Snoop Dogg "From Tha Chuuuch To Da Palace"

In DJing, as in life, you sometimes have to do stuff you don't want to do. What I wanted to do was play a set of music that I liked, that would make people happy, make people dance, make people have fun. If they thought I was a good DJ as a result of that, well, bonus, but my music tastes always tended towards the basic and the obvious. Actually, they were basic and obvious to me, in the sense that I mostly played records that people recognised, rather than trying to weave an intricate musical journey out of dirty electro, scratch weapons and chutzpah.

DJing at an intro level - as a weekly job in a small, cheap club - is a weird thing. You're playing records mostly to people who are, shall we say, in the process of throwing off their cares, and as a result can be a bit disinhibited. I remember being asked by a British Asian girl if I had "any Indian beats", which after a split second pause was followed up with "actually, look at you, of course you haven't". You can't please all of the people all of the time. 

But in an effort to please all of the people all of the time, I made a rule - if someone asked for the same record 2 weeks on the trot, I'd buy it and play it on the third week. That HAS to be how I ended up buying this, because it's not the sort of thing that I actually like. It's got all the elements in place for a great record - Snoop at peak dillywizzle shizzle bizzle, Neptunes on production (that's yer actual Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), languid rhymes about fourteen inch rims, puff and pass, and corn rows - but it just never really gels. Mind you, two years later, the Snoop and Neptunes released "Drop It Like It's Hot", a Certified Banger, and you can certainly hear elements of that track in here.

Do I ever remember playing it? No. Do I ever even think about it? No. Oh well. On, on, onto the next one.

Beastie Boys - "Check Your Head"

This was the album that cemented their place in all of our hearts. It's the sound of them growing up, finding themselves musically, and laying down the future direction for what they would do. It's the most live, organic-sounding album they did, and although they went back to more sample and loop-oriented tracks, it seems to me that this album enabled them to break free and listen to the music inside themselves.

And that, no doubt in common with millions of others, is what this album did to me too. It reminds me of a time in my life when "in my sleep I'll be thinkin' 'bout beats and gettin' on the mic and bustin' some treats". Yes, I was a slavish imitator of their white-boy rap styling, and as Superwack (I know, what was I thinking?), we were a bit of a low-budget copy, but damn, we rocked, hard, and didn't give a damn. Wearing an absurd oversize Carhartt work cap, 48" waist jeans and worn-out Vans. Carrying a spiral bound notebook and Bic Crystal pen for when inspiration struck - you can't properly write dope rhymes with anything but a Bic Crystal.

Essentially, this is the soundtrack to that part of my life when, in my mid-twenties, I was lucky enough to be able to do whatever I wanted, to please myself, to be idle and creative all at the same time. To me, this record is the soundtrack of an intelligent mind being taken off the hook and allowed to run riot. It's a reminder that nothing is an end in itself, and that everything is but one small point on a long journey. This record sounded like freedom then, and it still sounds like freedom now.

RIP Adam Yauch.

Various - 'The Deer Hunter'

I'm pretty sure that this is one of a few records I bought in a thrift store in Brooklyn, when I lived there in the early 1990s. I was sharing an apartment in a brownstone on South Portland Avenue, and had walked to the Silver Spoon on Flatbush for breakfast and a spot of bargain hunting. The walk over took in a fair number of run-down and vacant lots,a sort of urban wasteland. It was OK in the daytime, but you wouldn't want to be there at night. The discarded crack vials made that quite clear.

It's a nice-enough record, although a bit of a mish-mash - it doesn't really make sense without knowing the film. Strings, acapella folk, acoustic guitars, then a bit of polka, then some helicopters and machine guns. It's evocative, but it's hard to say of what - a forgotten America, maybe?

The helicopters sounded great sampled and played back as part of a track when we played a Speakerfreaks gig at The Warehouse in Leeds, late 90s, probably at 'It's Obvious'. I drew the line at machine guns - the KLF had a monopoly on that.

Did I really bring a load of second-hand vinyl home on a plane from New York? Madness.

Catalogue Number: SOO-11940

Tracklist: Cavatina. Praise in the Name of the Lord. Troika. Katyusha. Struggling Ahead. Sarabande. Waiting His Turn. Memory Eternal. God Bless America. Cavatina (Reprise)