DJ Super Dmitry | Dee-Lite, Nauti Siren & The Sound of a Life Lived in Music
This week on Once A DJ, Adam is joined by DJ Super Dmitry — one third of Dee-Lite, the group behind one of the most joyful and enduring records in dance music history. But Dmitry's story goes far beyond 'Groove Is in the Heart', and this conversation goes all the way back to the beginning.
Dmitry grew up in Soviet Ukraine as a third-generation musician. His grandmother — unable to afford a piano during the disruptions of the Russian Revolution, Civil War and World War Two — cut piano keys from paper so she could practise by hand. That love of music carried through the family, and Dmitry began lessons at five, was attending a conservatory music school by seven, and was already writing his own compositions in the style of Gershwin and Scott Joplin by eight.
Western music was tightly controlled. Records could only be obtained on the black market — for around $50 each — and were copied onto reel-to-reel before being traded on. A track from Jesus Christ Superstar introduced him to something funky he couldn't yet name, and the search for that sound would shape the rest of his life.
At 14, Dmitry and his family left the Soviet Union — the first in their town to do so, and treated as traitors for it. After periods in Austria and Italy, where he discovered punk (the Pistols, the Damned, X-Ray Spex, Iggy Pop), the family arrived in New York in 1978. On Halloween. In a Black neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Having never seen Black people before.
From a 50-cent bin in a record shop, he picked up 'The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein' by Parliament because the cover looked insane. That was the moment. 'There it is,' he thought. 'That's the sound I've been looking for.' He's been a funkateer ever since.
New York in the late 70s and early 80s was extraordinary — punk, disco, hip hop, and house all converging in the same sweaty rooms. Dmitry became an elevator operator at Danceteria, practising guitar in the lift between floors while Sisters of Mercy and the Sugar Hill Gang did soundchecks below. He ran into the pre-fame Beastie Boys regularly, worked at the Pyramid Club (run by drag queens, and a real education in showmanship), and played for Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash at block parties in Harlem and the Bronx.
Dee-Lite formed as a direct attempt to bridge the gap between house and funk. They built a following through monthly shows drawing up to 1,500 people, which caught the attention of a Billboard writer and eventually sparked a label bidding war. They signed to Elektra — choosing them because their A&R, Nancy Jeffries, had signed Iggy Pop and Bjork, and that felt like the right kind of open-mindedness.
Elektra didn't believe 'Groove Is in the Heart' had any traction. They let Dee-Lite do the video anyway, and Dmitry remembers the precise moment he knew it had crossed over: standing in a grocery store queue when it came on the radio and the cashier started dancing at her till. 'That's my jam,' she said. 'That's my jam.'
Q-Tip turned up to the studio, listened for 15 minutes, jotted notes, and nailed it in two takes. Bootsy Collins casually mentioned he had 'some friends' who might be able to play horns — those friends were Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker, who arrived as near-strangers to each other after five years apart and immediately played like they'd never stopped.
Their first proper gig with a full live band was in front of 300,000 people at Rock in Rio. The second album was recorded expensively in a big studio; Dmitry considers it their weakest. The third, Dewdrops in the Garden, went back to basics and home recording, and he's proud of how well it still sounds.
The band broke up when Dmitry and Kier's relationship ended, and he eventually made his way to Berlin — partly drawn by its thriving club culture, partly pushed out of New York by Giuliani's crackdown on clubs. He played Tresor, won a Best Techno DJ award at Ibiza despite not really being a techno DJ, worked with Julie Cruz, remixed Chaka Khan and Ziggy Marley, and kept making music.
Then during the pandemic, a friend sent him a vocalist called Jessie Evans. He sent her some dub tracks that had been sitting on his computer for years. She recorded them one by one, sending back a finished song every couple of days from Brazil — while caring for two young children. Before they had ever met on video, they had an album's worth of material. That project became Nauti Siren. She moved to Germany, they got married, and they now have around five albums' worth of music ready to release. The first, 'Rising', is out now.
This is a remarkable conversation with someone who has lived inside the history of popular music for fifty years — and who still has plenty more to say.
Find DJ Super Dmitry:
Instagram: @superdjdmitry
Nauti Siren 'Rising' — out on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms
Once A DJ
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Transcripts
Adam:
Welcome back to One2DJ everyone, the podcast that looks at what brings us together and what sets us apart. As a dj, I think there's probably a lot of us where we.
Where we go out and DJ and we're somewhere where we're just trying to feel out the crowd and you'll have a few different sort of litmus test songs, you know, where you can kind of gauge this crowd's up for it or they're just not. And I'm delighted to have today one part of the group that brought out one of those litmus test tunes, DJ Super Dimitri from D Light.
How are you doing today, sir?
Speaker B:
Thank you very much. I'm doing very well. You know, I'm sitting here in my studio and looking forward to our chat.
Adam:
Great stuff. And just to correct on that, sorry. Of D Light and Naughty Siren and a bunch of other work as well, which we're going to get into.
So what I just tend to start the show with really is looking at sort of where you grew up, really, and what your earliest sort of musical connections are and where the passion for music came from.
Speaker B:
Well, I must say, first of all, I'm third generation musician, so, you know, my mom is a pianist. My grandma, unfortunately, she started. She was very music able, but.
But there was the small little things like the Russian Revolution, then Civil War and then World War II. So there was a couple of snags along the way with her continuing her music education. What she did is to remember her piano.
She cut out all the keys from paper and laid them out so she could practice. She couldn't hear herself, of course, but yeah, she could probably. But she made sure that her daughter had the opportunity to study music.
And my mom went to a conservatory and got her music degree and then was teaching at home and she was my first teacher. Her taste runs towards classical pretty much, and she kind of snubs her nose at anything that's not exactly.
She's no longer with us, God bless her heart. But in any case. So she started me out on teaching me, but that didn't go very well. We fought quite a lot.
And that she, the tender age of five, she couldn't take it anymore and she gave me to a teacher, a music teacher. It was a little old lady, Oksana, and Oksana straightened my ass right out, you know, she wouldn't suffer fools at all.
And so she, she was a harsh teacher, but she got me good. And then at the age of seven, I started going to music school. And that was kind of a Cool thing in the Soviet Union.
So it was a very different time frame we're talking about. And it was within a conservatory for adults. There was a music school where the students of the conservatory were the teachers of the music school.
So we were taught by quite young people, you know, 19, 20 students. And they were into, you know, Western music and they were into rock mostly. But, you know, that was the time.
Adam:
And this was Kiev, wasn't it?
Speaker B:
Well, it was Ukraine. No, it's not Kiev now. It's called Kropovnitsky. Then it was called Kirovograd after the great hero of the Soviet revolution.
But, you know, they decided that they didn't really want to remember the great year of the Soviet revolution after all. And then he renamed it back to its old name. However. Yeah, however, you know. So the students were into, you know, western music.
And we studied funny things. We studied like some Deep Purple tracks. We studied some. One thing we studied was the Jesus Christ Superstar, you know, the opera. Yeah, okay.
Andrew Lloyd Weber.
Anyway, so we studied because it was a good example of western decadence and like religion, you know, all the things that were wrong with the west, you know. So it was all there. It's kind of funny that it was used in a very propaganda context, you know. Yeah.
Adam:
I was gonna ask you about, like, was there a lot of control over what Western music you access to?
Speaker B:
Yes, pretty much. I mean, the western music really, you could only get really on the black market. Now, as a kid, I was already very involved with going to.
It was a private gathering where you would have to hear it to be announced through your friends and so forth, so the authorities didn't know about it. So you would go there and it would just be a bunch of people selling different western things.
Everything from jeans to vinyl to stamps to whatever, you know. I don't know so much about the shady side of the black market in the Soviet Union. I was a kid. But any case.
So you would try to save all your money and then go to one black market and buy a record. Cause each record was like 50 bucks, you know, so you really had to. Yeah, that much. So, you know, it was.
What you would do is then you would bring it home and then you would make.
You would record it on reel to reel for yourself, and then you make copies for your friends, and then you'd sell it right back and trade it for something else, you know. So that was the deal.
But the funny thing I was gonna finish about my story about the music school and studying Jesus Christ superst In Jesus Christ Superstar is pretty much, you know, all this kind of showy, rocky, you know, feel. But then, you know, there's one track called what's the Buzz?
And it's kind of a really funky bass line and keyboards and, you know, and I thought, wow, that sounds cool. You know, I didn't know, really. I couldn't understand the lyrics so well, but. But the groove was super funky.
I was like, wow, I want to do music like that. And I didn't know black music. I mean, we had Boney M, you know, that was pretty much the end of it as far as, like, I
Adam:
think that was produced by a white guy anyway, wasn't it?
