Influences: Mister Saturday Night’s Justin Carter

PM Dawn’s Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience was the first CD I ever bought. The big hit was “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.” You couldn’t turn on pop radio in 1991 without hearing it. It’s a great song, and I’m sure it’s the one that made me buy the album, but the memories of ten-year-old me listening to it in my fake wood-paneled bedroom all center around “Comatose,” a song with a killer groove and rapid-fire conscious rap. It’s kinda like slow, breaky hip-house. Also, it should be noted that there was something that was totally uncool about these guys despite the fact that they were getting played on the radio and clearly very talented. Because I was a pretty uncool kid, I identified with them. It was nice that there was this pudgy, kind of silly looking guy out there doing his thing. It made me feel better about who I was. I often wonder what these guys are doing today. I hope they’re living good lives somewhere, still making music.

Alright, so this is some crazy stuff right here. Right around the time I bought that PM Dawn CD, give or take a year, I also bought a Carman CD called The Standard. Carman was an evangelical preacher/rapper/singer/entertainer from New Jersey. I grew up in a pretty religious house, and a good chunk of the music I consumed was specifically made for young Christian kids. Looking back now, I realize that much of that music was aimed to indoctrinate me with a very specific, very narrow world view. This song is the pinnacle of that – a middle-aged man half-rapping to a young audience about the US heading into the gutter because of some kind of attack on religious freedom (a theme that was hammered home in most churches I went to growing up). After the verse came the most unfunky chorus you’ve ever heard with the lyrics, “The only hope for America is Jesus.” I include the song here because it, and other music like it from that era, still does influence me – but probably in the reverse way it was originally intended to. I think about songs like this when I think of the rise of Trump or the oppression of trans people, because to me they remind me that I, myself, was susceptible to pretty backwards ideas at one point in my life – and it reminds me that everyone has the ability to change their viewpoint.

I remember the day my dad got the cassette of Al Jarreau’s Heart’s Horizon in the mail. I was seven. We were going somewhere in his red Toyota pickup, and he popped it in the tape deck. After a few songs, “10K High” came on. I’m pretty sure he didn’t like it (he was pretty anti-drum machine), but I loooooved it. I made him play it over and over and over again. It’s probably the first song that I ever listened to with any regularity that had sampling and drum machines in it, and it was also the first song that I felt like was MY song. I actually hadn’t listened to it in years, probably since I was less than ten. I should’ve listened sooner! Still great! I just ordered a copy on vinyl.

In Junior High School, there was a group of cool kids who I desperately wanted to be down with. They loved Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, skateboarding and, most importantly, Pavement. In an effort to ingratiate myself to them, I forced myself to like Pavement. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was their most popular album, so I got it and just listened to it on repeat until I liked it. (I specifically remember being in the shower with my boombox blaring when I finally got it.) This was definitely the first time I’d challenged myself to listen to music that I didn’t immediately like on first pass, and despite the fact that I was just doing it to fit in (junior high school, man), it’s paid off and allowed me to expand my musical palette over the years. And I still love Pavement.

Before I was ever a DJ, my creative outlet was playing the guitar and singing. These are the heights I aspired to.

I really wanted to include this amazing Jason Lindner Big Band tune called “Hexophony” from the Jazz Underground Live at Smalls album from 1998. I got that CD when I still lived in North Carolina, and I was trying understand what jazz was all about. When I first moved to New York, I found myself regularly at Jason’s Monday-night gigs in the tiny little basement at Smalls, and they were amazing. Sadly, though, it’s hard to find any of his recordings on youtube, so I’m putting up Brian Blade Fellowship’s “Crooked Creek,” which is still representative of the late ’90s/early ’00s New York jazz scene that was the gateway to all other styles of jazz for me. Blade, like Lindner, composes gorgeous melodies, and on this album (Perceptual), he actually features at least a couple guys who were in Lindner’s big band.

The first song at the first show I ever saw in NYC. Mos Def sat down behind a grand piano onstage and started playing these chords; Questlove walked out onto the stage unannounced, sat down on the drums and laid down the beat; and then Kweli walked out and started to MC. Goosebumps!

I have praised this song plenty of times before, included it in other lists and caned it to death on the Mister Sunday and Saturday Night dancefloors, but this list wouldn’t be complete without it. It’s the first house track that I fell in love with, hearing it week after week after week at Body and Soul.

Most of the people I know that worship Prince are Purple Rain Prince fans or Dirty Mind Prince fans (or bootleg Prince fans). I love Prince from all eras, but the Prince I love most is Diamonds and Pearls Prince. It must have been the time I was most exposed to his music. My mom had the CD, and I remember seeing the videos for “Cream” and “Diamonds and Pearls” and this one on MTV and being mesmerized.

In my freshman year of college, I volunteered in the kitchen at God’s Love We Deliver, an organization dedicated to delivering hot meals to New Yorkers living with AIDS. The org was founded by David Geffen, and it was housed in a building on 6th Avenue that still bears his name. One of the perks of working at God’s Love was that there were often promo CDs of Geffen Records artists. One day after a shift, I grabbed Hell Among the Yearlings by Gillian Welch. It was the first country music I ever loved. “Nowhere Man and the Whiskey Girl” is beautiful and melancholy, indicative of the rest of the album and the rest of her career. She’s a treasure.