Emmerald: I hear what you're saying. Do you mean that in the context house music and other forms of dance music or in the context of all forms of music?
Larry Heard: Well all forms of music come from a form. House music is just the next generation of what was previously disco. It was more of a low budget form of it because you were dealing with the ghettos and the people who didn't have big budgets to put productions together. But theirs was a passion behind it that's one of the elements that you find that's missing in a lot of music right now of all genres, and that's why it's so short lived. It doesn't become a part of your life sound track. It's just this passing music that you put up with, but there's no real long lasting connection like we have with Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield and The Temptations and these groups that we consider legendary. You relate to it every time it comes on, not like that "used to be my jam," it still is my jam.
Emmerald: I hear you. Let's talk about DJing a little bit. Are you on tour now or are you just doing specific cities?
Larry Heard: No, it's just whatever comes up that sounds interesting.
Emmerald: As a musician who can DJ, how do you see that aspect of your career?
Larry Heard: Well it's easier than lugging around drums and lugging around keyboards, you know, you just lug around a crate of records. (laughs) I guess you're always lugging something no matter what. DJing is the simplest way to come out and share your perspective with people. You're not dealing with having a sound person with you all the time and coordinating musicians and all that kind of thing, which can be really crazy.
Emmerald: Do you ever combine a live show with a DJ set?
Larry Heard: I've done that before, but even that is more complicated because it takes more personnel. To handle it all, making sure everything's in order, is more than a one-person job. I tried it actually in Japan last year and found out that it takes more than one person to do this. There's too much stuff to oversee. And the audience is there, and they're excited, but don't know what in the world you're going through.
Emmerald: When you do DJ, what sort of sets do you usually play?
Larry Heard: I usually try to flow with the energy of the people who are in attendance. I just try to pack what I think are good selections for the set, and then flow based on what's going on. I have tried to do a preprogrammed set, but it never worked. I know there's some people out there that do it all the time, but it does not work for me. My viewpoint of music and how I've related to it is that music always has to have some kind of element of impromptu to it. I like to be part of the adventure myself.
Emmerald: Right, and you never really know where the crowd's going to go.
Larry Heard: Yes, you can plan something out all you want to and it'll be totally wrong for where you're going to play and the people who are going to be in attendance.
Emmerald: So what is next for Larry Heard?
Larry Heard: Well I'm trying to work on some music to get out there on the streets. I've got some pretty interesting songs that I want to have floating around for the summer, because they have a real summery flavor to them. So that's what I'm trying to get together right now, a kind of an EP kind of thing, and maybe an album for next year.
Emmerald: And those will be on Alleviated?
Larry Heard: Most likely, yes.
Emmerald: Do you see yourself going in a different direction stylistically?
Larry Heard: Not really. Over the years I've made tons and tons of R&B stuff and hip-hop stuff and reggae stuff and what have you, but unfortunately the public just has never heard this stuff. That's where I come from. Actually some of the first songs that Robert Owens and myself wrote were R&B songs. Before "The Path" and all that stuff came out, we worked on some R&B stuff, that's where we both came from. House music was just something that we just wandered our way in to. It just seemed just like naturally we just flowed right there. He was DJing and I was listening to disco music and early techno music on the radio, but it wasn't this big focus on genre in those days. We just made cool songs. It was just I like that or I don't; those were the two genres that everybody focused on. When I was a little kid and I bought a Mamas and Papas record with a Steve Miller record, and nobody made a fuss about it. But now it's just so crazy, there's this big focus on genre and you can't even tell people to actually hear the music.
