Ron Trent

Gerd Janson

This gentleman to the right of me has been a music producer, DJ, owner of a record label for 15 to 20 years or even more. He has been in different places like Chicago and New York and experienced some of the stuff that is still important today first-hand, when it happened. So yeah, let him feel welcome here, Ron Trent from Chicago, Prescription Records.

Ron Trent

Thank you. Good to finally be here, good to finally be here.

Gerd Janson

Ron, it’s almost a bit difficult where to start with your musical biography, right? You have been doing almost everything that one can do when he is into dance music, maybe?

Ron Trent

Yeah… Well, I started in 1982, believe it or not.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, how old were you then?

Ron Trent

Nine.

Gerd Janson

Nine?

Ron Trent

Yeah. For us being in Chicago, house music was different then. There was no term for it at the time, of course. It wasn’t called house music. It was just called dance music, or music we kind of listened to in our home environment. We kind of touched on this in our conversation yesterday. There was more or less up-tempo R&B and I had been exposed to this whole disco culture because my dad was a director of a record pool at the time, like 1978/’79.

Gerd Janson

Maybe you can explain, what a record pool is for people, who are not familiar with the term?

Ron Trent

Well, the record pool is pretty much what would happen back in the day. If the record labels, the major record labels wanted to have their tunes played in the clubs, they would basically go to the club DJs or record pools and have them distribute to the DJs that they were involved in their pool. So you know, they would give them all the promo copies, which is why if you’re a record collector nowadays, you see some of the promotional copies or 12”s and all that kind of things out there. Those were part of the basic record pools at the time, demonstrations to test out the music.

My dad was a vice president of one of the bigger record pools in Chicago called NADJA. At the time I didn’t know what was going on, it was just like 12”s and good music. Music was always a part of our household and stuff like that, from playing instruments to actually playing records in the basement with my dad and playing to the records, which is how I really kind of started to get involved in the whole music thing and developing an ear. I was actually listening to music and playing to the music percussion and that kind of thing, because my dad was also a percussionist, and he made sure these things would pass on to me.

At the time I didn’t know what’s going on with the 12”s or any of that kind of stuff, I was just into good music, you know? Good stuff, new stuff, stuff that nobody had, that kind of thing. Yeah, pretty much from here, I had other family members were involved in the music business and from a DJ perspective, it was just a part of my upbringing, more or less. How can I say… well, one thing that I always said in different interviews is that, how the hip-hop culture is today with the younger people is pretty much how the dance music thing was for us when I was growing up. It was just a part of urban culture. It was pretty much everybody on the block knew what was going on. You know, it was just kind of a part of the whole fabric of our existence.

Gerd Janson

Maybe you can talk a little bit about what was going on for people who might have never heard about Chicago and house music?

Ron Trent

Well, first of all, the term house music comes from the Warehouse, OK? Let it be known, it doesn’t come from somebody doing music in their house and all that sort of kind of stuff. That’s not the case. It comes from the Warehouse, which is where Frankie Knuckles used to play. So they shortened it and said, “Oh, that’s house music.” OK, Frankie Knuckles was from New York City, let that also be known and he was best friends with Larry Levan. Larry Levan was the resident DJ and purveyor and the innovator of the Paradise Garage in New York City, which is one of the most important places probably in our history. Not just dance music history, but the history of music. And because, I’ll explain it later, it was the staging ground for a lot of music and it influenced the radio.

You know, that was like one of the first times that anything like that really ever happened. Where, on that level, you had a DJ who was from the streets of New York City, whose ear influenced the rest of the world, which is not something that happens nowadays. There is always radio or somebody higher up telling everybody else what they gonna hear, and that is not what was happening back then.

So Frankie and Larry grew up together and they played together in New York City and through Robert Williams, who was one of the co-owners of the Warehouse and later became the owner of the Music Box, which is where Ron Hardy played. Ron Hardy was also an important DJ in our time. Robert Williams was from New York, too, and he pretty much wanted to do what he had seen in New York City, which was The Loft by David Mancuso. The Loft was also like… how can I explain? The Loft was the very first party of this kind, With David Mancuso, of course – you guys can look up the stuff on Google now; you can get any information you want, which I suggest actually, or get some information, some books and stuff. David was actually an architect of what we do today. Actually, having a party in his house, which is a loft and you know, putting together a high-fidelity sound system and caring about how it sounded to the people.

Frankie and Larry would go there and dance and hang out along with Nicky Siano, who was their friend and also an important DJ in New York City. But basically what happened, getting back to Chicago, is that Robert Williams wanted to create this thing in Chicago because it wasn’t happening there. Originally, he wanted Larry Levan, right? And you know, Larry was in the process of building the Paradise Garage. He was like, “No, I’m not going.” So, he got Frankie Knuckles to pretty much come to Chicago and from there it took off. And it was the first time anything like that ever happened on that level and so it got into the blood and it took off. Just from the gay community, because it was primarily a gay community at the time, with Frankie and that era. It became heterosexual probably in the early ’80s kind of thing, you know? Of course, there were heterosexuals that were going to the Warehouse at the time, because we are talking about 1979. So. by the time it started to trickle down into the younger community and the more heterosexual community, it really got into our urban culture. And when it hit me in the chest, it was over.

Gerd Janson

Do you remember when it hit you in the chest? The very moment of it?

Ron Trent

Well, I was really into the music and was practicing the craft before actually got a chance to experience the dancefloor and all that kind of stuff. I was more into the aesthetic of, “Wow, I can match beats together!” because I was into percussion, that’s how I was growing up, so I was like, “Wow, I can mix, I can mix two records together make them do things?” That was my thing. When I heard my first DJ, who was Ron Hardy, when I was actually… let me explain this. This is something that doesn’t happen today. There was an intermediate place where younger people could go who couldn’t get into the club. There were high-school parties that were going on, and of the high school parties that were going on, the most important high-school party was Mendel High School, which was on the South Side of Chicago. Pretty much I lived three blocks away from that school. So a lot of the surrounding kids in that area went to Mendel and were having these parties, where they would have Frankie Knuckles come play, Ron Hardy would come play at these parties. Andre Hatchett, Pharris Thomas, Michael Williams, Farley… trying to think of other guy’s name… Basically what it did is that it gave kids a chance to experience this new infectious music. You know, done not probably as good as the club, but with the feeling.

Gerd Janson

Pretty close.

Ron Trent

Yeah, pretty close. So what it did is, by the time they were old enough to go, they were ready and the aesthetic was there. It was already written in the brain. By the time I got the chance to go out, went to hear Ron Hardy, you know, he’s been this god-like person to me, because, “Yeah, Ron Hardy plays this kind of music…” because he was like this special thing. In these places they were playing stuff that you’d never hear on the radio. Or maybe you might hear a couple of things on the radio, but you would never hear some of the stuff, it would never leave the club. You had to go there to hear this specific type of stuff. A lot of stuff was new tracks that people were developing or obscure 12”s and stuff like that. Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles and these guys were playing from their artistry and their perspective and their feeling and, of course, they were dealing with psycho-acoustics, which we’ll talk about later. You know, being able to transfer feelings to people, which you can do playing vinyl and electromagnetic energy. They were doing that and this is why people were going crazy. They were going nuts, you know?

Gerd Janson

Can you think of the track certain track that you might have with you that is a prime example of [that era]?

Ron Trent

I’ll tell you what, I do have. I think I have. It is actually one of my favorite records of all times, Johnny Hammond, “Los Conquistadores Chocolatés.” That was a big like Music Box record. I think I have it with me now. Hold on a second, and this one was a Ron Hardy special, actually. At the time, when I went to go hear him, he was more in the house sound that had already kind of developed… I didn’t get a chance to catch him in the early days. Here we go. We are in luck.

Gerd Janson

Oh, and if you guys have any questions, you can ask them right away. Just wait for the microphone, or if you want to know about certain people we just mentioned you haven’t heard of before.

Ron Trent

Now, this record kind of starts off very chaotic, it’s kind of abstract. Maybe some people are familiar with it already. But it has a lot of energy, a lot of feeling and it’s a high-powered record. Johnny Hammond was – if you’re not familiar, he’s passed on now – they actually they named the keyboard after him. He was very, very innovative in terms of how he played the Hammond. Of course, you know, Charles Earland was also a Hammond player and Jimmy Smith, he was along that tradition, but he was very innovative, check out his stuff. A lot of energy and this is that kind of thing that Ron [would play in the early days]. He was very energetic, very energetic. Frankie was more of the finesser and how he presented his records, but…

(music: Johnny Hammond – “Los Conquistadores Chocolatés”)

Ron Trent

Bad jam. Super-bad jam. Some consider it to be a straight jazz-funk record and it really is. But, yeah, it’s a journey.

Gerd Janson

And can you remember the first time when you heard that at the Music Box?

Ron Trent

Well, no, I never got a chance to go the Music Box.

Gerd Janson

You never were there?

Ron Trent

I went to the Music Box, not the one, there was two. No, there was three. Started off in 16th and Indiana, in Chicago, one of the streets in Chicago and that was the very first one. We’re talking about 1981, something like that.

Gerd Janson

So you were eight years.

Ron Trent

Oh, come on. Yeah, some people in Chicago that will say, “Yeah, I was there,” and they’re my age, you know? It’s a thing of making themselves, or making you feel like they’re important because they had that kind of power, you know? That, “I went to the Music Box, I experienced that kind of thing,” you know? I mean, when the man died, Ron passed in, I’d say was it 1992, ’93 and there was only 18 people at his funeral. He was a very, very powerful man, this guy was like God in a lot of ways in Chicago.

People would do strange things, as people do. He was definitely a celebrity status. But when he passed, he moved out to Springfield with his mom and they had a funeral down there. Pretty much to keep people away from coming. But it was only three DJs, and I was one of them. It was myself, Terry Hunter and Armando – who’s now passed on – and my friend John, who had introduced me to Ron because later I became pretty cool with Ron.

