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omegaremix · 2 months

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July Vintage.

Any producer, vinylist, or sample searcher will tell you that collecting is a never-ending habit. One recommendation leads to another and before you know it it’s off to the races to scour the racks for some obscure or ever-elusive finds. Of course, you could also stumble upon some groups where diggers are more than happy to give their finds to you. That was the case with Vinyle Archeology: Crate-Digging & Excavation. I’ve shopped for jazz / fusion, soul, and R&B vinyl since the turn of the millennium for the return ritual of keeping in touch with myself through the music. It’s visiting a world I’ve bypassed and have been chasing to fully connect since. Vinyle Archeology took it to the next level. Their diggers have introduced me to uncharted territory while keeping the theme and aesthetic that I’ve longed for and enjoyed through discovery. More than six months after founding Omega WUSB in Winter 2013, I had the idea to give back more of this sampling, vinyl, and crate-digging culture where available, and see if it would change my listeners as our hip-hop dee-jays did to me at the turn of the millennium. Those stories are very rare if anyone makes them. It seems like I’m the only one I know who does. Though Vinyle Archeology, I found things that went deeper, divergent, and more obscure; all while keeping the spirit that these vinyl finds had me connected to. Brazilian jazz. French jazz. Japanese pink records and Israeli finds. African funk. Prog-rock. De Wolfe, Themes International, Bruton. Religious music. Space rock. The overlooked, the under-rated, and all that’s released that we never knew existed. This was it.

My first finds of this calibre? James Mason, Geoffrey Stoner, Sunburst, and Tarika Blue to start. Never heard of them until now. All artists should’ve been bigger names but for what reason didn’t. Now they’re given a second chance in the eyes of collectors and producers. (A Band Called) Death, however, did get a real second chance and now they’re in the history books. You never heard of Manzel, not by any shot, but you certainly heard of their drum break sampled for Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill A Man”. Almost unknowns in Smoke, Mighty Ryeders, Arawak, and Cortex. I never heard of them until Vinyle Archeologie. Have you? I never heard of Frank Ricotti and Francis Monkman either until I came across the Bruton music library compilations. Some really good bullseyes in T.S.U. Tornadoes and Chick Carlton & Mesmeriah whom not many people know about. Sounds from Mort Garson’s “Walk In Space” and a true oddball from Dick Hyman, “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose”, are timestamps of even a specific time gone and written. 7”’s and 45’s no one knew even existed until now. Then The Blackbyrds and Herbie Hancock, maybe even Flora Purim, are all-too-familiar names people know about. What do they all have in common? They’re connected to my Brooklyn youth, no matter how obvious or nebulous, that connects me to this very day. Find any record in a certain era, no matter how similar or disparate it is from the others around it, and they’ll share that certain quality, note, or feel that equates to a time and place that’s I’m still trying to grasp. To this day, I’m treading and discovering uncharted territory that people once visited before but have left for good. Only a few days after joining Vinyle Archologie, I had enough finds to assemble what would be its’ first bonus broadcast of its’ kind during Omega WUSB’s Year One. While it’s unfolding, these finds would also help paint another picture of a very specific moment of time not long ago.

**********

July was one of the most pivotal months for both Cath- and I after three months of seeing each other. Our second chance became a reality for both of us. The night before we met after six years of absence (April Fool’s Day) she confessed that she made the wrong decision. She confessed that she should’ve chosen me all along instead of some random stranger who ended up becoming her first boyfriend. He was the one who got her drunk, introduced her to heroin, took her V-card, and ended up spending the night with her. He was one of the reasons why I didn’t see her for six years. Whether she could’ve avoided her addiction is up for debate. Some say she choose to get involved. Others say it was in her waiting to be unlocked. Who knows if I could’ve swayed her from signing an opiate contract with a full needle. I am only one person out of many who could’ve influenced her otherwise and every day I tried like a greyhound chasing that electric rabbit lure. But here we were now. After all of her arrests, blown plans, strange encounters, revenge-fucking and one-night-stands who bailed out on her, she’s here with me again.

Cath- and I decided on a locale to go to and Babylon Town Hall Park it was. I never been there but I assumed it was closer to her jealous boyfriend Smith’s house in Massapequa. It’s a sweltering July day. Hot, stifling mid-Eighties. Hazy, overcast, blinding white skies and unbearable humidity. Wednesday was heavily distorted and everyone was dying like dogs. I eventually pulled up right beside Cath- with our windows down and heard her say “hi” to me in a dull sullen manner. She was feeling down as usual. What else is new?

