Too weird for BUDS Distribution

(Double apologies: I haven’t written a post in awhile and this one is long.)

I clearly don’t remember exactly when quite a few things happened in those early days. That’s not for any exciting reasons, it’s just because a lot of things happened really fast and there really wasn’t any reason to think that what was happening was noteworthy from any sort of historical perspective.

This post is about the Deep Puddle Dynamics “Rain Men” 12 inch, which features my remix as the A-side. To be honest, I don’t remember if I did this remix before all of the Stuffed Animals recordings happened or if it was after. I am going to guess that it was after Stuffed Animals because this really felt like a defining moment for me. It was the first thing that I did that seemed to get a lot of enthusiastic praise from my musical circle at the time. Looking at the back of the 12 inch, I really have no idea when some of these things came out:

The record is dated 1999 and all of the “Recommended Listenings” seem to have come out in 1999 too, although the cover for Bottle of Humans is not one used for the official release (maybe not any release - there were a series of 1999 bootlegs that preceded the actual release in 2000). The “Coming Soon” section has two 1999 releases (Sixtoo and Mayo) and a 2000 release (Them). Where this Deep Puddle 12 inch falls in 1999….

I have no idea, but here are a bunch of random things I remember.

The Origins

In 1996 or 1997, I responded to a posting on the Invisible Skratch Piklz website about a brand new Vestax 06 Pro demo model they had for sale. I drove up to Daly City, expecting to hand over the money in a parking lot and scram. To my surprise, when I pulled up to the apartment complex, the legendary Toadman looked out a window and said “are you Tommy? Head on up.” Instead of the expected quick sale, I hung out with Yoga Frog, Toadman, and D-Styles all afternoon. A-trak called the house and D-Styles demonstrated a new drum scratch he had worked out. They gave me snacks and free stuff. Just like in the Turntable TV videos, Toadman fell asleep. Deep asleep, right there on the floor. D-Styles said “watch this” and banged pans next to Toadman’s head and he didn’t register a thing. It was an amazingly fun day. They told me I could come hang out anytime, but I never imagined I really would.

A year or two later, I borrowed a modified Emu SP12 from Rev. Destructo. I don’t know if it was broken or if I just couldn’t get the hang of it, but I ended up not wanting to use it and I was going to help facilitate its sale. To my surprise, I was told that D-Styles was going to come to my parent’s house to check it out. When he arrived, I reminded him of the day I went to his house to buy a mixer from Yoga Frog. We became friends that day and ended up staying in touch.

I forget how it came up, but I told D-Styles about this collection of Atari game chips I had. My next-door neighbor did some work on the games and we ended up with a collection of chips that you’d attach to a board. It was basically the games without the fancy plastic outer case. The guts. I told D he could have them and I brought them to his parent’s house, which was also the location of the “Shit Palace” aka his studio. He had an original Roland 808 and I brought my MPC to sample all of the sounds off of it. He showed me some records. We were all geeking over drum breaks back then and it was always fun to say “you know about this….?”.

What does all of this have to do with the Deep Puddle remix? Well, D-Styles showed me the drums that make up the core of that remix. I can’t remember if he gave me a copy or if I just made a note and then found a copy. This was the late 90s, so I am guessing he gave me a copy because that seems unlikely that I actually found a copy soon after learning about it. Either way, full credit to D-Styles for introducing me to that break.

The Acapella

I don’t know if I was asked to do a remix or if I asked to do one. Odds are pretty good that I asked. I still had my DAT recorder, so Sole gave me a DAT with some vocals on it. It is labeled as “Rain” and also has Anomaly’s phone number on the front. I never met him, but I am sorry to see that he just passed away in February.

As you can see, “Savior” is crossed out. I didn’t realize it until this moment, but 3 people who were recorded on this tape are no longer with us (Anomaly, Eyedea, and Alias).

Heavy.

Maxed out RAM

When I bought my MPC2000 in 1998, I couldn’t afford any of the upgrades like effects or additional outputs. I believe it had a pretty decent 32 seconds of built in sample time, but after learning that I could expand the RAM myself, I went to Fry’s and bought the max. Extremely nervous, with anti-static gloves on and a warning to my parents not come near me while I was working, I swapped out the RAM and bumped the sample time up to something silly like 6 minutes. These days, we don’t really think about max sample time because we have so many more options, but back then it did make a difference.

The reason the RAM is important to this remix is because the MPC was my main workstation. I didn’t really have any gear that I could use to reliably line up tracks for a remix. The only thing that did make sense to me was to sample the entire acapellla for the song. One long file…I think it’s maybe 4 minutes or longer. There are a lot of ways I could have been creative and worked smarter, but that’s what I did. I sampled the entire acapella and made the beat keep pace.

Since I was working on an MPC2000 and Jel’s original was made on an SP1200 and the song was recorded to tape, even syncing things up to the same tempo wouldn’t keep it locked for the entirety of the song. There’s enough natural fluctuation built in that it would fall off eventually. With that in mind, I made some sequences in one tempo and some in another, so they could basically speed up or slow down. Nowadays, you can nudge and fine tune anything with the click of a mouse, but I definitely was not working on a computer at this point.

