When heard alone, they sound like random, disconnected pieces. But by punching a button and stroking a key, Macklin assembles the sounds one on top of the other until they form...a song. Suddenly these six sounds seem as though they belonged together all the time, magically combined into a single seamless and almost-beautiful whole, inextricably woven by a microchip.
Though he's heard the song a hundred times before, the architect smiles. "And this is the easiest song we've done," Macklin says. Behind him, his bandmates--young men who'd prefer to be known only as Fatz (who is Macklin's cousin) and DJ Bobby Dee--laugh. "Yeah, this is one of our simple ones," Bobby Dee says, cracking up.
"There it is, man," Macklin adds, laughing.
These three men, all in their early 20s, form Shabazz 3--the local hip-hop band most likely to bring Dallas' hip-hop underground to the surface. (Macklin also has a stage name--XL7, because he's the square of the bunch. "I don't drink or smoke," he says with great pride, "but I don't judge those who do.")
On this mid-August afternoon, they sit in Macklin's home "studio," where equipment covers one entire wall and half of another in a tiny room tucked away in his mother's North Dallas apartment; Mom, who doesn't mind the music coming from the next room, rides her exercise bike in the living room. Yards of cables and wires are strung behind shelves and underneath tables. Cassettes and computer discs and albums are stacked atop one another. This makeshift studio also contains the advanced sampling recording keyboard, a digital audio tape deck, two cassette decks, a turntable, and a mixing board--the jigsaw pieces of technology that, when assembled and employed properly, create a sound as wondrous as that of any big-league producer.
It's in this room that Macklin and Shabazz 3 have crafted a debut album to rival any hip-hop album released anywhere this year--an hour-long cassette dense with sampled jazz chords and riffs and beats. They pulse underneath the rhymes of young men as wise as they are funny, as sweet as they are sharp. "If you go to Pleasant Grove, that is where I stay with my momma, my poppa, my sister, and my brother," Fatz raps on "3 Black Cats." "My family, I love ya, come close and I will hug ya."
There's no gangsta here, no mention of blunts or 40-ounces or .38s--just the words of young men who attended Woodrow Wilson and Samuell high schools. But Shabazz 3, as they like to say, do "try to stay real."
"A lot of lyrics we talk about, it's real," says Macklin, a former member of Decadent Dub Team and Phlomatics, which was responsible for the song "Jack the Blue (Don't Back the Blue)." "Like, I'm a vegetarian and I'll be speakin' about vegetarianism. But I won't be tellin' nobody to go be a vegetarian."
"People can tell who's bein' real," Bobby Dee says. "Life isn't always happy, man, and there's a lot of things that happen that aren't fair, and that's just the way it is."
"I'm just tellin' you what I seen," Fatz adds.
The music is a dense, soulful melange of melodies and beats, not unlike the hip-hop-jazz fusion of Guru and Digable Planets--old jazz and soul samples spliced together by Macklin, with words added by Macklin and Fatz, with Bobby coming in at the end to add the breaks. It's a remarkable sound of wide-open spaces and ambient dreams.
"I'll listen to the notes, and sometimes, if it's just an instrument with a certain note that I like, I'll grab it out of a record," Macklin says. "Notes be inspirin' 'cause to me notes are mystical...A song can be a country and western song, and if it's got some fat-ass notes then I can use it."
"We try to keep a flavor to it that's jazz-oriented, but with a jagged edge to let you know we're real," Fatz adds. "We put more into it than just gettin' on the beat machine and makin' a beat. We put more energy into it."
For now, though, their album sits unreleased and unheard as Macklin and his partners wait for a record label to come along --or at least until they find a manufacturing and distribution deal that's affordable on their tiny budget. They are true do-it-yourselfers, as Macklin ponders in "I Gosta Handle Mine": "Love has got me goin' in circles/Should I buy equipment or buy the girl clothes?"
"We put out a sound that people hear," Fatz says, "and then they come here [to Macklin's studio] and say, 'This is it?'"
Most of the band's equipment actually belongs to a local management company called SLP Management--nothing more than two wannabe music-biz insiders who operate out of their home and share Macklin's dream of hitting it big someday. They have offered their time to promote Shabazz 3 in exchange only for a promise that if the group ever lands a record deal, it will take SLP along to some place bigger.
