came out in the early ’80s. Those and the Hollywood and Bits & Pieces mixes that had started coming out in the late ’70s would get played on New York radio at the time, especially on WKTU. They were really sophisticated. It was almost like a medley; you’d hear a hundred or so snippets. I didn’t know how they did it, and tried to figure it out by doing pause recordings with cassettes. It was like wanting to learn to drive a car but, all of a sudden, you’re watching pilots fly planes.
amazing to hear one song on one side of a whole record. It was also the first record that I realized had a pseudonym for the producer because the Universal Robot Band [at the time] was just Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael.
How did your early years studying piano, guitar, voice, bass, and drums influence your direction?
I didn’t master an instrument, but I realized that by taking lessons, getting into 12-inch singles, and listening to records the way my father showed me, I found myself producing in my mind.
When did you start clubbing in New York?
I was probably fifteen. There were discos all over. In Brooklyn, there was one on my corner called Plaza Suite. It was a residential neighborhood but they would have Diana Ross come through to perform with Jimmy “Bo” Horne or Sylvester. People would get dressed up, looking really sharp. The first club I went to in the city was the Underground in Union Square. I didn’t know who the DJs were, and I wasn’t even asking. I was a teenager going out with friends to hang out and meet girls. In the later ’80s, I went to the Loft when it was in the East Village. It was David Mancuso’s home. The fact that you had to be invited, or come with someone invited, made it feel like you were entering a friends and family gathering. He was very concentrated in what he was doing, rightfully solid. He would never mix—he would just let the full records play, and sometimes clap between his selections. Dancing on the dance floor felt like floating because everyone had the same intense energy. It was a euphoric feeling.
Could you take us back to listening to New York radio mixshows, and how they inspired your journey?
Back in the ’70s and ’80s, you didn’t have to go to the club. If you opened your door, club music would be on the street, in the cars, stores, at the beach. After we moved to Utah when I was ten or eleven, I realized that something was missing, and asked friends to send me tapes.When I’d go back to NewYork to visit family during summers and holidays, I’d sleep with the box next to my bed. In the late ’70s, there was Ted Currier at WKTU, and Shep Pettibone [later of WRKS, aka KISS FM].And then, woven into the early ’80s,Tony Humphries [at KISS FM] and Boyd Jarvis and Timmy Regisford on WBLS. Frankie Crocker at WBLS would go to the [Paradise] Garage, listen to what was being played, and bring those to the radio. It was as if radio was a loudspeaker to the city directly from the club. Big Apple [Productions] mixes were bootleg vinyl mixes that
42 WaxPoetics
( top ) Jimmy “Bo” Horne performing at Plaza Suite Club in Brooklyn in the early 1980s, as a young Victor Simonelli (second row center, in gray vest) looks on from the crowd. Photo courtesy of Victor Simonelli.
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