Mark Ronson

27:43Like the crowd is what makes the club great. I think the crowd and the DJ. But, you know, of course, there were incredible places like Tunnel and Limelight and Roxy and these places that were made to be these wild fun houses. But for me, my favorite places were always 50 % of them were basements. And I try to get into that in the book. I'm like, why was it the basements? Is there something like going underground where you're just like, you're getting a little closer to like Satan's real estate. Like are you just aware? Like we're going down here, like being summoned for a Dionysian right? And it's also that thing we're down here now, where we've all come to this place.

28:32It's, we might as well be down here because it's going to take a little longer to get out. I don't know what the fuck it is. Yeah, there is something about basements feeling like you could get trapped really easily. Yeah, yeah, you could get, exactly. You get trapped. There was this one club. I don't know if you ever went, David Lynch has this club. I don't know if it's still there. I had this club called, they're he designed called Selencio. It was in Paris. And you had to go so far down to get into this club. You just couldn't help but think like, Jesus, like what if there's a fucking fire or something?

29:05I get felt like you were descending for floors underground. But once you're down there, it got naughty in there. because it was just like, wow, we are down here. How does the energy of a club change over the course of the night? I wouldn't say, I don't know if it's what I miss, but what made me good back then, you would play 6 hours. You would really play 10 to 4, maybe 11 to 4, and you were there to build the whole night. So there was this kind of New York regimen back in the day. It's that certainly different now, but you play classics and funk and soul. And then that would move into some more up tempo disco and maybe some break beats if they were like break dances out on the floor.

29:55And then you go to old school hip hop slick Rick, EPMD, somehow 1231. You would really try and save the new hip hop like as long as you can, like keeping them at that, you know, like at the gate. Like see how long you could really like tease the crowd before you suddenly drop. Big E DMX J whatever it was. And then you would play one to two new hip hop and dance hall. Then some new hip hop, some old school and then maybe a little bit of house or some like classic sort of old school dance to the end. So it was amazing to get to architect that, you know, part of what happened later when you kind of, whether you become a big DJ or you, whatever it is, like you're just going on these festivals at this peak hour and you're going to play an hour set.

30:44So I missed all that feeling of building the night. There's a great DJ in New York who's from my era, but I talk about him in the book a little. His name is Eli Eskibar, because he was kind of a bit of an unsung hero for the first 25 years of his career. And then suddenly, in the last five, 10 years, it's just become like this New York nightlife icon. But he'll still play that six -hour set. Because he loves that thing of playing the whole night and I've actually a friend of mine who read the book was like, hey man, yeah no I digged the book. It just really sounds like you just misplaying vinyl again.

31:24That was his takeaway from the book and he's somebody who's always come to me with a good creative idea and just like set it like it's kind of like gospel. I think you need to just play vinyl now until the end of the year. Yeah and I remember thinking like that sounds like such a pain in the ass but also maybe incredible. So that's what I've been doing. It's just been playing vinyl again. And you know, it's certainly about 2007 after 2007, the selections get a little slim, but I just love it. And I'm going back and I'm playing five, six hours sets again. And there's all this 90s and 2000s hip hop that when I'm playing off my computer drive or USBs, even though I'm playing with turntables, they become almost not meaningless because they're still great songs, but it's one of 20 ,000 songs on a hard drive, three megabytes.

32:25It's sort of, it's click and drag and it's there.

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34:01If you know you're only going to be playing vinyl, would you go to the extreme of having vinyl pressed for things you want to play that vinyl doesn't exist for? I think I would actually, I think that you can press 45s. There's this DJ, this Japanese DJ who I watch on Instagram because he just has these incredible things where he's just like cutting 45s and it's just so exciting. His body language is so like swinging and just so like, you know, I always wish I had that body language as a DJ, like sort of like, gregarious and inviting. I've always just been a bit like kind of just sweaty going through it, throwing records because every which way.

34:42But he has all this new shit. I know watching it, I'm like, oh, there must be a way. I think that there's like an affordable 45 pressing machine that you can like having your crib maybe. But yeah, there would certainly be things. And I remember the first time I ever made a record that I pressed up on acetate was the Nico Costa record like a feather because it was the first time I had ever made anything. that I deemed worthy to play in the club. I was like, wow, let's see. So I remember going to Sterling and just watching the lathe for the first time and come down. And obviously, technically, it's just making microscopic wiggles that amplitudes and volumes and whatever.

35:29But I was like, this shit is sculpting music. Like, this is incredible. I remember playing it for the first time. and then obviously, Acetates, you can only play them five or six times, they wear it down. You can't really back cue them a lot because you'll wear out the groove. I remember one of the main promotion guys from Bad Boy Records, his name was Henrock. I remember him one time coming also to that same Tuesday night party that Biggie came to and bringing me an Acetate of Biggie hypnotized and saying, like, I got the new Biggie joint. I mean, I can't give it to you. I'd like to take it to flex, but like, you could play it right now.

36:10And I just remember being like, holy shit. I don't even know if I had heard it yet. It was so crazy. I think there was this era where the first time you would ever hear a song was in the club amongst, because the DJ had it or whatever. And I remember putting it on and just like handling it, like a Mingbao's or some shit and throwing it on and just release on beat whatever song I was playing it out of. And just because that song just came in so heavy to that. Oh, with the kick drum and Biggie's fucking wheeze. And the whole club, it was just one of those moments. Like I remember there's five or six songs in that era I remember dropping for the first time.