I had people come up and tell me they were at the funeral. “Yeah, I was there, I was right there, I saw Ron.” I was like, “OK!” You know, that kind of thing. But this man had a lot of power and he was very talented in what he did. We see a lot of guys working the isolator – the isolator’s the crossover – that was something that was really, really innovated by Ron in Chicago. Of course, Larry Levan did his thing, too. I never got a chance to experience him, but by the time that I could really, really go out and experience things it was like in the mid-’80s. I went to the Music Box that was basically a take over from the Power House, which is formally a club that Frankie Knuckles had opened up with someone else.

So, the Box has this big powerful presence, because these were places where important music was played and it was a part of the housing of our culture, you know? I wanna say this, too… in Chicago we were really into electronic music at the beginning stages, because we were really into breakdancing. You know, people need to know that. Beat Street, Wild Style, all that kind of stuff had a big influence on me. I used to breakdance, that was our thing. By the time the whole house culture came into play, it just kind of all toppled in and came together. This kind of music here, like Johnny Hammond… what we called classics and disco and this kind of stuff, that was kind of more of the obscure stuff.

You know, that was like specifically rooted. I hate to say this, but it was bad like this because it was predominantly a gay thing and when it started to get into the heterosexual community, people had this idea that if you were listening to this kind of music, then you were gay and you were a freak, all this kind of stuff. Because with the culture of house music and dance music, it was like fashion, you know? Because it had its own fashion, its own dance and had its own music and its own people…

Gerd Janson

What was the fashion?

Ron Trent

People were really into very expensive stuff. And the boosting culture was big in Chicago. People used to go and rob stores to have their Montana jackets. That was a big thing back then. Versace stuff and Armani was big, and Izod and Willi Wear – these were big items back then, man. People were really into dressing, but not dressing wear like suit and tie, you know? It was dressing like fashionable stuff. Later it was, I think, kind of exemplified in Miami Vice, that kind of stuff. People were really into that, that kind of stuff.

I love Miami Vice, bro – don’t trip. It’s my show, bro.

You know, people were really into fashion, into dressing up and looking up some wearing different hair styles and being different. You know, people also were punk, too. Radical, you know? Ron attracted a more, whatever we call, punk or rock & roll type of element, because he was radical. All his energy was chaos and frenzy, and Frankie was more finesse and good music and more a high-quality status kind of thing – that was his thing.

So, there were a lot of things meshed together because we were listening to all of different types of music. You know, rock & roll, punk, new wave was big. When you would go hear those guys play, they were playing that stuff. So we grew up in that. We were kind of an amalgamation of a lot of different things, which is what house music is, you know? It’s not the name at all, it’s music, you know? And that’s what people need to understand about things nowadays, because I think a lot of people get caught up on genres. Genres separate you from things. Especially nowadays because everybody wants to wear moniker of “I stand for this.”

That’s cool, but what you’re doing at the same time is that you’re keeping yourself away from a lot of things that are going on in the world. When you do that, you shut yourself down. So it’s very, very important, because we took on a lot of different things. We didn’t think, “I’m just into this, I’m just into that.” We listened to everything. I grew up loving hip-hop, what we called disco-rap back then, it was a little different. So you know, Kurtis Blow, “The Breaks,” stuff like that. That was huge. Huge. OK, go ahead…

Gerd Janson

And when did you actually start from going out to clubs to making your own music? You were still pretty young, right?

Ron Trent

Yeah, I started making music and experimenting with it, probably around ’86, ’87… maybe a little bit before that. You know, messing around with beat machines, that kind of thing. My first beat machine was a Roland 626 and I wound up doing “Altered States” on a 626, a 909 and a little keyboard. Having these things as a kid would have been a little bit unheard of at the time because it was like this expensive stuff, you know?

Gerd Janson

Yeah, how did you get the access to it then?

Ron Trent

Well, this is gonna sound funny, but I had a friend who was rich. He had stuff, he had equipment. This guy was spoiled, OK? His parents got him everything. He had 1200s and stuff like that, which was unheard… when I first started playing, I played with no pitch control, OK? We had tape decks and we would do edits on the song as we liked to and to have them repeating and that kind of thing, edit the part that we liked. And we would have like a turntable, but no pitch control and we just practiced mixing and we wanted to do it so bad that we just kept at it. Practice makes perfect. It was more about programming the music, having the great music, having the ear and until we can afford enough money, save up our little allowances or whatever to go get a turntable, you know? And it was a community thing, too, because people had crews, they had DJ crews. So, I had my buddy and my guys. He had a turntable and he had a turntable, we put it together, a mixer and then you know, do our thing.

Gerd Janson

What was the name of your DJ crew?

Ron Trent

We didn’t have one.

Gerd Janson

No?

Ron Trent

No, we didn’t have one.

Gerd Janson

You sure?

Ron Trent

I’m quite sure, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. [Laughs] No, we didn’t have one.

Gerd Janson

But people in Chicago loved having middle names, right? Like Mike “Hitman” Wilson, and that kind of stuff. [Laughs] You were Ron, what? No?

Ron Trent

Well, this is the kind of thing I was talking about. See, I didn’t understand the whole hip-hop culture electro Afrika Bambaataa thing was kind of intertwined in there, so it was cool to have a little flair… yeah, street name kind of thing. It was just that kind of thing.

Gerd Janson

What was your street name?

Ron Trent

I always went by Ron Trent, bro. That was it. I mean, I could make up something right now, but it didn’t work, because it was just Ron Trent. I just went with the tradition of the old-school cats. That was pretty much the deal.

Gerd Janson

Back to the equipment stuff. You just went to your friend’s house and made “Altered States”?

Ron Trent

Yeah. I had been playing around making a couple of things. Actually, the track that I really liked was a track called “Afterlife”, which I don’t have with me. That’s the track that I used to play. Just so you know, we really got into making music because we as DJs… I had a music background because of playing percussion and getting into… of course, my family wanted me to play keyboards and stuff like, “You need to learn how to play piano.” But I pretty much had been… how can I explain? I had pretty much just decided that I wanted to start to expand the idea of these records, or giving a rendition of these records that I had been listening to.

I started developing a little style, my own little style, which was a little different from what everybody was doing at the time. I was good at making beats at the time, and so I tried a couple things. Go back home and listen to it, because we had tape decks at the time. We didn’t have DAT machines. We didn’t have any of that kind of stuff. It was real basic, raw element, home stuff, and so went over there. At my friend’s house I would square away some time with him, bring my beat machine over, and he was learning at the time how to hook up MIDI. We learned how to play the pads on the 626 as the keyboard to play the bassline. We didn’t know how to MIDI up the keyboard at the time, so we had to play that all the way through the track. If the track was 15 minutes, had to play it for 15 minutes.

Gerd Janson

Our good friend Theo Parrish still does it this way today, right?

Ron Trent

You know what, it’s beauty in that, because in the process of doing it over and over again, and playing it different, it blends and brings another whole energy to what you’re creating, which is what you hear on a lot of these old records… this live musicianship. These guys are this heart and soul, and guys study this stuff. These are human beings, and we are human beings, and we relate to feelings, and so that’s what happens. We’re talking about electromagnetic energy. It’s human beings recording onto a format that will allow other human beings to feel what’s going on. We see this nowadays anyway, especially with hip-hop, or even dance music, obviously. A lot of records are sampled, old records. That feeling, that warmth you get you can’t really duplicate that. You could try. There are ways to do other things, but the process, obviously it’s different, of course. When Russell [Elevado] was here yesterday he was talking about different things, but that element is very, very important. But anyway “Altered States” just came out of experimentation, you know? That was the basic man, that just happened.

Gerd Janson

Maybe we should listen to that experimentation then?

Ron Trent

Oh, boy. OK, I got it. I had to dig this up. I don’t really play this. It’s not even in my record case. I play this, but this is the process of experimentation, which is what I like to do. I like to have a certain element, a core and then basically develop upon that core. The idea, the visualization of where I wanna go and then kind of develop it. At the time when I did this, I was 14 years old. So, ride with it.

(music: Ron Trent – “Altered States” / applause)

Ron Trent

Thank you.

Gerd Janson

So you knew back then that you made an all-time classic?

Ron Trent

Well, this track was tested out for years before it came out and I used to play this. That was the whole thing. We were making tracks that we could play in our sets. That was the inspiration, because, at the time, everybody was kind of in this battle mode and all this kind of stuff… of course, what set to aside your selection, your skills and tracks, man.

Gerd Janson

Like in the reggae trade, to have your dubplates?

Ron Trent

Yeah, man, rastaman soundsystem. Yeah, that kind of thing. It was that kind of culture, man. It was that kind of thing. I mean, you see all these things are intertwined with New York and Chicago and the culture. It’s just all a part of the same thing. It’s just a different extension of each other.

Gerd Janson

So no rivalry between Chicago and New York?

Ron Trent

Yeah, I was in the DJ battle myself back in the day. Came in second, but that’s okay. The guy had some political ties… I did my thing. These tracks that I was making, the guys were like, “Yo, this is dope shit. What’s up? What can we do? Can we put it out?” I had a lot of offers and there was a lot of very bad business going on in Chicago, back in the day.

Gerd Janson

Yes, you didn’t go to Trax Records with this one, right?

Ron Trent

No way, man. No, no. But my DJ guy, friend, whatever you wanna call him, Armando Gallop, he was a bit older and he was starting up his label, which was called Warehouse Records and he approached me like, “Listen, man. I really wanna put this out.” And my other good friend Terry Hunter at the time was putting something out with them. You know, and Terry and Armando were running with the crew, who was called Gucci Promotions. This sounds crazy, but this is what was happening in Chicago. They were one of the biggest promotional teams and they would throw parties with people of our age in different places. So, you had Hyde Park Racquetball Club, the Bismarck [Hotel] from time to time. There were a lot of moguls going on at this point.

