Mario Caldato Jr.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

We are very fortunate to have a gentleman, a producer, who has done quite a bit of work with everybody from Beck to John Lee Hooker to a host of Brazilian artists as well. He has come all the way from Rio to be here and speak with us today, so please join me in welcoming Mario Caldato Jr.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Thank you, thank you, glad to be invited to the Red Bull Academy here, it is really incredible.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’ve been having a good time these last few days or so, checking on things?

Mario Caldato Jr.

It’s incredible to see the gathering of people from all over the world and be able to participate together. Share the knowledge that everybody has. Take it on to the next generations, it is a really wonderful thing for everyone.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I neglected to mention one group you have actually done quite a bit of work with, but maybe you can just play something from that group and give everybody an idea what Mario is known for?

(music: Beastie Boys – “So What’cha Want” / applause)

OK, so for those that may be unaware, that was a group called the Beastie Boys and before the Beastie Boys you did quite a lot of other stuff. There seems to be a routine with a lot of these lectures, let’s go back a little way and find out how it started with what you do. So Mario, how did it begin for you?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Probably when my dad took me to Sears buying stuff and whatnot and he decided to purchase an electric organ, a Silvertone. Sears is a classic “find- everything-in-one-spot” kind of place. He’s actually a mechanic, buys tools and my mom buys clothes and vacuum cleaners and whatnot, and he decided one day to get something cool. He asked me if I liked it and we went and checked them out and they were on display. In the ‘60s, it was kind of a cool home entertainment piece. They had these presets and it was just funky, just cool. This guy would be playing it in the store so you get a demo as you’re walking by, and if you purchase it, you get free lessons. So I got a few lessons and they put a little chart with numbers and I played the chart with the numbers and that was the beginning of my musical introduction.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And beyond that Sears organ, what was the next step?

Mario Caldato Jr.

It escalated. A few years later my parents moved to a house and they decided they wanted to buy a piano, so I got a piano at the house and they put me in some lessons. I took some classical lessons, did that for a few years and it was fun and interesting for a bit and then it got a little serious. I had a really strict teacher.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How strict?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The worst part was that I had my lessons before I went to school. So school started at eight in the morning and my lesson was at seven, which meant I had to get up at 6:15 or something and leave the house at 6.30.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That’s like downright abusive.

Mario Caldato Jr.

It was kind of cruel, but it was the only time available and my dad told me she was a really expensive and really good teacher. So I was told, “You are lucky to have this and you should appreciate it,” and whatever. I did for a while when it got to the point I wasn’t having fun so I stopped practicing. I would rather play and do stuff like that than have my lesson. In the end I had my lesson and I was supposed to play something and I didn’t play it and my teacher slapped me in the face. Back and in the ‘60s you could do that. [laughs] She said, “You’re not practicing, you’re wasting your parents’ money,” and all of that. My mom was breaking down, “We’re giving you this money and you should really be practicing,” and then I decided to quit. It wasn’t for me. I thought I’d rather not play and so I backed out of the classical music. But I still had the organ at the house and I enjoyed messing around with that, turning it on and playing it. The same one, Sears organ. Back then, things were built to last, those things still work.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What about the teacher, has the statute of limitations run out? Can we go back and prosecute?

Mario Caldato Jr.

I think she has probably gone by now, but I can’t be mad because I did learn how to read and do some basic things, which were important later on in life. I appreciated it definitely, but at the time I wasn’t interested so much in the classical music. I was listening to the radio, and radio in the ‘60s, AM radio, was playing really, really good and high-quality music. The pop music was really high quality, the Beatles and the Stones, everything else was going on, Motown, wonderful music that was happening, I would be listening to it all the time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is in Los Angeles?

Mario Caldato Jr.

That’s correct. I was born in Brazil, São Paulo. My folks moved when I was two years old to LA, not knowing how to speak the language or anything. They took a big chance, and I got thrown into the whole American system of schooling and all that. But I was exposed to all this music, which was obviously around and really, really good. That was a big influence listening to AM radio, there were only a few stations back then and everybody was listening to the same things and it was really cool. I was fortunate to catch that time, I think it was very inspirational.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So just absorbing all the music you were listening to and having some lessons, some keyboard lessons, when did you make the transformation to create your own music?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Well, it started off a few years later when I was about 12 or 13. My neighborhood where I lived was a pretty mixed neighborhood but it changed quite a bit after the LA riots. Most of the white people, and there was lots of Asian people, actually, they had moved away after the riots, so we had more black people moving in and Latinos and stuff. That changed the neighborhood.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Which riots are you referring to?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The LA riots in ‘68, not the ‘92 ones.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Not the sequel.

Mario Caldato Jr.

The original ones. That was pretty serious back then, actually. Obviously, in the ’60s all of the protests and things like that going on, Martin Luther King and whatnot, it was an interesting time to be raised in LA and the music definitely reflected it. My neighbors, I had several friends and would hang out at their house and we would be listening to their folks music, a lot of Al Green and Motown. My best friend was this black guy Dwayne Allen, whose mom was a schoolteacher and she was really hip and she let her son play music at home and whatnot, and for some reason he was really into the Beatles. He went to Sears and his mom got him a guitar and we started jamming along with the Beatles and doing covers. We started a little band called the Soul Sticks, he played guitar and I played percussion, maracas and tambourine and backing vocals and that is kind of where it started, hanging out. Then it escalated to a drummer, this kid Calvin, who was really funky and he had an older brother who was a jazz musician, who happened to have a Ludwig drum kit, Beatles style.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That wasn’t from Sears, though.

Mario Caldato Jr.

That wasn’t from Sears, it was a real Ludwig. Now we had drums and it just all slowly started, just jamming around and doing covers and playing for our parents at little events on the weekend. That went on for a bit and when it escalated, I switched schools from the one I was going to, from a public school to a Catholic school, and started hanging out in Gardena and then I got introduced to a whole new crew of friends. Same thing, I hooked up with some friends who had a little band and they had a bunch of guitar players and a bass player and a drummer, but they didn’t have anyone with a keyboard. I told them I had an organ, an electric organ, and they were like, “Whoa, shit. You’ve gotta join the band.” So they had me come down and they started showing me the playlist. Back then we were into Deep Purple, Free and Led Zeppelin and started getting into a whole ’nother rock and stuff and it just escalated from that band. We played at the school festivals and then in the following year we went to junior high school and it escalated to where we started another band and we just kept playing.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

When did you meet Mark Nishita?

Mario Caldato Jr.

