“Hip-hop’s birth on the streets of the Bronx is a well-documented moment in New York’s musical history. In the late 1970s, DJ Kool Herc isolated the drum break; Grand Master Flash turned art into science with the ‘quick-mix theory;’ stumbling upon the scratch, Grand Wizzard Theodore gave the genre its signature sound, then, in 1982, Afrika Bambaaata took the whole world to ‘Planet Rock.’ Those are the broad strokes. However, many of the music’s earliest pioneers receive less recognition than they deserve. As a fearsome crate-digger, block-rocking DJ and founding member of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers, Charlie Chase is one such character. This interview, which took place in 1998, began in Chase’s modest, record-strewn Bronx home. While there, he handed me a tape of his most recent labor of love: a version of Cold Crush’s 1981 battle with Theodore’s crew, the Fantastic Romantic Five. The vocals, Chase explained, were remastered from a fourth – or fifth – generation cassette, and all the music had been painstakingly re-recorded – a process that involved more than 8,000 individual edits. …”
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)