|
 I
recently had a discussion with my girlfriend while one of my best
buddies, Jeff, spun at a nightly event in Houston, Texas. He was
putting on some serious downtempo hip-hop grooves, and I realized
that the records he spun touched me the way only soul music does,
although they weren't soul records at all. We both were wondering
how you could define soul music, and after a heated discussion
I must admit that I preferred the answers from my better part.
To her, soul music is music which touches a chord inside her;
music which infiltrates her mind and reaches deep inside her.
I agree, that's the main purpose of soul and it doesn't matter
if the music is actually rock, pop, hip-hop, classical or, in
fact soul music.
And then there's the music of Jay Denes aka
Naked Music NYC aka Blue 6,
who doesn't stop hitting us with the most soulful music you can
imagine. If soul music is supposed to touch you, Jay's music is
already on a next level because it will take over your entire
body. Therefore, I want to name this kind of music 'deep
soul' and Jay Denes inventor of this new music style. We here
at the UF are proud to feature an exclusive interview with him,
during which he showed me that he's also a very deep and soulful
person who just wants to release good music.
Let me assure you Jay, you do it all the time!
DJ MG
November 1999
The following interview was conducted by DJ MG on 10/19/99:
Hi Jay! How are you?
Pretty good, I'm just making a bunch of samples here...
I can call you back later...
No no, this is just mindless work. Hang on one second...
Why don't you put it on the loudspeakers? I wanna
listen to it!
Nah, you don't wanna hear it. This is businesslike drum machine
stuff I want, that I got from a friend of mine...
Well anyway, I want to thank you for taking the
time for an interview.
Ahh, please!
I know, it's probably no big deal for you, but
it is for us! You have a lot of fans here.
Ahh, OK! Where are you anyway?
I am in Lincoln, Nebraska.
What the hell are you doing there? And it's not a Lincoln, Nebraska
accent you have. Are you German?
Yes.
I am working at UNL.
No kidding, really? I have a friend, I don't know if you know
Leo Windom? He actually makes music too but he works for Realtime.
Leo is actually another Masters in Science guy, and I always talk
to him about it. I'm kind of a technology buff. I forced Leo to
read Ray Kurzweil's book. Have you read his new book "Age Of Spiritual
Machines"?
No.
Yeah, you should read it, it will blow your mind. It's in hardcover
now. I am a huge fan of his! Do you know about Ray Kurzweil? You
know Kurzweil synthesizers, right?
Mmh.
Do you know what an amazing cat this guy is? I mean, Ray Kurzweil
is like a genius. He's the guy who invented the charge-coupled
device, like scanners. He's an artificial intelligence expert,
so he developed a scanner. He also made the first reading machine
for blind people in like 1978 or something. Stevie Wonder bought
number 1! So they became really good friends, and Ray Kurzweil's
dad is a classical composer and conductor, so he always loved
music. And Stevie Wonder called him during the birth of sampling
and said "Hey, I have these sample pianos but they suck. Do you
think you can do anything with artificial intelligence to make
them better?" That's how Kurzweil's company got started. So what
he does is, he starts these companies and when they get successful,
he sells them. Like Kurzweil Synthesizer is owned by Young &
Chang. I don't know who has a patent on his scanner device...
Do you use Kurzweil synthesizers?
Yeah. I own like three of them. I wish I had more like them -
I will actually buy a new one. I just always liked them, but they're
really overpriced. I mean, I wanna buy the new one, the 2600,
but it's like a freaking fortune. 5000 bucks or so.
Do the vibes on your records come from the Kurzweil?
I don't know... I use a lot of sampling - tons of samples and stuff.
And I use a lot of real shit, too. It depends...
Lately I've been running into science-types which is really funny,
'cause in New York I can't say that there are lots of deep people.
You know, I'm not a very well traveled person. I do tend to like
live in a dark room. Four walls... I definitely spend a lot of
time in a windowless studio...
... which is great because we can enjoy the results!
No, don't get me wrong. I love this room. I have a really nice
studio in a really nice part of town, so zero complains!
Where is it located?
I'm in Soho.
Wow, that's nice. How did you end up there?
Well, to make a long story short: I'm 37, and I'm working on
music for many years now. I'm actually born in New Jersey, Newark
- of course famous in house music circles. And then I moved up
to New York and lived here since.
Do you remember 'Zansibar?'
Yeah, oh yeah, I'm old enough to remember that. I was a teenager
though - I was a little too young for it when it was in full swing.
