Weevie Remixes & Originals

Central Nyack Community Center ID Card 1973

How it all began…

I grew up in the tiny hamlet of Central Nyack, NY, just west of the more widely known Nyack, NY on the Hudson River, just north of NYC.

We moved there in March, 1969 when I was four years old and were one of a few white families in this mostly working class African American neighborhood. I grew up among soul brothers and sisters during the heart of the Funk era (I even had an afro pik!).

Around 1977 or ’78, Hip Hop had migrated its way north from the Bronx to the Nyack area. As the story goes, there was a party at a girl’s house (Gina Hill) where some MCs and a DJ came up from the Bronx and showed everybody what it was all about.

From then on, there were local MCs and DJs popping up, most notably were Phase Productions (Ronald White Sr.) and Strob Attack (AKA Taylor Brothers Disco, with Kermit Taylor [now Jamaal Bey] as Professor B and Kent Taylor as DJ Clark Kent). I’m sure there were others so forgive me if I left anyone out. The full history of Hip Hop in Nyack/Spring Valley is a project for another day…

My older sister Julie was friends with Kermit and would go to the basement parties in Nyack. I tagged along as “Julie’s brother” and spent most of the night watching the DJs cut and scratch. This went on from 1978-1982.

To give you sense of what I was watching at the time, here is a film Julie Covello wrote, produced, directed, and edited in 1984 featuring Kermit Taylor (Jamaal Bey) called “Breakspeare” which clashed the cultures of Shakespeare and Hip Hop. It won a regional Academy Award. (I wrote the Crew Rap – my first ever effort at writing rhymes). The gear Kermit is using is precisely what they were using at the time.

1978 – The birth of the pausebutton remix…

The first track is literally the first pausebutton experiment I ever made, in1978. It was conceived in my squirrelly 14-year-old head that mixing the horn break from the Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster” would fit perfectly right after the chorus of Joe Tex’s “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (No Big Fat Woman)”. Well, it sounded good in my head, but it didn’t quite work in reality. But the notion of the pausebutton remix was born.

Afterwards, in 1979, I tried some pausebutton tests on my JVC boombox while WKTU Disco 92 was playing on the radio. Here is track 1: Vaughn Mason’s “Bounce Rock Skate Roll”. In track 2, I pushed the limits of the pausebutton to see what it can do: Trussel’s “Love Injection”, the special WKTU version of “Rapper’s Delight” and a few more. It may sound like utter chaos, but I was trying to shake down its idiosyncrasies.

1983 – The Hitachi DE-22 and the pausebutton remix explosion…

In 1982, I left Central Nyack to go to college in Vincennes, Indiana – the middle of nowhere – way before MTV started playing Rap music. I brought my crate of funk records, Spoonie Gee, Captain Sky, P-funk, the Bar-Kays, and “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat” to the middle of John Cougar country.

I experienced overt expressions of racism that I never saw before, especially about the “n****r music” I played in my dorm room (an actual quote). One openminded vanilla brotha (who later became my roommate) took a liking to “Super Sporm” and became a Captain Sky fan. Actually, I learned a few lines of some Hank Williams jr. songs while I was there, so it went both ways.

The significant thing about living there (other than getting an education) was the happenstance purchase of a stereo cassette deck at the local head shop and sexual novelty store (which also sold stereo gear). It was a Hitachi DE-22 which had a mechanical pausebutton.

Not only did it make PERFECT edits because it had no latency, but the edits were a clean “soft” cut with no chirp. In fact I used it so much in the following years doing pausebutton remixes, I had to fix the worn out parts inside with rubber bands and Sculpey to keep it running.

The Original Jam – the Hitachi DE-22

What followed was an explosion of experimentation starting with a (lost) remix of Shannon’s 1984 “Let the Music Play” with pieces of Art of Noise’s “Beat Box” and other found sounds.

1990 – Passaic Park, NJ in the basement

In 1984, I returned to the Nyack area, and then moved to Passaic Park, NJ in 1986. The house I lived in (with Julie Covello as a roommate) had a gigantic basement which became the after hours party spot for the post-LOOP Lounge crew. I finally bought my first DJ mixer – a shitty Gemini – but my turntables were still home stereo types with no pitch control. Still, the pausebutton remix machine was in effect. The following tracks were assembled strictly from one turntable source and the Hitachi DE-22 deck.

The unique character of the DE-22 made possible to cut on a single beat and then cut over the same beat with another track while retaining a “shadow” of the original cut.

In the tracks below, consider that every edit required recording a section of music, stopping the recording, rewinding it back, playing it forward to the desired edit point, hitting the STOP button at exactly the right place, setting Record + Pause, cuing the record to pre-roll the next edit, then releasing the Pause button on the beat. Then repeat this process a ZILLION times to make these recordings.

“Walk This Plank” takes Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” down a crooked pathway including some pieces from two versions of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (the popular one and the instrumental organ version). “Walk This Way” was a popular cut-up back in the day, which is one of the beautiful things about Hip Hop. No one cared where the tracks came from as long is there was a funky beat.

In “Shining Rats”, I edited an 8-bar loop from EWF’s “Shining Star” for a while, then removed the belt from the turntable so I could spin it backwards by hand. Then returned the belt and cut it forwards, then removed the belt and cut it backwards while estimating where the downbeat would be on the track as it was heard in reverse.

“Him or me or Popeye” doesn’t have too many edits in it, but the backend gets funky with it. Includes samples from Ohio Player’s “Let’s Have Some Fun”, Gwen Guthrie’s “Seventh Heaven”, the opening drum riff from Chuck Brown’s “Bustin’ Loose”, Prince’s “Alphabet Street”, and some various cartoon and comedy records.

1987 – Shitty Technics 1200s + Hitachi DE-22…

In 1987, scraped together $150 and bought a pair of (very) used Technics 1200s that were both so out of alignment and malfunctioning that I had to dismantle and re-assemble them with new solder and new pitch control faders. I had no idea what I was buying, but I finally got them to work!

Having mastered one turntable and a pausebutton deck, it was now on to mastering two turntables and a pausebutton deck. The following tracks reflect multiple edits where two records had to be synchronized in a pre-roll prior to the paused edit point, and then the pausebutton released when the pre-roll approached the part where I wanted the edited track to continue.

Check the section below the player to see all the samples.

1989 – Shitty Technics 1200s + Hitachi DE-22 + Porta-One 4-trk…

Tascam Porta-One Cassette 4-Track

The next escalation was to purchase a TASCAM Porta-One 4-track cassette recorder which used regular cassette tapes but only in one direction.

I discovered that I could do a basic pausebutton remix on the Hitachi DE-22, and then drop the tape into the Porta-One and add two more tracks of sound.

The following tracks reflect two turntables, DJ mixer, Hitachi deck, and extra stuff on tracks 3 & 4 on the Porta-One. Click the section below the player to see all the samples.

1993 – Gone digital:  Ensoniq ASR-10…

Ensoniq ASR-10 Sampler Sequencer

Finally, in 1993, I sprung for an Ensoniq ASR-10 Sampler Sequencer with a BIG FAT 16MB RAM upgrade (for something like $120!). Yes, that’s 16MB, not GB.

Soon after, I picked up MOTU Digital Performer software and a midi setup so that I could compose both on-screen and on the ASR-10 button interface.