Talking Shit with Shake, Part 1

Anthony “Shake” Shakir is one of techno’s true innovators. Despite having tracks out since the initial “Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit” compilation, he is consistantly one of if not the most underrated techno producer out of the D. infinitestatemachine had a long talk with him, trying to see what makes him tick. Also check out the exclusive mp3 clip of a track from his forthcoming album…..

Shake live @ DEMF ’07, video courtesy of Adam Ratana.

ISM: Before you started with techno, what music were you interested in?

Shake: That’s a funny question, beacuse I’ve been listening to records all my life, I got pictures of me when I was 2 or 3 years old holding up 45’s. So music has been a big part of my life as long as I’ve been living. My father used to have an 8-track recorder, and I would mimic songs, sing into it, they would find the tape and say “Hey, that’s funny and cute” but then I would clam up like the Warner Brothers frog, so I would stop playing with singing the record. My father played saxaphone in high school, and I knew that but I never asked my father about trying to play instruments, I never really asked him about that stuff. But he always bought records. My brother reminded me that my father used to buy records every Wednesday, come back with at least 3-5 albums, this was in the 70’s when you could do that stuff. That was a great time for music because everything sounded good then. I’ve been listening to records all my life, but I wanted to figure out certain things about records, my thing was a record thing more than anything.ISM: What kind of records was your father buying?

Shake: My father used to buy the cool jazz of the 70’s, you know like the funky jazz of the 70’s like Donald Byrd’s “Places and Spaces”, War “The World is A Ghetto”, some of the big Motown, like everything Marvin Gaye did and Stevie Wonder did, everybody bought that. My father liked jazz, the last great era of jazz music in America, he liked all that electronic, electric jazz. He bought those and a few pop things, a few. I’ll tell you this though, one day we went to the record store, we went to Detroit Audio, I don’t know if it’s still open, on 6 Mile on West McNichols, it used to be around the block from the Mercury. We went in there, he was like “You can get any record you want” and I was too scared to get one. That was when Earth, Wind & Fire’s album just came out “That’s The Way of the World”, and I was just like “I don’t want nothing.” I punked out. I caught up later though. My father, he always liked good music. He knows what’s good and what’s bad, he knows what’s in key and what’s out of key. I had a good lesson. But also, my mother grew up eight blocks away from Motown. My mother grew up in the late 50’s early 60’s, that’s when she was a teenager and a young adult. She always loved radio music and songs like that. Whenever the Michigan Chronicle comes out they have questions about who did this record, that record, she knows pretty much all the answers. So she knows alot of music of that era, we talk about that stuff all the time.

ISM: So what about right before you started making techno, were you into the disco thing at all?

Shake: You know, that’s when I was anti-disco then, I fell into that media hype about that. I used to really like to listen to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 to hear the stories about “Yeah he said to play this record, play “Checkers” for my girl in South Dakota, this is for Stan in Iraq, he said to dedicate “Checkers” to his woman. And this is “Checkers”….”. I used to love Casey Kasem.

ISM: His voice is comforting.

Shake: That’s why he was great. And you know he went to Wayne State, great school. That was his commercial. I used to listen to whatever was on the radio. Coming from radio in the time when I was a kid, I can remember hearing as far back as the early 70’s, like 71-73. That’s when AM was what it was, all the big stations were AM stations. I used to fall asleep listening to the radio, I liked everything they were playing. Between 73 and 75, FM came into play and I know (W)JOB switched to FM and then (W)BRQ kicked on and I listened to that, too. They played top 40 music of that era, and I liked it all.

ISM: So how did the transition into techno come about?

