With the exception of my man Doogert Houser, the young MD, it turns out that most people are pretty dumb when they are young. Maybe you’ve got a few books in you or you’ve mastered some skill, but chances are that if you’re still a teen…you’re probably a knucklehead. You’re really impressionable and you think so many things are cool (without much scrutiny). Needless to say, I was still a knucklehead when I was 18. Easily amused, easily confused. I was a good kid who went to school, skateboarded all day, and spent the rest of the time watching movies and listening to or working on music.
I saw a movie once and it had a line in it. Maybe it’s a funny line. Maybe it’s stupid. It’s right up knucklehead alley. It inspired the name of my second tape.
“Cross-Eyed Dyslexics” came out a few months after “A waste of tape and paper” but they sound pretty different. The main difference, and something that I think hurts it, is that I started to chop and program drums more. I didn’t know much about breaks, so I didn’t pay enough attention to the sound selection. The funny thing about sampling is that almost anything is possible, but you don’t always know what is possible or how you might apply a technique. I don’t know if there was anything specific that inspired me to start chopping things up more, but I generally blame listening to too much Company Flow (with sincere appreciation for it). The drums on “The Fire In Which you Burn” are both simple and also completely chaotic. I’m not saying every idea I had came from that, but I definitely got hyped on it. I was also hanging out with a bunch of pretty hardcore underground hip hop heads through my connection to the radio show at Santa Clara University. I was too immature and impatient to really figure things out. The stakes were also really low. I had no concept of anyone hearing my music besides my close friends. For lack of a better description, there was a lot of “creative” ideas that were not that creative or musical.
It sure sounds like I do not like the music on this tape. It’s not that I hate it, it just not something that really interests me much. It feels a bit more like a phase, but in all honesty I don’t even remember most of what’s on it. I don’t have a copy of it with the cover. I probably haven’t listened to the whole thing since 2004.
Even though it’s not my favorite, it definitely played an important role in my musical journey. Prior to making this tape, I had shared one of my beats with Drew from the Curbside Radio show. I wasn’t there that day, but Jihad the Roughneck stopped by the show and ended up freestyling over my beat. Third Sight’s “Rhymes Like a Scientist” had just come out and it was a personal favorite of mine. Having Jihad rhyme on one of my beats, even as a radio freestyle, was huge. I was so geeked on it that I thought about ways to press a 12 inch. Reminder: knucklehead. While I never pressed that 12 inch, I did include the freestyle on the tape.
In a previous post, I mentioned getting an audio clip up on an email listserve (somewhat of a technical achievement at the time). Around that same time, I was buying things through ATAK Distribution. Paul (P-Minus) basically had every underground tape or cd. If I remember correctly, he had an open call for demo tapes. I sent a copy of Cross-Eyed Dyslexics to him and he ended up ordering some. I think I sold about 120 tapes total. I dubbed them all myself, so that was a pretty big achievement. Jihad’s presence definitely helped.
I came home from school one day and my dad told me that some guy named Tim Holland called and wanted to talk to me about a record label deal. An eyebrow scrunched for sure. What the heck?! I called the number and it turned out that it wasn’t some label suit, but an extremely sarcastic underground rapper named Sole. He mentioned that he was in a group called Live Poets and that he had just moved to the Bay Area. He happened to be staying at P-Minus’s house and heard my tape while he was there. I didn’t realize it right away, but I had the Live Poets 12 inch and also the Sole and Moodswing9 single that had just come out. Sole asked if I’d want to come hang out in Oakland. I was always looking for people to work on music with, plus these guys had actual records out, so I was in.
That first day, I am pretty sure that I met Moodswing, Sole, Matth, Scribe, and pedestrian. I ended up becoming good friends with Moodswing and Matth. They both taught me about records and Moodswing introduced me to the MPC. Things seemed to move pretty fast back then, so I probably ended up moving to an MPC not long after meeting them. It was a huge investment for me. They did not make music like what was on Cross-Eyed Dyslexics. I am not sure why Sole even called me, but I’d say I’m lucky he did. I’ve always taken my own path with music and have kept to myself for the most part, but there’ve been people along the way who redirected my path.
Moodswing was really serious about samples and drum breaks. Cross-Eyed Dyslexics was not that at all. My record knowledge was minimal at best. He had a portable turntable. It may seem odd now, but that was kind of mind-blowing at the time. They were pretty hard to find and I’d never seen anyone in San Jose with one. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Mood and Matth and they definitely taught me a lot about records. They helped nudge me more towards my own sound.
My first two tapes aren’t really something I consider as part of my discography. Of course they are, but they are the early learning sessions where I hadn’t quite figured out my sound yet. You can hear some of the songs on The Lost Tapes.
up next, I’ll revisit some of the pre-Left Handed Straw productions (Deep Puddle Dynamics “Rain Men” remix, Stuffed Animals, Bottle of Humans).
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