Back in the day

DJ Rico with DJ Big J doing their thing

Remember the ol days?Young and stuck on 200miles per hour. Weekends started on Wednesday, latest Thursday,Big J and Rico holding it down at FX,Suzy with a Canon,Kodaking all the moments, from the insane to the glorious..remember how dudes leaned on the wall in the middle of the club, trying to chat up skirts, Pilsner bottle in the left-hand,holding our crotch with the right? I had this grayish baggy shirt with 'hip-hop' neatly printed on it, some shiny blue jeans and bright brown caterpillar boots with an occasional red bandana to keep my outfit together. I was cute,wasn't I?Pizza at Narodni Trida 'round 3AM 'fore catching 51 home. I won't tell you about the time,high as a paper-kite, I stopped a police squad car on patrol thinking it was a cab! Before Ralphael became Ralph,he was Ralph Styles and right b4 that, he was MC and even earlier than that he was 2Ruff...how many names did this dude have? Kingpin was Fridays and MC with his sidekick DJ BlackJesus hosted. If you weren't in Kingpin, you were at the other end of the tramlines, Bila Hora;small,smoky place but packed like a motha, coz you know Henry D or as he is popularly known today, Henry BiggDawg was in the house and Steve Kimani was spinning a mixture of Reggae,Soukous and for lack of a better term, Bohemian...

DJ Iceman with Victoria during an album launch

Brian had this neat idea to booze us back into the stone age;he was generous with his booze and we tried our best to be grateful by constantly showing up at his joint thirsty. Soon enough, we found out that the colorless liquid in his glass was actually mineral water and not vodka like we thought. You gotta be really out of this world to cheat at drinking. For those who used to stay in Strahov at the time, didn't you just love it when you got your drunken ass to Malovanka and there was no taxi to take you up the hill? Or if there was, the cabby would try to milk a 100CZK out of you for the short ride to the hostel? For those who are still wondering about apples in my room,l'll let you in on the secret. I used to pluck them from this tree just off the bus stop at Malovanka. Ask Shady...
DJ Ama was the man to visit if you wanted to listen to some good old reggae jams. Vagon, was the place. DJ Ama or 12Play to his earlier fans, with his constant bottle of Juice(that particularly tickled me to no end - I took to noting down which brand he had each week), a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth did us proud. I can't remember when he used to play though, all I know is that Vagon was enticingly dimly lit and they kept changing the DJ Booth.

Hahaha...DJ 2ruff..this vest...no comment

Henry D with United Flavour

DJ KazD was the dance-hall,Rhumba, soukous specialist. The first time I remember him playing was at this club in Mustek just inside the metro station. I can't remember the name off the top of my head but it was great while it lasted. Of course soon enough, he was hosting gigs in Abaton and Tropison. He still up to date owes me Koffi Olomide's "Loi". I have been asking him for over 6 years to play for me that song and its always "next time,dude". 


Saturday was a different kettle of fish all together. You were either in Bila Hora, Kingpin, FX, Kalrovy Lazne or in all 4 places in the course of the night. If you were in K.L, you were likely to run into Ice-man with the beautiful Victoria...shh..I used to have a crash on her. Iceman was spinning and Victoria was singing. Ralph and BlackJesus rounded up the quartet with the occasional guest DJ showing up. Is KL still 4 floors? That was real nice,you chat up a girl on the ground floor (hip-hop/rap) and whisk her away to the chill-out lounge on the 4th floor to get to know each other some more. OK guys, don't kill me, the statue of limitations has passed, and I won't name names,HA! But soon enough, with more people coming in for hiphop and mimicking our business-model, our market-share on the ground floor soon dwindled and like any good thigh-monger, you learn pretty quickly to look for other life opportunities on the other floors...you know; Metalica and HardRock Music. Have you ever seen a brother trying to dance to hard rock? That's a sorry sight yo...

B-Jesus back in the day. Wasn't he innocent?

KazD

Leaving the club, you had to pass by those folks on Vaclavske Namesti selling Klobasa and hot dogs while you wait for your tram or metro. Heavens knows the many stomach pains I suffered as a result of those. All in all, it was a good time, an innocent time in our otherwise young lives, where we swore by Tupac and bumped our heads to Biggie smalls, threw our hands up in the air to Naughty by Nature and our idea of a TLC was actually listening to TLC. Those were the days,when discretion was the password and if your picture was taken, it wouldn't wind up on Facebook or Youtube - We thought we would remain young forever(sigh). Right now, whenever I find myself in the club, good music is far in between...wistful of those days..someone needs to organize a real old school hip hop night in Prague, we would be better for it...
Disclaimer: The pictures here are courtesy of Sussane Bitter.