36:54We're dropping in a certain way and feeling molecule shift in the club. like there's something molecular heat energy that would just change. So yeah, those acetates were very special. And I also remember walking past a brown stone in Chelsea one time and somebody left all these original pressing, first pressing acetates outside that they must have not wanted anymore. And it was all from the first brand newbie in album. And I remember meeting Dante Ross one time much later and was like, did you ever live on 21st Street? Like I just had an inkling, they were his, that he must have left out in the street.

37:34He was like, yeah. But I like the way that playing vinyl only, it's just been a nice hard reset. You know, I miss some of the creativity of what you can do with Sarada the way you can just make a acupella with a click of the thing and do mixes and use the baseline from a Jackson 5 song over a drum beat from whatever. But I just needed this hard reset at this moment and it's been a lot of fun. Would you say it makes your DJ set very different? Yes, I noticed that like younger kids are just watching because I'm not doing some DJ scratch crazy routine, but just cutting records, bring him in on beat, taking him off and maybe speed mixing.

38:20You know, eight bars of this record into this one, they're just dumbstruck. They're just like, haven't seen it before. And this is one of the things I think has gotten crazy about DJing, like with DJs being huge headliners, like, DJs are not essentially performers, you know, like pushing a series of buttons. Listen, Steve Aoki, there's people that are really good at it and will bring this showmanship. But most of us, you know, that's why there's 200 grand of LED lights and wherever the fuck else on stage and confetti canons. But there is something with vinyl that's like at least a little something to watch.

38:59Hands are doing something. There's a grace and a performance in it. And then the other thing was I have to think so much before the gig about what I can bring tonight because I can't just show up with the laptop with the entire history of recorded music, right? And maybe 300 records if I really want to fucking do my back in that night. So I'm carrying all these crates, so I have to think about what the crowd's going to be. And what do I want this record? And going through records, I sort of psychically bonded with this crowd before they've even got there. And they might be a totally different crowd that shows up than I imagined in my head.

39:39But I have a little bit of an idea, and I'm picturing that dance for and seeing what that might be. So I'm already in some sort of flow. I've already thought about the records. So, and listen, doing that the past six months, it's so fucking crazy, like, you know, all our schedules are full enough as it is. I'm like, not only do I have the DJ gig now, but I have to fucking carve out an hour and a half before the gig to get my records together, like, but it does make a difference, and there's something about it. It's like the warm up. Also, to be honest, like, that was the time I was It's probably the best DJ.

40:15I have more knowledge of music now in the 90s when I was playing Five Nights a Week. I knew my crowds. There's probably something for me that's a little bit. I'm performing and playing the record and doing it in the same way when I was sort of at my best. So I feel invincible, right? How different is the audience today than it was in the 90s? The crowds are pretty much completely different. I'm playing for 93 % different crowds. You know, there's some old heads that come out and occasionally I'll play a party where it's like a little bit of an old school crowd like that. But you know, when I haven't played in a while, I have a few younger DJs that are dope that I text.

40:58Like, hey, what's popping? Like, what's the new shit? I'll dead it out. And these kids are just like, man, we're just playing urine AMs 2 ,000 set. And I have that going on a little bit in my production right now because I noticed that music is going back to this thing and kids are, you know, falling in love with those same drum sounds that we were doing in the 2000s, the kind of old school 60s breakbeat sound and all that. And maybe it never went away, but I noticed it's really back and kids are like, yeah, no, do that shit. And it's not that I'm Tom York or SquareProsher where I'm so entirely progressive that I will I'll never repeat myself, but in my head, I'm like, really?

41:39But I kind of did that. Like I remember once doing a record with Duranjan, who I really loved. They were one of my first favorite groups as a kid and still made great records. But I remember going in the studio with them, maybe it was 15 years ago. And I was like, can we get some of that, the Rio, the magic of Rio, the sequences, did it, did it, 16th notes, disco hats, tough drums, nasty guitars, and just great songs, funky bass signs, that thing. And they were like, but we did that. And I remember, like I remember thinking, yes, but like, and it was this moment that the killers had just broken and Franz Ferdinand and all these English bands, the Kaiser Sheet songs, like, but like all the coolest shit is just taking a lot of like what you did.

42:27Like it, this is the cool shit right now. But I do remember them because they were, you know, they like to stay moving forward. And so now when I'm in the studio with like younger artists, you're like, no, that's it was dope. Like how you did that back then, it's sort of still this push and pull. I'm like, not wanting to repeat myself. And I guess the other thing is it's interesting to me when a 23 year old reinvented or does take some of the thing or some of those, those same concepts or ideals of what we were doing back then and puts it through their lens. When it's strictly through my lens, that's when it just becomes recycling.

43:08So with the DJing, when the kids are like, no, no, we're just playing like the 2000s, like set the year doing. I'm like, oh, it's nice to hear because I love that music and it's fun to play. But it's like, it's super cool. And like, I watch like a young 23 -year -old DJ playing nori or whatever else it is. So when I'm doing it, do I just look like that old guy who's just like kind of falling back on this same shit. Do you record all of your DJ sets? Actually never record any of them. I because I'm not on the mic, the mic is like when you hear those great old DJ set recordings and someone's on the mic, you can hear the crowd because the bleed from the mic and it seems to me it's so ephemeral.