Shake: I always liked electronic sounding music, some of those records like Charles Earland “Leaving This Planet”, I’ve been listening to that since it was a new record. I always liked that kind of stuff, not because it was electronic, my father liked it but i found things I liked on it, too. My father bought a lot of records, at that time he also bought a few funky disco records, which was soul music because that’s what disco kind of evolved from. He kinda liked some of them, but he wasn’t a rabid fan of it. I remember him buying Mandre’s album (“Mandre”), that was around 1976, I always like that album. It had “Solar Flight” on it. I just liked synthesizer sounds or whatever, I just always looked at things a certain way. When techno started, from my perspective of it, Chicago had kicked on first and early in that sense. I liked house music, but I was a Detroiter like “I don’t wanna hear that sissy stuff” or whatever, like a typical Detroit guy. But at the same time I did (like it). I can say I just like all music. When the new wave movement happened, I wasn’t into punk rock. I didn’t pay no attention to that. I used to read all the time, I’d read about it, but I wasn’t the type of guy to go see this stuff at the clubs. I was a scared kinda kid, I wouldn’t do that stuff, I wouldn’t even think to do that kind of stuff. I liked some of the records that would slide through on the radio. I remember Mike Halloran, he was on WLBS for a stint, some of those records I heard I liked. For me, a record that made me kinda want to figure out certain things was Thomas Dolby, a record he did before “Blinded Me With Science”, I just can’t remember the name of it. It was that stuff he was doing, I just liked it, then I would read up on him. Like how he ordered a synth and they sent him two of them and they let him keep it, that’s how he started doing his music. I always liked songs, that was another part of it.

ISM: Did you start off with your own equipment?

Shake: Not at all. I remember when I was in high school, I took a drum class, I was in the band too. I actually had drum class with Rob Hood at Cooley High School. But I didn’t have any instruments. I wanted a drum set, so my father did get me a drum set, but he didn’t buy me the hi-hat. I didn’t even try to play it, I ended up getting rid of it, which was a dumb mistake on my part. I just didn’t take anything seriously then, I think I was in high school then. But here’s how I started trying to make records. There was a guy I grew up with named Charles King. I was in college at this time. When I was in my second year at Western (Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo Michigan), I had a friend who had a (Korg) Poly800, he let me borrow it so I was trying to figure it out or whatever. I ended up keeping it a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to work the sequencer on it. I was just making sounds up with it. He let me keep it for a while, I just played around with it. I was trying to figure out basslines, one of the first basslines I figured out was (Model 500’s) “No UFO’s”. When I came back home (for the summer) from Western, Charles King had a (Casio) CZ5000, he let me borrow that, I never could figure out the sequencer on that thing neither. By that time I had got a Poly800. And this is when I met Jay Denham in Kalamazoo in 1986. We were fast friend’s, he’s still my dog as they say. I took the Poly800 up to college and Jay had got a (Roland TR) 505. We just swapped machines, I let him get the Poly800, he let me get the drum machine, so I started trying to figure out how to program the drum machine. What ended up happening, Jay figured out how to work the sequencer (on the Poly800) and I learned how to make drum tracks, that became my focus because I always liked funky drummers. I love rudimentary drumming, how they play the whole drum set. The first studio work I did was for the Detroit Techno album that came out on Virgin.

ISM: So that was the first track you ever made?

Shake: Yeah.

ISM: Nice.

Shake: No, it’s one of the worst tracks I ever made, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. When I was down at Metroplex, this was a little later, I was down there hanging out all the time. I didn’t look at Derrick and them guys as different. I’d come home from school for the summer and I’d hang out with them or whatever, they’d have some parties but I didn’t really go to parties that much then. That was a great era. You just had to be here at that time. One thing in that Omar-s interview, he was talking about these motherfuckers fronting like they know shit, it’s true. They don’t know shit, they play like they do because they read on Discogs. You just cannot understand what happened with this, how this shit happened, how it worked. I used to try not to be nostalgic, but I’ve been nostalgic for the past two or three years, I kinda miss that shit. When that stuff happened then, everybody got along, wasn’t nobody beefing. Everything was kinda still new. Chicago was poppin’ off, some of the people at Cooley they used to go to Chicago every weekend.

ISM: Did you go to Chicago?

Shake: I didn’t get to Chicago until 1986, when I was in college.

ISM: Did you check out the clubs?

