Albert Cabrera use to do "pause button mixes" and play for his friends...most thought he was crazy for doing this "edit" style, but he kept at it, because his idol Shep Pettibone was doing something similar at Kiss FM. One day he was playing one of his mixes in the record store that he worked at when a popular KTU DJ by the name of Carlos Dejesus walked in and heard this mix playing. Carlos knew he had heard something special and asked if he would be interested in having his mixes played on WKTU. The only snag was he needed a reel to reel (which he didn't have, but his friend Tony Maran did). Soon the two managed to transfer the cassette mix to reel to reel and give to Carlos. Soon the duo were doing mixes regularly aired during Paco's (Manuel "Paquito" Navarro) timeslot. "The Paco Supermixes" would air every weekday Monday-Friday at exactly 4:10 pm to 4:32 pm. ( most dont know the exact length these mixes were, but I do (hehe) they are all precisely 22 minutes in length. ) Paco thought the duo needed a catchy name and would make up names of the spot while their mixes aired...experimenting and saying things like "this mix was done by latin lovers....young rascals, etc..until one day he called them "THE LATIN RASCALS" and Tony & Albert absolutely loved the name, hence that is who they would become known to the world as. One day Arthur Baker had been listening to KTU at 4:10 when he heard an "LR" mix, and the rascals at the time were mixing up lots of Baker produced tracks in that particular mix (they didnt even realize at the time that almost their entire mix was Arthur Baker, it was just the music that they liked). The mix was very creative...remixing many of Baker's tracks and improving on already great tunes. Baker was so impressed he called the station right away inquiring on who the Latin Rascals were and how he could get in touch with them. He tracked the Latin Rascals down and offered them a job to do some remixing for him. They gladly accepted and headed into his studio. They were instructed on what to do and shown all kinds of equipment they never knew how to operate. They didnt tell anyone, but pretended that they knew. At this time they still didnt know how to edit on reel-reel tape machines and practiced for hours until they learned which tape-head to take the razor blade to. Of course they figured it all out eventually, and got the job completed in a timely fashion...and that was their first start into studio remixing.
After KTU, the Latin Rascals went on to KISS FM around 1984 to do the 3 hour mastermix dance parties. The mixing style was a bit different, as these were not the quick 22 minute long "medleys" you would hear on KTU but long sets with many songs being played in their entirety (of course which many times included slick editing, remixing and sampling). After the days of "Mastermixing" left the NY dance scene they both went on to produce and remix tracks for many different artists.
Freeze
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