| |
It was played in a really wide spectrum: in black hip-hop clubs, in white underground places like Danceteria, in after-hours clubs. The radio station pumped it like crazy because I did vocoder spots for them and in exchange for payment, they put my stuff into heavy rotation. When you first hear it, you think, "Huh, weird instrumental track." But the more you listen to it, it's like, "This is really interesting." It even happened to me: I used to hate it at first.
"Hip Hop Bee Bop" came out of going to this club called The Funhouse, a hip-hop club where Jellybean (John Benitez) was the DJ and this skanky girl with long black hair and hairy armpits hung out wearing a shirt that said "I'M MADONNA." We'd make a track, get an acetate, and run out to the club that night and test it on the floor. If the crowd liked it, they would bark and if they didn't, they would literally boo. That's where we got the dog barks for "Hip Hop." We wanted to make a song that reflected that scene.
So how did you get that record out?
When I first started out I was so broke I made this song called "Heatstroke" as a soundtrack for a porno movie. Some DJ had sampled it off the movie, made an acetate, and somebody told me, "Hey they're playing your music at this club." I ran down to the club and all of a sudden my song came on. I asked the DJ, "Wait a minute, where'd you get that record? It's my music." He told me, "That's your music? Come down to the record company, they'll sign you on the spot."
That song did really well. Did you do make good money from it?
I got nothing--it was the classic first record rip-off deal. I would go to the label and literally beg for rent. The guy who owned it bought a plane, a house in Vermont, and a Porsche with a hand-carved dashboard. It was how everyone did it back then.
But it's been included in a bunch of compilations and mix CDs recently--Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats, Andrea Parker's DJ Kicks--you must be getting something now...
Nope. Some Canadian company owns it now--all I own are the actual samples. I want to give them to Andrea Parker and have her do something with it. I would love for her to re-do it.
|
 |
| |
 |
| |
Did you think what you were doing back then would have created all of this?
No way in hell. We were doing art music, I never thought it would do anything. Hip-hop was really big at the time, so I figured that would be really big, but I never thought this weird electronic stuff would live on. There was a big divergence between what we were doing and what the hip-hop kids were doing. "Planet Rock" and "Hip Hop Bee Bop" weren't made by starving kids in the ghetto with a message, they were made by whiteboys who wanted to party and dance a little. So the two split and became separate things.
So you're DJing now... do you have any timeline for producing music again?
I'm buying lots of equipment right now, but I don't have any definite plans to release music. Let me explain something that I think people would be interested in. When someone has a hit record that does really well, you often wonder what happens to the musician who made it. What happens is you go through this huge change in your life, it's a big rush, people know you, people want to see you, people interview you. Your life is exciting--you may or may not be making money, but you're traveling and things are really good. But it doesn't last very long. The bigger you get and the longer your career lasts, the harder you fall.
It's really hard because all of a sudden your life changes again. "Wow, my life's exciting, I have so many things to do today. My week is booked, my month is booked." Then all of a sudden you wake up and there's nothing to do. "Ah man, I wish I could go to Florida and see my friends or go to Paris," and not because you're a jet-set snob, but because you did it and it's exciting. A lot of people go through a hard crash and get really mentally fucked up. People don't talk about this but I've seen it happen. It happened to me on a smaller scale. You get really depressed, your life sucks, and you're a used-up has been. It damages you emotionally. You don't want to do another record and have it fail; you don't want to do another record and have it succeed because you don't want to crash on the other side again. I mean, I'm dying to have another record come out, but do I want to go through all that again? It's like doing coke: you're going to have a rush, but you have to pay for it.
Man Parrish is currently DJing weekly in at a party called Sperm in New York and earning his living selling male porn on the Web. You can reach him at manparrish@fan.net or through the Man Parrish Website.
|
|
|
|
