the legendary Eddie Martinez.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, rock Box yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: They were one of our local bands. And we had
Speaker 2: some hell of funky bands back then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where would these shows happen at high schools or
Speaker 4: like how like give me a typical rundown of Okay,
Speaker 4: if you have a neighborhood band, one, where do you rehearse?
Speaker 4: Because I know that, at least for the Midwest, families
Speaker 4: with garages, you know, hence the term garage band, like
Speaker 4: that's where bands are formed. But if you're in New
Speaker 4: York City and you form a band, first of all,
Speaker 4: where do you rehearse at.
Speaker 2: We're in Jamaica, Queens everybody had a garage and a basement,
Speaker 2: so you're the You're you're either rehearsed in the basement
Speaker 2: or the garage. My next door neighbor was Eddie Hazel's father,
Speaker 2: Eddie Hazel. He lived next door to me, so the
Speaker 2: parliament back in the day would come and and pull
Speaker 2: around on the back of you know, basically give parties.
Speaker 2: But his father, he did all the processes in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: All hair processes.
Speaker 1: Could also do hair. I forgot about that.
Speaker 6: I'm saving a hair chapter until get the.
Speaker 1: Wow, oh that's crazy.
Speaker 4: Who who else were your were your contemporaries growing up
Speaker 4: as far as like who you went to school with
Speaker 4: or other people?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, when I was in public school, it was
Speaker 2: really you asked about how where we would gig. There
Speaker 2: were five or six local clubs. There was the Club Ruby,
Speaker 2: the Linden Manor, there was after Rochfield Village was built,
Speaker 2: there was a big concert venue there. Everybody would play it.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of clubs. There were a lot
Speaker 2: of bars, local bars, and they all had bands. I
Speaker 2: mean we're talking before DJ before they realized, oh we
Speaker 2: can just get a DJ to come in. You know,
Speaker 2: we give it every everybody would gig. There were bands
Speaker 2: like the Firebolts, who were really kind of the leaders
Speaker 2: for us local bands because they had it organized so
Speaker 2: they played. They gigged every weekend like they always had
Speaker 2: shows for different cotillions. And there were a lot of
Speaker 2: gigs back then and when we were like the band
Speaker 2: under them, so we would sometimes be the opening act
Speaker 2: basically the floor show.
Speaker 4: Is this a thing where you can if you're that
Speaker 4: top band, can you make a nice living?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, how old are you doing this period?
Speaker 2: I'm like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen when.
Speaker 4: You can go into a nightclub and do a show
Speaker 4: and it's not because a culture wasn't a thing yet.
Speaker 2: Or my mother was a mamager and she was a beauty,
Speaker 2: so nobody said no to Shirly, so she would kind
Speaker 2: of she was kind of book us on gigs. And then,
Speaker 2: like I said, during that era, everybody was a member
Speaker 2: of a social club. So they would be uh shinnecock
Speaker 2: Rod and Gun club and they would give an annual event.
Speaker 2: There might be the motorcycle. The Fat Back Band was
Speaker 2: the official band for like the Linden Boulevard Biker Biker Club.
Speaker 2: Really they would all have event yeah, yeah, yeah they would.
Speaker 2: They rehearsed from Linden Boulevard. How far from where I
Speaker 2: grew up.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Fat Back was from there.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Fatbacks from Linden Boulevard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wacky for like thirty minutes. Yep, I've heard about
Speaker 1: their series.
Speaker 2: So all these social clubs, they would have a contillion
Speaker 2: where they'd bring out the young ladies. There would be
Speaker 2: a lot of events you could play. You could really
Speaker 2: make a living. I mean I was a kid and
Speaker 2: I was I'm making like one hundred dollars a weekend
Speaker 2: all the time. And you know, back in.
Speaker 6: That a teenager period.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, back then, what.
Speaker 4: At what point for you at least are you even
Speaker 4: considering making this a profession.
Speaker 1: And I gotta know. I know that the group clear
Speaker 1: played a.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I'm not there yet
Speaker 2: because I'm really, like I said, I'm an egghead. I'm
Speaker 2: going to Brooklyn Tech. I'm gonna be I'm gonna work
Speaker 2: for NASA. That's my that was my head. That was
Speaker 2: my DUTs in my head. That's that's what it was.
Speaker 2: I'm going to NASA. But I was in the band
Speaker 2: the Soul Shakers, and at some point we were like,
Speaker 2: let's try and see if we can get better. And
Speaker 2: a young lady named Laala the Forest Cope you give
Speaker 2: good love, Yeah, La La joined the band. So La
Speaker 2: La changed a lot from me because she was she
Speaker 2: was like the first female rebel who always said, well
Speaker 2: why not, why can't we get this? Why can't we
Speaker 2: do that? Why can't I was more like in pocket,
Speaker 2: like come on, let's see, we'll get it so down,
Speaker 2: so down. So once her energy came into the band,
Speaker 2: we were forever seeking the better drummer, the better bass player,
Speaker 2: the better guitar player, the better sounds is the better gig.
Speaker 2: So she changed a lot for me, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Just so we can make it clear.
Speaker 4: I don't you mentioned it earlier, but I wanted to
Speaker 4: make it clear for our listeners that don't know. La
Speaker 4: Laud wrote Whitney Houston's very first single, you Get You
Speaker 4: Give Good Love Love You've Give.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we didn't want to admit we didn't know who
Speaker 6: Lai was, but we didn't thank you.
Speaker 4: No, no, lad You know, she made noise and she
Speaker 4: did some stuff with like full force and as a
Speaker 4: solo artist around like eighty six.
Speaker 2: Anyways, sorry, yep, yep, but but part of her thing
Speaker 2: was she would write songs way back then and I
Speaker 2: would kind of fool around with ideas imitating other people's songs.
Speaker 2: But she was the first person I was around who
Speaker 2: would just sit at the piano, make up a song
Speaker 2: and break your heart. And she was in the band
Speaker 2: and we would do gigs and she would sing like
Speaker 2: songs like Gladys Knight in the Gladdys Knight song last
Speaker 2: what is it? Last time I'm leaving Midnight, and she
Speaker 2: would she would tear the house down. She would do
Speaker 2: things like Billy Holliday. She just had that soul and
Speaker 2: that spirit that she would tear the house down with
Speaker 2: these songs and songs like you give good love. She
Speaker 2: was writing no songs when she was sixteen. She was
Speaker 2: already right, she had written that she had written ten
Speaker 2: of those by the time she was sixteen. So that
Speaker 2: kind of made me start noticing, you know that, oh,
Speaker 2: this songwriting is a thing. Songwriting is really a thing
Speaker 2: that you should be focusing on, particularly, you know, in
Speaker 2: the band thing. So moving on, we got into this
Speaker 2: band called Jack SaaS, The Jack SaaS Band. Former members
Speaker 2: included like a lot of local talent in Jamaica, queens
Speaker 2: and really good musicians, so we really had to step
Speaker 2: up the bar a little bit. But our band, we
Speaker 2: were playing all over the East coast, would play the
Speaker 2: Jersey Shore, we would play Miami, we would play Virginia,
Speaker 2: but we couldn't get a record deal. So along this time,
Speaker 2: this guy comes to town. We used to play this
Speaker 2: club uptown called the Seller with band this ban Kinky Fox.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know Timmy Allen. They were
Speaker 2: like they would play one weekend, we would play another weekend.
Speaker 2: So this guy Fred Petris, little Macho Music, who produced
Speaker 2: Change and BB Change. Yeah, yeah, so he comes to town.
Speaker 2: I'm still deciding if I'm really gonna do music. So
Speaker 2: he comes to down and he says, hey, I really
Speaker 2: like you guys. I want you to be I had
Speaker 2: this record out called Peter Jacques Band, which was a
Speaker 2: huge hit in Europe. He's like, I want you to
Speaker 2: guys to tour and pretend you're Peter Jack's band. So
Speaker 2: we're like, okay, because you know he's gonna pay us,
Speaker 2: we're going to put well, basically we didn't record anything
Speaker 2: on the album, but we were going to perform the
Speaker 2: touring act of Peter Jacks Band and we would be
Speaker 2: the artist. So that kind of fell apart. But then
Speaker 2: he called me one day and he said, hey, Murphy,
Speaker 2: I want you to introduce me to bands in the city,
Speaker 2: all the best musicians, and I want you to work
Speaker 2: for me. I want you to work in my office.
Speaker 2: I want I'll teach you publishing, I'll teach you recording,
Speaker 2: I'll teach you everything. But just connect me with all
Speaker 2: the bands. And so I did, because I knew I
Speaker 2: knew all of the musicians. Not I didn't know all
Speaker 2: of the studio recording musicians because in New York at
Speaker 2: the time, they were really they kept it real tight.
Speaker 2: You couldn't even get you couldn't get a session, you
Speaker 2: couldn't get to record anywhere. They had it on lock,
Speaker 2: Fid Thornton, Color, They just they had sessions, Yogi Horton,
Speaker 2: you know that whole crew. They had the session world
Speaker 2: on lock. So a band like ours didn't stand a chance.
Speaker 2: But through through my relationship with him, he actually did
Speaker 2: bring me in to run his office and I would
Speaker 2: hook him up with the musicians and do demos, and
Speaker 2: I would go to the sessions when he was out
Speaker 2: of town make sure everybody was recording, booked the sessions,
Speaker 2: learned about publishing, and at that time it became real
Speaker 2: for me because I could connect my brain with the
Speaker 2: creative part on how this can how this is a
Speaker 2: real business, and how you can really you know, how
Speaker 2: you can make things happen. So that's when when I started, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's when I started to think about music as a
Speaker 2: real profession for me.
Speaker 4: There's one thing I wanted to ask about your tenure
Speaker 4: and your band, and you were doing these club gigs
Speaker 4: on an average one, how long were you expected to
Speaker 4: perform at.
