“Last Call?” 99 Prince Street, David Mancuso, The Loft and an Unprecedented Year Of Loss for Our Famous Entertainment Stars: 2016 “Whatz Going ON??”

As Barbara Streisand and the late Donna Summer (I still cannot believe Donna died so soon…) sang back in 1979, “Enough is Enough“ with these losses, but somehow, I do not think they will end with the conclusion of 2016.

OMG! What a tragic year for us who have lived via our stars like Prince, Glenn Frey, David Bowie and many more!! Is it our supernatural Baby Boomer karma catching up to us? All of this reinforces my reckoning with our human mortality. And you?

At the rate that our musical stars are dying I might be next!lol Even though I was only a Dee Jay on the radio, who played their hits!
I have experienced many strange events by being part of the media. For example, I was working the board on The Zone, 104.5FM, which was only one hundred yards away from the scene where the NFL’s Tennessee Titan’s legendary quarterback, Steve McNair was murdered by his extramarital lover. I digress; this article is about 2016!
Can we dig deeper into this? Is there a conspiracy about that is suddenly taking away American icons rapidly via some diabolical plan? Is it “ISIS”-related? Most likely, Nyet.

On the heels of learning about Colonel Abrams from the list I link later in this blog, I peruse it again, in order to do a possible year-end summary of the many important stars and musicians we lost this year, when I come across the name, “David Mancuso”. I’d skimmed this list many times during the past week and saw his name only this evening now, over a drink, while at a lonely, hidden bar in a southern town. This trend may well continue into 2017! I hope not…

I remember the shiny cobblestoned streets, often moistened by a recent rain as I, the still a bit shy, baby DJ, freshly graduated from Adelphi University, crossed to visit him at 99 Prince Street, the home of David Mancuso and the first Record Pool I ever belonged to which was responsible for many of the vinyl 12” DJ versions I own. Sometimes I left with just a couple big, album-sized envelopes and other times, I could hardly walk to the subway station, if I hadn’t driven there, parking several blocks away as parking was difficult in that part of “the Village” in Manhattan, New York.

David was kind of “scary” to the 1970s me. Not in the mean sense of the word, but just the kind of fun, strange cat that I would likely become! He briefly would chill with me, imparting heavy conversation sometimes [I didn’t always understand, but pretended to] and schooled me about stuff that I had no idea about though I now still relate to as “an old Black American Hippie”, which is, at my core, who I am! Many other Baby Boomers are similar to me, but will not admit it because of the un-corporate connotation of “Hippie”. I say “f-ck that!” Be who you are (another famous, educational song lyric!). David would agree. I wish I was him sometimes now!

David Mancuso was mysterious to me. I remember always wanting to smoke a joint with him! Ha! Maybe we did once, or I smelled it while copping my sides. “I can’t remember”, lol Those were the daze. How I came to find him, I cannot really recall. It must have been via one of my major record company Promotional contacts, my own research, Billboard magazine, or word-of-mouth via other DJs…I apologize for being so vague about this, which I am usually so succinct – at the time of this writing, but I do not have all of my belongings with me to research into my past, as it used to be when I began to blog. ‘Working on changing that asap! I always left there feeling part of the greater DJ game! I knew I was a real “player” and party motivator! All of that started, by the way, in my senior year at the now defunct, Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, New York City and going forward from there (as was mandatory in those great days) as an undergraduate DJ on the campus of Adelphi University in Garden City, Nassau County on Long Island.
This is as close to the David Mancuso that I remember:

And as I write this, I receive the news that naughty, inner-conflicted “Wham” boy Gorge Michael died over Christmas weekend. He cheated death many times as attested to here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/rob-sheffield-on-why-george-michael-was-a-true-pop-visionary-w457788

Again, this is a summary inspired by the passing of my 99 Prince Street Record Pool Founder, David Mancuso; yet another “nail in our collective coffin” during twenty-sixteen. Is there a larger message that we should be hearing behind these passings? I think so!
To encompass all of the disappointing hurt in words of this year’s losses is difficult. And again, as I write this, the news of Carrie Fisher of “Star Wars” (the original) fame now passing-away at only the age of sixty (60)! WTF??