43:53So it's there's something so in the moment about There are some like I played a set for A -Track recently and he recorded it. Also the other thing is like when you're at fucking playing in the crowd like I try to be as precise as possible but you're in the moment and you're the crowd it's with the crowd and you might be dropping a record not off beat but maybe not in the most like kind of like you know the mix wouldn't be as exact as if you were just making in the studio making a fucking blend tape. So, I was almost like, I don't want to hear it back, but he did record it because it was for the full school, his labels to anniversary, and I heard it back, and I was like, oh, that's actually pretty good.

44:34Like, I don't really ever need to hear them again. How long did it take you to put the book together? It took me probably, from start to finish, it was about three years. So, I had, you know, stopped there, music projects here and there, and we did the score in the music for the Barbie film, which probably took over like nine months, maybe a year of my life. But I read Stephen King on writing. I never studied writing in school. So I read Stephen King's on writing and Mary Carr's The Art of Memoir. And I just love Stephen King's how I'll steer his rules where like lock yourself in a basement and no windows and five hours a day and these kind of things and for the first year, I was in the basement of my place in New York until I realized like wait this is actually a health hazard.

45:32Maybe I should just seal the windows off somewhere else because it's just like a damp fucking New York basement with water damage everywhere. But I would try and write eight to one or eight to two and then take a break and then do whatever music stuff that I was working on. But it really did take over and there was a time certainly in the second year of it where I was so turning down studio work and working on records to really focus on this. And I was aware that something was pulling me to this and there was a reason I needed to do it. but at the same time I was like, you know, I had no idea if it was good, terrible, what the fuck I'm like, is this now I'm in year two, is this a total waste?

46:18And, you know, I was doing it at that point. I was so deep into it. And then at the very end, I handed in the book to my editor, Janie, where this year, and he was like, great, that my editor at the publishing house, Colin, who was a great editor and really helped me out a lot along the way. And I think in some ways he had seen the writing go from maybe being like a four to a seven and a half was just so happy we're like out the woods. But there was something that I just knew it wasn't done I just was like I don't feel like breaking out the champagne doesn't feel done to me like. And that was already you know almost three years in and I showed it to my wife's.

47:01Cousin, who's a really incredible writer named Abe Streep, wrote a book about a Native American basketball team from Montana. It's just an incredible book and writes for New York or all this shit. Anyway, around my age, he loves that era of hip hop and he said that he would read it. I was like, thanks so much. And he was like, I called him up and the first thing he said was, so there's a permanence to books. And I was like, oh God, here we go. Like he was trying to tell me like, this thing's going to be around forever. I think you could spend a little time and make it better. So he came on and really helped me as an editor for a little while and then he passed me to this, his editor at the New Yorker.

47:42And the last three months of the book, I just spent in like an 18 -hour day self -imposed writing boot camp. And what was cool about having her is she made me put the kind of stuff that you would expect from a New Yorker angle. don't just say all Peter Gaceon's clubs closed. Tell me how Giuliani's fucking policies and trying to get his war on clubland. How did that thing? And don't just we can't just be suddenly at Friday nights at life and it's bottle service like let me know why the climates of New York clubs changed and why it went from this pretty cool egalitarian place where everyone's hanging.

48:20There's no VIP rooms and suddenly we're at this thing where it's like you know this total exclusive hierarchy of where people sit has become the most important thing. So, so I'm really grateful that that last couple of months like brought the thing to the book list and the books not perfect. It's something that I need to get out for whatever reason and I wanted to tell a story of this time. But where it got to because of that last intense three months, I can't imagine the old book came out. How has your relationship to that time period changed from working on the book? Yeah, I don't know if it's like a, if it's my midlife crisis, but like, it's funny, like carrying these, you know, 100 pound crates of gig bags, one in each hand to these gigs, like lumbering upstairs again from basement clubs, and actually two of my good friends from that, from that era, like been helping carry the records.

49:23And there's definitely something about it. It's just like, we're literally just repeating, like it's 30 years, you could take a snapshot. We look a little older, but this looks like what we're doing 30 years ago. And there's something about it that's both sweet and like, okay, we just trying to, you know, relive some glory part of our youth, but I've been working on a record at the same time to go with this book. And the record I don't want to be retro, I don't want it to be like sound like 90s up. It has touches and some samples and some flips of things from that error. And honestly, some of the things that I'm flipping most kids today will have never heard anyway.

50:05So it is, you know, hopefully something fresh. So I think the club and the DJing is informing the music in a nice way that's just like, I want the music to at least have the energy the way it moves. I don't want to fall back on any of my like go -to easy drum patterns that I know work or what I've been doing the last 20 years I want the shit to move in the way that the music of that time that I loved it. My ears are fucking battered, holy shit like I forgot like I think you just regenerate so much better, your cells and all that stuff when you're that age. So now the pounding of those booth monitors for three, four hours is no joke.

