What ranks up there as your greatest Funk find? As far as simply being in a store and lucking upon some ill shit... I once was in this store bugging this stupid lady (whose husband actually owned the place but was in absentia) to get upstairs - where I knew all the ill shit was. So she's hemming and hawing, basically not saying shit, and the husband comes in. He says there's no possible way I'm going upstairs (which was wonderful, since this stupid lady told me when I was booking my flight that it was no problem to get upstairs - gadamn tease) but he informs me that he just placed a whole bunch of backstock on the floor. He points to this area underneath some white mail crates and I see this huge row of boxes. I start going through them and I pull the illest shit - records I had never heard of like JC and The Soul Masters "Rageena" and records like Billy Ball and The Upsetters "Tighten Up Tighter" on King that I'd always wanted and couldn't find for less than $1000. None of the records were priced, and I was thinking to myself that I would get hammered when I brought them up to get priced, but the moron let them go for, on average, $5. Wonderful. I'm still trying to get upstairs!
What got you started on your funk fascination - were you born with a funk bone or did you have to grow it? Had to grow it, of course. I can't stand hearing these stories about these fabled collectors that say that they've been buying funk since they were 6 and they owned every James Brown record by the time they were 7. That is craziness. My parents were musicians, they got me into a weird melange of music from an early age, I fell into hip hop when I was in sixth grade, and through hip hop (and really dope hip hop producers that took me under their wings) I got into funk when I was in high school.
What do you think of the daft prices Funk 45s are starting to reach these days? It's completely ludicrous, and it has to stop sometime. Fuck, you cannot get a good record for $10 anymore. Every fucking decent record is $100+. Well, except "Family Man" by Gene Faith. Lucky for every music lover that track is still cheap. I don't know who to blame. At the same time, I have to admit that I've exploited the craze and have (1) paid for entire buying trips by selling three or four 45s for loads of cash (2) took 7s that I paid $5 for and traded them to stores for loads of rare lps that I'd never find and (3) helped out the actual musicians that have released these records by actually "brokering" the sale of their remaining records to collectors. So you take the good and the bad, I guess.
How secretive are you - some collectors use the 'cover up' technique when DJing or on mix tapes to protect the anonymity of their finds - are you of this breed or you an open funk-door? I'm not secretive at all. Don't get me wrong, at times you have to be a bit careful with your sources. I won't give up warehouses and I'll rarely tell someone where I found a record, but I'm all about the dissemination of information. I work to officially reissue these records, produce live shows that incorporate funk musicians and hip hop musicians, write about the funk movement in magazines and on websites and play the music every damn chance I get.
Where do you listen to your funk? Have you got a little room set up at home full of crates and a turntable or do you kick back in your lounge and throw on a few? Right now, we (the Stones Throw staff), live and work out of the same Los Angeles house. So, I have my little stack of 45s and LPs that I listen to in my room. It's cool, there's always someone here and I'm constantly talking music with musicians that I respect. But at my parents' house in Connecticut, I have these wonderful custom built shelves lining the walls in what is now my sister's room. The majority of my records are there, so everytime I visit home for a holiday, I set up shop in my old room and peruse my collection.
Where do you get most of your funk from - fairs/lists/travelling round on the hunt/charity shops? Traveling around and then trading the doubles that I find. Or sometimes, I make these great connections on the phone and get records through the mail. I should make the point that, on the whole, stores are completely dead. It's very rare that you'll actually find some ill shit in a store. Most of the ill shit that anyone finds comes from either a private collector or the musician that actually recorded/released the material. The latter cases are few and far between, but I've gotten some incredible records that way. And I get the chance to do a bit more research, so even if I don't get that small piece of plastic, I get a wonderful story to tell.
What's going on with the Stonesthrow Funk 45 compilations? Lucky for the funk world, Peanut Butter Wolf is down for the cause. We drove across the country, from Connecticut to Los Angeles, and we stopped in twelve or so major cities and met these funk musicians that I'd been in contact with over the past couple years. Wolf was into the music and the stories as much as I was, so he suggested that we put together some stuff for the label. This is cool 'cause we get to rock these projects alongside The Breakestra - kinda show the old and the new, demonstrate the lineage. And also, we get to work with these guys on good terms, make sure they don't get screwed out of their music, and the music will reach a broad base. That's the great thing about working projects like these for a hip hop label. Most of the funk labels only reach that core audience of dedicated funk fans that would buy that record no matter what was on it. Here we have the chance to expose people that might not necessarily know the Ebony Rhythm Band or the Soul Vibrations to this monstrous movement that truly shook America to its musical core. So, we have this dope 45 reissue of two tracks by Indianapolis' own Fabulous Highlighters, a 45 EP of four funky ass children's records by Harrell and Sharron Lucky, and a comp. of 16 tracks from across the country that we'll present from the artists' point of view. Wait and see, I think this will turn out to be a very cool thing.
Egon gives Nitric his Funk 45 hunting advice