Speaker B:
Yeah, Farian. Frank Farian. But in any case, it was. The girl's voice was cool, though. She was the. The cool one.
The rest of them, you know, I'm not sure there's a lot of clouding around with that, but. And not being on the record, but, you know, being the visual, you know, it's kind of set the standard for all the subsequent, like.
Well, in Black Box and people, you know, just. People just taking. Taking other people's vocals and pretending to be them, you know.
Adam:
Well, it was Frank, wasn't it, Frank that did.
Speaker B:
Milli Vanilla as certainly did. Yeah, yeah. So he had a long tradition of that. But in any case. So I was really into the sound.
I didn't know it was called funk, but I was like, okay, well, this is. You know. And I started writing songs at around maybe the age of 7, 8.
I started writing my first songs, and they were, you know, I also loved, like, Gershwin and the Gershwin Brothers. So that was a big early influence. Scott Jopp, you know, that was another influence. So I started writing something in the style of.
I thought, of course, they were very simple in comparison to the Gershwin and the Scott Joplin. But in any case, that was my earliest influences. Then I came to the age of 14.
I and my family left the Soviet Union, still was the Soviet Union at the time. And we immigrated, which was also, you know, fairly traumatic experience, you know, for.
Because we were the first in our town to leave our glorious fatherland, motherland, whatever you want to call it. And so we were kind of looked on as traitors that we were abandoning, you know, our motherland, like, and then treated accordingly, you know.
Adam:
Was it easy to leave?
Speaker B:
No, it was a really difficult thing where you had to have relatives abroad that would send you an invitation, then you would put that invitation to the passport agency, you would give it to them, and then immediately you would be fired from your job. Right, whatever.
So then you would have to wait for about maybe a year, maybe longer, for the visa to come through, if it would come through, you know. And so during this time, you had to live on your savings and you were kind of ostracized, you know. So, no, it was not an easy thing.
And for a kid, you know, but I knew I wanted to leave, so there was no, you know, I would endure everything. I'm leaving, you know, screw that, I'm leaving anyway. So I'll just endure whatever insults you throw at me.
Adam:
Did you feel like you had to leave and go because you wanted to discover more of the music?
Speaker B:
Well, the music is definitely the world. I mean, you know, really.
You know, I was very, very much into geography and history and all the things that literature that the world had to offer, you know, and I didn't care to be censored. I mean, inside the Soviet Union, the only official records were, like, released by one label, Melodia. That was the 1 label.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And they released a couple of Beatles, 7 inches. They released a couple of St, 7 inches, ABBA, you know, the Bodium, you know, this kind of thing.
But that was as far as they went, you know, that was it, really. So, yeah, I wanted to hear more clearly.
And, yeah, I was really interested in being part of the world culture, you know, and it felt very stifling to be in a little town in the tightly controlled media, which, yeah, we knew there was just propaganda being thrown at us all day. Not that the west doesn't have its own propaganda, which is thrown at us every bit as much. It's just more subtle. That's all it is.
It's not as overt, but in any case, there is freedom of press, sort of, and freedom of speech, sort of. And the music doesn't seem to be repressed. Although, economically speaking, you know, it can also be like that. Especially previously when the studio.
Going into the studio was a very expensive business, so you needed to be funded by somebody or, you know, or rich to be able to go to the studio to record a, you know, a decent demo. But now we're not limited by that anymore. So it's a. It's a beautiful thing. However, it also.
Well, the other thing was prohibitive, but it also separated a bit, weeded down people that had no talent and no business trying to do stuff officially to a much more democratic thing. However, we have to weed through endless millions of compositions now to get something that you really love.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
So was.
Adam:
Was there any of the locally released music, was it Megaphone, did you say the label?
Speaker B:
Melodia. Melodia.
Adam:
Melodious.
Speaker B:
Sorry.
Adam:
Was there anything on that label that was released that was. That was from the Soviet Union that you got quite into? Because I'd.
Speaker B:
Yes, I've.
Adam:
I've heard that. There's a few bands that I've heard that are, say, from like, the Czech Republic or Hungary or places that are really funky of that era.
There was one I discovered the other day. I think they're called, like, Studio B or something like that.
Speaker B:
I'm not familiar with that. I mean, I left, you know, I was 14, not even 13. Yeah. So.
But during my time there was this composer, Tukhmanov, who was considered really hip at the time in the Soviet musician circles. And there was a group from Belarus called Pesnaray that was also kind of edgy.
They had these really cool Eastern harmonies with their voices, and it was rock, but with these really cool harmonic vocals, you know. So I kind of quite like that. Although I haven't heard their stuff in, well, 30 years or so. But, you know, but I enjoyed that at the time.
It was experimental and interesting, of course. Then I, you know, once I left and my family moved first to Austria and then to Italy, we. I got into punk.
You know, it was:
You know, Buzzcocks, you know, I mean, there was a huge explosion and in the States, too. I mean, there was the Stooges, you know, they were the originators anyway, and there was a. I mean, lifetime fan of Iggy Pop.
So, you know, just went recently to see him in concert. Just as great. I've seen him in maybe six or seven. Amazing. Amazing individual, amazing performer. Love him.
United States. This was like:
time. And so then eventually:
I was the only child, so it's me and my parents and my grandparents. So it was three generations of my family. And there I started to go to school and, you know, there was other people more into rock, though.
But, you know, there was a. Back in the day, there was 50 cent bins, you know, in a lot of record shops.
So you'd go there and it was a cutout thing, you know, on the corner, and then, you know, you'd buy things there. So I would save all week and that was kind of my weekly allowance. So I would spare little records.
And one of the first records I got was because it looked so crazy, I didn't know them, but it was The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein by Pivot. And I thought, oh, these people look insane. Like, I mean, I knew kids, you know, and they looked wild.
And these guys kind of look sort of similar in their own way. It's the same costume designer. Later I found out who did the costume. Costumes were kids and P. Funk. So, yeah, and I listened to that.
It's like, oh, there it is. There is the sound that I've been looking for. This is it.
And so from there on, you know, I was a funkateer and pretty much all things funk, you know, still love, you know, a lot of rock, you know. Huge fan of Led Zeppelin. Huge fan of a lot of more funk rock, though.
You know, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, of course, you know, that's the old school, but also like glitter rock, you know, sweet slate, all that, you know.
Adam:
Yeah.
I suppose it must have been a really interesting time to be landing in New York, because it was just after the blackouts and also the time where you had that kind of explosion where post blackouts you had the punk movement, you had the disco movement, you had hip hop starting off. Like, what. What was it like landing in that sort of world?
And I guess there was probably a lot of poverty around and things like that as well in the city.
Speaker B:
Well, okay, I'll tell you kind of a funny story about our arrival in the United States. We arrived on Halloween. Now, we had never heard of Halloween.
We didn't know what the hell was going on there, but just the weird looking people in costume and like, people throwing, you know, rotten eggs at, you know, people and just all sort of naughty behavior, you know. And we're like, what the hell is going on in America? It's Brooklyn. And it was. Well, back then it was Brooklyn Heights was.
No, it wasn't Brooklyn Heights. Carroll Garden. So this neighborhood was mostly black neighborhood, lower, you know, lower poor people mostly, you know.
And then most of the corner services and stores and things were owned by Hasidic Jews. Right. So. And under the grocery store, that would be, you know, the main Grocery store for the black neighbor would be a synagogue, right. And that.
So it was a really weird mix of. Of poorer blacks and Hasidim, you know.
So, yeah, I wound up, you know, my first job in the United States was working for Hasidic man who was very kind to deliver groceries, you know, so that was that. So we were like, what is going on here?
You know, we're arriving and, you know, there's a bunch of like, you know, neighborhood guys, like drinking 40s hanging out on the corner, you know, just chilling. They weren't being aggressive or anything, you know, but. Well, you know, coming from the Soviet Union, then Austria and Italy a little bit less so.
But we've seen very few black people until we arrived, you know, really too. We had very little experience with, you know, African Americans or, you know, or Africans or any kind of thing like that. We were very isolated.
The culture was very white. So arriving in a black neighborhood, it was a real culture shock.
But, you know, it was a beautiful thing, actually, because, you know, there would be music being played usually, and the guys hanging out on the corner, they would have a blaster with them and they would be playing some dance stuff usually, you know, some. Some funk or disco. So it was fairly innocuous once the Halloween passed.
And the next morning we took a train to Manhattan and we saw the skyscrapers and said, oh, okay, now we're in America. I see. Because Carroll Garden is all like one or two story houses and pretty poor neighborhood. So it's not that beautiful. It's gotten better looking.