50:53And I've had to start wearing molds. But even that only really takes what like 10, 20 DBs off. And it's your skull vibrating. That's like part of what the tonight is. So it's yeah, it's crazy. Like the past 20 years, I've been rocking up to a and playing my little fucking hour set. I'm the headlight, but this is like back to four or five hours of this pounding thing. And it's like, yeah, I've had to be really careful. Like it's, that's also been a wake up call, like turning them on and it's down, wearing the earplugs, because my livelihood is now studio. So I can't really just, yeah. It sounds like these five hour sets are putting you closer in touch with the spirit of music than the connection you've had over the last, I don't know, 15 years.

51:48Yes, yes, has to. It does. And and there's all these other records like if I'm DJing somewhere I play my like 90s segment of the sad or 2000s, you know, it's this sort of speed mix of 20 songs, Snoop, Dre, DMX, whatever, fucking 20 minutes. When I'm looking at 200 of those records, 200 records of the 90s and the 2000s, suddenly it's like, oh, how the hell did I forget about? Got it twisted by mob deep and fucking souls of mischief, 93 till infinity. It's like all these records that I forgot. And like, and the other night I played at this roadside bar, fried chicken restaurant, upstate in upstate New York where I have a place and a friend of mine, who threw soul kitchen with Frankie, he lives upstate and he opened this kind of cool fried chicken restaurant in this twin peaksy looking diner.

52:50So I was up there and he just has two turn tables and they have disco nights there. And so I was like, yeah, let me play. So I went and my opening song was, I think it was Papa Don't Take No Mass by James Brown into Golden Years by Bowie. And just that feeling of like, Golden Years, I think I had on a 45 because I just found it that day. And like holding so delicately onto this 45, it's like spinning with the middle and like the slip mat spinning underneath it and you're just like queuing it exactly so you can drop it on beat because we all know like 45s are a little like harder to handle them.

53:26It is just much more exciting. Like you said, the spirit of music, the breadth of music is much wider of what I'm playing. I'm playing music that honestly, I like a lot more than probably some of the shit I've been playing for a little while. And then what's also funny is to see like every generation of clubgoers has its own recurrent throwbacks, right? So like a song that wasn't even big to us when we were DJing the 90s and 2000s is now cool unironically for this generation, so back. So there's things that no offense, I'm not going to play return of the Mac, it's just not something I'm going to play, but the Ramones Blitz -Greek pop is a huge record for like a sort of hip -hop party going downtown crowd.

54:19I'm still standing by Elton John, which is that that's an interesting one to me because also the beat is like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, it's not something, it's sort of like an awkward way to dance. Like yeah, like what else is big? Everybody wants to rule the world. I feel like these are like stranger things records almost. Like love full by the card against. So it's like fun tracking these ones down on vinyl, occasionally playing them, trying them out, and sometimes just being like, no, that's okay.

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56:30How does disco fit into the picture? Disco is Michael Jackson, early Prince, disco Prince, Cheryl Ling, got to be real. These were all some of the cooler records in South Soul Orchestra. Those were all parts of the New York canon when I started DJing, like everybody knew it. But it's funny to think when I started DJing in 92, 93, Michael Jackson still stopped. You get enough was what, 15 years old? Like, there are Drake records that are older than 15 years old now to play. It's wild that that was like really throwbacky to play a Michael Jackson song. The also the thing about New York clubs is, especially in the hip hop clubs, it was a little more, not snooty, but there was like an attitude.

57:21like you're not gonna hear September by Earth and Empire. Like you might hear Brazilian rhyme song. You're not gonna hear Michael Jackson don't stop to get enough, like these songs are kind of like wedding songs or whatever you want to call them. Now I noticed, especially like with like the DJ Ellie Askabar that's talking, kids actually want to go out and hear songs they've never heard before, which is like that blows my mind and also I find incredibly scary because I'm like, well, wait, what does that mean? Like, does that mean not to play any of the shit they used to play? Like, is it ghost or like corny to play?

57:57You know, I'm not talking about wedding tunes, but even a disco song. So when I played the chicken restaurant for lack of a better word of state, you know, I think it was like maybe fit 300 people and there were like 300 people parting outside because they were piping the music outside. And the age was like 18 to 60. So that's another thing. Like now I have like people who like my music that are 40s and 50s and they might be bringing their kids and you know there's this, you're trying to find this balance. And the thing that I'm, that I talk about in the book too is that as a DJ, the other thing that's definitely changed for how I play is like people come out and they expect to hear records that I made.

58:43Of course they do. They're going to see Mark Ronson and they're like, okay, we're going to get hair. Valerie, we're gonna hear Uptown Funk, we're gonna hear whatever it is. But for me, that almost feels like cheating or something. If I'm playing and I don't have them enough, I know I could throw one of my records and those records are 10, 15 years old. So yeah, I talk about this in the book, it's like when I play Uptown Funk, the crowd goes crazy. Bruno Mars is not standing next to me in the booth performing the song. You know, I think it's kind of amazing. It's like there's something psychological that happened to our brain Like why do people get more excited?

59:23Well, we know why they're excited because there's dancing in front of the person who made it and they're showing their appreciation and I'm Beyond grateful for all of it. I'm not paying lip service like it's I'm so lucky that anybody gives a shit and it's coming But it always fascinating to me that like like the next DJ could literally get on and play uptown funk once I've left and everyone will clear the dance for. It's like, you know, there's all these bizarre things that happen in this psychic bond between the DJ and the crowd. Is the New York club seen the same as it's always been? No, and it's changed so much that I could probably answer about 25 % of this question.

