The sound is everywhere: it comes from all places and speaks to all people. It recognizes no definitions, no categories, no formula, just the inexpressible elements of soul and groove. The music released on the UbiquityRecords label–be it salsa-soaked afro-Cuban jazz, head nodding breakbeats, or heavy reissued rare groove–is bound by a single common thread: the sincere love and respect for the music from the people who put it out. Celebrating its 10 year anniversary in November 2000, Ubiquity has matured and evolved, consistently thinking a year or two ahead of the mainstream and earning a reputation as purveyor of some of the best music on the planet. Label chiefs Andrew Jervis and Vinnie Esparza have been with Ubiquity since the early days, and to talk about music with these guys is to understand the years of passion and effort that have made the label what it is today. Radio-V’s Jonathan Zwickel sat down with the two in Ubiquity’s slick San Francisco office while Andrew prepped for a four-week European tour and Vinnie came to grips with his new SF Guardian-appointed title of "Best Local DJ."
So Andrew, you’re off to Europe tomorrow….
AJ: Yes. Counting the hours. Should be cool. Got some DJ dates, and some press, some radio stuff, and some business to do. Should be good.
Ubiquity over Europe. You’ve got a cross-cultural exchange going…
AJ: Yeah I mean, sometimes being here, people have a tendency to think the grass is always greener. Labels that are doing similar stuff, like Compost or whoever, they’re doing killer stuff, and they’re doing what we’re doing, but over there, so often kids over here get turned onto Compost, more than they might Ubiquity, because it’s something else, its from Europe, it’s the hot stuff from there. Which is cool , because they are doing great stuff. But I go over to England, or people call us from Japan, and are like, "Oh you guys are the shit." And it’s like a weird thing , the grass is always greener. Wherever you are somebody always wants the thing that’s on import, or the hot new thing from that other country. But it will be great to hook up with all those like minded people, and see how they do I t over there, and play some Ubiquity exclusives, and have fun in their part of town.
The tour is only a couple of weeks, but and we plan to do a lot more next year because we have artists actually based in Europe, and we have some other acts here that will have touring bands and stuff. So there will be a lot more of that going on.
How did you get involved with Ubiquity to begin with?
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San Francisco has gone from being a city where bands ruled at one point, to now where the DJs totally rule.
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A: I came over here in ‘91and it was to finish off a degree here, and I kinda came here on a whim. A friend of mine at the time in England was like, "You should go to San Francisco, it’s cool." And I’m like "Oh, okay, San Francisco." And I ended up here. I had just bought one of the first Luv ’n’ Haight twelve inches, and it had a San Francisco number on it. So I got to my dorm room which was a real dump, and decided "Hey, I’m gonna call these guys, see what’s going on." I didn’t know, but they were running a record store on the Lower Haight. So they said "Record Store," and bam, I rolled down there as fast as I could, and probably bugged them for a couple of weeks, and then got myself a little job. I was running the store when they weren’t around. The label outgrew the store, and I’ve kinda been involved off and on ever since. I’ve been here permanently for the past four years, but that’s how I got started.
The Friday sessions show on KUSF, was that a major part of what you were doing?
AJ: Just something I did by myself. I always wanted to do radio. I did radio a little bit in England, and when I came over here I had a box of part new and part old records…
You were spinning records when you came over?
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Not only do we try and look for the next thing, we also still believe in vinyl.
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AJ: Yeah, I came over and I had albums from bands like Massive Attack and people like that and nobody had really heard of them, nobody was playing that kind of stuff, and I went to KUSF and they were like, "Uh, what is that? I don’t know about that." But eventually, you know, I bugged them too, and I got myself a radio show there which I ran for something like 5, 6 years. Kinda stepped into a jazz show that had been going for like 15 years. And so it had a built in audience, but they knew what they wanted to hear, and gradually I had to wean them around, and now the show is totally my own, it has nothing to do with him anymore. Although his was a great show, it took a little while to make it my own.
I was working off and on at the store and kinda stopped when I started editing a magazine in San Francisco called On the One, which was kinda dedicated to electronic and jazz and dance music, but jazz oriented. There wasn’t really anything like that over here. So I did that for a couple years, didn’t work our business-wise, so I quit and came back here after that. I was doing the radio show all along and got involved with a couple bands that were signed to the label, funnily enough, and I guess I’ve been a bit of a permanent fixture--or semi permanent--ever since.
