Radio 2310

This is the winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Short film “Logorama” and all I can say is that its 16 minutes of pure awesome. “Ronald McDonald packing heat” is enough to get me excited alone but that’s like one of about two dozen things to love about it. There is some language (quite a bit actually) in this one so don’t play it out loud around the kiddies.

Mick Boogie did this mixtape a while ago but he tweeted out the link today so I thought I’d post it up. Its a free (albeit extremely large – 129 MB) download. Once you click the link you’ll have to wait for a few seconds before you’ll be able to actually download it but it’s totally worth the wait.

I was on my way home last night from dinner in Tremont (at Parallax which is a hellified spot for sushi and plenty of other fare so check it out when you’re in Cleveland) listening to Sirius Backspin when I heard “Fakin the Funk” by Main Source.  I hadn’t heard that jam in a while so I thought I’d start a running gimmick on this blog with a different Old Skool joint each day, and “Fakin the Funk” was going to be the first one.

Then of course I remembered that today is the Anniversary of Notorious B.I.G.’s death and that changed that program up quick. 

I could’ve gone with a myriad of Biggie’s songs but I chose this one because its the one that introduced him to me.  Supercat’s “Dolly My Baby” from ‘93 – which gave us the line “I love it when you call me Big Poppa” that Puffy then sampled a the next year.  I’ve still got this one in the wax collection – although I’m pretty sure it belongs to someone else and just ended up in my hands.

Just in case any of you didn’t know, I truly loathe Joe Buck.   Since sports is how I got my start in both amateur and professional broadcasting, when I see a smarmy talentless hack who is only employed because his dad was good at it let’s just say I take joy in anything that causes him pain and misery.  You can call me jealous if you want to and you’d probably be right but even as an amateur I could broadcast this jamoke into the ground, yet sonny boy is the one with the million dollar contract.

Full story here:

Fox’s everywhere sportscaster Joe Buck and his wife of more than 15 years, Ann, have decided to “take a break”, according to his mother, Carole Buck, who spoke to reporter Jerry Berger.

Next up on the list of things Joe should consider taking “a break” from would be “speaking” and “breathing”, not necessarily in that order.  The only thing that would make this story better would be if Ann’s reason for the break was that she needed the time to be at Artie Lange’s bedside to assist his recovery.

If you’ve been following the health of GangStarr front man Guru at all, you’ll know that there’s quite a bit of controversy about how his producer Solar has been handling the situation.  Judge for yourself based on this set of videos from Solar calling in to Hot 97 found here at hiphopsite.com

Check out one of my recent dance sets from the Rockside Holiday Inn. You might want to fast forward it to the 4 minute mark to skip the “Electric Slide”. If I never play that song again I’d die a happy DJ but you’ve gotta give the people what they want.

I’ve been DJing now for over a decade.  The more I say that out loud the more astonishing it seems because I can remember when DJing and beat mixing was all that I wanted to do… and I was horrible at it.  I couldn’t mix two songs together if you spotted me the first 8 beats.   After a while I became so frustrated that I contemplated giving it up completely.  Sure I was competent with my tables but I wasn’t nearly as good as I wanted.  I had  a gig at AM 930 for a while but that paid squat, it was a news and sports station and most of my work was done on the board (including one heartbreaking night in 1997 when a certain closer failed to get the last two outs of a certain game 7) without ever cracking the mic.  I just wasn’t feeling it anymore.

I quit the radio station and started teaching classes on MS Office for a training company in Parma. One of my students and I were talking about music during a break when he informed me that he was a DJ at the 100th Bomb Group.  This guy was in his late 40s and seemed to know what he was talking about so it had sparked my interest once again.  With this new found energy I began practicing again, but this time with more focus and a sense of purpose – something I didn’t have previously.  The training company actually hired this student to be my new admissions director so we developed a pretty solid friendship, which only motivated me more.  I finally had a contact that I was certain over time would help me get where I wanted to be.

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