Exclusive Interview with Al Pizarro

Al Pizarro, a prominent DJ in New York, a Billboard Magazine Reporter and co-owner of SURE and VIP record pools.

 

Throughout his career, he earned gold and platinum records from artists such as Ice Cube, The Sugarhill Gang, Karen Young, Shannon, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Naughty by Nature, Exposé, and for albums like The Chronic by Dr. Dre and the Above the Rim soundtrack. VIP Record Pool was recognized by Gavin Magazine as the best Rap Record pool in the U.S. from 1996 to 1999.

 

Al stayed involved in the music scene by working at clubs such as La Mirage, Tapestry, Peoples, 109 Gallery, Skate Key, and Roller World, and was known for discovering talents like Judy Torres, Information Society, Exposé, Vaughan Mason, Sugarhill Gang, and Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force. His concerts were hosted at iconic venues like The Tunnel, Palladium, 1018, and Homebase.

 

Today we had an exclusive chance to Interview Al Pizarro and take a glimpse at the history of DJ Record Pools in USA. The host of the interview is CL (Corey Llewellyn, founder and current owner of DigiWaxx record pool – first ever digital record pool in US)

 

CL: So, first of all, Al, thanks for agreeing to do the interview and just talk about your history and talk about the history of record pools and how they affected the world musically. I’d like to just open up by starting with you, your background. Who’s Al Pizarro? Where are you from? How did you get connected into the music business and really what inspired you to do so? You know, we all have our background stories, but what’s your origin story?

 

AL: Love of music, I would say, because I was a rough-neck gangster teenager in the projects and always in trouble, but the music was something that I always gravitated to. So that was in public school. I was buying 45 for the $5 & $10 at store and playing them on my mom’s stereo and put the speaker to make sure that the stereo was close enough so that way because the speaker was detachable from the stereo system that she had. I had the TV, I had the stereo system, I had the radio all combined. The speakers were detachable, but it could only go but so far. I had to push my mom’s stereo system as far as I can, take the speaker and face it out the window and then put the ’45 Spindle, if you remember that. The ’45 Spindle.

 

CL: I remember the Spindle, yeah. 

AL: It stopped off the ’45, and then it would just go, and it would play, and the other one would go, and it would play, and that was the deal. That was my first experience as far as playing music to people. I don’t know why I was doing it. I like music, but it got me excited that people were outside, listened to it, and they would say, oh, they called me Little Al. What’s going on? I would pay it again and all that stuff. So, I spent a lot of my jump change that I was making just by 45. And doing that. And that was my saving Grace, but it was a troublesome time.

 

CL: And give us some context in terms of the year. What period was this in your life? How old were you and what year around was it?

AL: I had to be about 11. Because I had to be probably in the fourth grade. Fourth grade, thinking I’m grown already.

 

CL: Thanks. And what year was this in New York City?

AL: Man, if I was born in ’56, so that’s ’65. That’s nine years, so like ’67.

 

CL: Wow. Shout out to New York. Okay, that’s the origins. Okay, dope. What proceeded from there? Was this your, I guess, your genesis into becoming a DJ?

AL: I didn’t know that at that time. Imagine that I am hanging out with real gangsters, and when I say gangsters, I mean the guys who wore the colors, the Satin Skull, etc. There was a clubhouse in my block.

 

 Those guys all grew up in a block, but they were members of that gang. I would go there, and I was the kid that would run and go get them the beer. Then I will play music for them inside their clubhouse.

 

I’ll play the 45s, and That’s how… That was my introduction into just playing for somebody. It wasn’t a DJ set up. It was just not even a record player. A record player, a couple of speakers that they had, and I just put the record one after another and just put it on and played for them and all that. Doing that, they just said, “Hey, little out, you’re going to play some music?” I said, “Yeah, I’m going to play some music”, and I will play a little bit of music for them as long as I could stay there because my mom will be like, I don’t want to be hanging out with that people and all that stuff. I would have to come back home as soon as she caught me out there with them. But it was exciting times because who figured? I was getting… I don’t know if you remember the… I don’t know if you even remember this.

 

What was it? The Columbia something house. There used to be a magazine called The TV Guide. See, I’m really giving some history to people. When we didn’t have cable, our televisions were basically our source of entertainment. But they came up with a magazine that was The TV Guide. They gave me a guide on what was happening on what channels every single. The back of that was subscription to whatever. If you wanted a slingshot, you wanted a dick, you fill out the coupon, you mail it out, and they send it to you. It was the Columbia Something House.

 

CL: “Record House”.

AL: Yeah, probably “Record House”. But I know I became a member and I had to pay like $0.05 or something, $2, some crazy amount every month. But they sent me records. They sent me albums. I was ecstatic, bro, because now I’m getting a full album. I couldn’t afford to buy an album. I got a full album.

 

Natalia: You said you had the subscription for this magazine, The TV Guide. What was the frequency? Was it monthly or weekly?

AL: Weekly. It wasn’t a subscription. You bought it in the store. You bought it in the grocery store. They didn’t mail it to you. You bought it in the grocery store, The TV Guide. And if you wanted to know what was happening on your television set for the rest of the week, every week, you bought The TV Guide.

 

Natalia: How much was it? Just curious.

AL: Like 25 cents.

 

Natalia: Oh, wow. You say they were sending you records; you mean was it mailing you vinyl?