We got out of our cars and started walking around to shoot the shit since we last met. We veered off the beaten path and ended up getting lost in-between the town hall buildings with no one around and encountered the outdoor benches and tables, commenting on how sweltry the evening air was. Cath’s silly playful self layed down flat on the table, never offering a moment of pause during our conversations. Then her phone rang…

It was Smith. He’s at his neighborhood 7-11 and saw an underage girl all slutted up as he waited in line for his snacks. He was so shocked by what he saw that he had to call Cath- to tell her the news. Wow, you don’t say, Smith? I was so relieved that he didn’t call her up about how infuriated he was when I bought her tickets to see Nine Inch Nails with me or how he assumed that she was with me to fuck me. He knew who I was and I never met him. I wouldn’t allow my presence to be near any fucking minus sign. She didn’t tell him who she was really with though. That was a good five minutes lost for nothing. I shook my head and told her not to pick up the phone again. But that’s the power of mere mentions. Cath- was real thirsty. Who wouldn’t in this insufferable weather? We left the park and drove to the 7-11 a mile west on the highway for some drinks. A mind trick if Smith ever invoked one on us. We loaded up on some of that sweet stuff as she asked me how tall I was. What prompted her to ask was beyond me. “Five-five-and-a-half” I said. She had the idea of turning around and putting her back against mine, put her hand on her head, then mine, and proceeded to trade notes. “Five-six!” No surprise. She told the entire world this on her social media account once up on a time. We set our ice drinks up on the counter. I ponied up the receipt for both of us and we left. We drove back to the park and stayed for good this time.

Cath- wore her white woven dress with matching white stockings like I’ve seen her weeks prior. A blue-and-white-laced bra strap slipped out of sync with her dress and off her shoulder. It was enough of a nuisance that she kindly asked me to help put it back on with all the respect in the world for her. Good thing that was taken care of. Her phone rings again. It’s Smith again for fuck’s sake. I told her not to pick it up but she did it anyway. This time he wasn’t outraged about another random underage’s dress code. It’s about a fix he’s setting up for the both of them. She has her side to me while she asked a bevy of questions. “Who’s delivering?”, “How much?”, “When’s it getting there?”, “What time you want me there?” That’s another ten minutes of me standing there while she inquired about another batch to save her from those disgusting withdrawals. The day wasn’t getting any cooler by any means and I wasn’t getting any younger, but the phone’s down. We finally had the moment to sit.

Cath and I sat next to each other, her to the left of me, on a metal grated bench doing what we did best; talking, asking, listening to each other to the fullest of our abilities. Good news: we each make progress finding second jobs. Cath- nabbed both a position at a hamburger place and an office-supply store because she was weary of being jobless and broke and was scratching to move on with her life. I got my foot into a big-box electronics store while the other still stalled at food service. It took me five years to finally get an out and my manager was absolutely livid to see me go. I was super fortunate that for those five dreadful years that not one of my co-workers or his son’s friends happened to discover her through stalking my Facebook and tossing her name around the boy’s club like the wind-up merchants that they were. She knew all too well of the crayons, finger-painting, and building-block free-for-alls that I dealt for so long.

I noticed that two or three times our hands brushed up against each other’s with no objection or notice as we still kept the discussion going. We continued shuffling categories and traded questions for answers; answers that should’ve been easy solutions to what had become a crippling difficult situation for Cath- to untangle. It veered towards herself as usual: how she felt like garbage for the last eight years of her life with all of the wasted potential she’s thrown out, the unusual predicaments she found herself in and the results bestowed. She was still conflicted even though she was making moves. She was still without money. Her ma’ simplified everything to a nice and clean compartmental image for all who inquired to protect her family image. Dad showed tough love denying her tax refund checks and dishing daily personal attacks towards her in an attempt for her to wake up. Not I. There was nothing sanitized and Disney’ed about her addiction. No need for name-calling, criticism, belittling, or forcing the obvious. I heard it all. I seen the worst she’s posted. I understood, even if it was hard to take.

She stood up, stretched a little from being sore of sitting, then proceeded to walk a few feet towards the water. I slowly got up and trailed her while she was talking to me about her recent down moment. She stepped up on the rocks at the edge of the water where several other patrons stood. I stepped up and stood next to her. I put my arm around her waist and she leaned into me. Time slowed down.

I consoled her as she stood silent, listening to the encouragement I’d gave her. All the families and siblings of two, three, and four were pre-occupying themselves chit-chatting with each other, running around while they admired the water beside us. For a few minutes, we brought ourselves down to a personal hushed level. I didn’t know what she was thinking other than stopping to realize that maybe this was the moment she needed.