In high school. He was actually in the second formation of my high school band. He was in the phase two part, he came in as a keyboardist and a singer. I was playing keyboards, I started off on the organ and eventually bought an electric piano and a synthesizer. I was really fascinated when I went to the music store and I saw these mid-’70s electric synthesizers, portable ones, they had all these knobs, making all of these crazy sound effects and stuff and that really caught my interest. I was more into the sound effects and things and less into the playing and so I ventured off into making sound effects and things.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, so that’s when you became more interested in that aspect of it. You mentioned Mark, who went on to become known as Money Mark, who played on all of the Beastie Boys records that you produced. Describe then going from the early beginnings of recording and how you got into that aspect of it and what followed.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Mark was definitely my main guy for getting me into recording. He wrote songs, original songs. We had cover songs in the band, but he actually had original songs. He was into acting and whatnot, and he did a play where he actually made his own music for the play and to do that he went and bought himself a four-track, a reel- to-reel Teac, which was a really amazing machine. He figured it out himself, how to use it and record, and he was doing that at home. He lived in a little house with two other brothers and he didn’t really have a lot of room, so they had to set it up in the living room and tear it down afterwards. I had just moved out of my parents’ house and was on my own. I had this little job and I quit school and had moved into a little back house and he said, “Hey, can I set up my gear here?” And I was like, “Yeah, of course,” and he basically brought over his four-track and we set it up in my little back house. We were hanging out, him playing songs and you know, you hit record and watch the needle and keep it close to zero. And I started engineering basically his sessions and that is really where the recording started. Through his guidance and his will to just figure things out himself and do it, he didn’t take any classes or anything and he was very talented. We did that for a few years, four-track demos.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Then you started doing engineering things a little bit on your own. You said you were DJing as well?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The recording stuff escalated. I slowly started buying gear, find a reverb here… Actually, Mark, he would show up with stuff all the time in the studio. He would hear about stuff or run across it and one day he came in with a little mixer that had reverb on it and an EQ and we thought, “Wow, this is interesting.” Obviously, we’re hanging out just a lot of time just messing around, taking a channel and panning it and adding reverb and just really educating myself and finding out about it, and then plugging in an effect like a phaser and making a bunch of recordings. We made some mixes, we made some acetates we sent to the radio station at the time. The college radio station was a big step, so we did that and it got to the point where he played all the instruments and you couldn’t really perform so he decided to start a band. By now, it was early ‘80s, ‘80, ‘81, something like that. He said, “Well, let’s start a band. You play bass.” OK that was an easy thing for me to do. I got into that, and he made his brother play drums. His brother was a punk rocker, he said, “You play drums,” and he made him play drums and we got this other cat to play guitar, our friend Bill from one of the old bands that we had. Then Mark started playing keyboards and singing and we created the Jungle Bugs. And we were more serious about that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That was the first time you really took it seriously and it wasn’t just messing around?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Exactly. My first production was a 7" of the Jungle Bugs, which was a big deal. We all had bands, but none of us had a record, and we decided to go ahead and do it. I had a job, so I had some money so I put that in to fund the recording and we were fortunate enough to make a little record and have fun with it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So what was the style of music you were doing?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The ‘80s ska was really big, like the Specials, Elvis Costello, the Clash and we were kind of into a psychedelic ska, reggae vibe with a little bit of pop. Mark was very Elton John and Billy Joel background, keyboards and all.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was that like Fishbone back then as well?

Mario Caldato Jr.

They were around that time, that was definitely happening. But we were definitely weird, just different.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So how long did you do that for before you got into the next phase?

Mario Caldato Jr.

That was a year or two of horsing around and playing and we worked our way from little house parties and whatnot to play in Hollywood. We played at a club in Hollywood and that was a big deal, we were like, “Oh, we made it,” although we had to pay to play. We got a friend to sell tickets, but we played at a club and thought, “Wow, now what do we do?” We had our little 7" and things kind of went their own way and we kind of got bored with the music that we were doing at the time. Then I started just being a music listener and going out and absorbing live music a lot and hanging out at clubs and really getting into the scenes, different scenes. I really got into reggae music when Bob Marley died. I’d be listening to the public radio stations and they had a lot of reggae programs and they were playing all this reggae music and I thought, “Oh, what is this? This is really cool stuff.” I really found a connection, a calling there, and I started listening to it a lot, got deep into it. I even took a trip to Jamaica in ‘83 to go to the Sunsplash and then I couldn’t get any of my friends or anybody to go. I was like, “Does anybody want to come with me?” And everyone was like, “What you’re listening to that for?” No one was into it and I said, “No, I’m really into this music and it’s great and I’m going to go.” And I went and had fun with a bunch of people and met some people, bought some 7"s, some records.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So that was your pilgrimage to pay homage to Jamaican music?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The music was just a big motivation at that time for me. An inspiration, I should say.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was it Jamaican music that styled or influenced what you did later, do you think as far as a sound or sonic landscape?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Definitely. I didn’t really know much about it. I went to a record store once I started listening to it on the radio to find out about it. I went to my local record store on Cranshaw in the ’hood, where I lived. The reggae section was literally like ten records or something. It wasn’t a lot. And one of the first records I found was Lee Perry. “Who is this guy here with the trench coat in the woods, with a suitcase? This looks crazy.” I looked at the back and there was all these crazy titles, “Acid Test” and whatnot, and I was like, “I’ve got to get this record,” and I bought that and I think one other record by LKJ, but I took those records home and played them and was totally amazed at how crazy and how different this stuff was. This is deep, you know.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

At that point, is this when you began your DJing portion?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The band stuff died down and I ended up owning most of the equipment from the band. Everybody would go broke and the guitar player, he would sell me his amp and Mark would sell me the microphones and I ended up owning the PA and building a PA. So I had a PA system and I started renting it out on the weekends, little parties just from cassette tapes and turntables and it just escalated. I was amazed, there was always someone calling up for something and I did a lot of music researching, listening and learning.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So you had a little PA rental business going?

Mario Caldato Jr.

And eventually, I ended up collecting records and thought, Well, I might as well play music while people are waiting for the bands to come on. I DJed before, using mix tapes or with records if I had the turntables on hand and I got to meet a lot of cool people. I did sound for a few clubs…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, there is one club night that might have been a very profound experience for you. Do you want to describe when that happened and how that connected with all the other things that you wind up doing?

Mario Caldato Jr.

There was one spot, a club that we frequented regularly called Power Tools, which had a very arty New York vibe. A club with go-go dancers and live musicians playing and weird art installations and people dressed up very dramatic and stuff and it was at a very interesting place. We had all kinds of celebrities coming down. This was ‘86. The club started in ‘85, but I discovered it in almost ‘86, and I was just hanging out there every weekend and the DJ was really incredible because he would play all genres and keep the dancefloor moving. He had a musical knowledge and he knew how to mix stuff from everything. Dance stuff, soul stuff, funk stuff, rock stuff, and make it all work. He’d play even Sergio Mendes, Brazilian or Latin boogaloo stuff, which no one was really playing and making it work like he was doing it. He was friends with Andy Warhol and Basquiat and all these people would hang out at his club and it was a really cool scene and he was very influential on a lot of people who went there to hear his music and hang out.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Where was this in LA, what was the venue?

Mario Caldato Jr.

