Entertainment
Herbie Hancock's "Rockit"
In this episode, we explore Herbie Hancock's groundbreaking track 'Rockit,' which masterfully blends jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music, making waves in the 1980s music scene. We delve...
Herbie Hancock's "Rockit"
Entertainment •
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Interactive Transcript
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Luxury. Today we're diving into a pioneering record that proved you could mash jazz with hip-hop,
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with Afro-Cuban rhythms, and electronic music, and land a major hit. Take that one, Marcellus.
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That's right. And to do all that genre-bending successfully without any vocals and hit number one
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on the dance charts, and win a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Performance, I mean, come on!
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By the way, this song's success came in no small part thanks to its avant-garde music video,
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which stole the show at the 1984 music video awards. We're going to get into all of that,
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and more. We're talking one song, and that song is...
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by Herbie Hencock.
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3-0.
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Those who lead deserve a car that leads with them, because a car that doesn't move you
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is a car that falls short of amazing. That's the Luxus standard, the standard of amazing.
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I'm after Reddit Director and sometimes DJ Diallo Rittle. And I'm producer DJ,
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songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers,
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and this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs
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across genres, and I tell you why they deserve one more listen. You hear these songs like you've
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never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can watch this full episode on
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YouTube, ask about a fight. And while you're there, please like and subscribe.
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So Diallo, when was the first time you heard Rocket?
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Oh man, it was probably when I saw the video on MTV. It featured the sexiest pair of robot
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legs of all time. Not to mention the creepy bird. There's a creepy bird robot.
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There's a lot of creepiness. The sexiness, I'm not sure I agree with.
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Well listen, you weren't raised in my house.
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I don't want a robot shame you, sorry about that.
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All of these creations were created by British artist Jim Whitey.
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It was kind of like a wild fever dream. Let's look at a little clip of this classic video.
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Why does that still sound? It's like it's still a fact, even though it's old technology.
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Yeah. The robots are so...
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That's what I like about it. I love how...
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50 years ago, it still like affects me. It's the untanningness of it all. It's still really strange
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and weird and emotional. I love the vision of the future that we had in the 80s where everything
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was like on a tron like grid. Even the album cover of Future Shock has that tron like grid.
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But what's interesting is even back then we sort of predicted the dehumanization of the world
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because it's a house full of robots and yet they're still watching TV with humans like Kirby Hancock.
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It is a little dystopian. I never thought about what the narrative is in this video,
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but it's a little bit creepy when you say that way. That's taken over.
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We were living in a max headroom was a thing.
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Right. It was very much like trying to figure out where the line between humanity and technology is.
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But you're right. And herbie in this video is sort of trapped in the little video,
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like a pet. She's either trapped like a pet or he's like some gauzy sepia tone,
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you know, relic from a time when humans walk through the earth.
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That's true. Maybe he's just a vision of the past in the future.
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Okay. I like to give it that way a little bit.
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But that video was everywhere. That video is everywhere.
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It was definitely my first exposure to the song.
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You have to remember, this is early MTV.
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And MTV has a way of hearing new music is suddenly a thing.
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Oh, yeah.
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I mean, it was certainly on the radio as well.
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But seeing it and hearing it at the same time was definitely why it gets so embedded.
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And that's probably why it's such a special song.
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Maybe to both of us is that we had this experience.
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Not only was it a video, it was this video.
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This video.
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Yeah. So this video is directed by the British do of Kevin Godley and law cream from the band Tensey C.
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They also directed.
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They're not in love.
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I'm not in love is one of the songs they wrote.
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It's true. They're they were part of that in the early 70s.
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But then in the 80s, they went on to become really iconic directors that shaped the visuals of the time.
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So they did videos for Frank goes to Hollywood and the police and Durand Durand.
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Durand Durand.
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Oh man.
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So these guys unlike some other one episodes where we've talked about making the jump from the 70s to the 80s,
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these guys did it successfully.
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Yeah, but they did it from behind the camera.
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It's just interesting.
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It's worth mentioning that this video came at a time when black artists were rarely getting played on MTV.
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And MTV could totally make or break your career.
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We've talked about it that on the show a lot.
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Speaking of Durand Durand.
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Yeah, so many bands that became huge because of MTV.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And an artist that we just associate with the 80s like Michael Jackson.
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Even a Michael Jackson had a hard time getting his video for Billie Jean played.
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At this time, it was only after the president of CBS Records threatened to remove all his other artists from MTV
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that they agreed to play Billie Jean.
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And the fact that a black jazz artist like Herbie Hancock was getting his video played on MTV in 1983,
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like that was groundbreaking like that.
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That shows you the ability of MTV.
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Almost like Netflix today.
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The ability of just one media company to absolutely break an artist.
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Right. Well, don't forget.
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And huge successes.
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They weren't just like racist.
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They were also ages.
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So the fact that Herbie Hancock is 43.
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To be fair, this is an era where the ability to have a hit at 43 is beginning to wind down.
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It hadn't ended all together, but it's still pretty unusual that in a sea of
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you know, early young Madonna's and young Durand Durand's, we do have a 43 year old jazz musician.
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When they were able to break down those doors at MTV and get a Michael Jackson on and get a
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Herbie Hancock on, it was almost like a message went out like, hey, you may not be the typical MTV
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artist white rock star.
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But if you come up with an interesting video, there might be a chance.
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And with Herbie, he clearly took advantage of that opportunity.
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In fact, that video won five MTV Music Video Awards.
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The song, the video, they really came out at about the right time.
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Before we go on, can we back up a little bit and talk about Herbie?
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I think that for those of you who don't know Herbie, Herbie Hancock is just one of the most
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iconic jazz artists of all time.
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His work spans so many decades, so many genres and styles.
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He was originally a part of the Miles Davis quintet and he went on to dabble in more acoustic
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and famously funk styles as the 70s pushed on.
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He's doing everything.
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He's doing albums.
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He's doing soundtracks.
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One of my favorite compositions by Herbie Hancock is the soundtrack to blow up by Michael Angelo
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Antonioni.
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Let's hear a little bit of Bring Down the Birds.
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And yes, of course, you are hearing the famous Ron Carter bass line, by the way,
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that was used in D-Lights, sampled in groove is in the heart.
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We have a whole episode.
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One of my favorites, go back and check that out in the archive.
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Go back and check out the song of the sample because that whole soundtrack to me just sounds
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like a really groovy party.
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That's a year and a six.
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It's a swing in sixties party.
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That's right.
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I can see the clothes.
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I can smell the cigarette smoke in the furniture.
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Absolutely.
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And that's just one example of, in fact, my exposure to Herbie Hancock was through samples.
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I probably heard most of his hits because they were sampled in songs that I was listening to.
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Another example of that, besides the D-Light one we just talked about, is Watermelon Man.