Ubiquity has a heavy association with Gilles Peterson and Talkin’ Loud. Seems like you’re part of a greater musical evolution.
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It’s whatever it is that moves you and is soulful, and that’s what Ubiquity is really all about.
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AJ: What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that when the label started off, Mike and Jody (McFadin, original founders of Groove Merchant and Ubiquity Records) and myself were part of a scene that was going on all around the world. There were pockets of people doing it in England and in Germany and in Japan, and some people knew that over here, but a lot of people thought, "It’s that funny little record store on the Lower Haight and they got a little label and their doing their own thing." And they didn’t know that we’re a part of this big scene. Doesn’t really matter that they knew or not, but companies like ours, and Ninja Tune, Giant Step, Talkin’ Loud, we’re all ten years old this year. Which is kind of a weird little coincidence. But you know, Gilles plays our records, I’ve DJed with him, and he’s been pushing his thing over there, and probably without him a lot of what we’ve done, a lot of what people like Ninja Tune and Giant Step have done may not have happened, because he’s a major instigator of the scene, for sure.
It’s a worldwide movement. Now you’ve got the opportunity to spread the Ubiquity sound across the globe.
AJ: You know, we’re an independent label and we don’t always have the means and the resources to do that, and we get bigger and we get wiser, and we try and shout as loud as we can. The older we get the louder we’re able to shout--tell people what were up to.
Have a great time over in Europe.
Vinnie Esparza: While I’ll be rocking the spot in Fresno.
Vinnie Esparza live in Fresno…
VE: No, none of that. I’m just jealous of Andrew. He gets to go all these places, and I get to DJ in my bedroom. It’s pretty sweet.
But you’re DJ of the year!
VE: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.
How did that come about? Was it a voter participation thing?
VE: You know, I have no idea. It was actually a readers’ poll.
Suddenly coworkers in the background pipe up: "Ahem, recount! Soft money! Recount!"
VE: Some people are demanding a recount. I think Nader won DJ of the year is what it was. You know what, I really don’t know how it happened quite honestly. Interestingly enough, the day I found out was the day I was sick in bed. And my friend calls me up and is like "Yeah you got the Best of the Bay, Best Local DJ." And I was quite surprised, considering the amount of talent that’s in the Bay Area. There really is an insane amount of really good DJs that certainly deserve that. I think part of it is just the fact that I DJ quite a bit, I DJ a lot. I have a couple of weeklies, and I also do the monthly Ubiquity parties and I’m doing this new night on Saturday with DJ SoulSalaam at Hush Hush called New Conception. And I’m doing this night called Hella Tight over at Amnesia. And I just do little isolated gigs like that, but I do a lot of them. You play out to enough people and you’re gonna be heard eventually.
Something I think is cool about that is you’re not as easy to peg down as a house DJ or a drum ‘n’ bass DJ…
VE: No I’m not, and the funniest thing is according to the Guardian I play house, and I don’t even own any house records. That’s the funny thing. The thing about me is I don’t necessarily have any particular style of music that I favor over another, just because I enjoy good music in general, and I think people really appreciate the diversity, especially on the dance floor. If you’re gonna play four on the floor all night, or hip hop all night, that gets really old really quickly for me. I can’t listen to an entire evening of drum ‘n’ bass. But I like to mix it up with older stuff and new stuff, and just mix it up as much as I can, just keep the dancefloor going, with whatever it takes.
I was at the last No Categories party at Minna. I spent a good few hours there, and I was really impressed by diversity of music played. Over a period of like three hours, there had been this transition from old roots, soul music, to hip hop, to some salsa/Latin jazz, to breakbeat and house and beyond. And by the time I left the dancefloor was packed, people were sweating, going crazy.
