Around that time, I’d gotten my hands on a Roland TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines, and it quickly became my pride and joy. I’d program tracks on my new toy and play them during my sets each weekend, using the club as my own private focus group. I’d watch and study as 1,500 high school and college kids moved their bodies to the upbeat, exotic sounds I’d been making.
I’d even mix and re-edit tracks right there on the turntables, using a synthesizer to add sounds. I’d add a new melody here, or experiment with different drum tracks there. Pushing the envelope with my sets and using the club as a space to explore new sounds — whether they were my own or new discoveries I made at the record store — became an integral part of my approach to DJing. It became my signature sound.
One day as I was perusing the new releases at Importes Etc, the local 12-inch store, an assistant manager name Frank Sells approached me in the aisles. As I sifted through crates of vinyl, he casually told me that people had been coming by to ask about a record I’d been playing during my sets. “Any idea what it is?” he asked.
I couldn’t figure out which track he was referring to, so he asked if I’d make a cassette recording of my set that weekend. The following week, we figured out that the track in question was one I’d made using my TR-808, which would later be titled “On & On,” itself a remake of a vinyl record that had been stolen from me a couple months prior.
Sells had an idea: “We could sell a shitload of these if you could get them pressed on vinyl.” I was shocked. While I always knew the record was great, the confluence of events that had led me to create my version of “On & On” has been so unlikely.
The original version, also titled “On & On,” had been introduced to me by my brother Wayne Williams, who was also a DJ and the inspiration for getting into the game. Wayne had bought a “bootleg” record (I don’t recall the title), a mix of various disco songs that pilfered the best aspects from different tunes and brought them together to create the ultimate disco record. The only crediting info on the record sleeve was “Remix by Mach.” Wayne used to play the A-side mix sometimes — a 15-minute-long pre-mixed version — to give us a bathroom break during our sets.
One day while sitting in my living room, I flipped the record over to check out the B-side and found a bootleg mashup. This song used the bassline from Player One’s “Space Invaders,”► the “toot toot, heeeeey, beep beep” refrain from Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,”► and the horns from Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown.”► It was called “On & On” and I knew right away that it was special. The first time I played it in a set, it created such a frenzy on the dancefloor that I immediately made it my signature record, using it as an intro every time I DJed. Looking back, it was probably the first mashup ever created.