Salute and Summer of Salute
If you're not familiar with Funkmaster Flex, he is a radio DJ in New York City who has been broadcasting on Hot 97 since 1992. As Wikipedia so cannily puts it "He is well known for his signature "bomb drop" sound effect over records." If you have ever turned on an FM radio in New York city likely you've heard Funk Flex. And if you've listened long enough, or on the right night, you've been lucky to catch Flex on a premiering a new song. As Funk Flex whips himself and the audience into a frenzy of anticipation, starting and restarting the track, dropping the bomb over and over and over, exhorting the audience to listen closely and understand the magnitude of the moment, this is when you get swept up in the performance, hanging on every word. Like a preacher, or an auctioneer, or your best friend telling an amazing story.
In 2010 I wrote a script that recorded the Hot 97 web stream each night during Funkmaster Flex's show, as an attempt to get a "field recording" of Funk Flex generally doing his schtick and hopefully premiering a new song. The script recorded shows on and off between June 2010 and January 2011, ultimately capturing about 100 hours of audio. (These recordings feel a bit different from the actual FM broadcasts as there's no compression that you'd normally get on FM, and they run station promos instead of ads between the songs.) Those recordings were used as the source material for a few different artworks:
- Summer of Salute is an audio edit from the recordings that focuses specifically on the bomb sound effect and it's use throughout Funk Flex's show, stitching together excerpts "supercut"-style from many shows. This definitely captures the spirit and sound of Funk Flex, while not being totally coherent or linear. It was exhibited in 2011 in the show New Age Problems at The Pigeon Wing in London, playing from an auto-looping tape in a Sony Sport Walkman broadcasting locally in the gallery at 97.1 on a small FM transmitter.
- Salute is an excerpt of one particular show where Funk Flex introduced the new track "Salute" by Dipset. It is a good example of how he can draw out a three minute song into about 20 minutes of entertainment. He also go off the rails to touch on topics like sparklers in the club and, notably, jean shorts. I transcribed this recording into text, which I first exhibited as a video projection from a vintage video Titlemaker at the Bring Your Own Beamer (BYOB) event at MoCA L.A. in 2012. I also edited the transcription into a script and performed a live version at Betalevel in L.A. in 2013.
Audio Files:
Summer of Salute: 01 - Summer of Salute.mp3
Salute: Funk_Flex_Introduces_Salute.mp3
Raw webstream audio recordings: https://archive.org/details/funk-flex-20100615-1858/
Exhibitions:
Summer of Salute @ Pigeon Wing Gallery, London, 2011
Salute transcription, Titlemaker version @ BYOB MoCA LA, May 2012
Salute transcription, Titlemaker version (video transfer) @ TV Garden, Arthall, Philly, Nov 2012
Salute performance @ Betalevel, Los Angeles, March 29 2013 w/ Adam Lustick (as Mr. Cee), Kevin Driscoll (as the bomb puller), Bennett Williamson (as Funkmaster Flex)