The most impressive part of the "studio" is the room in which Macklin and Fatz record their vocals, though "room" isn't an accurate term. It's actually a closet filled with clothes and some foam tacked to the walls to mute the outside world.
"The clothes absorb the sound," Bobby Dee explains. "And dirty clothes is better to absorb sound."
Strewn across a couch and the shelves of this tiny room are books and magazines about production techniques; they have titles like The New Recording Studio Handbook, and they sit next to copies of the Bible and the Koran and other books on Judaism and the history of ancient Egypt.
"We crave the knowledge of all," Fatz says, smiling.
For these men, hip-hop truly is their lives: Each day, young local hip-hop acts with names like Epatomed (which is "demo tape" spelled backward), Camp Wisdom, Stormtroopers, Stank Godz, and Native Poets file in and out of Macklin's mother's apartment to record their demo tapes; later, they will send them out to local club owners and promoters hoping to land a gig--or perhaps even to interest some record label.
The project is called House of Demos and is, gushes KNON-FM disc jockey EZ-Eddie-D, the beating heart that keeps the underground hip-hop scene here alive. (Eddie's own band, the Funktactics, also records here.) Macklin's datebook is crammed with recording sessions, and he uses the money he makes from this business venture to pay for more equipment and to help his mom with the rent money.
"A lot of cats be comin' through," Macklin says. "Well, not a lot."
"It's underground," Fatz explains.
Perhaps not for long.
Shabazz 3 performs August 26 at the Major Theatre, 2830 Samuell. Also on the bill are Cottonmouth, Texas; poet Roxy Gordon; performance art group Soul Nation; juggler Logan Daffron; and writer Kelly Higgins.
Bronco Bowling for dollars
It was more than a year ago--July 28, 1994, to be exact--that word first appeared here about the impending resurrection of the late, lamented Bronco Bowl. Danny and Tony Gibbs of Garland-based Gibbs Construction, Inc. promised the venue, which shut down in May 1991, would reopen in December 1994 as a much-needed mid-sized concert hall with other amenities (including a banquet hall and a "hi-tech arcade").
Though that initial target date has long since passed, Danny Gibbs insists the grand old Oak Cliff bowling-alley-cum-concert-venue will actually open late this year--if, of course, things go as planned. Gibbs blames the delays on complications in obtaining financing to purchase the property and begin renovations. "We had to do private financing on it, and it took longer to close it," Danny says. "We actually pulled the trigger on the 4th of August, and now we're looking at it opening in early December." Groundbreaking ceremonies actually took place on August 22.
Gibbs explains the Bronco Bowl's concert arena--a place that puts the "golden" in Golden Horseshoe (the nickname for the front seats near the stage)--will be the "major focus" of the renovations and says he's talking to local promoters about putting "joint shows in there." Before it was shut down, the Bronco Bowl was Dallas' best and best-used mid-sized venue, a lushly faded auditorium that held 2,700 comfortably and played host to everyone from U2 to The Clash to Peter Tosh to the New Bohemians' first farewell concert.
"We're planning on having a wide variety of acts in the concert arena," Gibbs says, modifying his comment last year that the venue would concentrate on country bands and stand-up comics. "We're not going to be locked into one type of music."
Scene, heard
Club Clearview will celebrate its 10th anniversary (how time flies when you're having...fun?) with three nights of S&M (sex and music, that is). On August 24, the club will host a "Sexmonger Night" featuring the likes of Pimpadelic, Guy 2000, and Goddog. The following night's eclectic bill will feature sets from Reverend Horton Heat, Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks, Tablet, Buck Jones, The Mullens, and Southern Discomfort. And on August 26, the lineup will include Funland, Beef Jerky, Bobgoblin, Bleeding Rita, and a few other bands performing on the indoor and outdoor stages; at midnight on Saturday, Lady Bunny (the New York City drag queen made famous in the film Wigstock) will take part in a beauty contest complete with a celeb judge, the guy who plays Lowell on "Wings."
Street Beat welcomes E-mail tips and comments at [email protected].