Speaker 1: These these shows?
Speaker 4: And how big is the repertoire, like just in terms
Speaker 4: of I understand like every band had to know the
Speaker 4: top forty so you had to have of course, So
Speaker 4: how how does that work? Is it like every Friday
Speaker 4: you go to the local record store, you get all
Speaker 4: the forty five's and you're like, okay, damn, we got
Speaker 4: to learn to how to trap by the commodorees or like,
Speaker 4: what's that process?
Speaker 1: Walking through that process.
Speaker 2: As the point where we got serious. We were rehearsing
Speaker 2: four days a week and we were were the shows.
Speaker 2: When look, we went from being like a floor show
Speaker 2: band actually having to hold on a club and generally
Speaker 2: you'd be booked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so that's five sets,
Speaker 2: three nights in a row, so you had to have
Speaker 2: And also we were doing originals cut because at that
Speaker 2: point were we started figuring out how to manipulate our
Speaker 2: sound and create a sound of our own and Jack sass.
Speaker 2: Actually it was a really killing band. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know. Liz Chisholm was the bass player. She's
Speaker 2: one of the original female bass players in New York.
Speaker 2: Liz Chisholm Omar Jakeim was an early drummer in the band.
Speaker 1: Legend.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were, we were, we were, we were
Speaker 2: pretty serious, like we were coming up on a funky
Speaker 2: rock thing. We were doing things like we were doing
Speaker 2: rare earth songs. We were doing uh, we were just
Speaker 2: doing our own brand. We would we would hit them
Speaker 2: with with the top forty hit, but we'd also hit
Speaker 2: them with something that's in the vein, like a song
Speaker 2: by war or you know. We were coming off a
Speaker 2: little bit left of center, but it was really working.
Speaker 2: It was working.
Speaker 4: You mentioned queens, and also I wanted to know whether
Speaker 4: or not at the time was anyone like from the
Speaker 4: Jamaica Boys like in also in the sphere I'm talking
Speaker 4: about like Bernard right, you know, Marcus Miller, all those.
Speaker 2: So all those cats are in the mix. Bernard Wright
Speaker 2: was in the Junior Firebolts. So the Fireballs I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: who had really gotten it down to a science where
Speaker 2: they were gigging all the time for weddings. So they
Speaker 2: created a spinoff called the Junior Firebolts, and Bernard was
Speaker 2: in the Junior Fireballs.
Speaker 1: You're so popular, you have your own sequel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all these bands were in the mix, and all
Speaker 2: these bands were killing.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you right now you led us to the
Speaker 4: point where you're learning the business. How are you getting
Speaker 4: talked into being a tour manager. And at what point
Speaker 4: are you entering Clear's life like, because I remember, like
Speaker 4: it's weird that I know, like intimate connections is a staple.
Speaker 4: But I'll admit that only after hip hop that I
Speaker 4: learned intimate connections because I always knew Clear because of
Speaker 4: like their early part in nineteen eighty where they had
Speaker 4: the song called win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm around them this whole time. So I'm in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Tech High School and Dennis King is the chief
Speaker 2: mastering engineer at Atlantic Studios right on fifty ninth Street.
Speaker 2: So he was someone who took interest in my early band,
Speaker 2: Jack says, and actually was the first person to ever
Speaker 2: take us into the recording studio. So he worked at Atlantic,
Speaker 2: and I would come home and I would stop at
Speaker 2: Atlantic Studios, and he lived near me in Queens and
Speaker 2: I would ride home with him. But that stopped entailed
Speaker 2: waiting around in Atlantic Studios Columbus Circle. I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: I saw everybody record Aretha. I saw the Stones come
Speaker 2: through there, Ricky Lee Jones, I mean like everybody who
Speaker 2: was anybody. I'm talking the days when you know all
Speaker 2: the actually the Cats, A lot of the Cats from Philly,
Speaker 2: the guitar player, and the bass player, Bookatie Owms, what's
Speaker 2: his name the keyboard player. They would all be around there,
Speaker 2: Jeve yep. So I got to kind of blend in
Speaker 2: through that and also view recording sessions and learn sessions.
Speaker 2: So Dennis at the time was working with the band Clear,
Speaker 2: who was from Baltimore, and they had one small record
Speaker 2: that didn't do a lot, but by the time the
Speaker 2: second record came, they were in demand to tour. So
Speaker 2: he obviously couldn't go on the road because he was
Speaker 2: a mastering engineer at Atlantic, and he knew I knew
Speaker 2: the road because I had taken my band everywhere and
Speaker 2: I knew all the details, booking hotels, all of that.
Speaker 2: So he asked me to be their road manager. So
Speaker 2: the first tour, well, the first big tour I get
Speaker 2: to go on is Prince Rick James and Clear. I
Speaker 2: felt I done it. Clear was the opening act. I
Speaker 2: thought I died and way to Heaven. I thought I
Speaker 2: died and went to heaven. Brother, So oh, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean I have actually pictures from the tour of
Speaker 2: Prince when he was doing the jockstrap and the reset
Speaker 2: ladder thing. I have pictures back there, Rick Jane All,
Speaker 2: I have pictures of all the madness. And he Rick
Speaker 2: had had kind of a crush on the clear girl,
Speaker 2: so you know, he liked him as the opening act.
Speaker 2: And we did. We must have done like fifteen dates.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling you, Prince killed Rick. Prince killed It
Speaker 2: was so funny because killed Rick. He killed Rick every
Speaker 2: single city. He killed him. First they started out. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the opening act. You might have six feet of
Speaker 2: depth and they peel you off. And the next act,
Speaker 2: you know, have twelve feet of depth. They peel him off,
Speaker 2: and then Rick has his whole big show, right. But
Speaker 2: Prince Prince had those stairs and he had like a
Speaker 2: little light rig that said Prince. And I'm telling you
Speaker 2: they were kicking ass and taking names every single gig.
Speaker 2: It was crazy, it was. And I'm standing there with
Speaker 2: my mouth of him because in a way, my band
Speaker 2: Jack sass. We had this guitar player, Vick Vaughan. I
Speaker 2: hope he hears this. Vic Vaughn was as good as Prince.
Speaker 2: He was good a guitar player and as good as singer,
Speaker 2: but he didn't have that you know, that extra thing
Speaker 2: that makes you want to stick to the business. He
Speaker 2: ended up he ended up moving to the midwest, South
Speaker 2: Dakota somewhere, but he was kind of the New York
Speaker 2: City embodiment of Prince. So when I saw Prince, I
Speaker 2: was like wow, And it also made me kind of decide,
Speaker 2: you know what, I can do my own I can
Speaker 2: come up with my own thing that's different than all
Speaker 2: of this, but I could do my own thing. So
Speaker 2: that's when kind of my road management dream turned into
Speaker 2: you know, I want to create some thing.
Speaker 4: What were touring conditions? Like whoa, I'm so glad you're
Speaker 4: tour manager because it's like.
Speaker 5: Weird y'all know y'all know everything? Yeah, exactly because musicians
Speaker 5: you'll put the fires out sort of, you know, have
Speaker 5: very selective memory. But if you're touring in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 5: you know a bandlike Clear, Are you guys in a
Speaker 5: fifteen passenger van?
Speaker 1: Are you tour bus status yet? What kind of hotels
Speaker 1: are you in? Like I want to know, like the
Speaker 1: boring stuff, like what what is that like?
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty it was it was right, it was correct.
Speaker 2: Al Hayman was the tour promoter, so everything they don't
Speaker 2: have to war you don't have to worry about the money.
Speaker 2: You just had to be there on time. I always
Speaker 2: book connections. I don't even know if they're still in
Speaker 2: business connections, bus service. You know. We had a budget
Speaker 2: for hotel room. Hotels were cheap back then. You could
Speaker 2: get you could get decent hotels for one hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: It was. It was smooth and correct. It was smooth.
Speaker 2: Every per diem was solid. I was handling the money.
Speaker 2: Everything was smooth. I had three bands on tour together.
Speaker 2: I had Clear, Change and BBQ all on the road
Speaker 2: at the same time. I was a little twork. I
Speaker 2: was a little twork, but I knew I knew how
Speaker 2: the right job.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to know about those groups.
Speaker 4: And in the case in the case of Change, of
Speaker 4: which I believe it was Jimmy jam that revealed to
Speaker 4: me that Change was really well in name the two
Speaker 4: Italian guys.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Malavas.
Speaker 1: Were they in concert? How did that work?
Speaker 2: No? They never showed up to concert. They were studio
Speaker 2: musicians and brilliant ones. They had an amazing sound and
Speaker 2: Michael Brower would engineer most of the projects. It was
Speaker 2: all the best suit. Lutha Vanress, who I also worked
Speaker 2: for on the road after I think it was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think early shows. Yeah, I was. I was a
Speaker 2: guy with the fog machine and I was the guy
Speaker 2: with the spotlight, and I was paid Lutha. Lutha paid
Speaker 2: his guys. It was crazy. I had to listen. I
Speaker 2: love working for Luther so much. And that was another
Speaker 2: point where I was like, Wow, I love I could
Speaker 2: I want to I want to entertain again. But I
Speaker 2: did one tour where I drove from New York City
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles for his on his first tour, all
Speaker 2: down through Texas, myself and one other road guys. So
Speaker 2: I've I've done. I've worn all the hats I've worn,
Speaker 2: like the road he hat, I've won the drive and
Speaker 2: truck hat, hold the spotlight, I won.
Speaker 6: Any of them know about your talent? Did anybody know that?
Speaker 2: No? No they didn't, They didn't know. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you a great story. We're on the road in South
Speaker 2: Carolina somewhere and Clear, which were on with Clear and
Speaker 2: David and I had made the record in Times of Passion.
