Danny Krivit
Who better to make us more than just a wee bit excited at the prospect of an anecdote or two, than New York’s own Danny Krivit? This DJ don, behind the immensely popular 718 Sessions events in Manhattan, and part of the Body & Soul triumvirate, is a veteran of the New York music scene. From meeting the original “Funky President” and DJing at the age of 14, Danny tells the 2005 Red Bull Music Academy how David Mancuso gave him more confidence to take the dancefloor “a little left off centre.” Roll on, disco vibes!
Hosted by Gerd Janson To my left here is a man who has seen the rise, the fall and the revitilization of disco in New York, one of the pivotal figures of the whole New York dance music scene. He was one of the driving forces, together with Joe Claussell and François Kevorkian behind the legendary Body & SOUL Sunday sessions. Please give Mr. Danny Krivit a very warm welcome. [big applause] So, Danny, you had a very interesting childhood when it comes to music. One
could almost say that you didn’t find the music but the music found you. So
maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that one. Danny Krivit [smiles] It was probably quite a while before I even realized it. I think I
took it for granted for most of my childhood. My father was Chet Baker’s manager, and my mother was a jazz singer, who formed a band with some of his members. And then my father went on to start this club in New York called the
Ninth Circle, which ran for about 30 years. It was kind of a hot spot in the Village, so I was kind of just around all these music people. I respected the
time, but I didn’t realize how influential they would be on me later. Like, I
met Janis Joplin there, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Charles Mingus. The guy who
lived above us in our building was a friend of my father’s, he was the vice
president of Polydor. And when I just started DJing he [the exec] kept saying, “Oh, come up to the office, we’ll give you some records.” I took my time, and by the
time I got up there, James Brown was the big thing at Polydor, I’m a big fan of
his. He said, “Well, this used to be all my office, but this is now James’
office. So let me show you around James’ office.” And we’d walk around and he
introduced me and said, “Danny’s a DJ.” And James said, “Oh, you got to give
him my new jam.” You know? So he gave me a white label of Get On the Good
Foot, and “Think” by Lyn Collins. And I was just amazed, you know, so used to
the red label with his face on it. And I’m looking at this 20 different ways.
And he’s got his picture on the cover with this white jump suit, and I’m kind
of looking at it, and at him, and he’s actually in the same suit while we’re
talking. [laughs] But I was pretty struck, and I’d just started DJing and I
kind of felt, “Wow this is a jump start. I really feel like this is where I’m
going.” Gerd Janson How old were you back then? Danny Krivit I was 14. Gerd Janson This was what year? Danny Krivit Ah, ‘71, yeah. Gerd Janson And you started DJing at your father’s place, at the Ninth Circle? Danny Krivit Yeah, I wouldn’t have got a start that early except it was his place, so I got
in pretty young. And then he opened a second place a couple years later, and I
was a DJ there. So I kind of got over on my age. [smiles] Gerd Janson Except for James Brown, what kind of music did you play back then? Danny Krivit I definitely was a funky kind of DJ back then at the time, but a pretty wide
variety. Quite a lot of rock, dance rock, was in there. Things like Brian Auger, Traffic and Exuma, you know, things like that. Gerd Janson And from there on you got to the Loft, David Mancuso? Danny Krivit [laughs] That was a bit of a jump later. My first few years of DJing I was
really sensitive to the people that I was playing for. I remember their really
starting to dictate to me, “Oh, this is not good,” you know? And I was
starting to question my taste though I really felt passionate about a lot of
music at that time. I remember in particular, a song like “City Country City”
by War, I was really into it, and I remember a lot of people saying, “What are
you playin’ this for? This is for home! Don’t bring this again!” And I started
to question my taste. And I remember going to the Loft and hearing this song
there – but this was the biggest song there. Everyone was going nuts. And I
really started to realize that really, some people are not on the same wavelength as me, but now I really feel there’s a reason I love that song. Gerd Janson And you have the song with you? Danny Krivit Um, yeah. [searches through his record bag] Gerd Janson And this is still a staple for David Mancuso, right? As the DJ at the Loft. Danny Krivit Oh, yeah. I think the last time I went there he played it. [loads CD] But,
it’s a terribly long song. The name is appropriate, because it starts off