A lot of money had gone in there. And gentrification, big time New York has been gentrified unbelievably.
When we got to New York, it was very much a poor city, even though Wall street was there. So you had that wealth being generated. But the city itself was deeply in debt. There was.
The city services were being cut left and right because the city couldn't afford them. So it was very, you know, in some ways, very polarizing environment too.
And also during this time, early 80s and late late 70s, there was a war going on between the New York City police and the Rastafarians.
So a lot of Rastafarians because of the weed, obviously, but the Rastafarians were quite a lot of time they were armed because they were, you know, the police would get aggressive with them just for no reason at all. You know, they just rough them up. So they protected. They were protecting themselves. And so it was pretty hairy, that part of it.
out at that, you know, around:
It played mostly reggae, and so it opened at like three in the morning and it closed in the afternoon sometime, you know. And so it was a really mixed crowd, actually, quite eclectic crowd, but a lot of Rastas.
And they didn't ask you to check your gun at the floor at the door. So, you know, they were carrying, you know, inside the club. So basically you had to be careful whose toes you stepped on while you're dancing.
But they were, you know, they were there to have a good time and, you know, smoke their weed and get into the music. So it wasn't really that they were being aggressive, but, you know, tempers do fly.
Adam:
Was it?
Speaker B:
Go ahead.
Adam:
Was it kind of like. I do wonder with things like that, like, because everyone knows that everyone's armed.
Do you think people are more careful about letting their emotions get the better of them?
Speaker B:
Well, there's definitely that, but I don't know if that's enough of an advantage to have legal arms. I'm just, I'm very against that, you know, telling the truth.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
But, you know, I mean, I can't, you know, count of people staying calm, you know. And, you know, in New York, you also, you get very hot summers and everybody's suffering from the heat. So people have really. The temper is afraid.
Big traffic jams.
Temper is afraid when you have people armed, you know, people react in unpredictable ways, you know, So I don't think it's actually a great idea, but at the time, that was what it was, you know, so.
Adam:
Yeah, so. So from discovering P Funk then, did that kind of kick on with you in terms of anything around DJing?
Speaker B:
Well, I started collecting records. It started, you know, with that. I, you know, I would skip food and buy records.
And I mean, I was very excited about my record collection and kept growing. So I started out with. I didn't have two turntables with pitch control, you know, So I had bought two turntables, but they didn't have pitch control.
So it was just a 33 and 45 thing, you know. And so I would make mixtapes, but really just try very more like cut, you know, through just.
Yeah, I would make a lot of tapes like that and go around restaurants and try to sell them as like, you know, to take bake background music tapes and yeah, some of them fairly successfully, but some of them not, you know. But I was, you know, also working in the restaurant business. I was managing A restaurant.
And that's when, at around this time, I mean, I met Kier and met her at Washington Square park on the fountain. She was sitting there. We had a mutual friend that was there with her.
And we got introduced and hung out for about maybe a year before we decided that we were interested a little bit more than just friends. Also, because her friend was a gay lady and she had a crush on Kier. So she told Keir that I was gay, and she told me that Kier was gay. Right.
So we were like, okay, well, just hang out and be friends and all that. And then it went into the romantic side. And so we. Then very shortly after we started going out, we moved in together. First she moved into.
I lived at the time in a one room that I was renting from this old lady, Helen Putnam. And it was by United nations there in Manhattan, Second Avenue.
But it was one room, so it was a little bit too tight squeezed for the two of us to stay there. So we pretty much. Pretty soon we moved out. And Kier was doing fashion at the time.
She was studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and she was printing fabric. She was a textile designer, basically.
And so we founded this apartment in Brooklyn, and she built this huge printing table, maybe about seven, eight meters long, you know, printing table where she could print a whole bunch of fabric all at once. And she. It got pretty elaborate.
She was doing great stuff, but, you know, nobody was paying attention, you know, she was just a young girl, you know, and so nobody was really taking her seriously. Then we had this great opportunity. We were both going out a lot, and I was already doing music. I was in a couple of small town bands.
Punk, ska, all kinds of sounds. Some rock, too, but. And, yeah, and some funky stuff as well. So here she was doing her fashion thing.
And we had this opportunity open up this club that we would go to all the time, called Area. They had a competition because they had, like all these rooms, the small rooms inside the club, they were behind glass, like you had.
What do you call it? Well, a storefront. Yeah, like a little glass window inside the room. And inside the room, they would do art installations.
So they would contact different artists. And it was pretty cool club, actually. They had a nice sound system, too, and big dance floor. But they had this competition of the best artists.
You had to do an installation in the room. We enrolled in the competition and Kier designed a boudoir, hooker's boudoir.
She printed her own wallpaper, she printed her own furniture that she reupholstered. She decorated the entire room. And she was the lady of the night and I was her john, you know.
So in various incarnations, I did, you know, I'd come in as a sailor, rough her up a bit, you know, and there was a screen in the back where with a light behind it so you could see the silhouette of somebody doing something. And she, you know, we'd go back there and she would pretend to, you know, do naughty things.
I mean, it was all acting, but, you know, it was kind of for the fun of it. And we had a friend who was a. She was a Go Go dancer for the Butthole Surfers. I don't know if you'd heard of the Butthole Surfers, right? Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, so she's pretty wild lady and she'd come. Come in there covered in completely green. She was. Her body and face, everything.
And then she'd be naked inside the room and grinding on the window and things like that. So we did this for about a month. Yeah, about 40 days or something like that. Every single day.
It's funny, we were driving this car on the way to area and somebody rear ended us, hit our car, and we were in our drag, if you may. Kier had one of her teeth blacked out. She was wearing a white afro wig, a really cheap 70s dress. And I was dressed as a Hasidic Jew.
And so I had the, you know, the curls and the whole nine yards. And so the cops come and they see us and they're like looking completely disgusted at us, you know, they're so like, ew, gross. Like, go, get out.
So he ran into us. No, just get out of here. Get out of my sight.
So anyway, we wound up winning this competition and it was $5,000 big, you know, big money back then, so bought more gear, you know. And then we had a psychedelic trip. And pretty soon afterwards and we started decided to try to do music together.
We came up with the idea of the name, the concept. We wrote our first two songs during this trip and delight was born. And then I contacted my ex girlfriend who I was friends with.
She played bass and she sang. So she became our backup singer. And so we decided, we got a little demo of maybe six or seven songs and we'd start performing.
And we booked our first gig. We didn't tell a soul about it because it was our first gig and we were terrified to be on the stage. And it went okay though.
And they asked us again, you know, the club asked us to play again. So the second time we told everybody of Course. But, you know, so that's how D Light started with the live shows. That was really the way.
Because we weren't signed. We didn't. You know, we send out hundreds of demo tapes to labels and not one, you know, right back anything positive.
Like, they were just, what we got, a negative letter. So you should forget doing music. Don't ever, you know, just forget it. Find another job. You know, you don't. You don't want to.
You don't want to be doing that. But, you know, it did not let us. Let them deter us. We had. During this time, we wrote a letter to Bootsy Collins, and it was just a fan letter.
And we sent it to him and we sent him our demo. And he wrote back, which is, bootsy is just lovely. And so he wrote back. He's like, yeah, I like the music. You have some potential here.
Let me know when. If you guys get set up with a label, then I will come and play on your record. And so.
Adam:
Wow.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Adam:
How come you went to Bootsy rather than George?
Speaker B:
Well, you know, to tell the truth, we were a little scared of George. Right. No, I mean, I met him later and he's amazing. You know, I love George, but, you know, at that time, they felt very intimidated.
But in any case, we love Bootsy, especially, like, you know, he had this. He had this. The name is Bootsy, Baby is this album. And it has this amazing. Like, one side is old slow jams. Like, the other side is more upbeat stuff.
But anyway, I love this album. So we really felt connected with Bootsy more because it was also a lot sweeter than, like, P Funk.
Some of the P. Fung stuff can be rough, you know, and if you really listen to the lyrics, if you're really paying attention to what they're saying, you know, some of it is. Well, it deals with complex issues. You know, put it this way.
Not that Bootsy doesn't, but he's just so much sweeter about the way he interacts with the world. You know, he's got that great energy. Anyway, we might have even written to George, but at the same time, I just don't. I don't remember.
I remember because Bootsy responded. We wrote a lot of letters at that time, you know, trying to get kind of have a funny story about Bootsy, too.
Because I met a Bootsy imposter before I met the real Bootsy, right? So this guy is, like. He was a very tall, Afro American guy, and he is. He's got the.