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Which is sampled in Digable Planet's escapism.
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Such a great album.
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Of course, we love Digable Planet's.
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And that was my first exposure to what I now know to be one of his most popular, most iconic songs.
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He gets sampled a lot.
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And another song we've talked about on this show a few times, generally not in the most
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favorable light, but the original is incredible.
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Is of course, Canal of Island, the original, which is incredible and sounds like this.
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Once us three got a hold of it.
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For Canceloupe Island, Flip Fantasia, that's when things went south for me personally.
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You know what, come to one song for the facts, the state for the us three shade.
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Us three slander.
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But by the way, if us three ever wants to come on the podcast, we would love to have them on the show.
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I feel like they need their chance to defend themselves.
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You know what, for the first time ever, I'm going to gatekeep and say they're not welcome on the show.
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They are not welcome on my show.
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You can spit off have your own version, but God damn it.
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Not, not just kidding.
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Us three, please come on.
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I'm going to do a US three chit chat with Diola Riddle.
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Mustaches on and hide them from me.
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Another thing to point out is that all the things that Herbie Hancock is, he's not a singer.
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And he'll be the first to admit that.
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And this is important because in the 70s, in this era where he's evolving and jazz and funk
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are starting to be merged.
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And there's a disco era that starts to come into play before this song.
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He's seeing a lot of his contemporaries, Patrice Russian, George Benson.
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So many of our favorite artists.
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The whole he's done episodes about.
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Yeah, we've talked about George Benson.
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We've talked about Donald Burr.
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We've never done a Donald Burr episode, but him and Donald Burr are very close.
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But they all pick up the microphone and they start singing.
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If they hadn't been from the beginning to begin with.
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But Benson in particular, but Herbie is not a singer.
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And I found this really charming footage.
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He figured out a way to sing without singing essentially.
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So here's Herbie Hancock.
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This is footage from 1979.
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It's a live version of the song called, I thought it was you from the sunlight record.
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And he's figured out how to sing, quote unquote.
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Let's listen and then talk about what he ended up doing as a solution after we listen.
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It's a punk rock, though.
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It's a DIY.
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You know what they had invented?
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They had invented the keytard, which would solve this problem.
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I'm looking like you're selling popcorns and peanuts at the game.
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I love that footage.
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It looks like a man desperate to solve a problem.
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It's so DIY, so punk rock.
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He's for those of you who are.
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I think they put right.
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I think one man band.
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But yeah, they're kind of the similar things because it's just like, how do I get out there and perform?
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I love that footage.
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I mean, like to me, it's just, it speaks to that technology at that time that people were just
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figuring stuff out on the fly.
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That's really interesting to me to see him try and use a vocoder live.
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Has Peter Frampton?
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Was he using a vocoder?
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No, he's using a talk box.
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Okay.
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Talk box.
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We, I feel like on early episodes of the show, we used to talk about, is it talk box?
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Is it vocoder?
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Is it auto tune?
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You know, we used to write down those different types.
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Well, I can give it to you real simple.
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A vocoder, the main difference is that the vocoder makes the human voice sound like an instrument.
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And a talk box makes the instrument sound like the human voice.
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Oh, interesting.
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There's more to it than that, but that's the easiest way to tell.
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If it sounds like a robot, but it's got like kind of human like shape to the sounds that are
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being made, that's probably a vocoder.
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Yeah.
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So just really simply explain.
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I'll demonstrate to you with my trusty vocoder here.
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I've got a microcork, which is a synthesizer, which you can use as a vocoder.
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So I've plugged a microphone in and I've got my fingers on the keyboard.
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And when I speak into the microphone, which is plugged in as the vocoder with an
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and obviously what you're hearing me say is different from what's coming out of the vocoder.
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The sound, the notes are the notes I'm playing on the synthesizer.
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So I'm playing an A minor.
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And when I play it and talk, even if I'm talking normally, it just gives you a A minor.
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So Herbie Hancock, when he sings Rocket in the song, he's playing two notes on the synthesizer.
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It's G to A.
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Maybe it's Rocket.
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That's it.
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So the beauty of the device for Herbie Hancock is because he has full control with his
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fingers of the notes he wants people to hear.
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He can make his voice match what the synthesizer is doing.
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But if you're hearing what sounds like a voice, but the sound itself doesn't really sound human,
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that's more likely to be the talk box.
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The talk box, interesting.
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At some point we have to do a Peter Frampton episode because Frampton Lye, it was the jaws,
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was the Star Wars of the Recordings.
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Bon Jovi living on a prayer or anything, Chromio, Bruno Mars, 24-karat magic.
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All that stuff is talk box.
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But Mr. Blue Sky by ELO and a lot of that punk stuff, that's going to be the Vocoder.
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Vocoder.
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And the song we're talking about today also has a Vocoder.
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It should be mentioned.
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So as we enter 1983, Herbie's kind of done it all.
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From disco to electro-funk to pop.
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Even though he wasn't reaching the heights of headhunters, he was constantly searching
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for new genres of expression.
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And he's kind of in a crossroads when he hears a song, Buffalo Gals, by Malcolm McLaren.
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And he hears scratching for the first time.
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Let's hear a little bit.
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Bye-bye.
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Bye-bye.
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Bye-bye.
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Bye-bye.
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Hey, hey.
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Buffalo Gals go around the outside.
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Round the outside.
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Round the outside.
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Well-famous supreme team scratching it up there.
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Early days of scratching.
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And the first record a lot of people heard scratching on.
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You know, I got to point out, I'm a little bit jealous of
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the underground hip-hop of the early 80s because like there were so many new things that they could
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just casually try.
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Yeah.
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And now we almost have like too many things we could casually try.
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And it's just confusion.
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But like back then, like you could just do something as simple as just, I'm gonna be.
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And it's like, whoa, what are you doing here?
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It's a really good point.
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And it's some great foreshadowing of our episode in For Rocket because the innovation of scratching.
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Yes.
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These are new techniques and new sounds, which hadn't existed before and yet gave you the ability
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to use any sound that had ever existed before and put it in your song.
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This is before there were samplers you could cut and you could scratch and you could get some of
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those sounds into your material.
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And I also have to imagine like Malcolm McLaren, you know, down there, you know, hearing these sounds.
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You know, Malcolm McLaren for those who don't know, white, British producer, he basically do
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about scratching because he happened on a block party being thrown by the Universal Zulu Nation.
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Yeah, Malcolm McLaren, famous culture, Vulture, who gave us the sex pistols, gave us Bowl-wow-wow.
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He was managed the New York Dolls for a while.
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He gave us Vogue before Madonna, real legendary character, but also someone who
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hip to trends.
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You know, and given this for Rocket sometimes before the next guy.
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Give us a props. He's like one of those people who like has an insane playlist to play for you
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and he's just like, oh man, check this out, check this out.