I mean I heard about it, but I wasn't there all the time.
Were you listening to house at that time?
No, I was a jazz fan man. I didn't listen to pop music at all
until I got older. No, I was a real jazz fan. But you know what?
I got into house music out of pragmatism. I had a record deal
a long time ago, when I was in my early 20's, and I was in a horrible
group - really terrible. And when all that fell apart and I had
no money, so basically I just didn't know what to do. So a friend
of mine, Bob Power, a pretty famous and really rich now hip-hop
producer - he did the D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and all the big A
Tribe Called Quest albums - I knew him for years. He's probably
ten years older than I am, and he has always been some sort of
mentor to me. And he hooked me up with the guy who is now my partner,
Dave. Dave and Bob were best friends since college, and at the
time Dave owned part of a really big studio in town, and I had
no money. So Dave was the only guy who gave me a chance, and he
believed in me. He let me have all the downtime there for free,
so my sessions started at night.
Did you know how to work all the equipment?
I learned over the years. I mean, at that point I definitely
had made a deal with the devil. I had partners where you would
never wanna deal with, but I learned to be a really good engineer.
I engineer and mix all my own records. I don't credit that a lot,
but I do. I do pretty much everything by myself.
So when was that? Mid 80's?
Nah, more late 80's, early 90's. And then after I did that for
a couple of years, I sold a couple of club records.
Do you still remember the name of them?
Yeah. One of them actually became sort of a classic. It was one
of the very first things I did in club music, it was Ada Dyer
"You Make Me Hall." It became famous because Joey Negro did a
mix of it that was on million compilations.
Ada was later on Naked Music NYC, right?
Yeah, Ada is a friend of mine in town. Ada is great! She sang
with everybody, she is one of those music-business tragedy careers,
where the record industry really did it. All the horror stories
are true, believe it!
So let me ask you this. You had a bunch of great
people on this album. Ada Dyer, Richard Worth, and so on. How
did you get those people together?
That's what is so sad about it. It took me a year to get this
together, because I basically got so many great people to do shit
for free. That's the best thing about living in New York. I know
all these people. And you can get all the greatest people in the
world to play on your record for cheap if you live here. Richard
literally and I am not exaggerating lives across the street from
the studio. And my best friend Mark Anthony Jones, the guy plays
guitar on all my records, he is about to get an enormous record
deal, he has people bitting on him right now - he's like the next
Stevie Wonder. You'll see when his album is out in one year or
so. Mark is a genius. It's Marvin Gaye meets Stevie Wonder meets
Sly Stones. He is Mr. Funk. He looks like a pimp, but he's amazingly
good, and he plays everything and sings like a bird. He is the
best guitar player in town, he plays bass, keys, just amazing...
But you know, maybe another reason is that this
album was just too late, because Acid Jazz was almost gone at
this time?
Yeah, but that record was done for a year before it was released.
Oh well, it's sad...
Well, it is still on heavy rotation here. Andrea
told me she just listened to it on Saturday.
Who is this?
Andrea Beamish. She is writing for us too.
Is she living in Nebraska as well?
[Laughter] No, she lives in California.
Does Bruno know her [Bruno Ybarra is the label director of Naked
Music and Transport Records]?
Yeah. Actually she's hooked up with him for an
interview too. She was asking me to say "Hello" to you, and she
told me she's always listening to Naked Music NYC.
Oh, please thank her. Yes, it's funny. I walk into stores or
restaurants sometimes, and it'll be on there. But on the other
hand, I believe everything happens for a reason, and I have to
say we now have our own label, and I really just wanna make the
albums that I wanna make...
Why didn't you release Naked Music NYC on Naked
Music?
Because the label didn't exist at this time. I mean, really,
I wanted to get famous enough to justify having a label. People
start these labels with no anything. Really no reputation, and
then you watch them fold throughout the year.
So when did you start Naked Music Records?
Right after the album. It's pretty recent. What do we have? I
think release four is coming up.
Yes.
It's very much about taking control. I mean I don't mind sailing
on my own terms, let me put it that way. But watching somebody
else screwing up your own thing is just the most heartbreaking
thing ever, especially if you put a lot of time and effort into
something.
Well, just to let you know, the Naked Music NYC
album is still treated with highest respect by lots of us.
Thank you man. I am really very very into trying to make a Blue
6 album.
Are you really working on a Blue 6 album?