AL: Yes. Brand-new vinyl. It will come in a box, and there’s going to be two or three vinyl. Every time they sent me a vinyl, they gave me a catalog of what do you want for the next month. All I do is check it. I check what I wanted, and they sent it to me. I couldn’t go more than… I don’t think I couldn’t go more than four. I couldn’t even buy more than four hours because I was locked in a price every month.

 

Columbia had it going on, boy. They had it going on. That was the only music company that did something like that in the weekly TV Guide for people.

 

CL: Do you know who was behind “The TV Guide?” Who were the owners or who were rather?

AL: It had to be the association that set up the networks on TV because there was only 2, 4, 5, 9, 11, and 13. I think one other channel. That’s it. Those were the channels. Then later on came 41, 47, the spanning channels and all that. They started spanning on it. But you only had those channels.

 

CL: When you were DJing, I guess the beginning of your DJ roots for the different, I’m going to just say the different crews in New York at that time, in the Bronx at that time.

AL: The Bronx, yeah.

 

CL: This preceded, I guess, DJ, right? So, you were talking about the fact that you were starting to get… You joined a Columbia, I think it was called Columbia Music House mailing list, and you were getting records, right?

AL: Right.

 

CL: So, how did that progress into you becoming a DJ as well as others becoming DJs in the Bronx?

AL: Well, for me becoming a DJ, eventually, I started to the little collection that I had of 45 were growing for my album. Now, if I had Ohio players, I could listen to the whole album. I didn’t have to worry about one single, one ’45 that they came out with, but I couldn’t buy the album. I was too young. I didn’t have the money to buy the album. But Columbia House was sending me the albums, and now I could go and I said, Man, they got this record, Skin Tight. They got this other record, and this other record all on the album, and I immersed myself in the different albums that I was getting.

 

That exposed me to being able to select good music out of an album. I didn’t do it then. I’m realizing it now because now I’m listening to the album and I’m picking what I think are good records, and I’m playing them in the clubs, in the clubhouse of the gang that I was hanging out with and all that stuff. I had a nice little collection. I had to buy the Crate. So, Crate for me was like a thousand records. I started to hang out with a guy named Frank DioDonet. Frank was a dancer.

 

Back then, the hustle was big, uprock was big, a lot of different dancing was happening, and there weren’t a lot of clubs. It was more like basement parties, apartment parties. The only like a disco were Studio 54, those are the places that you heard of, but you never, ever really went to it because you weren’t a specialist and you couldn’t get into it. You hung out in your area and different places that you were at. But I started to invest in my own DJ equipment. So, Frank taught me the upscale of DJ and brought me to a club called La Mariposa, over at our Dietman area, and the DJ there was Jellybean Benitez.

 

This is my true introduction to a professional DJ. Jellybean was playing music and I couldn’t tell why he was playing the label because the Adam Hall called Scratch Power. I’m in a DJ booth, I’m listening to this guy and then I said, wait a minute, this guy is playing records and it’s just continuous. He’s not stopping. I was fascinating. I said, wait a minute. He’s got two turntables. What’s that in the middle? He was using a Boat and mixer at that time. Frank would say, That’s the mixer. I said, Get out of here. He switched him from one record to another record. He said, Yeah, he’s mixing the records together. That’s when I caught the bug. That’s when I really caught the buck and I said, oh, I got to get a mixer.

 

I got to get a real turntable with everything. I got to get all this stuff. I invested. I only had one speaker. Cory, I only had one speaker, and it was a band speaker. It was a band speaker, so it wasn’t even a real. It wasn’t a JBL, it wasn’t a Sarah Baker, none of that stuff. I had my 1200s.

 

 

CL: You had 1,200s back then?

AL: They had just come out with 12. No, that’s a lie. I think it was 1210s or something. It was a belt-driven techniques turntable. That’s what I got. Wait a minute.

 

 

CL: Hold on, I got to stop you real quick. Just to keep the timeline, you know, in succession, what year did you meet Frank?

AL: After the death, I was in high school, so I got to be 14-15 in that area.

I bought a GLI mix-up. That was the first mixer that I had. The best thing about the GLI is that GLI had the slides and GLI had the pots, the Silverface GLI mixer. I had my two techniques, belt-driven turntables. I would try to play in the party, but I didn’t have enough equipment. I had a Kenwood amp, and I will go out to the park and I will plug into the light pole, and I will play music. Now, at that time, I used to make more money going to the supermarket and carrying people’s groceries.

 

I would do that over the weekends, and that’s how I make more money, and now I’m investing more in music. Understanding that music at that time was the music they were playing on the radio was different than the music that you buy in the store. The 12 inches didn’t come out yet. The longest standard remakes didn’t come out yet. Basically, whatever you buy, whatever you’re hearing on the radio, you’re not getting that.

 

They’re playing a special mix or stuff like that. Frankie Crocker was on the radio. KTU was afterwards, came on. There were a couple of stations that were very relevant, but there Almost everything was basically pop-orientated. Very little, very, very little R&B, a lot of pop music. Most of the music that I heard, I would hear it from either other DJs or I would hear it in a party that I went to. Once I started going to more parties, I started getting immersed in more different music because not everybody played the same music.

 

 

CL: When you said that, you’re talking about the downtown scene versus the uptown scene?

AL: And dancers versus basement club stuff. Dancers will go to a ballroom. They’ll go to a ballroom and they’ll go to the Hunts Point Palace. There was a couple of other places that they went to, but they went there to dance. Their stuff, if you think, Natalia, if you think about ballroom dancing, their dance was a hustle. That was very famous back then. So, everyone was hustling.

