TRANSCRIPT: Grand Dragon KD on Aspirin Regimen Podcast
He was the FIRST to put the Transformer Scratch ON WAX!
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Sound Collage [00:00:00]
Grand Dragon KD: One of the biggest scratches in the whole lexicon of DJing.
Intro [00:00:15]
Lisa “Chase” Patterson: I'm Chase and this is Aspirin Regimen, a Hip Hop Podcast where we go down the rabbit hole of creativity.
diamondseed: Hey party people, this is diamonseed comin' at you live. I wanna recognize that you're livin' in some trying times, and when you need to dial it back again, to get your mind right, to focus on some other things I recommend Aspirin Regimen.
Lesley-Ann Brown: This is Lesley-Ann. Today on Aspirin Regimen, we have a new segment called "Listening Now, Closer To The Ground". We know that we're dealing with another world with everything that's happened since the last episode. The times being what they are, everyone is having to work hard to make sense of what's going on.
Some artists have their own ways of making that happen easily. We want to acknowledge these contributors to the cause on a new segment called, "Listening Now, Closer To The Ground". That will be a little bit later in the show. But first...
Chase: Today we have an interview that DJ Johnny Juice hooked us up with. DJ Green Arrow spoke with Grand Dragon KD. He's a true Pioneer,
diamondseed: ... one of the key people who are mentioned when you talk about the origins of the Transformer Scratch.
Chase: In fact, he was the first person to put it on wax.
DJ Green Arrow: Now, what is the Transformer Scratch? Well, this is what it sounds like to me... and it's basically taking a long sound and cutting it up into smaller pieces.
Chase: There's "Scratch Nerd" stuff, like "were his turntables in Battle Position when he did that?" Well, you might not care about that "Nerd (EXPLETIVE") .
His story is inspiring to anyone who's interested in Hip Hop history.
diamondseed: But it's not like a normal interview... you gotta get that. We're gonna try something new here. Green Arrow will be scratching up the questions and KD will be servin' up the answers. All right, everybody, thanks for listening... and enjoy!
Lesley-Ann: Let's hear from Grand Dragon KD.
diamondseed: Grand Dragon KD! Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Lesley-Ann: KD, what's your origin story? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah, this is Grand Dragon KD, straight from Philly. I'm the first guy to perform the Transformer Scratch on wax,
SAMPLE: KD where's it at? ("BRING THE BEAT BACK" EXCERPT)
Grand Dragon KD: "Bring The Beat Back" was the song, by Steady B. We did this back in 1985. "Just Call Us Def" was the first record that we did together. And right after that, we came back with "Bring The Beat Back".
diamondseed: Please tell us about the origin of your name.
Grand Dragon KD: My name is Grand Dragon KD. Actually it was condensed. My first DJ name was "Kid Disco" . At that time you had DJs like "Grandmasters" and "Grand Wizzards". At that time, I was with a crew called "Poison Clan".
I was one of the main DJs out of the Poison Clan. So when I started making records in '85, I had said, "I need a title to go along with my name." Instead of being Kid Disco, 'cause I ain't going to be a kid forever. I'm going to put a title on Kid Disco... condense that and break that down to KD. And I'll put "Grand Dragon" on that because the guy who was one of the head guys in the Clan would be a Grand Dragon, hence the name.
I started with Steady in '85, he had a record out called "Check Your Radio". That was a diss record to LL Cool J. I hooked up with him when that record came out, we did shows, but he and I didn't do anything together until '86. Again, that was "Just Call Us Def", "Fly Shante" and right after that was "Bring The Beat Back", and on the "Bring The Beat Back" record I performed the infamous Transformer Scratch. This is one of the biggest scratches in the whole lexicon of DJing.
I rocked that joint and from there we just started rippin' records from that point on.
diamondseed: Thank you. Can you break down the Transformer a little bit for us in the audience? There's some lay people out there and they might not understand the nuances involved.
