"I was always into Kraftwerk,
Yellow Magic Orchestra, Gary Numan. I said, there is
no black group out here that plays strictly electronics.
Herbie Hancock and all of them did that but I'm talking
about a strict funk type of groove.
I thought it was just gonna please the punk rockers
and the hip-hoppers, but suddenly you started seeing
Chinese people singing it, Chicanos, other people, and
it really amazed me how it took off. After that came
out, every record that came out of New York had beat
boxes and synthesisers."
The team that produced "Planet Rock" was Bambaataa
and his MCs - G.L.O.B.E., Mr. Biggs and Pow Wow - along
with Tom Silverman, Arthur Baker and a keyboard player
named John Robie. Robie had produced a synthesiser track
for DiscoNet called "Vena Cava". Having met
Baker, Bambaataa and Silverman, he was invited to the
session.
"We did the music in one night," says Baker,
"and we did the music for 'Play At Your Own Risk',
which was Planet Patrol. We did that the same night.
Two days later we did the rap. It took a while for the
rap. We fought a lot about the rap. Soul Sonic Force,
they didn't like how the record sounded. They didn't
trust us because we'd only just met so they slept out
in the lounge so they could get cassettes. They thought
we were going to fuck it up, basically. There were mistakes
in it and they wanted to keep going for perfection.
I said, rap records aren't perfection. What makes a
rap record great are the little things that happen by
accident that you keep in."
Silverman laughs about one of those accidents. "Pow
Wow forgot the words," he says, "and he went
'Zuh-zuh-zuh, zuh-zuh-zuh'. I said, keep it, that's
great. He was always spaced out, this guy." Programmed
by John Robie on a Roland 808 drum machine and the studio
synthesisers, the track featured a huge orchestral chord
played on the Fairlight sampling keyboard. "Can
you play the orchestra hit polyphonically, like 10 orchestras
hitting at the same time," Silverman had asked.
"That ended up on a billion records afterwards,"
he adds.
Musically and lyrically, the track was revolutionary.
The style of rap, called MC Popping, had been invented
by G.L.O.B.E., a rapper who had met Bambaataa at Bronx
River High School. "MC Popping was pauses and phases,"
Bambaataa explains. "It was symbolic. Chase your
dreams, jump out your seat, if you can't do it on your
own, socialise. Anything that's your perfect beat -
love, astrology, sex, music, whatever it is - that's
your perfect beat. I like to keep reality and the fun
stuff mixed together."
From the first moments of its recording history, hip-hop
had encountered problems with copyright. The Sugarhill
Gang's "Rapper's Delight", for example, infringed
copyright on Chic's "Good Times". As for "Planet
Rock", the lead melody was Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe
Express", with a second melody taken from Babe
Ruth's "The Mexican", originally composed
by Ennio Morricone for Sergio Leone's spaghetti western,
For a Few Dollars More.
"We liked it, we danced to it," said Kraftwerk's
Ralf Hutter, asked if he felt flattered by "Planet
Rock". "Before, we were like outsiders. We've
been attacked or put down and suddenly you get artistic
response. It's wonderful in a way." Less wonderful
for Tommy Boy was the predatory response from the publishing
company who handled "Trans-Europe Express",
No Hassle Music. With "Planet Rock" growing
into a huge hit, their demands for payment reflected
the success of the record. "I had to settle for
a number three times higher than anybody pays now for
publishing clearing," Silverman says. "They
were trying to get 25 cents a record. I think I ended
up paying 7 and a half cents. It was highway robbery.
They were getting 200 per cent of the publishing. It
was outrageous."
With "Planet Rock", Afrika Bambaataa and Tommy
Boy rocket-launched a futuristic new sound, a black
science fiction music that exploited cutting edge technology
in a way that was totally accessible to young street
kids. Planet Patrol's "Play At Your Own Risk"
was inspired by the craze for electronic arcade games
like Pac Man, Defender and Galaxian. The track was recorded
on the same strip of |
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