I had 2 plastic Realistic decks with a pitch dial on the front and a Realistic mixer. I never learned to beat match it was absolute instinct to me, I swear. Long mixes and riding the pitch always felt so good. I’ve got a photo of the Realistic decks somewhere.
You could beat mix straight away without learning & practicing?
Well, me and my friend Paul had been setting up our music centres toegther since the early 80’s when we were 12 /13 and controlling the speed of the record using our fingers. We figured mixing records pretty quickly and the fact that if you play 2 copes of the same record it made this flanging effect… we loved that… When it came to having pitch on a turntable the rest was history. I bought the Realistic decks from a friend I did hospital radio with in 85/86. Riding the pitch just came naturally. Same as my first go on a pair of Technics.
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Haha. That’s exactly what we did. My mum let me smoke in my bedroom aged 16 then it was game on. Mixing records for hours and hours.
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Doing a mix tape and dropping ready brek on the record and fucking it up. Fact : men cannot do two things at the same time.
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Nice one Apientos mom. My mom used to shout up ‘turn off that drug music’. She wasn’t very open minded. My Dad would shout ‘I don’t mind the wacky backy but I don’t want to see any heroin again in your room’. I had no heroin in my room so have no idea what he was on about but I just said, ‘ok’.
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I once made my mum sit through the whole of Kaotic Harmony by Rythm is rhythm as I believed it was what all music should sound like in the future and that it was really special. I properly blasted it at her. She sat through it all bless her and at the end said “I’m not sure it’s for me”. 
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Kings of Tomorrow - Finally accapella over pretty much any 120ish bpm house track. Seriously. There is some juju on that record that makes that vocal track work wonders every single time.
Another one I like to do is Bjork’s acoustic Human Behaviour (cosest I can get to an accapella) over Cleavage - Barah, which is a total cop out as Dimitri From Paris actually used the Cymande bass line on his remix of the track but I like to do it anyway.
Another one that is killer is ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ into Krystal Klear’s extended edit of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”. If you time it right, everyone goes nuts.
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Hahahahahaha my parents were exactly the same. “Turn that fucking drug music off you’ve been playing the same song for 6 hours”
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I used to listen to Jazz as a teen (Benjamin Buttoning life) and my dad would ask “When are they gonna stop rehearsing and start the song?”
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My party trick was mixing the acapella of TLC’s “Creep” in it’s entirety over “A Whim” by DJ Krush. Other acapellas that got a solid rinse over various tracks were " Champion" by Buju Banton, “Girlstown” by Supercat and of course “Dub Be Good To Me”.
I’ve posted this on a few other threads, but here’s a blend I made the other week of Sault’s “Wildfire” and a Jacques Renault rhythm track.
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I took a new girlfriend to the underground in Ibiza and she told me she is having an ok time but the music all sounds the same. I wasn’t cruel enough to get rid whilst on holiday but I did when we got back to the UK.
The closing bars of New Frontier by Donald Fagen and the beginning of My Piece of Heaven (International Mix) by Ten City sound great together.
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We used to do that phasing trick on our double deck ghetto blasters, I remember endlessly playing two copies of Sharon Redd Can you handle it with all the phasing to another tape deck then using that in a mix tape with lots of repeats and cut ups all done with the pause button, wish I still had them, bet they sounded horrible, but we thought we were Mike Shaft’s next protegé.
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My mum picked me up once in the early 90’s and the car stereo is pumping out Bassheads ‘Is There Anybody Out There’. Me “What’s this?”
Mum “Well, I was out shopping with your sister today in Cult Clothing, and they had this tape playing and I loved it so much I bought it.”
Me ejects cassette Justin Robertson Live at Cream.
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Acappella of ‘Do you want it right now’ over anything especially ‘Gat Decor’ (White label ahem), Mrs always loved it, I’ll get my coat now… 
I finished a night once mixing The Waterboys ‘Whole of the Moon’ over the top of Harlequin 4 - Set It Off (below). I was absolutely wired to the moon at the time but in that moment it was the best sounding thing I’d ever done DJ’ing. I’ve tried replicating it afterwards and even editing it on the computer and it sounds terrible. Must have been the pills!
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always enjoyed this blend on the groove armada late night tales cd
jeru accapella over roy ayers
Here’s a question for the group: does using an acapella count as a blend?
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Pause button edits… another fave. My poor Pioneer music centre was ABUSED. If you recorded a few seconds extra of audio and then went back and pressed record again at the point you wanted to edit it would overdub over the extra audio for a few seconds. I exploitated that to the max. Was just trying to copy the Kiss FM Mastermix tapes we used get hold of but yeah i loved filling up a tape with pause button mixes and edits, Wish I still had the tapes.
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