This was at the Park Plaza hotel across from MacArthur Park, which is a really interesting area of downtown. The building itself had a staircase with two ballrooms on each side, one on one side, one on the other, sometimes we used both, and it was really incredible. At one time it was actually a Masonic temple with all these crazy figures on the walls. It was just the perfect atmosphere for a groovy club like that and I happened to be there one night in particular where there was a vibe that something was going on, these rappers were in town and were going to do something. Nobody knew, they were just walking around and next thing you know, the DJ, he didn’t really talk, he would just play music, but the music stops and these three rappers get up on stage and it was the Beastie Boys. They didn’t have a record out, they just had a single out, “Hold It Now, Hit It” or something, and they were in town, and the DJ was friends with them or had invited them up to do something and they got up on stage and said, “We’re going to do a song.” And people were like, “Wow, OK, this is cool,” and they grabbed the mics, and tested the mics, and the DJs up there, DJ Hurricane, testing out the turntables, and they’re getting ready to drop the first record. He’s like [makes scratching noise] and there’s the intro to the song and the roll, and the first 808 that comes on, boom, it just shuts down the whole PA and the guy’s like... [muffled voice] “Hello? Hello?” The whole show gets sabotaged, literally. They didn’t have a sufficient soundsystem and all this excitement, it was like, “What a bummer!” And everybody was let down because they were really getting excited, like, “This is going to be cool,” and they were let down and I was really bummed out about it. So I was like, “OK, who is the owner here? I’ll go and talk to the guy.” I went to a security guard and said, “Who’s the owner?” And he said, “That guy over there.” I went over there and I spoke to the guy and said, “You need a sound man,” and he said, “Tell me about it, I know.” He goes, “What do you do?” I said, “I’m a soundman,” and I told him about it and he said, “Great, can you come down next week?” So I said yes, ended up coming down the following week and had a look at their equipment.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What did they have?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Or what they didn’t have. They had a little home stereo, a Marantz 50w amp powering four Cerwin Vegas in a club with like a thousand people and it’s like, you can’t really do that. They were just barely making it, and obviously with the band, where the dynamics are so loud, it just shut the amp off. And I thought you need some power amps. So I showed up the following week with some power amps and some crossovers and then got some sub woofers for them. I got to meet the DJ, whose name was Matt Dike, he was the head guy there who really is responsible for a lot of things.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What was his reaction when you showed up?

Mario Caldato Jr.

He was thrilled. He was very embarrassed about the situation, about what had happened with the soundsystem. He was cursing out the guy who had set it up, but it wasn’t his fault. They were just under-equipped. And he was happy the next week when he heard the soundsystem and everybody was like, “Wow, what did you do? It’s amazing!” But I really brought it up to the next level of sound. I had raised the speakers and taken them off the ground, you have to get speakers up because everyone was dancing and it cuts off all the high frequencies. I brought in some subwoofers, which was great because the go-go dancers could dance on the subwoofers and they really loved it because they were on top and everyone could check them out and they had bass on their feet rattling.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

A multiple use, really.

Mario Caldato Jr.

It escalated and from then on it went cool and my association with Matt started and I would hang out with him in the DJ booth, which was a privilege because nobody really got to hang out there. He had all his records there and he was very particular of what was happening. Fab Five Freddy was a good friend and these guys would sleep at his house, Warhol and Basquiat and Fab Five Freddy, because he is actually from New York originally. After a while, he was getting a little tired of the DJ thing, he’d been doing it for years. He could move the crowd and knew what records work and what breaks, he was really into the breaks. Obviously, rap music was really developing and there was a lot of sampling going on and he started to understand what was going on. He was like, “Man, I gotta to do this. I really want to be a producer and make some records and I can do it,” you know? And he made an attempt to record his friend Kevin Dolan playing drums, have him play “Funky Drummer” for like ten minutes on this four-track cassette, just so that he can have a long break. One night he brought the four-track to the club and said, “Can we hook this up to the mixer so we can play it?” And I said, “Yeah, of course.” I rigged it for him and EQed it a bit and gave it a little quick mix because he didn’t really have it mixed right and then we cued it up. When the time was right we started it and played it and he had the crowd moving, and nobody noticed that the record switched to a cassette of the drummer, his friend playing drums. It was working, and he got so happy he was like, “Wow, this is great! We’re making it.” I said, “Yeah. We could do a lot more. I know how to record.” He was like, “Dude, I gotta do a record.” I was like, “I already made a record, a 7".” He was like, “Man, really? I want to start a label.” I was like, “OK,” and the next week he said, “I got a budget of about five thousand dollars, what can we get?” He goes, “I need a sampler, I know what I want to get.” At the time the SP-12 was out, one of the first sampling drum machines that all the hip-hop kids were using at the time. We knew he wanted that and then I told him we could probably get an eight-track and so we bought an eight-track Tascam 388, a mixer and recorder all in one, which was convenient and practical for what we were using it for and it was within the budget. So we went and got that and I set up the studio in his living room. I told him I had some microphones and reverbs and delays and compressors and cabling and all that stuff, and I hooked it up like a studio. He didn’t know what it was, he had a speaker here and a speaker there and didn’t have the right cables. I laid it out and that was the beginning of Delicious Vinyl, his living room.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But he had a partner also, is that correct?

Mario Caldato Jr.

He did have a friend, Mike Ross, who was also a kind of DJ guy, who worked at MCA, and was an assistant to an A&R guy. He would sit around and listen to demo tapes all day and filter them out and give them to his boss. He would see his boss and listen to stuff and he’d say, “This is crap.” There was a big pile of stuff, he would go through the piles they didn’t use and would be like, “Wow, this guy here…” They would have their name on what was back then a cassette. They would write their name and phone number on it, their contacts, and it was just right there, like Tone Loc? Like, OK. Young MC? Whoever their names were. “This sounds pretty cool to me.” The guy had a deep voice, his demos were a cappella, and the guys were like, “Maybe we can use these guys for something,” and he showed them to Matt. And then Matt, within the first week he got a drum machine, just locked himself away just pulling out all his break beats, “Scorpio” and everything you can imagine, he started looping up all the best parts that worked on the dancefloor and started creating some grooves. He didn’t play, so his tools were his turntables and his records and he would go and match the pitch and figure stuff out and started mapping out songs every day, one or two songs. After about a week or two, he had ten songs and it was like, “This is cool.” And his friend showed up with the demo tapes, like, “Let’s try calling this guy up here and have them maybe rap over one or two of these songs,” or something, and it basically started off like that. Guys would show up and be like, “Hey, how about this track?” We would play the track and would figure out a theme or something. One of the first tracks we did with Loc was “Cheeba Cheeba.” He liked to get his weed on so that was an obvious first track for him to go off the dome, “Cheeba Cheeba ya’ll,” and it went on from there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play something from then? You are engineering these records while they are being recorded in Matt’s place, right?

Mario Caldato Jr.

This is Delicious Vinyl in the living room and it is basically stuff that was done on an SP-12 at the beginning. There was a closet that I turned into a vocal booth when it started, like, “This is perfect right here.” Pull out everything and carpet it up and set up a mic and that is all we had, a vocal booth and the living room and Matt’s musical ideas. It was literally a factory of stuff and this is, I guess, one of the big songs.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You want to play something from the Delicious Vinyl years?

Mario Caldato Jr.

This is one that kinda set it off for everyone.

(music: Tone Loc – “Wild Thing”)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Tone Loc, ”Wild Thing.” You were describing how that little track was put together?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Yeah, Matt was figuring out the drum machine and on that one there, he just took some beats from Bizzy B I think it was, the kicks and snares, and he found a Van Halen riff. He was really inspired by the whole Rick Rubin rap/rock kind of thing and I think he was trying to do that, emulate that kind of vibe. And he brought a West Coast vibe to it, the Van Halen thing, like nobody would do something like that, but he just used the intro and the little guitar hits. He actually came up with the concept of the theme “Wild Thing.” He came up with the concept, like, “We got to come up with something that is catchy.” He’d seen Spike Lee’s movie She’s Gotta Have It, and they say the “wild thing” in there, and he’s like, “That’s the hook right there, we got to do that.” And we asked Young MC, who was a good lyrical writer, he could write rhymes, he actually wrote the rhymes for “Wild Thing” and we told him the concept. He went and wrote all these rhymes, and Loc didn’t really write any of the rhymes on that one, but he was the perfect voice for it. It was just finding the right combination to put things together. I didn’t think much of it after we did it. I thought this is all right, and I wasn’t thinking it was that great. But when you put it all together and you see the video that is what set it off, and the timing of it too. And it does work on the dancefloor, I’ve got to say. I still hear it nowadays, even though I live in Brazil now, I hear it in the favelas, they sample that roll and the intro and his voice and it still rocks. Who would imagine we mixed it in a little living room on a minimal set up in a closet?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you want to play something else from the Delicious Vinyl years?