So, they were part of that crew and I was up-and-coming DJ and they were appreciating my stuff and they were like, “We love it, let’s put it out.” But it didn’t happen until later because we’re still in the ’80s. I’m DJing and doing friends parties, still making music, that kind of thing. By the time it actually came out, it was 1990 and the thing exploded. That’s what happened. Once it got in the hands of Frankie Knuckles and David Morales it was over, and when it hit the UK – it was over. And I have to this day, I don’t know how many records were sold, and it’s been repressed and I just recently got my business straight on that.

Gerd Janson

Just recently?

Ron Trent

[Applause] Because boy, that was something else. I’m a tell you guys right, if you guys are aspiring anything, I don’t care, DJ, writer, whatever – do it on paper! I don’t care what it is. Paper, OK? Put it on paper, because it pays off later. Put it on paper, because when I was at that time… I did a contract, believe it or not. My mother stepped in, because I was a young cat, so we did the whole going to a lawyer thing, and still, still got outdone. They took my stuff, man. Took my stuff, took my music.

Gerd Janson

Who took your music?

Ron Trent

Without getting into the start of defamation of character, and all that kind of stuff man, there was a bigger company that was out there. I’m just going to keep it basic, that basically Armando licensed the stuff to. Armando died, and when he died, his stuff and everything that was in his catalog just went to these people, and these people…

Audience member

Tell them, man. You ain’t got to say…

Ron Trent

They’re in the Netherlands, okay. They basically took my stuff and exploited my music for a long time. It just basically got to the point where I said, “You know what, enough is enough. You guys have taken my music.” These guys had licensed my track 50 times, and I never got paid… 50. You can go check it out for yourself on Discogs.com. It was crazy.

Gerd Janson

So you had to go to court?

Ron Trent

I had to do some business.

Gerd Janson

But you’re fine now?

Ron Trent

Oh, yeah.

Gerd Janson

You’ve got your share?

Ron Trent

Oh, yeah… businessman.

Gerd Janson

Yeah?

Ron Trent

Yeah, I took care of it. I learned how to be a businessman. I was an artist, producer and became a businessman. Very important. Good to be balanced that way. But I took care of a little business and we got it a square. So, I have everything back. For a long time I didn’t even want to play that track because it hurt. That hurt. Because I waited for so long to put it out and it was my heart and soul and somebody took it and exploited it and got paid on it. I felt very cheated and it was upsetting for me, and then I moved on in my career, too. So I was just like, “Well, that’s a part of it.” But when it started to get to the point where the exploitation was just really beyond… because it started coming, it would be re-released over and over again without me knowing anything about it. I would get calls. The major piece that really just rocked my socks, just made me get up, as they say, was when the thing was put into Grand Theft Auto. I got a phone call on it and I was like, “What? It’s in Grand Theft Auto?” And Grand Theft Auto is a huge video game, so then I was like, “Wow! OK, well, we got to do something.” So, it took a couple of years, it wasn’t easy, but I handled it.

Gerd Janson

Grand Theft fits then very well, right?

Ron Trent

Hey, the states got altered. Next question.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, from releasing “Altered States” on Warehouse and making the first steps into the record business, you went on to work with a guy named Chez Damier?

Ron Trent

Yeah, but before I did that, I worked with Hula & Fingers who were big time [producers]. You know Clubhouse Records?

Gerd Janson

In Chicago still, right?

Ron Trent

Yeah, yeah. I mention these guys, because these guys were really good to me in a lot of ways. They were like my big brothers, they really took care of me, made sure my stuff was taken care of. I was still working on MPC and R8 and that kind of stuff. These guys introduced me to the MPC 60 and in a way that they did, they were producing people like Kool Moe Dee because they had a production deal with Jive. So they did Kool Moe Dee, Hi-Five, which was a big R&B group at the time. They actually did “Summertime,” a tune by Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, they produced that.

These were guys who produced house music and they came from Chicago, OK? But they were music people. So they were able to do, switch it up and that kind of thing, which most of the guys that were in Chicago, really just big music guys, not so much a style of music, but just music people, and took their time to study the craft, keyboards, engineering and the whole nine. Pretty much, they threw me in the room with an MPC.

As a matter a fact, no, the way it happened, they were ready to go back to New York to do some recording and they said, “Hey, man. You gonna learn this.” Threw me in the room with an MPC, left me with the keyboard and said, “This is how you do that, blah, blah, blah." Do it!” And I was like, “Wow, OK!” Pretty much was doing the production for the label. They were building a team. And from that, put me on the case, it increased my skills and actually furthered me in the game. I mean, I’d been working on the MPC 60, or the MPC, the technology, for like 15, 16 years. As long as it’s really been out, you know? And from that, man, I just developed from there. Chopping up samples and doing all that kind of stuff.

Gerd Janson

You’re still using it today?

Ron Trent

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because a lot of the hip-hop stuff that I am doing now is, you know, I’m chopping up stuff. I used it a lot in the creation of the tracks for the Prescription, my record label, which is when I started working with Chez. That piece was like a main frame of doing the production at a lot of big studios, anyway. So, you needed to kind of know that. You kind of needed to know how to work that machine to do your thing and go work on a professional level in a lot of ways, so it was great. Then I met Chez.

Theo Parrish

But before there were couple things that happened, I remember. You put out the record that really never been done before and that was Chicago vocal.

Ron Trent

Which one?

Theo Parrish

“Day By Day.”

Ron Trent

Day by day, day by day, day… [tries to remember]

Gerd Janson

I think Theo means Dajaé, “Day By Day”?

Theo Parrish

That’s it!

Ron Trent

Dajaé?

Theo Parrish

Yeah, because this is something I noticed. When people talk about what you’ve done, they jump from “Altered States” straight to Prescription.

Ron Trent

Oh, yeah.

Gerd Janson

What I just did.

Ron Trent

Oh, yeah.

Theo Parrish

Exactly. Expand on that. Be sure to expand on the stuff between it.

Ron Trent

By the way, this is my good buddy, Theo Parrish. We grew up together, same neighborhood, we been known each other since we were kids, that kind of thing. So, thank you.

You’re right, it’s very, very important to bring it up because there was a lot of music done between “Altered States” and Prescription. A lot! But what happened is that when “Altered States” came out, it got categorized as techno music. Had nothing to do with techno! Techno was an afterthought of what we were doing in Chicago, because all the guys who were in Detroit were actually going to Chicago to get their influence from Ron Hardy. Ron Hardy and Frankie… but Ron had a lot of influence on them. And as a result of that, they went out there and they did their thing, and techno blew up the way it did. And the era and the time that the music came out, people looped it in as being techno.

So, then I am still just doing what I do, I am just going along with my process of creation and evolving as a producer and developing my ideas, and I’m still honing in on my own craft. But, what happens a lot in this industry, and this happens in all industries, that when people pigeonhole you into a style, they want that aesthetic over and over and over again. And some people fall into that and they just ride the wave. I was never into that, and I’m still not into that. To me, this thing is about evolving, constant evolving – being a student of this music and constantly coming up with new ideas and developing and moving on to the next step, which is I take cues from the old producers, man.

Look at Quincy Jones, look at his career. This guy has done everything from jazz to R&B to some rock stuff. You look at his discography and you look at what he’s done. Wow! Man, this guy has transcended the whole idea of genre. He does music, and I am taking cues from those kind of guys. Like, man, I’m doing music. The whole genre stuff, the classification, that’s for you. That’s what you wanna do. But a lot of people using it, obviously, in music business to sell things.

So, that’s kind of what happened, people put me in a box and I wasn’t gonna stay in the box. So then, at the same time I was putting out other music, but it wasn’t getting as much attention, because it was this big “Altered States” thing. So, I’m almost trying to catch up to this thing, this “Altered States,” you know, ability, when I’ve already been there, done that and I’m doing other things. So, by the time I got with Chez, which we’ll talk about, and I started doing my other music, I was just on another page and ready for experimentation.

Gerd Janson

What kind of experimentation?

Ron Trent

Mmmmm.

Gerd Janson

Like you talked about psycho-acoustics and sound.

Ron Trent

Well, I read a lot of books. It’s a good book, I’ll talk to you about it, but I read a lot of books and I have always been into [reading]. One of the important things that was placed in my mind as a child was the process of learning about the past, in order to see the future. So, I do a lot of referencing with things and I’ve always been into the idea of transferring energy to people through music or other ways. People have that power. We have energies that we work within ourselves – some of us know about, some of us don’t tap into and that kind of stuff.

But it started off with Prescription, that was more or less a platform for me to be able to do that. Working with psycho-acoustics and you know how things sound on the dancefloor, or how things sound when you’re in the studio and how things sound in the car and why the people like what they like? The word “music,” comes from “muse,” which is an Egyptian thing, you know? The power of sound and color, and we really started working with that element, started doing a lot of experimental stuff, you know?

There’s been a lot of great innovative pieces of experimental electronic music, that came along over the years, from Manuel Göttsching, “E2-E4” to, who else? I like a lot of Jon Hassell stuff, new age, kind of wild stuff, you know? So, we wanted to kind of create an aesthetic that was centered around sound, pretty much, and the uses of sound, you know? So, when you’re listening to our records, like Prescription stuff, the old stuff, it has a lot of feeling and it is very sound system-oriented. You might not be able to get the all the elements of what it’s all about, unless you listening to it on the really good soundsystem. We got a chance to experience really good sound systems in our time. A lot of people nowadays, they don’t really get a chance to experience really good, high-fidelity sound in a club. There’s nothing like it.

Gerd Janson

So what were these clubs?

Ron Trent

Man, because I also wanna say this too that I also study sound reinforcement and a lot of my buddies are sound engineers and that kind of thing, and as a DJ growing up, that was a part of the whole element that we were doing. We were like whole-heartedly not only into just playing the music, but into the sound and how everything was placed and everything. But the pinnacle was Paradise Garage, bro. That was it. From talking to people, who have actually worked under Richard Long, who is the guy who developed the sound system in the Paradise Garage – you can check this out online and basically the technology and the information that they synthesized at that time has not been beat yet.