Speaker 2: We made it like one weekend, actually like in one day,
Speaker 2: twenty four hours. We made the record, went to the
Speaker 2: studio got it out. I knew a couple of people
Speaker 2: Atlantic because I had worked with with Dennis and I
Speaker 2: had worked with Clear, and they always said to me,
Speaker 2: you know, because I was a good looking young fella. Yeah,
Speaker 2: They're like, hey, if you ever, if you ever make
Speaker 2: a record, so why don't you bring it, Why don't
Speaker 2: you bring it to me? Let me hear it. So
Speaker 2: we made in Times of Passion and one day I
Speaker 2: took it to Atlantic. They signed it the same day,
Speaker 2: but I didn't I didn't make any noise because Clear,
Speaker 2: I was working for Clear, and I don't know, if
Speaker 2: you know Woody. Woody was a little bit of a
Speaker 2: kind of jealous guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So
Speaker 2: we're on the road in South Carolina doing an outdoor
Speaker 2: date and I'm carrying you know SVT bass amps, I
Speaker 2: know those spg ampeg I'm carrying an SVT bass cabinet
Speaker 2: to put below the bus, and David's on the tour
Speaker 2: bus and he's yelling, make our songs on the red
Speaker 2: our songs on the radio. In time the Passion was
Speaker 2: playing on the radio.
Speaker 4: That's how everyone found out that you were yes singer.
Speaker 4: So can you well, since you already you brought the
Speaker 4: great David Frank into the picture.
Speaker 1: Can you explain the story? What am I to believe?
Speaker 4: And he told me this once was was Madonna originally
Speaker 4: supposed to be in the system and you replaced her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what happened was we were all we all
Speaker 2: were growing. We all kind of circulated around the music
Speaker 2: building on eighth Avenue and thirty sixty whatever. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: all the bands rehearsed there. People would kind of share
Speaker 2: recording spaces, like you'd have a space and you'd have
Speaker 2: it from two to five and someone else would have
Speaker 2: it from five to nine. So I got I got
Speaker 2: a back up because I got David. I got Dave
Speaker 2: in Clear. I got on to be the keyboard player
Speaker 2: and Clear. So what happened was Dennis King was prettying
Speaker 2: together the tour for Clear, and they didn't have a
Speaker 2: keyboard player. So one night he took me to this
Speaker 2: club uptown and he said, yeah, come with me. I
Speaker 2: want to see this singer. You know, I want to
Speaker 2: see the singer and then tell me what you think.
Speaker 2: So we go to this club. I didn't think much
Speaker 2: of the singer, and I said to him, Hey, that
Speaker 2: keyboard player is really good. I mean you should maybe
Speaker 2: you just consider him from clear. But they were playing
Speaker 2: kind of like steely Dan's style, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 2: it was nothing like the electro that you come to
Speaker 2: know David as at the end of the player you
Speaker 2: come to So he did that for he did that tour.
Speaker 2: This was not the rig James tour. It was the
Speaker 2: next tour. He did that tour. And when I when
Speaker 2: I would work, I guess I would sing sometimes or
Speaker 2: I would sing along the songs, not making anything of
Speaker 2: it or paying attention. But one day he had cut
Speaker 2: this track that he'd been working on because he got
Speaker 2: a DSX, a DMX and he got an Overheim, which
Speaker 2: he actually kind of bought it with another one of
Speaker 2: the musicians in the music building. So out of the
Speaker 2: blue he calls me and he says, hey, I wrote
Speaker 2: this song, and you know Madonna was supposed to sing it,
Speaker 2: but you know, Steve Bray wants to put guitar and
Speaker 2: they want to put this on it and that, and
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't want to do that. I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that. So he was like, why don't
Speaker 2: you come to the loft and listen to it? So
Speaker 2: I go to his shared loft in the music building.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm expecting because I've only heard
Speaker 2: him play in the clear mode, which is kind of
Speaker 2: jazzy soul with some pune basically, and that's not what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do either. I wanted to do something
Speaker 2: completely different musically than that. So I get there and
Speaker 2: he said, well, you know, listen, geor it tell me
Speaker 2: what you think. He hits the button and it's the
Speaker 2: track of in Times of Passion. But I died and
Speaker 2: went to heaven because it was exactly what I what
Speaker 2: I had been thinking of, because I was thinking, if
Speaker 2: what if you put Rick James and craft work together,
Speaker 2: what would that sound? And when he hit when he
Speaker 2: hit that button, I was like, this is this is it?
Speaker 2: You know, this is I've been looking for. I hadn't yep.
Speaker 2: She said, well, yeah, Madonna was gonna and I knew
Speaker 2: Madonna too. There's a story there too, she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: Madonna'll think. Okay, Well, when when I when I was
Speaker 2: in the band, when I was in Jack Sass, we
Speaker 2: used to play at the Queen's College, rath Scaler. She
Speaker 2: would play on Wednesdays and my band would play on Thursdays,
Speaker 2: so I knew her from that, so, you know, you
Speaker 2: know how you go and check the competition out. I'd
Speaker 2: gone to check her out then, and and you know,
Speaker 2: and we also knew each other around the music. Mcmathe,
Speaker 2: Are you want to do it? Mcmathein that time? You want?
Speaker 2: That's time? She was like that. She was like, she
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I knew she had the attitude,
Speaker 2: but I didn't you know, I didn't know what how
Speaker 2: far she was going to take it. So anyway, David said, yeah,
Speaker 2: Madonna was going to record it, but she backed out
Speaker 2: at the last minute. Can you can you record it?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, what was the title she had?
Speaker 2: She said, Crimes of Passion. Said okay, let me see
Speaker 2: what I can come up with. And I was just
Speaker 2: singing along with the track, humming and kind of crimes
Speaker 2: a Passion, kind of falling with it. He was like,
Speaker 2: that's great, that's great. Now go home and write the song.
Speaker 2: I'll pick you up in the morning, we'll go to
Speaker 2: the studio and record it. I'm like, write the song
Speaker 2: right tonight and we're gonna record it tomorrow. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I had had the dream of what I wanted to
Speaker 2: sound like, but I had no idea what I wanted
Speaker 2: to say, So somehow I stayed up all night. David
Speaker 2: came to pick me up my mother's house in Queens
Speaker 2: at like seven o'clock in the morning. We go to
Speaker 2: the studio in Long Island. We recorded all day. We
Speaker 2: laid it on the parts, I sing all the leads,
Speaker 2: all the backgrounds. We mix it, and the next morning,
Speaker 2: when he dropped me off at my mother's house, I
Speaker 2: had a big sound system innovation because I always owned
Speaker 2: the band's pa. So I put the cassette tape in
Speaker 2: and I played it, and I was like, this is
Speaker 2: this is the one. If you don't do something with this,
Speaker 2: you're never gonna do anything. So I immediately, like at
Speaker 2: nine o'clock, called Dennis King, Hey, Dennis, can you can
Speaker 2: you cut a couple of acetates of this thing I
Speaker 2: cut yesterday? So he said sure, So I went to
Speaker 2: the studio Atlantic. He cut three assetates, of which I
Speaker 2: have I have two of them now, And I went
Speaker 2: and I went to the two people who I knew
Speaker 2: in the record business who had said to me, if
Speaker 2: you ever, if you ever come up with anything, let
Speaker 2: me know. One was Jim Delahant who worked for Atlantic
Speaker 2: Records with Jerry Greenberg. Okay, and the other one was
Speaker 2: was r f C Records, and they, you know, they
Speaker 2: were big because they had you know, Socio and they
Speaker 2: had they had a lot of really popping electoral soul.
Speaker 1: Right, So I went to yeah, okay, ye, yep, he's
Speaker 1: the president of mag is he not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a president, but at the time he
Speaker 2: was president of Atlantic. He had just come stepped down
Speaker 2: from being the president of Atlantic.
Speaker 1: So he was the president of Atlantic.
Speaker 2: He was the president of Atlantic, Yes, but when but
Speaker 2: he was forming his own label, and I think he
Speaker 2: had only he had signed he had only signed one
Speaker 2: act so far. So I take the record to Jim
Speaker 2: Dellahan and I said, Jim just cuts this. He plays
Speaker 2: like thirty seconds of it, and he says, hold on a second,
Speaker 2: and he disappears through a door and out comes Jerry Greenberk.
Speaker 2: My jaw is on the ground because Jerry is the cheese.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's the man. He comes out, he
Speaker 2: kind of looks at me, sits in his chair, turns
Speaker 2: around to face the speakers. I'm looking at the back
Speaker 2: of his head. He listens to like thirty seconds of
Speaker 2: it and he turns around and says, get yourself a
Speaker 2: record deal, just like that, one day, one day, it
Speaker 2: was that easy. Well yeah, at that moment, at that moment,
Speaker 2: and the record came out and it it caught a fire,
Speaker 2: It really did. It caught a fire.
Speaker 4: So this wasn't a case where you had to like
Speaker 4: a relationship with Larry Love or someone to like, you'll
Speaker 4: play my thing, test it out on the crowd and
Speaker 4: see how it works. So you just instantly had an
Speaker 4: end with the Brass Atlantic.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and thank god, Frankie Crocker love the record. Okay,
Speaker 2: Frankie Crocker loved the record. He ran it into the ground.
Speaker 2: And he you know, Frankie was a DJ at the time.
Speaker 2: If you like something, he's playing it. He doesn't care
Speaker 2: what the trend is, he doesn't care what anybody says. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So he played that record to death. And then you know,
Speaker 2: as far as the system, the rest is history.
Speaker 4: You said something really interesting about your interaction with David
Speaker 4: frank and what you said was he pressed a button.
Speaker 4: So can you explain to me at the time your
Speaker 4: willingness to embrace kind of a new culture, which is programmed,
Speaker 4: you know, at the age of you know, sort of
Speaker 4: seventy nine eighty. New drum machines are being invented, New
Speaker 4: synthesizers are being which I could imagine could be intimidating,
Speaker 4: because the thing is is that there's a watershed moment
Speaker 4: for black music after the sort of post disco fallout
Speaker 4: where a lot of these bands that were foundational, name
Speaker 4: them like Brass Construction, mass Production.
