oldschool dj, lover and collector...
I first got in contact with Hip Hop - or should I say "rap" - when I heard rappers delight in 1979. I liked it, because I loved the groove and the totaly new style of rhymes over a beat. But I didn't know anything about Hip Hop.In 1982 I was in a disco where a dj was playin Planet rock and he told me that a friend of him just came back from USA and he saw all goin wild on that tune - so his friend was demonstrating later on, what he saw over there - Breakdance ...
From there on it was my mission to get more informations about all that rap stuff - and I went on to become a DJ. I tought myself how to mix and how to scratch, simply because I knew nobody that could have shown me that in these days back there. I first started scratchin without a mixer with my Dual CS607 - the turntable had that ultra low mass needle-system. I guess that was the reason, why the needle broke and was spinning arround on the record, while the rest of the system was sliding accross the record and got stucked on the slipmate ... I bought a new needle (about 60 $) which was very expensive for me. So I decided to use my old Dual 1224 which was a belt drive one with a pitch that was to handle with a screw - that means I had to put in a screwdriver. I bought a Sure needle which was the N75 if I remember that right. Now I was able to scratch as I heard it from Jam Master Jay on a live show in 1983 in Hamburg.
But there was a difference between my sound and his - So one day I saw a TV-show with Grandmixer DST, there he was showing the audience how he was cuttin' - he did backspinns with Pack Jam and scratches with "fresh" AND now I saw what I got to get : a Mixer ! - that sounds stupid to you, doesn't it ? - but thats how it was for me - All other people were listening to discoor rock/pop music - no one could understand or help me with all that.
I was learning a job called "radio and TV technican" and so I started building my first own "Mixer" - It was just a fader between the on and two - so I was able to mix records together and doing this phasing effect - oohhh, I felt like I was the king ... Later on I built my first real mixer with faders for each turntable but there was another thing that should get a great handicap for me : I had no cue on the Mixer. I had to turn down the volume in my room to listen to the sound of the needle to get ma mix done. After that was too complicated for me I decided to buy a mixer. It was a vivanco without a crossfader. But I added a crossfader to it. Later I got a Monacor Mixer MPX 7000 from ma man DJ Cutsfaster - he wrecked it down with a try to repait it by hisself with a tool that was made to repair old trains, after they were exploded. But I fixed it all and I had my first Mixer with a crossfader. That was the time were DJ Cutsfaster and I had dayly battles in his room or on the telephone... as I had years before with my man Trouble Tee.
I could tell much more about all that, if I only knew that you are still alive... ;)