We came down from standing on the rocks and slowly walked back to the bench. We both sat back down together and leaned into each other. My arm once again around Cath- as we both held hands. Time stood still. We were in our own world unaffected by the voices of families and their small excited children playing together, the cheers from the coaches and the impact of aluminum bats coming from the field as the orange sun descended down the gray skies. Only the two of us mattered now. All her eyes could do was look down while we spoke as she took in the moment.

All the cards were on the table. For the next 45 minutes we opened up to each other. Our first time meeting each other on that freezing cold day in Lake Grove. Why I chose not to move on away from her after she disclosed her struggles to me. When she first rejected me over a night of ice cream. Our spring day taking the train to New York City and back. The meaning and symbolism of Diamond-suited playing cards. All that we messaged each other over the last three months we now said in person. She wanted to hear it. She had to hear it. The close, caring contact. The compassion, time, and proper attention and respect she needed, wanted, deserved. These were things Smith never gave her. She shared it now with someone rational. Someone reasonable to hear her out. As it always had, is, and should be. All without judgment. While we spoke about finding time to see each other in-between both of us working two jobs or our next stage of plans towards her recovery, I mentioned that I had two dreams of her. Once I was in a classroom that was held in the second floor in a small house in the Hamptons. During our mid-break, I stepped out to the upstairs balcony to find her there, smoking a cigarette without a care in the world while going over what the fuck our professor taught us. The second was when I came home from working at a Huntington clothing store but stopped by at a bakery the size of a very small Chinese takeout that was open at midnight. I brought something home to my old house in Brentwood, went straight downstairs to find the entire basement stuffed with stacks and stacks and bundles of old donated clothes from the opposite side of the wall coming in. Cath- was sleeping in five layers of thick blankets on an old red felt couch I used to have in reality, with whatever narrow space there was left to navigate as I greeted her with a box of cookies. But the most important questions I had to ask were if Smith knew about us, what would he say? Did he know about how close we were? How would I have to confront him not if, but when, there’d were any issues raised between us? And how would ma-, dad, and her sis- Cheree receive the news that we were becoming something? I wouldn’t know, at least not yet, because Smith was calling. That’s fucking it.

Cath- got up to excuse herself to take the call. No arguing or yelling this time, but he had her attention for a good ten minutes again as I sat there impatiently waiting for her to hang up, preferably in mid-conversation. I was itching to resume the evening with her. I got up arms folded, walked up behind her with an impatient mood in my eyes and pressed her to end the call, which she finally did ten minute later. She turned to me in an apologetic manner and said sorry to me for interrupting our zen to take his phone call as she hugged me hard for a good 30 seconds. By then it was 8:15 PM. The orange sun was getting dimmer and the voices around us started to wind down. So was our day. We finished up our conversation as we walked back to our cars to end the night.

She hugged me one last time and thanked me for seeing her again before giving me a light kiss on the lips goodbye, a nice touch to end the night. I promised I’d call her when I got home. We got in our cars and drove our separate ways home.

All I could think about during the drive home was how Wednesday unfolded. How could a straight-edge person like myself who has never smoked a single cigarette, who’s never downed any alcohol, or done any illicit drugs sought out to be with someone like Cath- who’s done it all? She’s abused her body in ways I never would…someone who’s cut herself, abused pills, got blacked-out drunk, suffered from anorexia and bi-polarity, and was wasting her true potential on heroin while she gave herself away to some of Long Island’s undeserving scum of the Earth who never deserved to put their grubby hands on her; all because of a poor social life in high-school that never panned out? Simple: I only sought the good in her while acknowledging the bad. From the moment I learned she was hurting herself, I stayed. I never backed down. They say you shouldn’t fall into someone with a labyrinth of problems, nor you should save them. But what was I to do? Leave her behind? That’s what anyone else would do. Not me. I hung in there because I seen and experienced something different from her than anyone else I met at this point. When the ones closest to me are in such dire straits, I help them out as much as I could.

I drove east through Route 27A thinking that my relationship with her was now a lock. For once in my life here was someone whom I really wanted to be with, not the long line of pitiful arms-down-to-their-sides undesirables who wanted me that I had absolutely no interest in. Not Molina who forcefully kept pushing her gifts and i.l.y.’s on me that I didn’t want, or Melissa who kept guilting me with meaningless conversations that went nowhere and makeshift “friends forever” greeting-card moments that I had to take part of or else.

**********

“Hope I didn’t freak you out.”

