DJ Slugo "Godzilla"

 

DJ Sluggo 

Godzilla Remixes

scum stats: sold by the boatload

A few months back I read the wonderfully exhaustive oral history of Detroit ghettotech written by Ray Philp.

Ho-lee shit. I found myself absolutely smitten with the story, I was vaguely familiar with some of the narrative, but I just jumped in wholeheartedly. The most rewarding part has been going back and tracking down the records referenced in the piece.

None tend to loom any larger than "Godzilla" by DJ Slugo. I could attempt to contextualize, but I'll just copy-and-paste what Philp communicated at the bottom here.

Safe to say, it's been a minute since I've played some music that got a reaction out of Swank. Once the drums kick in on this one, I heard him exclaim from one office over "This goes HARD!"

I felt like I had some deep unlocked memories of this song...a YouTube comment mentions the that this played on WJLB every Friday and my immediate gut reaction was "OH SHIT, that's it! I remember this from when I was a kid" But once I realized the song was released the year I turned twenty years old (2002) I had to reverse wrap my brain around the fact that this just sounds SO timeless, SO perfect, SO inimitable that the genetic make up of the mix, the sample, all of it, as so precisely tweaked within an inch of exploding by DJ Godfather....nevermind the fact that I've never even seen the original (any?) of the Godzilla films, so it's not like this is some sort of lost recollection buried within my psyche cued by the mental trigger of the sounds. Shit is just solid.

I don't use the term "quintessential" all willy-nilly. But I mean it to the fullest extent here. Enjoy.

GODZILLA

Mr. De’

“Godzilla.”

Keith Tucker

The theme from Godzilla was another [anthem].

DJ Slugo

There ended up being a big hoopla about that record.

DJ Godfather

[Slugo] didn’t even make that record. From what I understand – and I kind of understood this later – a guy named RP Boo made that record. It never got released because Dance Mania went out of business. It was an old record. It was a B-side. It was on a DJ Slugo record. Finally, I called him. I go, “Look it. I think this record could be big. Do you want to release it? I think this will definitely be a big thing in Detroit.” He’s like, “Yeah, we could release it.”

RP Boo

Me and Slugo, we was real good friends. Even with “Baby Come On,” “The Ice Cream Truck” and the other tracks, he was the type of person who would always try his best to look out for people. Dance Mania had just collapsed. We wanted to push this to get it out on other labels and give other labels an opportunity. What had happened was that... We didn’t know that it took off, because I was at work. I didn’t go to Detroit. I didn’t go nowhere.

DJ Slugo

When I first started out, I was one of the ones in Chicago who had all the equipment before any of the other DJs. At the time, RP Boo was one of the people I was teaching how to produce, on a [Roland] R-70. I end up getting two of them. I loaned him one and let him use it to make beats. [Then] I needed it back because I sold the other one. So when he brought it back, it had the samples to the Godzilla record. When I heard it, I felt like he didn’t chop them up right. It was too muddy, and the samples wasn’t clean enough.

DJ Godfather

[Slugo and I] worked out a deal and then after it’s released he kind of told me that RP Boo made it. I’m like, “Wait a second. Is there an issue here? What’s going on?” He’s like, “Oh no, he owed me a favor.” He owed him money or a favor or something. I don’t know. Slugo was owed something from RP Boo, so Slugo released some tracks. Or he gave Slugo the tracks. I don’t know the exact story.

DJ Slugo

I went to the record store and asked them for [the original record], because I wanted to sample it from the record itself. So when I played them what I wanted, one of the guys that worked in the store was like, “Oh, that’s Pharoahe Monch, that’s off of the Pharoahe Monch album.” So I chopped it up, did it the way that I want to do it. I actually never released it – I released it on a mixtape one time, and that was basically it. So then I meet Godfather, and then he asked me for a song. But the song he wanted was the “Where The Rats?” record. So we released that and then we needed a record to be an album filler, because I didn’t have enough records that I thought were strong enough to give to him at the time. So I had [“Godzilla”] in the archive and I just threw it on there.

RP Boo

Word got back, it was, “Hey, Slugo, he’s taking credit for your track that you did.” I already knew that because Slugo asked me, could he do a remix. “Fine, no problem.” I actually gave him my record so he could do it, chop his samples up. I was like, “Yeah, I know Slugo has a remix.” Word got back like, “No, it’s not the remix that he’s claiming. It’s the one that you actually did.” When I saw the label, and I saw the print. It was DJ Slugo’s remixes, but that wasn’t the remix. It was the actual track. He was able to put out what he want because I had no access to Godfather. That’s when it just went, “No, I can’t do this no more.” Slugo was not the only person that I had these problems with. I had problems with this with other people.

