Either late 1998 or early 1999, I was planning to go to Berkeley for the day because there was going to be an outdoor show at People’s Park, which is right around the corner from Amoeba Records. Sole was going to be performing and he said he was going to do one of the songs I produced, I think “Dismantling of Sole’s Ego.” That same day, I got a big envelope from UC Berkeley saying that I got in. Pretty exciting day. I remember going to the show and telling them that I got in. I haven’t really thought about that until right now. It probably did feel like a really big culmination of things. The really exciting part was that I was going to be living in the East Bay, close to all of my new music friends.
My school ID says it was issued in July of 1999. On the inside of the Left Handed Straw CD sleeve, I noted that it was recorded between 12/99 and 5/00. I don’t remember all the specifics because a lot of things happened fast, but a good portion of the beats that ended up on Left Handed Straw were probably made between April and December of 1999. I know I started “Yellow” when I still lived at home with my parents. My mom told me that she recognized the sample. I don’t know if she just knew the song or the actual record I sampled. I know I made “The Place Where Smiles Hide” in the Summer of 1999 because I was subletting a friend’s room right near campus and they raised the rent two weeks before school started and we had to move.
I ended up living in a small studio apartment about 2 blocks from Amoeba and 4 blocks from campus. It was really damp and I had to run a dehumidifier all the time. This is where I made the majority of Left Handed Straw:
I built all of the shelves. I just laughed as I typed that. My turntables were on a table I made out of an old door and upholstered with a sheet. It had two shelves and a space underneath it for my subwoofer, which was from my brother’s car. On the right, there’s a shelf where I sat and made beats. There’s a box of records on the floor, my MPC2000 was on a shelf above that, a shelf with a reverb unit and a minidisc 4 track above that, and on top there was a CD player, my Numark mixer, and some crappy stereo speakers. I really didn’t have a lot of records back then. Looking at the sleeves, you can tell a lot of them are newer stuff I’d listen to and not sample.
There’s a Cat Power poster on the wall. Believe it or not, I was listening to Cat Power a lot during this time period. So much so that I had a poster right there in the center, with an RCA cable strung across. The neighbor’s shower would leak into mine and I had a plastic bag pinned to the ceiling to catch the slow drip. Sometimes a gang of about 15 raccoons would show up outside of my door and would try to get inside.
I made LHS chronologically on a minidisc 4 track, meaning that I started at the beginning and pieced it together until I got to the end. There was no moving anything around, at least not easily. If I decided to take something out, I had to replace it with something that was exactly the same length. I only did that once or twice. It wasn’t like moving things around in a DAW.
I must have done the intro track in early December of 1999. I can remember piecing it together in that studio apartment. Movie Trailer was a beat from the Stuffed Animal sessions and I really liked it. I think it was also pretty popular among the people who had heard it, so I guess that’s why I started things out with that. The drums from that song are from an instructional drum VHS tape. At the time, we had lots of stupid rules about sampling vinyl and what was cool and what wasn’t so it was sorta different that I got them off that VHS tape, but they were also undeniably good drums.
“Stane” was also made in December. I can remember sitting in my apartment, piecing that one together. It was done a little different than my usual process. In those days, I would make everything in the MPC and sequence out all of the changes. “Stane” was pieced together on the 4-track, with some elements laid down and then me dropping in the drums live so that I could stay more loose and follow the main sample. The name “Stane” is a nod to two of the sample sources.
“Love” is an interlude that was a nod to the beat I made for Sole’s “Furthermore.” When I was making LHS, I didn’t want to use anything that had already come out. Instead of using beats that had already been used, I would reference them with their sample sources. It seems overly humble in retrospect, but I honestly didn't think I was making something that would be released. I was making a mixtape for my friends. I wanted something that would showcase all the different things I’d been working on. Since Stuffed Animals never really materialized, I felt kind of bummed that those beats wouldn’t really be used on anything. It ended up being a collections of various beats, soundscapes, and jokes and references.
“Bunny Slippers” is probably the last time-specific memory I have. I had been away at college for a few months and I was going to go home for Christmas break. I brought my MPC and some records and was going to try to get some music done while I was there. Prior to leaving for school, we’d taken in a stray cat. I had no problems with it then, but when I came back home I found out that I was insanely allergic to it. I couldn’t stop sneezing. My face was dripping all day. The reason I tell that story is because I only made it through two days at my parents’ house before I went back to Berkeley. In those two days, I made the extended drum solo at the end of “Bunny Slippers.” The main beat was from Stuffed Animals, but I wanted to do something different with it. My parents had changed my room into something else, so I had to sleep in my brother’s old room. I programmed those drums in that room. Cat sneeze insanity drums.
So, that first chunk (Intro to Bunny Slippers), was laid down in December of 1999 and it never changed. It felt like a pretty good start, but I have a vague memory of thinking that I would go to my parents’ house for winter break and make the entire project. Thwarted by a cat. Realistically, I wouldn’t have finished it, cat or not cat.
I’ll work through the other songs in future posts.
Bonus pics:
In the previous picture of my studio apartment, there’s a gold record on the shelf. This was an “award” I won at the Vinyl Monkeys Awards Night. Moodswing 9 put together a gathering and had awards for our little crew of producers that we called the Vinyl Monkeys. I won “Most Likely To Be Yoko Ono.” In all honesty, I was kinda “what the fuck?” about it then and I still don’t know how the hell he came up with it. It’s all good. Moodswing is hilarious. The only other award I remember was Alias winning “Most Likely to Sample Rotary Connection.”
In the photo, you can see Moodswing with a crate of records in a shopping cart. This was the Lester Ave. house where Moodswing, Sole, pedestrian, and Scribe lived. It was wood-paneled, kinda dank, and questionably carpeted. Lots of music was made here. Tons of laughs. They would record upstairs on an ADAT. I met Jel here and heard him finger drumming on his SP1200 along to records. In 2022, finger drumming is more commonplace, but in 1999 it was a pretty mind blowing experience. Jel is one of the best to ever do it and he did it before most and did it in a way unlike anyone else. I have some cool memories from that house. It was an inspiring time.
I don’t remember where this falls in the timeline and it might actually be from after LHS came out, but here is a picture of me popping out of Sole’s car. The car was in the parking lot of the Oakland loft space where Sole, Mayo, and Alias lived. Sixtoo lived there for a bit too. This was the same loft space that the Living Legends lived in. It was basically just a large industrial warehouse with plywood rooms that had no ceilings. I have no idea how they survived. There was almost no privacy.
Sole’s car had no back window. We would drive around in this, doing things like going to Tower Records in Emeryville to buy Super VHS tapes to use in the ADAT recorder. My friend went with me to the loft one day and she took this photo of me. I found it quite amusing that I could poke out the back of the car. It also looks like the bumper might be tied on. I have a Sixtoo shirt on. I really don’t know when this was. 1999 or 2000.
So dope to see these pics and read the back story on all this. Left handed straw is one of my favorites!
Shout out to triple-bypass.com... Way (WAY!) ahead of it's time.