fast, it goes fast and slow. You have to have a certain amount of patience. (music: War – “City Country City”) Gerd Janson This was some sort of record pool? Danny Krivit That was the second record pool. David Mancuso had the first one and Judy Weinstein used to work for him. Some other people all split off and made their own record pool. Gerd Janson Maybe you could explain what a record pool, in effect is. Danny Krivit Well there’s no swimming. Basically it’s where the companies send all the records then this pool distributes them to the DJs. Maybe there’s 100 DJs that belong to that pool, they’ll get a shipment of 100 records and each one will have their bin and come each week. They’ll fill out a little feedback for each record and there might be a stack of records from different labels. Just a lot of advance and promotional copies you wouldn’t get. Gerd Janson You had to be in that record pool to good jobs in New York nightlife? Danny Krivit Back then that was really important. It was crucial. It was a clique that got jobs. Gerd Janson Like a grand lodge of disco. Danny Krivit It was just the ‘70s, it was really crucial to be in one of those pools. Gerd Janson How often did you play at the Garage? Just one time or... Danny Krivit One time was official where it was advertised. I played maybe two or three other times. Larry [Levan] said, “Just play for a while, let me go dance,” or, “I have to leave, play some records.” Gerd Janson This was a few years after the War “City Country City” song, so what kind of stuff was being played at that time? Danny Krivit I remember the first record I played at the Garage was “Lost in Music” by Sister Sledge. There was no 12” or remix, it was just the album cut. Everybody was playing “We Are Family” and stuff. This was the other cut, and I think Larry was impressed that I didn’t just go for the obvious. It sounded really good there. I remember the time that I played that was advertised, it was the first time I played “We Got the Funk” there by Positive Force. That’s kind of a staple for me. I still play it all the time. Gerd Janson You have that with you? Danny Krivit Yeah. (music: Positive Force – “We Got the Funk”) [changes disc] You have to excuse me, I’ve got a bit of a cold. (music: Rene & Angela – “I Love You More (Mr. K Edit)”) Gerd Janson So this is actually even more than an edit, right? It’s almost a remix. Danny Krivit It’s a bit beneath that, but yeah, it’s more than that. It’s got a little
post-production. I think that’s the best way to identify one – just a little post-production. Gerd Janson So how would you define an edit then? Danny Krivit I think that that’s all an edit is. It’s no extra instruments, or production
values. It’s basically arrangement where you’re chopping and putting it back
together in a different form. Gerd Janson You’re pretty well-known for doing edits. When did you do your first edit, and
it was still on this tape machine, right? Using scissors? Danny Krivit [laughs] Yeah, razor. I got my first remix – I felt I was kind of late
because I’d been DJing a while. A friend of mine owned Sleeping Bag
Records, who I grew up with.
And he was just starting it. He asked me to do him a favor. He couldn’t
afford a lot of the guys, and he said, “Can you do this remix for me?” I did
his first record and I was really frustrated because I wasted the time in the
studio that he had, listening to this engineer who said he could fix that in
editing later. And he couldn’t. I knew what a bad edit was, but I couldn’t
step in to do it for him. And soon after that another friend asked me to do a
mix and the same thing happened. It was like deja vu, and I was just so
frustrated. I thought, instead of this helping me, this could probably hurt me.
And I went home and I had a reel to reel, a friend of mine was a top editor
for WBLS in New York and he had shown me how to edit. He says it’s really simple, and back then if you owned a reel to reel, you had a simplistic idea of editing, because just
to put a reel onto the machine you had to at least edit some leader on the
tape and things like that. So it wasn’t that big a stretch to learn a few
techniques. So I went home and I thought, “I can’t do any worse than this
guy.” And I had one little reel of tape, and I was kind of being cheap about it. I didn’t want to waste any tape. So I started editing. I was playing at the Roxy then, so D.ST was the big DJ and he was very influential on me, he
was playing “Funky Drummer,” it really stuck in my head. So I was like, “Let me do an edit of what he’s playing live.” So I started editing “Funky Drummer,” which ended up being Fela [Kuti] and James [Brown]. At 3 and 1/3
speed, which is the slowest speed, it seemed like the smallest bit of tape was a big piece of music. So I really had to fine-tune it and get it
right. A lot of multiple edits. It was kind of uneven for a while. So I
finally got it right, but after I did it, I felt like I’d handled the tape so much that it kind of lost a lot of its quality. So I was noticing that a lot of things that I worked very hard on, really were dull. And coupled with, youn know, things like bootleg records, their quality wasn’t that good. And I would run to the Garage and bring it to Larry and he was very happy to test it out.