Mario Caldato Jr.

We worked on a lot of stuff. I guess I’ll move to Young MC, who was another cat who happened to fall into the same category. We called him up and had him sing. This guy had lyrics. I had to go and pick him up from USC to bring him to the studio in my car and whatnot and he was always prepared. He had a book of rhymes but didn’t really have any music, which is good, and Matt and I provided all the music. This right here is just a mix of a bunch of stuff.

(music: Young MC – “Bust a Move”)

Young MC won a Grammy for that record. I guess, it was probably the second year that they had a rap category.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

These records were huge pop hits. I remember being in New York at the time, we heard this sort of stuff and thought, “What the hell is this, man?” When you were creating it and it was taking off, and I’m sure the perspective is quite different in LA. I guess describe the feelings of seeing all this stuff take off. Was it like, this is great, this is exciting? Or were you thinking in terms of hip-hop and different regions and perhaps backlash from people as well?

Mario Caldato Jr.

At that moment, we had no idea what was happening because when I started working at Delicious Vinyl we were working on a bunch of things at the same time, a bunch of different artists. We never knew what was going to take off. Obviously Loc was one of those first guys and Young and it happened really quick, within six months, eight months, there was already a movement. Then, as soon as the video came out, that was literally overnight. They started playing it on MTV and started getting requests. Then, a week later all the national radios picked it up, and when the national radios pick it up, it just blows up. He wasn’t even charting and then, all of a sudden, he enters the top 200. And after I think about a month or two, I think it went to No. 1 for one week. It knocked off Paula Abdul, who was real hot at the time, and we knocked her off for one week and it happened really quick. We were really excited and we didn’t know what to expect and we thought the music was cool and different. Obviously, it wasn’t as hard as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy and LL Cool J and stuff like that, but that wasn’t the intention. Matt was really into a dance vibe with obviously rap being the medium, but the music was groovier and funkier and it worked. It got respect from the East Coast, eventually, when they started listening to it and it was pretty cool and it got some crossover, which really brought it into the mainstream.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So do you want to get into the Dust Brothers?

Mario Caldato Jr.

When we were making the records we were getting introduced to a lot of people. Obviously, people started sending in demo tapes and whatnot, and we had, one of the guys… They were promoting the stuff, sending it to radio stations, and they sent it to a college station, Claremont radio station, and two of these guys E.Z. Mike and King Gizmo had a rap radio show and they were huge fans of Tone Loc. Especially the very first single, the “Cheeba Cheeba” one that couldn’t be played on regular radio because it was talking about weed. But they would play it on their program. They had “The Dusted Hour” or something, and these guys were very creative and they actually had their own demos and they passed that on to the guy who was servicing them and bringing them records. This guy, Orlando, he goes, “Here’s their demos, they sent it to you guys, you guys should check them out,” and Matt heard the demo, we listened to it at the studio and we were like, “Oh my God, these guys are on another level.” They were really inspired by the Bomb Squad and the whole Public Enemy layers of samples and they had eight or ten samples going at the same time, all synced up. Back then, we didn’t know how to do that, really. We were basically just sampling on the fly and programming everything in a drum machine and hitting play and starting it and letting it go. I already had the arrangement worked out in the sequence. They had complex stuff playing, a bunch of things at the same time, and we were like, “How can you do that?” We wanted to meet them. And their musical selection was really, really cool and we had the guys come down to the studio and they explained to us, “This is how we do it. We use a four-track cassette, we have a little box, a PPS-1 that lays SMTPE on a track, it reads it back so you can sync it up, you get a start tone…” We were like, “This is crazy science.” We didn’t know about this stuff. And it really was because it allowed you to go back, sync up to the same BPM at the same point. And then we were like, “God, this is like a new invention.” Now you have endless opportunities to go back and add stuff. And it was really science and the broadest technology to us and we incorporated it and start using it in the studio, and in return we let them use the studio to redo their songs and save them bouncing everything down to three tracks because they only had a four-track at their own studio. At this point we had upgraded the eight-track to the 16-track. I had made an investment and bought a 16-track so we had more tracks to work with and they came and laid down 15 tracks of loops, everything separate. We would listen to this and think, “This is incredible.” But we didn’t know how to arrange it. So what we did, we would have continuous loops and then we just did everything with the mutes, turning stuff on and off, that was the old school way of arranging it. So we would just lay all these loops, turn stuff on and off and make an arrangement and we made a couple of mixes and the tracks turned out really, really cool. We didn’t know what to do with them. None of the Delicious Vinyl rappers were really right for it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Their vocals wouldn’t have sounded right on the Dust Brothers’ productions, because there was too much going on in them?

Mario Caldato Jr.

On those particular tracks. But what we ended up doing was asking them to finish off the Loc record. We had like eight tracks ready and we thought we needed a couple more, so we asked them to produce three tracks. They came up with three tracks for Loc, because they had Loc in mind, and they ended up doing “Cutting Rhythms” and “Next Episode” and another one I can’t remember. So they produced three songs on that record, which was their introduction into working with Delicious Vinyl. And then they did a couple for Young MC, they did two songs, they did “Know How” with the Shaft thing. They are actually standout songs on those records because of their production on it. They taught us a lot and it was a really good collaboration.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But it would become a situation where they wouldn’t just get an album track on a Tone Loc or a Young MC album, but they got to do something pretty big after that, wanna talk about taht?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The two tracks, the first two demo tracks they sent to us, the really hot ones we didn’t know what to do with. Matt had the master plan. Well, he had heard Beastie Boys had just got off their label, they were suing their manager, they were suing their producer, they were leaving Def Jam and going somewhere else. And he was like, “We’ve got to do their record.” He wanted to do it and he needed help doing it, and so he said, “We’ve got to do it, let’s send them these two songs.” So we get our little contact, this skater kid Max Perlich, who was an actor and knew Ad- Rock, something like that, he was going to New York and we slipped him the tape. He went and got it to the guys directly and they heard it, they heard these instrumental tracks and were like, “What is this stuff?” They obviously loved Public Enemy, that was their label mates, and they wanted to go to the next level and this was the next level to them. “We want to come and meet you guys.” They planned to come out and they came out to meet us at our studio at Delicious Vinyl.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Alright, so do you want to play one of the things that you guys wind up doing? This is one of the instrumentals that were sent over?

(music: Beastie Boys – “Shake Your Rump”)

Mario Caldato Jr.

That’s a Dust Brothers production there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So you are recording all this stuff?

Mario Caldato Jr.

I am engineering at this point on that track, yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You guys are hearing this stuff and pretty much losing your minds, I imagine.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Everybody was just bugging, like, “What in the heck is that?” There are so many things going on and it’s madness, and that's what the Beasties were into. They liked the chaos of it because it wasn’t predictable, it was funky and Latin beats and timbales and crazy Moogs, the “Car Wash” keyboard and scratching and a lot of stuff put together.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

They ran into sample clearance issues on their first record. So what happened with this one because these had more samples, even on this one record alone?

