You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone’s voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.
It was very hard to get any records, so the only source for us to really hear what was happening was listening to the Voice of America. We would be taping all the broadcast and then sharing the tapes and talking about it.
I try to keep myself busy creatively; it’s for my own sanity after auditioning in the city for bad television shows and bad scripts and not being a name and having the clout to get my tapes passed on further.
I use to live on this street when I was a kid where there was an old person retirement home, and all of the old people would listen to that band Herman’s Hermits, and they would wear white nursing shoes. And they would throw away stacks of VHS tapes, and I would go through the trash and take them.
It is just called Continuing Legal Education. You can go to lectures, you can even listen to tapes on airplanes – they want you to stay current. So you do have to stay current to maintain your license even if you are not practicing.
If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.
The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip-hop to jazz to funk to whatever else. And in a way, ‘Check Your Head’ ended up being like one of those pause-tapes.
I remember, as a kid, nothing struck me funnier than seeing Richard Nixon look into the camera and sincerely tell everyone he didn’t know where the 18 minutes had gone from his tapes. But there was all this sweat on his upper lip. We knew he was lying. He knew we knew he was lying. But he was determined to tell the lie.
I’d been trying to do this since I was 15, sending out the demo tapes and doing all the things that everyone told me that I should be doing. But no deal – like, never.
My dad is huge on music, so he always made tapes from his friends. That’s how I got into music.
