Superdragon DJ: Los Angeles Dreams Mixtape 1996
SUPERDRAGON DJ CASSETTE ARCHIVEs
Superdragon DJ, Los Angeles, 1996
One of my favorite parts of digging through the archives is finding and digitizing my old cassette tapes. I was a prolific mixtape producer back in the day, and in my digs I’ve surfaced so many cassette classics from the Superdragon DJ archives - Superdragon DJ was my DJ and noisemaker alter ego in the late 80s and 90s - and I found one of the better mixtapes from 1996 recently. 1996 was smack dab in the middle of the my time as a Los Angeles scene guy, and this tape is a truly accurate time capsule of a typical Superdragon DJ set back then.
LOS ANGELES DREAMS is a good blend of dub classics stuck in my head in 1996, but also represents the tail end of my college radio days in the early 90s, so lots of early 90s dubby hip hop interspersed with a shitload of new electronic bangers I was being exposed to on a daily basis in L.A.. I996 was the height of my scene hobnobbing - I was DJing, writing, photographing, hanging out with bands and label AR sleazebags, and getting wild with electronics and making shit from it. My mailbox was a steady stream of freebies from really good LA/SoCal electronic labels, not to mention regular deliveries of boxes full of CDs to review from the east coast magazines. I was never in need of new music in those days. Probably not these days either.
SIDE A
Meat Beat Manifesto
“Radio Babylon” 1991
New Kingdom
“Crush Your Enemies (Panama Connection Dub Mix)” 1995
Fiddler’s Dream
”Daisy Rose” 1995
Faithealer
“Wicked Vibes” 1995
DJ Food
“Freedom” 1994
St. Etienne
“ Filthy (Monkey Mafia Vocal Mix)” 1996
DJ Red Alert & Resident Alien
“Pum Pum Master” 1994
Greater Than One
“Dubkiller” 1991
Dread Flimstone
“Frankie For Dub” 1995
DJ Food
“Simply Magic” 1992
SIDE B
DJ Matt & Dr. P
“Red” 1994
De La Soul
“Me, Myself, & I (Cutmaster Swift Remix)” 1991
Tuffy Tuf
“Ghetto Soundcheck” 1991
Meat Beat Manifesto
“Strap Down” 1989
Universal Joint
“Aerosol Funk” 1994
Freestyle Fellowship
“Respect Due” 1992
Shamen
“Hyperreal Selector (Jack Dangers Mix)” 1992
Renegade Soundwave
“Brixton” 1993
Bedouin Ascent
“Broadway Boogie Woogie” 1995
KRS One “Outta Here” 1993
Mastered with the tape hiss and all mistakes intact to take you right back to the 90’s, driving on the 405 and up and down the Sunset Strip, cassette tape deck blasting. A personal fave: “Daisy” by Fiddler’s Dream on Side B might be the most quintessential Los Angeles song of the 90’s - a perfect encapsulation of the scene, just like the lady sings “I like the cool people, and the funky clubs.”