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Like I kind of respect that because you know, for those of us who don't always make music,
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if you have incredible taste of what's out there and what's brand new,
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I mean, sort of what we try and do on one more song here, we try to just put people on.
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Malcolm McLaren is putting people on.
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Complicated legacy this guy, but one of my heroes, but also just complicated legacy.
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Incredible musical.
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Negative flowers to some of my friends.
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No, no, no, no, all support that he deserves flowers for his taste.
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Uh-huh.
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Not necessarily his business methods.
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Oh, no, okay.
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Well, that's a full one.
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All right, let's get back to her for a second.
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So he was at the time in 1983.
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He was being managed by a 20-something, who had his ear to the ground in New York City.
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The Amon Guard, his name was Tony Myland.
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And he's an unsung hero of this episode.
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There is no rocket without him.
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And literally his ear to the ground meant that he was hip to what was happening on the scene.
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The producers, the sounds.
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And we've talked about New York in the late 70s, early 80s, many times on this.
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It's a good place.
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Sonic Youth, Blondie, among others.
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There's a special convergence of sound.
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It's hip hop, meeting punk rock, meeting post punk, meeting, meeting everything,
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meeting salsa for that matter.
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So having your ear to the ground in this case means he hears about a duo named material,
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which at the time, it's a floating group of musicians who at the time was Bill
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Aswell, who's the main guy to this day, and Michael Binhorn.
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The two of them, he heard through the great Vine War like the guys who were doing some special stuff.
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And maybe Herbie should connect with them.
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Maybe they can write a song with him.
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Yeah, I mean, to hear Binhorn say it, he said that they approached the music with kind of a
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what would Herbie do approach?
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I want to give some flowers in particular to Bill Aswell, who moved to New York in 1977 and had
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the good luck of getting a rehearsal space where Steve Gad, the drummer, the Ramones, James
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Chance, all these incredible musicians were there and it blew his mind.
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And he started to formulate this idea of what he called collision music,
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where you would cross-pollinate genres and cross-pollinate instruments and rhythms and
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geography for that matter.
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Again, I wish that I were a fly in the wall in 1980, 1981, New York City.
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Like that just says.
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And I love the idea of like all these like, you know, rock musicians or a lot of these white
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musicians looking up to a guy like Herbie.
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Like at this time, Herbie was a musician that already had an expansive career as an innovator.
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And so, you know, I love the idea that they were wondering how would Herbie build on that and
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incorporate, you know, a new form like hip hop?
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What a cool opportunity, right?
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You're given kind of a blank slate or a canvas, if you will, of somebody with his incredible
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career and skill set, but looking to do something new.
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Let's bring some no way into it.
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Let's bring some Lydia Lentian contort into it.
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And by Freddie, what's the word?
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Yeah.
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Orchestra Harlow.
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You still like this.
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Right.
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You know, all this cool stuff that's happening in New York at the time.
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Well, listen, we're going to take a quick break.
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But when we get back, we're going to dive into the stems of this groundbreaking track.
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We're going to hear how Herbie composed the melody in just 15 minutes.
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And while I answer the question, what are the scratch on this song that gives us those classic
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scratch moments?
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Welcome back to one song luxury.
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We're about to get into the stems and just to give us some context.
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This song was recorded across three studios.
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Let's start with what they recorded in OAO studios in Brooklyn.
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That was the studio that was run by Bill Laswell, an engineer Martin B.C.
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That's right. I think they had some funding from Brian Eno at some point too.
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One of my favorite people on the play.
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One of our favorite people, absolutely.
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A year with swollen appendices, one of my favorite music books of all time.
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His journey, his diaries from the 90s.
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His work with blur in the 90s. Perfect.
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His work with Roxy music. Pretty good too.
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All right, well, let's start with the drum programming,
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which was done by Michael Byron from Material, who we talked about earlier.
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This is the Oberheim DMX drum machine.
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This is one of the big hip-hop machines of the time, but it's also the drum machine you may
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recognize from Blue Monday by New Order.
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Here's the main beat that Byron programmed.
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I love how it stops right there.
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And here comes one of the fills.
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I love how the fills in this song, the rhythmic motifs, are part of their hooks.
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You can't wait for it to get to that part, that fill.
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Da, da, da.
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It's as gratifying as a melody might be.
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And by the way, no attempt to make that simple part sound like it was played by a human.
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That is definitely like a robot just going,
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and it's also relevant to say that we're a year after Planet Rock.
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So Planet Rock would have been literally just,
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would have been out, would have been huge hit on the dance floor.
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They didn't have the 808.
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They had the DMX.
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So you're getting a drum machine, but it's a different drum machine.
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But we are definitely in the post-electro era now, where these sounds are hugely popular in the clubs.
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And just as an example, what I was saying before about the motifs being drum fills,
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here's another one.
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I just love the drum.
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It's hard.
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So exciting.
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I can't pop it a lot.
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But if I could, that would be the sound of me popping it a lot.
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Yeah, put some 16th notes in there.
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It is perfectly the soundtrack to break dancing as you're pointing out.
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Right.
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Street, absolutely.
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All of these changes and rhythmic kind of stutters, moments like that are perfect for a human body.
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Kind of activities.
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That's right.
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So there's a few more iconic fills.
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I think this snare crescendo qualifies.
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And fun thing to listen for in here is that it's somebody turning the volume up
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imperfectly.
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It's not like a perfect crescent, like straight line on the snare.
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The little human touch on a drum machine like that.
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I have to do something.
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Live that play for a little bit.
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I'm sorry.
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Live that.
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Never apologize for asking to play a D&X.
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I love that little pause right there.
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Another electronic instrument in the mix was the sineere.
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And now a sineere is a super iconic like late 70s.
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I would say.
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Sineere.
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Sineere.
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Yeah.
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It's very disco sounding.
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It's that pew.
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It's the pew pew.
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Yeah.
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We've got some pew pews in here.
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I'll play it isolated and then I'll add it to the mix.
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That's so electro too.
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It's so electro.
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It's so craft work.
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Tiga.
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Not to be confused with Tiga, but Tiga from the electro clash period.
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I feel like you do a lot of what is that supposed to sound like?
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What is that?
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What instrument were they going for?
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It's like a Tom.
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But it's meant to sound electronic and maybe harken to a craft.
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Sounds like my spaceship got destroyed on Galaxia or something.
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Yeah.
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It definitely has that in the late 70s, this sounded like the future.
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But now it doesn't.
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Yeah.
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Think going for it.
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Yeah.
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In a character I'm controlling on my Atari 26th century.
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Just got shot.
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Make the sound.
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It's very, it's very 8-bit.
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It's very limited.
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It's very early, but it sounds cool.
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And when you blend it with the beat, you get this.
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In the beatboxing here, that sounds like the human mouth going.
