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IM: bengefunk

It sounds the way it does because of this: my dad playing jazz piano - nothing after 1940 - from the first day of my life; an early '70s NYC child; coming up to Plainfield by '74 and the birds singing in the otherwise quiet woods; 1978, hearing "Working My Way Back to You" from a boom box on Avenue C; second place in a 10th St block party disco dancing contest at the age of 8; John Lee Hooker stomping, Smashing Pumpkins playing nothing but feedback, and the Beastie Boys leading thousands in a wave of bodies at Tibetian Freedom Fest in '95; The Beasties and Sick of it All at Coney Island High; being on the air the evening of 9/11, playing the saddest acoustic jazz I could find; watching the entire dance floor of the Palladium turn into a mosh pit from the balcony at the Fishbone and 2 Live Crew in 1990, Angelo Moore diving spread eagle on the crowd from the speaker tower on the second floor; "Chase" booming over Second Avenue from a building across the street; bootleg a capella versions of Michael Jackson tunes; Rakim, especially when he says, "I hold the microphone like a grudge"; "The Sauce (Benzino Dis)"; the mix I made for my wedding people dancing for two hours straight; starting that mix off with "Three Is the Magic Number" from School House Rock; Dar Williams at the Barre Opera House; money from my first job going to nothing but Billy Joel vinyl at Sounds on St. Mark's Place; reading the words to "The Message" scribbled by a friend then listening to the 12" for the first time in '82; picking up the 12" to "Rapper's Delight" for a quarter from a crackhead on the corner of 3rd street on Christmas morning in '84; going to pre-school with the kids of Archie Shepp and Phillip Glass; finding a duct-taped copy of Yusef Lateef's Detroit in Portland, Oregon for $1; defending Run-DMC to a friend who told me rap music sucked and only listened to the Who in '83; watching the film of the Who performing at the Isle of Wight; "Over the Hills and Far Away"; charging funk compilations on credit cards when I couldn't afford them; all the original early Rolling Stone LPs for 2.99 each; knowing the presence of god for the first time when I heard

the guitar intro of "Can You Get to That"; "Under a Falling Sky"; "Can You Feel It" (either the one by the Jacksons or the one by the Fat Boys); the winter and spring of '88, listening to nothing but the cassette of Sign 'O the Times and the cassingle of "Going Back to Cali" I stole while working at Rainbow Records in San Francisco; tears streaming down my face when the Indigo Girls dropped "World Falls" at a concert on the Cape; playing pick-up basketball with Sadat X at Hunter College; sitting in the third row for Max Roach at the Flynn; my old VHS tape of Yo! MTV Raps; Red Hot Chili Peppers and Public Enemy the same weekend at Burlington Memorial Auditorium in '91; giving Grandmaster Caz a hug; realizing "Dear Prudence" is about my lost childhood, and so is "The Only Living Boy in New York City"; Nas's concert in Central Park; "Ray of Light" on my iPod among the throngs, going to work in downtown Manhattan; calling a number for mix tapes I found in a magazine and having Z-Trip answer the phone; "Crazy in Love"; Jackson telling the visiting Russian basketball player that his favorite band was funkadelic on The White Shadow; doing a Sonic Youth/Prince oldies show with Ned on WRUV; a dude named Gripper tuning into my show from the UK when radio first broadcast on the internet, telling me he had just hung out with Aim, and then being asked to write liner notes for Aim's first album; "Amazed By You (Aim Mix)"; the original Leadbelly 10" my godmother gave me; Willie Nelson at Shelburne Farms while the sun set; blasting "Our Lips Are Sealed" while driving the California Coast; a kid asking me to play hip-hop in the midst of people going nuts to some soul at a basement party, me pointing to the crowd, the kid saying, "White people can't dance," me immediately putting on C.R.E.A.M.," clearing the dance floor; talking to Joel Dorn while we waited for an elevator; Dire Straits's "Brothers in Arms," waiting for the subway at the 53rd St Station in '87 (the one group you will surely NOT hear on Sex Fly); laying in Sheep Meadow, writing KRS-One lyrics in an English journal; never admitting in the '80s that I loved "Sister Christian," "Baker Street," All Night Long," "Borderline," and "Only in my Dreams"; finding the 12" of "Only in my Dreams" with the a capella mix; crying and getting goosebumps watching Fade to Black; Steinski; driving around Harlem a two in the morning in my Nissan Sentra with Gary blasting the Three the Hard Way soundtrack; hearing "Gloria" (the Laura Branigan version) coming out of a boombox on the softball field on Houston and 6th Avenue in '82 and wondering why I was the only one freaking out; from 4:57 to 5:06 of "Give it up or Turn it a Loose (Remix)"; "Get By (Remix)"; the X- Ecutioners at Club Toast; the X-Ecutioners at Wetlands and the guy behind me who kept yelling "What!"; my friend Nick and his love of bluegrass; the girl who asked me to listen to De La Soul in '89 and telling me, "It sort of sounds like the Blues Brothers"; "Deep Water"; my son listening to John Coltrane when he was a month old; my 45 of "Afro Strut."

Benge Newman