The Structure

It doesn’t seem like the remix is streaming anywhere, but you can listen to it on YouTube. I started things out with the string sample and the dialog. It just seemed like a perfect fit since it mentioned the rain and that they came one by one. Slug started the Deep Puddle song with a nod to Rakim’s “I’ll take seven emcees, put em in a line” from My Melody, so I did a nod of my own and put Rakim back in. As soon as you hear Slug say “Shoot em and sell their clothes…” that acapella sample is playing in the MPC all the way until the end. It gets triggered once at the very beginning and plays until the end with all of music floating around it. Everything was done inside of the MPC, so any changes you hear were all programmed.

I don’t remember if I originally planned to have each verse be a different type of beat, but the real answer probably has a lot to do with boredom. I think I made. it through Slug and Sole’s verse and felt like it needed to change at that point. I was probably also trying to flex a bit. The first flex was bringing in that second break for Alias’s verse. The second flex was doing that “drum and bass” type change up for Dose’s verse. Looking back, I’m not sure how much of a flex either are, but back then it was me really trying to prove myself. I definitely wanted to impress people. After I did it, I believe 3/4s of Deep Puddle loved it and 1/4 did not. :)

Recording at Eclipse247’s Studio

The only time I have ever recorded in a real studio was for this remix. Only time…in my whole life. Eclipse had a pretty nice home studio and was recording and mixing a variety of things at the time. I owned some of his records, so I was a bit nervous going there. Sole was really good at networking and he was hanging out with and recording with a LOT of people. I’m not sure how he knew Eclipse, but he told me we were going to record and mix the remix at his studio. I drove up to Oakland with my MPC (in its original box) and my Zip drive with all of the files. My MPC didn’t have the 8-outs, so I could only really do a stereo-out. I guess we went one by one and recorded the sounds (samples, drums, and vocals). Hmmmmm? I have no idea. I have no idea if the beat was recorded as a 2 track stereo file or if we actually separated any sounds. I guess it was probably just the vocals and the beat.

Sheesh. Why were we there paying for studio time? I didn’t know anything about that stuff. Either Eclipse set things up with MIDI or we kept it simple. I imagine he wondered who this know-nothing kid was and why he had to waste his time tracking my beat. I wish I could go back and relive that moment (probably having a few good laughs).

Additional Notes (speed round)

• I must have originally made this remix in early 1999, because it was released on vinyl in 1999 and I also did a class presentation on “How to do a remix” and that had to have been around April or May of 1999. I brought my MPC to class and explained what I did and played part or it. It was an Electronic Music class, so I actually talked about SMPTE and MIDI and ways that it should have been done.

• This was the first thing I ever had on vinyl. When I first heard it, I actually hated it. It sounded kind of blown out and distorted to me. It eventually grew on me and the distortion is probably an asset.

• The (radio edit) on the 12-inch is something that Eclipse did. Sole explained where the curses were and he was going to mute them. Eclipse did the little scratch sounds to cover things up. That wasn’t me. :)

• While doing the radio edit, I heard the Bjork line for the first time. I always thought Slug said “If I ever blow up, I want it fucking pure.” Sole told me what he really said.

• Since I made it all inside of my MPC, if I needed to listen to something at the end of the song, I had to listen to everything that led up to it. The acapella sample started at the beginning and wouldn’t play at the end unless I just let the entire thing run for 4 minutes. I must have sank hours and hours into this.

• I remixed the song again on Left Handed Straw, but I led in with an interlude that was a nod to the original remix. The LHS remix is more upbeat and jazzy.

• In my opinion, this is the first “Controller 7” song. One of my old coworkers from Rasputin’s told me that it didn’t sound like me (he was used to the stuff on my first two tapes), but I think it was actually the first time I was able to get close to a sound that still sounds close to what I might make these days.

• It may have happened more than once, but I actually got to see all 4 members (Slug, Sole, Alias, and Dose) perform “Rain Men” live at Rico’s in SF and they did it over my remix instrumental from the 12 inch. That was an exciting moment for me.

Too weird for BUDS Distribution?

The Deep Puddle Dynamics “Rain Men” 12 inch was distributed by BUDS Distribution. When this came out, artists were selling big numbers of 12 inch singles through stores and online retailers like Sandbox Automatic. People were making decent money, but if I remember things correctly, this was anything but successful. I remember Sole saying that he had a phone call with BUDS and they said the record was too weird and they dropped them from distribution. I’m not sure if copies were trashed, but they didn’t have any interest in pushing it and they definitely didn't press more copies of it. Looking at the Discogs page for BUDS, they were probably right. It might have been too weird.

Another one of those mysteriously dated disks. I didn't own the MPC on 2/27/98, but maybe that says 99? There are 3 floppies. It was later on a Zip disk.

Rain Men 12 inch single with art by REKA.