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Boom.
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Which we would definitely get the party started.
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It certainly would.
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And there's one more piece of electronic percussion
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to add to the blend.
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And that's, I think, been made on a mini-mo, but I'm not positive.
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But these 16th notes that mirror the high hat 16th
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and are speaking of craftwork to my ears, very craft-vucky.
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Right.
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Sounds like machine gunfire.
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Yeah.
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Sounds like we're in the Faulkland Islands with our...
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That wouldn't be.
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By the war nobody has for it.
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When it was on everybody's mind.
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Yeah.
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In 1983, Argentina.
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So I love how on top of the electronic drums that they also added actual acoustic drums.
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That's really cool to me.
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Specifically this drum called the Batah, which was played by Cuban American percussionist
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named Daniel Ponce.
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And apparently he's playing this drum the Batah
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and the rhythms he played are associated with the Aruba religion from West Africa.
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That's right.
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This family of drum usually comes in three different sizes.
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And you would normally have three different players.
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But Ponce was such a professional.
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He played all three of them in different passes.
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And it sounds like one performer doing all of it.
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I love it.
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And that's what you're about to hear.
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That's what you wanted.
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That was the sound you were looking for.
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Well, let's layer it with some Oberheim.
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And some crafty 16ths.
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Do you say crappy 16ths?
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Crafty.
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Yes, those are crafty.
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I thought those were wood blocks.
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You know, like to me the wood block is also something that comes to prominence in the New York,
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me, of the late seventies early eighties.
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The sound is very similar.
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It's a two headed drum.
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So there's skin on both sides.
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And you know, again, there's a small medium and large.
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And you're hearing all of them together right there.
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Love the batah.
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I feel like we got to get get some batah up in here sometime.
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Hell yeah.
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Let me just say one thing I love about the batah is that when we went back and listened to
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this song this week, that was the one percussive instrument where I was like,
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oh, this reminds me of break dancing.
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This reminds me of all the moves I could not do.
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Oh, that's interesting.
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Right.
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You know, it's true because there's drum machines and there's break beats.
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But there's also percussion.
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There's also a big part of like hip hop, as I mentioned, salsa earlier.
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There is a lot of live percussion.
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That's a big part of both being added to machines,
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but also just in those early James Brown break beats.
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Yeah, to me, that percussion is what makes me see guys like,
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you know, spinning, you know, doing the windmill, doing the head spins.
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Like that sound.
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I can hear that in my mind's eye too.
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Absolutely.
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So one of the most legendary parts of the song aside from Herbie, of course,
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is the scratching.
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And we want to talk about that.
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The scratching was performed by the legend of self-grand mixer, DXT.
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Let's hear a little bit of the intro.
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Okay.
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So iconically, grand mixer DXT, born Derek Showard,
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starts the song by scratching and it's layered with the drums.
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But let's just hear his part first and then I'll add it back.
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That what boom is so iconic to me.
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What boom you can't hear without thinking about Rocket.
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Right.
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And I imagine the Oberheim was programmed first
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and his scratching was too that already programmed Oberheim.
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So let's hear what was programmed that he would have been matching with his.
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Or I actually thought you were going to say the opposite.
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I thought you were going to say he did that and the program the drums to match him.
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That's also possible.
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So here is just the Oberheim DMX with the same rhythm.
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And it sounds very robotic in rhythmic.
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Yeah, but not very human.
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But when you add the scratches together, it kind of gives it a little bit
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something different, something new.
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Yeah.
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I don't know.
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We don't know which came first, but to me, like that hand movement
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sounds very organic.
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I think people intuitively understand that that's the sound of a record being scratched.
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Yeah.
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But what not everybody knows and I certainly learned in the making of this episode is that the origin of
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that the idea of using it as a sound is grandmaster flash one of the first two do it talks about.
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The idea of using a record scratching as part of the entertainment.
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Because normally a DJ is doing that behind the scenes.
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They're queuing it up in their headphones.
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They're hearing that sound when they're finding the start of the next song.
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The history of scratching is out there and there are a couple of places to get it that are fun.
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One of my favorite places to get it is if you go to the OK player account on Instagram,
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Klesslev has his timeline, ironically from drunk history of scratching from point A all the way
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to point Z. And it's really entertaining.
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And it's really informative.
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It talks about who is the first person to cue it.
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Who's the person to do the helicopter scratch.
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Who is the first person to end it's a pretty amazing story.
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That might be a fun sort of like extra credit assignment for some of our listeners who want to get it.
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Extra credit on one song.
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Extra credit on one song.
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Go watch this Instagram wheel.
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Now let's hear DXT's scratch solo that he recorded in just one take.
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Let's do it.
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I'll play it for you and then we'll talk a little bit about what you're actually hearing.
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I mean, that's so like something crazy.
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It's almost like the moment in 2001 a space out of C when the eighth throws the bone
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into the sky.
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The world changes and it comes down as a satellite.
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Like if you can remember what it was like to hear that coming out of like cars just driving
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down the street.
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Everybody's like, yo, what's that sound?
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What is that sound?
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And it was like big and it was like important and it kind of changed what people thought of.
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Not just hip hop but like what we were capable of producing sound while.
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There's so much going on here.
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I'm so glad that we're let's slow down for a second because it's a new tool to
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instrument the turntable as a tool.
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But also the specific sound which we're about to reveal what the sound is where it came from.
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And how it's being manipulated.
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All of that is new in this moment.
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It's so exciting sounding.
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And one really cool thing about this song over the course of the song.
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It's kind of a calling response between rhythm and melody.
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Like there's no harmony in the song.
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There's no chord changes.
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What you have is rhythmic motifs that interplay with the melody that we'll be
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soon hearing from her.
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He handcock.
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So all of this stuff to me is just as hooky as an Eddie van Halen guitar solo with actual notes might be.
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It's funny.
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I always think about like our episode on Little Child where he was like everything's a hook.
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You know, like this is one of those songs where like there's so many different parts of it.
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That could be a hook.
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You know, I have to say just because I'm I've just turned in in my 80% done man you
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script on the book.
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And one important thing that I'm finding as I try and do a taxonomy of all musical
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borrowing throughout history is how much rhythm is like this kind of secret sauce.
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We think of melody as being so important in the world.
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And it is.
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But melody are just what the notes are.
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How the notes exist in time.
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How the rhythm is so much.
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The speaker actually has much bigger.
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And you can do this experiment with any almost any song you can go
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you can almost like kind of rhythmically do.
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Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
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Kiss you back.
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There's a lot of songs right where there might be multiple versions of melody.
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Sometimes a rhythm is enough to evoke an melody by itself.
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So anyway, all this to say that in this moment we're getting the scratching.
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And let's talk a little bit about the sound source here.
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This sound that you're hearing is a single moment from a single song and I'll play it for you now.