 

Then there were guys who were doing uprocks, so guys would be dancing with each other also. These were the dancers of that day. Hip hop did not exist. Did not exist at that time. We’re not even talking about hip hop had started or anything like that. I’m playing in the park, I’m in the fourth project, I’m hooked up to the lap hole and all that stuff. I hear a sound system from way far, but I hear it as if it close to me and I said, damn, that guy got to have a system and a half. A guy is walking by me and that guy happened to be Meen Jean. DJ Meen Jean is walking by, he’s cracking up on my system. But I had some records. He was like, “This kid got the worst system in the world”, but damn, where’s he getting all these records from? Because every time I worked and went and shop for somebody and made some money, I went to the store and buy some music, and that’s what I was doing all the time.

 

I have my music, and then I will go to Downstairs Records, I will go to Rock and Soul Records, I will go to Binomania. I’ll go to Connolly’s, and I’ll go to the other spot that I went to. Those are some of the stores that I went to and bought my records at. Some places I bought my imports, and I knew an import of 45 import would cost $4,00. That was a high price to pay for 145. Because 45 back then had, of course, maybe about 75 cents. But I got an import. Nobody got the record. And these records I heard when I was going to different clubs hanging out. But remember, I told you I had that experience with Jellybean Benitez.

 

So, I used to go and follow clubs that he was at and go to clubs that other people were DJ that were friends of his. Frank DioDonet really introduced me to the whole world of disco, to the whole disco era. But the disco era to me was how professional DJs were. What I was doing, I was a street DJ. I was playing. If I could play for a little party, I played for a little party and stuff like that. That’s what I was doing.

 

I was nowhere near when you talk about Superman, you talk about the brothers and all these other DJs that had a mega system. I was nowhere near that. Me and Jean and me struck a conversation. He just said, you should come to the park and check out what we doing. I went to the park and I was just amazed because they were playing records and they were playing parts of records, and they were just shouting over the mic. I said, “Wow, this is totally different because the DJs that I met, they weren’t shouting”. The most they do; they wish a happy birthday. Hey, there’s a car double parked outside. Why did somebody lose their keys? That was the announcement. That’s it. That’s their last call for. They weren’t speaking on the mic like that. But these guys were speaking on the mic, guys and girls were dancing in park and everything. It was just a new experience for me. But I had the bug and I wanted to get more records, and I had to figure that out. And I joined Disco’s Den Records.

 

When I joined Disco Den record pool, I have more of an understanding of what a record pool was. Now, Disco Den record pool was probably the first and only urban record pool that I knew of in existence.

 

CL: Where were they based out of?

AL: 125^th Street, right on 125^th. Right down the block, there was a burger spot right across the street, so they were right across the street for that burger spot. Everybody, all the record companies were excited about this because this was breaking their R&B Acts. They didn’t have that. Remember, we’re coming from the disco era. The record pool was maybe at about 125 members. They were from all over New York City. But This was all basically Black and Hispanic members, and they were all getting all the R&B tracks from all the record companies.

 

This guy, his name was Dennis Franklin.

 That was the director of the records. Eventually, from a member, I moved into giving out the records. Now, I’m behind the concert, giving out the records, but now I’m getting the joints. Now every week, I’m getting 30, 40 records, and I’m getting everything. If the radio got it, I got it, or I got it before, though.

 

That experience opened me up to the working of record companies, promotion, the record pool hierarchies, because the record pool business was very political. This was the cheapest form, the cheapest way that record companies can promote their records. There was no other way because remember, the digital domain did not exist. None of this stuff that we have now existed. They had to mail a record to a DJ, and they get in contact with the DJ, and then find out that DJ is playing a record, and keep that DJ on that record for a long period of time. They had to do that all across the country.

 

Natalia: I have a question. I have a question. Do you know if those record labels were paying to DJs for playing, like Payola? Were they actually offering money to say, “Hey, bro, play this song. We’ll pay you for this”.

AL: I think that many of were more able to go and do different things and be more creative. Because let’s say they say, Yo, man, I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne, or here, you want some drugs? I do this, that, whatever the case may be. They’re taking care of each DJ. But understand that their goal is to get the record on the radio. The premise of the record pool was the record pool gets the record and then they give it out to their DJs. And then what happened is they were working from that point to build up momentum to get the record on radio. 

Every record pool was different. The first record pool was David Mancuso’s The Loft. That was the first record pool, period.

 

CL: I need to repeat that. The first record pool, period, was…

AL: David Mancuso’s The Loft. That was the 99, Prince Street.

So, Jellybean was part of that record pool. So, he had to be part of that record pool for a long period of time. If I were going to say maybe late ’69, maybe ’70, maybe earlier, you know what I’m saying? Because they were already doing all this stuff. You’re talking about this is… You’re talking about Alphie, François, Tom Cerberus, Bobby DJ, Godero. You’re talking about those type of DJ. These DJs were remixing for Southerners records, for Casablanca Records, for Praline Records. They were in the production and all that. But the funny story with David Mancuso, the record pool is that He had a loft, and he invited his friends to his loft, and he would play music. What happened was it was frequently visited by people that were in the record business, and they will give him a record to and he will play it. Before you know it, other DJs were coming and listening, and he formed the loft. He formed his record pool out of that premise.