Shake: I went to one, the guys I went with, guys I had been in high school with, guy named Howard Fanning and Arnold Nevilles. They’re better deejays than me too. They went to college in Jackson Mississippi. They was home for the summer, and they had a friend who lived in Chicago, so they said “We’re going to Chicago”. So we went to Chicago and we stayed at his place for a day. We went to, I think it ended up being a high school party. It was 1986, these high school parties was bumpin’. Back to Detroit, there used to be a place on Telegraph called the Bonnybrook, it was a country club, I think it was a Jewish country club they formed because they couldn’t get into the country clubs in Detroit at that time. They used to have parties there, I remember coming home from school one summer, this had to be in 85, a guy named Eric Simms said “Hey man, Derrick and them are playing here” so we checked it out. That’s where I met Juan and Derrick, Eddie Fowlkes too. It was Derrick, Juan, and Kevin spinning, but Eddie Fowlkes was there being Eddie Fowlkes. Eddie is a good guy, he gets a bad rep but he’s a good guy. Eddie Fowlkes put money in my pocket so I got nothing but kudos for that great man. Print that. You can hate on Fowlkes all you want, but Fowlkes is real, he’ll never front on you. Flat out. At this party, I know I met Derrick first. Juan was there but I didn’t know him at this time, but of course I was enamoured with Juan Atkins because of his first record that I knew of, “Alleys of Your Mind” with “Cosmic Raindance” on the flip side. Here’s a little cheesy story I love to tell: I walked two miles from my house to buy that record when it first came out. I remember when Mojo was dropping that record, I was awestruck.

ISM: That was on Deep Space records?

Shake: Deep Space, I rememeber, I’ll never forget it. I haven’t had that joy from buying records in a long time. It’s just a great time to me. I guess I get a buzz from that like some people get from weed. “Clear” I don’t wanna hear no more, but “Cosmic Raindance” is timeless to me. I’ll never get tired of that record. There’s two ways for me to hear it, it sounds old but it still sounds new and different to me. But that’s Detroit, they play things a whole different way now. To me, that’s the record that kinda made me want to figure out how to make records. I always loved Stevie Wonder, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a Stevie Wonder record because I can not play. As these machines were coming along, I could make these records. By this time I used to hang out with Derrick, looking through his records, listening to him talk crazy, whatever. By this time I had met Juan, I was not a groupie type, but I respected him musically. Juan put this shit in effect. Juan is my boy. Period. He made this whole thing possible. At this point, Derrick was putting together that “Techno” album. I was fiddling around, I made this cassette tape, it had one track on it that was a rip off of Mr. Fingers “Mystery Of Love”, like me trying to figure out how to make it. I don’t even have it no more. It was kind of a cheesy copy, but not like a direct ripoff, it sounded unique enough. Derrick, it was the only track on there he liked. Alot of records at that time had electro beats made on the 909, Derrick didn’t like that. That was the dichotomy of the dance music scene at the time. Detroit had a split at that time, it was jits and preps. Jits are now thugs, and preps, they whatever they are. They were kids whose parents had good jobs and they always had the new clothes, Izod shirts and all that. It was a class thing.

ISM: Were you rocking Izod?

Shake: Naw man, I hated clothes, but I wasn’t gonna walk around naked. I just wore Levi’s. So they were putting that “Techno” album together, so I had to record my record at Kevin’s house. I just had that Poly800 and I knew how to make drum tracks with the 909. I was always trying to make it sound like a real drummer. Even Ron Murphy said “That’s kind of ludicrous”. I said “I know, but I wanted to make it sound like he was doing runs around the whole drum kit” or something. I never looked at it like the 1-2-3-4 thing, I looked at it like a drum machine, try to make it sound like a real drummer playing. So anyway, I did the record, I had a few tracks that I did, “Sequence 10” was the one that ended up being done. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, I didn’t have confidence. My track got on there, it’s not that great. I listened to it the other day, I still hate it. I’m glad I was a part of it, but I’m not looking back towards it. Cause somebody asked me about “Do you have any older stuff like that?”, I said “Naw, I lost all that stuff, man, nobody needs to hear that.”