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All right, so the origin of the sound you're hearing is just a very tiny moment at the end of
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a song called Change the Beat or Shenzh Lebeat by B.
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We talked about this song on a previous song.
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I think chemical brothers.
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And this is a remix actually to a FF5 Freddie song called Change the Beat.
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Exactly right.
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And at the very end, there's a moment.
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Interestingly enough, this song is created by Bill Lauswell and Michael Bynorne.
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And this is a material production with FF5 Freddie and B.
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Which makes sense that you would scratch on a song that you had created.
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It was there at the studio.
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That was the vinyl when DXT came into the studio to work on the tune.
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They had a stack of vinyl that they had made themselves.
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And this was one of them.
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Without further ado, here is the moment that he used.
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So what you're hearing actually, interestingly enough, is
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Bill Lauswell's manager Roger Trilling through a vocoder saying,
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ah, this stuff is really fresh.
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It was making kind of a record label executive.
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But that sound fresh is one of the most sampled sounds in all of it.
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Absolutely.
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Hip hop history.
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And actually, it's in Britney Spears.
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It's in lots of things that aren't hip hop.
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About 3,000 uses according to who sampled.
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Yeah, if you've ever listened to much old school hip hop,
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you'll hear that fresh everywhere.
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I can't.
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Yeah, the sound of hip hop almost.
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It's like the lineage.
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When you use it now, it's 40 years of lineage going back to 1982 when it was first used in this song.
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And how smart of them?
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I mean, they had no idea that hip hop would become what hip hop became.
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But how smart of them to essentially sample themselves because they were able to get away,
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you know, legally, you know, financially from a publishing point of view.
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Which wasn't probably really on the table, to be honest.
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No, they weren't thinking about it.
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Good luck.
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But it was also, yes, it was there good fortune that they did that.
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And like you said, most people at this point know that like,
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scratching is just, you know, basically there's a sound on that piece of vinyl.
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And you're rubbing the needle over it back and forth.
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Scrubbing back and forth.
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Right.
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And it's funny because the second that we realized that, you know, on our laptops now,
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you can kind of do that.
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We were like, can we duplicate?
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Rock it.
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Right.
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And it would sound something like this.
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Something like that.
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That's so cool.
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What I love about this is you've really demonstrated getting into the head of grandmaster
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DXT who talks about this sound.
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And how important it was to him as a maker of music.
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He said, quote, it was just the right sound.
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It became like my bow.
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I refer to the turntable as a turnt fiddle.
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In other words, like an instrument.
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So my bow was the change, the beat record.
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This sound became an iconic part of his arsenal, his instrument.
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It was his instrument.
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The turntable was like an instrument.
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And this was like a patch on a keyboard or something.
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I love that.
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And I don't know how I never thought about turntable and your fingers as sort of being like a bow
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and the fiddle.
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Like that, that's kind of it.
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I love that.
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I don't know why I had thought about that, but that makes a lot of sense.
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I love it too.
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And I feel like it really gives proper credit to the art of the sound that we're making coming from
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this new tool, the DIY nature of it, the punk.
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I keep saying punk rock.
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It's DIY in that you're taking the tools you have access to.
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And the skills you have innately to make music with.
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And you don't need necessarily to have a keyboard or to have a drum kit or to have
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access to a studio.
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So Grandmaster DXT is making music, which is a substantial part of this song using that sound.
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The other thing that I like that DXT said was that he was trying to
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in his scratching channel,
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Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz great.
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So he's really thinking about the musicality,
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the musicality of what he's doing in the studio.
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He's thinking rhythmically of placing notes.
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The notes just happen to be this sound.
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Yeah.
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So there's one more thing that recorded in OEO's studio.
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And that's the electric bass.
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That was played by Bill Laswell.
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Can we hear a bit of that?
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This is Bill Laswell on bass.
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He's playing I think a Steinberger,
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which is your classic 80s bass where it's just the neck.
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Like the body is like the side of the neck.
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When you picture the 80s bass, that's what he's playing here.
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And it has a very distinctive sound too.
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An interesting thing that he's done here.
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I'll play it for you.
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And then I'll tell you where he got not quite interpolation,
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but it's very close.
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Interpol it's an interpolate.
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Interpolite.
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It's an interpolate.
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I'll put some drums in just for fun.
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Two things. First of all, Laswell has talked about his influence
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for that bass line many, many times across any interview.
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But even if he hadn't, even if this was like secret knowledge
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that we're revealing, what's interesting about what he borrowed
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is that it's completely outside of the realm of what would be
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remotely considered infringement.
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It's not a melody.
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It is not a melody.
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It's just a rhythm.
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We were talking about extractive rhythm before.
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He's extracted the rhythm from another piece.
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This is Pharaoh Sanders' upper and lower Egypt from 1966.
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Listen and see if you can tell what was reused or borrowed or shared.
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Right. Do you hear what was borrowed from that?
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I don't know that actually.
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It's so subtle.
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It's just the rhythm of what he's scatting.
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I'll play the bass line.
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But he assign different notes to the rhythm.
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Absolutely.
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In theory, he assigned some notes.
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The scatting was bordering on melodic.
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Here is that bass line again for comparison.
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It's so subtle.
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Laswell also cites for the second bass line at the very end,
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which is kind of a coda.
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He plays this and he cites the source.
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I'll tell you what that is in just a second.
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But see if you can tell what it is.
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Which as Laswell points out was borrowed from the Jimmy Caster bunch,
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the song is just begun.
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And we talked about evocation combinations before.
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Like playing two notes on the bass.
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Like it's mighty vocal.
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Another song with two notes on the bass,
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but nobody can own two notes on the bass.
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What's your expression of evocation?
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Evocation combination, but when it's small,
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like that, two things, rhythm plus sound,
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the bass line, but the same rhythm.
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No.
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Evocation minimum.
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People seem to like that, by the way.
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I know. We read the comments,
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we talked a little bit about how that fresh came from another.
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But there's another sample.
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That's right.
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What can you tell us about that?
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Again, Laswell talks about really funny story.
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How he went to sample Led Zeppelin's Coda,
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which is their worst record.
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And at the very beginning, it starts out with a drum fill.
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And he wanted to isolate one of those snares.
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He wanted to get a John Bonham snare sound.
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Now, who doesn't want a John Bonham snare sound?
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But he didn't have a sampler.
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And actually, I do believe he worked with Martin B. C on this.
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It's unclear actually who of them who's pushing the buttons.
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But they didn't have a sampler.
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They had this delay.
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And a delay, what it's doing is it's repeating a sound.
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That's what a delay device does.
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So in a way, it's like a little mini sampler.
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By using the repeat hold function,
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you can kind of cheat a delay if you can't afford
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a fair light or a synchleviar.
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You can use it kind of as a sampler.
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So he was trying to grab this snare sound and he missed.