 

Look, have you ever had a friend in your life that used to go to the house and he always had friends over? That was DavidMancuso. But David Mancuso thing is that his friend was other DJ, Lovers of Music, and his house was big. So, it was called The Loft. And that’s how he started his record pool because the DJ, the company, he would go in there and giving him a record, he played it and all that stuff. Before you know it, the formation of that, the record pool started.

 

Julie Weis theme was the second record pool, which was for the which came from David McFall, so forth. But these were a pool I couldn’t even get into. I couldn’t even get into this pool because I wasn’t a professional DJ. I wouldn’t work in my high-profile club, all these different things that you needed credential to get in their record. Now we go back to this Godden Record Pool. This Godden Record Pool, I guess for record companies, was the epitome of breaking urban music. I left that record pool and started Sure Record.

 

CL: What year was that?

AL: Oh, man, that. I can’t even say the year. After I don’t even getmy plaque for that. It has to be in the early ’70s. So, I started it in my mom’s apartment in the project, in Forest Projects, with Bobby Davis and Paul Maron, those were my two partners. So, I started “Sure Record Pool”, and I started it because there was no record pool that allowed people who worked in a little club, a little bar, a little hangout to get in a record pool, and I thought that was so unfair. I said, why is it that I can’t get in a record pool, yet I’m playing music? 

 

Mobile DJs couldn’t get in a record pool. All this stuff, there were so many restrictions. I opened up the door and I said, we’re going to go and we’re going to give a record out to anybody who’s a DJ. Period.

 

It was funny because when you walked into my apartment, when you open the door, the record was all laid out on the floor, and I just had cardboard sticking in between them representing the band numbers of each DJ. “Sure Record Pool” became a very prominent force in hip hop, freestyle music, house music, and all that stuff, because we didn’t stay in one format, and we catered to everybody. DJ Squibbles was in the pool, Dr. Bob Lee was in the pool, Jazzy Jay was in the pool, Artz Bencana was in the pool, Cork was in the pool. I mean, it was a list I’m going to throw one out there.

 

CL: I’m going to say the Love Bug was in the pool.

AL: Yeah, Love Bug Starski and Hiccup. So, Hiccup joined… After running Sure Record pool for like five years, we were getting awards. I got over 50, 60 tracks of different gold records and platinum records of records that we wrote. I left Sure Record Pool and left the business.

 

CL: One question about Sure Record pool. First of all, again, the year, but I know you don’t know that off the top, but how many DJs initially did you start with, and how many do you have, would you say, at its heyday, at its height?

AL: I started with about 10. And then when I left “Sure Record”, we probably got 75.

 

CL: Awesome. What are some of the key records you remember impacting in New York that you would say that your record pool played the key role in breaking across New York?

AL: Jesus. Almost every track on Sugar Hill gave. Almost on Sugar Hill record, almost every record that came out with, we broke. Enjoy records, we broke. Sound of New York, we broke. The stuff with Scott LaRock and KRS-One, we broke. Man, nowwe’re talking about that hip hop was just beginning. Hip hop was just starting, was just beginning.

 

Tom Silverman was an owner of a magazine called the Disco News. He had three roommates. He lived on 90 something Street of First Avenue, somewhere near first or second. I got introduced by somebody I went to him and I introduced Tom into the hip hop world because they had a publication, Disco News. My introduction to him into that world gave the birth of Planet Rock. Everything he did with Tommy Boy records. Because they had no idea that this world existed. That’s how relevant Record pool was.

 

We were touching the streets. We can go where all the other promoters couldn’t go, and we would know the response on a record before a promoter would know what’s happening because at the other clubs, they were only playing what they felt like playing. All my DJ, they were starving for music. You kidding me? They were starving They’re coming for music, but they finally got a 12-inch Lolita Holloway, and they finally got a 12-inch of this track or that track. They were like, Holy crap, I got a 12-inch of this stuff. We had a habit that every time the DJ came When they come in, we will play the records that we picked out from that allotment for them to hear. As they’re coming in, they say, What the hell is that? You got it in your bid this week.

 

That’s on Southerners Records or Faisal Records or Interscope, any one of the labels. They will go out immediately. They’ll pull it out. They say, okay, this is the joint? Yeah, okay. I’m going to play this tonight. DJs had a habit of following people, so they wouldn’t play a record until they heard somebody out playing. Breaking records was not a tradition for a lot of DJs back then. There were few DJs that broke records. So, you got to give it to Larry Levant because he will play a record. He will play a record four or five times in one night to break it. Where other DJs only have a habit of playing a record once, he will play it four or five times. He literally would take the needle and go like this. I put it on, play it, and take the sucker and put it right back on. You hear the dead noise, and then he put that sucker right back on. People want to applaud him.

 

Music on, they were applauding and waiting, and then he would play it back. That’s just to give you the ambiance of the different DJ style, the different techniques. But most importantly, the different music. Those record pools did not play hip hop.

 

CL: When you say those, which record pool is it? 

AL: I’m talking about Judy Weinstein, the David Mancuso of them, they didn’t play hip hop. They had a selected music that they played, that was it. It was like freestyle music. Eddie Ribero and myself were very famous for breaking a lot of the freestyle music. That’s when we played. When house music came, you knew that you could go to anyone and Judy Weinstein DJ, you go to anyone and David McFall still DJ, and they will have that record. T. Scott, Frankie Knuckles, all of that will have that joke. A lot of record pool were pigeon-like. He said this record’s an hour. So, record companies divided their company to service pool according to what list they put them on. If a pool was put in a list for, we’ll send them pop music, that’s what they will get. If they were listed as an urban pool, they’ll send them urban music. If they were listed as a rock pool because the rock pool was existing then.