ISM: Were you recording all that stuff to cassette tape?

Shake: At the house, yeah, demos was done on a cassette tape, cause I was learning to drive, I’d just drive around playing my tape all day to myself.

ISM: So how about your deejaying, how did you get started there?

Shake: Now I can get back to my boys Arnold and Howard. We were at Cooley, I always liked listening to mixes, on 98 at that time they had a deejay named Barry Grant. He used to play the mixes, more New York style mixing blending and all that stuff. I liked it, but didn’t know nothing about it. Also, a guy I went to school with was Mike Huckaby. He used to buy records, so we’d talk about records, trade records or whatever. Mike was always working, he was always building up stuff, he got his tables, he always had records. But it was Howard, I was like “Man, if you’re gonna be a deejay, you’re gonna need some 12’s (Technics SL1200 turntables). You gonna be a professional, you gotta have what professionals have.” So Howard ended up buying a pair of 12’s, so we used to all go over there and practice. Around this time, the hiphop revolution was kicking in, so everybody was trying to figure out how to scratch, trying to apply that stuff. They figured out how to scratch. They were here for the summer, so we’d be playing records, buying records or whatever. This was in ’86, when we went to Chicago. We went to Imports, Etc. which was a great record store. As we were driving in, we got there late. Once you get to the Michigan/Indiana state line, you start picking up WBMX in the car. We listened to BMX and heard all these sweet tracks, I was like “That’s sweet, gotta see if they got that at the store” or whatever. I can remember one record specifically, that sticks with me to this day, it was “Mind Games” by Quest. That’s one of my favorite records of all time. We finally get into town, we get there late at night. We go to Imports, Etc., they closed, we go find out where it’s at so we know where to come back to the next day. The store opened at 10:00, we went back up there at 9:00, there was a line of at least 30 people standing outside waiting for the store to open. Everybody got in the store, everybody was asking for “Mind Games”, “Mind Games”. Guy said “Hold on.” He behind the counter, he reached and grabbed this box, he sets the box on the counter, takes out a utility knife and cuts the box open. EVERYBODY in the store bought a pair of “Mind Games”. I’ll never forget that. I never seen that in Detroit. At that time in Chicago, everybody was with it. Chicago played a big part, not so much in how I hear music. Those deejays on BMX, the way people used to mix then, they played a little bit of everything. Everybody used to do that. But with the Detroit guys, it was around the progressive versus the jits at that time. You had the guys that now are deep guys versus the guys who play everything. The preps were the guys who played the progressive side, they thought they had more class. The jits played Cybotron and Rum DMC and a few house records, a few. Not many of them, but a few.

ISM: So they were more hiphop and electro oriented?

Shake: Yeah, exactly, at that time yes. Detroit at that time, the jits liked electro and the preps liked what they called progressive at that time. I don’t think the deejays now make distinctions, everything is at 45 (RPM) now. It became booty shaking music.

ISM: You’re still down with that kind of stuff though, aren’t you?

Shake: Kinda, not really though. My thing is I don’t like rap that much anymore. I did like 2 Live Crew at that time. I used to make the girls mad cause I would play “Throw the D”. I had this sweet mix I used to do: Hanson & Davis “Tonight (Love Will Make It Right)” and I mixed 2 Live Crew “Throw the D” with it. Girls used to hate it but they ended up dancing anyway. I like the beats more than anything. To me, hip-hop was more fun then. When gangster came and kinda took it over. I’m not a thug so I can’t relate. I’m not trying to build the biggest dope house on the block, I don’t need a beat by beat history on how to do it. But at this time, in ’86 they (preps and jits) weren’t beefing like that. It wasn’t on that level at that time. The young boys was into whatever was on the radio. This was the time when Jeff Mills was coming into prominance. I told him this the last time I saw him, I said “Jeff, you a paradigm shifter, man. You don’t understand. I was one of them kids trying to figure out how to play like you played, how to get the records you played. I know, I was there.” And he was like “Naw man, it’s not like that.” But Jeff turned Detroit out, he really did. In fact, he turned Detroit out so much that his influence lasted here for 15 years, 10 years after he left Detroit. The guys I was spinning with at that time, the Ron Cooks, the Gary Chandlers… Gary Chandler was always a neat Jeff Mills. Gary learned how to mix that stuff with precision, Jeff was always sloppy. But it didn’t matter, when he’s on the tables it’s his house. Gary figured that out, he was always precise. Ron Cook was cool, east side deejays really took that whole Jeff Mills thing to another level. They took it to where it’s at now. I hate that phrase, “ghetto tech”. It’s some bullshit, I’ll never say it. To me, it’s like they’re putting a monkey suit on. It’s usually suburban white boys, it’s a monkey suit for them. As soon as they’re tired of wearing that monkey suit, they can take it off and put on a regular suit and then go back to business and we’re stuck here worrying about somebody robbing us. I don’t like that shit, I won’t play party to it. I’m not gonna play a record at 45 because they play it at the tittie bar like that. Go to the tittie bar and dance.

