“Music marks my first memories from the early ’70s in the Bronx, waking up in the middle of the night to a muffled beat under clarion voices calling in laughter and song. Spying from the stairs I smell the acrid funk of marijuana, see my musician Father and his friends spinning discs whose covers folded shake seeds in the creases to spill out and roll into spliffs. Those same covers became my textbooks, whose photographs were my art museums, whose liner notes I memorized like catechism. Still now, the first scratch of the needle on any disc, that soul tingling crunch, and I’m a salivating Pavlovian dog; forever in love with vinyl.”
“Going through my Father’s record collection introduced me to myriad influences: Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Tito Puente, Hector Lavoe, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Return To Forever, Earth, Wind and Fire, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson, and many others.
When we moved out of the Bronx to West Haverstraw, I bagged groceries at Shop Rite to spend all my money on vinyl. I would go to my local record shop (where have they all gone?) and comb through the bins with an Indiana Jones-level jonez, trying to decide which Zeppelin album I was going to buy that week.
I remember getting Led Zeppelin 1 and running up to my room and putting it on my cheap record player. Time stopped and I lost hours practicing the drum beat to “Good Times Bad Times” over and over again. All through late elementary and middle school I bought rock albums and I would blast them; my parents never complaining.
When High School came along I found Prince and his 1999 was my epiphany, I wanted to do this and feel this way forever. I opened the smooth cover, whose edges later would fold, soft from constant use, and daydream at the record sleeve’s photo of him lying in bed painting with water colors… Could I paint my own masterpiece? Where would I begin?
I would hunt for every 12 inch, b side, bootleg, and wait with an ache for each new album to come out to absorb every lyric and note. When Purple Rain came, I tried to grow a little mustache and style my hair like his but I ended up looking like an anorexic John Oates. Still I would sit in my room for hours listening to Sign of the Times, never tiring of turning the record over and dreaming of one day being like Prince.
I also started to collect Hip Hop 12 inches: Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, Kool Mo Dee, LL Cool J, and Africa Bambaataa. I DJ’d parties at schools, friend’s houses, and suburban block parties. My dad was so cool he would let me take his speakers and his turntable. Later I had a Radio Shack mixer and my own turntable; I was good to go mixing Black Sabbath into Crash Crew, Queen into Apollonia 6, Prince into more Prince.
In 1987 I moved back to New York to study Jazz at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary music. There I met guys just like me who lived for the search, going to all the amazing record stores in the East Village, hunting for inspiration. We would make each other cassette mixes: Funkadelic, James Brown, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Ohio Players, Slave, Monk… endless treasure, you just had to look. Now, those record stores are mostly gone.
Still as I write I hear all the sounds that came from the Pioneer record player in the ’70s Bronx. I’m still that dog, sniffing, digging… That’s why my music is Funk, Latin, Brazilian, Jazz Fusion, Rock and Roll. I’m still carrying all those crates of music in my mind, those discs melted into the foundation that made me the musician, songwriter, and performer I am today.”
—Rene Lopez
