Not the original cover. Re-design by Renz De Madrugada
SYNDROMES Part I (Original Version) circa 1996
JROCC photo by Shin Okishima
SYNDROMES was a tape given to me around 1997 the tape was made circa 1996. I met Jason “Jrocc” Jackson summer of 1996 in Cerritos. The city wasn’t aware of the little mecca that it would become in the years to come as some of the most talented djs in the world would call it home. But Jrocc was not from Cerritos. I’ll leave that as a mystery if you don’t know.
Syndromes is not your regular Hip-Hop mix tape, because is not pure Hip-Hop is Jazz. An eclectic mixture of songs from various Jazz icons like Roy Ayers, Freddie Hubbard, David Axelrod and other Jazz figures that producers have sampled and would sample in the years to come.
The tape was a blue print for my journey into the art of digging records. This tape exposes me to a different sound in where I found a new inspiration for collecting vinyl records. I was not familiar to a mature sound, as Jazz is to me. Nevertheless it didn’t take to long for me to appreciate more of the versatile music world in which I was encountering as I found places and spots to dig. Thrift Shops was the 1st choice during the late 90’s.
Jrocc photo by June22
From the moment the tape is play to the end of the cassette is a continues journey into a time capsule of Jazz’s most beautiful sounds.
I’m not kidding, I would take the tape j-card cover with me every time I dug for new records. From thrift shops to garage sales to flea markets… I had the idea to get every single LP on that tape… Ah! Eddie Kendricks’ “Intimate Friends”… Uff! that sound took me to a whole different level of listening to music via records. It was my new thing, my new kind of herb. Diggin’ became the past time thing for me on a personal level. To find an old sound that can still be related to our present times.
Jrocc was asked by friends and peers to bring the tape back. He did! … Some time around the mid 2000’s Syndromes remix was dropped. It had about 75% of the same content as the original version, but with additions of some of the songs sampled in Hip-Hop. Like Tribe Call Quest, KRS 1 and others.
Jrocc photo by Renz De Madrugada, Sao Paulo BR.
Personally it don’t compare to what I was given in 1997, but the remix still a favorite till this day. There is also Syndromes II, but that is an entire different story. For now…
“That is what Syndromes tape (original version) means to me”
Renz De Madrugada
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