Mario Caldato Jr.

This one here they went completely legit. They signed to Capitol and it was a whole different thing. Obviously, they were popular, people were after them and whatnot and they knew they had to cover their asses, so they cleared it and put all the samples down and they literally spent between two, three-hundred thousand dollars just on sample clearances, which is actually cheap because back then they were still negotiating. People were like, “What? You want to give me five thousand dollars to use a little bit of my record?” Nowadays people want a lot more. It was a lot, it was huge. There were a few things they didn’t get cleared. They couldn’t find the people they were just so obscure and hidden, it was impossible. People still wonder about a couple things, but I’d say 95 percent, which is a lot, [was cleared].

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You were saying there was one particular session that was particularly amusing?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The whole process of recording Paul’s Boutique was an amazing ride because we were still getting over the Loc and Young MC high and we were getting all this attention and whatnot. Then the Beastie Boys come into town and were obviously very excited about the songs. They did the two songs first and then said, “We have to make a record immediately. We’re going to New York and will be back in a month. Get a studio, get the best studio, get everything you need.” They spared no expenses. So we went to the top studio, the Record Plant, spend three thousand dollars a day. Since there was no instruments, we just had a huge room where they recorded drums and whatnot, and we rented a ping-pong table, a pool table, air hockey, pinball and just filled it up with junk that wasn’t music. Just so we could hang out and have fun, and that was the environment, was to have fun. And all they had to do was do vocals, and the Dust Brothers provided all the music. It was like two teams, we would be there in the daytime laying down the tracks, they would show up at night and be like, “OK, we got some lyrics,” and they would divvy up their lyrics and decide what to do and work on a quick arrangement and laid it down. But there was a lot of hanging out and playing ping-pong and whatnot.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who was the best ping-pong player in the Beastie Boys?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Actually, no one was really good. The best guy was E.Z. Mike, he was the Dust Brothers. The Beastie Boys, they didn’t have no game. They thought they could play basketball, too, but the West Coast guys took them out. We would take them out. Matt Dike could shoot. Mike D couldn’t dribble, it was pretty funny back then.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Why could I guess that Mike D couldn’t dribble?

Mario Caldato Jr.

They got better. So it was a nine month process of hanging out in this big expensive studio, ordering prime rib to go, crazy expensive dinners. We had a dealer that made deliveries directly to the studio with ounces of weed, just the most ridiculous things we could think of.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Capitol was like, “Yo, we got the Beastie Boys, they just sold millions and millions of records, this is going to be amazing, a huge hit.”

Mario Caldato Jr.

They thought they had it for sure because the Beasties sold four or five million. It was the first, biggest rap record, so Capitol gave them a budget and signed them for a few millions. They had everything they wanted and they abused it. They totally took it to the limit, ordering the runner to go out and buy dumb things, shopping, everything, shoes, whatnot. It was all about fun and how ridiculous and extravagant we can be with the music and with our time and what we were doing. It got to the point towards the end, and we were getting down to the last song and we saved this one song for last, and they told us we had to move to this other studio because they were going to remodel one room. So we were in a Neve room and we went to this other SSL room, just a whole different vibe, and we thought, “Well, let’s do that to this crazy song,” and we thought this would be a cool one to do there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So this is the product of that environment?

Mario Caldato Jr.

“Car Thief.”

(music: Beastie Boys – “Car Thief” / applause)

It was a night to remember.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, so how long was that night?

Mario Caldato Jr.

That night was just crazy and we couldn’t believe it. The next day we listened to the track and were like, “Oh, I guess this is alright, it’s going to work.” We were pretty faded. It was an experience, we were open, it was cool. Nobody got addicted, nobody became a crackhead afterwards. It was a total experience.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, you know, it’s totally cool to try it yourself, that’s the lesson we learned. [laughter]

Mario Caldato Jr.