ISM: You had that one track on Puzzlebox “(With A) Piece of Ice”….

Shake: Yeah, that was just to see if I could do it. What it was, I did a rap record also at that time called “Da Jit” with a group called K.O.T. Matter of fact, I was working at Metroplex at that time, they lived on the east side, they came with “We wanna do a record.” They wanted me to sample Juan’s record “Technicolor” and put a beat under it, a looped beat under it. The guy’s name was Lo, he was the rapper. He had the line that I just liked, it goes like this: “I like hoes that’s twice as nice, suck on my dick with a piece of ice, lick on my goddamn nutsack, and come up blowin’ like Roberta Flack.” That shit was funny to me, that’s all it was. People tell me to this day they still play it out there. I ain’t played that record since I did it. To me, in recording I know i cram too much stuff into it or whatever. I had an SP-12, so everything sounded dirty. That was one of Juan’s pet peeves with my music, “It just sounds dirty” but I was like “That’s all I got”.

ISM: How did you get the SP-12?

Shake: Kevin Saunderson had an SP-12, and I remember asking Tyree Cooper and Jeff Mills before I had access to one if they used it to make their records, they both said yes. I said “I gotta get one.” I ended up buying the instruction manual before I even had one. So Kevin had a sister, she was doing rap stuff. Kevin said “Man, you do a rap beat for my sister, you can take the machine.” So I got the machine, I started using it to make everything.

ISM: Did that track ever come out?

Shake: I can’t remember, I honestly can’t remember. I did it at his studio, it’s probably on tapes in his studio now. I do know this: when I was making rap beats, I figured certain beats needed certain rappers to work on them. So there would be some beats I would have that I wouldn’t want just anyone rapping on them, I wanted a specific rapper to rap to it, so I would hold them or whatever. I’ve come to learn now, whoever rap to it, you sell it to whoever, whoever catches on run with it. I had a misguided view of rap beats, I had to let it go. I gotta learn how to make them again for my brother. Some of my best work I did with my brother. We did a track called “Speak On It”, I think Juan put it out on a white label. It was kinda like a Public Enemy style beat that I did.

ISM: Is there any hip-hop that you like now?

Shake: I like Common. I like stuff more New York oriented, that sounds like the classics. I still like Rakim as a rapper. I can understand everything he says. If I can’t understand you, I don’t get it, I can’t feel it. For the past five years, rap is more techno than techno. They’re using the same sounds we use to make records.

ISM: Especially alot of that southern shit, using the 808….

Shake: 808 is the greatest machine invented. All they is is back to the future with that stuff. That’s all that is. 808’s ain’t never left the arena.

ISM: Didn’t you recently make the change from using hardware to using a computer to make music?

Shake: I thought if I got a computer it would speed up my process, that shit shut me down for five years. Things are getting better now. I got an iBook G3, I bought Logic, it’s too big for a G3. Between that and trying to figure out what to do with it, I was stuck. That’s why I ain’t put out a record in 4 years or whatever. It threw me off. I was told that was gonna happen, I didn’t believe it. I was cocky. Now, I’m trying to get back up to snuff.

