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Posted by
Kogar the swinging ape December 13, 2008 -
605 views
As a preamble to the "More Mad Mike Madness" blog compilation (coming next Thursday!), I figured I'd post some interesting "Mad Mike Fun Facts" for those that don't have the new Norton releases.
So, everyday, if I can manage it, I'll post some cool stories, facts and maybe even some audio clips of Mad Mike, ending with Thursdays debut of the first 5 songs of the blog comp.
Before continuing further, please check out the Mad Mike Moldies myspace page and familiarize yourself with Mad Mike. Trust me, you will enjoy everything that follows a little more, if you have some background on Mike.
myspace. com/madmikemoldies
Part 1 "Deface is the Place"
One of the things that drove Pittsburgh-ers (Pittsburgh-ians?!) crazy was the fact that Mike kept all of his records SECRET. Most DJ's at the time, and today, made sure the listener knew what records they were playing. Not Mad Mike! He went thru the greatest pains imaginable to keep his records secret.
This drove a generation of kids and adults absolutely nuts! They would hear a record that they particularly liked, and then scour the record stores in the area trying to find out what those records were! What many of them didn't know, I'm sure, is that Mike traveled the world looking for obscure, wild teen sounds. So the odds of them finding a particular song were pretty slim.
There are people to this day trying to discover certain tracks he played.
To make it even harder for the kids to discover these records, Mike defaced them! Record collectors to this day scratch their heads over what Mad Mike did. He would rip the labels off of 45's, glue comics to them, draw pictures on them, scratch up B-sides making them unlistenable! He would also scratch off the matrix numbers in the dead wax (if you don't know what these are, grab you nearest 45, and look in the dead wax...you'll see numbers etched in the vinyl). Other times he would use "record toppers". These were labels from other records that he would take and place OVER the records he was playing.
Whatever it took, Mad Mike would protect his records.
Another story has Mad Mike going to a young lady's house who wanted to tape some of his records.
After taping a bunch of records off Mike, when she wasn't looking, he took a magnet to the tapes! Thus making all the tapes sound strange, and incomplete!
That's the kind of guy he was...
More tomorrow...
