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Music

I Remember the First Time I Met Cajmere

DJ DB recalls the fortuitous meeting with Warner Bros that brought Cajmere to American ears.

DJ DB has been a fixture in dance music through every renaissance the style has experienced. His archive of DJ mixes and flyers from the '90s rave era are a time capsule of electronic music's first worldwide explosion, and in NO SCHOOL LIKE THE OLD SKOOL he shares some of these treasures. Hear new shit he likes here, or connect with him here.

One of the most fun projects I've ever worked on was signing Cajmere (AKA Curtis Jones), as his alter-ego of Green Velvet, to our Warner Brothers-owned label F-111. This was in the mid to late 90s—the last era before the Napster takeover. Major record labels still thought they were untouchable. They threw large sums of money at non-commercial artists, while A&R people like me and my partner, Andrew Goldstone, were supplied with ridiculous paychecks, three-year contracts and wicked expense accounts. Jordan Belfort would've approved.

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Warner Bros, like all the other major labels, had seen Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy explode all over the charts and thought, "We need an 'electronica' label too!" So they gave Andrew and me our own imprint—along with the power to sign whoever we wanted. To us, Curtis was the obvious choice. So we flew to Chicago to meet the man and talk business. He struck me as warm and funny while basically living in his own alternate universe.

This photo is from the Miami Winter Music Conference in 1999, at our F-111 label launch party. I'm finishing my set and explaining to Curtis the weird mixer that had been supplied. Andrew looks on nervously.

Like most great homegrown DJs from Chicago or Detroit, at the time Curtis was largely ignored by the rest of America while finding massive popularity in Europe. We wanted to show the American mainstream how awesome he was, so before we released an album of new material, we put together a collection of his best tracks from the last five or six years—tracks he'd released on his own label.

Sadly, our efforts at Warner Bros were falling on deaf ears. No one but the two people who had put us in F-111 gave a fuck, so everything from marketing to promotion to distribution was lacking. The record barely got any attention at all. So little attention, in fact, that it doesn't even show up on Discogs. We were later poached to do A&R for Ministry of Sound, but before we left, we were able do something pretty unusual in the major label game: give ownership of Curtis' masters back to him.

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I'm stoked that in the last couple of years, Curtis' forward-thinking music has experienced some kind of renaissance, with both DJs and listeners rediscovering his singular talent. He's now more in-demand than he's ever been. Too Underground For The Main Stage was one of the best dance records of last year—and the title, a winking nod to his cult status, is just perfect.

Here's the video for the 2010 rework of his 1992 classic, "Percolator," where Caj shows a bunch of super cute kids how to do the percolator. (Also, don't miss Jamie Jones' 2012 remix of the same track.)

I also feel like Disclosure's awesome hit, "When A Fire Starts To Burn," wouldn't exist if Curtis hadn't made "Preacherman" in 1993. Listen to these tracks back-to-back and tell me you don't hear the blatant parallels.

During that Warner Bros meeting many years ago, Curtis showed us a note he'd scribbled on the way to meet us. It contained the lyrics for a song idea which later became "Gat (The Great American Tragedy)." He let me keep the note, but annoyingly I can't find it. While ripping my apartment apart to look for it, I did stumble across this page from the long-gone but essential UK magazine, Muzik. Curtis and I are at a party for Sm:)e Communications in 1997—two years before the F-111 party, but in the same city, same time of year, and even the same rooftop.

I also found these classic 90s rave flyers from Cajmere's parties in the Midwest and Liverpool, UK.

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Curtis is a wonderful anomaly in this industry—both a sick DJ and and talented poet, using his skill with language to make funny yet astute social commentary. There's never been anyone quite like him. To finish things off, here's a classic Cajmere mix from 1997, sent over to THUMP from the man himself.

DJ DB has been a fixture in dance music through every renaissance the style has experienced. His archive of DJ mixes and flyers from the '90s rave era are a time capsule of electronic music's first worldwide explosion, and in NO SCHOOL LIKE THE OLD SKOOL he shares some of these treasures. Hear new shit he likes here, or connect with him here.

One of the most fun projects I've ever worked on was signing Cajmere (AKA Curtis Jones), as his alter-ego of Green Velvet, to our Warner Brothers-owned label F-111. This was in the mid to late 90s—the last era before the Napster takeover. Major record labels still thought they were untouchable. They threw large sums of money at non-commercial artists, while A&R people like me and my partner, Andrew Goldstone, were supplied with ridiculous paychecks, three-year contracts and wicked expense accounts. Jordan Belfort would've approved. 

Warner Bros, like all the other major labels, had seen Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy explode all over the charts and thought, "We need an 'electronica' label too!" So they gave Andrew and me our own imprint—along with the power to sign whoever we wanted. To us, Curtis was the obvious choice. So we flew to Chicago to meet the man and talk business. He struck me as warm and funny while basically living in his own alternate universe. 

This photo is from the Miami Winter Music Conference in 1999, at our F-111 label launch party. I'm finishing my set and explaining to Curtis the weird mixer that had been supplied. Andrew looks on nervously.

Like most great homegrown DJs from Chicago or Detroit, at the time Curtis was largely ignored by the rest of America while finding massive popularity in Europe. We wanted to show the American mainstream how awesome he was, so before we released an album of new material, we put together a collection of his best tracks from the last five or six years—tracks he'd released on his own label.

Sadly, our efforts at Warner Bros were falling on deaf ears. No one but the two people who had put us in F-111 gave a fuck, so everything from marketing to promotion to distribution was lacking. The record barely got any attention at all. So little attention, in fact, that it doesn't even show up on Discogs. We were later poached to do A&R for Ministry of Sound, but before we left, we were able do something pretty unusual in the major label game: give ownership of Curtis' masters back to him. 

I'm stoked that in the last couple of years, Curtis' forward-thinking music has experienced some kind of renaissance, with both DJs and listeners rediscovering his singular talent. He's now more in-demand than he's ever been. Too Underground For The Main Stage was one of the best dance records of last year—and the title, a winking nod to his cult status, is just perfect.

Here's the video for the 2010 rework of his 1992 classic, "Percolator," where Caj shows a bunch of super cute kids how to do the percolator. (Also, don't miss Jamie Jones' 2012 remix of the same track.) 

I also feel like Disclosure's awesome hit, "When A Fire Starts To Burn," wouldn't exist if Curtis hadn't made "Preacherman" in 1993. Listen to these tracks back-to-back and tell me you don't hear the blatant parallels. 

During that Warner Bros meeting many years ago, Curtis showed us a note he'd scribbled on the way to meet us. It contained the lyrics for a song idea which later became "Gat (The Great American Tragedy)." He let me keep the note, but annoyingly I can't find it. While ripping my apartment apart to look for it, I did stumble across this page from the long-gone but essential UK magazine, Muzik. Curtis and I are at a party for Sm:)e Communications in 1997—two years before the F-111 party, but in the same city, same time of year, and even the same rooftop. 

I also found these classic 90s rave flyers from Cajmere's parties in the Midwest and Liverpool, UK.

Curtis is a wonderful anomaly in this industry—both a sick DJ and and talented poet, using his skill with language to make funny yet astute social commentary. There's never been anyone quite like him. To finish things off, here's a classic Cajmere mix from 1997, sent over to THUMP from the man himself. 

Connect with him here:

Green Velvet on Discogs

Cajmere on Discogs

Cajmere on Facebook

Connect with him here:

Green Velvet on Discogs

Cajmere on Discogs

Cajmere on Facebook