You know, he had the glasses, the Star glasses that has, you know, Bootsy signature star glasses. And, I mean, on the albums, you can't really tell what Bootsy totally looks like because, you know, he's wearing glasses, usually hat.
He's got a lot of, you know, a lot of flashy outfits. So you can't really. You can't really tell exactly what he looks like. And I'm sure he was intentional.
He didn't want to be recognized walking down the street everywhere. So we didn't really know what he looked like. So this guy comes.
I'm DJing one night in this club, and he comes and says, and I'm playing not just knee deep, right? I'm playing not just knee deep by beboping. And. And he comes over and says, can you play One Nation Under a Groove?
After that, I was like, oh, well, okay. I could do it. You know, I love One Nation under the groove too, so. And it actually. Well, yeah, it sort of mixes. You have to speed one up.
You have to slow one down. But they do. They can be mixed together. So I wound up playing that next. And the club owner came over, and the guy walked away.
The club owner came over, says, did you like the Bootsy meeting? Bootsy. That was Bootsy. Oh, my God. You know, so then I'm, you know, finished with the night.
I'm packing my stuff, and I was driving, gonna drive home to Brooklyn, and this guy is standing outside, like, trying to get a taxi. And then, you know, for. Sometimes at nighttime, for a black man to get a taxi in New York can be problematic. At least that time it was, you know.
So anyway, I said, hey, where you going when you want to ride somewhere? I'll give you a ride. And so I made him listen to the tape. And he knew his stuff. He knew about Bootsy's bass. He knew.
He's a musician, so he's a bass player. So he actually knew what he was. Sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And then I let him go, and I gave him my number and everything.
And then two days later, I'm DJing at the World, and I see him again standing outside. I was like, hey, you know, can you let this guy in?
That's Bootsy, you know, so he hung out with the management there, you know, free drinks, drugs, whatever, you know. And then he was with this lady, and she's like, hey. She comes over. I'm DJing, and she comes over and she's like, hey, have you seen Bootsy?
I was like, well, no, I don't know him. Sorry. He's walking around the club somewhere, and she's like. Cause he had my purse, and it had $300 in it. I was like, oh, shoot. I don't know.
I'm really sorry. I don't know what he's doing. So then I called up. You left me a number, right? So I called up the number, and I was like, can I speak to Bootsy?
And the lady picked up the phone, who was there? That motherfucker. Pardon my French. I got bills here for catering. I got bills here for liposis. I got bills here for. You know.
He was, like, completely using Bootsy's name. He got a grant from ibanez guitar for $10,000. He was really like, you know, working it. And Bootsy, real Boots, he had heard about it.
I talked to him about this later when I met the real deal. And he's like. He had friends of his who found him and brought him to a hotel room where Bootsy was. And he's like, look, I don't want to hurt you.
I don't want to do anything to you. I just want you to stop. This is not okay, what you're doing. You must stop. And the guy continued. And so Bootsy passed it on to FBI eventually.
And he's in jail, that guy. But whatever. But this is my first experience of meeting the fake Bootsy.
Then I met the real one when he came up after the letter, you know, so he came up to play to the. On our album. And what an incredible professional. I mean, my God, he was. He was so humble about the way that he, you know, behaved.
He really wanted to learn exactly the parts that I wanted him to play. He bootsified it at the end, you know, he made it his own, you know, and that was what we wanted anyway, you know?
But he was very careful to learn to get the composition correctly, to get the parts right. And also, when touring with him, it was the same thing where he was super careful about how he was very true to the original.
He didn't try to just change it automatically. And he would always look, say, oh, you know, was that okay? How I changed it this way or that way? You know, and it was always okay.
First of all, that man is a human sequencer. He does not make, like, timing mistakes, like, ever. He's on time all the time, super tight. You know.
I guess the school of James Brown and P. Funk, you know, really worked that out. He's.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So whilst. Whilst you were kind of working on the album, then had DJing, been kind of bubbling and steadily growing.
Speaker B:
Yeah. Oh, the DJing absolutely never stopped. You know, I was at that point.
By the time the first Delight album come on, I was working six nights a week as a dj, you know, so, yeah, so different clubs, the world Red Zone, you know. God. I had a gig at a place called Afro Sheen. That's where I met Towai, actually.
Adam:
Right.
Speaker B:
Yeah. I was DJing at this place and there was a group of maybe five or six Japanese kids that would come.
Trendy Japanese kids would come, and every time I dj, Friday night, you know, they would be there. And one day, one of them, you know, had given me a cassette of his DJing. And I was like, okay, thank you. You know, I didn't know him.
So, yeah, I let it lay around for a while. And then, you know, one day I was like, oh, let's just see what this is about.
I popped it in the cassette player and it was very similar to what I was doing, but different songs, wasn't the same. But it was also in the same feel like, you know, in the same. Yeah, ballpark. So I gave him a call and say, you know, wow.
It turns out that he does music as well. And he had. He had a sampler, I had a sampler.
He had a board and he had an Atari sequencer, you know, so which is the sequencer I did not have at the time. So everything that I would do, you know, I mean, it was sync, you know, it was not even like midi.
And I would just program the drum machine and record that. And then, you know, on an A track, I would record the Delight stuff to be good. But he was like, okay, come over. Let's have a jam.
And so we started having a jam and we liked what, you know, the chemistry and. Cause Toa didn't really speak much English when we first started hanging out.
You know, he was just arrived from Japan several months ago before that, and he. Yeah, it's also. But we jammed and we really had a good time and I liked him and we thought, okay, let's do some more and wind up.
By that time, Delight was already performing fairly steadily, like once a month. But we started jamming with Toa and then I was like, okay, why don't we ask Toa to be a part of the band? You know, too. And so we.
Then Toa didn't really have a role to play live. So we were like, okay, why don't you, you know, you're Japanese.
Why don't you take Polaroids and, you know, like, such a stereotype you know, so he would just take Polaroids and throw daisies. That was another job of his that he would throw daisies into the crowd. But he was very much involved with the production especially.
I mean, most of World Click was already written by the time that Tova joined. But it wasn't all produced. So Tova had a big hand in making the production.
Adam:
Did he have like a similar style to you guys? Cause that was kind of quite a big thing, wasn't it? The visual element as well?
Speaker B:
Well, I mean, we were kind of really trying to be very individual about our style. You know, we didn't really. We weren't trying to look similar to each other. Kier had her own thing, I had my own thing. And.
But me and Kier, of course, we lived together, so we coordinated more naturally than with to. But Tova, you know, he was. We were all really into hip hop too, you know, let's not forget that.
Because there was a height of the hip hop beginning of the hip hop culture in New York.
And I used to go to block parties in Harlem and the Bronx and with like Red Alert and Kool Herc DJing, you know, with a lot of early hip hop of Grandmaster Flash, you know, that kind of thing and Roxanne Shantay, you know, all these kind of people. And you know, New York had a plus. I was working also at Danceateria and at Dance. This is a club in New York.
And there you had a lot of hip hop nights too, where you had like the sequence, you had the Sugar Hill Gang, you had Spoony G, you had, you know, some like Doug E. Fresh, you know, these early hip hop by Run dmc. Actually, Run DMC were there quite a lot at Danteria and we even filmed one of their videos there, which I appear in for a quick second.
I was just a club kid. Yeah. You know, but they hired a whole bunch of club kids from Dunceteria to be in their video. You know, they liked our look.
But yeah, so that was that time. And there at Duncat, I met another mentor of mine called Mark Kamons, who was a big DJ at the time. He produced the first Madonna single.
Actually, everybody. Yeah, because Madonna, she went from DJ to DJ to produce her next single until she got huge. That's a whole different story.
But anyway, so she was, at that point she was going out with Mark Kamens and you know, everybody was just broke out. But the dance Achiria was awesome. Cause you had a lot of live bands that come through there. Pretty much anybody who Was in the.
From rock to funk to disco to rap to industrial. You know, people like Front 242 and Einstein Neubaten, you know, this kind of people.
And like Lydia Lunch and you know, a lot of really amazing Mark Holman. You know, a lot of really amazing people have come through Danceteria and performed there. And I got a job there as an elevator operator.
elevator, an old school, like:
Like once I bring the people to the office, they would stay there. So I had very, a lot of free time, but I had to hang out in the elevator, right, and be ready for somebody to ring that bell.
So I'd bring my guitar into the elevator and my little mini amp and I'd be practicing there. That was the. Was a good school, like I was saying, you know, because you would, you would see people doing sound checks, you know.
You know, you would see like anybody from Sisters of Mercy to, you know, to Sugar Hill Gang and you know, all kinds of Grandmaster Flash, you know, different, different people.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And I remember, you know, so many amazing punk shows and hip hop, all kinds of things like that, you know, and we used to hang out there all the time at Dance Interior. Also hanging out a lot was next to us with the BC Boys, you know, so. And I must say, you know, I used to think that they were really obnoxious and.