Cath-’s message waited for me once I arrived home. I should’ve asked her that. We didn’t plan on what we just had. She was concerned that the unexpected would be a wrench that would cost us everything, but her slight uncertainty asked anyway. That ended right after our war of re-assurance that we were on the right path. We both felt the same for each other.

“I was always afraid to pursue anything because I didn’t want to lose our friendship. You are definitely someone I don’t want to ever lose. What we already have I’d never want to ruin and I want to work to make it the best it can be. I think it’s rare what we have you can’t get it all the time and I don’t want to throw it away. You’ve always been there and not many guys I’ve been around respect my views or opinions. I love that the most.”

There’s moments where some people see the clarity and appreciation through the distorted drug hazes, pop, and smoke from years of substance abuse. It took a lot, but Cath- grasped it. Our moment was the zenith that stood out above all the other objects in the sky. It was a lot of time and work to get here, but here’s the results we knew we wanted. I now had ten straight days of work to contend with in-between two jobs, but we’re going to make the time and effort to make it happen. I couldn’t wait to see her again.

**********

Monday midnight was approaching. Kim of Purple Starlight asked me to take over her three-hour slot. It was the first of countless Sunday / Monday slots I’d vacate and still do to this day. We were still broadcasting at the old WUSB studios housed into the old Union building which was erected in the md-Sixties. Both spaces retained the original feel and architecture of the era without much change. A true relic of its’ time. Original egg-crate ceilings and that text-book smell of old books pressed of Helvetica titles. Solid-color embossed signs that haven’t been replaced since then. Thick doors, unpainted walls, old non-functioning call boxes with black Otis elevator buttons, and push-button locks still installed on our studio doors. Through out the journey I could smell the apple-cinnamon scent-of-the-month aerating the stairs up from Lord knows where it transcended but forever reminds me of this specific time of doing those three-hour bonus broadcasts.

The studio itself was never an equivalent angel itself. Our Dymo-labeled boards were made in the same era as the building. Switches broken. The original foam on the walls has decayed. Disused reel-to-reel machines. Non-functioning square-foot cut-outs where the turntables used to be with non-working solid-color buttons. The carpet was atrocious-looking and hasn’t been replaced since the Seventies. Elbow microphones out of operation. Random finds of single-spindled cassette cartridges, non-working solid-state PCBs, and flat-boxes of blank reel-to-reel tapes with disued reel-to-reel machines all over. A small production space no more than six-by-six feet used to be a news booth but housed a stack of old Scotch reels, a musty stack of outdated papers, and a wide dot-matrix printer. All this was the perfect setting of what I was about to play for the next three hours.

These jazz / fusion cuts played on that Monday and discovered via Vinyle Archeologie master these moments like pressing plants master their vinyl with the music they press on. Who knows if any of the sounds I showcased on that overnight were played before within these walls of the old studios; vintage equipment intact, even. But any reach of these finds makes it feel like it all happened yesterday. It’s 2020. Cath- is no longer in my life but the music sure is. Very much so. That July Wednesday which I’ll always remember is brought up as much as the finds I go back to. The sounds born from a totally distant time which defined an era it sprung from can also define new ones and personal memories decades into the future, at least for me personally.

Flora Purim “Angels”

James Mason “I Want Your Love”

Chick Carlton & Mesmeriah “One More Time With Feeling”

(A Band Called) DeathSpiritual Mental Physical

T.S.U. Tornadoes “Got To Get You Through”

Tarika Blue “Dreamflower”

Blackbyrds, The “Love Is Love”

Grover Washington, Jr. “Black Frost”

Los Chobros “El Sonido Cano Roto”

Frank Ricotti “Vibes”

Rufus Harley “Crack”

Smoke “Shelda”

Geoffrey Stoner “Bend Your Head Low”

Manzel “Midnight Theme”

Minnie Riperton “Les Fleur”

Scope “Big Ferro”

Joe Simon “It Be’s That Way Sometimes”

Jacky Giordano “Train”

Mighty Ryeders “Evil Vibrations”

Francis Monkman “Getting Ready”

Herbie Hancock “Butterfly”

Big Barney “The Whole Darn Thing”

Joachim Sherylee “Iceberg”

Arawak “Accadde A Bali”

Sunburst “Mysterious Vibes”

Tom Scott “Shadows”

Black Merda “Cynthy Ruth”

Benoit Hutin & Joachim Sherylee “Spot”

Cortex “Huit Octobre”

Dick Hyman “Give It Up Or Turn It Loose”

Mort Garson “Walking In Space”

#omega #music #playlists #mixtapes #personal #Long Island #dating #jazz #fusion #sampling #vinyl #records #groove #treasure #soul #R&B

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