DJ Slugo

The reason I felt like I didn’t care [about the track] was because of the samples. We’d never cleared the samples. So I was like, “I don’t care, I don’t want no problem from this record, you can do whatever you want to do with it.” [Godfather] was cool with that, and the record took off. Then the big old thing came out where people thought I sampled RP Boo’s record. I was like, “Well, all you gotta do is listen to the record, and listen to the record that I’ve done and you will hear that the production is the production I done.” And then if you look at the record, I even gave Boo credit. I gave him credit for the original concept, because the idea was his. I heard it from him first. I was like, “Oh, I like that but you did it wrong. So I’ma do my version. And I asked permission when I didn’t even have to.

DJ Godfather

The record started doing good but then I thought it could do better, so we did a remix record. I did a remix and a few other people did remixes. Then the remix I did was the one that got the most popular. Yeah. Story of my life: that had a sample in it and it could only go so far, because we got offered a lot of money to put it in a car commercial for an international commercial and we tried to clear the sample from the Godzilla people and they wouldn’t clear it.

The Cold Crush Brothers "Live at the Hoe Avenue Boys Club 1982"

The Cold Crush Brothers

Live at the Hoe Avenue Boys Club 1982

scum stats: this barely exists...

Real-time live action rapping oozing with vitality and impossible opportunity rough around the edges but magical and charming and infinitely funky the inimitable power of just a drumbeat and vocals timelessly powerful but when the delayed bass drop crossfade mix drops the groove in your hips floats into your heart and you're floating

Addendum - the Hoe Avenue Boys Club was the site of a legendary NYC street gang summit on December 8th, 1971, called in light of the murder of Black Benjji from the Ghetto Brothers. This would be the inspiration for the main plot point of the 1979 film The Warriors

Addendum #2 - I was a bit stymied in my effort to properly identify the specific song or songs included on this single. Its release being of the unofficial sort and the available documentation online being scant, I resorted to good ole' Shazam which identified T. Ski Valley's "Catch The Beat" as the backing rhythm track (a standard go-to of the era, no doubt) pitched up a hair to my ears, but I tend to think the rhymes themselves are essentially unique

Addendum final - I am scared to even further dip my toe into the waters of first wave hip hop live battle tapes....shiiiiit this gonna continue to flip my lid for the rest of my days no doubt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_Avenue_peace_meeting

https://kaydeerecords.com/collections/brand-new/products/1192-hoe-avenue-boys-club-1982-the-cold-crush-brothers

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Sole Tech, Circle Game and the Joy of Record Store Inspiration

Spent my 43rd birthday in Detroit yesterday. Slept in, chased a six-year-old around a playground and of supreme excitement was my wonderful wife Malissa telling me to take the afternoon to go to whatever record store(s) I wanted. 

I’d been drooling at the Instagram posts for the Circle Game store for a minute. On the West Side of the city, it’s located in an area that I just don’t ever find myself in. My parents both worked in the around the corner some 35 years ago, but otherwise, the environs were unrecognizable and I can’t say that about many Detroit neighborhoods

As I pulled up to the store, I set a simple hope for myself…I just wanted to find a Sole Tech record. 

The outfit had only recently appeared on my radar as I delve further into ghetto tech at an age and geographic locale that belies the fact I could’ve explored the genre with comical ease in my youth. 

Within five minutes I find a Sole Tech 12”, then another and the store just melts into an indescribable whirl of amazing records of all genres and all price points. It was intoxicating. 

Owner Ben Hall pops out around 30 minutes into my visit and is surprised to see me. We’ve really only talked once in person previously. But this dude gets it and we are able to cut straight through the bullshit, a conversation riddled with shorthand for Archer Record Pressing, Sound Patterns, Griot Galaxy, Watts Club Mozambique and on and on and on. 

I got to hear a jazz version of a Ted Lucas song, was hipped to a gospel record out of Ann Arbor seemingly with only two known copies in the world and generally was just happy and enjoying myself in a manner that is unfortunately less and less frequent as I age. 

Overall, this was the most inspirational and satisfying visit to a record store in at least twenty years…and possibly ever. I’m holding up the two Sole Tech singles I grabbed, but really, the pile I walked out with was life-affirming in the best of ways. If you find yourself in Detroit, make way to Circle Game. It’s certainly worth it.

