mine from NYU,Adam Goldstone, was really into club culture. He started bringing me to parties [around] Lower Broadway, like Payday. Then there was Tracks on the West Side and Save the Robots in the East Village, which was a lot of fun because it was after hours and so sleazy. But the one that had a major, major influence on me was the Shelter with Timmy Regisford.
show called Nocturnal Emissions , where I heard Brian Eno for the first time. On the other end of the dial was Kiss 108, run by Sunny Joe White. He had come from a Black AM station called WILD. He was playing stuff from the Paradise Garage. So I was getting turned onto things like D Train, alongside Prince and Rick James.
You mentioned the Garage. When did you start having an interest in New York?
Why did the Shelter make such an impression on you?
It was a mainly Black and Latino crowd, some of whom had been around for fifteen, twenty years. A real Garage crowd— they’ve been dancing for that long. And they [would] pass that on to the younger generation, both with how they dance and the way they are into the music and the spirit of the dance. I’m really fortunate, because it was such a great emotional, beautiful, and holistic experience.You’re being taught by the generation before you, you know, because I was one of the young ones. I was in my early twenties and some of them [were] in their forties. That seemed so old at the time. I feel blessed that my history in dance music started in New York properly.
I was obsessed with the Velvet Underground, and that side of New York. I was an indie kid in many ways but I was also into hip-hop from New York: Run-DMC, Eric B. & Rakim. There was this record by IRT called “Watch the Closing Doors.” It had this great story rap [about] taking the subway on the whole line. And it was so cinematic. Some friends and I drove to New York one day and I saw [Keith Haring’s] Crack Is Wack mural in East Harlem. I just had this burning desire to live in the city.
So you’re in New York in 1986. When did you start experiencing the cultural life there?
I was mainly going to live shows to begin with. But a friend of
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( clockwise from top left) Flyer for the Aqua Booty party at New York’s Bar Room 432, circa mid-’90s; Tokyo photo booth slides; with fellow WNYU DJ Chris Cullen at JOGZ FM in Nagoya, Japan, in 1989; with DJ Nori in Sapporo, in 1997.
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