found drama

At an after-party, I meet this DJ/producer that’s built his career out of pornographic movie soundtracks.  He started out as a DJ in California (he explains) spinning mostly house and breaks; he always wanted to get into the production scene though, to have his discs become the ones that were rocking the floor.  As his tale unfolds, he explains that the porno from the 60s and 70s was fringe enough that the production houses did not spend a lot of energy, effort, or money on securing the copyrights to the music.  Those classic grooves (he continues) that everyone instantly associates with vintage skin flicks are not protected works; the films are protected but the scores from them are not.  So he started to sample them, building house tracks on top of the definitive bassline from “Debutante’s Handbook”, the timeless recurring drum loop of “Theme from Double Delights”, the twangy guitar section in the final scene of “The Good, The Bad, and The Naughty”…  Eventually the modern porn industry started to ask him to produce new material for him but it just wasn’t the same.

About Rob Friesel