Well, I want to! I just finished another single because I realized
that it was taking me so long 'cause I kept doing other work for
the label, remixing things for other people like the Maxwell thing,
and so on. I just did a Towa Tei remix, which is kind of generic
for me.
Wow, Towa Tei?!
Yeah, it's a song from his latest album. It's got a French vocal.
It's cool, it's very... ahh, I don't know, I sometimes get tired
of myself... But the next Blue 6 is gonna be interesting. I am
gonna start on the second mix tonight. Actually, I am interested
what people think of the first one. It's definitely different
than what I've done before.
You started this entire Blue 6 project on Wave
Records, right?
Yes, I am friends with François K. I was whining to him
about how I am just sick of doing formulated stuff, and that there's
no point in making music if you're not gonna be happy, you know
doing what you want. And at that point I was really just disappointed
as hell. And François, he basically encouraged me to just
do whatever I felt like. So that's what Blue 6 is. Blue 6 is basically
like me saying "How can I be in a format without caring about
the format?" You know what I mean? I did remixing as a thing in
itself, yet the content has to be the content and somehow stand
on its own without people saying "Oh, this is a house record."
or "This is a R&B record." It just has to be "This is a good
song!" That's really what I was trying to do.
Why Blue 6? Is there a special reason for the
name?
Nah, everybody asks that. Literally, I was on the phone with
François and he's like "We need a name this afternoon!."
Blue 6 just popped into my head. I am an Aquarius, and blue is
the color of an aquarium, and so on...
"Do you like it?" was the first one, right?
Yes, but the first one I don't love. What I did love on it was
the dub I did with François. It was a little 'bit of a
revelation, because this is the feeling, that's the idea. I think
I was trying to get to something that was like organic but futury
at the same time. That's sort of a thing that I am wrestling with
too, because the thing that I just finished has that quality but
now I'm gonna do another mix of it, and I want it to be even more
like "How can you something really feel?" It should be like electronic
but feel really natural! The one I just did has all acoustic guitars
on it. You have a second? I can play it for you?
Sure. But please, don't change your sound too
much!
Everything I do sounds like me anyway. Should I skip through
the long intro? It's like a DJ intro... You know what? I play
you the 'Radio Edit.' Wait a second. And be honest! Monique, the
woman from Abstract Truth, she's singing on it. And watch the
end of the track. Mark is singing background.
You got the idea? Kind of unusual though.
It is! But you know, it is still Blue 6. How do
you describe music like this?
I don't know, and that's the whole point! The next mix I'm gonna
do will be a full vocal as well, but it's gonna be very much like
the traditional Blue 6 sound, like super deep kind of, where this
is very light hearted. The song is called "Keep it Pure." It's
about not saddling in life. You know, people look their entire
life for something, and if they don't find it they stop. So that's
what this song is about. And I think we're gonna make a video
for it too...
... and send it to MTV.
Well, Europe! We have no illusions. I did a really solid 'Radio
Edit' of that version, and then I wanna try to make a video. Did
you ever see the video for "Sweeter Love?"
What?! There's a video?
Yes. EMI South Africa had licensed that, and they paid this animation
company to do this animated video, and it's a really cute video.
There are things in it I don't like, but there are things in it
I love. So that company then started to license stuff from us,
like "Music And Wine" and the Lovetronic record.
In South Africa?
In South Africa, yeah! Apparently these compilations where the
tracks are on sell really well. After that I was very much like
"Look! I'm not gonna kill myself making these records." Because
it always bothered me that "Sweeter Love" didn't make it huge.
"Sweeter Love" was a huge record, but if it had been marketed
properly I think it could have crossed over and been a really
huge record.
I thought it was marketed pretty well.
I guess I shouldn't say badly marketed, it's more a matter of
scale. You either distribute it by one of the five big conglomerates
that are in the world, or you're everybody else. I mean that's
just the bottom line.
Does it in general bother you that you're music
is not so successful as, let's say, Britney Spears?
Sure! But it's not that... You know what, let me explain it that
way. I feel like if I'm working on a certain level and I worked
my whole life to get to that level. Yeah, I mean I very much want
- you know that's one of my big goals before I die - to make one
thing that I can definitively be proud of.
Mmm, but I think you are already famous in the
house world. Have you seen the latest charts? Everybody charts
Lovetronic!
Yeah, but you know what? It doesn't translate to the larger world.