1:00:05You know, like there's some shit in Manhattan, but really all the fun shit is in Brooklyn, for sure the clubs. Then there's like the knockdown center which is out in Queens. You know, there's like places to party. The New York shit is, New York is always going to have its little spots and it's going to have it a vibe but it's like once a lot of cool people and artists, so many people were priced out of New York. Like of course the cool parties were as well. And there's no huge super clubs really to draw people in here. Most of that shit is in Brooklyn. So yeah, so it's been getting back out. There's also like been about hooking into the right scenes and being like, you know, making sure, you know, I played this, I played a club in New York last week and it was like, it was corny, like because it was just like that who goes out in New York, like it was like, oh man, I played the same set last week in Brooklyn and it was incredible.

1:00:58So it's also been about like finding the right people to make sure I'm hopping on the right gigs. is the scene in Brooklyn as good as the scene in New York in the 90s or they still different? I think it's good. I think it feels very vibrant and alive. I think there will always be something special about the 80s is incredible because the 80s was when it was very first happening. You know, It was literally the Roxy and Uptown and Downtown meeting each other for the first time. I mean, you were an architect of so much of why that was going on. And then the 90s was the last era before bottle service, VIP booths and camera phones.

1:01:50So I think that a lot of it had to do with people were just parting, people were parting with the absence of surveillance. It was this feeling. And then also people wanted to stay in rooms because you weren't getting fomal because you could see another party happening down the street or just text your friend like, you know, come over here. And then even though, listen, smoking is bad for you. We all know that. But the smoking band even changed something too because you have people keep going out to have a cigarette or there was like, there was something a little cool about the clubs like just this layer of smoke.

1:02:25I remember going to the first live shows after the smoking band, too, to see bands, and it was weird not having that protective, like, gals of weird fucking shit between you and the state. You could just see right through to the band, you know? It was different. What's your favorite club in the world? There was a club night in London at this club called The Notting Hill Arts Club, another the basement. Very special. These two English DJs, Seb Chiu and Leo Greenslay through it. Early in the night, they would have a little showcase for a new band or whoever was launching and then 11pm it would turn into the club.

1:03:12And because they just became known as the spot to play when you first came to London, it was like Lupe Fiasco, Lili Allen, Kanye, Bruno, you know, Luru, the list is just like, it's kind of endless. Everybody played their first UK showcase there because everyone knew that was a spot. And then the party was just insane. And I remember going and playing there my first time. And actually I remember someone saying like, oh, you've got to come down here. The DJ set is like, he's like the London Mark Gronson. So of course, I'm like, I'll go down, show them. Like, you know, as much as I ever get into that mode And I go down and I play my like New York set at the time that I just had like clockwork and Quick mixes and clever fucking blends and word playing all this shit and the crowd was like oh and then Seb just got on in the first thing he played with some like UK like garage or drum and bass record that just like They were spanging the fucking wall like he just he didn't because he wasn't doing to show me up either It was just like cool.

1:04:17That was a great set. Well, you played all the hip -hop, so let me just play some vacation. It was such an eye opener. Like, oh, there are entire other genres of essentially black music that will bring a fucking house down that I know nothing about. So I loved playing there. I started to go back there and play a lot when my first record came out. And the song, OOE with Ghostface and Nate Dog, did well in England and didn't do much here, but it like kept my buzzer and I was going over there to play parties and just I just loved it. And I actually, it inspired me to come back because that was at the time where 2003, New York it just because I was just so turned off New York in the bottle service and everything that it had become.

1:05:00And I came back and I told Q -tip, I was like, go tip party, I just played in London, like you playing shit that they love and you playing like OC times up and like underground records and people are just going off like let's just do that shit here and just see. And of course you're doing something with YouTube. There's going to be and people are going to come down and be excited about it. But we found a basement, this basement club called Table 50 on Bleaker Street. Actually, my friend, Blue Gems, who the book is dedicated to, who passed, he found it. And he was always like the person dragging me to some fucking basement being like, We got to do a party here.

1:05:40It's gonna be the best shit ever. He was usually right. We go into a Dinging Basement at 4 in the afternoon and he would just have some vision. And it was like this amazing party that did breathe some life back into both my love for DJing and downtown at that moment. And Boston, most deaf and people would just come and like grab the mic and shit and get on over it while me and TIP were DJing. So that party back to your question though in London, and Notting Hill Arts Club was a really special place. And it ended, I think, after about 10 years, because a lot of hip -hop parties, there was like some violence in there.

1:06:18But I remember for the 10th anniversary party, I surprised them. Nas was in town. And I was like, I want to give these guys the best, and this crowd, the best birthday present I can think of. So I managed to work it through, and that Nas came into the surprise set. And one of my favorite Na's songs ever has made you look. It's just such a hard fucking record. And I was Na's as DJ for one night. And there's just this moment on YouTube. And I used to spend many late night, fucking hide watching that one six seconds over and over. And Na's just goes, Yo, Mark, hit him with that murder. And I just dropped Meiju Look and the whole fucking place came down.

1:07:02and it was just like, yeah, just that, you know, I never stopped being a fan of the artist that I love and I'm nearly 50 fucking years old and being on stage, getting to play public service announcement with Jay or Nas, like it will just send me right down to my 18 year old, whatever it is. How would you say your tasting music has changed over the course of your life? I think COVID was like a big thing of spending a lot of time at home. I started to listen to records at home, maybe for the fucking first time, except when I went home, I'm listening to records so I quickly look for breaks or listen to what I'm going to spend that night.

