Bubz remained a creative partner and confidant to Amp until his death in His relationship with Clinton allowed him to access the music industry, hone his skills on tour and create demand for himself as a session musician. Since so many pieces have come through here, Amp likes to keep his newer pieces upstairs until he gets comfortable with them.
When they feel more familiar, he moves them into his basement studio space. Amp leads us into the basement, where there are two separate setups, a vocal booth, drum kit, couch, and a shelf filled with a few hundred records with a TV on top. Next to the couch lies the current iteration of his live show, which he explains is sometimes perhaps awkwardly billed as a DJ set. In the last few years, all of his performances have been a combination of DJing and live musicianship.
These hybrid sets have had different configurations, but essentially consist of a keyboard, MPC, standalone DJ controller and a microphone. Bluntly, artists who have accomplished a fraction of his accolades can sometimes be pompous, as if their time is inherently worth more. This happened as a natural progression rather than because of any one, significant event. There was an admitted learning curve which drew some ire from his DJ peers, for moving into their world before his skills were polished.
He remembers early moments when his transitions were off, or when he would let songs play out so that the audience would applaud. In DJing and in live performance, Amp focuses on the audience being satisfied, and everything else is chalked up to a learning process; trying new things out and making use of errors.
While many have turned to playing on live streams and meeting Bandcamp Friday deadlines, Amp has kept busy in his basement. This has been the de-facto space for most of his creative process, recording with local artists and finalising music for release. He plays a few tracks off the Denon, jamming some loose riffs and basslines. The funk is strong down here. Amp is a teacher and collaborator, a trait he shares with Mike Banks of Underground Resistance, a fellow Detroit mainstay.
This build would become instrumental in the development of hip-hop in Detroit. The house was filled with friends, family and well-known musicians, including the ladies known as Dames Brown , who returned home to Detroit last week after a lengthy European tour with Fiddler. Amp also used the occasion to celebrate the life of his recently deceased brother, Charles Fiddler.
One hundred and fifty well-dressed women, mostly from Windsor, filled the second-floor designer department at Saks Fifth Avenue in Troy on Wednesday at an event benefiting Windsor's Transition to Betterness. But the knowledge of those things, look how much richer that makes a Galaxy 2 Galaxy record, or the way that Mike Banks can interrelate chords, I think it adds to it.
But coming from a medium where people are borrowing from a very musical history — when you look at disco, when you look at where jazz and funk meet, this is a very musical thing.
You hear the same thing in a Basic Channel record, you hear the same thing in a Theo Parrish record, a never-ending groove. It has a much longer history. I totally agree. I heard that same thing as a kid.
My dad was from St. Probably 18 people. It was kind of scary at first because I had no idea what to play. Were there people in the group who had played with James Brown? Yes, there was Maceo Parker, the saxophonist. He was main person who had played with James Brown and he was the band leader, the one to yell at you, to tell you either to stop playing or….
How did he communicate that on stage? Did he have a special kind of nod or something? He was the MD, the musical director, at the time. Once you fucked up, he would look at you with this real ugly face. So you would stop playing or play something different. Yeah, it was. It brought me a long way and I learned a lot from it. I always thought it would be an education, a schooling, but I learned how to arrange a band, and how to make things work within a band in terms of business, as far as tour management, moving around on a bus, marketing.
I did a Seal album, I did a Maxwell album. The thing that I was always keen on as an artist was to leave my ego at home. I left the ego at home. I went home, the next year he called me back and said he wanted me to play on his album. I think that humility, having that sense of just being there for people and giving, is what got me more into getting more.
I was giving a lot. Kenny Dixon Jr. How did your association come about with him? I feel house has been a pretty boring genre the last couple of years, but the stuff you guys have done is pretty interesting. How did that come about? This is Moodymann. Exactly, I just work and I do things. And I think a lot of us in Detroit do things for each other in a way. Because I could add something that could be totally too dark, or I could add something totally too bright, as far as tonality in a record.
Some things need chords that lay down, some things need chords that are rhythmic, some songs need basslines. So it made me think economical in the way that I had to go back and listen to all of this music. Talk about working with Slum Village a little bit more, I love them. Jay Dee was the kid that created all those tracks.
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