Break 4 Love...

JesseDezz	I love the moaning/screaming by the chick in that song - it's one of those "club classics" where I'm from, along with "Time for the Percolator" and "Just Us" and "You Are My Friend" (the club version). My author page: https://www.amazon.com/au...eretttruth
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Reply #17 posted 11/22/05 1:20am

meltwithu

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lilgish said:

little known fact: the music for break 4 love was co-written bylegendary vaughan mason (of bounce, rock skate roll fame)

here's an excerpt by this kat named keith thompson, who did the vocals on b4l:

I started realizing that I could do as well as some of these others and because I was always doing demos at home, that's when I really got into the business. Knowing the other sides, the radio, advertising and even the media side, gave me an [understanding] of how the industry worked. So I decided to open up my little label called Flat Records . I put out a reggae record, did all the stuff that needs to be done to it to get it on the radio and it worked. I got calls from all the national college radio stations and it got charted on WLIB [1190 AM] here, which is the biggest Caribbean station and a sister to WBLS [107.5 FM].

The only part I didn't handle was the management or booking because I really wasn't into doing gigs, I just wanted to put the records out. That's [when] I met Vaughn Mason . I was at a mastering house, mastering one of the tracks and I ran into him. He produced “Bounce, Rock, Roll, Skate.” So we met and I asked him what kind of music was he into and he said, “house.” I said I was too, because I went to one of Paradise Garage's last days and that whole scene just blew me away. I was like, ‘what the hell is this?' I left the place all angry going, ‘I should know about this. I want to get down with this.' The fire was in me. It was an epiphany, and I am not exaggerating. I came out of that place that next morning, thinking this is it. Where the fuck have I been?

I went home, did a demo and later when I talked to Vaughn he said come out to the studio. I heard what he was doing and it wasn't as deep as I wanted to go but it was cool and we did one track called “Caught You Cheating.” That was the one I thought would be the hit. I sang it kind of Teddy Pendergrass -ish. People say it's Colonel Abrams but I say if you don't know Teddy…

...you don't know the Colonel.

Exactly. I thought that was going to be the hit and then we did a second song. I didn't really know where it was coming from but that was “Break for Love.”

Okay, tell us how that song came to be.

I was home after we'd done “Caught You Cheating” which they'd sent it out and was buzzing around in early 1987. We put it out on his label Groove Street and we took it around to all the local clubs and DJs. I think ‘BLS and KISS added it to their late mixes. Back then the US was playing house music and it was street music so people like John Robinson and Tony Humphries picked up on it and it became something of a hit in the underground. It was recorded as Raze , and I was the vocalist. The follow-up single was “Break 4 Love” and like I said, I didn't really know it was going to get anywhere. It was different for its time – it was an Afro kind of thing, minimalist style, the moaning and groaning. Okay, let's be graphic. When Vaughn first called me to do the track, I was with my girlfriend, at home, her legs up by my shoulder – engaged in some activity.

You answered the phone?!

I answered the phone and I always remember that. She was pissed, and rightfully so. But usually when the phone rang at that time, it was something important and it was Vaughn asking me to come right now and finish up a recording. We finished up and I did go to the studio. Maybe because of that mood of him interrupting me, I was thinking, ‘yo, this track ain't all that.' He wanted me to finish writing it because all he had was break for love and baby don't you worry. He said say some stuff that women want to hear. So I start writing some of that. And as you can see it's a short song because I didn't have any more inspiration. I just wrote one verse basically and let the music do its thing.

Who wrote the “break” music?

Vaughn and my boy Vinny Fraginals came up with the concept. Vinny had heard a track that he liked and thought could be done over to greater success, so he brought it to Vaughn who liked it and worked on it. Vaughn was the one who put it on tape with some other musicians so when I got there, the track was basically finished. He already had the hook line ‘break for love,” I finished the rest and Vinny's wife did the Spanish translation and original vocals that are on the Grove Street Spanish Fly version. When I heard the final mix, he had added the moaning and groaning because when you listen to the lyrics, it's just a simple love song. It shipped like 13,000, which back then, wasn't a lot, and we brought them to Vinylmania . This is around December 1987 and the DJs weren't feeling it. That's why when I hear people say that it was a hit from the beginning, I am like, oh, shut the fuck up. I personally brought it up to WKTU and though they had a euphemistic way of saying they didn't want to play it, I knew what they were saying was that we aren't playing no black house. They only wanted to play that high-energy / freestyle wack shit.

I went to BLS and Bobby Konders said it was too slow and lazy and he wasn't feeling it. Then I brought it to KISS and I forgot the girls name but she was the one who listened to new product and placed them. She wasn't the program director but she felt it and got it play-listed. Besides that radio station, the only other person that was playing it was Tony Humphries. He always played whatever we gave him and he is the one I credit with making it a hit at Zanzibar . Zanzibar for me was the serious home of house music.

