DJ Bone on Detroit
DJ Bone speaks out about Detroit techno's legacy in a lengthy interview with SmartShanghai.com. A lot of this is nothing new, but it's worthwhile reading. You get Bone confronting Terry Lee Brown, Jr., but you also get Bone taking Detroit "legends" to task for sitting on their laurels. I particularly liked his recollection of the Electrifying Mojo, especially given that Around the World in a Day has been one of my favorite albums on the world for almost a quarter century now:
DJ Bone: He just played whatever he thought was good and what we needed to hear. He would talk all the time. Talk, and talk, and talk. But he was so deep that Prince would send him every single extended version, every single album like two weeks before it would come out in the store. And he would tell him, “play this on the radio and get everyone to record it.” And Mojo would say, “Get your cassette recorders ready, I got the new Prince coming up.”
I remember he played Around the World in a Day in its entirety. He didn’t say a word, he just played it. He said, “Get your cassette players ready.” He was doing a show, and out of the blue he had a call -- he never takes calls -- and he goes, “Uh I just uh wanna uh say that we have a special guest.”
He was really flustered, which he never was, because he was always really smooth. He’s like, “we got Prince on the line”. Prince called after his concert in Detroit -- called Mojo from his dressing room to talk and he was like, “Yeah, Detroit is like my second home, I get so much love here. From now on every concert tour that I kick off will be in Detroit.”
And sure as shit, every time he’s started in Detroit. He would send Mojo everything. I have extended versions of everything that only Mojo had access too... it was ridiculous. So that was Mojo -- he has a free format and could play whatever he wanted -- Cameo, ABC, whatever.
It was so dope to be in the ghetto and hear “Rock Lobster”. You know in the middle of all this black music you hear and all these black people are like “Oh, Rock Lobster!” Everybody’s down on the ground and shit and then it would kick back up and everybody’s up. In the ‘hood! [Laughs.]