As long as you’re in the studio, a safe environment. Just don’t stand on the console.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And do a bong hit before you try the crack. So you said that was nine months?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Nine months in the studio and then we finally had the baby. They had a big launch on top of Capitol Records, on the roof, they had a release party and they even had airplanes going by, write “Beastie Boys” in the sky. They took down the Capitol flag and put up a Beastie Boys flag on top of the Capitol building. That is how excited they were about it, and they had a New Orleans marching band playing. Everything was just ridiculous, you couldn’t believe what was going on. They really milked it and we had fun. It was an incredible moment. And then the party kind of died a bit after the record came out. Well, two weeks before the record came out, the Capitol president got fired and they moved the whole staff and everybody. It was one of those big corporate moves and everything changed, they didn’t know what to do, they didn’t want to work the record. They did one single, “Hey Ladies,” and one video and it didn’t quite come off or have the impact at the time. Everybody was expecting a...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Multi-million seller.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Well, expecting more than the first record, Licensed To Ill. It was only later that people listened to the record and really appreciated it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I guess it was a big disappointment for the company then?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Yes, it was big. They told us it had gone gold and they gave us gold records, but it only sold three hundred thousand or something at the time. They didn’t really work it and the guys didn’t tour. They had another deal to do another record, that was guaranteed, so after that moment we all took a little time off and then we kinda decided, “Let’s do something completely different on the next record. No samples.” That was the intent at first, let’s do something completely different. Our friendship was really strong at the time, after working for so long. We hung out a lot and I go over to their house and Ad-Rock was always into messing around and jamming, and he had a drum kit. He liked to play beats in his apartment, the neighbors loved him, but he would be playing drums at home. We would be hanging out and those guys started to get the itch to make music and whatnot. I was like, “Instead of going into the studio and spending all that money, why don’t we just make a little space?” I love home studios, I have always had a home studio and feel comfortable and I think that’s a good environment to work in as opposed to being in an expensive studio. And the guys were like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea, we should do that.” At first we just did some more jamming and we got inspired. My friend Money Mark would show up once in a while. He always travels with a portable keyboard and guitar, whatever he had on hand, and Ad-Rock and he would jam a little bit. Then Yauch, who used to play bass in a band, he got into his Bad Brains punk bass, fuzz bass and whatnot, and he would bring an amp over. Then Mike D, actually Mike D was also a drummer, a drummer in a band, and he worked his way back into drums and Ad-Rock switched over to guitar, although he is a better drummer to me. He took the guitar spot and we were just kind of like jamming in an apartment and the next thing you know the neighbors are like, “Shut up!” And we’re like, “Oh fuck, this is cool. You know what? Let’s just go to a rehearsal place.” They rented out a little rehearsal spot where 10 bands go and rehearse and you can hear everybody jamming and we rented out one of those little rooms for a week and we just went in there and start just jamming. I said, “Well, let me just bring a DAT player, just for the hell of it, and record what these guys are doing. No big deal, no pressure, let’s just capture the moment.” Laid down two mics, just put them on the ground, a little portable DAT off to the side, hit record and nobody knows what’s going on. Those guys just started jamming, just having fun. Mark was leader, the musical guy because he was the most proficient on his instrument and he would start a little groove. “OK, play in this key here, G or A or whatever,” and the guys were like “OK,” and would just try to groove. There was no pressure or nothing.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That is definitely reflected in the nature of the recording that followed. So what happened with the studio, because you eventually got out of the rehearsal space?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The rehearsal space served the purpose because it set the seed for a few songs that ended up being on Check Your Head. There were a couple of grooves that turned out pretty cool, like, “Whoa, this is kind of funky,” and for some reason a friend of theirs, the son of Donovan Leitch, the son of Donovan, the famous singer, had a club in Hollywood and said, “Would you guys come down and jam at the club?” Asked the Beasties to come down and jam but not called the Beasties, just come down and jam, and they were like, “Yeah, that would be fun.” And this was the first time they would play together at this club and they just showed up. Mike had a van, everybody just packed everything in just like an old school band. Everybody just carried their equipment and they set up and they would play instrumentals at the club and everyone was just ecstatic about it, the vibe. “This is kind of cool,” you know? They got a little response from people and thought, “Hey, we can do this.” So we really needed to find a space so we can build a studio. And Mike D had just moved into this area with his girlfriend. He was looking around his area and he found this place in Atwater Village, which is a perfect place, it was an old community center, a place that somebody had turned into a rehearsal space for bands.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is the outer edge of Los Angeles.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Correct, by Los Feliz, heading into Glendale. It’s called Atwater Village, just a little town vibe, just a main strip and this was the tallest building there. There was a ballroom in the back and the guy rented it to us, and we said this is perfect. There was one huge room, which is about like this [gestures to room he is in] with wood floor and it was half cylinder. It had really crazy acoustics when you’re in the middle, you clapped your hands and got multiple reverbs, which we thought was cool and funky, and we built a small stage. There was two little rooms, so we tore out the wall and created a big room for a control room. Mark was the carpenter so he had tools and just cut a door and put in a window and a week later we had a studio. I told them we just needed a 24-track machine and a board and we went out and purchased a two-inch tape machine and a console. I had everything else, the outboard and compressors. I just set it all up so everything worked and the band equipment was set up on the stage. Then we had this huge basketball area where we played basketball... in the recording room. MCA decided to build some skateboard ramps, as he got into skateboarding. It was like, “OK, why not?” He took up half the court. And it was like a playhouse. It was kind of a school basically and we hung out. It kind of reminds me of the Academy a bit and we had a bunch of people with ideas, and everyone brought in their ideas, and it was a clubhouse. We could only work at night because downstairs was a drugstore, and they closed at six so we would start at six and could make noise. We’d come in and play basketball and just hang out, sit till everybody arrives and listen to music. We had turntables and we’d be DJing. We were all record collectors and everybody was just digging back then. It was a competition on who had the funkiest and rarest shit. We would be like, “Check this out, check this out.” It was a good environment, everyone was turning everyone onto different things. But the idea was to play. They would go and listen to the Meters and would then go and try and play the track. I had everything set up to record either on the two-inch machine, all I had to do was hit play, and if they were just jamming around and it didn’t sound that hot, I would just roll the DAT. That happened a lot. Just capture the moments, and then they would come in and have a listen every once in a while. “Hey, this is pretty neat.” And we just did that for three years. We took a long time, and a lot of things happened in three years. One guy made a movie, MCA went to India and Nepal and discovered Buddhism and whatnot. Slowly everybody changes. We would come back after a few weeks of taking a break and other ideas would come up. We were slowly collecting stuff. Next thing you know, I had one hundred two-hour DATs of them jamming and ten reels of songs, just jamming and ideas. We would go through and pick the best elements and keep narrowing it down.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So was it an editing process?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Editing out songs and picking out grooves. Obviously, some of the grooves were like ten minutes long and we would go and just pick out a couple of bars sometimes and create some songs out of looping or replaying them or adding on to the loops. But it really started off musically, like the first half of the record, ten songs, were playing. Then it got to the point where we had all these instrumental tracks and we were like, “Well, you should maybe do a rap on something.” But nobody wanted to do a rap. The first guy who stepped up to bat was MCA. He pulled me aside and said, “I’ve got this idea, this Hendrix stuff that I really like.” He put it together with a beat, and it was the “Jimmy James” track. He was actually too embarrassed to do it at the studio. So he called me up to come over to my house — I had a little studio — and we demoed it up at the house. We both had the samplers. We all had the same samplers, actually, and he brought the discs over and I looped it up and timed it out for him and got it to work. We came up with the instrumental and then he did a rough vocal over it and we brought it back the next day to the studio and played it for the guys. The guys were really excited and were like, “Man, I want to get on that.” And that started up their enthusiasm of wanting to rap again because they really didn’t want to rap after Paul’s Boutique. They were like, “Let’s just make an instrumental record or something.” It slowly developed, like I said over three years. Slowly, a track would show up, a month later another one and another one. There was no hurry, no time [restrictions], the label never had a limit and they never came down to listen to anything, which was great. I had no pressure, it was a very fortunate situation. And I have never been in that situation and probably never will, three years on payroll to produce something.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play something from Check Your Head that might be reflective of that whole?

Mario Caldato Jr.

This is one of the songs from that actual first rehearsal place with the two mics on the ground, where we took some elements and created a song out of it. But the backing track, where there is drums, a keyboard, bass and another keyboard and some live percussion and a little bit of guitar, is everybody playing at the same time and it turned out to be a song on the record. And this is how it turned out.

(music: Beastie Boys – demo)

That song was patched up from a two-track live and then we added a bunch of elements and ran the voice through the Leslies. They were embarrassed to do vocals and stuff so Mark actually started off singing the vocals on there. The only way those guys were singing, they were like, “If we sing on it, put some effects.” So we ran it through the Leslie and they kinda sang together. Then Ad-Rock decided to sing something and I actually sang the high part, which was me mimicking Lee Perry on something that I had listened to at home. I was like, “We need a high voice like this.” We actually had two studios. We had the main studio and the B studio, which was a four-track. We would take a cassette mix of the song so that we could work in there with a little bullshit mic plugged in and we would work on the lyrics while somebody else was working on something else. And I grabbed the mic and did, “You could go like this” [sings high note] with some reverb and stuff. And the guys were like, “That’s great, that’s perfect, we’ll use it.” I was like, “Should I do it again?” They said, “No, we’ll take it right off the cassette,” and we just flew it in. It was all just duct taped together, all these little elements, the laugh box. The part I really liked was the scratching that comes in and that was a total accident. I had echoes on that channel the scratching was on and it went to the echo and it was feeding back to itself, Jamaican-style. It sounds like a helicopter coming in and it was just a wicked effect. We were like, “Oh, man!” We couldn’t believe it. Those are happy things that come together that are just cool. We were just impressed with that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So you got a co-production credit?

Mario Caldato Jr.

That is correct. They put me down as a co-producer on the record and we had stepped up from just engineering to throwing in elements and elements and helping to write songs and helping to put the rap songs together.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And how long was the studio functioning? How many records did you guys do there after Check Your Head?

Mario Caldato Jr.

After Check Your Head we did one other one, Ill Communication. After this record, it took so long we went on tour. We had some ideas together when we came back and did the next record in six months, that was quick. Everyone was excited and we were all confident and there were no issues and so we focused and did it in six months. We spent one month in New York, the very first month, we tracked some stuff like “Sabotage” and a few other ones. It went really quick, and with the high of the first record, the second was received a lot bigger and better and it went really well.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play a taste of next record? So it took three years to do Check Your Head but this one you knocked it out in six months. So the energy is slightly different, I guess.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Very different, everyone was amped and ready and confident and had ideas and was like, “Let’s just do it.” We really put together a good team and had a percussionist, Eric Bobo, who was introduced to the group at the time and he contributed. We had this one track, which was the only one that was different to all the other ones, kind of a rock track. And they weren’t really trying to do rock. That was the furthest thing they wanted to do. They wanted to stick to the funkier stuff. And this song stayed an instrumental for a long time. Then towards the end of the record, we were just about finishing, the last two weeks. We had attempted a couple of times to put vocals on it and it didn’t sound right. And then Ad-Rock was like, “Let me try it one more time to do it,” and two weeks before we finish the record and the song together and put the vocals on it. But it almost didn’t make the record. But here it is.