Speaker 5: Mask, any band with like eight niggas on the cover,
Speaker 5: you just know what it is.
Speaker 1: No cameo, same thing.
Speaker 2: No real talk. I was already there because I was already.
Speaker 2: I was already listening to craft Work, I was listening
Speaker 2: to Yazoo, the Arrhythmics, I was eating I was eating.
Speaker 1: Up every record until UK and of course early Garan.
Speaker 2: Of course the Thompson I was. I was there already,
Speaker 2: I mean I was, I was. I was eating off
Speaker 2: of soul and funk. But I was already there because
Speaker 2: of what you're saying. I had been on the road
Speaker 2: with brask and fifteen Pieces, and I'm like, how these
Speaker 2: guys making money? How you know, it's like this is
Speaker 2: this something makes this makes no sense to me. I
Speaker 2: don't get the math here, and you know, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of there were a lot of brass construction
Speaker 2: like bands, phrasey, all these bands from from the Midwest.
Speaker 2: I was like, how everybody, so I was, I was,
Speaker 2: We've interviewed all those bands.
Speaker 1: I was just laughing, Yeah, we've been interviewed.
Speaker 4: And is the thing is though, is because you know,
Speaker 4: even though I was like nine in the eighty like
Speaker 4: when like terms like new wave were being invented in
Speaker 4: all those things, I'd never truly understood or got a
Speaker 4: chance to ask a guest on the show, like is
Speaker 4: this a Titanic synchrosus.
Speaker 1: Whim moment for you?
Speaker 4: Like do you learn new technology or do you just,
Speaker 4: you know, defiantly say no, I'm gonna keep my horn
Speaker 4: section and these Fender roads and this clabinet.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you one of the reasons why I
Speaker 2: loved jac sass. So we had we always had great drummers,
Speaker 2: but a lot of times they were nowhere to be
Speaker 2: found when it was time to do. We had this
Speaker 2: cat Lino Reyes. I don't know if you know who
Speaker 2: he is, Leno. He ended up playing with rig Games,
Speaker 2: but we had a couple gigs lined up and he
Speaker 2: just didn't show up, and I had bought a rolling
Speaker 2: drum machine, like a little Mini eight o eight. I
Speaker 2: was like, come on, guys, we can use this for
Speaker 2: the gig. Let's just do the gig. And they laughed
Speaker 2: me out of rehearsal. They laughed me out of rehearsal.
Speaker 2: But I was like, all right, you know, somebody's somebody's
Speaker 2: working on this. And I'd already been geared up, you know,
Speaker 2: reading Nmy Out of the UK and like you said,
Speaker 2: Gary Numan, all these bands in my image. I was
Speaker 2: already dressing new ways and I was always thinking new wave,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know how to create it on my
Speaker 2: own with the with the musicians that I had around me.
Speaker 2: So I was already playing with technology and drum machines
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. When I met Dave Can,
Speaker 2: I just ask.
Speaker 9: A question about radio, because you mentioned that, like Frankie
Speaker 9: Crocker popped off your popped you off on radio, and
Speaker 9: I'm curious that you mentioned a new wave, like, so
Speaker 9: what happens after that? How do they decide, Okay, we're
Speaker 9: going to continue to service these black radio stations, We're
Speaker 9: going to service the pop radio stations.
Speaker 6: Like how does that happen? What happens after.
Speaker 2: Frankie response, the response to the people calling in what
Speaker 2: is that? Actually when that record first played, you know
Speaker 2: who tu May is, right, yes, oh yes, yeah, so
Speaker 2: in to May like two days later and and Tue
Speaker 2: May called and said, man, I heard your record and
Speaker 2: I had to pull onto the side of the road
Speaker 2: outside out of the Midtown Tunnel. What are you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing a session now. He was doing Juicy Fruit.
Speaker 2: He was recording that at the time, and he invited
Speaker 2: David and I to play on that session because he
Speaker 2: wanted that. He yeah, we're We're told that session.
Speaker 1: I forgot, yeah, he.
Speaker 3: Told So we went.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we went and played on that session, and we
Speaker 2: started getting We started getting a lot more calls like
Speaker 2: from the UK, come to the UK produced this artist
Speaker 2: and groups and and you know in America also, hey
Speaker 2: produce us, can you give us give us some of
Speaker 2: that that system funk. So we started doing pretty much
Speaker 2: right out of the box.
Speaker 9: So they never put you in a radio box, so
Speaker 9: you were never just in the Frankie Cracker in urban box.
Speaker 2: Well we you know, everybody starts in an urban box.
Speaker 2: But once you start breaking out, don't forget we had.
Speaker 2: You know, after after the results of that record starting
Speaker 2: to take off like that, I had another meeting with
Speaker 2: Jerry and he was like, you guys want to do
Speaker 2: a twelve inch And because of what I had learned
Speaker 2: with Petras, I was like, now we want to do
Speaker 2: an album. Well, what would you what would you give
Speaker 2: us to do a twelve inch? And he gave us
Speaker 2: a number and I was like, give us double that.
Speaker 2: We'll do an album. Now we had already been we
Speaker 2: had already been writing songs like, we had already been
Speaker 2: working on songs. So basically our process in recording was
Speaker 2: we would get together and maybe spend a couple hours.
Speaker 2: David might have some ideas he's working on, We're do
Speaker 2: an arrangement, I'd work on a vocal, I'd sing a melody,
Speaker 2: and you know, we basically had seven songs for the
Speaker 2: album already, so it was basically we go into the
Speaker 2: studio record all the parts he had pre recorded. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't want people to think that pressing a button
Speaker 2: means you're just pressing a button and something's coming out
Speaker 2: that's been pre recorded. There's a lot that song in
Speaker 2: Times of Passion. If you ever listen to it. He's
Speaker 2: using an OB eight. He made four different keyboard sections
Speaker 2: on the instrument.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, was MIDI a thing? Backman?
Speaker 2: Yes, MIDI was a thing. Midy was just becoming the thing.
Speaker 4: Because I always wanted to know, like, yeah, you guys
Speaker 4: had intricate arrangements, especially on that first record, and I
Speaker 4: was trying to figure out, like, are you programming in
Speaker 4: this in real time? Or is this MIDI? Like is
Speaker 4: MIDI culture in eighty three? I never knew when Mitty came.
Speaker 2: So no, he's playing. He's playing in real time. But
Speaker 2: as you know, you can either sequence it or you
Speaker 2: can let it play in real time, so he's recording it.
Speaker 2: He's really Actually David is a is a great physical player,
Speaker 2: like great, so he was. He divided the keyboards into
Speaker 2: different sections. So there might be one section of course
Speaker 2: in the lower and that's the base, and another section
Speaker 2: might be a pad. Another section might be a little
Speaker 2: squeaky thing, which you could you could you could change
Speaker 2: programs while you're recording and it would record the program changes.
Speaker 2: So those sounds like Bud is him basically pressing different
Speaker 2: program buttons, and then you had to drum machine so
Speaker 2: you have you know, you could have six, seven, eight
Speaker 2: parts would play back automatically.
Speaker 1: You know, And none of this was a tea at all.
Speaker 2: No, because after we we did in Times of Passion,
Speaker 2: I kind of knew how the system could work and
Speaker 2: how we could take it to another level with the
Speaker 2: instrument because basically you had you were basically it was
Speaker 2: a digital recording, you know, without tape. You could record
Speaker 2: all the songs except for the vocals, because they had
Speaker 2: nothing at that time where you could actually record the
Speaker 2: vocals and still be in sync with everything. So being
Speaker 2: someone who had played in bands five shows a night,
Speaker 2: I could I could hit it on a dime, like
Speaker 2: every gig, the harmonies all.
Speaker 4: Lot before I get into sweat and you're in my system.
Speaker 4: There's one thing I always wanted to know, you know.
Speaker 4: At this time, also like hip hop is also finding
Speaker 4: its legs and developing, and you know, pretty much, I
Speaker 4: guess the the modus operandi of hip hop was was
Speaker 4: kind of like, Okay, there's no more music lessons in school,
Speaker 4: so we got to figure out how to make music.
Speaker 1: Ah, we'll make hip hop.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm certain that you're growing up and
Speaker 4: and you know, are firsthand witness to this culture as
Speaker 4: it's starting. How how did that not call you and
Speaker 4: you still maintain like singing and traditional R and B
Speaker 4: and funk like you could. Well, yeah, you've done rap
Speaker 4: on your records, and I got to ask you about
Speaker 4: that too, But no, not really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Actually, if you listen to some of
Speaker 2: our stuff, those beats are actually imitating some of the
Speaker 2: hip hop that was coming around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But you just Africa Bombarda because I thought there was
Speaker 2: a place for melodics and storytelling in the way I could.
Speaker 2: I wasn't a rapper, was I wasn't a rapper, and
Speaker 2: I thought there was still a place for the context
Speaker 2: of what I was doing over these bombastic beats that
Speaker 2: would still work so and there were other guys who
Speaker 2: were just they were just doing it so much better,
Speaker 2: and I just had to remain kind of authentic to
Speaker 2: what system is.
Speaker 4: That was what I was leading into, because the thing
Speaker 4: is is that you know the kind of the genre
Speaker 4: of freestyle, you know, the kind of Stevie B Planet
Speaker 4: Man Tronic sort of eight a weight lead break dance
Speaker 4: and music, which is clearly more on the hip hop
Speaker 4: side of the fence than you know, there's some other
Speaker 4: guys like I don't know the names, like the guy
Speaker 4: that saying like your little brother, or.
Speaker 1: Nolan Thomas, Nolan Thomas, how do you know that.