But right in the middle of the record you could see his face like [scrunches up his nose], “Hmmm, this quality is not good enough. It’s a good edit but you
got to step up the quality.” So now when I do stuff – I work in Pro Tools
mostly – it’s just a huge difference in quality, and I retain that no matter
what I’m doing. Gerd Janson What did you do back then to enhance the quality? Danny Krivit There wasn’t much I could do. Try to handle the tape a little less. What was the industry standard then, which is still now – they changed the name Ampex tape, I forgot the name they use now. But there was this certain number of 456. It was a thick tape, and whenever I got a tape from someone else that wasn’t that it was this thin tape and I could only compare it to a dependable CD, a professional CD or store-bought CD with a name, and the absolute cheapest two-cent CD that hardly ever works. That was the difference in tape, so I focused on having good quality tape. I had a good machine with clean heads and I was involved in the mastering. With one of my earlier ones, “Love Is a Message,” I spent the time to make sure all the levels of production were not corrupted. I was pretty happy with that one. Gerd Janson Do you have “Feeling James” or “Love Is the Message” with you? Danny Krivit I don’t have “Feeling James.” I have “Love Is the Message.” (music: MFSB – “Love Is the Message”) Audience Member First of all, I really want to show my respect for the edit. Danny Krivit Thank you. Audience Member You were talking about edits like this were like blueprints for house music? Danny Krivit Not the editing. This type of music, the pattern, the drum pattern. For many years there weren’t really any records that had this very simplistic, straight drum pattern. This is Earl Young on drums, who really did almost the entire Philly sound, and he had different patterns that he worked with and this stood out as a real breakdown and blueprint of what ended up being like house music. Kind of a straight sound. Audience Member Was it also like the other way around? Disco bands performing, or playing, or recording tracks that were very repetitive, very straightforward? Danny Krivit Yeah, but most of the disco bands, if you listen to them, you’d think they’re very straight but if you try and mix them with a house record you find out how really off they are. This particular drummer was a really professional, straight – you know, he was very consistent. So stuff like this was much more the blueprint for what came later. The disco mimicked this a little but really went off into tangents, and it was after this. Most of the disco scene was really after the song. This is like ’73 I think. Right around there. Audience Member I was wondering, I know a little bit of the Salsoul Orchestra repertoire ... Danny Krivit Same drummer and a couple years later. Audience Member Oh yeah. Danny Krivit Yeah. In the “Love Is the Message” edit I did, the first piece is actually Salsoul Orchestra doing “Love Break.” Vince Montana headed that group, which still use some of the same musicians from MFSB. Same drummer... Audience Member Now? Danny Krivit Hmm? Audience Member Now he does? Or are you talking about back then? Danny Krivit Back then, yeah. Basically he was saying to himself, “I need to do something in that vein. It’s so popular,” so that’s where the similarity comes. “Love Is the Message” was first. Audience Member And how popular was this? You were telling us this was not popular at the time? Danny Krivit This was underground popular. It was very, intensely popular in the underground but it got a bit of public popularity because right then FM radio was really coming alive with WBLS, especially in New York. One of the things WBLS and Frankie Crocker focused on was finding music from the clubs and things that would accentuate the stereo and different sound than other AM radio stations. “Love Is a Message” was something he focused on very early, like right when it came out, so there was a big mass audience that responded to this right away. Broke a lot of rules. Audience Member Sounds like the sort of record that if you play in a good sound system will blow you away. Danny Krivit It did. Audience Member There’s always these legends you can read about in numerous books and magazines about ’70s New York sound systems in clubs. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Danny Krivit Well as I touched before, the Loft really held rein over the sound system for many years. I don’t think it was until Paradise Garage that it was clear something else had come along. Because the other sound systems that were good were just maybe, you know, louder or good for other reasons, but they weren’t better. I think those two in particular focused on the high quality of sound and they influenced a lot of other clubs and DJs. Gerd Janson And what does a song or a track need to caught your attention of finally doing an edit for it, or of it? Danny Krivit I guess I have a DJ’s point of view. I’m busy thinking about, first, that I just love the song to begin with and then I’m thinking about, “Well I’m playing