Sizzled Chicago

[New monthly column] Mixtape Chronicles 001: Star Trax

Posted on 10. Feb, 2009 by baiee in Columns, Contribute!, DJ Sets, House Music, Inspiration, Other Sets, The Mixtape Chronicles (Bryan Balli) [Monthly], mp3

Ah yes… the mix tape! Those outdated, scratched-up, unstable pieces of plastic that most folks have banished to a forgotten shoe box in their mother’s basement…

If you’re anything like me (or are driving a car that still has a tape deck), then maybe you’ve held on to a couple (dozen) of the cassettes that meant something to you. If you’re like the vast majority of people my age (that spent their high school years chasing down rave parties), you have long since lost that old box of tapes, or maybe wish you still had a copy of that one special tape that melted in the backseat of your car.  It’s also entirely conceivable that you’re young enough to have missed cassette culture entirely — in which case this monthly series will hopefully open your eyes to a whole series of mixes (and the culture that went along with them) that hail from a Time Before Digitalia. 

Whatever the case may be, if you were part of that culture, then you almost certainly had a favorite mixtape. As an example, some of the tapes of my youth contain elements that continue to inspire me as a DJ 13 years later. The intent of this article — coming at you once a month — is to happily recognize, explore, and expose new (and old) listeners to some of the tapes that have had the biggest impact in my life as a house music enthusiast that grew up in Chicago in the 1990’s. 

The Mixtape Chronicles will aim to dig up the best sets of yore, and although there are many established and well-known mixtapes to acknowledge out there (most of which are readily available on archival sites), I’ll be attempting to showcase more obscure, harder-to-find tapes from my own collection that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks. These are the mixes that I’ve proclaimed as my own personal classics! So without further ado, here’s the first.

As I was trying to decide what to kick this series off with, I bounced between a number of strong contenders. When it came down to it though, my first choice ended up being Star Trax, a personal favorite of mine that will hopefully encompass the essence of what this column is all about. My original copy was handed down to me in 1996 from a friend, and has since been in and out of my hands at least three times. I was finally just recently able to recover a copy after years of trying to track another one down, and to my delight it was just as good all these years later as it was back then.

This tape brings back memories of hot & sweaty house parties, long car rides to random check-point raves, and grindin-ass fools makin’ shit twerk in south side barrios all over Chicagoland. This tape is a straight-up ghetto house banger, a sound that was especially huge in the Midwest (and is probably responsible for Daft Punk’s entire career) but is in no way tacky. Seminal Chicago ghetto house labels DanceMania and Relief Records make a dtrong showing all over this mix, along with early tunes from legendary producers Fast Eddie, Green Velvet, Paul Johnson and DJ Funk.

The (still) unknown DJ who laid this mix down could have been plucked straight out of any house party at the time, and the mix contains tons of edits and reworks that I’m still trying to track down! The packaging (and side A) positively scream commercial studio mix, but I’m still pretty sure this was mixed live. The jock behind the decks is not at all afraid to abruptly cut tracks in (or quickly slap them out), and the tape captures a lot of the attitude and style I still hope to see from DJ’s when I’m out and about.

This mix remains a true mystery tape to me and my friends (we still have no idea who was responsible for it), but it was definitely professionally duplicated (printed in white across the side of a clear cassette case with nothing but a telephone number).

I always had fun hypothesizing what DJ was behind this (anybody out there with inside information, please pass it on)! What’s especially curious about this tape is that the first song on side A is “Cotton Eyed Joe”…. um, yeah we won’t go there (nor present that side to you here) but trust me, Side B to this day is where it’s at!

Thanks again to Brian S. from Wisconsin for taking the time to digitize his copy of this classic tape for me. This has given me the opportunity to share one of my favorite tapes of all time, Star Trax, with a whole new audience.

Of course ripped tapes aren’t going to be of the best audio quality, but after years of research and easy listening on the deephousepage archive, I’ve learned that inspiring content doesn’t always require perfect sound quality!

So, without any further hold-up, I present to you the infamous, ghetto-fabulous, yin to DJ Funk’s yang, inspirational, and (in my opinion) classic music mix that is Star Trax!

Grab the mix on the Sizzled servers at: 
http://sizzledchicago.com/guestmixes/MixTapeChronicles-StarTraxx.mp3

Or from Underground Existence dot info at:
http://www.undergroundexistence.info/StarTraxx.mp3

Until next month,

Bryan (BAI-EE) Balli

http://smoothagentrecords.com

http://myspace.com/truefamilyunit

http://undergroundexistence.info

 

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