I mean, you have these digital systems and that kind of stuff that’s out here, but there is nothing like an analog system, I tell you right now. Nothing. I mean, you push a digital system to a certain point and it starts getting abrasive and it’s almost like somebody’s beating you across the head. Because it’s not real, it’s synthetic. An analog system is just that. It’s feelings and that’s what stays with you, stays with the memory. The brain works off of electricity so you’re working with the electro-magnetic energy that’s recorded onto electromagnetic tape, which is then transferred to vinyl, OK? Then it’s being transferred and, of course, you lose a bit of the quality as you go along, obviously.

From the first generation to people like David Mancuso and Larry Levan, these guys actually cared about quality from start to the finish, and their job was basically to give you the best experience of that record as possible through their sound system and what they were doing. They really cared about what they were doing…

The Garage was basically like the Loft on a bigger level and these guys spent a lot of time and energy on that system. The system was never the same because it was more or less Richard Long’s staging ground, that was his showroom. So, for the other systems that he was doing in New York, because he came in and partially did the system at the Warehouse in 1979, he changed the system all the time… he was trying out new stuff in the room. The way they designed the room from the floor to the acoustics that were on the ceiling, it was high-powered. I got a chance to experience what probably would be something like the Garage on a smaller scale, which was the Sound Factory in New York. I went there in about 1991, and when you guys hear a real sound system, you really feel like you’re experiencing God in a lot of ways.

Gerd Janson

And who was the God behind the records there?

Ron Trent

When I went to the Sound Factory, Frankie was actually playing… he had moved back to New York City. And what better person? What’s happening on a real good system, it’s a lot of warm feelings happen. A lot of things are evoked. Your body feels good. You feel like you’re being massaged, if you can imagine that… you’re feeling like you’re being massaged and you’re hearing quality music, presented to you in a quality way. It’s a next level of euphoria that happens. Some people, of course, take that euphoria to different levels – they take drugs and go to Star Trek Enterprise, and all that kind of stuff. And when you experienced quality, you don’t want anything else. Everything else is garbage.

Gerd Janson

Maybe we should listen to some of the tracks that were inspired by that? “Morning Factory,” for instance?

Ron Trent

Yes. Little history on “Morning Factory”… in checking out what Chez was saying in his interview, he said how we experienced sound systems and came back into KMS studio and synthesized that experience. Well, “Morning Factory” was just that, it was called “Morning Factory” because of the experience at the Sound Factory. By the time we were going back and forth to New York – because by the time I was living in Detroit – Junior Vasquez was playing at that time.

Now, Junior is a different kind of DJ [smiles]. He would play stuff that made you go like, “What the hell is this? This is garbage.” But he had the power of the sound, OK? So, by the time he had played it two or three times you would be in the middle of the floor like, “This is great!” I mean, that’s how powerful it is. There’s stories of Larry Levan playing, and this is gonna sound funny, playing the Bee Gees, “You Should Be Dancing,” which was considered to be like cheesy disco at the time… “This is garbage…” and 15 minutes later [everybody] was on the floor. And that happened actually to me, too. There was a record that I hated that was playing on the radio before I went to New York, as a matter of fact. It was a tune by Jomanda, “I Got a Love For You.” I couldn’t stand this record because they were playing it on the radio, had this cheesy saxophone on it [squeaks], couldn’t stand the shit. We went to New York for the New Music Seminar…

Gerd Janson

It was the start of the Miami Music Winter Conference thing.

Ron Trent

Correct. So I went out there, went to check out Frankie, and he was playing Sabrina Johnston, “Peace in the Valley,” and Robert Owens, “I’ll Be Your Friend” was hot at the time, and this was also when Frankie and David Morales were doing their productions, you know Def Mix, and he was playing “What Is This Thing Called Love” by Alexander O’Neal. And then he breaks into Jomanda. “Man, I can’t stand the song…”

Gerd Janson

So you went to the washroom then?

Ron Trent

No, I was staying to the side and looked and said, “This is garbage.” But he kept working the record, kept bringing it back, mixing it, mixing it. And, man, by the time, like 10 minutes later, I was all in it [laughs]. But that’s also about the power of the DJ, too. A real good programmer can really get you into a record. This is what we do. It’s not about a guy getting up there and tweaking on some knobs… It’s about a guy playing records and really caring about what he’s presenting to you, because it’s a presentation. But that’s the power of that. So, we would go back and forward to the Sound Factory. [Finds record] This was actually part of our New York trip, and there was a record that I brought that we discussed earlier. And I brought this record back to the studio to Detroit and I cut it up in the MPC and manipulated the sound and this is what we came up with.

And real quickly, at Prescription I was more or less the music guy, I synthesized the sound. And Chez was more the spiritual philosopher that Chez is. He really knew how to work the KMS studio, which was a million-dollar facility, and I really liked the aesthetic of listening to my music on big speakers. We had Gen Elec near-field [monitors] and Tannoys in the wall, old analog board. Kevin Saunderson was always getting new equipment and always experimenting with things. But he would get so much stuff, he would never have the time to work with it. He was always busy, so me and Chez took advantage of that. The Kurzweil K2000 came out at that time, and I just…

Gerd Janson

Which is a synthesizer.

Ron Trent

Yeah, right. I jumped all in it. And, of course, I was always making my own drum sounds, cutting out from old disco records. Making my own beats and put them in the MPC, much like how hip-hop is. But this was like the New York experience here at the Sound Factory, that’s why it’s called “Morning Factory.”

(music: Chez N Trent – “Morning Factory”)

Ron Trent

So it’s more of a hypnotic piece, very euphoric on the dancefloor and you don’t appreciate it unless you stand on the floor.

Gerd Janson

And very dubby as well, right?

Ron Trent

Very dubby. But I was always a big reggae and dub guy, and that’s always been my approach, like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Scientist. I will go through the tunes real quick, because I’ve done a lot of sound. But that’s Prescription sound to be honest with you.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, so not only was the sound important for Prescription, but also the whole art work and the message.

Ron Trent

Sometimes there was no art work, sometimes it was real basic. The whole idea of Prescription was that we…

Gerd Janson

In the first place, why did you pick Prescription as a name?

Ron Trent

It’s kind of a long story, but the Reader’s Digest version of that is the fact that I really study a lot of spirituality, and Chez and I would have all these talks about a lot of different things, and we knew at the time especially, with Chicago in the state that it was in, because by this time a lot of the wonderful stuff that was going on in the ’80s had died off and gone in a different direction…

Gerd Janson

Why?

Ron Trent

Man, Chicago is a very conservative city now, and where we had a very fresh scene in the ’80s, which was much like New York in a lot of ways, it turned into more of a conservative kind of environment when the mayors switched up.

And then there were some incidents that happened that really had nothing to do with us as a culture, but had everything to do with political ties. There was a girl that apparently went to a club – it was a North Side club called Medusa’s at the time; it was more of an alternative place – and apparently she got accosted or raped or something like that when she left. This had nothing to do with our style of music or what we were into, but they just loop it all in together. And Medusa’s was a juice bar. And at the time, too, I think they were also racist… they wouldn’t let black folks in there. So, because this girl’s family member knew a politician, they immediately went after attacking all the juice bars of Chicago, which immediately killed it. So, it had to go underground. I’m also missing over the fact that I played in the last after-hours club that we had in Chicago. When “Altered States” came out, I was playing at a place called the Reactor, and I would play from 12 at night to 12 the next day and it became…

Gerd Janson

Just with juice?

Ron Trent

Just with juice, baby. What people decide to do on their own time, which people do, that’s their business. But we weren’t serving anything in there. It was just music. And it started off being 15 people and wound up being something like… lines out the door… and this place had three floors and it was packed. That was very important. But that whole scene and that culture has died off in a lot of ways. And this is a big gap of time where there’s no connection. There’s now a myth or legendary status, where they say like, “Oh yeah, the legend of Ron Hardy,” because it’s not actively happening like it used to.

It’s terrible to see what has happened. Also, what happens in this situation, too, is that when there’s no consistency, the message gets diluted of what it was all about. Because we have the internet nowadays and one person who writes this story and then you have another person who reads that and gets their own idea of what things were about, and then it’s the whole thing that you used to do in the classroom when one person says one thing and you whisper it to the other person and they see what the other person says by the end – it’s that kind of thing. The stories are just all misconstrued, it’s all over the place. Of course, everybody’s got their perception of what happened.

But there’s a lot of things that happened politically with that, and, like I said, there was some boosting going on. So, there were a couple of stores that got raided at the time because kids didn’t have money but they wanted to look good. So they’d go and pretty much do what they needed to do to fit the criteria to what was happening. Yeah, Chicago is a shell of itself in a lot of ways. A lot of people have the idea, “Oh, Chicago, it’s the city of house music and it’s always great.” Listen, I’ve lived in New York for close to 10 years, and I moved back there and it’s definitely not what it used to be at all. And I’m working on trying to change that and do something about that. But yeah, it needs some help.

Gerd Janson

And you had the prescription for that?

Ron Trent

That’s what Prescription was about.

Gerd Janson

And the message on the records?

Ron Trent

Yeah, that’s what I was getting to. Prescription was the prescribed elements that we wanted to give to people. We wanted them to open their minds. Because we appreciated being able to pick up a record and look at it. See the face, read the back of the cover, check out the story and learn about the artist. We were really into that. As a matter of fact, part of growing up was the whole idea of DJing and collecting music and having that record in your hand… somewhat like a book and this is somebody’s story here. This is their feelings right here.

So you’re getting Rodney Franklin here [waves record around] but you’re also getting his story, how he felt when he was recording this – electro- magnetic energy once again. And that’s what you’re getting. So we kind of wanted to do that with our wax. You know, put a little something on there that would make you think for a second, like, “Hmmm, OK.” At the same time slipping in our little philosophies. As we went along with the music. As we developed it, it built.