Grand Dragon KD: Transformer Scratch, man. It was one of the dopest scratches that you could ever perform as a DJ. We had guys from our city: Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, Lightnin' Rich. These are guys that I came up with, we were doing scratch patterns forever. And this particular scratch, the way you would do it was you'd manipulate the record where it sounds like the characters from the Transformers cartoon.
SAMPLE: "TRANSFORMERS" CARTOON SOUNDBITE
Grand Dragon KD: ...and you'd just do it in a rhythmic manner, where it's output is dope. It's mind boggling the way that it sounds, because you don't typically hear this type of thing. We developed this scratch before it was even named we were doing it, but somebody came up with the concept "oh, that sounds like the Transformers cartoon". From that point on guys like me, Jazzy Jeff, Cash Money, Spinbad (developed it) ... Spinbad, he's the DJ from Philly who was really credited for that particular scratch. But I was the first one that put that scratch on wax. You had guys from New York: (Grand Mixer) DXT, (Grandmaster) Flash, (Grand Wizzard) Theodore, but they were doin' different scratch patterns. And again, the scratch wasn't never particularly named until somebody from Philly gave it that particular name.
diamondseed: How did you first hear it?
djgreenarrow: And what sound did you hear it being used
Grand Dragon KD: There was a lot of different DJs in the city that had a whole bunch of different type of scratch patterns. Probably the majority of DJs here was doin' that type of scratch, but they wasn't doing it as consistent and as much as a regular Chirp or some type of Stab scratches and Crab scratches. It wasn't done as much. It was like an infrequent scratch. But again, it wasn't named. Until after it was named, it became a real popular thing because you can hear that particular scratch in thinking about the Transformers cartoon.
In '86, I did "Bring The Beat Back" in '86, but on a record that I did in '85, which was "Just Call Us Def", I did it a little bit on that, but again, at that time, it wasn't even named. I did a little bit of it, but I didn't do it consistently. Like I said, it hadn't been named and I had done the scratchin', it didn't have a particular name. You know what I'm sayin'?
diamondseed: How did people react? Did they say, "Hey, what are you doing up there? What is that thing? What did you use?
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah. A lot of people who heard it was like, "what is that? Did you have some type of effect scratch or somethin'?" A lot of people were like, "wait a minute, that shit that you did with the record, man. What is that?" They never heard anything like that.
They was like drawn to it. Jazzy Jeff did a record, he and Fresh Prince did, and he premiered the scratch on wax.
diamondseed: Live at Union Square?
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah, Live at Union Square. The crowd went crazy when he did it! Again, at that time it had the name and it stood out from regular basic scratches. People were ravin' about it.
diamondseed: So there was no real inventor? That technique kind of came out, just riffing during Partyrockin'?. And then people said, "Hey, that sounds like the Transformer cartoon?"
Grand Dragon KD: For that particular scratch, DJ Spinbad, he used to DJ for BBD (Bell Biv DeVoe) . He's credited for that scratch, the Transformer Scratch, with it bein' named that. But again, there was like a whole bunch of different DJs from Philly that would do that or something particularly similar to it.
diamondseed: Okay, we got you now.
Grand Dragon KD: There were some dope DJs coming up. And then you got some guys who did scratches that were just as good as that. But again, they wasn't namin' scratches. They wasn't givin' them identity, you would just do it, whatever the rhythm that your hands gave to the record, what you got out of the speakers.
diamondseed: Ok, I have to ask you this: just as the Baby scratch was around forever, and DJs would be cueing records, but then Grand Wizzard Theodore practiced in his room to 'voice' it, and made it into a featured thing.
Did you "woodshed" the Transformer scratch and then bring it out?