1:07:45But actually to listen as a passive listener and I found like a lot of 50s jazz,

1:07:5650s and and Jerry Mulligan, and then I know it's so fucking, like it's the cliche like rom -com soundtrack, but Chepp Baker, just beauty, like music with beauty and simplicity, country music, a lot of like classic 50s, 60s, 70s country music, my wife, like Willie Nelson discovering, just the beauty and those things. And then I feel like as I've gone older, and I remember now it makes sense I saw it with all my favorite artists, you know, I want to challenge myself, tonally, quarterly, not because I want to be like up my own ass and make complicated music. Like that's not my thing, but you know, you're just looking to try new things harmonically.

1:08:43So in that jazz and that playing of like Bill Evans and those people, there's something in there. And I noticed like, as I'm making music now, I'm trying to imbue the music that I'm making with that. But I also know that like, I'm aware you get to this thing that you complicate your music a lot and you're just. Dear off, you're on that next phase of your career. And I think I don't know that there's something about me. I don't know if it's my fucking ego or my ambition. I'm like, okay, I'm not ready to go riding off into my prog fusion sunset yet. Like, how do I do this and still do it with the records that I love?

1:09:22So it's interesting. It's interesting how, you know, we know this all are, when you're a kid, you just see your favorite artists and you just go, oh, they went weird. They've started, oh, they started to make fucking grown -up music or something like that. And now I understand it. You just, your taste kept evolving and you were trying out new shit. He said your early works were not well received in New York, but they were well received in the UK. What do you think it was about those records that worked in the UK? Well, the biggest one was this record goes with Ghostface and Nate Dog, Owie. And weirdly, like that really rang off on the West Coast, the Toronto Hawaii, I don't of what, because I was about to say maybe it's sunny places, but obviously Toronto isn't, but I made a record with Wu Tang, right, with Ghostface, but it wasn't a hard record, it wasn't like a Wu Tang record.

1:10:18It had this kind of like, bubbly, like slightly disco with the Dennis coffee breakbeat thing to it, right? So what was I really making? I was like, in my mind, if I'd really thought about the time, like there wasn't like an obvious hot 97 record, I was just making some shit that appealed to like the DJ side that like wanted some hard drums but still some fast shit that made people move. And I also I do think that growing up in England where you would hear a song an old -school reggae song like Uptown Top ranking by Althean Donna next to Dran Dran next to Bill Whitters lovely day next to maybe like a day last soul record.

1:10:58There was much less separation of what would be played on the radio, because Radio One and BBC sort of in England, just like a little more eclectic. I always think about how, you know, Amy Winehouse and Adele, and you know, they're essentially soul singers, but if they hadn't grown up in England with that slightly more English sensibility, like you just mix a bunch of shit together because you love it, which seems very inherently what you should do everywhere, but it's not quite R &B and things are a little bit more regimented here. So yeah, I think that there's definitely something about the way I grew up and in the UK that just I hadn't acknowledged so much until like, oh, that's why these people all like my shit over there.

1:11:45Can you think of a song that you loved when you were young, that you still love and can you think of a song that you loved when you were young and now if you listen to it, you can't believe you're reluctant. My dad had really great taste. My stepdad was the one in foreign and my dad was just like, you know, loved fung soul, grand central station, parliament, funcodelic, all this shit. So he loved early hip -hop. So grand master flash in the Furious Five, the message. He's to play that all the time. Me and my sisters would go to visit him in England once or twice a year because my parents split my mom moved to New York.

1:12:23And we were dense, jumping down up on his bed, listening to the message. So obviously that's a song I still think is incredible to this day. I listened to a lot of hair metal when I was a kid, because I played guitar and bands and that was kind of trendy and I went to like a guitar camp to try and learn to be a shredder and I fucking hated it and I was not very good, not good enough to be a shredder. So there was a lot of bands like Slotter, L .A. Guns, enough's enough. They had some good songs. I don't want to rip into any of them, but there was some stuff from that that I probably had to probably something I wouldn't listen to as much today.

1:13:12And then what's so amazing is when you hear a song that you completely forgot about, like there was that band King's X, it was kind of like a three piece kind of had like a little bit of a rush proggy thing. And I just heard like a King's X song in that era, like I think it was called Summerland. I was like, this is the gorgeous fucking song. Yeah, just how those songs give you, give you this jolt. If they can get me for three minutes through my fucking morning run, I'm so grateful for that. Three minutes where I've just forgot that I hate doing this and I'm fucking panting and about to fall over.

1:13:52And I find like that happens more often with Son that I forgotten about. Tell me about your listening habits. General listening, not related to work. general listening is now with my two and a half daughter. Most of my passive listening is what she's listening to and our mutual friend Richard Russell gave me this great radio that's like this little radio for kids that's sort of like environmentally friendly kind of like it's wooden and has these buttons and you can just program all her favorite songs into it. So she's just like there and she loves her radio and I got one of those old here I am just like putting all of my friends in the studio.