And we kind of, kind of were that friendly. Later we became really friendly and you know, and actually properly met up and, you know, laughed about that material. But, you know, so.
But they, you know, at the time they were just snotty young kids. Like they were, you know, barely out of high school and you know, they thought that they were the hot shit.
And at the time they were called the Young and the Useless and they were a punk band. My friend Kate was playing drones for them and then one day they, they, they had this record called Cookie Puss.
It was their, you know, first single really. And then they decided that they wanted to be an all boy band and so they kicked her out.
Yeah, and I was kind of, you know, like really thought what a bunch of wankers, you know, kick out the girl drummer. You know, she was good, she's a good drummer. So she actually started a band in the 90s called Action Jackson. That was quite a bit of success.
Yeah, but anyway, so they were there a lot. You know, we had like Karen Finley who is this performance artist? She was a bartender.
You know, you had a lot of really amazing people that were going through there, all kinds of very mixed group. And you had. On the fifth floor, you had a cabaret.
So you had a whole different group of artists that would be part of that, you know, and we've seen, like, you know, for instance, Kitten Natividad of Rathmeier, heroine of a couple of Ross Meyer's movies, and his wife. And she would. She'd done a strip there, and she. There would be, like, John Sex, you know, who was the really cool artist of the time in Manhattan.
He's. He's gone now. You know, all kinds of Anne Maguson. You had. Debbie M. You had a lot of really cool New Yorkers that were a part of that scene.
And so you had a lot of different scenes on. The first floor was more of a death and also rock venue, you know, where all the. The big shows were. The second floor was strictly dance floor.
That's where Mark Kamens was playing. And, you know, Madonna would be hanging out there all the time. Yeah, it was a very creative environment. And I learned a lot about performance.
And then I also got another job at the Pyramid Club, which was a club that was running and operated by drag queens. And so they. There was there. I learned a whole lot about showmanship and about what, you know, just comedy fun, but also real talent, you know.
So that was a great, great time and a great learning experience for me.
And we used to do a festival called Wigstock, and the Delight had done some of our early shows for that, and it was kind of a real fixture in the whole Pyramids scene. That was a very interesting other. So there's a lot of different scenes going on in New York. That's what we loved about New York.
And Delight was a direct result of that because, you know, house music was starting to go really strong. And at the same time, we were into funk. So we would. We tried to, you know, bridge the gap, like, you know, between house and funk.
And that was the Delight sound, pretty much.
Adam:
How did you guys get signed?
Speaker B:
Well, it was a really. We were doing regular shows. Like, once a month we would do a show.
to:
And then he wrote an article in Billboard about us. And then he had come around once more. And you know asked us if we would like him to help manage the band. And he had contacts with several labels.
We had a mini bidding war for Delight. It was kind of fun. All these labels were interested. Geffen flew us to Los Angeles. We didn't sign with them, but, you know, it was.
Anyway, they were trying. All these labels were trying to impress us, like.
And then Elektra, finally, we decided to go with Elektra because our A and R person, she signed Iggy Pop before, and she also signed Bjork. And so we thought, okay, well, you know, these.
If these people are open enough to deal with these people, then, you know, they might be open enough to deal with Delight. Because we didn't really want to compromise much on what our sound or what our look is going to be.
Adam:
Yeah. Who was the A and R person?
Speaker B:
Nancy Jeffries. She used to work at Virgin, where she signed Iggy, and she signed a couple.
A couple more really, like Ziggy Marley, a couple more really cool artists. And then she moved to Elektra. And then we were like, her first. First signing. No, Bjork was her first signing. Sorry. And then. And then we were next.
Adam:
Yeah. So when. When the album was getting ready to be released, did anyone have a feeling about how big Groovies in the Heart would become?
Speaker B:
Oh, are you kidding? They didn't even want to release it. Elektra didn't think that Groovies in the Heart would. Would go anywhere. They.
They thought they didn't like the vocals. They. They didn't, like. They didn't think the track had really, you know, any traction on it, but they let us do it. And we also.
Toa Had a good friend who became our friend, too, was Hiroyuki Nakano. He directed the video. He'd come over, and he'd shot Delight before with, like, a couple of times.
And then we thought, okay, let's ask him to do the video, you know, And Electra had never heard of him. They were like, who. What you want to do? Because, you know, back then it was like a big budget, you know, so they.
And it's the budget we had to pay back. You know, it's not. Was an advance, part of the advance. So they were like.
They didn't build in the project to begin with, but then all of a sudden it started happening. And part of that was that we released what Is Love As a white label before we released Groovy in the Heart.
And it became kind of an underground dance hit. And Junior Vasquez at the Sound Factory started playing it quite a lot. And so that got us noticed kind of thing.
It's a big dance floor, maybe:
And I dropped it. Nobody left the dance floor.
They all just stood there and like, they didn't know because it was a lot slower than all the other, other music that I was playing. You know, you. You got your 120 plus BPM, you know, where your house stuff. And all of a sudden, you know, what is love is 1, 113, 114.
So, you know, it's a lot slower. And you can't. With dat, you can't mix it. You know, it didn't have pitch control.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
So you couldn't speed it up. So you had to stop the house music and then play what is Love? And they were just mesmerized the first time.
Nobody danced, nobody moved from the dance floor. They were like, what the hell are we hearing now? And then. But. But they were. They were interested. And then later that same night, I played it again.
And then this time the reaction was amazing. You know, we really had people going crazy over it. And so then it crossed over to Sound Factory and other clubs started reacting, really hitting it.
And then we released Groovies In Our Heart with the video. And the video really helped sell it to bring it to another level.
Adam:
Did it blow up immediately or was there a bit of time for it to bubble up?
Speaker B:
Well, you know, a couple of weeks after it had been released, I was at the grocery store and I was in line, you know, with my vegetables, and. And all of a sudden it came on the radio in the grocery store. And the cashier lady, she started going, oh, shit, that's my jam. That's my jam.
And she started dancing at the cashier station. And I thought, hmm, you know, maybe this could really cross over, you know.
And then you would hear it, you know, going out of Jeeps, passing on our street a lot. And then, you know, people found out because we lived, me and Kier lived on St. Mark's Place, which is a very busy street in downtown Manhattan.
So people found out where we lived.
And then there would be crowds of people, like, waiting in front of the, you know, in front of our apartment, like to, you know, get a glimpse or get an autograph or something, you know. And so we actually had an expression for that, the Groovy Attack Run.
Adam:
How did you get the connection with Q Tip. Was that through Toa?
Speaker B:
Yeah, it was. Toa had done some work on the Tribe Called Quest and Jungle Brothers albums.
And so Q Tip, to reciprocate for the work that Tova had done on Tribe Called Quest album, he'd come over and it was kind of funny because we thought, he's coming by the studio to pick up the tape and, like, take it home and, you know, write and whatever, and then come back and record it. And he's like, no, no, man, let me.
Let me just listen to it for a little while, you know, so give me about 15 minutes or so, you know, let me jot down some lyrics. And we're like, okay, you know, so we did it. And then he was like, okay, I'm ready, you know, so. And just put it up. And he did two. Two. Two takes.
And the first take was the. The take that we know, and the second take was backgrounds. So he just, you know, doubled on some. Some words and some phrases, and that was that. He.
We were done. He was done. Another 20 minutes, he was done. You know, it was such a professional. Was really amazing that he just come up right on the spot.
Okay, okay, I'm ready. Yeah.
Adam:
And I suppose you've got the visual element that. That speaks to people in a certain way. You've got the Bootsy in there that speaks to him in a certain way.
You've got Q Tip that speaks to him in a certain way. It just. It's a track that kind of touches a lot of people.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it's funny. Bootsy, you know, he was like, talking to me. So. So, d. You know, you think you might want to have some horns on. On your record?
I was like, well, you know, who do you have in mind? Bootsy? And he's like, well, I got these friends of mine, you know, Fred Wesley and Macy Parker.
And at that point I was like, yes, bring him in, please, please.
Adam:
Oh, so they're on it as well?
Speaker B:
Yeah, they're on the first two Delight albums. Yeah, right. I didn't realize actually on all three because we used samples of them on the third one, you know, recorded. So. Yeah, so. Yeah, and so we.
We. We got Fred and Maceo, and. And then Maceo was even in the video, the Delight video.
But it's very funny because those two, you know, they haven't played together in a long time. They. They used to play for 20 years for. With James Brown and. And P. Funk. But then, you know, they.
