Spotlight: Things Overheard at the Record Store
A couple of DJs walk into a record store. There is no punchline, just a conversation that could easily go on for several hours.
Dave Palumbo, proprietor of Spiral Scratch Records, the store that Malik Von Saint and Marcos Udagawa agree to meet me at to discuss their record collections and their new weekly party gigs, sits in the background flipping a record. The record is some version of David Bowie’s “Looking For a Friend” that I’ve never heard. As we browse through records, I try to make a connection between the lyrics of the song and the story I’m about to write about a couple of DJs playing the music they love—because man, would that make a great intro. Luckily for me, the song is pretty broad. Bowie is just looking for a friend. Von Saint and Udagawa, our subjects, who many in the Buffalo music scene know because they’ve been doing their respective things for a while now, are friends. They met a few years ago in the Pink. It was probably around 2:30am and Von Saint was the DJ that night. He was sick of playing the Buzzcocks so he threw on a record he had just found. He tells the story of how he found the record, because we’re here to talk about records.
“It’s kind of funny, I picked up a few records down at this place, People’s Records in Detroit, one of my favorite record stores,” says Von Saint who is wearing a leather jacket and a black bowler hat over his long black hair.
I jot down a note to remind me to check out the record store if I’m ever in Detroit.
“[The store’s owner] Johnny Ill is an amazing guy, and he gave me a bunch of records to try out and I was like OK whatever this is totally out of my element. One of the records was by Cerrone, it was a 12 inch called ‘Supernature.’”
I’ve never heard of it, but later I remember to look it up on YouTube.
It’s an Italodisco song from the 1970s with super polished poppy synthesizers and a papery bass groove. It’s kind of cheesy and the exact opposite of anything the Buzzcocks ever made—but it is from the same era of music and for some reason I have a feeling that it made perfect sense playing from the speakers of the Pink at 2:42am on a Saturday night or whenever. People probably instinctively switched from PBR to some other canned beer that sounded vaguely more European. Like Geneseé.
“This is great Dave, Ministry 12” singles? Holy crap,” says Von Saint, interrupting his own story.
But, after making that rare find, he eventually continues. “I was at the Pink and I was getting a little bored playing the Buzzcocks so I was like, I’m just going to play this song. All of the sudden [Udagawa’s] head popped in the booth and that was pretty much how we met. I was like, ‘Wow, this guy knows this song?’ This was three years ago.”
I guess you could say Udagawa was just looking for a friend. Von Saint soon suggested they spin records together.
“He was like, ‘we should do something together,’ and I didn’t really take him seriously,” says Udagawa. But he eventually did and earlier this year the two decided to start playing weekly parties under the moniker Snake & Stylus. Their first was at ABV on New Year’s Eve. It went well and now the two take it even more seriously. Von Saint quit his other jobs to focus on the project. Udagawa has been spinning records for many years and tells me he wants to really focus on his mixing and building energy during their sets.
“The first thing that got me into DJing and stuff like that is I was in Europe during the acid house Manchester kinda movement. Rock and rollers were taking ecstasy and making dance music,” says Udagawa. ”I was 15. I have family in Spain. I would meet kids there and they would take me out and we would see the sun coming up before you knew it. It was all that Balearic music, cosmic disco, acid house.”
After living in Europe, Udagawa moved to New York City where he gigged several times a week. He says he doesn’t miss lugging hundreds of pounds of records up his six-story walk up.
We discuss more Balearic music, acid house, and cosmic disco.
“There are some classic dudes who have been not getting the credit, but have been doing that [Balearic] sound for a long time,” he says. He mentions Andrew Weatherall. He wants to focus on that vibe for the new weekly party that the two will spin at each Saturday night at the Blue Monk.
Von Saint’s little poofy white American Eskimo dog sits in the corner of the store waiting for a chance to casually nip at me as I try to pet him. The dog’s name is Cannoli, or Prince Cannoli for those who might want to follow the pup on Facebook.
“This is more about pushing the boundaries of creativity, and also just pulling shit out of our ass,” says Von Saint, advising me with a gesture not to let my hand wander too close to Cannoli’s cute little teeth.
Their gig at ABV on Fridays is a little different. There they’ll focus on punk and disco records.
“ABV started because we wanted a place to do the dance rock and roll thing besides the Pink. We want to do dance mixes with rock and roll. Everyone is doing hip hop and this and that so we wanted to do dance mixes with rock and roll,” says Von Saint.
The discussion moves into techno, what Udagawa refers to as “New York mud club” artists like ESG and Liquid Liquid, and psychedelic rock.
“Paul McCartney, “Temporary Secretary,’” Udagawa starts to explain. “Those experimentations with keyboards. Every rocker at some point eventually got a synthesizer and tried something out and the record failed and those were the records that kinda…” Von Saint finishes his sentence “came up with really cool sounds. You never know what you’ll find.”
As we prepare to leave the store, Von Saint makes a great discovery; a copy of Lil Louis’ classic 1989 house tune “French Kiss.” It’s $1. Udagawa advises Von Saint to make the purchase.
I ask Udagawa how big his record collection is now. There’s a long pause and he grabs his beard, which has a patch of grey hair right in the middle. We hang around the record store a little bit longer.