VE: Y’know that’s the idea behind those nights, the name itself says everything. It’s no categories. It’s whatever it is that moves you and is soulful, and that’s what Ubiquity is really all about. We don’t necessarily have any sort of borders, we don’t like to pigeonhole ourselves. We have artists as diverse as James Combs, basically a singer songwriter, a guy with a guitar, maybe he’ll throw in a few beats here and there. To P’taah, which is some next level shit in every way shape and form. Plus we have Latin stuff, plus we have a foot in the past with reissues of old obscure funky stuff. You know what I mean? That’s really the way to do it. So with my sets I try and reflect what the label is all about. Especially if you’re going to be representing Ubiquity. People sort of expect that, I would think. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes and hopefully they’ll catch on. Although sometimes DJing with that style of music can be pretty tough, because your sets are so diverse, you think that one track will be really cool and take it to the next level, when it fact it’ll just clear your dancefloor, like instantly. You know, like a Latin track can either rock the spot or just completely clear out the place. It’s happened before…
How has being in The City influenced the music? Do you feel that anything goes kind of ethic reflects San Francisco itself? 10 years you guys being here, seems like the place has had to influence the music and vice versa.
VE: Well San Francisco is a pretty unique entity in that we have more DJs per capita here than anywhere else in the US if not the world. And that’s actually true. You can throw a rock in a room and hit a DJ. Everyone’s a DJ. My mom’s a DJ. Everyone plays records. So because of that you’re gonna have people that are going to be into different things. And also within the past 10 years since Ubiquity’s been around, San Francisco has really seen a lot of change in the music scene here in the city. It’s gone from being a city where bands ruled at one point, and now the DJs totally rule. Everyone says that live bands in San Francisco just suck now. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but basically the DJ in San Francisco is king right now. I think that it’ll come and go, everything goes in cycles. At some point everyone’s going to get burnt on this whole DJ thing and they’re going to want to see live bands again, and there’s going to be a resurgence of live acts. I don’t know if you were around San Francisco in the early 90s, but we had a bunch of great acts. Charlie Hunter used to play at the Elbo Room for three bucks every Tuesday, the Broun Fellinis used to play, and there was a lot of really good live talent back then. It all kinda subsided and people went their own ways, and gave way to what’s happening now. I don’t know if that answers your question, but I guess what I’m saying in a roundabout way is that there are a lot of people in this city who are making music, are playing music, and because of that you’re gonna have a vast number of different influences, because we have so many people doing music here.
That answers the question. It was open ended. So who will be the heavy Ubiquity artists in 2001?
VE: Well we’re definitely working the Nobody record, still. Its been out for a little bit now, a couple months, and it’s doing really well for us. Its an artist that has an incredible amount of potential. The thing about Ubiquity is that we have a number of acts that we just have to keep plugging away at. And eventually… One of the things we like to do is have an act that’s gonna be a major act but not necessarily sell out.
Stay underground while still being successful.
VE: Yeah, to keep the integrity of the label. And you know we have acts like Puracane that have sort of a pop edge but are still fairly underground. And Nobody, who’s been likened to DJ shadow, that kind of vibe. We have P’taah, that’s basically some next level shit. And we have a lot of really great acts on our CuBop label as well. A lot of legends, people like Dave Pike, who’s not necessarily a household name, but for the heads, for people who know music, know the history of jazz and the history of funk, they know Dave Pike and know he’s the man. Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers, same thing. Bobby Matos. A lot of these people that we have on our label are people that get mad props, in the world of collecting and jazz.
As far as what’s coming up next we have a new album by Jack Costanza, who is on the CuBop side of things. He’s a total legend, he’s been around since forever. He’s made records with everyone from Stan Kenton to Nat King Cole. He’s spoken of in the same breath as Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente, people like that. He’s a total legend, and he’s still performing. We have his new album coming out in January called Back from Havana, which is in my opinion one of his best albums. We have Dave Pike, who just did this album called Peligroso that’s this killer Afro-Cuban record. And we have John Santos and Bobby Matos doing a record together. We have a lot of good things cooking on the CuBop side of things. We have a P’taah remix album coming out that has a number of different remixers on it: Ashley Beadle, Opaque, DJ Venom, Kirk Degiorgio, Chateau Flight, three original tracks from P’taah… There’s reissue tape we’re gonna do, a best of Luv ‘n’ Haight collection, with a lot of old funk. We’re reissuing this killer Latin record form the late Fifties called Jungle Fantastique buy a guy named Bobby Montez, that’s just incredibly good and it’s really, really rare. There’s a lot we got working…