Grand Dragon KD: I'm takin' the line from KRS ONE. "You've gotta have style and learn to be original. And everybody's going to want to diss you". You gotta have some type of trademark sound was something that stands out from the next man, that's part of your brand. That's part of your marketing. If you don't have that, you're just lumped in with everybody else, see? That part is something that people need to learn how to grasp. For the most part, everybody, they want to do the same thing, but nahh... you need something to stand above the rest, to stand outside of the group. You know what I'm saying? I don't recommend "goin' along to get along". I don't recommend that. I think you should have some type of savoir faire, somethin' different from the next person. Once you develop that, you have your own sound, you got your own identity, then you can stand outside of the other folks. In developing some of the scratches that I've done, a lot of them was just mistakes or wasn't something that I had set out to do, but it just sounded like "oh, this is something that I might want to try to develop more".
It may have been a mistake. And, "Okay. I need to expound on it and enhance it. And so in doing that, that's how you develop something different or something that's arousing to the ear. A lot of this stuff is just done by fault, created by fault. But you learn to take that fault and develop it into something that's looked up to, that's something that's drawing some awe from people. The stuff that you create is sometimes drawn by mistake or by mishap. But it sounds good. And you want to bring that to the listener's ear, where they're in awe from listening to that. And they're like, "Damn. that's like that. I like the sound."
You want to catch somebody's ears with it. If it catches your ear, it's definitely could church somebody else's ear.
djgreenarrow: What's the essence of being original on the turntables?
Grand Dragon KD: Turntable originality? Your whole thing was to like extend and mix... you're whole thing as a DJ was to extend the beat of a record. At that timewe would piece together a record that may have a small break on it, piece that together to make it sound, that little part continuous for at least a few minutes. So you could have MCs rock. That was a whole basis of the mix DJ. And then with the scratchin', that added the sound effect to what you were doin'. Putting together a song just by (mixing) bits and pieces of another song and you makin' that one piece of song extended, where it's a complete song where somebody can sing over it, somebody can rap over it. However you wanted to do it. That's all we had in the beginning. You didn't have any extended equipment to do that type of thing. So we had to work with what we had. It might be a small portion of record that we liked and it wasn't extended. So he had to extend it. We put that together and it may be a couple of seconds, but by the time we finished and it was several minutes. And that's how we got our groove. To make it full on complete, that's what we had to do. This was something that had to be done: piece that record together and make it sound like a full record.
djgreenarrow: Okay, we want to get a "real" turntablist's perspective on controllers. For example, the Pioneer DDJ SB3 controller, it's modeled after Jazzy Jeff... it's got a feature that with a press of a button, it emulates scratches. What are your thoughts about that?
Grand Dragon KD: You got the equipment where you can hit the pads, and you got the scratchin' sounds.
That's a nice feature to that, but again, gettin' into the new technology... guys who are turntablists, they don't particularly care for all of that, you know what I mean? Because we put the really hard work and footwork into that. Nowadays you got "just add water and stir and you've got an instant DJ". It's almost too easy right now.
These guys think that these guys with the controllers they think that they made something up. Nah, this stuff's been made up, you just gettin on! You gotta pay homage here. It's good, and it has its pros and it has its cons, the controllers. They're convenient, and a lot of people, this is all we have to work with. I had to work with stuff when I was a kid, I had a one turntable and a cassette deck and I'm DJing parties, but this is what I had to work with. And I would make cassette tapes back in the day where my cassette tapes sound like I'm on turntables. I had only one turntable. But I've made my tapes. My tapes sounded like I had two or three turntables.I had a cassette deck from Radio Shack, I got my first turntable when I was 12 years old. My first turntable was a Kenwood turntable a belt drive Kenwood. I got it from the pawn shop. And with that an RSM 6 cassette deck from Radio Shack, that's what I did parties with, I've been doing this since 12 years old, man.
I've seen a nice span of time into this. That was in the very beginning. I made my first record in 1985. I was 18 years old. And so that stuff, that prior stuff that was like to help develop me into the better equipment, the more advanced equipment after I was a young guy. I got some 1200 Technics, I got them on the day I went on my problem.