 

There was a pool just for rock music, and they were sending it to them. What I did with my record pool was that I made a Latin division, a hip hop division, a rock division. I divided my pool to have different segments so that we have to specialize in those categories of music so I could be more effective I thought…, and I learned that from watching the record companies, how they were structured. Because when they came out with a record, they’ll have a meeting and say, okay, pop department, we’re having a meeting. We got the new track that we’re doing now. So, imagine that every record company is set up to go and say, where did the music go into? If they’re going to set, they’re going to send out 2,000 records.

 

They’re going to send out 2,000 records to the right record pools to make sure that they get the best bang for their pop. Every record pool, now you have to chart your records. You had to send them a chart listing, like a top 25 of what’s going on in your region, in your area. After a while, record pool started growing. The number of records that they were producing to promote the music was going up, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 records they were sending out. Even though it was the cheapest way, they had to be some boundaries. How could they monitor a hundred different record pools all across the country when they still had to monitor all the radio stations, when they still had to monitor all the A&R for the group, when they still do all that stuff? 

Go ahead.

 

CL: No, this is good information. I just want to finish a little bit more about some more of the history, because I understand now that what you’re saying is that more record pool started to grow. You also shut down Sure Record Pool.

AL: Well, I left Sure. Sure kept on going. Bobby and I ran it. And I left Sure. I left the business for one year.vAnd the DJs convinced me to come back. That’s when I started VIP record pool.

 

 

Natalia: Okay. And it’s still functioning, right? Okay. Yeah, all right. I just need to look. I’m hoping to gain the correct understanding of a full landscape. I understand your record pool, whatever it is. But I’m trying to write a cover story as a journalist, as an investigative journalist, mentioning all biggest record pool, my top five. What would you say? Top 10, hip hop.

AL: In that era, in New York, you have to say David Mancuso’s Record Pool, that ninth Prince Street, Hold a Record, IDRC, Sure Record Pool, VIP Record Pool. That’s in that era, the 70s.

 

CL: Okay. That’s good. All right. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the evolution of VIP and then talk about the… I guess not the chain, but the evolution of Record pools.

Natalia: Yes, what about the ’80s? What happened in the ’80s? Do you remember the names, Al, of any Record pulse that emerged in the ’80s? Just to stay consistent on the timeline, evolution. What happened in the ’80s? Were there any new pools that appeared in New York or whenever?

AL: Now, there are probably maybe about I’m 400 record pools now.

 

Natalia : Who was the people you had?

AL: There were SOS Record Pool, Bill Ricket’s Record Pool, you had Connecticut Music Pool. I forgot, Richie’s Pool. There was a pool in Jersey. I forgot their name. Yes, I have a lot of connects in the industry. Then the rest of them are not in New York. There’s a bunch of record pools that were world famous, but not in New York because you got to put- That’s fine. Tables of a distinction. They were out of DC.

 

Natalia: Cool. What else?

Al: Impact Record Pool. They were in California.

 

CL: Los Angeles.

AL: Yeah.

 

Natalia: Okay. Anything else? You’re going to remember any other name?

CL: Records Systems of Las Vegas, that’s Rory, he’s out of Las Vegas. Long Island DJ Association. That’s Jackie McCloy. That’s in Long Island.I’m trying to think. Boston Record Pool. And I didn’t mention that I had a record pool in Chicago and I had a record pool in Florida. So, I have VIP Chicago and I have VIP Florida. Miami was run by Felix Summer, while Chicago was run by Julian Jumpin-Perez.

 

CL: Yeah, I’m just laughing. This is a lot of history, man. This is a lot of history. A lot of records were broken by these platforms, man. This is how I came up. When you talk about VIP, VIP was the biggest. No joke. How many DJs did you have at the height of… It had to be like 150.

 

AL: Well, we have 50 in Chicago, we had another 60 in Miami. And then I had 75.

 

CL: Okay. It was ridiculous. I just remember. I just remember. I remember giving records also, which is awesome. But yeah, this is good stuff. All right, Natalia, I’m going to ask a couple more things here.

 

Just to keep it going. All right. Okay, my bad. Yes, getting back to the… Okay, so a little bit more about VIP. Maybe if you remember the year, you started it, and then when you closed out, or just the evolution from VIP into what we see today with the digital record pools. And what’s the history on that from your standpoint?

 

AL: When I was running VIP Record Pool. I mean, I’ve done a lot of different things. I was already a Billboard reporter. So, I was the only billboard reporter that was a pool director. There was a rule that a Billboard reporter could not be a pool director simultaneously. I don’t know if you knew that.

 

CL: No.

 

AL: Yeah, you couldn’t. That was a rule about that. Could not do that. So, what happened was Greg Riles from Select, Curtis Hubina from emergency records I forgot who the third person. They recommended me to become a billboard reporter because I was working at a club called La Mirage, and all the record pools were pissed. He can’t be a billboard reporter because he’s a record pool director. I didn’t know the background. I didn’t know what was happening in the background. I’m unaware of this. I know that Greg said, Al, we’re going to recommend you to be a Billboard reporter.

