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Posted by
Kogar the swinging ape December 15, 2008 -
552 views
record cutting...
From very early on, "cuts" or acetates played a big role in the Mad Mike mythos. Mike used to confound collectors and fans alike with seemingly impossibly rare records.
Of course some of them were rare, they were doctored (mad scientist'd?) by Mike himself!
Mike had a record lathe and he made his own cuts/acetates. Acetates were usually metal discs with a vinyl coating made with these giant record cutters. So Mike would make these cuts into 45 rpm "records", and play them at his dances, etc. So, say he heard a great song somewhere (a 78, maybe), he would make a "cut" of it and play it at the hop. Kids would see it, and think that particular song was from a 45, even if said song never appeared on 45!
Confused? Well, it gets worse (depending on how you look at it...).
Dig this; he would make cuts of existing songs, but add bongos to the song to make it sound heavier! This meant, if a kid was to track down the 45 Mike was playing, it would confuse the hell out of them, because the version he/she heard at the dance was different than the record they found! Thus, making them continue searching for a record that didn't really exist!
The mind reels...
It also "cut" both ways, as collectors tried to tape Mad Mike's radio show so they could make acetates of their own of the songs he played. This is the reason Mike talked over a lot of the records he played, or used crazy laugh cues in the middle of songs to break things up. It made it next to impossible to make a clean "cut" of a song he played. Some people would collect maybe 4 or 5 different tapes from different shows and try to edit them together to make a good cut.
Seriously, If you haven't bought MAD MIKE MONSTERS from Norton Records yet, what are you waiting for?!
Tomorrow I'll post a portion of a Mad Mike show where he talks about his rarest find...
