Co-produced by Silverman, co-engineered
by Robin Halpin, the track was another wild anthem for
New York's merging tribes.
Even wilder was the remix by Double Dee & Steinski.
Entered for a mix contest by two radio engineer/producers,
Steve Stein and Douglas Di Franco, their "Payoff
Mix" of "Play That Beat Mr. D.J." was
greeted with a standing ovation by a judging panel comprised
of Silverman, Bambaataa, Soul Sonic Force, Jellybean
and Arthur Baker. The inspiration for virtually every
scratch 'n' sample record that has followed, "The
Payoff Mix" cut in everything from a salesman's
power closing techniques to Humphrey Bogart, escapologist
Harry Houdini and Fiorello LaGuardia, the ex-mayor of
New York.
Though never officially released to this day, due to
the problems of clearing so many copyrights, "The
Payoff Mix" was pressed on a limited edition promo
12 inch, backed with "Lesson Two (James Brown Mix)".
Even the cognoscenti had to ask what some of the samples
were. "Friday comes, we get to The Roxy,"
Steinski recalled in 1985. "Bambaataa's up there
playing records. Mr. Biggs comes up to us and it's deafeningly
loud in there. 'Say, what is that break where the guy
goes HAH HAH HAH HAH?' he shouts. I said, 'Oh, that's
Rufus Thomas'. Then he goes up and yanks on Bambaataa's
pants leg while he's Djing and yells, 'RUFUS THOMAS!'
That was pretty funny."
On the business front, the learning curve was steep.
By this time, Silverman had launched the New Music Seminar.
Monica Lynch was running from one task to the next,
overseeing manufacture and production as well as escorting
curiosity seekers like Martin Scorcese up to the Bronx
to check out this strange new scene. "Basically
I was also the person who fielded all the press enquiries,"
she says, "deal with a person who wanted Zulu beads
and worry about whether Mr. Biggs was gonna bring his
Viking crown with him." She also had to extract
cheques from distributors who were past-masters at the
art of delaying payment.
"We had to get distribution really fast,"
says Silverman. "It was a tough time in the record
business. It was when the indies were getting hit hard
because Arista, A&M, Chrysalis and Motown all left
the indies a year after I had 'Planet Rock'. Half of
the distributors went out of business and didn't pay
me. That was really tough because I didn't realise that
you could sell people records and then not get paid
for them. That really hurt me. I think I lost about
$100,000 which was more money than I'd ever seen before."
"Looking For the Perfect Beat" was the vital
Soul Sonic Force sequel to "Planet Rock".
"Boy, that took eight months to make," says
Arthur Baker. "Probably cost 10 to 15000 dollars
to make. Just because, when you're doing a follow up
to a record as great as 'Planet Rock' you get paranoid,
you're never really comfortable with what you have.
You get real nervous because you have to live up to
what made the last record great. With 'Perfect Beat'
it took a long time because I was never satisfied, but
critically the feedback we got on that record was even
better. Robert Palmer, New York Times, picked it as
his single of the year. It sold maybe a fifth of the
copies but I think it stood up more because 'Planet
Rock' was real simple and 'Looking For the Perfect Beat'
was real complex. We knew that rock and roll people
would like it and black people would like it."
The music that Baker and Robie were producing was getting
harder, but at the same time they were filling up the
multitracks with overdubs. "Renegades of Funk",
for example, mixed Zulu chants and percussion breakdowns
with passing references to Kraftwerk and Trinidadian
Soca. With so much happening in the tracks and more
money available to pay for studio time, the edits and
mixes threatened to last for eternity. Silverman produced
his own epic mix of "Renegades of Funk", so
long it couldn't be released. As for "Frantic Situation",
recorded for Beat Street, Steve Knutson (compiler of
Greatest Beats) has grim memories of being dispatched
to Baker's Shakedown Sound studio to collect the mixes.
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