How did you find all these people? Were these contacts that you made while working on the radio yourself?

I knew a lot of people. Tony I knew from going to Zanzibar and also he had close connections with Vinny. Vinny was one of his run around guys so that helped. Vaughn knew some of the other DJs like Merlin Bobb and people who played at the Silver Shadow. I knew how to approach ‘BLS because I was in radio before and I knew the protocol, so I just went up there. It's whom you know and the contacts you build.

By now, you were clubbing too…

Oh yeah, I was doing my thing and getting out there. What was nice about the time was we were part of creating a new music. Not many people realized it then. Some people were opportunists. I think I realized it but not enough because coming from the reggae scene, where it's a do-it-yourself kind of thing, gave me a different mindset about putting out house stuff. You could put it out on your own label and that was working for a lot of people. Even what's his name, who started Big Beat . He was no one, but he had one record and he went around to those really small dives in Jersey where had artists perform and sold stuff out of his trunk. He's gone very far. It was a beginning for the times. And like I said, most radio wouldn't play it and KISS didn't start playing it until summer time. So from the beginning of 1988 it was still an underground thing but it just kept picking up steam because the underground had power back then. We sold close to thirteen thousand and by summer, it was everywhere. How I knew that was I was walking down Gun Hill Road in the Bronx one day and some Latino guys were driving by and they were blasting it. I was like where did they get that from? My friend was like, “it's out.” Then I realized it wasn't a tape, it was on the radio and I was like, ahhh (yells)! It's funny how you lose your mind – even after you've been a radio announcer – when hear your song coming out from a big radio station. No matter how cool you are, it makes you go ahhh (screams again)!

Like a little girl on Gun Hill Road … [Both laugh]

Exactly, but not too much because it was Gun Hill Road , I was cool, you know? Then after that, it got really sickening because it was everywhere . I am not exaggerating plus the Spanish version was out and I was getting sick of it.

So what happened financially for you?

The record blew up and I was making money – getting royalties. Vaughn was trying to be cool about it and by mid to late summer, we started getting agents to book us. I'm getting my dance steps together and I can actually quote Vaughn saying, “Get your moon walk together.” Moonwalk? Ain't no one doing that! So I am waiting for the gigs to come in and I hear from Vinny, “Yo, Vaughn just performed at Baseline .” And I was like, what? How did he perform, I am the singer for Raze. Vinny told me, “Nah man, he performed with his wife.” Vaughn had just gotten married, someone he'd met a few months before. And Vinny was like, “He performed on stage with her dressed up as a mailman. He was in chaps with his butt out the back with elevated shoes or whatever. Then mid-way through the show, she unzips her pants, a dildo comes out and he deep throats it!” Whoooaaaa….

I was like what?!! That's not the Raze I want to be with and besides, my uncles would kick my ass if they heard I was down with a group like that. How would I explain it? So I called up Vaughn and asked what was going on and since he had seen the potential of what could happen, he got to arguing with me and I was like, cool then, I'm out. No problem. Now some people make me feel like that was a stupid move but it's easy to say that when you don't know the deeper story. Then pressings of the record came out without my name as a writer, and that bothered me. Finally [the record] got picked up by Columbia Records; which means it sold very well. Nowadays, if you sell 5,000 it means they might pick you up but back then, the record had sold about thirty thousand before they picked it up. Then there were posters all over the city and on the radio, it was Vaughn Mason of Raze and I was like, what happened to my name? I was getting heated. I had the right to be angry. There were gigs popping up all over, Bentley's, 1018… I was like, this is money I am losing out on and I can say this now, I had a plan.

…he says while looking at the tape recorder with a real venomous look…

I had a plan, cause I am from the Bronx . I was gonna get some crew but then I thought, you know what, let me do this all by my lonely. I heard he was going to play at a certain Manhattan club. Let's just say I had to rearrange some things and went to bat for my cause. It was wild though.

That's pretty dramatic stuff. Was this random act of violence brought on by something specific or were you just dying to crack on him because he'd cut you out of things?

This is actually after an episode that had built up. He had performed at 1018 and the opening act was actually the New Kids on the Block . He went on stage and when he finished doing his thing, a corny ass show, I came to the side of the stage and I said, ‘yo, I want to talk to you.' He pissed me off the way he responded. And at that time, we hadn't resolved certain issues and I blew up and was about to fuck him up. He started fighting like a girl so I stepped back and got into a fighting stance. Then these two big guys came and grabbed me and were about to throw me out but Vinny knew some of them and he was like, 'don't fuck him up, we're about to leave.' And we left. Then later the word went out around the industry from a Columbia Records A&R guy that I was a thug and that I tried to beat up Vaughn again at Roseland. I had not done that I just tried to fuck him up at 1018! Keep it straight. And that's when the [bat] to the BMW thing happened. I never admitted to it even though people have asked me about it. [I denied it because] it wasn't any of their business/ Besides, I am a lover not a fighter ...smiles