Resonance #6: Turntablism at the Mercury Cafe

By Duane Davis

It is evident in the review below that a couple of brainy white boy music nerds holed up here in Cowtown far, far away from the massive block parties of the Bronx and environs were going to bring their own slant to the dance. The writer Kodwo Eshun, in his wonderfully arcane and flamboyant history of all things Hip Hop, “More Brilliant Than The Sun,” writes that “the turntables, the Technics deck, become a subjectivity engine generating a stereophonics, a hifi consciousness of the head, wholly tuned in and turned on by the found noise of vinyl degeneration that hears scratches, crackle, fuzz, hiss and static as lead instruments.”

This notion of the cut, the break, the stutter, that punches holes in the locked-in flow of the song, and cracks faultlines of broke-kneed rhythms that morph into tectonic flows accounts for a good deal of the excitement that propelled Hip Hop into the music industry juggernaut it has become. And 40 years ago at the old Merc on Pearl Street, Specific Things (composed of Lin Esser and Steve Knutson) jacked in, cranked up, and turned their record collection into an alternate history of pop music.

“What I was attempting to do that night was use the records more as cut up language than anything rhythmic,” said Steve Knutson of the Specific Things performance. “Taking the language and making it new by recontextualizing it within the songs.”

Knutson first heard an emcee rap in 1979 on Denver’s KDKO–Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang–and shortly afterward he was ordering 12” rap singles for Wax Trax to sell (he was a buyer for the store in addition to his creative pursuits). Later, he moved to New York City and landed a job in the Mailroom at Tommy Boy records (the label that launched the careers of Queen Latifah, Afrika Bambaataa, and De La Soul) eventually working his way up to VP of Sales.

Though Steve and other great staff helped Wax Trax build its reputation in the late 70s and early 80s on Punk, Post-Punk, Hardcore, Goth, Industrial and various alternative music, we also carried a great selection of classic and current Soul, RnB, Dance, and, yes, Disco vinyl. When Hip Hop began to break in the early 80s, we didn’t just carry the music, we sponsored our own Breakdance team – Here are some pics of the B-Boys spinning, popping and floor rocking on cardboard outside Wax Trax in the early 80s.

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MY FAVORITE (SPECIFIC) THINGS: Scratchin’ the music

(Originally published in Westword, 01/18/1984)

Without a band, the DJ becomes a meta-band, appropriating to himself all the content of the music. Scratching becomes the disruption of the text, an interruption of surfaces out of which a new dance can begin. It is a power play that guts the “stars” and his product, opening up the record and letting someone else in.

Onstage, Lin Esser establishes the rhythm with a few knee-popping, backslant keyboard phrases. The tape machines emit ribbons of music that are interwoven with patches of shredded narration from John Kennedy, Che Guevara, Sylvia Plath. At the turntables, a crazyquilt interplay begins between James Brown and the Beatles, Archie Bell and the Drells and Yoko Ono.

The music hovers at the edge of dissolution, a step from falling apart into a random sequence of once-familiar noises. One of James Brown’s patented soul screams echoes endlessly until it seems to detach itself from its former context and establish a new identity.

This is only a flirtation with collapse, though, a teasing at the borders that close in the way we hear music..

The beat is a relentless, pulsing, nervous invitation to dance: it is the trail of crumbs marking the path so that we’re never lost – not too lost, at least.

Lin Esser says Scratch music gives a curious power to the DJ, that “it makes playing records into an instrument. You can steal a hook and bring it up to date.”

Esser and Knutson enjoy the chance to toy with music that already exists, that seems permanent and impervious to change. Duration, tempo, rhythm and melody are shaken apart and put back together again. It is, in a way, copyright infringement raised to an art, a defacing of the currency of sound, graffiti across the radio.

Esser uses some of these techniques on a new studio tape he is working on, “Mad Men Who Build Bridges.” But “making more music out of music that already exists” does not mean anything goes, he adds. There is a responsibility to “song,” and to a sound that dances, even if it is a shredded dance. In the studio, Esser expands this notion by using more electronic sounds, folding noise into music by a kind of aural origami.

Scratch music is a complex sound that depends on the style and verve of the DJ. Artists like Grandmaster Flash, Planet Patrol and Afrika Bambaata & The Soul Sonic Force broke the ground in this field and still remain the masters. In their own way, Scratch and the related Rap and Hip Hop musics represent a revitalization of black-street culture, just as Punk did for white-street culture in the mid-and late ’70s.

All the groups, including Specific Things, are making music for the Age of Information Overload, a reenactment of the crowded environment we squeeze through every day. We live inside of Noise: the constant buzz and howl of information, pleadings, threats and come-ons that drench our senses hour after hour.

Specific Things appropriated this noise, breaking it apart and patching it back together as ritual, as dance. When Scratch works, a rupture is revealed in the border between what Is serious and what is fun. They bleed together, reconstituting into another reality.

Although Specific Things was a one-time project, Esser will continue to experiment with Scratch’s effects on his other musical projects. We might see some of his Scratch ritual adding herky jerky rhythms to his work with the Aviators and Crank-call Loveaffair. And that’s something to look forward to.