 

1971 Holy Redeemer vs. Catholic Central Men’s CYO Basketball Final Detroit, Michigan

When I was nineteen years old

I was with adults

They pointed at houses

And rattled off

Three digit numbers

Longingly

The only time

My parents

Ever said

Three digit numbers

Was bowling scores or batting averages

Things My Daughter Violet Has Said

 While attempting to make fun of me

"You look like 500 pounds of mac and cheese"

Immediately followed by

"You look like a camel on two legs"

I consider neither of these

As insults

I happily laugh

Ted Lucas "The OM Album"

Ten years of emails and phone calls, contractual negotiations, in person meet-ups, the physical relocation of a mess of tapes and probably a bunch of shit I'm forgetting. This is what it took to get Ted Lucas released on Third Man. And for me, spiritually, it was absolutely worth it.

There is so much I could write about this record, but at the moment it feels best to point you to an interview I did with local NPR station WNXP....

https://wnxp.org/on-the-record-ben-blackwell-on-1975-ted-lucas-re-release/

There's audio of me flapping my gums as well as fairly insightful text excerpts of said gum-flapping at that link. If I can further belabor maybe just two points touched on in the interview there, it's as follows:

- there is SO MUCH more Ted Lucas music to sift through and to share. Like, it might be more than 100 reels worth of material. Across every and all iterations of bands and styles that Ted embodied, from commercial jingles he wrote on spec all the way down to field recordings and answering machine tapes, Ted chronicled and saved just about everything. And film footage? You better believe it. Thank god. I said recently that Ted is the perfect combination of an artist who was prolific, an artist who was a genius, and an artist who was great at documenting himself. Those three things almost never intersect. If you're lucky you can get 2 out of 3. 

- the digital bonus track of "Love Took A Trip" is just magnificent in every way. I cannot stop listening to it even now, months after first hearing it. This is the song that overwhelmed me and brought me to tears in the Turnip Truck (local grocery store) parking lot. As a raga, as a blues ramble, as an acoustic paean to the twists and turns that are inherent to the nature of "love" as it were...this song inhabits at least three different personas and each one of them is independently brilliant. But married together they take on a profile larger than the sum of its parts. 

Cecilia Castleman at the Blue Room January 25, 2025

So...I took five excitable pre-teen girls to the Blue Room in hopes of inspiring them. 

My two eldest daughters and three of their friends were all giggling and laughing in the car ride over, going to see Cecilia Castleman for no other real reason besides it was at the Blue Room and an all-ages show and it seemed that they just might like it. My wife and I had separately come to the same conclusion that our eldest best connects with her friends via music, and given our direct connection to so much of it, we should be exposing these kids to any and all appropriate stuff every damn chance we get. So with my office mere yards away, it was an absolute no-brainer to drag a field trip on down to the Blue Room. 

None of us had listened to Cecilia prior to that night, but that kinda felt irrelevant. I remember that age, just seeing ANY live music would've captivated and enraptured me in a way that is just impossible now. The promise, the potential...it's intoxicating when you land it and some of us spend the rest of our lives dreaming of recapturing it. 

 

But 9pm start for a headliner can be a reach for the circadian rhythm of a body used to being in bed by that time. My eight-year-old laid on the floor and subsequently requested to be held all before Castleman sang a single note. The four older girls, fifth-graders all of them, held up a little better. I gave them the pep talk that the moment they wanted to leave, we could go. So after 40 minutes or so, they politely told me they were ready to go. 

The show was solid, Cecilia has a spectacular voice, it was her birthday, the band was locked in (I guess she usually plays solo?) and just a great example of an artist doing it right. And I think the girls appreciated it, in addition to the free Coca-Cola and Liquid Death I gave them (a ten year old holding a 16 oz. can will never "look" right, it just seems like a beer no matter what) and the game of Truth or Dare they played on the patio where, I shit you not, one of the dares was "say the word 'poop' as loud as you can." 

Stopped off at the merch table and I felt it was as good a reason as ever to blow some money on vinyl. So I bought multiple copies of Castleman's 8" lathe-cut single of "It's Alright" record and handed them to the girls, a little souvenir from their first-ever show at the Blue Room for the three of them whose last name is not Blackwell. I also let them each pick an LP from the storefront...two copies of "White Stripes Greatest Hits" and one copy of "No Name" if you're curious. 

Probably too soon to tell if any of my five young charges had that life-changing moment last week, but I could see other folks in the audience, adults, staring in their direction with a look on their face, not longing, but thinking back to that age, to the promise of everything that lay ahead and its ability to blow your worldview wide open. We'll get them there yet.