That's the problem. And it also doesn't translate to money! I
watched a bunch of my friends becoming millionaires this year
doing pop music. Of course I can't say I'm jealous because it's
not the kind of music that I wanna do, but at the same time it's
like when you watch people who you know who you feel like "They're
OK, but they're not that great," yet they just made a million
dollars of that thing, and you over here are struggling and trying
to do this beautiful thing.
And the whole point is that it's been done in the past. There
are a lot of great records that came out of American popular music
at different points in history, and the thing is they were marketed
right.
Can you change this with your company, with Naked
Music?
We do have a lot of variety now at Naked Music and people do
call, so the trick is to really make some smart decisions, get
good distribution and have some balls, market yourself, and go
to the walk. If you don't no one is going to. Music business is
not filled with a bunch of visionaries, it's filled with a bunch
of followers. Once in a while somebody comes through with an idea
or something that's really good, and it hits, and then everybody
spends the next five years copying that. If you gonna define yourself
as somehow being an original, in any way, production company,
writer, whatever, you have to have the balls to back it up.
Maybe you can show people that you can do mainstream
records and still keep the quality.
It's definitely been done, that's what I'm saying. It's not like
we've never heard great pop records. Come on! Almost all of my
favorite records are great pop records. Stevie Wonder! Are there
better records than Inner Visions? These records were Grammy winning
records at that time. Marvin Gaye?! I know, nowadays it's hard
to find the good ones, but there are still records which are successful
that are great. Cassandra Wilson makes great records. And even
some pop ones...
There gotta be other people. Just R&B basically is been decimated.
Once from being the finest to the worst, once from being the definition
of the most sophisticated music in the world to being like this
crap. That's one of the reasons why I'm actually happy in the
way that I'm doing the kind of soulful club stuff that I'm doing
now, 'cause I feel it's sort of a scene that is starting to happen
seriously and have some integrity.
Do you spin?
No, I don't DJ and I get called all the time! I have too much
respect for guys that are good, 'cause honestly if you've ever
seen guys like François or King Britt spin it's like "OK,
there's more to this than playing records. Let me not go suck!"
You can't have a reputation as being this great producer and then
go in and suck! That would be horrible.
And I am not a public personality. I don't like being on stages
and stuff, and at different points in my life I either had to
be or people have wanted me to be. I really just wanna make records.
I just like making records, and I like working with people that
are good.
Have you done any live performances in the past?
Nah, I did some many years ago, but no, I haven't been on a stage
in years, and I really don't wanna be. I just wanna be in the
studio working with great people.
Oh, I'm sorry, hold on for one second...
Hey, sorry!
I guess you know the entire Groove Collective
crew, right?
Yeah, I know them for many years. But Jonathan is like one of
my best friends. The guys I hang out the most, probably every
day, are Mark and Jonathan. I see those guys basically every day.
We are about to make a remix from the Groove Collective album...
Talking about Groove Collective. Were you sad
when Acid Jazz vanished from the face of the earth?
Nah, because most of it sucked if you want the truth. There was
some good stuff though. I saw Incognito a couple of weeks ago
when they were in town. I went over there, and they were as good
as ever. They sounded terrific, Maysa sounded great, but a lot
of what was called Acid Jazz was just really sub part hip-hop,
it was just bad. It's funny. I really really like real Jazz, and
I used to have an enormous Jazz record collection...
How about record labels like Boogie Back out of
London?
Sure! Their stuff was definitely cool shit! Don't get me wrong.
I thought that it was cool that there's some venue for something
other than the regular crap, you know! I always thought that's
a good thing. But I never thought of Acid Jazz as one of the great
music of the world. And it was too short. There are a lot of things
which never reach fruition.
And I am not a huge hip-hop fan. There are some hip-hop records
that were enormously influential on me, I mean "Low End Theory"
is just such a record. I don't know anybody who wasn't at least
influenced by the damn sound of it, which Bob engineered I might
add. The records Bob engineered are the best engineered shit ever
done. But I really don't like most of the crap that is out now.
How about the kind of deep house you make now?
I like it, yeah! I make this music, but I can't honestly say
that I go home and listen to house records all the time, because
I don't. I do listen to a lot of shit Bruno thinks is cool. So
he keeps me abreast of like "OK, these guys are good" and "these
guys are overrated." What I still feel and I've always felt is
that house music mostly is just a glut of really bad stuff, like
the market is absolutely flooded with music by people who have
no business making records. You know what I mean? Maybe they should
one day. But you know, people who have been DJing for 15 minutes
and not even good DJs are making records.