 

Was that That’d be good. And then Curtis said, Yeah, I’m typing up a letter for you, too. So, what happens is that eventually, they talked to me and they said, we’re having a hard time getting you approved. I said, why? He said, Yeah, a lot of record pools are complaining. I said, Complaining? Why are they complaining? That because you’re not supposed to be a billboard reporter because you own a record pool. So, they wrote a letter to Billboard stating that My integrity and how I do things and everything, they will back it up with this letter if they make me a billboard reporter, that they feel that my honesty and my integrity will be first, and I became a billboard reporter. I think there was only 50 in the world at that time.

 

CL: Huge. So as far as the history from that point, now you’re a Billboard reporter running New York’s biggest record pool. What takes place from that point on? And when did the shift start to change?

Al: So, now I’m learning more about breaking records. Now, I’m breaking records. Now, I’m getting records and I could tell somebody, Yo, this is going to be a hit, but I needed to break it faster. I started making allegiances with different record pools, and I said, we should work together. I started doing We were in meetings with the record pools. We will have a… Damn, for the life of me, I can’t remember Richie’s Record Pool, but we will have meetings together. We combined three record pools together. I remember with me, Steve Richardson and Richie, those were the first three. Instead of 40, 50 DJs showing up, now it’s 100, 150 DJs showing up to a meeting.

 

Then I added a couple more record pools. Before I know it, I had about 10 record pools doing these meetings. The last meeting I had, I think it was on 50^th Street off of Madison Avenue or something like that. We had about 300 DJs in the room. This is unheard of. This is unheard heard of. Having 300 DJs in the room. Companies were coming with stacks of records just to hit the DJ off right there. They said, we got 300 DJs in the room. I will let their groups perform. We’ll play their records. We’ll have feedback. We did a panel; we did all this stuff. Companies were super excited. Records were being blown out the water. Information Society. I got that from Minneapolis. They sent it to me after the hit. We started playing it. Somebody told me, somebody should do the remix and all that stuff.

 

We throw Little Louis name into the mix to do that. Boom. He does the remix for that stuff. We were just I tried to break records at a faster, faster pace. If I couldn’t get the record, I would travel to that city and go get it. When house music came out, Julie Weinstein and David Mancuso were the only pool that had it. They were the only people that had it. T. Scott, Frank D. Noffke, the only people that had the house music. Got out of the house, music all night long. The only people that had it was Doug. I was pissed. I was pissed. I’m calling Chicago. I didn’t have VIP Chicago there. So, I flew to Chicago. Now, I had a cousin out there, and I went to their pressing plant, and they were just…

 

I met all them, Master Fawley, Maurice Joshua, X-Man. I met them all, all the house heads. They were all at the pressing plant. I get there with my cousin, and I said, Yo, man, my name is Al Bazar from New York. What the hell are you doing here, bro? I said, what are you kidding me? You got this house music; you didn’t serve as my pool. They said, you came all the way over here to get a house for me. I said, Hell, yeah. Put it this way, I must have left at least 25 different tracks that nobody heard of, plus the stuff they were playing in New York. I came back to New York. My DJ was so super excited because that first week was all house music, like a stack like that.

 

CL: In the ’90s. Late ’90s, right?

AL: I would have to call Maurice Joshua or one of those guys, and they will tell me exactly.

 

CL: Al, you’re stamping the history of record pools right now. It’s okay. I just want to know. I’m saying that to say that we want to tell it the way it is. 

AL: That’s it. Yes, exactly. That’s the plan. Look, think about it. From that day that I went to Chicago and came back and I built that relationship with them, from that day, that’s what gave birth to VIP Chicago.

 

CL: Wow.

AL: Then, when FreeStyle Music came out, Louis Martinet came out with a record where Expo said, Arista was going to sign it. And Arista told me, what do you think about this record? I said, I think this record’s hot. I went to Miami. I met with Louis Montenay. I met with Henry Stone. I met with all the guys, and they were just like, oh, man, we’re going to send you everything we got. And I came back and… Damn, I forgot his name. David German was working for Arista Records. And I told David, I said, David, you better pick this record up, this group is and Exposé, signed to Arista Records. So, this was the power of the record business. Now, let’s get into what happened with hip hop and record business.

 

Because this is so important that people don’t understand because it’s not being talked about. Think about it. When hip hop came out, when it came out, when it came When it came into records, no clubs wanted to play it. No clubs wanted to play it. So, the biggest record pools did not want to play it. The companies were like, who’s going to play this stuff?And they didn’t understand it. The record company didn’t understand what they had in their hand.

That’s why you had the Fatback Band come out with that track. With Kim 10 III. That’s because they were trying to, Let’s be safe. Let’s put an R&B group there, and we’ll put a hip hop feel in it because we don’t know what we’re doing here. This is all unchartered territory. We were the pool that had all of them guys in the pool. So, we had the Jazz DJ, we had the pool, we had the Africa Bamba, we had all these guys, DJ Hollywood, we had all of in the record pool. 

DJ Scribble, Dr. Dre, from your MTV Rack, all these guys were in the record pool.

 

So, it was simple for me to go and break this record because these guys were already immersed in it. The guys from public enemy were in my pool, Hank Shapley and his brother Keith. They were both in my pool, too. It was very, very hard for record companies to break it in the clubs of my hand. They weren’t playing it. So, this had to come from the street level and build up. Then Frankie Crocker made a statement that he would never play hip hop on his radio station. You got to remember that Frankie Crocker’s statement when he said, thisrecord is going to be a hit, every station in the country Listen to that guy. When he said he wasn’t going to play no hip hop records, wow. Everybody was just like, what are we going to do? The little hangouts, the little hole in the wall, the little spots, the T-Connection, the 371 Club, the Peppermint Lounge, all these little spots became the outlets for hip hop music. Hold on one second.

