| A Long-Lost Record, Found From October 1999 In 1979, the first official rap record was released: the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight." (There were several other singles that vie for that honor, but this one has the official title.) I recall seeing the single in a record store at the time. Even though I had never heard it, I thought it was ridiculous. The ignorance of youth.  In late 1983, Tommy Boy Records (a leading hip-hop label) released G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid's "Play That Beat Mr. DJ." Dissatisfied with the amount of airplay the song was receiving, Tommy Boy held a contest for DJs and re-mixers: come up with a new mix of the single and win a prize.The winning entry was "The Payoff Mix," by Double Dee and Steinski. In civilian life, Douglas DiFranco was a recording engineer; Steve Stein was in advertising. The mix was put out on the DiscoNet anthology, which went to radio stations. It was a terrific success. I lived in L.A. at the time and had begun listening to KDAY, a now legendary AM radio station.* It's pretty easy to hear rap on the radio these days. Back then, KDAY was about the only place you could find it. For all I know, it was the first hip-hop radio format in the country. When I heard that song, I was immediately captured. What Double Dee and Steinski has done was sonically interpret the lyrics:
Pop music, salsa, rock & roll Calypso, reggae, rhythm & blues Master mix those number one tunes I instantly went out and bought the 12-inch single, but was disappointed, because it was the original mix. Tommy Boy never released "The Payoff Mix" legitimately, mostly because there was no legal clearance for the samples used. Two later mixes followed: the "James Brown Mix" and "Lesson Three (History of Hip-hop Mix)." Collectively, the trio is known as Lessons 1, 2 & 3. I was unaware of the whole context and thought of my song as simply a lost radio re-mix. According to David Toop (in his book The Rap Attack), if you called Tommy Boy Records in early 1984, as long as you were kept on hold, you heard "The Payoff Mix." He described it as being "Like a long subway ride with the doors opening onto a different kind of music at every stop…" In 1989, music critic Dave Marsh wrote The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. Clocking in at #212 was "The Payoff Mix," giving me the story of my lost record for the first time. I was in despair of ever finding it. I didn't even know anyone who was familiar with the song. By around 1994, with the rise of the Web, I had a new resource. At various search engines, I would enter "Steinksi," who had followed up "The Payoff Mix" with other records (such as "The Motorcade Sped On," which cut together samples of news coverage of the Kennedy assassination over a dance beat.). Just recently, I made contact with someone on the Internet who had a copy of "The Payoff Mix." I traded for it. After 16 years, I finally had it. How was it? On first listen, a disappointment - as are most things, after that long. After a couple plays, however, I'm right back in that delicious groove. I have my long-lost record at last. My new goal is to get a better copy. [Editorial note: I did finally get a bootleg CD a few years later, and now the tracks are fairly easily available on the Internet or through P2P networks. What was once hard work, is now child's play.] * If you were in New York, you probably heard "The Payoff Mix" on WKTU. |