ISM: The album you have forthcoming, is that stuff you did on the computer or older stuff?

Shake: It’s stuff I’d done with my (Kurzweil) K2000. Some tracks I had that I wanted to put out. That’s why I didn’t put ’em out on 12″, cause I wanted them on the album. I held off on that, now here they come. But I ain’t gonna tell them when I did ’em, cause they’ll still work.

Shake “A Different Thought Process”
Check the exclusive preview of a track from Shake’s forthcoming album….

ISM: What’s the story with the album, when’s it coming out, are you gonna put it out yourself?

Shake: I think I’m gonna end up putting it out myself. My brother said he’s gonna put it out because I’ve been talking about “I wanna figure out my stuff so I can make you your beats”, I wasn’t stalling but I didn’t expect this to take me as long as it did take me. My brother, he thinks like a Detroit rapper, it’s like “What do you mean the beats ain’t there? All you gotta do is throw it together.” I’m like “Ehhhh…. I think you gotta put a little more into it than that.” But they don’t think that way. My brother is talking about CD’s, everything is CD’s now. It’s gonna be on vinyl cause I like records. I’m gonna handle that, my brother’s gonna take care of the CD’s. Some of the things he’s saying is right, I acknowledge I’m a little slow, but at the same time, I didn’t expect it to take me this long. It’s up to the people to decide. I never hear my records out when I’m out. I never did.

ISM: You have done a variety of styles, do you think that is because of your history as a record person who was just into music?

Shake: I remember when Dan (Bell) was here, when the (7th City) distribution was here, he said “Your records be having too much stuff on it, it’s hard to sell them.” But that’s how I listen to records. I understand now when people buy records, house deejays buy house records, electro deejays buy electro records, techno deejays buy techno records.

ISM: I think it’s interesting that when you deejay, you play a lot of pop records.

Shake: I like a good song, man.

ISM: So why haven’t you done any pop records?

Shake: I’ve been trying to do that. I got one record I did called “Is This Real?”. I did it at Juan’s studio, I think in about ’88, ’89 with a girl named Dianne Lynn, she went to Western with me. I did it and Juan took the record overseas and tried to get it put out overseas. When I did that record I didn’t have no confidence that I could do the stuff myself, that’s another thing Eddie Fowlkes helped me with. It came out through Italy on Flying Records, it’s one of the best records I’ve done. I did a few tracks with her, whatever, I know I did a Steve Hurley ripoff thing called “Spellbound”. As a matter of fact I got the master tapes but I can’t find a 16 track reel that I can run it off onto DAT so I can try to do something with it. If I can find a 16 track recorder like that Tascam Juan used to have, I’d do it. I’ve been trying to find one. When I find one, I’m gonna put it on DAT and put it in the computer, make it sound up to date, so to speak. I looked at this stuff, I was cocky enough to believe this stuff was all pop music, at one time it seemed that way in Detroit, but then when I look back on it now, it wasn’t like that. Like now, everything ain’t for everybody.

ISM: You mentioned to me one time before about you and James Stinson (of Drexciya fame) planning to work on a collaboration before he died…

Shake: I met James, he was a cool guy, we were just kicking it a little bit here and there, whatever, like “We gonna do something, right?”, “Yeah, cool,” this was right before he moved down south. I didn’t know he had a heart condition. It never came to be. But yeah James was a good guy, a cool guy. To me, he was the brains of Drexciya. Gerald is great at what he does, but I can tell the difference who did what. There was a time where I never knew who did what with certain music. Like a Beatles fan can tell you what song Paul wrote, what songs John wrote. With me with Drexciya, I never knew who did what, with Underground Resistance I never knew wrote what, but now I know who did what parts. I like to think I’m a student of music, so I start picking out little things based on the personalities I know of these people, the way they operate and how they talk or whatever, it’s just tantamount to their personality.

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To be continued…..

Shake’s Discogs Page

Shake on Myspace