this. How would I change this if I were playing it? What would really accentuate the high points in it?” I don’t want to change a record just to change it, but sometimes things cry out to me like, “I just wish it did more this or it didn’t do that,” a little rearrangement. Some of my edits are as simple as one edit. I just wanted to change a little. Some songs I could just never touch. People have asked me to do jobs for them, “Can you do something to this?” And after studying it I go, “You know, it’s really good the way it is.” I don’t want to just change it for the sake of changing it. Gerd Janson What would be an example of a song you wouldn’t touch? Danny Krivit Not that someone else, maybe, couldn’t improve upon it but as far as editing goes I remember a Junior Boy’s Own asked me to re-edit “Where Were You.” Gerd Janson By Black Science Orchestra? Danny Krivit Yeah. And it was done after I turned it down but I felt Ashley Beedle did it with the point of view of a DJ in a dancefloor and got it right. I didn’t feel that just changing the arrangement was going to improve it. I kind of liked it the way it was. It was very simplistic so I felt rearranging it is just not a plus. Gerd Janson Where were you in yourself in some sort of edit already right? It uses the Trammps? Danny Krivit Yeah, well, it’s a production. I’d hardly call it an edit. It samples the Trammps but it’s definitely it’s own production. There’ve been other songs that, I remember when I really wanted to do an edit of “I Know You, I Live You” Chaka Khan and I did a very simple one back in the ’80s and I just felt uncomfortable with all the different changes. I didn’t want to hurt the song. It took me about another 10, 15 years to kind of, like I still want to do something to it but I finally, with a little bit of production and just a couple of changes worked on something I was a little happier with. Lots of times I’ll just say, “Nope. I can’t touch this.” Gerd Janson You have Chaka Khan with you, “I Know You, I Live You”? Danny Krivit Yeah, somewhere. Actually, it’s on this CD. Gerd Janson And maybe to go a little bit further into the whole edit thing? Danny Krivit [checking the CD] Oh, actually it’s right in the beginning. (music: Chaka Khan – “I Know You, I Live You (Danny Krivit Edit)”) Audience Member Danny, here, Mike Clarke has a version of that track on a record, of that Chaka Khan track. Danny Krivit “Addictions”? Audience Member Yeah, on Planet E. He has a record on Planet E the chorus is the main sample. Sort of a filtered, house thing. Danny Krivit That was quick. No, I didn’t know about that. Audience Member No it’s old, like ’96 or ’97. Danny Krivit Oh you mean the original record that Kanye West used? Gerd Janson No, he’s talking about Chaka Khan now, “I Know You, I Live You.” Danny Krivit Oh yeah? Audience Member He has that loop on a track. My question is, before you play something else and I forget it, this is a track that filters the main chorus, which is probably illegal, right? It’s not something that you can actually do easily, take one bar and do a whole track with it. On one hand I wanted to know how you felt it is like to just pick up... I like the track, I’m not dissing it. Danny Krivit Right. Audience Member Take a... Danny Krivit A root? Audience Member Yeah, the central idea of a track and turn it into your own track just by adding a 909 pattern. Danny Krivit I think that the nature of that puts a lot of pressure on what level you take it to. I think that’s what I was saying I really liked about “Where Were You” by Black Science Orchestra. Basically they did that. Occasionally I hear some really good things in that vein. Probably me in particular, the Chaka Khan song means so much to me when I first heard it that I’m probably a little sensitive to manipulating it the wrong way. A lot of people might say, “That’s fantastic,” and I might go, “It’s not for me, though.” I’m probably a little prejudiced about songs that I grew up with and have a special meaning to me. In general I try to keep an open mind. I think when somebody does a good production loop of something, it shows their production value, what level that’s on. Audience Member You know about your re-edit for “Rock Steady.” That came out on Ibadan. How easy was that to re-release on such an underground small, compared to Atlantic, label? Danny Krivit Ibadan’s pretty small and they’re very quick to just give me something, and they put it right out. I think I was a little surprised. I actually expected them to license that. They’re one of those under-the-wire kind of labels, just feel, “Well, we don’t sell enough records for anybody to bother with us.” They got a letter from Atlantic saying stop that. And then somebody bootlegged their record, so... Audience Member Don’t you feel like these artists who get re-edited and get all these facelifts for their songs will actually be somewhat thankful for people doing it because it brings their music back? Danny Krivit It’s a mixed bag. I believe that a lot of the stuff I’ve worked on could be viewed that way. You never know. Somebody could have their own very distinct