I didn't spend any money on my prom, and right after that I went to the store and bought me some Turntables. Yeah. Yeah. That was ill. Music was my first love. I've had girlfriends and all that, but music was my first love outside of my immediate family, music was it!
And when I first heard Hip Hop, from day one, it stuck with me from that time up to now, man. Since it's inception in Philly I've been in it to win it since then.
djgreenarrow: What music were you using when you made "Bring The Beat Back"?
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah... the ingredients to "Bring The Beat Back". I put some Go-Go in there, that was the "Knock 'Em Out, Sugar Ray".
I had a loud horn to go with that. And those horns come from Experience Unlimited, EU. That was a Go-Go record. So I used that because at the time they had that slow beat with the decayed bass from the 808, then again, at that time you had songs like "It's Yours" by T La Rock. LL's "Rock The Bells", you had Jam Master Jay and RUN DMC with "Peter Piper".
And so I wanted to put something together on that line where you got a dope beat, you got a nice rhyme to it, and you got somebody really cutting it up. Those are the elements that we put in that song, man. I'm not a rapper, but I gave direction to Steady B on how to navigate this rhyme, "yo man, it's gotta be dope!"
He said "all right just come with it, let's do it." We went in the studio and we ripped it. I wanted to make something that competed that was in competition with the other songs amongst our comrades. Cause it was a lot of dope stuff out at the time. You had Eric B & Rakim with "Eric B is President", you had Cash Money and Jazzy Jeff, they weren't out at that time, but they were up and coming. You had guys from New York, they' had stuff out.
And I'm like, "yo, we gotta make something impactful, where, when we makin' a beat, that's what we set out to do. We went in there and we put that together. We just wanted to bring something to the table where we can impress just as much as the other guys that were out at the time.
djgreenarrow: So it was a 'Statement Piece', right?
Grand Dragon KD: Exactly. It is always a statement when you step up to compete amongst your peers.
It's always a statement. Yeah, that'll be a nice sound biteright there, 'it's always a statement".
djgreenarrow: Were you
Grand Dragon KD: part of the
djgreenarrow: Mobile DJ scene or a crew. Did you do weddings?
Grand Dragon KD: I was in the hood at the time that I linked up with Steady. I was in the hood. I wasn't with a crew at that time. I was with a group called Crush Nation. It was myself, Jazz Fresh and Snooze, we were signed to Select Records at the time. No, no, no. We weren't signed to Select Records til later, but I was with a group, called Crush Nation. We did parties in the hood and throughout the city. Steady approached me and said, "yo, I need a DJ!" Actually before we even hooked up, he had a DJ . His DJ, they did show and stuff together, but his DJ for some reason wasn't consistent enough. I even put their earliest shows together.
Then the time had came and he asked me, "yo, I need a DJ for this show". I said, "allright, I'll help you out". I started doing show with him, and he fired the guy that was his original DJ and I became his DJ. And from that point on that's when we did our thing together as a group. Me and him rolled together (awhile) and then, because of some creative differences, I had to go my way and he continued on and that's when he started Hilltop Hustlas. At the time before that was even developing, I was with him and Pop Art Records and from there they veered off and started doing some stuff with Three Times Dope, Cool C and some other cats.
djgreenarrow: Sounds Ackniculous.
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah... that's the dope show, once more you hear the dope stuff. I like those guys.
djgreenarrow: What are your thoughts on Phase?
Let me tell
Grand Dragon KD: you about that. That's without the tonearm and that?
djgreenarrow: No needles.
Grand Dragon KD: I don't even really consider that... as a turntablist, there's something about having a tone arm, and dropping the needle on a record? And for me, that takes away from the essence of turntablism. You can't really do what you can do, all that you can do with a turntable that doesn't have a tonearm on it. There's technology and all of that. Yeah. But in this case I'm gonna stay conventional. I need that. That's part of our whole makeup of being a turntablist. I definitely want to go with a controller, but I'm a purist turntablist. And the controller is for me is for the convenience, but I can do just about as much as I can on a controller, then I would on turntables.
