Remember, this was really in the disco times, so the idea of a record fading out and coming back [as the LP version does] was taboo. People who did that had a place, like the Loft or the Garage, where they excelled at things like that. But that was an underground club, completely controlled by the DJ, and nobody was going to tell him, “What are you doing?” In the normal world, at all these popular clubs, you’d do that and you were really going out on a limb. Maybe you’d want to use that limb for another thing and not that record! So it wasn’t that common [to hear the album version]. People were very locked into playing straightahead. When David [Mancuso] started, he wasn’t really beat mixing, but he was blending. I mean, he had a mixer, but he didn’t have a monitor. He had his booth up a little ways from the floor, and the music low enough that you were up in this closed booth, and you could hear the grooves from the record [being cued]. He could hear where the break was; he’d see the grooves. He’d be pulling it back, he’d see that there’s only a few seconds left, and he’d kinda feel the timing of the record and then do the blend. It was that kind of haphazard thing. That was very common the first few years of the ’70s. As the ’70s went on, and more people were beat mixing, David’s style became unique. At the Garage, in the beginning, Larry Levan was a mixaholic—even though people got used to hearing him not mix towards the end. He was making long mixes, train wrecks even. [ laughs ] Actually, I thought he was very good. But he made good mixes, bad mixes, it was all mixing, no letting a record stop. In fact, if you heard something like that, it would be something to talk about: “Ooh, he did this,” and it was a terrible moment.
but none of them really got it the way I did. I loved this record.
Did you play it out?
Well, that was the problem. I did play it out. I tried to pick a time when people were really listening or a time when it didn’t matter as much. But almost every time I played it, I had a problem. I would really risk my job because I was playing this record. The owner or someone who mattered would inevitably come over and say, “ What are you doing? This is something to play at home. Don’t let me tell you again.” People like Larry or David were very fortunate to have their own environment where they could experiment, but I had to support myself with a lot of jobs, and so I had to put this away. Towards the end of the ’90s, though, I was pulling this out again, and not only was it a big record, it was a huge record— especially in Japan. It was like it had always been this huge classic—which it wasn’t. It was a classic in my mind but not on the dance floor! It was just kind of an example of all the records I bought for myself that I believed in that finally had a place. To this day, I still love to pull out these things that never got the opportunity then but should’ve. People are searching for records that haven’t been burned out. Back then, a lot of the songs that are so played-out now were new, and I would play things over and over again in my house. I got a new record and I would play it all day, play it all week. I had an unbelievable sound system in my room. I don’t know how the neighbors dealt with it! I bought this sound system from this place called the Dom, it was below the Electric Circus on St. Mark’s Place. It had these huge Altec-Lansing speakers. They were home models, but they were huge; they’d cover up part of the window in my room! One time, I had been playing this record over and over in my room, and my neighbors, a young couple, stopped me in the elevator. “We like music,” they said, “but you’re kind of stuck on this one record, [First Choice’s] ‘Doctor Love,’ and we’re wondering if you could give it a break.” By the time they stopped me, I was pretty much over this record and on to the next, so it was easy for me to say “sure.” One of the walls of my room was part of their hallway or something, and I could hear them once in a while. About six months later, as I’m playing records for my friends and there’s a little silence, we hear in the background “Doctor Love...” and they’re pumping it in their house! I could hear them singing along to the record. Apparently, I’d brainwashed them into liking this record. I wasn’t playing it, so I guess they missed it! Loose Ends “Love’s Got Me (David Morales Mix)” (10 Records/ MCA) 1990
Mandré “Solar Flight (Opus 1)” from Mandré (Motown) 1977
Multi-instrumentalist Andre Lewis released three LPs for Motown under the pseudonym Mandré. The “Masked Music Man,” as he portrayed himself, collaborated here with his wife Maxayn Lewis and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Krivit: This is an example of an extreme taste. This was one that never came out on 12-inch, so I played the album cut. I used to go to Ones after-hours when it was closed. I had the keys, and I would go in, turn the sound system on, put a chair in the middle of the floor, and put this on. It was like having a giant set of headphones, and I’d just be in heaven. I would never do that now. It just shows where my head was at then: I was listening to songs, like, fifty times in a row. I had nothing but time. [Today] for me to listen to a record several times would really say a lot about that record. But Mandré was a record that I would play to death, play it for all my friends. They liked it,
From the London group’s 1990 LP, Look How Long , it’s
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