thoughts on it and be very sensitive to that. I tried not to get involved with things that I feel would end up that way. For the most part, they haven’t. Audience Member Thanks. (music: Kanye West – “Addiction”) Danny Krivit It’s almost sending a message to her. Her and Francois’ wife, who’s Japanese, said, “Really? I thought that was always saying, ‘You don’t have to love me.’” [laughs] It’s just funny how you expect people to know these words. You figure they’ve played so much. I think people get a vibe of records, but sometimes don’t know the words. When I’m in New York, obviously it’s very easy for me to tap into things that have to do with my history and maybe theirs, or relative things from New York. I feel I can just hit a button, like I know what we’re going to both react to. When I’m in Japan, it’s kind of similar. Around the world, it gets a little more guessing. I just hope they’re on my wavelength. Gerd Janson A place where it has worked very well was obviously Body & SOUL, right? Danny Krivit Yeah. Gerd Janson You did this for a couple of years. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the Body & SOUL parties? Danny Krivit Well, we did that for about six years. We’re still doing them as special
events, but Francois
[Kevorkian], I met in
the Loft, we’d just endlessly talk about music. Over the years, he got pretty
frustrated with playing out, and he got more into studio work. When he did
play out, he was very meticulous about it, and he’d call me up kind of
frustrated, like, “Why can’t clubs be more like this? Why can’t we have a club
like this, or this…?” You know, focus on some good memories. Why aren’t people more receptive to new music and new ideas? We talked more about this, and we kind of started to build a blueprint of what we thought was an ideal situation. And he called me up one day, and said, “I’m playing down at this place Vinyl today, it’s an afternoon party, this is what I was telling you
about. Just come down, bring some records, we’ll have a good time. It’s not a
big deal, but maybe this is close to what we were talking about.” And I did,
and you know the first Body & SOUL party we had, it seemed like 50 people.
If that, or less than 50. But right away, I got a vibe like this was what we had
talked about, what we wanted to do. It wasn’t for success, this was
our outlet. We could have jobs but this was the one we could get off on, and have a good time. Just play for some friends in a relaxed atmosphere. Good sound, good records, together. And it kind of surprisingly jumped off. We were very happy with it, but it had a life of its own. We saw it through about six
years and then the club changed. And we felt that it had gotten its own
integrity that was being compromised. And we felt we’d rather leave here even if we don’t have another place to go. Gerd Janson This was a Sunday afternoon party, right? Danny Krivit Yeah. Gerd Janson This is in some places in this world also quite unthinkable to do a Sunday afternoon party. What were your reasons to do it on a Sunday afternoon? Danny Krivit We didn’t originally conceive of it for Sunday, but what we wanted in the particulars was very difficult to get from a club. Clubs were not that giving. Sunday was more of a throwaway day for them at the time. We could experiment. When we got the opportunity, we said, “Sunday, that’s ideal for us.” The fact that this club Vinyl, they had just lost their liquor license. They were anxious to have someone like us that really wasn’t about liquor throw a party there because normally, everything was about selling liquor. As we got into the Sunday vibe, it became clear that this was exactly the anti-Saturday. It was all the things we hated about what New York Saturday nights had become. Just the tension and bad vibes, the problems with the club industry. Gerd Janson [smiles] So what is a typical bad New York Saturday night? Danny Krivit Well, I mean you get to a club that basically is shoving you around and
making you wait on endless lines, not for any particular reason. Maybe just
because they feel that’s what’s supposed to happen, even when it’s empty inside. They have security that treat you so badly that they spawn people into doing drive-bys. And, you know, I was working in a club where that exactly
happened. They were so rude and awful to people that I’m standing somewhere
near the door and all of a sudden I hear [makes shooting noise] and innocent people got hit! Because these idiot security guys were overdosing on
testosterone. And in the club itself, the Saturday night vibe, it’s very, “We wanna pack it in, we wanna sell champagne or liquor.” It’s not about giving you back much. It’s not much about the music, the music’s a backdrop. And it seems
just a bad experience, like, “We got your money, we really don’t care if you come back.” We’ve seen it prevail. The real estate situation in New York is so high, that people involved in clubs are just thinking, “I want return. Now. I want my money.” And that’s the vibe. You feel it when you go in the door. New
Year’s Eve is probably the epitome of that. And it’s a truly bad experience.