But turntables are my instrument. That's what I work with.
djgreenarrow: What about Serato?
Grand Dragon KD: Yeah, I use Serato because of the convenience of it, I still know how to rock with or without Serato. I got all my records. I got a rack of records. I call my collection the Wax Museum. I'm never going anywhere, I'm never departing from them. I took a loss for some stuff, God's been good and blessed me. I'm back up to standing with what I have.
djgreenarrow: Do you play any "real instruments" like guitar or keyboards?
Grand Dragon KD: I don't know how to play any instruments, but if you give me a drum machine and a few hours, you would think I knew how to play some instruments. All I need is the sounds and a little bit of time to put it together.
The typical stuff, the bass, snares, a little percussion, throw in a little sound effects. Like I said, I don't play any instruments, but yeah, that's what I do. People that are enthusiasts and people that really enjoy hip hop, they feel it more than I do! They feel it more than I do! Yo I've done shows and places I've been, people get like really, really overwhelmed when I come through, and it trips me out. It trips me out, I'm like, "wow". I think there's more of an impact to people than it is to me. Several friends of mine telling me, "yo, you're bigger than what you actually know. I'm like, "yo, this is crazy, man. This is crazy!" I'm not feeling that impact like other people do.
And a lot of the young kids that was growing up that used to check me as they was growing up, they grown now. And I've been around a few of them and I never, ever even knew that I made that much of an impact on them. I've had guys, grown dudes, come to me and say, "yo, you, the reason why I started DJing! You was the reason how I got into music". This is grown men coming to me with this. I never knew that. I never knew how many people I've touched, and how much of an impact I've had on folks. Like I said, it trips me out, it trips me out, but it feels good to know that I had some type of positive impact in somebody's life. Growing up, my mom would say, "you got to turn that down! You ain't going to be having that music all loud" and "turn that off!". You know, I'm under her roof, so she set the rules.
But I was given some space to do what I did, but she wasn't a real big fan of mine and didn't really care neither here nor there what I was doing. A lot of my peers, they recognized a long time ago, "yo... I like what you're doin' and you keep doin' it" and they encourage me to continue, and I appreciate them.
Like I said, as far as in the household, mom still had her rules and regulations, but I did get some level of support.
djgreenarrow: Who influenced you the most?
Grand Dragon KD: My greatest influence from the gate, I admire Flash, Theodore, Lightnin' Vance... these were my influences from outside of Philly. My major influences from Philly, was a group called "Superbad Disco". These was my greatest inspirations, Grand Slam DJ Jam and Grand Wizzard Rasheen. I'm sure you've heard of them...
djgreenarrow: Of course.
Grand Dragon KD: He and Grand Slam DJ Jam were a group. I used to go to their parties every weekend, thire house parties every weeendk. And I was 11, 12 years old and I watched these guys. And they influenced me a whole bunch. I didn't get my hands on any equipment until I was 12, but I used to watch these guys and I studied these dudes. I was kind of like mimicking these dudes at 11, 12 year old. As an 11 or 12 year old I was mimicking these guys, they was my closest influence.
I might be an Honorary Superbad Disco Member. They were my greatest influences. Now, as far as DJs I came up with, I came over with (Jazzy) Jeff,I came up with Miz, a few other guys. Grand Master Nell, Groove Da Most, Master Vic, DJ Bones, Corey DST, I came up with these guys from West Philly. I came up with these dudes and I wasn't influenced by them. We were coming up together. And like I said, my greatest influence and inspiration was Superbad Disco Crew.
Some guys like Rondezvous, of course Cash Money, Boogie Blind, DJ Scratch, Mell Starr, yo, these dudes are nice.