How did the passing of Gene Wilder, Prince, Craig Sager, Ron Glass, Alan Thicke, Maurice White, George Kennedy, Patty Duke, Merle Haggard, Pearl Washington, Billy Paul, Muhammad Ali, Morley Safer, Bobby Hutcherson, Hugh O’Brian, Bobby Vee, Gwen Ifill, Clarence Reid or Florence Henderson and others you can view on the link below, impact you this year? We all have our “heroes”, right? There is no shame in claiming them.

http://www.syracuse.com/celebrity-news/index.ssf/2016/01/celebrity_deaths_in_2016_famous_photos.html

Please share in the “Comments” area in remembrance…of them. I pray upon the souls of all these giants we’ve lost and that some of what I have written in hommage has educated you and made sense.

**PickHitt: and just as I clicked “Publish”, the news of another beloved of my lifetime and mother of Carrie Fisher (I didn’t KNOW that!), Debbie Reynolds joined the parade of 2016 stars leaving the physical world. “Wow”…again.

Nu Music Review: Madison Park, “MIX”, featuring Beechkraft

Just in-time for 2015 spring (beat) breaks, here is a cool cabin fever buster! Whether you are a DJ seeking spice for your sets or a “civilian” music lover, these fifty-four minutes of sound has something to give your Mr. Spockish quizzical eyebrow pause to do its thing.
From the first cookin’ bounce of “MIX” [BasicLUX BL9228-6; release date, March 31, 2015 ], I was reuniting with some old friends. I thought to myself, “The Cools have done it again!” James and DeAnna Cool, better known as Madison Park, are now collaborating with a Dutch dance music producer known as Beechcraft for this “MIX”, a well-conceived fourth full-length album CD since I first heard about and reviewed them for www.about.com back in the mid-2000s. It is very difficult to find out any bio on Beechkraft, who is also a Netherlands composer for television and film. Apparently he prefers to remain a bit of an anomaly – I cannot pinpoint exactly what he added to their sound, but suspect it is the upbeat, spirited-cadence of several of these tracks that he is responsible for. If I am incorrect, please educate me in the comments section below. At times, this album has a Pet Shop Boys feel to it – not a bad thing in my musical universe!
Madison Park, as always, features a very clean, sophisticated club music sound stapled by impeccable electronic editing and, of course, DeAnna’s hypnotically soothing lyrics via enchanting, wispy- velvet vocals. Having gone thru the disc multiple times, the first track, “Tonight” is the one I sweat the most. “Warm When I’m Alone” is next on my hot parade – I dig the uptempo groove – as future floor fillers!
In total, “MIX” grooves like a theatrical play or movie soundtrack with various moods and tempo. The cover art features DeAnna as the “I” in Mix, by the way, while the inner seat for the disc has three philosophical sayings for us to ponder.
Since 2002, downtempo duo, Madison Park has continued to produce brilliant music through a turbulent music industry era and are best known to me for their Billboard Dance remake of Roxy Music and in-particular, my favorite song, “More Than This”. Of-note here is their downtempo version of the David Bowie classic, “Let’s Dance”, which I envision as mixable within pancake turner late night chill sets. I think that it, like several other tracks should fade instead of ending cold. A chop ending works well on the acoustic selection, “Words”, track eight, naturally; fades are more disc-jockey-friendly.
From the dream-scape of “Parts of Me” to the bongos heard on “I Am Your Beachbreeze” or a cathedral-house anthem on “Sunrise (Next Level MIX)” and the lite drum & bass treatment of “Every Single Day”, this “MIX” garners a listenable, danceable four-of-five up/downtempo rated touch of house married with Portishead stars, which will cure whatever malaise the winter of 2015 touched you with. Remember…”Itz IN da MIX”.

Pickhitt: James Cool tells me that “Parts of Me” was the first single released in-advance of “MIX” and is in it’s 13th week charting on the World Chill-Lounge Charts at the time of this revu publishing. The video for “MIX” is being shot and edited at the time of this writing and will be available by the end of March, 2015. Then…y’all will see it here (hopefully FIRST!).