Speaker 5: I'm in a nucleus jam on it, Yeah, or even
Speaker 5: like the street dance guy.
Speaker 4: I forget his name, I forget his name, but yeah,
Speaker 4: Like however, it's it's like the particular lane that you
Speaker 4: guys occupied, even though it has the ingredients, like I know,
Speaker 4: like the DMX was was sort of the the secret weapon. Yes,
Speaker 4: so you guys weren't using a lin drum and you
Speaker 4: weren't using an Ato eight yet I almost feel like,
Speaker 4: you know, between what Prince was developing, which was more
Speaker 4: purple print whatever I call it purple music, yeah, and
Speaker 4: the freestyle stuff that was more closer to Shannon, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, like the Shannon freestyle breakdancy nuclear stuff. You
Speaker 4: guys were closer to New Jack Swing to me minus
Speaker 4: minus the go go overs. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I don't mean that. What I'm saying is the seeds,
Speaker 4: like your your beats were hard enough to wrap over
Speaker 4: and it's kind of a space that Jimmy Jam and
Speaker 4: Terry Lewis weren't occupying just yet because they were in
Speaker 4: anally territory. But what I wanted to know is, like,
Speaker 4: how like as far as you like going to nightclubs
Speaker 4: and whatnot, Like, are you guys saying yourself like, yo,
Speaker 4: we got to compete with these loud ass drums and no.
Speaker 2: But did you hear baptize the beat? Ever?
Speaker 3: Baptized the beat? Street sounds right?
Speaker 2: Our record? Yeah? Our record baptized the beat? That was
Speaker 2: that off kilter. We were doing it. We just were
Speaker 2: doing it our way, and we were listening to everything
Speaker 2: that was going on. And you know, my lesson was
Speaker 2: always be different, just just stay just stay the course
Speaker 2: and be different.
Speaker 4: I have a prince question. Has anyone played you his
Speaker 4: version of your in my system?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I've heard it, yes, yes, wow, okay, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: mostly Line and him kind of okay.
Speaker 4: So, in in light of the the Beatles documentary that
Speaker 4: you know is on Disney now, the Get Back documentary,
Speaker 4: which I you know, I feel is fascinating people not
Speaker 4: baptized the music, We'll say that it might be a
Speaker 4: little excessive for nine hours of watching them try to
Speaker 4: make a record. However of it I think that's a
Speaker 4: very important documentary only in the fact that you truly
Speaker 4: get to see how records get made, which in the
Speaker 4: case of the Beatles, it seems like they're two default
Speaker 4: go to places whenever they get stuck for an idea,
Speaker 4: like Paul will tend to go back to earlier Beatles songs,
Speaker 4: so he'll go back to you know, he'll start singing
Speaker 4: Lovely Redo or.
Speaker 2: Mad or.
Speaker 1: He'll go back to that.
Speaker 4: And John Lennon's go to thing is either Little Richard
Speaker 4: or Chuck Berry, like every three seconds is like wop
Speaker 4: boba bamboo. And the thing is is that when you're
Speaker 4: writing songs, you have to do you know, I've gone
Speaker 4: on record to say, like, you know, D'Angelo and I
Speaker 4: would do entire prints albums, and then one song will
Speaker 4: spark an idea like, well keep on doing that again,
Speaker 4: and then you morph into another song. So in the
Speaker 4: case of Prince I always wondered and obsessed over the
Speaker 4: fact that when he's creating music, like is he aware
Speaker 4: of other music at the time, or is he just
Speaker 4: in his own private bubble in which you know, he's
Speaker 4: just alone, isolated and coming up with this brilliant stuff,
Speaker 4: or is he actually aware of what black music is
Speaker 4: doing and then creating his own thing and kind of
Speaker 4: you know, I finally got my answer and hearing, so
Speaker 4: you know, I, you know, after he died in selling
Speaker 4: like just a whole mountain load of Prince sound checks
Speaker 4: and mainly like his sound checks to me, like tell
Speaker 4: the best story of his creativity, because you know, he'll
Speaker 4: riff on a line for five hours in a row
Speaker 4: before it's lunch breaking.
Speaker 1: So there's a moment.
Speaker 4: There's a moment where kind of at the tail end
Speaker 4: of the nineteen ninety nine rehearsals before they go on
Speaker 4: the road, you know, they pretty much they play you know,
Speaker 4: karaoke and for them. But the reason why, you know,
Speaker 4: people of diden't ask like, well, why didn't he learn
Speaker 4: the song? I think the whole idea is not to
Speaker 4: learn the songs or learn the changes. Like you learn
Speaker 4: one part of it and hopefully if you repeat it
Speaker 4: enough then it becomes something else. And there's a moment
Speaker 4: where you clearly like in this forty minute version of
Speaker 4: your and my system, he will eventually morph that into
Speaker 4: what we know as the bird, but it starts. I
Speaker 4: find it fascinating that once once you know, once I
Speaker 4: spent a year just listening to those sound checks. Then
Speaker 4: I realized, like, oh, so he listens to modern radio
Speaker 4: and then learns it and then tries to unlearn it
Speaker 4: and morph it into his music.
Speaker 1: Like how I mean to know what he morphed into.
Speaker 4: I know, back then it probably wasn't obvious that he
Speaker 4: was gonna be king or like a god in music.
Speaker 4: But I mean, I'm certain that it has to feel
Speaker 4: somewhat like validating that you're definitely one of the pegs
Speaker 4: that helped him climb to a hit, which is you know,
Speaker 4: the Bird for the Time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it feels good. I mean, if you're trying
Speaker 2: to get around to how to how David and I right,
Speaker 2: I don't do that at all with David. So our
Speaker 2: process is more David thinks more like he's Beethoven. I'm not,
Speaker 2: I'm being honest with you. Yeah, he's thinking, yeah, does
Speaker 2: it fit into the context of what's going on now
Speaker 2: in music? No, that's kind of my job to edit
Speaker 2: that music together, because sometimes you hear long landscapes of
Speaker 2: some of the things we have or what they became.
Speaker 2: There's modulations and then there's time. So I kind of
Speaker 2: I'll inspire him when he thinks and ideas no good
Speaker 2: like he played during My System for me the baseline
Speaker 2: when we because we were working on the album. I
Speaker 2: would go, we'd spend two three hours, you know, writing
Speaker 2: songs because we both had to do other gigs to survive,
Speaker 2: and that was one idea. He was like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: what do you think I don't like. I'm like stop.
Speaker 2: I'm like stop, yes, yes, that baseline. I'm like, no, stop,
Speaker 2: give it to me. So a lot of times it
Speaker 2: would be like what he thinks is the chorus, I
Speaker 2: think is the verse? You have a section, Maybe he
Speaker 2: thinks that's the A section. But I will edit it together,
Speaker 2: even back then from the beginning. I'll edit it together
Speaker 2: and move things around to make it be what I
Speaker 2: hear as not commercial, but something that that I could
Speaker 2: sing over and somebody else could sing over. You know.
Speaker 2: People ain't singing over modulations and people ain't singing over
Speaker 2: you know. So I will edit into a piece, and
Speaker 2: I'll send it back to him and say, hey, try this,
Speaker 2: and then we'll take it a step Further'll be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I never thought of that. We'll take no, that's not
Speaker 2: he'll be like, no, that's not the chorus, that's the verse.
Speaker 2: I'm like, let me give me a minute, let me
Speaker 2: let me ride this out for you, let me get
Speaker 2: sexy on you, let me show you, and then you
Speaker 2: will come up with you in my system. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of how it works, and that's kind of how
Speaker 2: it's worked throughout our career. You know. We never I
Speaker 2: don't listen to anything else and suggests, Hey, we need
Speaker 2: something that sounds like this. Okay, So he may have
Speaker 2: ten ideas on a on a cassette and send them
Speaker 2: from you, just little pieces, and I'll say, I like
Speaker 2: this piece, this piece of that piece. Let's work on these,
Speaker 2: and we'll work on it. I'll be like, we need
Speaker 2: a B section, or we need a we need a chorus,
Speaker 2: we need the chorus to hit more, and we'll work
Speaker 2: on that and we'll mold it and slowly, but surely,
Speaker 2: I'm saying solely surely, but sometimes only within an hour
Speaker 2: or two hours, we'll have the shape and the form
Speaker 2: of a song.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, I'm so glad I'm talking to you
Speaker 4: right now, because there's two questions I've been dying, dying
Speaker 4: to ask you or Frank and I can't believe this
Speaker 4: is the moment. First of all, one one of the
Speaker 4: secret sauces in the group, in my opinion, was always
Speaker 4: you gotta please tell me about the great Paul Pascoe
Speaker 4: on guitar. Next, what what David Williams is to Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: You know, David Williams has probably been the most consistent,
Speaker 4: steady thing and Michael like not even Michael Jackson is
Speaker 4: consistent and steady through his career, through you know, creativity, physicality, whatever.
Speaker 4: David Williams is almost the most consistent. The sound of
Speaker 4: his guitar from like that line of Billy Jean to
Speaker 4: want to be starting stuff, Like the sound of that
Speaker 4: loud pluck guitar. I think next to David Williams, Paul
Speaker 4: Pesco has one of the most distinctive act sounds, like
Speaker 4: he's well speaking of Madonna. Uh, he's that work on
Speaker 4: I think Lucky Star, that's him.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yep, he's on. He's on a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's the the ah CC Music Factory.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, he's on a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Haull of notes like adult education.
Speaker 4: All that tell me about Paul Pesco, Like I never
Speaker 4: heard any stories about him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Paul is just a wonderful, wonderful guy. We
Speaker 2: this is for you. This is Paul Pesco. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know our song this is for you.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, this is for you. He's the guy. He's
Speaker 2: the guy. Really, him and him and David, they would
Speaker 2: get together and cook up some things. This is for
Speaker 2: you as one. I want to make you feel good.
