RS: So, how did the whole mash-up with Billy Squier and Fischerspooner come about?
Barry: That was Rob Eric's idea to put those two songs together, because I'd never heard the Billy Squier "Everybody Wants You" before. I got the acapellas of the Fischerspooner and the mp3 of the Billy Squier and figured out how to make it work.
RS: Rob Eric is the music supervisor for Queer Eye?
Barry: Yes and he definitely has to take credit on the idea.
RS: I heard a quote once, that music supervisors are the new A&R guys.
Barry: Really? I don't know, it's not my world.
RS: OK, let's go back to your world then. The mash-up track, is that something you'd ever see yourself playing in a club gig?
Barry: Yes, actually. I don't necessarily go into that type of a vibe as a DJ, but it would be very easy to interpret if I was to do a club mix of that. But that version is more like the main LP / radio version, so therefore I wouldn't play that.
RS: As a DJ when you were part of the Thunderpuss remix team, were you expected to play a lot of that sound in your live gigs?
Barry: I think so, absolutely. That wasn't me, that wasn't "DJ" me.
RS: So you have like a dual life, producer on one hand doing one sound and DJ on the other hand doing a different sound?
Barry: Yes. You don't see Victor Calderone playing all his Madonna mixes all night, absolutely not.
RS: How do you explain the different or duality of it?
Barry: Well, Thunderpuss was like a creative "job". You're doing a lot of records and "going with the flow" with the success of the
Thunderpuss chemistry. I can be pretty schizophrenic, all-encompassing,
and understand "this kind of music" and "that kind of music" and "this
kind of vibe" and "that kind of vibe". I "get it" and I can understand
how to crossover things. If you take an extremity of one kind of music,
being a DJ or producer, then that's what you're locked into because
that's what is expected and opportunities are limited because that is
your scope, this one little box is all you do and what you do best. I
mean the bottom line is you're an entertainer and if you want to be one
of the guys that just does super late night moods and can only DJ 3am
to 6am slots, then don't expect any bigger success than that. But if
you can somehow make things slightly more crossover and think bigger on
a global scale, you realize that when you look at an actual globe, even
London and New York are simply little dots. For example, this kind of
thinking goes back to Kon Kan when i had Portuguese talking in it, I
was totally thinking global at the time. It's not a matter of making a
commercial record, just thinking globally. You want to entertain a lot
of people and that is what feels like success (at least to me). There's
also a fine line between thinking big-time and being a sell-out. For
some people like me, it rips you apart trying to figure out what is the
right or what is wrong, and it drives you crazy. It also drives your
partner crazy because you're trying to think crossover and bigtime
within a different thought process. See....sometimes I simply "think"
too much!
RS: So you're making the point that it's what you do, but it's only a part of what you do and rather limiting yourself to just one flavor, you can be all kinds of different things with different visions in mind.
Barry: Right. So there's basically a "day job" and then "what you love to do" on the weekend. What you do on the weekends is kind of the same thing as when you're working your "day job" 9 to 5, BUT it's the weekend now so yee-ha, I don't necessarily want to play the same music. I don't want to be reminded of what I do on a weekly basis, even though I'm trying to somehow cross it over into what I do. So when it's the weekend, I want to hear stuff that I haven't heard before. I enjoy hearing and playing music that's interesting and unique and not simply what everybody else is playing. It sounds very ignorant and arrogant for me to say I didn't necessarily want to play Thunderpuss mixes because I knew everybody else was. But that was also my schizophrenic Jekyll-and-Hyde thing of wanting everybody else to. So it's literally a crazy way to think and it's psychotic but that's just me, I am a bit psychotic.
RS: Welcome to my head.
Barry: Exactly. Well, it was true, exactly what was in my head.