Teflon Dons / Coastal Commission The Rendezvous [Pacific Coast House]

Format: 12" colored vinyl.

I first met Aaron Parr in 1992—the golden age of electronic dance music. Everything was exploding in the L.A. underground, and he was working right in the epicenter at Beatnonstop Records on Melrose Avenue, in the heart of Los Angeles. I was living in Santa Barbara at the time, still doing my college radio show “The Joy of X,” and had been driving down to L.A. on weekends almost every week since 1989. Aaron was a regular a few blocks away at Streetsounds Records, where my young friend at the time, 19-year-old Steve Loria, worked alongside warehouse DJ and underground legend Barry Weaver.

Those were intense times. Clubs, after-hours, and clandestine warehouse parties set the pace… every day. Shops supplied DJs with killer records and ravers with party flyers; record stores were the center of the entire scene. The key was to befriend these future underground superstars if you wanted good vinyl and to know where the real action was… literally.

In 1992, I was selected for the U.S. Olympic basketball team and returned to Europe, trying to get to Barcelona for the Dream Team to crush us for gold in front of the whole world… nope. We were eliminated by Petrovic and the Czechs just before Barcelona. Anyway, after three months, I returned to California, and everything had changed: Steve Loria moved out of Streetsounds and opened Beatnonstop, and it was huge. It quickly became the largest independent record store in the U.S. The scene was massive; everything had exploded. I dove in headfirst and started a weekly techno club, “Happy Planet,” on Tuesdays, and a house club, “NYC,” with Doc Martin on Fridays. Both were packed.

Aaron, the hardworking Brit from Nottingham, along with his colleague Dave Fong, also moved fast, releasing the Rudiments EP on Worldship Records and then Psycho Ray in 1998. That same year, I closed my Culture “Soma” shop in Santa Barbara, packed up my studio and sound system, and officially moved to L.A. I was offered the management of Beatnonstop on Melrose after Steve Loria’s departure, and I accepted without hesitation.

I quickly set up the Beatnonstop label, releasing the double-pack “Pacific Coast House EP” with contributions from myself and local producers like Aztech Sol, CPen, and Kenneth Graham/Steve Loria. Then I started PCH Records with “Rhodes Through Space,” and after a drunken night in the Hall of Records studio, I signed Aaron and Dave’s track as Teflon Dons, “My Vice,” for the label.

“Vice” was totally my thing: an acid, dark, and dirty track, with menacing Pacino samples. On a Beatnonstop buying trip to New York, Harry the Bastard, from Watts, took me to meet the Brit Stefan at Dance Tracks in Manhattan, where I found the “Our Music” sample in an acapella among the crates. Super inspired after two weeks of touring distributor warehouses (Watts, Nemesis, Syntax, Downtown, etc.) and all the Manhattan stores (Vinyl Mania, Discorama, Frankie Bones’ shop, Satellite, and many more), I returned to L.A., and Nate and I loaded up the Emu 64 Ultra sampler to create “Our Music.”

The track is clearly New York-inspired and was very well received by Big Apple DJs like David Morales, Junior Vasquez, Roger Sanchez, and Baby Hec Romero. I’d say elsewhere it was a slow-burner hit, taking off later with support from DJ Deep in Paris, and Terry Francis, Eddie Richards, and Mr. C in the UK.

Surprisingly, it didn’t get love in L.A., but it did in the rest of the country: Miguel Migs and DJ Garth in the Bay, King Britt in Philly, and DJ Pope in Baltimore pushed it hard. Now it returns to vinyl after 25 years, remastered by the great Martin Iveson, and I think the world is finally ready.