 

CL: The history of the new record pools, the digital record pools, all of that stuff. What’s your history on that?

AL: Now, the record pools are changing. Everything’s going digital now. Companies find a way to save money We don’t have to ship it out. We could send them a digital file and they got the music. What better way to go and promote your music, you save more money. Then they were cutting departments. Now, you didn’t need this guy to do this function, whether it was retail or anything like that, because everything was now streaming. Everything was now more digital format and all that. I didn’t want to get into that stuff. Because it was too far away from the actual music for me. It was too far away. However, when you have a Jazz DJ and you have people of that caliber in your record pool, what happens is that the technology, they absorbed it. They’re building their studios. So, they were able to take this stuff and say, wow, this is the new format. I mean, that machine, I was just talking about it yesterday. That machine lasted for a year. They made it that machine, and after a year, it fainted out. So, the technology was moving so fast, and I said, you know what? I moved into the promotion game. That’s when I got hired by Death Row Records and all that. It started working with all the different labels.

 

CL: Okay. I guess what was the first digital record pool that you remember?

AL: This is where I was. [Laughter] You’re the first guy out the gate. Love your Digiwaxx.

 

CL: All right. We’ll continue on. What else do you remember about that, era? And appreciate what else you the impact that DigiWaxx had, I should say.

AL: I think that you set the template for everybody else to follow. Not that everybody else could follow or would want to follow, but you set the standards for that. That was important. Record Pool, Natalia, very important thing. A lot of Record Pool did not get along with each other.

Natalia: I can imagine. Why couldn’t it get along? Because they were competing against each other? What was the nature?

 

Competition. I want that record. Don’t give it to him. When companies started saying, I only got 500 copies, you want to be the guy to get the copies. It was very competitive. But I always looked at the record pool thing as a blessing because I was able to share music with people Who would never have gotten that record if it wasn’t for us sharing. I think the lack of sharing, the lack of being responsible to the music, not being emotionally attached to the feelings that you have about the individuals or individuals.

 

Be responsible to the music. It’s important that they’re the artist behind that music, and that artist wants everything possible to happen for their career and for that music to be heard. When you go and you become divisive and you separate somebody from that music, that opportunity, then you’re hurting that artist, and you’re hurting people from listening to that beautiful music. And it’s not right.

 

CL: Awesome point. I guess today’s record pools, you touched on it before. Natalia had asked you about some of the top record pools that are today. I know you mentioned franchise. I think you mentioned…

AL: The Core DJs. The Fleet DJs.

 

CL: Cool. Yes. Who are some of the top ones that you recognize today as you see that are still breaking?

AL: Well, I would say Core, Fleet DJs, Franchise, of course. Those are the ones that I hear about doing something, that they’re out there, they’re on the grind, they’re doing something. 

I think that they’re nowhere… Look, Fleet and Core, Tony Neil comes from my fabric. When I say my fabric, when I was running Sure and VIP record pool, I went out to different conventions and panels and spoke about how I felt about the running of Record Pool, promoting music, and how important it is to be a DJ, and what type of DJ should be, and all that stuff. He was in a room listening. People were in the room listening. I’m glad that it didn’t fall on death’s ears because then he came out with core DJ. Look what Tony Neil was able to do. Everybody’s able to do something when you’re listening and you grab it and you go and say, I can do that, or I could do something better. Let me go and do that stuff. Today, I don’t see that because everything is more… It’s so separate. We’re too tied into the technology. We’re not tied into the personal. Music is personal. Music is feelings. You play, look, if your heart gets broken, Natalia.

 

AL: The music is emotional. It is attached to you. That is so, so important to understand that nowadays, the digital takes away that feeling. It takes it away because everybody likes the touchy-touchy. You want to smell a flower. It’s good that you look at it. It’s good that you could see it from afar, but you really want to smell that flower.

 

Look, when you’re a DJ, the music is like reading a good book or watching It’s a good movie. It doesn’t matter if it’s 50 or 100 or 200. Once you put the needle on, right from the first 20, 30 seconds, you’re going to know if you got a good record. If you don’t hear that in the first 20, you know what you start doing? You start moving the needle over to hear something. If you don’t hear it, you say, Okay, next. Let me hear the next one. That feeling, that thing.

 

A lot of the hip hop were birthed from beats. So, I’ll beat the person I love the most. Famous DJs may break and records that never existed. When you hear the album, the break is not there. There was a DJ that went into the studio with them and made that break longer. It could have been for like five seconds and they extended it for like 30s. It makes a dance floor pop.

 

 So,all these all these little things. I remember when I got fiscal disco. When I got that record. That record was at a studio at a distribution house called Sunshine Distributors and Sunshine Distributors to call me in, to listen to records, to figure out what they were going to ship out. He showed me the record. It was rainbow colors. And he said, al, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this record. You know what I’m going to do? And he played the record, says, this record sucks. It’s terrible. I don’t even know why I got it. And I said, keep on, keep on. Let’s go to the parade. Then when we got to ten, ten, ten didn’t. That was it. I said, give me two copies of each. Let’s go. Go to the pool. The DJ took both copies. I played the break. They said, Holy crap. They went with it.

 

CL: Dope stuff. Thanks for sharing the story with our audience, AL.

AL: What is what we do? Yeah, man.

