In 1987, I had just graduated high school and moved from San Jose to Long Beach, CA for college. I chose Long Beach State because I assumed it would be a party school since it had ‘beach’ in the name. My parents helped me move all my belongings which were my clothes, 2 turntables, a mixer, speakers, an amp and probably around 10 crates of records. I was into hip hop, but wore vintage clothes from thrift stores and had a mushroom haircut so wasn’t really accepted by the other college students who never understood me. So I was a loner who pretty much stayed in my dorm room and made music all the time. I remember saving my money once I got there and eventually bought a 4-track recorder and a Casio drum machine that had 4 pads, each with a split second of sample time. I got the drum machine used for like $300 and was very excited. Next step was to find a rapper so I put an ad in the paper. I said my influences were Schoolly D, Just Ice, Scott La Rock, and Ultramagnetic MCs. ‘Hardcore rap.’ That’s how I found Spunky Spunk Dogg, a Cholo rapper from Long Beach. A few years later when Snoop Doggy Dogg came outta Long Beach, I wondered if he knew Spunky Spunk Dogg, but that’s another story. Spunky had more tattoos than I had ever seen on a human, especially for 1988 and I was always kinda afraid of rolling with him cuz I didn’t really know his background, but he always treated me with respect and admiration. I made the beats and did the cuts. This recording is the only one I have with him from back then and we performed outside at the backyard of a BBQ on a Sunday afternoon for an audience of around 15-20 people. We did around 5 or 6 original songs we had made and 1 cover and for the cover, we chose the biggest rap song in LA at the time. My turntable kept skipping as it wasn’t a 1200 and nobody even really cheered. I don’t even recall people really paying attention, but we were having fun and it was our first and last show together as a group. This was in the summer of ’88, and soon after, I moved back to San Jose, where I eventually met Charizma and started all over again. — PBW 8/14/2015