(music: Beastie Boys – “Sabotage” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So, this has a pretty heavy impact on the opening, just the way it comes in, what was the difference?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Yauch was always loved that fuzz bass thing and they were horsing around and try to play in a Bad Brains style. He got this riff on the bass and Bobo, our percussionist, was very alert and was listening to it and he totally accented it. And that marked the song right there. And as soon as we heard that, that was it. Mark heard it and was like, “Mike, Mike, hurry up, get in there, just follow him, just copy Bobo.” And he started doing it on the drums and it just kept building the intensity of it. And when it finally drops they’re just droning on one note, but it’s the intensity of it. And the vocals obviously really set it off. Ad-Rock really gets into his high pitch and it works. It took a while to get though, we tried it a few times, literally. That was a song I mixed it instrumental because they didn’t have any vocals. So I went ahead and mixed it and got it sounding as good as I could. When Ad wanted to do the vocals he actually came to my house and I threw it on the DAT machine, on two tracks and then added the two tracks for the vocals. Then, after he did the vocals, we did a little scratch and some terminating scratching and sealed it up from the pre-mix that was made. It was just flying and we knocked it out. And obviously, they made a video, which is really hilarious. Our friend Spike Jonze did it, and it was just perfect timing. When you hear the music and see the video they work really good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Correct me if I’m wrong, I was smoking crack before I got here, but I heard this story about somebody had heard “Sabotage”…

Mario Caldato Jr.

Oh, the owner of the studio from New York was this big rocker guy, this real rocker dude. We were there for a month recording all this stuff and the moment he heard that song he walked in and he goes, “That’s a record right there.” He called it right there. I was into it. He was like, “That’s what I’m talking about.” Everyone was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” they didn’t want to do the rock thing. But the owner of the studio, he called it and said, “That’s the shit right there.” And we knew this guy was Middle America and he was right. It did work. They just didn’t know how to approach the vocal at the time and was left it aside until the very end. His name was Chris and we actually called the song “Chris Rock” until it became “Sabotage” in dedication to the guy.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And at this point the guys started to take a little bit longer to do their records?

Mario Caldato Jr.

After this record had huge success and the other records, all the other records became multi-platinum. The tour was going really well. They were playing small places and ended up playing arenas by this tour. I toured with them doing sound front-of-house, which is also really fun: Getting to hear the songs in studios and playing it out live. We had a quad system. We rented the Pink Floyd rig with the joystick and we just went off and took it to the limits. And after all the touring and everything they took a little bit of a break. One guy got married, another guy got married, they were taking some time off and they could relax because it was a good couple of years run we had with Check Your Head and Ill Communication. So it took us like four years before we got back to do the next record and I started having to branch off.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So what did you do to occupy yourself then at that point?

Mario Caldato Jr.

By then, luckily these records did very well, and a lot of people read the back of the records and saw my name. I was on the back of a couple of million records. People were like, “Oh, I love that record, we love that sound.” Check Your Head inspired a lot of bands and they wanted that sound and wanted me to work on their record. I started getting calls. The first calls, the hook-ups were through the management. The Beastie Boys’ manager, he also managed Beck, so he sent Beck down to the studio and Beck wanted to do something. He said, “Just go down to the Beasties’ studios. Mario, he’ll take care of you.” He showed up at the studio and was like, “Someone said that I can record some stuff here.” Oh, great, and we worked on a few tracks, seven tracks. He ended up using one track on the Odelay record and a few others on B-sides. So I got to work with him and on the road we worked with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. They really liked the sound and the guys were like, “We’re going to roll through town,” and they came in and wanted to use the studio. I was like the chief engineer and they asked me to work on their stuff with them. Then bands from Japan loved the sound, wanted to come by and use our studio. I started getting calls luckily from the Beasties. So it was a big thing, you know. Most people found me, looked me up through the management and I started to work with a lot of different artists. Money Mark also went ahead and did his first solo record and I helped him a little bit on that, on the first one. Then he made a second one and I helped him a lot more on the second one.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Was there any kind of adjustment for yourself, working in a pretty unique situation with the Beasties, where you guys really knew each other well, to sort of freelancing, essentially? Doing stuff for people you don’t have the same relationship with?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Like I said, it started off gradually within the family with Beck and also DJ Hurricane. The Beastie Boys at that point decided they wanted to start their own label. The Grand Royal label thinking they could do Delicious Vinyl and make their own things. It was a good idea on paper, but it didn’t actually pan out that well. They had a few interesting acts, the first record that was on there was actually Hurricane. That came because Hurricane wasn’t really part of the recording process of the Beastie Boys and they said, “Well, we’ll give you a deal. We’ll get your record and put out your record.” So I produced the first record with Hurricane and we went in and knocked it out within a month. We weren’t messing around, we knew he had ideas and I had ideas and it was just me and him. That came out pretty good. It was well received and did well, and then there was a couple of other punk rock things. Ad-Rock wanted to do a punk rock band, and we were just utilising the studio. So I did the punk rock band and members of a rock band called me to work with them and I liked the band. I went and heard Mother Tongue and produced them, slowly escalating. Also, Mark ended up making a track with Los Lobos. We did a funky track for some compilation and they loved it and wanted to play on it. So I got to meet them and it turned out so well that they invited me like, “Hey, we’re going to do a song with John Lee Hooker, do you want to produce it?” “Yes, of course.” I got to do a session with John Lee Hooker and Los Lobos, which is obviously amazing, a thrill to work with a blues legend. He is the man, you know, literally. It was these opportunities that I had that were definitely great to be a part of and I’m really thankful for that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play something that you feel particularly good about from some of this extra work that you did?

Mario Caldato Jr.

I’ll play one song from Mark’s record. Mark is a very eclectic person and does a lot of recordings himself starting from home. He is a genius. We had a lot of fun making his record, the second record, “Push the Button.” With this one song it was really cool, which is on a whole different tip: it is live, everybody playing at the same time in my living room at my house, my old house. It’s a piano, vibes, Al McKibbon on acoustic bass, an amazing guy who played with Cal Tjader, Bobo on percussion and I had a friend Rocco on drums and I think that’s it. But here it is. I just really like the way it sounded and I recorded it on an 8-track, an A-DAT in fact with Telefunken preamps. It was just pretty simple but everyone playing together. It just sounded really nice and we overdubbed the synthesizers.

(music: Money Mark, Al McKibben, Eric Bobo, Rocco, Mario Caldato Jr. – live jam / applause)

Not bad for live.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

All the way live.

Mario Caldato Jr.

Which is at that point, bringing it back to the home recording is my favorite thing to do, really. They were really good musicians there and I really enjoyed that aspect. The Beasties was fun in a different way because it was just the innocence of the playing. They weren’t really great musicians, but the ideas were good behind it and the feeling. But it is definitely nice when you have musicians who really know what they are doing and have fun. The environment is cool, everybody enjoys it and that is something that I continue doing, working in a small environment as much as possible.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So you live in Brazil now, when did you move to Brazil?

Mario Caldato Jr.