Speaker 2: That's Paul and David cooking up that that plectrum on
Speaker 2: I want to make you feel good. The lines. Yes,
Speaker 2: he's he's basically like a line and a kachunka guy.
Speaker 2: But also he's he's very cordy. He knows his chords,
Speaker 2: he knows how to create atmosphere and mood. Just a
Speaker 2: brilliant guy. Love. I love the guy. I love the
Speaker 2: way he plays, I love the way he thinks.
Speaker 4: Okay, my second question, when you know your your your
Speaker 4: first record comes out when I'm twelve, and I swear
Speaker 4: to God, I swear up and down because I swear
Speaker 4: that's your voice.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing.
Speaker 4: I swear up and down. There's a there's a local hit. Well,
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's a local hit or a
Speaker 4: local group New York group. I need to know, did
Speaker 4: you have anything to do? There was a song that
Speaker 4: used to always play in Philadelphia. It's the name of
Speaker 4: the song. It's not Attitude. It's a song called We
Speaker 4: Got the Juice. Do you know the song?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course I know. We produced Attitude is our group.
Speaker 2: We created Regia gem In Lewis. We created that group.
Speaker 2: Bernard singing on that. I'm singing La la, Chris Tello,
Speaker 2: that's that's swear.
Speaker 1: You boys don't need to find like you're you always
Speaker 1: yelled on your.
Speaker 2: Records and it's when.
Speaker 4: I was a kid, I always thought that was the
Speaker 4: system and someone corrected me, like at a record store
Speaker 4: once and I never you know, I forgot the name
Speaker 4: of the song, but I always swore that We Got
Speaker 4: the Juice was like the follow up.
Speaker 1: So that was Bernard Powers group or.
Speaker 2: No, well that was if that look. I was following
Speaker 2: the Fred Petroz model. You have a band, you have
Speaker 2: a band, the system, and then you can expand that
Speaker 2: sound to another use kind of change the attitude of
Speaker 2: it and create a whole other bank of songs. We
Speaker 2: wrote all of Cindy Mazell sings on it. Who was
Speaker 2: someone who sang a lot of Yeah, she sings on
Speaker 2: Lisa Fisher sings on it, La La sings on it.
Speaker 2: Bernard follows sings on it. It was just our way
Speaker 2: to spread the juice.
Speaker 1: But it was clearly that song could have been the
Speaker 1: next single on the System album.
Speaker 4: Like so obviously you're you're saying you're creating your your
Speaker 4: your not your competition, sort of like printing the time,
Speaker 4: like you had to grow your own.
Speaker 2: Crist Yeah, exactly, to be honest, Yeah, that's what we're
Speaker 2: that's what we were doing. Exactly what my that was
Speaker 2: my idea.
Speaker 4: I found out recently that Charlie xc X finally admitted
Speaker 4: to me that what's the name of the idiom song that's.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I love that song. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Charlie actually basically admitted to me that that group never existed.
Speaker 1: They just found two models to sing that song.
Speaker 2: Band.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But she was more coming from the place where
Speaker 4: she felt that the song was still cartoony, that no
Speaker 4: one would take her series as an artist. So like
Speaker 4: the the compromise was, we'll still release the song, but
Speaker 4: we'll do it under like it won't be a Charlie
Speaker 4: X record.
Speaker 1: I get it now. So did you just feel that
Speaker 1: we got the juice wasn't like serious enough for the System,
Speaker 1: but it was still a good song that worked.
Speaker 2: No, well, we had I think we had the System
Speaker 2: System record then and it was still climbing and we
Speaker 2: were still touring it. And I really took a page
Speaker 2: at a Prince's book with the Time, because actually I
Speaker 2: saw I saw Prince at the Ritz and the Time
Speaker 2: was an opening act, but I know it was Prince's band.
Speaker 2: They had on these black robe hoodie costumes. You couldn't
Speaker 2: see their faces, so they were the band playing and
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, we could could do something like
Speaker 2: that in New York. We could like, I could come
Speaker 2: up with another group. We have enough musicians around. Really,
Speaker 2: that was really the thinking, to be real honest with you.
Speaker 1: So was was that song also your version of the
Speaker 1: Times wild and Loose? Always?
Speaker 4: You know, I always keep clear like derivative of wild
Speaker 4: and loose, like that was your version of it?
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't. I really didn't listen to the
Speaker 2: Time that much except seven seven, seven ninety three eleven.
Speaker 3: That was.
Speaker 2: That was my joint back then. That was my joint. Oh,
Speaker 2: Frankie Kraker had this saying on the radio, we got
Speaker 2: the juice, so I knew we could come up with
Speaker 2: something using that that he would play it, and he
Speaker 2: did and it spread, it spread it Just.
Speaker 4: So, how is how is touring for you guys? Doing
Speaker 4: this when when the album takes off?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that's if I have any regrets, I
Speaker 2: kind of regret that we didn't turn the touring thing
Speaker 2: into a bigger thing, because when the records took off,
Speaker 2: we had calls to produce records in the UK. We
Speaker 2: had called We produced a lot of Howard Johnson, Nick
Speaker 2: and Valerie Simpson.
Speaker 1: What did you work on?
Speaker 2: I can Nick and val Yeah, it comes, it comes
Speaker 2: with the package, you know. That's all. We did like
Speaker 2: three songs on that album. Okay, I think we're the
Speaker 2: only people ever produced to produce them. We did. Uh,
Speaker 2: We produced a lot of records and I think that
Speaker 2: was an era for what we could have done, you
Speaker 2: know from the live avenue. So we we did some victures.
Speaker 2: We did Marvin Gaye's tour that was a that was
Speaker 2: a big tour. We did Ready for the Yes, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's correct, Yes, can you.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, was it you guys Imagination?
Speaker 2: Well, we did in the UK. We did do some
Speaker 2: dates with Imagination also because they were kind of a
Speaker 2: similar We were in a similar.
Speaker 1: Vibe, so he wanted somebody really contemporary to open.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we had I don't think, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what do we have. Don't disturb this group at that time?
Speaker 1: What do you know that this is your and my system?
Speaker 4: This is like eighty three eighty four, so it's probably
Speaker 4: the Experiment record and Sweat Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It also may have been out Himan too, because you know,
Speaker 2: I want a neat, neat concert, show up on time,
Speaker 2: do the gig, get on, get off, easy, turnaround, no
Speaker 2: big nine piece horn band. You know, we we fifth
Speaker 2: the bill in a lot of ways because we travel light.
Speaker 2: But that's kind of my one regret that we didn't
Speaker 2: really build up what we could do live with the system.
Speaker 4: When you're performing live, because the albums are so have
Speaker 4: very distinctive like electronic sounds how and you know, also
Speaker 4: going off these Prince rehearsals, which I know he had
Speaker 4: to sort of turn serious miracles to get the sound
Speaker 4: of the studio to duplicate that live.
Speaker 1: Like how easy is it to do? That stuff live.
Speaker 2: Nah, that was easy. Look, we have we have a
Speaker 2: keyboard player, Chris Kello. I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: who he is, but he's a phenomenal Now he wrote,
Speaker 2: he's the one who did all the arrangements for Dian Warren.
Speaker 2: But he was a young kid. He was like maybe
Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen when his mom when I asked his mom,
Speaker 2: can you let him come on the road with us?
Speaker 2: That I'm putting him in fifte maybe he was sixteen.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe him and Bernard Wright were arch rivals in
Speaker 2: that area of Queens. They were both like idiots, suvant
Speaker 2: genius keybop players, but all that sixteenth note and he
Speaker 2: could do all of that stuff. So we really didn't
Speaker 2: have a live both him and David David very dexterous,
Speaker 2: both hands keep what Chris, very dexterous, Paul. That was
Speaker 2: That was not the hard part. Hard part was kind
Speaker 2: of convincing David to maybe add a drummer or ad
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, add that other component that
Speaker 2: would allow us to have that push and pull that
Speaker 2: you know you can only get with a live band.
Speaker 2: Those hits, those accents, you can only get that with
Speaker 2: a live band. You know, and have to playing with
Speaker 2: live bands. I know you need that. So and also
Speaker 2: it was very compelling all these production offers and and
Speaker 2: you know, you kind of just you write the songs,
Speaker 2: you get to publishing, you get the production fee. You know,
Speaker 2: it's you're on the road, you're spending spending, spending, spending,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. It was like that kind
Speaker 2: of balance of you know, being away from home.
Speaker 1: And right, I have I have a this is My
Speaker 1: Night question?
Speaker 4: Of course, you know you you and David are You're
Speaker 4: brought aboard by the great Uh.
Speaker 1: I always mess up his name. This guy's my my hero. Yeah.
Speaker 4: How you know, Atlantic house producer and you know average
Speaker 4: wipe in He produced Shaka Cohn's first like six solo records,
Speaker 4: and you know, it was a it was kind of
Speaker 4: a big deal when Shaka's I Feel for You album
Speaker 4: came out, in which you know, this is clearly them
Speaker 4: acknowledging the power of hip hop and where music is going.
Speaker 4: So it's a less jazzy record and more leaning towards
Speaker 4: the future. But there's there's a question I always had
Speaker 4: about this is My Night, and this leads to a
Speaker 4: I don't know if the grace period has passed that
Speaker 4: I can actually say the name of this particular Thursday
Speaker 4: night institutional comedy show that all of America religiously watched
Speaker 4: all the eighties. But there's a moment in in that
Speaker 4: particular black comedy show on NBC at eight o'clock on Thursday, Yes,
Speaker 4: before Family Dies. So there's there's an iconic episode. There's
Speaker 4: an iconic episode where the youngest daughter of the brood
Speaker 4: has a sleepover and you know, one of the one
Speaker 4: of the kids that are having a sleepover is.