 

CL: A couple more questions, and I think we’re good. One of the big questions I have for you is, um. Uh. How do you see the roll of record pools evolving even more in the future? You know, uh, and I ask that because of. I guess the comeback of vinyl. And how, you know, the sales are up and everything’s up. Um, however, there’s also new technology happening. So, in your opinion, what do you think the future of the record pool could look like?

AL: This is what I’m going to say. There’s another record pool coming.

I think it’s important to understand that. Record Pool was appointed distribution and evolved to a point of the most powerful promotion and marketing entity. With the fewest amount of dollars put into it from any record label in the world. If you were in Germany and you had a record.

 

And you had only you saved up all your money for your record. If you only had a thousand copies of your record. And if you send it to the right record pools and your record was good. You reckon we’ll be blowing in the States and they’ll be blowing all overseas? It made a big difference. So, there’s no way hip hop would be where it’s at. What the record pulls. There’s no way house music will be worth that without the record pools. You know, record pools were the foundation, the landscape, the very first essence of how to get the music out there. There was no other way. You could not jump and skip the line to radio.

 

CL: Any advice you would like to share with aspiring musicians?

Absolutely. Absolutely. But understand that. People. I advise people all the time. Don’t get taken by the music industry. The music industry can take your life savings. Make you believe that you’re going to be a superstar. Make you believe that you’re going to have a huge record. Make you believe that you’re going to have your next house. You’re going to buy another house. You’re going to be bigger than, you know, Madonna and everybody else. Meanwhile you don’t. You have to really, really understand the dynamics of the music business and who you deal with. 90% of people in the music business are full of it. The other 10% are moving the whole 90%.

 

CL: Let’s talk about that real quick, hip hop. I was so happy to see you. I know we’re still celebrating hip hop 50^th, but we know that hip hop is older than 50 years old. This is just a, I’ll just say a symbol, a number. I’m sure you have stories that predate 1973, but it was great to see you out at the celebration on Cedric Boulevard in the Bronx. That whole weekend, it was, I would just say, a big reunion from pioneers, foundation people, DJs. It was just the culture. You were representing hard your Hip hop Boulevard brand. Just tell us a little bit about the brand. Where did the where did this inspiration come from and why did you do it?

 

Al: First thing is, it took me two years to get it done. I had to go to the community board and everything. I want this on record. I first went to Cooper I’m going to ask him that this was going to get done, that people approach me and all that. He asked me for money in exchange for me, for him to get involved. I didn’t have the money and Sure enough, Hip hop Boulevard got done, signed into law and everything. This is where we’re at now.

 

Hip hop Boulevard is a company that is comprised for several reasons. Hip hop needs a solid entity that can say things, do things, achieve things without any self-motivation for self. In other words, not for me, for hip hop. To be able to help people in hip hop in all kinds of different ways that it can, whether it be emotionally, whether it be financially, whether it be spiritually, whether it be recognition. To be able to change communities by using hip hop as a conduit to show that hip hop has a positive face rather than a negative face. To be able to move in a way that hip hop had never moved before, working with- That’s right.

 

AL: I think everybody else to understand that hip hop is people. For a long time, hip hop has been corrupted, has been abused, has been misused in all kinds of different ways. Hip hop Boulevards is this one company that we’re not being corrupted, we’re not being abusive, and we’re not using people.

 

We are highlighting all the good stuff in hip hop and giving everybody an opportunity and a chance. I do not care if somebody is a millionaire or somebody is the poorest person, I’m going to treat you the same. That’s I’m going to give you a chance. I’m going to give you an opportunity. I’m on the Board of directors for the World Cup of Hip-hop. I’m the ambassador for Kurtis Blows Company, Humanity Coalition, and Hip-hop Boulevard just started its own magazine, the Hip hop Boulevard magazine, which is not going to be digital.

Next issue is going to be 10,000.

 

CL: What I will send to that is, first of all, that’s the issue. That’s fire. We have to cover that for DigiWaxx. This is our website, our blog. That’s fly. How are we going to help you with that stuff. That’s why I’m so happy we talk because this is what’s messing up everything. We’re just not having conversations. This is A1 information that you’re talking about. 

Okay. I’m just saying that’s symbolic for many reasons. But I’m happy that people truly care about the culture because money has derailed us so much. Money has derailed us. We’ve had mission drift like none other, even though you need money, but money comes naturally when you actually preserve the culture. You don’t have to sell out.

AL: It’s funny that you say that. I’m sad when people do go from me because they die, they can’t afford to bury themselves. They’re living in some sheltered home, and these are iconic people. These are people that started this culture. There’s no reason why these people should be suffering like that or can’t bury themselves. I give my hats out to Nas, what he’s doing, but they’re the missing piece. They’re the missing piece, and the piece is, why is this happening? We can’t continue to be at the end of it. We got to stop it before it happens.

 

Natalia: Because we need to remind people of the roots. People should not forget the roots. They forgot why it all started. They forgot the whole point of why hip hop started. It’s in our power between the CL, you, me, and other people to remind them what this culture is all about and what it should I feel like. So, let’s be like. That’s the trendsetters. But it all comes down to marketing. Marketing is hard. There’s no way around it. It’s just an idea that you have to push into the masses harder.

 

CL: I’m just happy that you’re saying this stuff because we forget so often. So, I appreciate that.

AL: Well, I thank you. Thank you and thank you for this opportunity. I hope that it enlightens a lot of people and let people know the truth.