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RA 225 ~ Scott Grooves
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I decided to post this podcast here instead of it getting lost in the Promos/Recommendations section. Mainly because so many of us were deep in the midst of dance music in the early '90's or just getting started. I think that you'll find yourself on a journey through a memory lane of tracks from the very beginning of this mix.
Last year I was in London, and I was talking to Judy from fabric while we were having dinner, and she mentioned she worked at Strictly Rhythm during that time period—the '90s—that's like our golden era! And we started talking about the different tunes that were out and at the time I had just stopped working at a record shop, but I was still very much affiliated with the buying end of things, and I knew what was selling, and what DJs were buying, and we started talking about the records on Strictly Rhythm and all the tons of labels that were around, so it stuck into my mind.
Cassette making back then was like the thing. Most DJs, when they came into a record shop and they bought a record, if they bought dance music, they would basically go home and make a mixtape. You just made a mixtape so that when you rode around in the car, you weren't just restricted to listening to the radio. You could pop your tape in, critique yourself, and share your tape with other DJs, and they'd give you their tape, and you all got together and made a tape together. The next week you could come in and buy another ten or fifteen records and do the whole thing again, because you never really put the same records on the same cassette, so it actually promoted a lot of vinyl buying in the city. Most DJs back then, they didn't have a residency. That wasn't even a word that we knew, but most people had a cassette deck and a basement. That was our residency! So I made a lot of cassettes, man. That was your residency.
One profound thing that I remember when making those cassettes was that my mother came into my room one day and she just asked me, "Why do you need two record players going at the same time?" That really sticks out in my mind from those cassette making days. I had to try and make her understand the concept of mixing! I made a lot of cassettes because when you bought the records, that's what you did with the records. I wasn't travelling overseas and playing in nightclubs, so cassette making was the climax of a lot of what I bought.
Cassette making back then was like the thing. Most DJs, when they came into a record shop and they bought a record, if they bought dance music, they would basically go home and make a mixtape. You just made a mixtape so that when you rode around in the car, you weren't just restricted to listening to the radio. You could pop your tape in, critique yourself, and share your tape with other DJs, and they'd give you their tape, and you all got together and made a tape together. The next week you could come in and buy another ten or fifteen records and do the whole thing again, because you never really put the same records on the same cassette, so it actually promoted a lot of vinyl buying in the city. Most DJs back then, they didn't have a residency. That wasn't even a word that we knew, but most people had a cassette deck and a basement. That was our residency! So I made a lot of cassettes, man. That was your residency.
One profound thing that I remember when making those cassettes was that my mother came into my room one day and she just asked me, "Why do you need two record players going at the same time?" That really sticks out in my mind from those cassette making days. I had to try and make her understand the concept of mixing! I made a lot of cassettes because when you bought the records, that's what you did with the records. I wasn't travelling overseas and playing in nightclubs, so cassette making was the climax of a lot of what I bought.
I decided to post this podcast here instead of it getting lost in the Promos/Recommendations section. Mainly because so many of us were deep in the midst of dance music in the early '90's or just getting started. I think that you'll find yourself on a journey through a memory lane of tracks from the very beginning of this mix.
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