They did their own thing for a little while and they lived in different parts of the country, so they hadn't played in five years together. And they come together and they start playing like, you know, like they never left.
You know, it's just so long together, you know, they know exactly where it was, you know, Macy was improvising and Fred knows exactly where he's going and can, like, harmonize with his improv. Improvising Blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like it. But Bootsy's like, oh, you know what? They're not playing so good.
Let me see what I can do about it. And that would sound great to me, you know, I don't know. Bootsy, he's like, yeah, just. Just wait.
So he pulls out his record at the time, and it was a 12 inch.
I forget the actual track name, but it had on the back cover of it, it was a picture of a woman's beehive, you know, taking up the entire, you know, 12 inches of it. And so he holds it up to the vocal booth, you know, in the window, and they perk up. Like, they start playing much, much harder. It was hilarious.
But, you know, but really they came up to do two songs and they wound up doing eight. And, you know, it was. It was amazing. You know, they were just such pros.
And when they first come, like, Fred, you know, Wesley, come over, give everybody a hug, you know, give everybody a smile. Really super friendly guy.
Maceo came in cold as ice, you know, he just come in in his suit and tie, very, very cold, very formal, you know, and we're like, okay. You know, I mean, he's mail, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah, you know, so we.
We let him get into the music and when he came out of the booth, it was all smiles and hugs and. And everything else. He just was, you know, harder to get. Break through the eyes, you know, he just thought, oh, these white folk doing our.
You know, taking our. Our funk sound, you know, but that was. That was not he. At the end, he was the. Really came around and was lovely, you
Adam:
know, so it's crazy that you guys on your first album them just had something that made everyone believe in it so much.
Speaker B:
Yeah, right. No, we were very lucky, for sure. And yeah, especially with Boosie, you know, that was the thing that really.
Cause he brought in the horns then and I mean. But we were lucky also with Q Tip agreeing to appear and, you know, a lot of great artist helped and great engineering, you know, from Mark Rogers.
Mike Rogers, rather. He also played drums on a couple of the tracks. Right.
Adam:
Because something else I was going to mention as well is the arrangement.
Speaker B:
Oh, the arrangement. That, that was my, that was my responsibility. A lot of that because. Yeah. Many hours in the studio. Yeah.
Adam:
I think like, like a lot of people I've heard Groovies in My Heart a lot more than like the albums. I've listened more to the albums recently since sort of talking to you and just kind of.
It's really interesting, like understanding what you were doing and how much cross pollination there is and stuff like that and where everything comes from. But I think with, with dance music and stuff, like. Well, just generally, I think in arrangements, kind of like an underappreciated part of
Speaker B:
things is key, you know, the arrangement is, is like half the battle, basically, you know. Yeah. I mean, sure, you know, it's easy to come up. Well, I mean, not for some people, but it's. For me. It's easy to come up with parts.
It's not a big deal. But how to make up into a coherent picture, how to make them into.
So they don't step on each other, so they, you know, they tell a story, you know, that's, that's, that's a range arrangement.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah. Did, did that arrangement experience and kind of.
Was that something that you learned in your early years training, like with the conservatory students?
Speaker B:
Well, you know, certainly musical composition, you know, for sure. Arrangement. I mean, you know, I've apprenticed in a couple of studios.
I've, you know, worked with, on sessions with artists and seen, you know, how it's done a bit. So that was inspiring.
But, you know, I think I do have a little bit of a talent for the arrangement part of it, you know, that's definitely my strength. But yeah, because like, it really keeps
Adam:
the energy in, certainly, like we. Grooves in the heart, like the Middle Earth 8.
You know, like a lot of dance music doesn't really have that sort of middle eight in the structure, I don't think.
Speaker B:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, being a DJ really helps, you know, with that.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:
You know, you, you need to have your, your highs and lows, you know, you need to have your break, you know, your, your break, you know, you need to have your, you know, build up again, you know, that's just that, that's, that's house music, you know.
Adam:
Yeah. Did touring come quite quickly after the first album then?
Speaker B:
Pretty much, yeah. I mean, you have to remember we were playing like once a month, so touring, you know, it just was a natural progression, you know, from that.
And then we got this gig at Rock and Rio in. In front of 300,000 people. And, you know, so it was a little bit. A little bit unnerving, you know, but. And, And.
And it's a festival situation that you don't really get a sound check, you know, you just have to jump on in there and in the first song or two, the sound man kind of figures out the mix, basically. I mean, so. So there was. Yeah, it was a little bit. Yeah, it was a lot unnerving.
Adam:
Did. When you were putting the album together, were you thinking at the time about how you could perform it live?
Speaker B:
Well, I mean, look, the album was produced by three people, you know, so we were. You know, we always had to play with a backup tape, you know, because we couldn't play all the parts. And so then, you know, we needed.
We would need a live band to be able to play the whole thing live. And that's what. Exactly what we decided to do, that we would.
We would get a live band and we would play, you know, all of it live or, you know, and that's with Bootsy. And a lot of the members of Bootsy's Rubber Band had come on tour as our musicians and other people as well.
It wasn't just Bootsy's Rubber Band, but, yeah, we had auditions. It took a while to get the band together, but, you know, we did it. And then we went to Cincinnati, Ohio, to rehearse.
We had two weeks of rehearsal with a band. Then, you know, it was on. Then we had to. To go on tour. So, yeah, it was. It was a little. You know, it was a lot.
A lot, too, because our first real gig with the band was in front of 300,000 people. Yeah.
Adam:
So when you went on tour, because. Did you go on tour support in Boot C?
Speaker B:
Well, at first we. No, we never really opened. Well, we had a couple of festivals.
We played together with other people, you know, but we tried to do our own thing most of the time.
Adam:
Right. Sorry.
Speaker B:
Yeah, yeah, the. The delight stuff started kind of blowing up and. And then we could. Yeah, well, afford is hardly the right word because the.
We were just wound up putting all the money that we made back into the. The band.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
You know. Yeah, into the tour. Tour. At the end, you know, we walked away. It was.
The money that I made from the tour is I. I made by selling my DJ mix cassettes, you know, on the side, like, the side that I made, like, I don't know, 10 or 20 grand. Something in between from just selling cassettes, you know, It's Pretty cool.
Adam:
And that. What impact did it have on your DJ career?
Speaker B:
Well, I mean, people, you know, a lot more people wanting to book me,
Adam:
I guess you would have had to like stop doing residencies because of all the commitments from the band, right?
Speaker B:
Yeah, yeah, No, I mean, I couldn't for a year. I couldn't do residency. I could do. I would usually DJ at an after hour party after the show. Right.
You know, so I did thousands of those, you know, do it through all throughout the next couple of years. And so that, and then when I, you know, in between tours, I would be DJing. And. Yeah, that's kind of how it was.
Adam:
Yeah. Was it, was there much pressure involved when you did the second album?
Speaker B:
Well, after the first album we had, we were introduced to the, the labor, the label's boss, this guy, Bob Krasnow, he is the president of Elektra. And he said we only. The meeting lasted about maybe three minutes altogether.
But he said, well, you know, you got your whole life to make your first album and then you have a year to make your second. So we were not expecting much from your second. That's what he said, said to us. Yeah, I was like, oh, okay, well, nice to know where we stand.
But now he was, he's like, oh, yeah. Andy Warhol said, everybody's gonna have their 15 minutes. You know, this, this is the first meeting. They're like, oh, okie dokie.
And then I asked him, I think I pissed him off even more by asking him because I'm a big fan of Love the band Love and Arthur Lee. Yeah. And so was one of the first signings of Elektra. And so I asked, oh, you know, so, you know, Arthur. Arthur Lee.
And then he didn't say anything positive. He said some really negative things. I'm not going to repeat that.
But it turns out later that I heard that actually Jimi Hendrix collaborated Arthur Lee on an album and they recorded an album's worth of material together. That Bob Krasno, because he's personal, he didn't like Arthur Lee. He really. They had a big, you know, they hated one another.
So he holds it in his vault and he never released it because he hated Arthur Lee. So this is the kind of thing. So I now, you know, looking back at that, you know, I understand what kind of a jerk, you know, I was talking to later.
But you know, that, that time it felt hurtful to hear that. But, you know, no matter we. With the first album, you know, we, we did most of it at home, right?
And, and Then we, you know, brought our home recordings into the studio and, you know, put it on on tape and so forth. The second album, we did mostly in the studio and we.
Which is kind of wasteful way of doing it, but we thought we were a hot shit and, you know, at that point that we wanted to try a different approach. And so while some of my favorite delight songs are on the second album, to me it's our weakest album overall.