Let me see who else was around? You got the whole X-Ecutioners crew, Rob Swift and them. Yo, these dudes, they like dinosaurs, they're like a group of dinosaurs. There's only a handful of us that know the essence of scratching, man, even Juice. These guys, yo man, these guys are nice man and we speak a different language than a lot of these cats that's DJing. It's difficult to explain, but I feel like I'm the Oracle. I'm the Oracle to the up and coming.
And I can hear something and within a couple seconds know if it's "the thing". You know what I mean? I'm like the Oracle, like a real old guy that people would come get inspiration from and get information from.
Check this: I just met Juice within the past three, four years. And he hipped me to a whole lot of stuff. I didn't know that he was the ghost for Terminator X. The whole time I'm thinking that was Terminator X, and it was him! I was impressed by that, and he told me about thestuff he did with Leaders of the New School and a few other people and I was impressed. I like his whole style. It's different. He has a trademark sound. When you got that, you can hear a million different DJs doing the same song, but you can distinguish who did what on what song, if you got a trademark sound.
Listen, I didn't know these dudes existed, man. I didn't know these guys existed. Juice put me on, I said "Yo! All these dudes are nice. All of these cats are nice!". It's funny. You would think I would know these dudes. I didn't know these dudes existed until Johnny (Juice) put me on to them. They're nice. Because from my city, you got some dudes that are nice and you probably never even heard of them, but they're nice.
You got a handful of cats. It's too many of us for one person to stand out alone and say "they're the best". Everybody has their best about them. And people have their opinions. When you give your opinion about who's the best or who's the greatest, people need to preface that with "in my opinion". That's how it should be, because the range is too vast for somebody to just take one person and say that "this person is the best". Yeah, he's good, I'll give him that, but he's the greatest of what he does. Everybody got their own thing, and everybody's great.
djgreenarrow: Have you ever heard of Invisibl Skratch Piklz?
Grand Dragon KD: I've heard of them. I'm not even up on them, but I've heard of them. And I think I've seen a little bit of their footage. Just like with QBert. I know a little bit about QBert, but his style of cuttin'... I don't listen to a lot of people. My ear's not tuned into them.
I'm probably not hearing them. I mean, I'm listening, but I'm not hearing them. There's a lot of cats that's like that, that I heard of them, but I never really sat down and listened to them. I'm not really locked in like that with a lot of DJs. There's a million DJs around me. Listen, this is funny. I feel like the scene from "Fist of Fury", when Bruce Lee goes to the school and all these dudes surround him.
And he beat all of them up. That's how I feel like amongst DJs. I'm in the middle of them. I'm not even in tune with all these guys around me. I know they're there, but I'm not even in tune with them. There's a lot of DJs around me. I'm listening, but I'm not hearing them. They even might be nice. He may be bad. They may be bad, meaning good in their own right. And then the right of other people too. But I sometimes feel like I might be pluckin' ashes off cigarettes or cigarette on these dudes. I feel like all of it in my own right. But just for me to believe it, or just for me to know it, that ain't good enough. I want everybody else to feel like that. I want them to love me.
"I want them to love me like they love Pac". You know what I mean?
djgreenarrow: Tell us about your meeting with Grandmaster Flash.
Grand Dragon KD: Let me tell you... In '86 we went on tour with Grandmaster Flash and yo, me and Flash had a sit-down. He asked me, "yo, man, how long have you been rockin'?" At the time I was 18. He said, "Yo! You're a SCIENTIST, man!" We were rehearsing and doin' a little bit of messing around and I was just in the zone... and he said, "yo man, you're a scientist with that!" That Was in '86, man. And yo, that was one of the biggest, if not the biggest compliment I ever gotten, and that still sticks with me, man.