Why is that? Is it too easy nowadays to make records?
It is too easy. Just anybody can buy the same boxes. You know
what, it's the "Instaumatic Camera Syndrome!" Anybody can buy
an automatic camera, but it doesn't make you a photographer. And
if you have a dumb enough audience or people who aren't discerning
they all believe you.
But then you also have a strong underground, like
all the jazz house stuff which blows me away right now?
Yeah, I know. The Jazzanova stuff for instance is really good.
Well, I am just saying there's good stuff in any thing, and I
think good people are just good people. No matter what genre they're
working in, they are good! The good thing about the underground
is just what was good about Rock'n'Roll. Anybody with a guitar
and some skills could do something good. That's what is good about
having the technology available to everybody. I'm really very
much for Ameritocracy, that's what I am. Anybody that is good
at anything and does it well should be rewarded. But the world
really doesn't work that way.
In private you're still listening to a lot of
jazz?
Well, whatever I am in the mood for. But I must admit, it tends
to be older records. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, or English
pop records which I love, like Bryan Ferry. Whatever hits me on
a certain day. I'm listening to Billie Holiday when I'm in the
kind of mood, or Cassandra Wilson or Joni Mitchell. I also listen
to a lot of classical music, I like impressionistic music a lot!
I love Ravel, all impressionists. I am crazy about that stuff.
To me that's the whole thing about music. Music is just music
and I really am with Duke Ellington on that. And I am not always
in the same mood. Sometimes you're just in a mood where you need
to hear Joni Mitchell singing something, and sometimes you're
in the mood where you wanna hear some Sly Stone or some house
music, or something that's gonna make you feel a certain way.
And that's what I always tried to do. I just try to make club
records that make other people feel the way I like to feel...
... which is?
You know, there's always one feeling, and I have thought if I
ever get this Blue 6 record done, this is on the inside of it.
There's one feeling that I always look for in music and it's no
matter what kind of music it is; it's like all emotions wrapped
up into one magical feeling, a 'if you wanna smile or cry' kind
of feeling. Every record that I've ever loved has that feeling,
whether it is classical music or Stevie Wonder or The Beatles.
They all have that one magical feeling of like it's shit you can't
really express in words what makes music music. It's more than
peace of mind, it's the emotional aspect of music, feeling all
those feelings at once. It's language, it's a high level language.
 Let
me tell you, "Sweeter Love" is exactly such a record for me!
Well, thank you, that makes me happy. Really, that's all I am
living for, to make people feel that way. Sometimes it's difficult
because you feel you are the only guy coming from a certain place.
You know, when it comes to "Sweeter Love," I really didn't know
whether people go for it or not. But François knew this
is really good, and so I thought it's good as well, and we waited
to see what's happening.
How did you come up with this sound? I mean, it
was definitely a new sound!
Yeah, I guess. It's a combination of all the shit I like worked
into club music. It's got like sort of minory versions you hear
in jazz music mixed with melodic English music, and I always loved
the kind of deep stuff - the deeper the better! The stuff that's
completely moody. And you mix that with just a sort of general
impressionistic feel. That's when I came up with Blue 6. Yeah,
sounds like "Sweeter Love," I guess...
Do you remember the kind of feedback you got?
When it first came out I was thrilled. I remember the first review
I read. I don't remember where it was, but it was in one of the
English magazines. The first one of it said something like "another
completely left field record from Jay Denes." That really made
me happy. But he loved it, he really gave it a glowing review,
and at that point I knew that this is gonna work and I won't starve
to death. Ever since then it's been like let's see how far we
can take it. The Lovetronic thing, that's Dave Warrin and me -
when I did the original I knew that people either love or hate
that.
Let's talk about Dave Warrin for a second. How
did you meet him?
Dave is a friend of Bruno. Dave moved to New York recently, he's
from San Francisco. Ever heard of Slide Five?
Yes! I'm writing since years about how great Slide
Five are!
Yeah, Dave is the keyboard player of Slide Five. They were on
Ubiquity Records. Now Dave and Lisa Shaw, they are basically making
an album for us now. And I only ended up doing it with him because
Dave really needed somebody doing the technical stuff on it. I
have a studio, and I made shit sound good. And then of course
I did remixes as well.
 So
this Dave Warrin and Lisa Shaw project is Lovetronic?