Also let me say something important – if you have something you believe in, don’t be afraid to stand on it and be consistent with it. Through time, things will happen for you, if it’s real and it’s pure. Because I think a lot of people get very discouraged, they have some idea or something they want to present, and the industry doesn’t help. It dumbs you down. That kind of thing. If you have something that’s real and quality, stick by it. Give it time. Time is very important. It takes time for anything good to happen. It doesn’t happen overnight. I’ve been doing this since 1982, so you do the math on that. Just to be here and have the knowledge I have, it doesn’t happen overnight. It just doesn’t. And if it does, you need to be scared because it’s not gonna last. I can guarantee it. I’ve seen people come and go. I’ve put people in the business that have left us.

Gerd Janson

And yourself, you never wanted to leave the business after all this time?

Ron Trent

No, man. I made a decision, when my father passed in 1982, that I’m gonna choose something that I like to do, that I’d like to get up and do every day. I have a lot of passions, I like to draw, I thought of being an architect, and archeologist, believe it or not, thanks to Indiana Jones… [laughs] because I was big into history. I still am into history and facts and that kind of thing. But I said, “You know what? This music thing is where I’m at. This is what I’m gonna do and I’m gonna die doing it.” So, if I have to switch it up, do this, do that, I’m always gonna be in the music business. God willing. I never got off it.

Gerd Janson

And you also got recently back into hip-hop, right?

Ron Trent

Yes. I sat back and watched the industry for a long period of time, and I didn’t want to deal with the industry of hip-hop. It was a dirty game, and I grew up in a violent environment in Chicago. Because let me also say this, these people have this perception of house music and these floaty people and they wear their blousy shirts and they do this…

Let me explain something to you, when I was coming up, bro, yeah, we were into nice stuff, and on the other side of that was gangsters, gang bangers. Gang banging was big in Chicago. You couldn’t wear your hat like this [turns hat to the right] or like that [turns hat to the left] because that meant you were affiliated with something, and those guys who were in that mindset. And it was the idea that it’s fags who were listening to this music, and if you couldn’t defend yourself, or if you didn’t have affiliations, bro, that was your ass. You get your shit stolen, you get your ass beat every time you went out the club, stuff like that. And it kind of carried over into other things.

So, for me, I had to be able to be a little rough, too. I had to really want this music, man. I had to fucking fight for it. I think we discussed before, it was very much like hip-hop. It was violence, gangsters and everything else that went with it. All the time, man. There were younger folks, too… mindless and got a lot of energy and shit. There’s a lot of elements in there. But I grew up in that, and I didn’t want to be involved in that. For what? I’m trying to do something with my life. I wasn’t gonna sit up making records and making music just to then have to deal with the element of having to carry a gun. It doesn’t make any sense. I just loved it from afar you know? “Good stuff, love that.” Collected what I liked and did some stuff. But I didn’t want to be involved with the industry. But then, I was always making stuff quietly, studying my craft.

Gerd Janson

What got you back into it then? Producing?

Ron Trent

Ah, folks that I liked, you know? I liked DJ Premier, Pete Rock. I listened to hip-hop in the early ’90s and that kind of stuff. I was into my A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul and the whole Native Tongues crew.

Gerd Janson

The daisy age?

Ron Trent

The daisy age, baby. And a lot of us did, in house music. Being into house music and dance music, we listened to everything. We liked music. We just liked music, it wasn’t about, “That’s rock, I’m not messing about with that.” This is music, I like it. Two types of music: Good or bad. I’m either one side of that or the other and that was it. And people got to get out of that. They gotta stop that whole, “I’m just down with this, man.” That’s bullshit. Because even punk rock, that was about the radical elements. There was actually a black man who was a big part of punk rock, which was Don Letts. Don Letts used to play reggae for the punks in London. And there’s like a whole movement there. And these are people who were just like, “Fuck the system,” you know what I’m saying? It’s alternative, we’re into everything.

Gerd Janson

Rebel music?

Ron Trent

Rebel music, baby.

Gerd Janson

Maybe we should play one of your hip-hop tracks?

Ron Trent

I’ll play you some new stuff. But before we get to that, do you wanna talk about Giant Step and all that?

Gerd Janson

Yeah, because the Prescription thing came to an end at some time.

Ron Trent

Yeah, pretty much. I’m carrying on the label and that kind of thing.

Gerd Janson

Your partnership with Chez Damier at least, this came to an end, right?

Ron Trent

Yeah, we discontinued our relationship on that end, and KMS closed down, which was the studio which we were recording out of. So, it was just kind of time to move on and leave that era to be classic. I, at the time, was experimenting with fusing the elements that I wanted to do originally, which was electronic meets live. I’m an ’80s kid, I love ’80s music when it was – and I’m not talking about Miami Vice and that kind of music and Jan Hammer big cheesy riffs, I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about the stuff that Larry Levan was playing and stuff that I collected, stuff that’s considered to be Italo disco. Stuff like that. Very, very powerful. Great fusion of live meets electronic. And if you study the era between, say, ’79 to ’83, some of the most beautiful music ever was made in that time. Just different things. So, I started to develop on that idea of my background of playing percussion and being able to play keys, and started to move into that direction, and wound up moving to New York. And New York has some of the best musicians in the world. Well, some of the stuff on Prescription I’d been playing live stuff, so I started developing that, and then I started working with Giant Step.

Gerd Janson

Which is a label.

Ron Trent

It’s a label and also a big marketing company in New York. I did my own parties in New York and the owners came to the parties and were like blown away and really into what I was doing and the aesthetic I was bringing. And they had originally been a party themselves, which had started in the early ’90s. They were the original purveyors of acid jazz as we know it today.

If you’re familiar with Groove Collective, which is a jazz-funk band that was actually developed out of the party, which was a DJ playing and then a guy come in and play trumpet, and then another guy come in and play flute, and then all turned into one element. Which is what we see a lot of today, and a lot of hip-hop moved into that live and DJ kind of thing. That was something that I would say Giant Step had a lot to do with that. And DJ Smash and DJ Chillfreez at the time. And when that era was over – well, you see that stuff with Guru and MC Solaar, and folks that they interacted with and had that kind of sound, that acid jazz sound. And, of course, Gilles Peterson was doing his thing with his label Talkin’ Loud and it was all interacting together.

So, when they stepped to me they were like, “Well, we want to start the party again.” I said OK, and they said, “We want you to be the DJ and we want you to produce music that you can play at the club. We want you to produce a sound, basically.” So that’s what was happening, basically. I was resident DJ for the Giant Step party, which became like a big deal, a big residency in New York City. Played with various people. Played with Ronny Jordan a couple of times and what’s my man’s name? Stanley Jordan – that was another guitarist – he asked to play with me. It was just a lot of interaction going on. But I was more or less trying to translate the energy of the party into the records I was making. I was doing a lot of remixes, too. Wound up doing Jody Watley, wound up doing Amel Larrieux. Also did a lot of world music stuff, which is what I’m really open to with my percussion background, a lot of African music. And I’d always been known for playing Fela, which is why people also put me in the Afrobeat category because I’ve always played Afrobeat and I’ve been into Fela since I was a kid, it’s just the other side of me.

I put together wax – records that kind of exemplified that energy with a lot of live musicianship. And I’m actually gonna play one of the tunes by Carl Hancock Rux. This guy was an artist on Sony. I think he was on the Nona Hendryx’s label. I don’t know if you guys know Nona Hendryx, but she was with Labelle. Did I leave that? Ah, I think I have it here… And LaBelle was Patti LaBelle, if you’re not familiar with Patti LaBelle. Let me see if I can find this joint. But this was a big record that exemplified the energy of Giant Step. [Finds track] Yeah, we’re good!

(music: Ron Trent feat Carl Hancock Rux – “Lamentations (You Son)” / applause)

Gerd Janson

Quite a giant step from “Altered States” to this one, right?

Ron Trent

There’s a lot of stuff out there that I’ve done. I’m constantly working, man. This is what I do every day. That is one of the best for that time, live meets electronics going on. Jonathan Maron from Groove Collective is playing bass on that. My man James, who plays with a big saxophonist, is playing keys. I’m playing percussion, live drum set going on. There’s a lot of things happening and I just wanted a very organic record, which was what I was doing at Giant Step. I did like a cover version of “Jingo,” which was actually my first release on Giant Step called “Kalawang.” Originally, we were supposed to be producing a – now this is going to sound strange – but a tap-dancer. We were supposed to produce him tapping to the track. But the track went to the next level and the tap-dancer went on his way. He was also a painter, so he got the cover.

Gerd Janson

At least he got something. And around the same time you used to do a label called Clairaudience, right?

Ron Trent

Clairaudience was another experiment, and it was a producer, his name was Anthony Nicholson that I took under my wing and there was a singer by the name of Deborah from New York City. And this was a big record in New York at the time and I was going through a lot of stuff. I was developing a company called Urban Sound Gallery or USG. That was something I started playing with when I was doing Prescription, actually. And Urban Sound Gallery was actually a space. It was my space. I’ve always looked at this thing like it was a cultural movement, so I’ve always tried to put my energy into that. So I actually had a space where I was trying to build that situation up through dance and through having classes there, because it really is a cultural movement.

Even if you go to New York right now and you see how things were working on the dance arena, it’s a very important part of the fabric of what they do. It’s like yoga, pretty much, the dancing. And I come up from dancing and that was a whole part of the New York thing for me, too, man. And I’ll say this to DJs and even producers, “Get out there and catch the feeling of what is going on, instead of doing it from the head. Feel it. When you feel it, it’s real, it’s natural.” You know, and I’m a dancer. What we call baby powder kids in New York City.

Gerd Janson

You use it on the wooden floor?

Ron Trent

Yeah, on the floor with a towel and you’re doing your thing. And I tried to bring that to Chicago, but once again, Chicago wasn’t ready…

Gerd Janson

No baby powder in Chicago?