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He went a little too late and he grabbed a guitar stab instead,
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which is what we're hearing when we hear this.
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And to be clear, this is public information.
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So here's what we hear in the song.
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What's interesting too when isolated is that that happens three or four times.
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But they're all a little bit different.
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Because every single time they had to queue up this device to kind of grab it.
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And it's not just pushing a button like we would now
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or pushing a note on the keyboard.
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It's like what all DJs would like to queue to have conduits.
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It's like exactly a needle drop.
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It's very akin to what is happening elsewhere in the song with the fresh sample.
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It's the same thing.
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It's going to be a little different every time.
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So he says that it was from the album Coda.
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I went through the whole thing and I wasn't able to exactly find it.
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But I think I got close.
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This is the song we're going to groove.
spk_0
Starts with the drums which would map to his story of trying to grab a snare.
spk_0
There's the snare he wanted.
spk_0
But I think that's where he actually hit the button.
spk_0
I think he hit it right there.
spk_0
I'll play it again when I think he did.
spk_0
And if you pitch that down.
spk_0
I was going to say must have slowed it down, right?
spk_0
Well, again, you're using this delay, this lexicon delay device.
spk_0
So how he did it, I'm not really sure.
spk_0
But I think he must have slowed it down.
spk_0
Which sounds an awful lot like the Zeppelin.
spk_0
With some filtering added, it's eight bits.
spk_0
So you're not sampling at the full resolution.
spk_0
I'm pretty sure that's the piece.
spk_0
It definitely maps the story.
spk_0
That's a scour green to it.
spk_0
It's got a lot of grain to it.
spk_0
And I think they softened it by cutting the EQs, the high EQs.
spk_0
You can hear a little bit of that percussion,
spk_0
no, that drum, duh, duh.
spk_0
And I'll play it for you in the context of the song.
spk_0
It's just a little moment.
spk_0
Just that one step.
spk_0
And again, that would be pitched up from
spk_0
and then pitched up.
spk_0
I think I nailed it.
spk_0
Oh, man, that's amazing.
spk_0
Listen, after they added these final touches,
spk_0
the ones you just played, Bill and Michael delivered the track
spk_0
to Herbie at his home in West Hollywood.
spk_0
Byron says, when Herbie listened to the track,
spk_0
he didn't know what was going on.
spk_0
But he knew that the song needed a melody.
spk_0
So they stood outside Herbie Studio for like 15 minutes
spk_0
humming together, composing a melody on the spot.
spk_0
I love that.
spk_0
If there's a through line on the show,
spk_0
it is that your biggest hit will probably be composed in 15 minutes.
spk_0
I don't know what it is.
spk_0
Let's hear a little bit of the melody they composed.
spk_0
And what a melody they came up with.
spk_0
Now, Herbie played that three times actually layered.
spk_0
It was the Rhodes Chroma, I think a mini-mog.
spk_0
And here's another layer and then I'll add them together
spk_0
for the thickness.
spk_0
And together.
spk_0
I will say, man, that speaks to the genius of Herbie Hancock.
spk_0
Because I love obviously all these other parts.
spk_0
But it really is that synth, in my opinion, that melody,
spk_0
that's the hook.
spk_0
You know, that's what draws in, you know,
spk_0
the kids watching at home in Atlanta or the mom
spk_0
in Iowa, like you need that part to make rock it happen.
spk_0
I think one unique thing about this song just in our
spk_0
hundred songs that we now talked about is,
spk_0
like there isn't, it's not driven by a lyric or a melody or storytelling
spk_0
or chord changes or harmony.
spk_0
This is a song that's an interplay between, we just heard a lot of rhythm
spk_0
and some interesting sounds.
spk_0
And now we're hearing a very simple melody
spk_0
repeated several times with no harmonization at all.
spk_0
There's no chords underneath it.
spk_0
The melody itself is not harmonized.
spk_0
And that's the whole song.
spk_0
But across the three minutes, the narrative between the two,
spk_0
the melody is so strong.
spk_0
The sounds are so interesting.
spk_0
And the rhythms that are used across both of them,
spk_0
both in the scratching as we were talking about in the beats.
spk_0
And now in this melody,
spk_0
all of it sustains your interest, your obsessed whole time.
spk_0
And there's so many different parts of the song.
spk_0
It's really, it may be one song,
spk_0
but it's like so many different elements.
spk_0
So many hooks, so many motifs.
spk_0
And yet, it's pretty minimal when it's very sparse.
spk_0
So Herbie has a solo on this song.
spk_0
Can we hear that?
spk_0
Isolated?
spk_0
That's right. At the very end, we have kind of a coda.
spk_0
So the whole thing has been sort of building up to like him,
spk_0
letting loose.
spk_0
It's been robotic, robotic, robotic.
spk_0
And then finally, at the end, we hear really Herbie Hancock,
spk_0
what he's known for.
spk_0
He's got the mod wheel, the pitch wheel.
spk_0
He's doing all the bending of the notes.
spk_0
And it sounds like this.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
That's what we had a jazz fusion artist on this song.
spk_0
Because that part makes a big difference.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
You know, this is the part where the humans beat the robots.
spk_0
Yes, the computers we win.
spk_0
The robots are funky.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
They're not some crazy algorithm
spk_0
getting us to kill one another.
spk_0
spk_0
These are these are cute ass robots.
spk_0
But how, by the way, how Daph Punk get lucky was that solo.
spk_0
Right?
spk_0
The rhythm.
spk_0
I mean, that's the other part.
spk_0
When you hear that, you hear every idea that the robots
spk_0
mean, Daph Punk, Chromio, all that, all that stuff that we,
spk_0
you know, think is so kind of stems from the song, doesn't it?
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Kind of goes back to this.
spk_0
Vocators and drum machines and even the solo being funky
spk_0
and melodic is all stuff we hear a lot later.
spk_0
A lot of times in bands like what you're naming.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
You know, they're still human behind all that stuff.
spk_0
Human after all.
spk_0
Human after all.
spk_0
I want to talk about the final piece, which is Herbie's vocals.
spk_0
It occurs to me that there are vocals on this,
spk_0
but I'm not sure that I know other than the words rocket.
spk_0
I know any words, any actual words.
spk_0
And I literally stayed away from like, you know,
spk_0
genius in other places that list the lyrics.
spk_0
What can you tell us about the vocals on this song?
spk_0
Well, they're pretty minimal.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
But there are some vocals.
spk_0
And they are all going through the vocoder.
spk_0
So this is a Sennheiser vocoder.
spk_0
Lyrically, the content is extraordinarily minimal.
spk_0
And as Binhorn tells the story,
spk_0
because Planet Rock was the big hit
spk_0
and maybe on all of their minds
spk_0
because of the drum machines and electro sounds
spk_0
that they were using,
spk_0
the idea was let's take some of the words from that song.