I like Infinity Within a lot and I. I like the way it looked and I like most of the songs on it, but I. You know, looking back at it, it is definitely my least favorite of the new Light 3 album, but.
And then for the Dew Drops in the Garden for the third album, we wanted to again, do a complete opposite of that and then get back to making. Doing things at home and really working things out out. And we. A lot of it was even mixed at home. We didn't even bring it to a big studio. Yeah.
So that was a big difference because
Adam:
in my notes, one of the things I read used the words, where is it? Down here. Sorry. It. It referred to you getting minimal label support for the third album.
Speaker B:
Yeah. They didn't believe in us.
Adam:
Did they give you less of an advance then?
Speaker B:
The what?
Adam:
Did they give you a smaller advance, like less marketing support and stuff?
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, there was all that, but, you know, it wasn't. We could still do it. You know, there was a way to do it, but we didn't want to do it in the studio and spending the big bucks.
It was really kind of a statement that we wanted to make it feel more homey, more real, more underground, even, if you may. And that's what Dewdrops was all about. And, you know, it stands the test of time at the end of the day.
You know, I listened to that the other day and thought, oh, wow, it still sounds really good. You know, I'm really happy about that album.
Adam:
It's got a bit of a sound in it. A bit like some of the Digable Planet stuff.
Speaker B:
Okay. Well, we were friendly at the time, right? Yeah. Cool. I like that first Digable Planets album quite a lot. Yeah.
Adam:
Yeah. It's like a sound that's kind of. It's aged pretty well.
Speaker B:
Well, yeah.
Adam:
You know, I think that's.
Speaker B:
Well, I mean, just very real, you know, it's very. Yeah. There was not trying. Not fronting, not trying to be something else, just.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:
Keeping it real.
Adam:
So one question that just comes a little bit kind of in from the side, if you like. There's a. There's. And this was the first thing I sort of commented on, something on Instagram of.
Of yours was that I've read certainly in Jumping Jack Frost's book and I think somewhere else about conversations with it might have been with Kia about the Internet and about, probably from this sort of mid-90s time about the Internet and about how. Oh yeah, you should be looking at how this thing's going to be used. It's going to be big. It's going to change everything.
Were you guys kind of really up on sort of technology and the possibilities of it?
Speaker B:
Well, I mean, I've been reading sci fi books most of my adult life. I would consider myself a futurist, you know, whatever that could mean to many things, to many people.
But so I was always interested in technology and how it could be.
How could it be used for art and then what you could do, how you could take it to a whole other level still there, you know, now, you know, with this AI, Very mixed feeling there. But, you know, there's. But at the same time, you know, I think that if we use it as a tool to get our ideas across, it could work out fine.
If we can't let it take over, we still have to be, you know, us. You want the human input, you know, that's very important. That's what actually makes it valuable more.
But, you know, it certainly looks very slick, you know, and that could be. If you know how to get your ideas across using that, then that could be helpful. Of course, it can also kill us all. Is that small matter?
Yeah, it's a very mixed bag with AI and now we're really entering the age of singularity, where things are accelerating quite a lot with technology and gonna get more. I mean, you have so much more information out there. Disinformation information, you know, fake, real, all mixed up and just.
And the fake has gotten to be so good that you can't really tell it apart from real.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
You know, and that's.
It's a little bit of a scary situation, but yeah, it's kind of probably going to be the greatest upheaval of humanity, you know, and we're like going to live through it in the next five, 10 years. We're going to see it.
Adam:
Yeah. You know, yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker B:
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed and, you know, try to keep positive. Positive. But it is. Yeah, it's. It's a lot.
Adam:
Yeah. So just going back to your sort of timeline, then after the third album, what what was it that led to you guys disbanding?
Speaker B:
Well, me and Kier were a couple. We broke up as a couple and, you know, then Keir, who decided that she wanted to move to London and she did for a number of years.
And I was doing my own thing, she was doing my thing. I started working with Julie Cruz, you know, after that and was very lucky to have been able to work with her.
But Kier did her own thing and she was making drum and bass, which was very cool, actually. I listened to some of them, it, and it was pretty amazing. But we weren't getting along really that much.
You know, we were a couple breaking up and, you know, remember that you said in February,
Adam:
yeah, it's not going to help.
Speaker B:
No, actually, I don't. But I certainly didn't mean it. Yeah. But anyway, you know, so that, that's, that was that until, you know, after. Okay.
When we signed the deal for World Click, where we just signed it, we were at Elektra. We were in a cab back, going back, and Toa says, oh, I think I'm gonna move to Japan next year.
I said, but Tova, we just signed a seven album deal with Elektra. You can't go. You move to Japan next year. You know, we got gotta, we got all these albums to do. And he's like, oh, okay.
And then he did, he did move to Japan next year. So. And then it was, you know, much more difficult to continue working together permanently. And he did, on the third album, he did do.
He did do one of the songs, uh, Call Me. He did, and he did a great job on that. But he was, you know, starting his own career and doing other things.
And we, me and Kier were kind of getting into the rave scene at the time and there was a club called NASA that we were, I was DJing quite a lot often there and is playing mostly drum and bass, but also technical, know. And so it was, it was a new sound and I was very excited about it and.
And there I met DJ Ani, who became a third member of Delight with Toa, you know. Well, I mean, Toa was still kind of involved, but he didn't go on tour. He didn't, he didn't like to go on tour.
And so Ani came about and we started working together and quite prolifically and we, well, we made do Drops in the Garden. Ani was a very essential part of Dewdrops in the Garden.
Adam:
Yeah. So after you guys split then what was the impact on DJing? Did you just. Did you kind of throw yourself a lot more back into that as a full time.
Speaker B:
Yeah, DJing. I started touring around the world, DJing.
I, I went to South America, I went to Asia, I went to, you know, uk, to, yeah, wherever, you know, Canada, a lot, A lot of places. Australia.
And you know, I, I played some high profile gigs like the Love Parade in Berlin and, you know, a big, big thing, Small things, all kinds of things. Mayday, you know, all kinds of things.
Adam:
won a Beast DJ of the Year in:
Speaker B:
I found that was kind of a funny thing because I'm not really. I don't consider myself a techno dj, but I like some techno, you know. So they asked me, this Privilege is a huge club in Ibiza.
They asked me to play a techno set. Cause I was playing with Sudan Boy. And I thought, okay, well that could be fun to just do a really, really hard techno, you know, techno sound.
And so I did, you know, he only had like an hour and a half or something, you know, to, to play. So I, I did a very, very hard techno thing. And Ibiza, they went absolutely crazy for it.
And it was, you know, 10,000 Englishmen, mostly well privileged, not men, just English people, you know, because you had, I think you had all these deals where you get, you know, your ticket to Privilege and Amnesia and another club included with your plane ticket and your hotel. It was like a package deal that you would get, was very popular. And the.
For the UK ravers, they would go to Ibita, fall asleep on the beach with their sunglasses on and then have raccoon eyes, you know, that was typical. Yeah, so that was kind of a funny scene. And I had a good friend who was living there and running a label of Ibiza.
So I was there quite often for a while. While. And so then, you know, they gave me this award at. Yeah, at Pasha. Right? That's where the awards were given. Yes.
Yeah, it's funny, but I was, you know, I was pretty happy about it. It's, you know, it's a cool thing, but it was kind of hilarious, you know, because I'm not really a techno dj, but it was a techno.
The best techno DJ of the world.
Adam:
And that's. Yeah, and that's when you're playing with someone like Sven Vath as well, who like, was at the top of his game.
Speaker B:
Right, right. Yeah.
Adam:
So that's, that's a pretty serious accolade, you know, with those sort of clubs that you're talking about as well.
Speaker B:
Well, yeah, I mean, Sven is kind of an old friend. He's, he's a cool guy. We, we, we met in New York and. And so forth. Yeah, yeah.
Adam:
Was it through this sort of era that you kind of connected with Berlin or was that quite a bit later?
Speaker B:
No, I mean, it was, yeah, maybe a little bit later, but 98, 99, that's when I started going to Berlin quite often. And I thought, well, you know what? I could live in this city. This is a cool city, and I could get into it.
And I had, you know, there's a lot of clubbing, a lot of work that's a possibility, so. And a big infrastructure for dance music, for labels, so, so forth. So it made kind of. And New York was going through the opposite of thing.
We had this mayor Giuliani, maybe you've heard of him, he's. Yeah, that guy. But he was, you know, he got elected by promising a crackdown on organized crime.
Now, organized crime always had a tax write off, and that was the clubs, because you don't get a receipt at the door, you don't get a receipt at the bar. You know, you can say, I've made so much or so much.