I just recently met (Grand Mixer) DXT last year. That was good. That was great. Big Bro, I appreciate you, man and I always looked up to you, you were one of my DJ Heroes, man. I appreciate you. (About Flash meeting) I was a kid back then and we didn't really buss it up, but we worked together. We didn't have a sit down conversation and stuff like that, but we were working at the time, it was him, the Soulsonic Force, Flash, Furious Five, Howie T, and Real Roxanne, Wrecking Crew, Luv Bug Starski, Jeckyl and Hyde, a whole bunch of us, man, but we wasn't kickin' it, we just had a couple minute conversation, but he wasn't like really having no long, drawn out conversation sessions or nothin' like that. But me and Flash did have that moment where he told me, "Yo keep doing what you're doing, and rock off, man.. you're a scientist!"
djgreenarrow: If you were to make a battle record, what would it sound like?
Grand Dragon KD: There's a whole lot of stuff that I would put together, bits and pieces.
Yo, listen man, I'm gonna do somethin' just for you, I've had it in the can... and I'm callin' it "Issues and Answers", where I'm using clips from records to make a full record from beginning to end, a fully understood record with just clips, or soundbites from other songs, making a complete song.
djgreenarrow: What's your opinion of the battle scene, in general?
Grand Dragon KD: In the past couple of years, I haven't been paying attention to those battles.
Since the advent of DVS, I haven't been really paying attention to the battle scene, since DVS was developed. Again, it has its pros and its cons. Digital vinyl made things really, really easy for cats. I can use it to my advantage. The Pro in it is the stuff that I already knew before this was even invented, I can couple that with this new invention. And do some big things with it. I'm gonna take it and run with it.
djgreenarrow: When you were developing the Transformer scratch, was your turntable in battle position?
Grand Dragon KD: No, I had the original recipe flavor, the original set up, I call it the original recipe flavor, where your turntables is not in battle position and the same stuff DJs do with the turntables in battle position I do. I still got the original recipe flavor. I didn't go to the battle style set up. I still go with the original recipe flavor.
djgreenarrow: Still to this day.
Grand Dragon KD: To this day, yeah. I've rocked in traditional battle set up. But I've developed with the regular recipe.
djgreenarrow: But you could rock it either way, right?
Grand Dragon KD: I can rock with their set up at the drop of a dime, I would. And I will, you know?
LISTENING NOW, CLOSER TO THE GROUND [00:36:01] Lesley-Ann: Listening now... listening now... Listening now... closer to the ground
djgreenarrow: This is a very
Lesley-Ann: special
djgreenarrow: interview because we're introducing a new segment called "Listening Now, Closer to the Ground". Here's Co-Producer diamondseed, speaking of some of the times.
diamondseed: That's what Aspirin Regimen is about. It's about changing lives, it's about awakenings. Black Lives Matter isn't a new thing. I mean, it's literally just an extension of people fighting for their lives and fighting for rights. They just want to live. I can't understand so why there's so much pushback with people when it comes to this. Yes, all lives matter, but a life that's being taken away for a little than someone else's ignorance, that's shows disdain against God, and that can't stand. It's just a lot of, a lot of tragic things going on right now.
And hopefully, I mean, I won't put the weight of the world on Aspirin Regimen's shoulders, but I think it's an important thing that allows people to have voice in the world. You can't be timid in the world, but not everybody is the lion. Aspirin Regimen, like I say Aspirin Regimen is for the people, 'cause it's a voice. It gives people a voice and lets you know about the architects and the ancestors. But it also lets you know about those to the left and right of you. Those who have your back, and those who are leading the way forward. Keep this in mind.
(MUSIC REPRISE) Closer to the Ground.
Lesley-Ann: Grand Dragon KD. KD?
Grand Dragon KD: This is the Oracle Grand Dragon KD from Philly, signin' out!
djgreenarrow: Thanks again to Kelli, Lisa "Chase" Patterson, Lesley-Ann Brown and diamondseed for helping me make this episode of Aspirin Regimen a reality.
Stay in the Zone of your original
Lesley-Ann: flavor...