spk_0
For example, don't stop, Planet Rock, don't stop.
spk_0
And Rocket, which are both featured in Planet Rock.
spk_0
Don't stop it, you gotta rock it, don't stop.
spk_0
You gotta rock it, don't stop it, you gotta rock it, don't stop.
spk_0
And here's her be saying don't stop on the vocoder.
spk_0
That's one of very few things you hear.
spk_0
And if you can believe it, the title of the song, Rocket,
spk_0
we only hear once in the whole song.
spk_0
Holy one time?
spk_0
Yeah, here it is.
spk_0
I don't think it happens more than once.
spk_0
I know it's just the once in here it is.
spk_0
Rocket.
spk_0
It's so brief too.
spk_0
That only happens one time in the song.
spk_0
There's more little sounds like this.
spk_0
Shut up to cook, cook, cook, cook, cook.
spk_0
He's just saying,
spk_0
he's just kind of saying scatting really, nonsense.
spk_0
That was a real fun sample waiting to happen.
spk_0
Can you play that one?
spk_0
Shut up to cook, cook, cook, cook, cook.
spk_0
Shut up to cook, cook, cook, cook, cook.
spk_0
Oh, you're popping on the one in two, my friend.
spk_0
Go to that.
spk_0
Shut up to cook, cook, cook, cook.
spk_0
No, but I'm saying like if you flip it on its own sample,
spk_0
you can put it anywhere you want.
spk_0
Okay, then I'll give it to you.
spk_0
Then I'll give it to you.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Now I was trying to make it a new song.
spk_0
That's your one.
spk_0
One, two, three.
spk_0
Shut up to cook, cook, cook.
spk_0
I know that's not the one.
spk_0
No, I'm giving it to you.
spk_0
Yeah, if you put his class,
spk_0
so sick though.
spk_0
How it plays with the drums there is so cool.
spk_0
Absolutely.
spk_0
Do you be clear I was trying to flip it into a new song.
spk_0
I heard that.
spk_0
I think what you do is an improvement.
spk_0
I can't help people out there think I'm climbing on one in three.
spk_0
That is cool.
spk_0
Is that it?
spk_0
Because I feel like there's some other sounds.
spk_0
Yeah, there's all kinds of weird sounds.
spk_0
The spurs.
spk_0
Here's another one you might remember.
spk_0
That's Binhorn just saying,
spk_0
Doddowl and slow down.
spk_0
Yeah, he's weird, man.
spk_0
That's a weird sound.
spk_0
That's a weird sound.
spk_0
Well, this song was infectious from the very beginning.
spk_0
I love the story of Bill as well.
spk_0
Playing rockin' in public for the first time.
spk_0
Apparently he had some time to kill on his way to the airport
spk_0
and played a reference tape mix at a speaker store,
spk_0
which is the thing kids used to go to these places.
spk_0
You used to speak for a scale.
spk_0
To bicycle.
spk_0
Yeah, you used to buy speakers.
spk_0
When he played a bunch of kids from the neighborhood
spk_0
gathered around asking, what was that song?
spk_0
I'll tell you what that song was.
spk_0
It was a Grammy Award-winning hit in the making.
spk_0
His performance of the Grammys that year
spk_0
is really like an introduction of hip hop
spk_0
as art to a global older audience.
spk_0
Let's watch a clip of that.
spk_0
I love that they brought so many elements.
spk_0
From the video.
spk_0
They've got these also pre-jabber walkie guys
spk_0
who are in these robot face masks.
spk_0
If you want to call it that, it's almost like a dancing mannequin.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And they're really tied up in a ribbon.
spk_0
Look at the instrument he's playing on stage.
spk_0
He's finally got his keytar.
spk_0
Finally got his keytar.
spk_0
He doesn't have to wear the actual keyboard
spk_0
around his neck anymore.
spk_0
What if personally it's still the word on candy keeps popping
spk_0
in my head.
spk_0
It was the video is uncanny.
spk_0
The uncanniness of the robots and the machine
spk_0
and emotions that they're making.
spk_0
But even watching this now, I know those are real people
spk_0
with masks on and you lading the video.
spk_0
But I'm still a little bit like, is that a robot or not?
spk_0
Like it's still not 100% clear.
spk_0
Of course it's really people.
spk_0
At this point it's obvious with the break dancing.
spk_0
But earlier when they introduced them,
spk_0
I'm like, wait, how are you doing that?
spk_0
How are they doing that?
spk_0
You know, no, this is actually beginning
spk_0
of Boston dynamic, the guys who make the robot else.
spk_0
Better going to kill the song.
spk_0
They started with break dancing.
spk_0
It was really benign.
spk_0
This will be our last episode guys.
spk_0
But this was really just the first time that you had
spk_0
the great because the Grammy's audience
spk_0
was not the MTV audience.
spk_0
And for some of them, this is the first time
spk_0
that they had break dancing and scratching
spk_0
and and all these B-boy elements on on a stage for them to see.
spk_0
So cool.
spk_0
With a herbie Hancock,
spk_0
who by that point was respected in those circles.
spk_0
Luxury now that we've heard the song and we've seen the video,
spk_0
knowing how much Bill Lazzwell contributed,
spk_0
I'm curious how these splits break down.
spk_0
Well, it's an even split between Lazzwell,
spk_0
Binehorn and Herbie Hancock.
spk_0
I'll give them split it all the way down the middle.
spk_0
That's awesome.
spk_0
Well, down the middle, 33, 33, 33.
spk_0
It's the even Stephen.
spk_0
It's the even Stephen that I always wonder who gets that extra penny.
spk_0
I know that.
spk_0
Because it's two point three point six.
spk_0
That's the tie-up for 45 years.
spk_0
Actually, it'd be the extra penny.
spk_0
No, I love it too because that seems fair.
spk_0
That seems like the song wouldn't have come together
spk_0
how to not been for the three of them
spk_0
adding their talents in different ways.
spk_0
And I actually want to call attention to because the front of mine
spk_0
just sent me a chapter of his forth coming book about Nashville songwriting.
spk_0
Nashville rules as a baseline
spk_0
is that everybody in the room is equal.
spk_0
And I love that.
spk_0
I think that's really fair.
spk_0
Can I say I do feel bad that Grand Mixer DXT
spk_0
does not get in on the publisher?
spk_0
I agree.
spk_0
Because I think without the scratching,
spk_0
this song is not the legendary song.
spk_0
I think so too.
spk_0
Rhythm is left out of the equation with copyright, wrongly so.
spk_0
But I will say, we love Herbie.
spk_0
And I've been waiting so long to do a Herbie episode.
spk_0
And I think Rock it was a perfect place to get in.
spk_0
Herbie's still around.
spk_0
So if Herbie ever wants to come on the show,
spk_0
we'd love to talk to you about your catalog.