Speaker 1: Is Alicia Keys. So there's there's there's a really funny,
Speaker 1: cool moment that connects you guys with this episode in
Speaker 1: which kind of, uh, just randomly call these two kids
Speaker 1: THEO and Denise maybe yeah yeah maybe yeah where where
Speaker 1: they are.
Speaker 4: Having a quickie like dance party with the kids and
Speaker 4: they're dancing to a version of This is My Night
Speaker 4: that is not the album version of This is My Night.
Speaker 4: And I make fun of Alicia Keys because she's the
Speaker 4: only kid in this in this group you YouTube it
Speaker 4: Rudy sleepover, it like she's the only kid that clearly
Speaker 4: has two left feet, uh, in the scene. It's funny,
Speaker 4: but it might assume that before that song was submitted
Speaker 4: to Shaka, that you guys demoed it, or because that
Speaker 4: version of this is My Night is not the version
Speaker 4: from Shaka Khan, but it's clearly like a different So
Speaker 4: I just wanted to know, like.
Speaker 2: I gotta hear it. But we demo. To be honest,
Speaker 2: we demo every song. We never go and cold the record,
Speaker 2: so we demoed. So the way that came about we
Speaker 2: were recording at Atlantic Studios. Reef was in the studio A.
Speaker 2: We were in Studio B, the Hallway studio, and we
Speaker 2: were working on Don't Diserve This Groove, and he came
Speaker 2: and asked, hey, you guys have anything for Haka, and
Speaker 2: we worked on it like overnight. The next day we
Speaker 2: turned it into him and he was like, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: going to record it. But he also, don't diserve this groove.
Speaker 2: You if you if you know the song in the
Speaker 2: middle section, there's a female, right, So we played them
Speaker 2: don't diserve this group because we respected him, We respect
Speaker 2: him so much, and he said, all you need to
Speaker 2: do is add the girl at the girl in the middle,
Speaker 2: that's all. And you have a you have you have,
Speaker 2: you have a smash, So we added the girl in
Speaker 2: the middle and we had a smash And.
Speaker 1: He talked about that.
Speaker 3: He was talking about the middle part in the hook that.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, we had we had that already,
Speaker 2: We had that close the door and turned up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we had that hook already. We had everything, but the
Speaker 2: middle we didn't have that. But he said at the
Speaker 2: girl at a groot in.
Speaker 1: The middle, who was the girl who was singing that part?
Speaker 2: We had Orgie Wheeler, Cindy Mizelle singing in the chorus,
Speaker 2: and wait.
Speaker 1: Jie Willard from uh uh Unlimited touch ar you will yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of our stuff.
Speaker 1: You killing give that facts she's lessend there.
Speaker 2: BJ Nelson, that's that's BJ. In the solo section, that's
Speaker 2: my girl. I love you BJ. Yeah. BJ sang the
Speaker 2: middle eight, Audie Wheeler, Cindy I think sang with me
Speaker 2: on the hook, or maybe it was just Audrey and
Speaker 2: BJ on the on the chorus hookst BJ sang the
Speaker 2: lead in the middle of the call and response.
Speaker 5: What did you think of Michelle's cover of that I
Speaker 5: Love her? So Look Miche.
Speaker 2: Michelle and so so I co I co produced her
Speaker 2: first album. The first three songs. I got shafted out
Speaker 2: of the credit. I was a vocal.
Speaker 10: Product plantation, yeah, dread dreadlocks, Yeah yeah, I produced that
Speaker 10: vocal yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I got.
Speaker 2: I got kind of shafted by the credit by someone
Speaker 2: who I brought up in the business, in the game.
Speaker 2: Who kind of I ended up? I ended up?
Speaker 3: I was thinking Gamson, No, not.
Speaker 2: Gamson, Gamson's my man, bets I got. I got chefted
Speaker 2: on the credit. Yeah, I got shifted on the credit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, she acknowledged it, she said. When the song
Speaker 2: was released, she said, for those in the know, McMurphy
Speaker 2: co produced you know, my first, my first record.
Speaker 6: I know she'sout giving credits because she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love I love Michelle, love her from
Speaker 2: day one, love everything she does, everything she touches. I'm
Speaker 2: just you know, I was. I was so proud to
Speaker 2: actually I to that point. That was my proudest production
Speaker 2: moment really honestly, because the whole record was so beautiful
Speaker 2: and just attitude, and you know, I love her and
Speaker 2: everything she does.
Speaker 1: Is there any other stuff you worked on that you.
Speaker 2: I co wrote Secret Garden from Madonna. I didn't get
Speaker 2: a proper credit. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 6: So y'all did end up working together.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes we did. And I wrote another song. So
Speaker 2: I wrote the song to your father, which she called
Speaker 2: me up when she was working on the album, called me.
Speaker 2: She said, McMurphy, McMurphy, I'm gonna make you rich. You're
Speaker 2: gonna be You're gonna be rich McMurphy out of the song.
Speaker 2: The song didn't make it on the album. And and
Speaker 2: Secret Garden I played. I played the instrument and the
Speaker 2: chords too. I didn't get any credit, but you know,
Speaker 2: life is life, man.
Speaker 5: Another cat I wanted to ask you about from from
Speaker 5: that era that was kind of moving and shaking chet Pettybone.
Speaker 3: Did you guys ever have any dealings working together?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, he remixed a bunch of System cuts, and uh,
Speaker 2: I know David played on a bunch of his remixes. Okay,
Speaker 2: but he did remix a bunch of system songs at
Speaker 2: some point.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Oh, can you can you please settle this once and
Speaker 1: for all? All right?
Speaker 4: I recently found out that it wasn't you, but I
Speaker 4: will say that for the last thirty five years I
Speaker 4: would have put my life on the fact that you
Speaker 4: were the voice so glow of glo.
Speaker 2: Shut up. Really that was that was That was Chris.
Speaker 2: That was Christopher, Yeah, that was Chris was who we were.
Speaker 2: We were really good friends, you know, we were real
Speaker 2: we were real friends and we still were still that
Speaker 2: was Chris Max. Yeah.
Speaker 9: So since we mentioned so, can I ask you about
Speaker 9: the hair and the maintenance? And because I don't disturb
Speaker 9: this groove, it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had, I had, I had well started. My
Speaker 2: first One of my first girlfriends was a hairdresser, so
Speaker 2: she taught me early to maintain and she would like
Speaker 2: she would print it and get it right, and it
Speaker 2: just it just it became like a vegetable that just
Speaker 2: kept growing. It took on the life of its own.
Speaker 6: Some aquaint would help with help with the.
Speaker 2: You know, I would tie it up at night. I
Speaker 2: would tied it up at night like a bouffonp.
Speaker 6: I love it like the girl on a chair.
Speaker 4: Yes, you see, I sleep on the pillows right here,
Speaker 4: just like like Friday.
Speaker 1: She doesn't let her hair touch the bib.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: Do you remember when you were we all recorded I
Speaker 5: know the song Baptized Beat, but recording the scene for
Speaker 5: Beat Street.
Speaker 3: Do you remember anything about that?
Speaker 2: They was that? Yeah, very clearly. Well, it was that
Speaker 2: what's this club on twenty second Street? The uh, it
Speaker 2: was a roller skating rink. It was a roller skating
Speaker 2: rink on twenty seven, twenty eighth Street, and everybody was there,
Speaker 2: all these different acts, and I know we we performed
Speaker 2: the song and when we were done, they were like next.
Speaker 2: In the edits, they said next. But I thought we had.
Speaker 2: I thought we had the slam in the song. I
Speaker 2: thought baptized the beat, And to this day, I think
Speaker 2: it's one of the most inventive songs lyrically. Beat wise
Speaker 2: changes the bridges, everything about it. Yes, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: some fly shit for me, it's it's.
Speaker 1: Not y'all would definitely better than Andy.
Speaker 11: Be Bad, Shine and Wine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can tell when he planned his career, he
Speaker 1: knew like.
Speaker 2: Yo, man, I'm just in and out.
Speaker 4: Poor guy never had a chance. Yeah, so okay, can
Speaker 4: you There's the one thing I also wanted to know
Speaker 4: is how did the group dissolve after eighty nine? And
Speaker 4: you know, why didn't you guys sort of try to
Speaker 4: push it further past that point?
Speaker 2: So let's see, we had don't disturb this groove. There's
Speaker 2: a massive hit we did big tours next record Rhythm
Speaker 2: and Romance. I think we kind of went down the
Speaker 2: rabbit hole of Teddy Riley style funk in our own version.
Speaker 2: I really think pretty much at that time we kind
Speaker 2: of run our course for where our heads you're at
Speaker 2: right then in terms of we would either have to
Speaker 2: go really simpler, like really back to the basics, or
Speaker 2: I don't think we could get any bigger in terms
Speaker 2: of the music, in terms of the chord and the
Speaker 2: layers and the parts and the levels, And it had
Speaker 2: just to my head it had blown up into too
Speaker 2: much to too much to digest. And David actually has
Speaker 2: started to get a lot more session worker on his own.
Speaker 2: What is this nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety I'm kind
Speaker 2: of looking for a new direction. I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: of something that's a little bit different. He had quite
Speaker 2: a bit of success in that era as a keyboard
Speaker 2: player and working and producing, and I was trying to
Speaker 2: find my own niche. I ended up going to la
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two ninety three and forming a band
Speaker 2: with uh Just. It was really like a summer camp,
Speaker 2: like a musical summer camp. We had all kind of
Speaker 2: gotten divorced, or our record deal that ended, or we
Speaker 2: were trying to find ourselves with Andre Simone, Gard Nicole, Saint,
Speaker 2: Paul Peterson, myself. So we went there the summer nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and actually that record just came out two
Speaker 2: weeks ago, The Mighty Soulmates. It just came out, and
Speaker 2: we recorded like twenty four songs. We recorded like twenty
Speaker 2: four songs and yeah, so we recorded actually a and
Speaker 2: M record. John McLain kind of put us together because
Speaker 2: he was a friend from way back. He's the one
Speaker 2: that said keep an eye on prints. You know, once
Speaker 2: he loses that baby girl voice and starts singing in
Speaker 2: a full voice, he gonna be a monster. He gonna
Speaker 2: be a monster. And he turned us on kind of
Speaker 2: the Jimmy and Terry and he was really like a
Speaker 2: like a coher driving force. So I think he said,
Speaker 2: once you guys get together, to what you can do.
