808 Page #2

The vibrant beats and break scene was being

led by a group of DJ's from the Bronx.

Inspired by legends like Kool

DJ Herc and Kool DJ Dee.

Block parties were popular and

a place for DJ's to experiment,

isolating percussive breaks

in popular songs.

One of the key figures in this

scene was DJ Afrika Bambaataa,

the self styled leader

of the Zulu Nation.

Back in the early days we was

playing a lot of different music

dealing with the soul and the funk

that was happening at the time.

I was also into a group called

Yellow Magic Orchestra

from Japan and a group

from Germany

that struck a big chord in

myself was Kraftwerk.

So with the funk of James

Brown, Sly and the Family Stone,

Uncle George 'Parliament

Funkadelic' Clinton,

and also my, my homeboy

Gary Numan,

I decided to mash it up, thus became the birth

of this sound called the electro funk sound.

Get up for the down stroke

In the late 70's, future Tommy Boy

Records founder Tom Silverman

was working on his magazine

Dance Music Report,

when he heard about Bambaataa.

I heard about this thing that was happening

called The Breakbeat Room at Downstairs Records,

and this was a record

store that was down in,

down below on the way to the subways

on 6th Avenue and 43rd Street,

and there was a line

out the door

of kids like sixteen and seventeen

year old kids, black kids,

waiting to get to the front so

that they could buy these records

and it was like a phenomenon,

I'd never seen anything like it.

I said what is... What's going on, and what

do these records have to do with each other?

And the kids would say that these are the

records that Afrika Bambaataa plays.

And so I asked the guy who was sort

of running that part of the store

selling records about how I

could reach Bambaataa,

and he gave me a phone number

and I called Bambaataa

and he told me, "Come

up and hear me play,

"I'm playing at the T-Connection on

Thursday night," or whatever it is,

and I went up to, to hear him

spin.

It was a disco, T-Connection it was

on White Plains Road in the Bronx.

There were some guys at the door and

I said I was here to see Bambaataa

and I think they looked at me like they had

never seen a white guy in the club ever.

They wanted to know who was

this black young man

who was playing all of these

different sounds of music

to a large black,

Latino audience.

They were hearing about me and the

different songs I was playing.

This is the time when we was just

giving the birth of hip hop.

I asked Bambaataa that night, I said,

"Do you want to make a record?"

and he said, "OK." And I never

made a record before,

I didn't really know

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