1:14:31fucking baggage and shit on her. But like this 80s Fisher Price turn table, the one that maybe has like the Sesame Street Big Bird, like it's as the arm and her 45s. She has her own 45s. She can like kind of put on and so yesterday, you know, I try and get her like, I'm not trying to give her my taste. I'm not even trying to like make this look more attractive. I don't want her to become a DJ, any of this stuff. or if she finds it great, but it's more just like, she seems to be drawn to it. So she has her 45s and she's, you know, a bunch of like Disney, Robin Hood, whatever the fuck. And but yes, she was just playing the pretenders brass in pocket, I'm special because I must have put that in her pile and she was just listening to it over and over again.

1:15:19And it's like, it's just so cool that that's a record that she's picked out that she's drawn to. and then she loves when we go to my record player and put something on. She knows that there's like an extra, that's a level up of ceremony, whatever she's not data put go listen to Chichachanges, you know, Bowie go listen to Chichachanges by the fireplace, which is where my record player is, but just letting her find her own music. She happens to love scenario by Tribe Called Quest and shake it off by Taylor Swift and Casey Musgrave, Slow Burn and whatever she loves and she has her little records and that's most of my passive listening right now is whatever she has on.

1:16:06Tell me the difference between curating music and having music curated for you. I know that part of what made me a better DJ. Let's just say it in the 90s was that like I was going out every night to hear other DJs. I was playing for nights a week and two, three of the other nights, I was going out to hear other DJs play or they were DJs playing before me and I was checking out their sets with the DJs after me. You have to go see other people play. I feel like there's so many records, especially now maybe even that if you've heard them or maybe you kind of listen to on Apple or Spotify, you wouldn't even think, you might not think that much of it.

1:16:45You see it in a club with 300 people fucking going off and pounding the walls and shit. It's a totally different experience. So then there's also like this other side of it. There's something and I kind of touched on the book because it was such a thing back then in the 90s. Like there was a certain circle of DJs where all kind of in each other's sphere, it was a, it was stretch mighty my I raise Max Glazer, Goldfinger. We all kind of went to each other's sets on our nights off. And then we had all hang in the booth because we really just all wanted to be asked to fucking get on. Like we didn't know how to really just fully be in a club and enjoy ourselves.

1:17:27Like the idea of like being in this place and not having something to do with this fucking vibe was like sort of drove us crazy. So we were just waiting in the booth like record vultures until the other DJ had to take a piss and just be like, oh, can you want to get on for a second? So the dichotomy of like, want to go these other sets, but then only so much because then you're like, fuck, well, now I want to get on. I want some of this glory or some of this energy. You talk about having acetate for Biggie's new record brought to you and playing it for the first time and the feeling in the room.

1:18:03We think of hip hop as so much of a poetic, lyrical style. And in a club, the lyrics are not always so detectable, especially on a complicated rap record. So if something's not known and you're playing it for the first time, it's hard to even know. Yeah. And I think this is even maybe been to my detriment as a someone who makes music. I think because drums were my first instrument and I always came from groove first. The beat has always been the first thing that I react to. And I think it wasn't even until I really got into like Bob Dylan was the first time I really appreciate like who cares what the chords are doing.

1:18:54Like the story is the thing that's important. And I feel like it's fairly obvious from your work that point of view and story is always the driver and then there's always great music under it. So for me it's really the beat. Like it's always the beat as well. Really? Okay. Yeah, I mean of course for the early records of beats were crazy too. So yeah, I feel like it's a DJ. And I think that was something we used to talk about when they started to use the thing hot record all the time. Hot record. Yes, but is it a good record, right? Hot record makes me think the beat comes on. It's hot. It reminds you of something you heard before.

1:19:30Dededed it like hot, hot. Like, you know, the difference between hot and good started to drive me a little bit crazy. But yes, for a song like Biggie hypnotized. And I think because rappers like Biggie, where the the timbre of his voice was almost like as exciting. it was like the Afro -Dijac in the club and that unmistakable wheeze, that, like with the beat, the way it dropped boom, boom, oh, like just came in. I think it was just like a meteor hitting the club and it was something biggie had so many hits at that moment. It was just before he passed. He was the king of New York. It was like, there were this moment that you could hear Biggie's voice on anything and it would probably have worked in the club, but that was especially special.

1:20:20And you know, it was like that era of that production of, it was kind of a lack of a better word. Jiggy had all those like triangles and shakers. Some of it is aged better than others, but that beat just was heavy. How do you decide what to listen to on your morning run? It's so different, because I only started running recently. Like I always hated running. I had to run in high school because I was so bad at all the other sports because I came here from England when I was eight. You know, like I didn't know. Like baseball, football, that shit had already been going on. I was bad at soccer, which everyone assumed that I would be good at soccer at least.

1:21:03So I had to run cross country because like I just didn't want to do PE. So just running, it's in stamina endurance, anybody could get through running. So I hated it for most of my life and then I really fucked up my knee four years ago and I went on a run for the first time in five years, fucked up my knee and did something where I couldn't basically use it for a year or two and I thought that I was probably dumb with it and I didn't really care either because I wasn't a runner. And then when it came back, after some like, you know, a good trainer got it back, I was almost like so thrilled to be able to use this thing that I hadn't cared about.