No, it wasn't meant to be necessarily, but I think it is gonna
end up being Lovetronic. The record did so well, that now the
second one which is more than half done, is very much on the same
kind.
What's gonna happen, God willing, is there will be an album from
Dave and Lisa, probably under the Lovetronic heading, and there
will be, once again if I find the time, the Blue 6 album. The
problem is it takes me forever to do stuff because I really do
approach those stuff very seriously. A lot of people that make
club music don't do this! I watch people do remixes in two days,
and I'm saying to myself "How the hell do they do that?!" The
Maxwell mix I did recently, I easily spent six days on that, like
all day, 'cause it has so much live stuff on it. Every time you
add a live element you add hours of editing.
That was actually another question from me. I
think your records are great because you spend so much time doing
them!
I mean, I think that's true in any kind of music. It's just that
it doesn't happen much in club music because the economics don't
really allow it. And I'm in the unusual situation because we have
our own studio. I can sit here all day and do it, whereas most
people don't or they're working out of their bedroom or they're
booking time or their budget on their record was so small that
they couldn't possibly do it.
You know, like the Maxwell record. They called me, he wanted
me, and they very much wanted me to do it, and they were willing
to pay whatever it took to have me do it that second. You know,
my one word to him was like "Yeah, I'll do it but you have to
give me exactly seven days from now!." I am not gonna put my name
on something that was rushed and is not good. That's always been
the thing. I do something if I like it and if I know that it's
gonna be good. I get asked to do a lot of stuff that is bad that
somebody wants me to save. Why am I gonna spend my time polishing
something that I don't even believe in?!
So you have a lot of people contacting you?
Yeah, I get asked to do stuff all the time, but it's not a lot
of good stuff. Sometimes you get good stuff. And I don't wanna
to be famous as a remixer! I wanna be famous as a writer and producer
of good music, and occasionally as a remixer.
You will - after the article in the Underground
Files! [Laughter] Here, another question. Who does the covers
of your records?
That's Stuart Patterson. Stuart is a friend of mine and a really
famous graphics artist. He does stuff for us 'cause he likes our
music. He became the de facto look for the label, and yeah, I
think it's appropriate. Although some people have commented on
the perfusion of nude women. I love nude women...
Me too. Another question before I forget. How
did you hook up with Simon Bradshaw for the remixes?
Oh, you would love Si Brad. He's a total Science guy as well.
Total Science junky, same kind of things, super nerd. You know,
Si Brad is the English me! We're both Science junkies, we read
a lot of Science Fiction, he engineers all of his shit, we're
around the same age, we've gone through a lot of the same shit
in the business. You would like him, he's a supercool guy. Si
also is another guy who came from being a jazz and soul music
fan, a lot of parallels.
Bruno became friends with him because he loved all the Attaboy
stuff, and then I talked to him on the phone a couple of times,
and he's actually making a record for us right now. I think he's
doing an EP for us at the moment.
Oh my, this definitely fits!
Yeah, he's really consistent with what we've done. He's very
much doing the same kind of thing. We're trying to come up with
something that is a consistent sound. A brand that people recognize,
the alternative to everything else kind of thing.
It works already. Whenever I see a Naked Music
record I buy it!
No, things have been going, I really have no complains in that
regards as far as underground stuff goes. We're definitely doing
well and we get respect. I guess I just wanted to be on the next
level. You know, if you do something well and you feel like "Boy,
this could really go all the way," you really would like to see
that happened.
So what would you do if Columbia or any other
big label would approach you and offer 10 Mio. Dollar for two
albums?
Yeah, whatever. That would never happen! What we want is really
good distribution and financial backing from a company that can
do it, but that will still let us be completely autonomous and
not getting into any of the creative decisions. The whole point
is you wanna keep the integrity of the basic thing. So you need
somebody that believes in that and is willing to trust you. He
has to act like a bank in a way.
But you know, toady's underground is tomorrow's mainstream. America
is really slow to catch on. The rest of the world was playing
Bob Marley records eight years before America was.
Why do you think is that?
Because of the money! Basically the channels of distribution
is such a big market and it's so much money. But all the channels
of distribution are really tightly controlled by the companies
that are here. They have a strangled hold on it, and the more
money that gets involved in something the lower the common denominator
factor gets. It gets hammered down to the lowest common denominator,
and all the personality gets ironed out of it!
It was a pleasure talking to you. Bye bye, Jay!
Likewise. Bye.
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