So many people that I play for and come to my parties think alike like that. They just stay away on New Year’s Eve. And it made me start a New Year’s Day party, which is quite pleasant, you know. It’s the opposite. Gerd Janson Yeah, your Sundays ended then with a few hundred people coming in every Sunday, right? It was very successful to do it the opposite way, right? Danny Krivit You’re talking about Body & SOUL? Gerd Janson Yeah. Danny Krivit Yeah, no. It got very crowded quickly. Our numbers were closer to a thousand and 1,500. It was unprecedented. They really did well. Gerd Janson Without drinking liquor, right? Danny Krivit It wasn’t about that. It was about people that wanted an alternative to what New York was so prevalent in handing you. It was the anti-Saturday party. Gerd Janson And Paradise Garage hadn’t a liquor license either, right, so would you… Danny Krivit Different period of time. The Garage was just closing near the end of the ’80s, and real estate had not hit its big boom. It was just starting. Lots of people could open up clubs and experiment. They didn’t have to rape you for the money. They were satisfied just to make a living. The Garage took most of its profits and put it back into the improvement of the club constantly. Nowadays, that just doesn’t happen. Gerd Janson But you are still doing a Sunday party, right? Yourself on your own? Danny Krivit Yeah, it stuck. Gerd Janson 718 Sessions, right? Danny Krivit Yeah, which it started in Brooklyn, which their area code is 718, the phone exchange. We were doing well and then we moved to Manhattan and the name stuck, so hence, 718 Sessions. Gerd Janson It’s basically some sort of the same than what you did with Body & SOUL? Danny Krivit I think before Body & SOUL, that whole concept of, “OK, this is what I’ve liked so far. I want it to be based on this,” and that’s where 718- It incorporates all these things that I was talking about. Gerd Janson Getting back to Kanye West’s “Addictions.” You’ve been a DJ now for 30 years? Danny Krivit Seventy-one, so almost thirty-five. Gerd Janson And how hard is it to survive all that hedonism and temptations of club land? In terms of, your still a healthy guy, so how do you cope with nightlife? Danny Krivit I think I focus on, after all these years, the community that I play for, which is a pretty positive community. It’s more about the music, and I think the music itself has kept me alive and young and positive. I think without that or if I got lost in some other direction, I probably would show a lot of signs of “been around too long” or something. Gerd Janson You brought your own mixer with you, and it’s a rotary one. Maybe you could explain to the audience what is so special about rotary mixers, because they are still being – UREI, right? Still being used in almost every club in New York. Danny Krivit A UREI rotary mixer, when they came about in the late ’70s, they were so well-made that all that main clubs had them, and once they had them, they didn’t break down. So they kinda went out of business, because they sold their rush and they couldn’t keep putting them out. Soundcraft came along and revamped it. There was a need for them again, and is making a new one now, which is a replica of the old one. It’s a little better in a lot of ways, but that’s what I really prefer, is the UREI. This is a very good rotary mixer for mobile, and it has some similar qualities. When I have to work on a slide, obviously there’s certain advantages to a slide, but as far as rotary and my style of mixing, I feel there’s a much more gradual and control over things being subtle. And if I want to work the sound and then pull my hand away, rotary usually stays there. I have to spend an extra couple of seconds to not leave the slide very quickly, because it will move and you’ll hear that jump. I feel that the transitions are much smoother with a rotary and generally better quality. The components are better quality. Gerd Janson So sound-wise, you were speaking of? Danny Krivit You hear a difference, it’s definitely better. Gerd Janson And you also have a special method of tuning a turntable the right way, right? Danny Krivit Well, I don’t know if it’s a special method, but it’s what I do. I feel, when I start DJing, if I don’t do this – it was what was taught to me – if I just
accept the turntable the way it is, lots of times I’ve come in and someone
didn’t know. They want the tone arm to stay in place so they turn the weight
around, it’s very hip-hop. And they have it maximum weight. And it’ll stay in the groove, but if this is a record you care about, it’s probably cutting a new groove in the record. Really maximum weight for a record should be about three grams. And it has a setting here. I usually drag along a record, this one in
particular, I found a record that has a blank B-side with no grooves on it.