1:21:45I just suddenly like I kind of want to run now like it was just a just a interesting thing. So running for me is either furious guitars. So a lot of that is like for me is like sort of 90s and 2000s like alt in the guitar, just heavy shit, because that has tempo. And sometimes it's quickly making like a playlist of songs, like the songs that we're talking about that you kind of forgot about that you're like, oh yeah, you still love that song, because those are nice distractions. And then I found podcasts actually like does take your mind out of anything that's going on. Certain podcasts like I can't listen to current events.

1:22:29I don't want to hear a fucking hash city than the world is blowing up while I'm doing this. I just want to hear it intelligent or funny people take my mind off shit. Tell me about fatherhood. That's the best one. I don't know. So again, cliche, but it, you know, I, I didn't have my first I was a kid, I was 47, I have two daughters. And I'm so glad I didn't do it, even though I thought it myself as being a good dad, you know, it's like I can't wait to like give myself to something. But to be honest, the way that I worked and the way that I traveled for work and studio and DJing and all that shit, like I wouldn't have been around.

1:23:14So if I had kids back then, I'm sure I would have worked it out. I would have changed my life, but I'm also really grateful for so many reasons to happen when it did, also because that's when I met my wife. And it's amazing, you know, lucky enough to be working mostly in New York. I write my bike. I'm five minutes from home. I can go for bath time and if it's important, come back to the studio. This is the first record I've ever worked on since I've become a dad. And it is a little tough reallining my, that old part of me that was just like, if you're not in the studio for 14 hours, who are you?

1:23:51Or if you're not doing that fucking, not that work ethic or, there are certain things that are true. I think you, you leave the studio for an hour and a half, you are maybe offsetting a, a, a, a, maybe some kind of zone or some kind of flow state that you might have been in, but that all just sounds a bit like, what ifs and excuses to me because I want to be there. I want to be present for my kids. But yes, as I'm working on this record, it is there is this slight push and pull between, but no, but I used to be the guy. And I would drop everything and fly to LA the next day for the chance of working with X person.

1:24:33And it's just like, it's not that anymore. So I know that of course a certain aspect of the music is going to pay the price for that. Tell me about your experience composing for movies. That's a relatively new thing for you, yes. Yes. That I love. Right now it's working on a film at the same time as I'm working on my own record. And when I'm working on my own record, I'm picturing dance floors. I'm picturing who's listening to this. I'm picturing this. There's certain constraints and things that go, I'm writing for the movie. I'm kind of just going off of pure emotion from what I'm getting out of the script.

1:25:16And I know that we'll shift it and whatever will happen when we start to put it to picture there these things. There's a director about me and they're going to be telling me what they want and sure. But there's something without some of those rules of pop music. I find a little bit freer and say what you want about it. I'm just Ken Song from the Barbie film. I had never really written lyrics for a song before. I never really sat down at piano and done the whole thing. I always work with such great lyricists and people with such a strong viewpoint. But I was so inspired by the script and reading it.

1:25:58And I just sat down at piano and came out with that chorus. Like if I was thinking in any way, Shabour formed that Barbie was going to be some blockbuster movie or that anyone was ever going to hear this song like. And I think it goes a little bit back to what we talked about before stretching out a little harmonically and genre wise and getting more experimental and weird, which is what some of my favorite people do when they make pop music anyway. But for some reason in my head I've decided that when I make pop music it's this and when I make film music it's free. I should be fucking bringing some of my film energy into my own music and that would be a good thing to do.

1:26:37Maybe it'll happen eventually. Maybe you'll talk yourself into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how Trent Rasmur, I don't know personally but like Nine Nishnells is one of my favorite fucking bands is the kid of First Album and And he manages to do great 90's, nails records and do really weird score shit. And you know, is the club all about dancing or is there more to it? No, there's definitely more to it. And that's why I called the book Night People because part of it outside of just the DJing and that side, that emotional side of it and the 90's, this isn't what I set out to do when I started, but what started on Ravel was like, oh yeah, we were all out at night.

1:27:24And I say this in one of the chapters, there's like, it's a difference. There's people who enjoy a night out, and then there's night people. Night people is like, you kind of live for the night. You're kind of like, maybe you're a little broken, a little damaged, I mean, everybody is right, but like there's something in the day that makes life, like it's just a little bit tough, and night gives you this coat of armor or maybe this extra sense of sort of confidence or swagger and also, you know, God knows it's like if he took drugs, it's probably most likely you're doing that at night. There's something that we're running from, running to, I'm not sure, but there was a community of us and there are also people who are night people because they really just love to dance and they love music or they love the sense of commune.

1:28:16And there's people that loved it because they wanted to fucking go and get laid, people want to get fucked up. But I wanted to look at that. And there's no set definition to this. It's a term I kind of made up. Like in there's no, I'm not a psychologist. Like I'm not getting to the bottom of like everybody's saying of why they're out. But I just noticed in my community there was that. And I know for me, I liked it because I loved DJing because I grew up in kind of like broken home and it was some, it wasn't the most pleasant place to be. And I like the idea of this booth that was this thing that I could like shut out the world essentially.

1:28:56Like I am the command of this thing and every fucking fader and dial bends this fucking place that the way I want and there was a little bit of that. And I also, I took drugs and I'm sure I was like running, I was, I presented as being so together and functioning, but then a couple nights a week when the gig was over, I would go on to obliterate my mind. So night life is, yeah, it's certainly more than just about the club.

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