Ron Trent

No, I had a space and they shut me down, man. They made it so that I couldn’t make any money and they said I was a black man selling drugs in the space, and I was running a record label and trying to do something good for the community sort of thing, and they shut me down, bro. So this is what I’m talking about when I say there’s a lot of things in the way. That is what prompted me to move to New York, because I thought, “That’s it, I give up.” I lost like $30-40,000 dollars out of my own pocket.

Gerd Janson

As a fine?

Ron Trent

No, just trying to make the place look nice, do things and trying to create the environment, it just wacks me out. But that was what I was going through at the time, and I started this label up with another partner of mine in New York, and I was bringing this other producer up, Anthony Nicholson at the time. He had a good ear for music, and I’m an energy person and I like good energy in the room, that kind of thing. And basically built this track here and it’s called “Ncameu,” which became a big deal on Clairaudience and with Wave Music, which is my man François Kevorkian – a very important person by the way. Go look him up. Did a lot of very important music, worked with Kraftwerk, did all the sound engineering on Prelude… he did the mastering on this and he’s also one of the biggest DJs around the world. But he had a party called Body & Soul that was a big party, too, a Sunday-night party and this became big there.

(music: USG – “Ncameu”)

Ron Trent

There’s a bit of that.

Gerd Janson

Mr Parrish has a question.

Ron Trent

Rock it out.

Theo Parrish

There was something that I think gets missed. Well, you touched on it a bit, that was music making your mind move, and then your body. If you’re one of those individuals that wanna go play music for other people. If you could touch on the necessary…

Ron Trent

Actually, for me, and probably for a lot of us, it’s the body first. It feels good and the brain synthesizes that. And then, when we think about things, we think about things we can relate to, naturally. We have references. Sometimes it’s not even about doing that, it’s just about letting yourself go and being part of the experience, versus sitting up and going through a process of, “Whoa, well, it sounds like that, but it’s supposed to sound like…”

No, once again, if it feels good, then it’s real. And you can stand by it at that point. And especially if you surround yourself with a lot of references. I think that the more you experience different things, the wiser you become. Study music, study things, take the time out to study things. People don’t do that. And they don’t do that nowadays, partially because it’s over-exposure and under-exposure. And that’s what we talked about yesterday that I was going to bring up. The internet’s great, it gives you a lot of information, a lot of accessibility to a lot of information, but there’s over-exposure because you’re seeing so many things and it’s running by you so fast. There’s so much music coming out and so many things… hard to kind of keep up.

It’s like fast food. It’s biodegradable, it comes in then goes out and that’s it. The thing is if you take the time out and really study things, go get some records, collect some music, get some vinyl. Do some other things, check out some other things, you’ll find you’ll become a lot wiser about what you’re doing, and it will help reinforce what you’re doing, you know? Because everything we’re doing now is passing on the baton from the past.

Jazz and blues really are the mother and father of a lot of stuff, if you ask me, and before that you have a lot of ancient music, and being that I grew up playing percussion, I always related to that. Because the drum, outside of the voice, was the first instrument. So, you know, it’s all the evolution. And when you study those things, you can do anything. You don’t have to be limited.

Audience member

You pointed out the fact that before it came out as a genre, house and hip-hop were both just cultural movements. I was wondering if you had any idea why people like you or most of us here are interested in a lot of different types of music and different styles, and why is it some people are getting stuck into genres today?

Ron Trent

Well, that’s again part of the over-exposure I’m talking about. If you have someone flashing something in your face telling you, “This is this! This is this! This is this,” hearing it on the radio, “This is this! This is this,” it’s going to become a part of your mode and how you do things, you know? When I was coming up, we were just going out searching for stuff.

Audience member

That’s exactly what I was going to tell you. We have internet and more information access. But at the same time it seems like ignorance is becoming the norm.

Ron Trent

Yeah, you lack the experience, it’s synthetic. Your experience is right here on the computer and that’s where it stays. You don’t have the avenue to be able to go and experience the music on the dancefloor and in these different situations. That’s why, I’m gonna tell you guys right now that one of the only things we have left is to experience live music.

Go do it while you can. Go do it, and go support these artists because the music business is really bad right now. I know you guys are here because you want to be in music, it’s the Red Bull Music Academy. And if you really want to do something about that, then you have to really support artists and what’s going on because otherwise you can forget about it. There’ll be nothing to talk about. The companies are hurting, people are trying to figure it out, scratching their heads like, “Oh my god, what’s happening?”

And at the same time, what the internet has done is even the playing field because you have independent artists and stuff doing things at their own speed and in their own environment and that’s cool. But at the same time, it doesn’t give you that feeling. You can’t experience if it’s not organic. And I don’t want to sound like a broccoli head when I’m sitting here talking about this up here now, but it needs to be organic, man, because it’s real. I mean, we’re all sitting up here existing right now because we ate food. And music is food, and when it’s done right… it’s real.

[Applause]

Gerd Janson

So, the MP3 won’t save us?

Ron Trent

The MP3 is a means to an end. It makes things easy, that’s all. Easy ain’t always better. It’s not. If it was easy, then everyone could do it, and you’d have a whole bunch of kings and queens, and you know what happens then.

Audience member

Thank you. I don’t know that much about house music, but I really like the tunes.

Ron Trent

Respect, man.

Audience member

Proper 808 basslines in the house.

Ron Trent

Yes, sir.

Audience member

And that’s opened up my eyes. Even though it was probably older house, I can feel that as funky house, you know? Anyway, I just wanted to ask you about that pyscho-magnetic acoustic stuff – what was the term?

Ron Trent

Psycho-acoustics.

Audience member

I read about an American music philosopher… talking about, “Sure, an artist can put the emotion into writing a record or writing the music, but then it’s just sound waves traveling through the air, and the emotions then caught on by the listener.” So there’s no emotion traveling anywhere, the emotion is connected and created by the listener. I just wondered what you thought about that.

Ron Trent

Well, that’s something that can be debated. This book here, this is what I wanted to give you. This is by Preston Nichols, I’ve been reading this book for several years.

Gerd Janson

What’s the book called?

Ron Trent

The Music of Time. He’s a sound engineer all the way from the ’50s until… Well, I guess he’s still doing his thing. And he’s gone underground because he did experimentation with the government, and it’s kind of wild. But this guy talks about being able to transfer his feelings in records, him being an engineer and when he was recording certain songs that became big records… I’m not gonna tell you that much about him, I’ll turn you onto him, but you need to maybe go get it. And he talks about psycho-acoustics and being able to transfer energy to people, which is real.

Getting back to the Garage real quickly, the Garage was important because it practiced the synergy of commercialism and underground, which is something that doesn’t happen today. This guy played music that he felt was real, he had all the tools that he needed, and it was in place, and it was quality, and he made people move to his thing. And he would practice it, and he did it for ten years. But why I was talking about the synergy of commercialism with the underground? Because it’s the people who make the music and feel the music and it comes from the streets normally. It comes from our bosom. Then we need the record companies to put the record out – commercialism. This guy, instead of nowadays the radio controls the DJ or what’s being played in the club or the mass spectrum, this guy controlled the radio.

What he played at his club and the way he played it. He would introduce records over two or three years, and you could only hear it at the club. There was an important radio guy by the name of Frankie Crocker, you can check him out, too, and get some information on him. He was a big radio programmer from the ’50s to the ’60s, he had one of the most important radio shows in the business at the time, and his show was like the beacon for the rest of the radio stations. So whatever he played, everyone else played.

Frankie Crocker was Larry Levan’s best friend, and he would come and get records from Larry. He broke a lot of music that way, and a lot of music you hear today from even hip-hop stuff because Larry Levan never limited himself and the type of music he played. He played reggae, dance, but you see this is where the term dance music gets a bit foggy, because dance music is music you dance to, but it does not mean four-to- the-floor beat. It does not mean hi-hat doing like this [makes drumming motion], it doesn’t mean chords doing like this.

Bullshit. Don’t let anybody fucking tell you that. It’s about music you can dance to. And when you understand that shit, you can think, “Oh, I can dance to anything. I can nod my head to anything. That’s what it’s about!” So this guy controlled the metronome of the urban world by practicing psycho-acoustics. Period. And it’s real, because once again these records and these artists I’m talking about, you’re getting their feelings, man. You’re getting exactly what they’re feeling.

Stevie Wonder? You can damn near fucking see and feel the sweat that was dropping on the floor in the recording studio. That’s real stuff. It’s not just about, “Oh, it’s synthesized and it’s the sound waves.” I mean, we can get scientific about it, but whatever. It’s real and that’s what it’s about. But check out this book, you guys might enjoy it. He gets into some freaky stuff, too, makes you think maybe this guy’s crazy as hell.

Audience member

Thank you.

Gerd Janson

Ben had a question as well?

Audience member

Yeah, I have a couple of questions. I remember when you were discussing about the scene dying in Chicago, and man, I remember being in Chicago and being frustrated. Like, a lot of cities have that rich history and other people from outside the city are like, “Wow, you’re from Chicago?” or, “You’re from blah, blah, blah. Man, house music is it like jazz?”

Ron Trent

It’s just that, it has a rich history. A lot of people don’t know this, too, a lot of the big record labels, there was a street called Record Row.

Audience member

Record Row? I was born on that street, on Michigan and 20th.

Ron Trent

Chess Records and…

Audience member

Vee-Jay Records.

Ron Trent

Vee-Jay Records, yeah. These were record labels that were the precursor to Motown, and a lot of blues and R&B came out of Chicago.

Audience member

Man, the Beatles first recorded on Vee-Jay before the British explosion, because they all wanted to come to Chicago. Rolling Stones named their group after Muddy Waters, who was in Chicago.

Ron Trent

Who was a friend of my great grandmother, by the way.

Audience member

And that kills me knowing that history. But I think you mentioned that you lived outside of Chicago for a couple of years.

Ron Trent

I lived in Detroit and I lived in New York. I was in Chicago for all of the ’80s up and through the ’90s, and I moved to New York around 1996, something like that.

Audience member

So, my question is, leaving Chicago and living outside of Chicago, did that help you appreciate that and have you not go back frustrated?