[holds up the blank-sided record before putting it on the turntable] And what I do is, I take the weight, [unscrews the weight on the end of the tone
arm and adjusts] and I get it to a point where it’s weightless, but it just
manages to stay down. And then I change the number to zero at that point. And then I bring it up to about three. If you’re home, I’d probably set it less than three. Whatever the suggested weight is. The less weight possible, the longer your records will last. And then I have to set the counter balance on
the side [adjusts counter balance gently] to the same setting. And
unfortunately, this is the most common turntable, the MK2 – it only goes up to
three. So if you need to go a little further, you’re stuck. You actually have
to dial off a little weight. The newer ones go up to six and you can adjust it
a little. But once I do that, it should stay where I put it. [puts needle on
blank sided record and the needle skids toward the center] See? I have
actually dialled back a little weight. There’re no grooves so there shouldn’t
be anything pulling it one way or another. [readjusts weight and puts needle
gently on the record] And if you have it off, it’ll kind of slide to one way.
And then, just as a double check after I’ve done that, [flips record over]
I’ll just kind of make sure I’m listening to it, and I’ll pick a groove out
and [cues a groove] move it back and forth like a scratch or something. Make
sure it stays in the groove, doesn’t pull to one direction or another. And
once I’ve done that, I feel pretty confident for the night. If I haven’t done that and halfway through the night it starts skipping, I have to blame myself, I didn’t go through the routine. Gerd Janson And this is also better for the sound, then? Danny Krivit It is. I mean, if you put an enormous amount of weight – people put a quarter
on here, they turn the weight around, up to ten grams. You can hear the
difference, it’s crunching. You look at the needle, the plastic is riding on the record. The needle’s forced down ridiculously, so you can hear the music being crunched. Gerd Janson And this was a common or is a common method with New York DJs? Because I have never seen it before. Danny Krivit No, it should be more common. It’s a bit of an old school thing. Most of the places I go, the sound technicians themselves are not paying that much attention. The
other adjustment to make, which I should have pointed out, is [puts the
record back on the turntable] the actual height of the arm. This wheel here
[indicates the bottom base of the tone arm], when it’s on the record –
depending on the felt, [the angle of the tone arm] should be fairly flat. It
can lean a little bit down [towards the needle] – very slightly, not too much. And
it shouldn’t lean up. And so you adjust this to that level. If that’s set at
the wrong level, it’s again hurting your records. It’s cutting a new groove in
it. Records that have the weight turned around and it’s so heavy like
that, [the effect] after ten plays would be the equivalent of [playing them]
like this, [indicates the turntable which he has just adjusted] maybe 300 plays. So you really do hear a difference quite quickly. Gerd Janson Before we call it a day, maybe you could play us your own most favorite edit
that you did. Or do we have more questions? Audience Member I don’t want to steal your thunder, but I have a few questions. Danny Krivit You’ve got a list. Audience Member Yeah, it is a list. Let’s start off. Excuse me, how old are you and what’s your weight? Danny Krivit Very young. Well, I was fourteen in 1971, so that makes me 48. Audience Member All right. What I wanted to know is, all the edits you did, they were bootlegged. Danny Krivit Mm-hmm. [affirmative] Audience Member Isn’t it hard to make a name and a reputation while you’re actually only on bootlegs? Danny Krivit I would say in the eighties when I was doing a lot of those, I wasn’t doing it for reputation. I basically was making a lot of edits that were helping me DJ, just things I wanted as an edit. “Love Is the Message,” seems like everybody I knew had an edit of “Love Is the Message,” but they didn’t want to share it, so I had to make my own just to play it. I feel that probably, I was sharing this with a lot of my friends, and that’s what was really important at the time. They ended up turning into jobs. Like the “Feeling James,” the guy from Polydor used to go to the Garage and he came to me and said, “You know, I’d love it if you did that for us.” And I would get work because I had an underground reputation for these things, and they were just positive, the