Speaker 2: So we hold up summer garding Nicole's house in Woodland
Speaker 2: Hills for like four or five months. We wrote, literally
Speaker 2: we wrote maybe more songs when we finished twenty four
Speaker 2: twenty five songs.
Speaker 1: Not torupt But John McLean is one of the most
Speaker 1: elusive hardest cats to get. He is our dream interview.
Speaker 4: Like he's literally the common denominator of almost every other
Speaker 4: guest on this show.
Speaker 1: And well, well yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Dick, he has reasons. He has reasons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he can't make it, But I know why, why
Speaker 4: is he such a mystery?
Speaker 2: He kind of you know, I mean, I've spent time
Speaker 2: with him, like over the court because he really was
Speaker 2: a fan of the system. He really was. He put
Speaker 2: us together. He brought us to produce a couple so
Speaker 2: we did a couple of projects for him. But I
Speaker 2: would ride around with him in LA and we would
Speaker 2: kind of talk music and he would talk Michael John.
Speaker 2: He grew up with the Jackson family. His father, I
Speaker 2: think was I don't want to speak out out of line,
Speaker 2: but his father was in the underground under whatever in LA.
Speaker 2: But John always had a brilliant ear for music and
Speaker 2: a personality to put stuff together and just a sense
Speaker 2: of kind of what would work and who would work.
Speaker 2: He's always had that. So he brought us together. We
Speaker 2: spent somemer together, wrote this record, and then the earthquake
Speaker 2: happened in January and we kind of all splintered and
Speaker 2: all went our separate ways. I think John changed labels
Speaker 2: or whatever. And this record is sat complete since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four. So I was finally able to get a
Speaker 2: deal for it with Adya Warner and the record just
Speaker 2: came out on on December third.
Speaker 1: Oh. Man, Wow, that's music to my ears. Literally wow,
Speaker 1: that's and over the course.
Speaker 2: Also, Andre Simone and I have become brothers over the
Speaker 2: last Actually I met. I met Andre on the Prince
Speaker 2: Rick James Clear tour. He was the only person in
Speaker 2: the band because I'm you know, I looked like a roady.
Speaker 2: I'm basically a roadie. No one would no one would
Speaker 2: look for me, no one and talk to me. But
Speaker 2: Andre and I connected on that tour and we've remained
Speaker 2: friends ever since.
Speaker 1: Okay, so are you You weren't in system mood yet,
Speaker 1: You were just one of the guys in as far.
Speaker 2: As yeah, I was just one of the guys hanging
Speaker 2: around the edge. I don't know what you do exactly,
Speaker 2: but you ain't you ain't you ain't an artist, so
Speaker 2: you know you get so.
Speaker 1: Love well that's beautiful man, yo. I just want to say, man,
Speaker 1: like I mean this, this is definitely a dream interview.
Speaker 1: Like I've always wanted to talk.
Speaker 4: To you or you know you or David either or
Speaker 4: and this is one of the moments that, you know,
Speaker 4: definitely a highlight for me to get the nerd out
Speaker 4: and study history here.
Speaker 2: Actually yeah, yes, absolutely one.
Speaker 5: And I just want to say too, man like, don't
Speaker 5: disturb this grooves? Like one of my favorite songs of
Speaker 5: all times, like in any genre. I mean, you know
Speaker 5: that song just when I was a kid and I
Speaker 5: would just hear it like, you know, in the way
Speaker 5: like my mom taking me to school in the morning,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Like.
Speaker 3: That was just I think it's kind of still one
Speaker 3: of my favorite songs.
Speaker 6: Of all the eighties babies.
Speaker 9: I mean it posted the video with jay Z just
Speaker 9: saying it in common and this casual language like don't
Speaker 9: disturb this groove, Like I kind of think it's like
Speaker 9: at least the top ten for most eighties babies.
Speaker 2: No, it really might be.
Speaker 5: I mean, no, that that song is just an amazing record,
Speaker 5: man Like, seriously.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: It's you know what they said, It's just.
Speaker 2: That's a good story about that. There's a good story.
Speaker 2: We have time yeah, yeah, so so so when when
Speaker 2: when we would make records, generally the label. They just
Speaker 2: let us do what we do. They just you know,
Speaker 2: you just turn it in when you're done. So at
Speaker 2: this point it's like we had done a system, we
Speaker 2: had done experiment, we had done the pleasure Seekers, and
Speaker 2: now we're coming on. Don't disturb this group. The pleasure
Speaker 2: Seekers did. It made a lot of noise. So now
Speaker 2: it's time they want they want they want payback. They
Speaker 2: want that money right, they need that big hit the
Speaker 2: money record. So we knew, David and I that don't
Speaker 2: disturb this groove was it? We we knew. So you
Speaker 2: know you're going to a and R meeting. You're gonna
Speaker 2: play all your ship, but you're gonna save the best
Speaker 2: one the last, right, You're gonna save the best one
Speaker 2: for last. So we start playing the songs on the album.
Speaker 2: We play everything, and now we're like, okay, we got
Speaker 2: one more to play for you hit play on the record.
Speaker 2: It plays for about a minute, a minute and a half,
Speaker 2: and Sylvia's says, come on, baby, I know y'all got something.
Speaker 2: I know y'all got something else, but you got what
Speaker 2: you got for me? Yes. So Merlin Bob, who was
Speaker 2: also he was like, really that the yeah, Merlin Bob
Speaker 2: Merlin Merlin. Bob said no, no, no, no, no, just
Speaker 2: wait a second, let's listen to that one more time.
Speaker 2: And they listened to the second time, and she still
Speaker 2: didn't want to release as the first single, but she said,
Speaker 2: all right, you know that if that's what y'all you know,
Speaker 2: if that's what y'all want to do, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think we is a little.
Speaker 12: Stronger and a right about this, yes, right, all right, now,
Speaker 12: right right, yeah.
Speaker 6: What was her come back to you hit? What was
Speaker 6: the comeback?
Speaker 2: No, there was no, there was there was no comeback
Speaker 2: that that record just went through the ceiling was not yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we never got We never got that. But that was
Speaker 2: kind of I thought that was an interesting story about
Speaker 2: don't disturb the screw.
Speaker 5: So they didn't label, didn't believe in it until it
Speaker 5: until it saw it hitting it and it went out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, until they saw some recognition from some label out
Speaker 2: on the West coast, I think in Washington State or something.
Speaker 2: There was some taste to make a label. At the time.
Speaker 2: They said their phones were lighting up, so you know,
Speaker 2: that one blew up and and I really believe it's
Speaker 2: one of our one of our best.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. All right, so just before we
Speaker 1: sign off, any other secret projects you've you've done that
Speaker 1: we don't know about.
Speaker 6: Come on, let's give you a lot.
Speaker 2: I know I've done a lot, but I don't know
Speaker 2: what I think. I think that Michelle and the Madonna
Speaker 2: stuff is kind of really what I'm I'm kind of proud.
Speaker 1: Of stuff you there. No, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Man, Thank you for having me. Man. I really appreciate
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 3: All right, man, thank you for the music well for real?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I want to shout out to my brother,
Speaker 2: David Frank. We've been on this road since nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: even earlier because he was in clear. My love for him,
Speaker 2: my love for his talent, my respect for him, and
Speaker 2: him getting on board with all my crazy ideas and
Speaker 2: my crazy energy. I got so much love for him.
Speaker 2: And we actually we have a record on the griddle
Speaker 2: right now that's being mixed in LA. It's a new
Speaker 2: system record being mixed by Tom Lloyd Algae and Jimmy Douglas.
Speaker 5: Okay, songs are finished, Jimmy Senator Jimmy d Yeah, yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: No, we're not we're not playing but you know, we
Speaker 2: need the right we need the right place to write
Speaker 2: home to get it out in this new world. But
Speaker 2: it's I think it's going to be a sensational.
Speaker 1: Record as as you're doing this, I promise this.
Speaker 4: My last question, are you are you aware of the
Speaker 4: sort of the phase of like throwback that that sound
Speaker 4: that you guys helped create, like from groups like Tuxedo
Speaker 4: or up in Canada there's what's the a trax brother's.
Speaker 5: Name, Oh, Chromeo, Chromeo like, and we're not We're not throwback,
Speaker 5: but the Foreign Exchange.
Speaker 3: I mean, me and my brother, we are very much
Speaker 3: inspired by y'all. For real.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, are you against like Oftentimes people
Speaker 4: say like no, let's push forward, let's push forward, But
Speaker 4: I swear there's just a generation of people that are
Speaker 4: starving for like authentic like pulling out the DMX drum machine,
Speaker 4: pulling out the Oberheim synthesizer, that sort of thing. Are
Speaker 4: are you guys going back to square one with us?
Speaker 2: We for the most part, yes, but we're down with
Speaker 2: your quest. You've got an idea, brother, we'll make a real, real,
Speaker 2: simple and basic I mean, well that's that's what we're about.
Speaker 2: That's what we're trying to get you right now.
Speaker 1: This might be a mission for Zoe and.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm listening. I mean listen. Here said, here's an.
Speaker 2: Open for all. He's your man.
Speaker 1: I will do the documentary on it, I promise ye.
Speaker 2: Here's an open.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Well, once again, thank you very much for joining us,
Speaker 4: Sugar Steve anything any.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for chiming for your music.
Speaker 2: Michael, thank you, thank you, thank you having me.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 3: I'll be good.
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