About four years ago. My wife convinced me to go back and spend some time there and we decided it was a good thing for our family. We’ve got a couple girls. Just to live there and hang out and check out the country which I was born in. I don’t know much about it and I’ve started to understand it a bit and appreciate all the good things it has to offer. But it is very interesting, very cool, very beautiful place, good people.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’ve also been able to record some stuff while you’re there?

Mario Caldato Jr.

My studio is still in Los Angeles. My studio equipment is all in my living room, and I go there every few months to work but I have been pretty busy in Brazil doing lots of stuff. The last tour I worked with the Beasties they ended in South America, first-time they ever played in Brazil, and that was what brought me back the first time. Back in, I think 1996, and I hadn’t been there since I was ten or something. One of the bands that opened up for us asked me to produce them and I came back later that year and produced them. And it kind of started my relationship with Brazil and Brazilian artists and it just grew from there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to play something from your Brazilian recordings?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Sure. I’ll play a track from a good friend of mine, Marcelo D2, he was in this band called Planet Hemp, which is kind of a very Beastie-inspired kind of band. They did rock, rap and funky jams and everything else in between. I did a few records with them and then he went solo and worked more on the hip-hop, Brazilian hip-hop. This is from his second record and it was really a cool mix.

(music: Marcelo D2 – unknown / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is your approach different at all doing stuff down there as opposed to what you were doing before?

Mario Caldato Jr.

Hip-hop stuff is inspired from records and grooves, so the beats are kind of the same. It’s just the samples instead of being funk and soul records are bossa nova records and groovy Brazilian music, samba and whatnot. It’s great, hip-hop is universal and is everywhere you go. You have Japanese hip-hop, Brazilian hip-hop and Irish hip-hop, just whatever, it works. It’s the beat that keeps it together and you can bring whatever elements, bagpipes, and it’s all good.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you feel like a hip-hop guy?

Mario Caldato Jr.

I do. I happen to fit in the groovy hip-hop category, not the hardcore category. I think it is a cool thing to be a part of and I’m really happy that the artists I have worked with have crossed over a lot of different ways, which is what music is all about: Crossing over and bridging stuff and different generations. Taking old elements, and new elements, the best of both and putting them together in a musical way.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Just a couple of other folks you want to mention that you’ve also worked with, so people get an idea of the range of it?

Mario Caldato Jr.

The Brazilian stuff. I was fortunate to work with a whole bunch of bands: Molotov of Mexico, Day One from the UK, which I really like. I also hooked up with Jack Johnson, which was a very wonderful experience. He was a guy who did a record, that, when it first came out didn’t get very much response, and then after 9/11 or something, people kind of got conscious. Someone on a record label heard his lyrics and stuff and thought this guy is pretty cool and they put him out on a major and he had some success. His manager called me to do a remix of a song and I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And I heard this song and the guy sent me the tracks and it was all live, playing live. I thought it was a little tricky to do the remix as I would have to have a musician come in and play, so I said, “Why don’t you guys just come down and do a remake of the song?” So we recorded at the house and he came over and we set it up in a living room and the bedroom, the vocals and guitar. He was really comfortable and he really enjoyed it and liked it and the remix is cool. I added some vibes and stuff and it was pretty cool. And he asked me, he goes, “You know, I want to do my next record. I want you to do it.” And I said, “Sure, that would be great.” He said, “I want to record it like this, though. I like this vibe.” He was going to buy a house and he said, “I want to buy a house, build a studio.” He said, “If I go and buy a house, will you have a look at it and tell me if we can build a studio?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “It’s in Hawaii though,” and I said, “I’m going to Hawaii next month.” So I went to Hawaii and went to go check out the garage and said, “This is it right here, this is perfect.” His brother was a contractor so he drew up the plans and my friend helped me design the control room. He built a control room, and it’s a total homely vibe with a garage and a little studio. We did his record, the second record On and On and his third record there. And those records did really incredibly well. They had incredible exposure, people were listening to organic music, acoustic guitar, bass and drums. He was getting mainstream attention, which was really, really great and it was very successful.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you want to share a little taste of something from that and then we will open things up a little bit for questions?

(music: Jack Johnson – “Traffic In the Sky”)

Mario Caldato Jr.

Jack has an amazing voice. He played that song for me on just an acoustic guitar before we started recording. He was just like, “Check out this song, see what you think of it.” He just played and sang it and it was so deep, I said, “That is amazing.” The lyrics and everything, and he explained what the song is about and I said, “That is the real deal right there.” The guitar and the voice and he laid it down. It was the easiest project to work on. It was so simple, the elements, the song, the simplicity and his voice, it was incredible, a pleasure to work with him. He’s a great guy.

Audience Member

How did the collaboration with Q-Tip on “Get It Together” come about?

Mario Caldato Jr.

He was a friend of the band, a New York cat, and whenever the New York cats rolled into town they would call up the Beasties and hang out. They knew we had a studio, Biz Markie was also always around and rolled by the studio, and Q-Tip, we were trying to play him some stuff, like, “We’ve got these tracks here and they’ve got no vocals. What do you think?” He heard that one track, the “Get It Together” one, which was actually the only one that Mike D had put together. He had found that one and sampled the beat and put a beat and loop together, and he said, “This one here is good, this one’s dope.” We put him in the control room, everything was handheld… That is another thing on Check Your Head, all the vocals were handheld, most of them were SM-58s with the guys cupping the mic. A lot of times I had a bullshit mic that we called a karaoke mic. A Sony variety karaoke mic, $29, that I bought in Little Tokyo that is amazing. It has pitch and you can octave to high and low and all these effects, and it had perfect distortion on it. So “What’Cha Want” is an example of that microphone. That’s no preamp, just the microphone directly into the console. We would plug it in, Q-Tip grabbed the mic and he just, “One-two, one-two…,” went off the top of his head. It was all off the top of his head. He ad-libbed it, and in three minutes did a take and then another track. We did another take and then out of the two tracks we muted out all the parts that we didn’t like and we only kept the parts we liked. Then we mapped out the song and the guys did the lyrics in between. They took whatever his rhyme was, and then Ad-Rock would respond, and we knew what the next rhyme was already so he would end a rhyme and connect them. Then Mike D would come in, and it was a puzzle. We put it together and fill in the blanks basically.

Audience Member

How did he feel about the muting of Q-Tip’s voice?

Mario Caldato Jr.

That is how we worked. It was all about turning stuff on and off. I had a little MIDI mute that remembered all the mutes and the automation so that was helpful. And we would just turn it on and off and it would just play it back that way.

Audience Member

That’s a crazy track, man.

Audience Member

I got a few questions, actually. You said that “Wild Thing” was recorded in a closet. What kind of mic did you use to get Tone to sound like that in the closet?

Mario Caldato Jr.

A Sennheiser 421, the black dynamic microphone. It was the best mic I had at the time and I just mounted it inside the vocal thing with one of those arms, because there was no room. It was literally a chair and he had to sit there with their headphones and that was it. It was a dynamic mic, so it took a lot of sound pressure and it worked. It’s a good rap mic, actually we used for the Beasties on Hello Nasty.

Russell Elevado

You have been a big influence for me. I was listening to the Beasties when I was doing stuff with Voodoo and the Roots and I just wanted to thank you for paving the way. I’m going to pick your brain later on as well, I am not done with you yet.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, let’s all, in addition to Russ, thank Mr. Mario Caldato for being here.