way I was going about it. I was just taking care of my friends. Audience Member That’s actually another of my questions. Were their any artists, for example, Chaka Khan, who would come to you and ask you for a remix or a production, to be a producer or something? Danny Krivit If you, let’s say, cite some of these classic things I’ve edited, these artists are so big, if I don’t know them personally, they’re pretty unaware of me and would not come to me. I can’t point to any people like that who have actually come to me. Most likely, it would be the record label, and usually the artists, generally, they’re not that involved. They don’t want to be involved with a remix or edit. They wince at the whole idea of, “What did you do to my vocal? Why did you change the record? I did like it. What are you doing?” Generally, I think I’m pretty happy with the thought of these things as, “Well, I didn’t butcher the record and they probably would be fairly satisfied with the way it turned out. I didn’t mess up their vocal.” Audience Member That’s Nowadays it’s, I think, more or less the other way around. Nowadays it’s like Madonna who’s asking… Danny Krivit Madonna in particular tries to be in touch with the club scene. She’s not in touch with me, but she has her own favorites and she probably will ask that person. Audience Member There is a disco revival. What will you do if Madonna asks you to make her next album? Danny Krivit I’d be honored, but as I said before, there’s some things that I don’t feel inclined to work on. I would assess it and then say I’m up for it or not. I don’t want to do a job for the sake of work. Audience Member I just want to ask a question: One of these latest records that was released
was that Marvin Gaye record, and that really has no beat. And for me it’s one of the hardest to play, and still one of the most rewarding when you get to play it, type of record. And you were just saying that you were trying to have
things that you could DJ. Personally, I’ve never heard you DJ unfortunately,
until tonight I hope. What in your head makes you do an edit that’s so
beautiful and that’s beatless? And how did you in your DJ vision see yourself
playing it while you were arranging it? Danny Krivit Well, the thing about that is, even though it’s beatless, it’s something I
felt when I heard those parts: This is something I would play. And there’s
parts of my set that I feel it’s important to not just focus on the beat all the time. And sometimes I need that breath. Something that just clears your
head. Sometimes in Japan... I mean I’ve played gigs in Sapporo that are 22 hours long. I’m not going to keep that beat there all the time. It’s like Marvin Gaye and things like that are a welcome breath of fresh air. If you’re
playing for two hours, maybe it’s a little more difficult. But if you’re
playing a reasonably long set, it’s great to have these different places to
go. So I thought, “I am going to play this right away,” when I made it. Gerd Janson Can you please play that for us? And, how do you keep on playing for 22 hours? Danny Krivit [starts digging through his CDs] Uh, a good crowd. Because with the wrong
crowd, an hour and a half seems like an eternity. Gerd Janson And you’re having a shower, then, in the DJ booth? [laughter] Danny Krivit A what? Gerd Janson A shower, a breakfast room and stuff like that? Danny Krivit [smiles] No, it’s very timeless, you know? I’m so appreciative of the
Japanese audience that after 22 hours I was like, “Do we need to stop?”
[However,] I felt sorry for some people who, they just wanted to stay ‘til the end, but it’s much harder for them to dance 22 hours than it is for me to DJ. [laughter] (music: Marvin Gaye – “I Want You (Breakdown Edit By Mr. K)”) Danny Krivit I’ve got three storage rooms, plus my apartment, which is the worst storage room. About 70,000 [records]. [gasps and laughter from audience] Gerd Janson That’s quite a pile. Danny Krivit [smiling] There’s not much room for me. Gerd Janson There once used to be a picture of your kitchen on the Ibadan website, full of records next to the oven? Danny Krivit Right, and that picture has regressed. There were records that you could get
in the kitchen, but now I can’t get in the kitchen, it’s just records. Gerd Janson So you need a new apartment. Danny Krivit No, I need to get rid of some records. My storage places have more room than
my apartment. I need to juggle that up a bit. Audience Member Maybe we can help you with that, if you need to get rid of some records. Danny Krivit [smiles] Oh, OK, right… find a home. Gerd Janson So, thank you very much, Mr. Krivit.