And nobody can really check it, you know, because you have a clicker, a guy who's with a clicker standing up front to know exactly how much, you know, how many people you're letting in. And you have a clicker in the box. But, you know, the authorities don't know. So that was a very obvious tax write off for the mob.
And so he went, but that was not their real business, you know, that was just what they used to launder some of the money. And so he went after the clubs because it was the easiest thing.
And he could pretend that he's going after the mob and basically devastated New York nightlife, close so many clubs. You also, you know, in New York you have.
There is the liquor commission where you need your liquor license, and then there is the dance commission where you need your dance license. And these processes can be very corrupt and wear at the time, you know, so it took, you know, it can be.
It could take a couple of years to get your dance license if you didn't have the right connections, you know, and then you, you would have to be open and illegal, you know, running your club illegally while you're waiting for the dance license. It's a very, very corrupt process. But he wound up running the.
Getting down the number of clubs from like almost a hundred that we had in New York to down to five, you know, so it was Only five survivors, like. And I thought, okay, well it's time for me to look for greener pastures, if you may.
You know, Berlin was wide open and hundreds of clubs, parties, love parade, all kinds of things going on, celebrating dance culture. And I used to play at Tresor fairly often, you know, in Berlin. So I thought, okay, it's time to, to, to move on. And I did.
And so I've been here for quite a long time, 19 years.
Adam:
So yeah, amazing.
and I know like he moved late:
Speaker B:
That's right, that's right.
Adam:
Especially for being a capital city full
Speaker B:
of culture, it's still comparatively to London or Paris or New York, it's still much cheaper, but maybe 20% cheaper than all those cities. Of course you do not get the kind of cultural diversity that London or New York or even Paris has. You just don't. It's very diverse culturally too.
Berlin, don't get me wrong. But it's just not to the point that New York or London is, you know. Yeah, that's just, yeah. Historical reasons and all that.
Adam:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And then, you know, I was working on remixing. I did some remixes for Chaka Khan, I did some remixes for Ziggy Marley.
I've done a couple of other things for, for artists and you know, still working on my own stuff. Stuff.
And then one day my friend Eric D. Clark from Whirlpool Productions, he goes, hey Ad, you know, you really should listen to this lady and do a remix for her. Like, well, who do you have in mind? He's like, well, this girl, Jessie Evans.
And I knew who she was because I had an album of hers from years before and I liked it. And so I was like, well, send me the music and send me the, the her vocals and let me see if I, if I'm interested.
So I, I, I listened to it, I loved it and I, it came very quickly. Usually it's, you know, one to two weeks for, for a good remix to, to take shape.
But this came in like in, in two days it was done and it was really, really felt really strong. And I sent it back and started a conversation with Jessie, you know, and she's like, about talking about music.
I said, well, what do you like to sing to? And she said, well, I love reggae and dub. And you know, that's kind of really the direction where I Want to go.
before, in, you know, around:
And then my friend stopped doing music, went into music journalism, and he said, oh, just do whatever you want with these tracks. You know, forget about it. I gotta provide for my family. I understand that. And so then.
So I sent Jesse these tracks that they were laying on my computer gathering bits, and. And she claimed every one of them. And she plays the sax, so she. One by one, like, every. Every couple of days, she sent me one of the songs.
And it was just amazing. I mean, it was pandemic time. So the kids, you know, didn't have school. They were at home, and my kid was at home.
She was living in Brazil at this time. She was living in Ubatuba in Brazil. And so. But I was like, who is this person?
How does she have this kind of work ethic that she can, you know, record, I mean, like, six or seven tracks of sax and then, you know, five or six tracks of vocals, you know, so, wow, you know, who. When does she have the time? She's caring for two young kids. When does she have the time to even do this? And how is she doing it?
And one after the other, and before you know it, we had at least an album's worth of material, and we never met. So. Yeah. And at that point we said, okay, after we had a.
About an hour's worth of material, let's have a video session to, you know, to talk each other on video. To each other on video. And so then, you know, we started getting.
Writing these long emails to each other, starting getting closer and closer and really got close over our music. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to Ubatuba in Brazil and meet who I'm working with, because. Because she's really doing something great here.
So it went. And it went really well. And before you know it, we were very close and in love. And then I went back to Germany.
She stayed in Ubertuba, but six months later, she decided she was gonna move to Europe to do Naughty Siren with me. And so she came to Germany with her daughters, my daughters now.
And pretty much a couple of months after that, we got married, and here we are with Naughty Siren. And now we have about five albums worth of material with Naughty Siren. So we got A lot of music to release.
Adam:
That's amazing.
Speaker B:
Yeah. And so the first one, Rising, is now out on Badcam Camp and soon to be out on all the platforms.
Adam:
Yeah, it'll. When this comes out, it'll either be. It'll either be out on all platforms or that will be imminent. So if people head to your Instagram,
Speaker B:
probably the preview of some of the tracks, they can also. I mean, the singles are out on all the platforms. So we have five now, five singles and some remixes as well. Well, on. On all the platforms.
So people can get those already and they can go to band Camp if they're not too lazy and. And get a copy of the album Rising on Bandcamp.
Adam:
Yeah, and it's spelled naughty, as in N A U T I. Siren is correct.
Speaker B:
Like nautical.
Adam:
Ah, right. Yeah, it's N A U T I and then siren S I R E N. Yeah, correct.
Speaker B:
That's. That's it.
Adam:
That's amazing. So, yeah, to have had kind of two romantic partnerships have all also been music partnerships is pretty interesting.
Speaker B:
Well, with Jesse, it really started with the music with care. It started with. Not with the music. It just started with a love and then it, you know, evolved to music with Jesse.
Started with the music and then evolved into love. So a different thing.
Adam:
Yeah. And. And you guys have got the studio as well, haven't you, which you're looking to expand?
Speaker B:
Yeah, well, you know, I have my studio and now we have more space, so we're building a studio in the basement of our building. And yeah, the. For the drum set, for the percussion, for the bass and the guitar and the keyboards and all that is going to be down there. But it's a.
It's a bit of a slow process. You know, we're working on it. Couple months, then we'll be. Will be. We'll be going.
Adam:
And how much DJing are you doing at the moment? Are you still very active?
Speaker B:
Yeah, occasionally I do. I DJed recently at Paloma Bar here. I have a couple of festivals lined up closer to the summer.
I mean, for me now, you know, I've started a new series kind of that I'm doing. Doing. It's called Life of a Party and there's a couple of examples on my Instagram page. But basically I pick one track from. From a year and I go.
I started with:
But I want us really Take it next to a DJ set where I play. You know, I go through the evolution of the dance music. I play one track from every year and. Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty long DJ set. 55 years.
But, you know, I'll make it work. Work.
Adam:
Amazing. Yeah, I'll post it. What is your Instagram handle?
Speaker B:
It's a super DJ Dimitri and it's S U P E R DJ Dimitri. D M I T R Y. Amazing.
Adam:
Just one more stray question. I've just got the the world clique credits on my screen or another bit of my screen.
I just noticed that Bob Power did some of the engineering on that. Were you around him doing that? And what was that experience like?
Speaker B:
He's mast you talking about?
Adam:
I've just got it. It just says additional engineering on here.
Speaker B:
Oh, yeah,
Adam:
that's. Well, this is on discog, so whether it's accurate or not, maybe it does mean.
Speaker B:
Okay, yeah, no, I mean, he did, he did some of the mastering. Yeah. I mean, actually, he doesn't usually let people hang out in the studio while he does his magic, but he, he made an exception for us.
He let us see him in action and what an amazing man.
You know, he, you, you could say, give him an engineering credit because really what he did was nothing short of magic to, to, to make your record sound great. But, yeah, I, I, I, I don't know. I, I haven't been in touch, so I don't know. He's still around.
I hope so, you know, but he was, he was an older guy then. Not sure.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah, he's, I've heard him on a few podcasts and things, and just the way he talks is still around okay? I believe so. Yeah. I've heard him on things in the past couple of years anyway, but, yeah, phenomenal. Dimitri, thank you so much for your time today.
There's some wonderful stories that you shared and I really appreciate you just, you know, just being like, yeah, yeah, I'll do this and just, you know, just coming on and, and sharing all this with us.
Speaker B:
This. Right. Well, I appreciate you having me on. It's a pleasure. And do you, would you like me to send you the Naughty Siren album or.
Adam:
Yeah, that'd be amazing.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. I'll send you the MP3 version, but, yeah, yeah, brilliant. Cool.
Adam:
All right, well, I'll let you get back to your weekend and it's been really nice doing it on a Sunday afternoon as well. What a nice time to have a chat.