Ron Trent

Well, it gave me… as an artist – and y’all gonna think I’m crazy having different personalities – but it’s necessary to have duality in this business. You have to have the artist side and you have to have the business side. And as an artist I had to be inspired, and in Chicago I wasn’t getting that. Like I told you, I lost money, and it killed my spirit for a minute, you know? Because I was trying to do something good, and I got stabbed on it. So, I needed to go and be in New York, where they were still doing it the right way. And the New York game is a little different, because the level of professionalism is great and it kept it going. So, I needed to go and be amongst that, and once I did my thing and was accepted and respected as a musical force there, I was able to look back into Chicago and see what works and what doesn’t. Because I was clouded. I was too close up on it. I had to go away and study and look. And it’s fertile ground right now, as far as I’m concerned. So I’m coming back and putting some seeds in the ground.

Audience member

Did you feel bad when you were coming back like, “Nah, I’m not feeling Chicago,” or did you catch flak?

Ron Trent

Nope! I mean, you have the guys that talk shit like, “Blah, blah, blah.”

“Right, that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you’re not doing anything because there’s nothing going on.”

You know what I’m saying? If there was something going on, then we’d have something to talk about. You see, I look to New York as being at school. I went to school. I had to go study, you know? Pack it up, and know when to pack it in. And that’s what I did, I went to school. Learned from some of the best, played with some of the best, did some things and brought it back home. And building again. I’m not born in Chicago anyway, but that was where I was raised. I had my first teachings in Chicago, that’s where my family is, so I wanted to do something there. Because it’s rich in history. It is very rich in its depth, but the stuff that’s been going on, toxic soil that needs to get washed away!

Audience member

I know exactly what you’re talking about. Alright, my second quick question: How do you prepare your sets? Do you improvise your sets?

Ron Trent

You know, sometimes it depends on where I’m going. What’s changed, and we kind of talked about this before, you see, going to play in these clubs around the world that ain’t got their shit together is one of the most disturbing things. It’s a waste of time and energy. I’m coming to do something special, I’m taking the time out to do what I’m doing, and the people that I’m doing business with have not taken the time out to do the system, to do the things that are necessary to make it functional, the way it’s supposed to be. Which is a discredit to the people I’m playing for, and myself. And that’s because, once again, they didn’t do their studying, they didn’t do their homework. And because they didn’t do their homework, it fucks up everything.

So for a while, I stopped traveling. Fuck that, I’m not doing that. Why I’ma do that? I’m gonna play my music for you, and do my best, and try to purvey the best that I can for you and these guys are fucking up. But guess who you look at if it’s not right? You look at me. You’re like, “He fucking sucks,” and I look like an asshole and shit. Why? Because the people didn’t do what they were supposed to do. But when it’s done right, you can’t beat it.

So, for those kind of environments, like when I go and play in Japan, or playing on a dope system or something like that, then I put a lot of energy into that. Otherwise it’s a mish-mash. I go in there, read what’s going on, I know what’s playing, I know the people. Then I kind of do what I’m gonna do. But there are situations when you really get a chance to hear what I should call a Ron Trent experience, you know? Start to finish, because I’m really programming the music for you. I want you to go on a journey with me. I want you to sit where I’m sitting, and we’re gonna take a ride. I’ve visualized where I want to go, and I want you to go with me. I program music to do that, instead of just buying all the bangers like, “I’m gonna buy the top-billing song, and everyone in the club is gonna say my name and put their hands up like that.” Bullshit. Fuck that.

Audience member

Cool. Thanks.

Shaheen Ariefdien

I have a question. The one thing in the last little while that you touched on that’s super-important to you is understanding the history. Like, the roots of where a lot of the stuff comes from. And in order to understand the roots you have to understand the roots and where it’s going. What are your views on remixes? Because you’ve been involved on some projects where your interpretation of a project might be not even be touching the thing, just editing. You know what I mean?

Ron Trent

Yeah, we talked about it yesterday.

Shaheen Ariefdien

So what are your views on the remix?

Ron Trent

I think some records shouldn’t be touched because they’re classics. Why touch it? What the fuck’s wrong with it? Do a rendition of it – fine. I’m not gonna speak of the companies, because I respect the companies who’ve done some of these things. But some of the newest things that are going on right now – and I guess they’re trying to reintroduce product to the younger audiences – they’re just not a good representation of what these people that they’re doing remixes on were about. You know, the Miles Davis’ and this, that and the other, these guys were fucking geniuses, and we need to study their music as it was. And these remixes by DJ such-and-such and all these other guys, who add a little down [makes down melody] on top of shit, and scratches. Whatever. It doesn’t give it any justice. And there’s some good remixes. You can tell a guy has taste, but you can also tell the guy, he’s got to go back to school. He’s got some more studying to do. Because he obviously doesn’t know what these guys are about. But since he has a popular name, we’re gonna get him to do it. And he dilutes it.

Gerd Janson

So you wouldn’t mix Pat Metheny?

Ron Trent

Of course I’d remix Pat Metheny. But you know what? I grew up on Pat Metheny. The very last record that my dad bought before he passed was a Pat Metheny record. That’s my heart and soul. So, yes, I’d remix a Pat Metheny record, but if it was a record that I felt I can’t do anything to it, and needs to stay, I’m not gonna touch it. You know, give him the high salute. Why? I believe in authenticity. This is the last record my dad bought. [Pulls out record] And I’ll play a little of it, because this is serious business here.

(music: Pat Metheny Group – “Are You Going With Me?”)

Ron Trent

This record is played on the dancefloor. Maybe you guys wouldn’t even imagine that, but that’s the aesthetic that is brought to places where the system is great with a guy who really knows what he’s doing. He can take you from a four-to-the-floor to this. The aesthetic is there, you’re all in it, you’re experiencing the record. One thing that Russell pointed out yesterday, he’s talking about visualization and placement, and the systems are such that you feel like you’re right there in the session, with these guys. That’s how a system’s supposed to sound. When sound reinforcement is in place, and it’s done properly, then you’re right there. I’ma tell you right now, there’s no more wonderful experience than being in that euphoric place.

Gerd Janson

There’s another question.

Audience member

I just wanted to ask, you said you had a percussion background, right?

Ron Trent

Yes, ma’am.

Audience member

I grew up learning a lot of percussion. I enjoy dance music, as well. I’ve always kept the worlds very separate, because I didn’t know how to blend it. People always say when you want to create dance music, you have everything programmed in the computer. That’s what people tell me. I always wanted to merge the two, because I have no knowledge in using programs. How did you bring the worlds together?

Ron Trent

Well, for me, which I wish we had more time. I have a lot of stuff where… I’ve done a lot of world music remixes and stuff like that. I’ve always put percussion into my tracks and that kind thing, that I’m playing, or that I have somebody is playing. Actually, I’ll play, if we have time, one of those things. I have an album, that I just did in Japan, which is basically a live album. There’s nothing funkier than congas, djembe, and these kind of things. It’s not about always programming. It’s good to program it, and then maybe add stuff into it. What happens though, a lot, which is what people need to study, is being able to mix properly. Being able to mix them into the same thing, to make them sound as one, so that it’s not like you have this whole digital program thing going on, and then this live thing going on. It just sounds like garbage.

Audience member

[Inaudible]

Ron Trent

Pretty much, it really depends on the person, their perspective of how they want to do it, or what you’re trying to do. For instance, on one of the tracks I did for the album, I have Karsh Kale. He plays for Tabla Beat Science. He plays the tabla, and that kind of thing. I did a track called, “World Travels” that he’s playing on it. It’s more of a listening tune. It was my first time dealing with Indian percussion and that kind of thing. You just blend it in. Once again, if it’s something that you’re feeling, then you have to stand by that. You can’t let anybody tell you anything. It’s not even…

Audience member

I understand whenever you bring in live percussion, it always tends to be something a bit more mellow. You can’t actually bring it out into something hard.

Ron Trent

Oh, yeah.

Audience member

Early on, I heard you play one of your tracks. There’s a faint cowbell in the background. Is that live, or is it …

Ron Trent

That’s all live.

Audience member

That is? OK, cool. Is there a way that you have to do …

Ron Trent

I’m into a lot … If you listen to the stuff that I do, I’m into a lot layering. I’m a big fan of Trevor Horn, and folks like that. These guys are fucking geniuses at layering, and taking you into different journeys. They got different segues into music. If you listen to their stuff, shit, you guys might laugh at this but Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Frankie Goes to Hollywood had one of the biggest fucking records in Chicago, ever. “Two Tribes” was huge. If you listen to that record, that shit is amazing. On a sound system, how it’s recorded and everything, it’s crazy. I’m into a lot of layering, so it’s not always about it has to be upfront and the feature. It could be in the back and have the same feel, because it’s the feel.

Audience member

Do people ever ask you why you actually bother with live percussion, instead of just using what’s in the computer?

Ron Trent

They ask that, but I’m just doing me. Everybody’s got their own perspective, the way that they want to do things. Mine happens to be that I’m into live elements, percussion, and that feeling. Somebody else might be into electronic, trying to express themselves. They may be good at that. For me, that’s where I’m coming from. If that’s where you coming from, then be about it.

Audience member

Cool. Thank you.

Ron Trent

All right. Real quick, I’m just going to play a track that inspired me. One of my favorite keyboardists in the world is José Bertrami, from Azymuth. He’s more of a visual keyboard player, I call it. I’m into a lot of visualization before I do whatever I do. Keys, and the way that they are, can be more surreal than just being the feature. This guy and Azymuth, they create pictures when they do their music. It’s one of my favorite groups in the world. Azymuth is one of my favorite groups in the world. Just real quickly, this song was actually a big record. Used to be played on Chicago radio, actually, when radio was good.