spk_0
Please come on the show Herbie.
spk_0
So, Jala, what do you think the legacy of Rocket
spk_0
by Herbie Hancock is?
spk_0
There are a lot of things you can say about this song.
spk_0
It was a groundbreaking music video
spk_0
that so much has been said about thriller,
spk_0
you know, breaking down doors over there.
spk_0
But like, less has said about Rocket.
spk_0
I think this is absolutely, you know, it deserves to be.
spk_0
It's number two to thrillers number one in terms of like opening those doors.
spk_0
But I also just got to call out the scratching again.
spk_0
Like, there's been so many hip-hop songs and songs and various genres
spk_0
with scratching.
spk_0
Really does it take such a center stage the way that it did here?
spk_0
I completely agree with you.
spk_0
I know every note of the scratching
spk_0
as much as I know every note of the baseline or the melody line.
spk_0
They are all components of what makes this song
spk_0
hooky and memorable.
spk_0
And I think memorable is the key phrase,
spk_0
because, you know, people often think a scratching is just a spice.
spk_0
But it's one of the four avenues of B-boyism.
spk_0
And really, doesn't get to take the stage.
spk_0
But when it does, it can transform a song.
spk_0
I'm thinking about going back to Cali by L.O. Cool J.
spk_0
Back in the four, I told you sick and lonely days.
spk_0
I think about Paul Revere by the B.C. Boyz.
spk_0
I've also think about Peter Piper by Randy MC.
spk_0
I just love it anytime.
spk_0
And we won't even get into a conversation about
spk_0
we've been talking primarily about people scratching on instruments,
spk_0
but when you scratch on a word, like fresh.
spk_0
He is a good thing to scratch on.
spk_0
That's a whole nother conversation.
spk_0
But give scratching its due, it definitely took music to a different place.
spk_0
These are new sound sources.
spk_0
And remember in 1981, we take for granted that we got synths,
spk_0
we got splice, we got all kinds of ways to get sounds.
spk_0
Prior to this, you had to have an instrument,
spk_0
you had to know how to play the instrument.
spk_0
All of this stuff suddenly overnight becomes transformed by your ability to
spk_0
take a tiny little piece of another recording.
spk_0
And it's a sound that you completely transform in its reuse.
spk_0
I mean, the other thing too, the legacy of the song is the elevation of hip hop and turntabalism
spk_0
and scratching as an art form,
spk_0
contextually because Herbie Hancock co-signs essentially on hip hop
spk_0
to the Grammy audience with his legacy.
spk_0
What an elevation that is and deservedly so.
spk_0
And people might have wondered why through
spk_0
when Marcelus's name at the very top of this episode.
spk_0
But there were people at the time saying like,
spk_0
that's not jazz.
spk_0
Herbie sold out, that's not jazz.
spk_0
And I think that jazz, as much as I love bebop and hardbop
spk_0
and I love the music of Robert Glassper,
spk_0
I feel like in some ways Herbie is more like Robert Glassper in the sense that like
spk_0
he draws in these elements from other genres.
spk_0
And it prevents jazz from becoming sort of like this,
spk_0
you know, strictly for the museum's dead art form.
spk_0
You know, like, no, like bring in more influence.
spk_0
Jazz didn't end in the 60s.
spk_0
Jazz continued to evolve.
spk_0
Absolutely. So no, no, no, just effective to
spk_0
Winton, but I'm team Herbie Hancock.
spk_0
Me too.
spk_0
Okay, luxury. It's time for one more song.
spk_0
This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you,
spk_0
the one song nation and with each other.
spk_0
Uh, luxury, my man.
spk_0
You go first.
spk_0
Well, I mean, I couldn't resist with this song because this is
spk_0
Mayor Jai-Ci Mehuba by Bobbula Heary.
spk_0
I'm glad you said it.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Come on.
spk_0
Mehige Simeh Bula Bula Bula.
spk_0
I mean, we got to ask the question who came first.
spk_0
Oh, definitely, Herbie Hancock.
spk_0
And not even close.
spk_0
Hindi music, Hindi, Bollywood movies have always
spk_0
have a long legacy of like taking something popular in the West.
spk_0
And they're not going to hear it.
spk_0
Let's just redo it.
spk_0
I think that's actually an 808 too, which is fun because it kind of
spk_0
gives you an alternative universe where they use an 808 instead of a DMX.
spk_0
Totally.
spk_0
And only had a two-track recorder or something.
spk_0
But I love how low-fi it is.
spk_0
And I love how like kind of, you know,
spk_0
recreated sounded.
spk_0
It is imperfect.
spk_0
That's awesome.
spk_0
What about you, Deyala?
spk_0
What's your one more song?
spk_0
I think because we were talking about Herbie,
spk_0
I've been thinking about things with vocoders and various vocal
spk_0
enhancements.
spk_0
So for me, I'm going with one of my favorite Southern rap songs
spk_0
of the late 90s.
spk_0
This is eight ball and MJG, top of the world.
spk_0
I'm going to drop you from my heart.
spk_0
Let me drop it on the one that is the fend me.
spk_0
I think eight ball and MJG are just criminally underrated.
spk_0
That's hot.
spk_0
In the history of Southern hip-hop.
spk_0
I like anything with a vocoder or a talkbox.
spk_0
And by the way, I couldn't actually tell which that was.
spk_0
It's right in that zone where it could kind of go either way.
spk_0
But it's always cool.
spk_0
We should do a segment called.
spk_0
Talkbox, vocoder, auto-tune.
spk_0
And then, you know, we should give out cash prizes.
spk_0
As always, if you have an idea for one more song,
spk_0
you can find us on Instagram and TikTok.
spk_0
You can find me on Instagram at DialloDiA, LLO,
spk_0
and on TikTok at DialloRiddle.
spk_0
And you can find me on Instagram at LUXXURY
spk_0
and on TikTok at Lecture XX.
spk_0
And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at
spk_0
One Song Podcast for exclusive content.
spk_0
You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube
spk_0
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Just search One Song Podcast.
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We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe.
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Also, be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist
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for all the songs we discuss in our episodes.
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And you can find that link in the episode description.
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Show us some love.
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Give us five stars, leave a review,
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One song, make sure.
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Luxury, help me on this thing.
spk_0
I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist.
spk_0
Luxury.
spk_0
And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ.
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Dikit, dickit, dialloRiddle.
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And this is One Song.
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We will see you next time.
spk_0
This episode is produced by Melissa Dwayne.
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It's our video editor, is Casey Simonson.
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Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo,
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mixing by Michael Hartman and engineering by Eric Kicks.
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Productions to provision by Rizok Boykin,
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additional production support from Z Taylor.
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This show is exactly to produce by Kevin Hart,
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Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wile, and Leslie Wong.