You have worked with the likes of Arthur Baker, Aldo Marin, Evelyn King, Thomas Dolby. The Bee Gees and New Order – what cuts are you proudest of?
“All the work done in those days to me was amazing. Just sharing ideas with everyone and actually having my ideas accepted made all those tunes special to me.”
You also worked with Grace Jones – was she as mad as a box of frogs?
“Grace is a wonderful person. I only had the fortune to meet with her once as I was more of the arranger than the producer. But I feel she is one of the nicest people you could ever encounter in this business…”
When you were at Cutting Records back in the day, you helped to produce the classic Nitro Deluxe tune ‘Let’s Get Brutal’. That is still on my stereo today, amazing.
“Nitro Deluxe ’till this day has been a surprise for us. The whole idea of the tune was not planned. It came about by Aldo Marin purchasing his first sampler and calling me over to his house to try it out. As we were ready to sample, I grabbed one of my all time favorite records ‘Let No Man Put Asunder’. As I played the acappella over a beat we had done weeks before, Aldo randomly sampled the word ‘sweet’ and our friend started triggering the sample with the keyboard over the beat we had up. Aldo who recorded everything, captured the moment and the rest was history…”
You had a show on London’s Choice FM – how did that all come about?
“At the time, I was selling mix tapes and unbelievably these tapes would circulate all over the city and then quickly to several parts of the world likr England, Italy and Japan. The station learned of them through a friend who knew the station programmer who was American. He loved the tapes so much that he asked me to feature them on the station. The popularity of the mixes grew so quickly that he then asked me to do a slot every week and the Friday Night Choice FM Dance Party was born.”
What is the best record ever made?
“Wow! I don’t think I can answer that question. I love so many records and not from just one genre. There are so many records that I hold dear to me. Records that when I hear them take me back to a special time in my life. So to have only one favorite would be cheating myself.”
What fellow US DJs do you want to give high fives to?
“I guess it would need to be the ones that paved the club scene in NYC for me. Bruce Forest – “Better Days”, Kenny Carpenter – “Bonds International”, Jellybean Benitez – “Fun House”, Shep Pettibone – “Kiss FM”, Tony Humphries – “Zanzibar”, Timmy Regisford – “Shelter” and of coarse Larry Levan…”
Your home city, tell us somewhere to go that we don’t know…
“Well one thing about NYC is there is always something happening. But what I have noticed is that there are a lot of smaller parties popping up here and there. Parties that are keeping the underground original sound of NYC alive!”
You have DJ’d all over the world and at some of New York’s best clubs – ‘The Building’, ‘Red Zone’ and ‘Danceteria’ – what have been your favorites in your illustrious career…?
“I have to say the best club’s in the world I have ever played would have to be in Italy in the 90’s. The scene there was amazing. People would travel for miles and hours to come see you play and they would let you know constantly that they were there for you and the music you were playing. Rooms of two to three thousand people singing along with the records. And the amazing thing was that a lot of them didn’t speak English.”
What’s coming up on the production tip now for Mr. C?
“My latest venture is my label Transitori Music, which is an extension of my production company 2nd Color Entertainment. My mission is to release forward-thinking music from a diverse roster of up and coming artist. Rather than concentrating on a specific style, I aim to have a platform where I can truly express creative freedom through a varied selection of music. So far some of my past releases have been licensed to Ministry of Sound and several other European and Japanese labels. Which has opened the doors for opportunities in presenting new material in the next coming months.”
You were the dude who found and made your label sign Crystal Waters – I was at a dance weekender back then when DJ Nicky Holloway stopped the music and sang her famous tune on the mic and 5000 people joined in. How did you find her?
“Well I was at a music industry event at ‘The Shelter’ on a Tuesday night, Timmy Regisford played the unreleased version of the record. I then saw DJ’s looking around to see if anyone knew what the tune was but no one admitting to each other that they didn’t know what it was. A few tunes later Timmy plays it again and the floor erupted. By this time no one cared they had no clue what it was but they knew they needed to dance to it. I then ran to the DJ booth to find out the title. The next morning I walked into the management company I worked for AM: PM Entertainment and told my boss Vito Bruno I heard this tune which is not signed and we need to have it. He then made a couple of phone calls. By 11am he had a flight booked to DC and signed the act for management that day. By Friday afternoon of that week the act was signed to Mercury Records. One thing you learn growing up in NYC if you snooze you lose…”