(music: Azymuth – “Last Summer in Rio”)

Ron Trent

These guys, outside of Roy Ayers, were big influences for me. Roy Ayers is also super-bad. I call it visual music. You can just sit and zone out to it. Of course, there’s other… I like Led Zeppelin. I like that, too. It’s just really, really good heart and soul music. Once again, it doesn’t have to be energetic and thrash. This is one of the tunes from my album, actually with tabla in it.

(music: Azymuth – “Last Summer in Rio”)

Ron Trent

These guys, outside of Roy Ayers, were big influences for me. Roy Ayers is also super-bad. I call it visual music. You can just sit and zone out to it. Of course, there’s other… I like Led Zeppelin. I like that, too. It’s just really, really good heart and soul music. Once again, it doesn’t have to be energetic and thrash. This is one of the tunes from my album, actually with tabla in it.

(music: Ron Trent – “World Travels”)

Ron Trent

I know we’re running out of time. More questions and then I can play maybe a hip-hop track after that.

Gerd Janson

Any more questions?

Benji B

You were talking about doing some hip-hop stuff recently… I wondered if you could play some of the stuff you’ve been up to recently and where your head’s at in 2007.

Ron Trent

I’ma tell you right now, with my brother Waajeed over there – yes, sir! These cats, the J Dillas and Pete Rocks and that music, it showed me a lot of energy. And I think that J Dilla was a very important individual in terms of how you approach music, and his aesthetic and I’m a big fan so it inspired me to get back into the lab and start doing stuff. So I’ve got a couple of things here, one is with an artist I’m working with right now, and he’s out of Chicago. We’re still working on the vocals, and it’s not even mixed, but check this out, y’all.

Ron Trent

[music: Ron Trent – unknown]

Ron Trent

Once again, it takes time. I’m not up here saying, “Oh, I’m Mr Hip-Hop now.” It takes time to study your craft then you can start and be official. Any more questions?

Audience member

You spoke about how the initial house music scene was something really with the gay community and had a lot of pressure coming out from the mainstream and you were labelled as a freak for being interested. How did that evolve into something that was slightly more accepted by the mainstream?

Ron Trent

Good question. Basically, what happened is just it took time. People are afraid of what they don’t know. They were afraid of gays because they didn’t know about gays. They were afraid of the club because they didn’t know about the club. As those walls started coming down, people started getting more into like, “Oh wow. This is ours. This is our culture.”

I think Chicago also hasn’t really realized the power of what it helped to create, too. I say that because Chicago’s a kind of city, it’s a Midwestern city so it takes from everywhere. We’re in the middle. It takes from New York. It takes from LA. It’s got into the idea of instead of being a server – a conduit – it’s turned into more of a consumer city. What it needs to realize is that house music or dance music or whatever you want to call it … because I don’t even call it house music anymore because it has nothing to do, the name now has nothing to do what it’s all about because, once again, it’s a genre. I’m anti all the names. I’m like, “Fuck the names.”

It’s more like they need to embrace a part of their culture. It’s something very important. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. I’m working with a hip-hop artist, an R&B artist that are very conscious and aware of what we come from. Even Kanye West is very… he used to work in E-Smoove’s studio and he used to work around a lot of the guys, the producers that were my cohorts in the business. These are guys who are house music guys.

In Chicago, we’re into everything, at least growing up we were into everything. The guys that are still producing, doing production are very diverse in their methods and how they see things. But we don’t have the industry anymore so you don’t see these things. You see something as powerful as Kanye that comes out and you’re like, “Oh shit. Something interesting out of Chicago?” Or you see something like a Waajeed or J Dilla coming out of the Midwest, out of Detroit. “Oh shit. This is coming out of Detroit?” Of course, techno, whatever… In terms of mainstream commercial music but coming from a real soulful place like no other, we have that. We didn’t embrace that because we didn’t had the industry. Because the TV and everything else got us watching other people dance around. That’s not what it’s about, but it was the walls that came down. It’s just time, once again. Everything takes time. Hope that answers your question.

Audience member

I was thinking about you talking about that you tried to open up your own place and you lost a lot of money and all that stuff. Except from that, I was thinking about that they pointed you out as a drug dealer or whatever and what have you. We’ve had some problems with this back home. There are always some people showing up at the party who… I mean if people want to use drugs to get an experience that’s one thing, but people that can’t control it and it gets out of hand. Some people get aggressive. Have you been experiencing this thing happening during your time?

Ron Trent

Yeah, absolutely. The problem with that is, once again, people have a delusional and deluded perspective of what this shit is about. Some people thought because of, say, the rave culture that came along after the fact that, “Oh, let’s go get drugs and get fucked up and fall out mate, and bust our heads on the ground.”

That’s not what this shit is about. It’s like, “Man, what are you talking about? Where you trying to go?” The thing is this happened in sections of time back in the day, but not like that at all. You always had the one fellow or female that had problems more than anybody else… that probably did more drugs than everybody else, but that wasn’t the thing. That wasn’t the focus. It’s strictly a music, good time, grown-ups acting like children for about five hours. What’s wrong with that? I want to go be a kid. I want to go shake it up, get stress off. “My girl’s getting on my nerves. I want to go dance.” I come back and I’m a different person.

It’s that kind of thing, but yes, this has happened and it’s called stereotyping. Once again, a wall. When that happens, it just destroys things. It just keeps things fucked up.

Audience member

When you’ve been experiencing this problem at some certain venue or something, have you ever tried doing something about it or go out there? Where I come from, Gothenburg, it’s like if you’ve got a good venue going and these things starts to happen, it absolutely draws the attention of the government or whatever and they will shut you down. I was wondering if you have some… advice?

Ron Trent

It’s like this, man. I do a party in Chicago. It’s called Africa Hi-Fi that I’ve been doing for the past three years. We started our core off with consciousness and the message that we wanted to send and from that we attracted a people that were like us, that wanted the same thing that we wanted. Then what happens is that, and this is why the club experience or dance clubs back in the day were beautiful because they were pretty much, I don’t know if you know this, but they were membership-only kind of spots, so what happens is that your clientele and the people that you’re interacting with pretty much become soldiers for your cause, so they keep all that shit down. See what I’m saying?

They cut all that bullshit out because they don’t want you to fuck up their place. You see what I’m saying? “You fucking with my place now and I don’t want you in here like that and I don’t want this.” All that is eliminated. If you want to go get fucked up and fall out in the alley, that’s your business. We in here trying to have a good time, listen to some good music, and get some stress off, have some new experiences. Out of that, man, comes a lot of beauty. I’m really big into art and that kind of thing, and that’s what was a big part of the ’80s, was the interaction of the actor with the painter, with the musician, and everybody’s getting together and we’re just creating new stuff. That’s how new things happen. That’s how scenes happen, versus it being a situation where this is over here, that is over here, everybody’s mixing together and beautiful experiences are happening. That’s why art flourished in the ’80s the way that it did. We missing a lot of beautiful stuff, man.

Gerd Janson

One more?

Audience member

You mentioned about the Afrobeat. Excuse my ignorance. Do you have any examples. Have you made up stuff from the…

Ron Trent

What I love about the industry is that they have categorized me so many times it’s ridiculous. “He’s the house music guy. He’s the techno guy. He’s the Afrobeat guy. He’s this.” That’s cool, but I’ve done a lot of Afrobeat. Of course, I did an edit and remix for Tony Allen, but I’m trying to think, in my computer right now, if I have anything that I’ve done that maybe I could let you check out. How are we looking on time? We did start late because people were partying!

Gerd Janson

Yeah we did start late. It was their fault. I think we have enough time for one more.

Ron Trent

This was considered an Afrobeat record. This was on Clairaudience. It’s more like an Afrobeat, an electronic record. This was also a nice … it had a nice piece of energy, in New York it was pretty big. My man, Timmy Regisford really loves this record. This is actually what made him start talking to me. Timmy doesn’t talk to anybody.

Timmy’s a bad, bad DJ. What he did one of my first times when I experienced him on the dance floor. Two, the man’s ridiculous. That’s another reason why I had to go to New York, because the way the guys were playing records was totally different from what I had seen. They were doing phenomenal stuff. Stuff that you would think is generated by a computer they were doing live, right there on the spot and working the sound system. It was ridiculous. Timmy, in particular – and the likes of Joe Claussell – but Timmy was also an industry person so there was a lot of mixing of the industry with the regular dance floor folks. Once again, it had kind of an influence on the radio and it became an important thing. That’s why The Garage was very important because it was all the different economic brackets dealing with each other. People that were different social backgrounds and industry. There’s a place where everybody could go and kick it.

A lot of hip-hop artists, believe it or not, were on the dance floor. Your Marley Marls. Marley Marl is doing house tracks. He got his influence from Larry Levan and all the rest of them, because they all mixed together. Same thing with Biz Markie. He mentioned Larry Levan in his rhyme, couple of his rhymes he did. Mick Jagger used to hang out at the Garage. Everybody. Grace Jones. Russell Simmons. All them cats. It was the core of New York City, because dancing is dancing. Everyone wants to fucking dance, to have a good time, and be free for a couple of hours. That’s why people are out here getting fucked up now. You got no outlets. That’s why people getting into drugs. They don’t have outlets. They trying to escape something. Anyway, Afrobeat. Ready?

(music: USG – “Ebony Angel: A Tribute to Fela Kuti”)

Ron Trent

OK…

(music: Ron Trent – “Mother Earth”)

Did this kind of like a one-take. Did this in about two hours, to be honest with you. That’s when I was in, we were kind of midway in recording this already. Was going for more Jean-Luc Ponty-type feel. He’s a live violinist you need to check out. He’s bad-ass. My man Dorian Chea was playing the violin. I’m playing the keys. Have my man Ken Roberson playing percussion. I did the beat. I have a lot of other stuff, a lot of that Afrobeat stuff. That’s an example, little tasty something.

Gerd Janson

Good. Thanks for bringing down a few walls.

Ron Trent

It’s good to be here after it took so long to get here, right? I was supposed to talk for you guys seven years ago, but 9/11 happened. It was just the week afterwards. It’s just good to finally make it here.

[Applause]