John Morales (BBE / M&M Mixes / NYC) at Pistil

In music, and especially in underground music, the word “legend” is thrown around to the point where it loses all meaning.

What is a legend? It’s someone who broke the mold – someone whose sounds, techniques – even his style – changed things forever. It’s a pioneer that everyone who followed after emulated, whether consciously or not.

John Morales is a Dance music legend

In the ‘80s. On the radio, in the record racks and most importantly on the dancefloor, John’s work helped define an era and influence future generations of DJs, producers and artists.

Born in the Bronx and working in a record store, his burgeoning record collection had helped land him one of his first DJ gig at the influential Stardust Ballroom in the Bronx. As his reputation grew Morales went downtown to Manhattan to play at the likes of Pippins, Bentleys, 1018, Limelight and the infamous Studio 54.

Like many DJs of the ‘70s John ventured into the studio more through need than necessity: “I started to make medleys and remixes because the records in those days were too short, most in the 3 minute range, and being a DJ I needed to get more out of the records I was spinning. I first started to do my edits using the pause button on a Teac Cassette Deck, After many hours of self education I graduated and I purchased a Sony ¼” reel-to-reel and learned to edit. It was hard work and long hours editing and putting all the little pieces of tape together and making something creative happen.

His now infamous ‘Deadly Medleys’ and ‘Sunshine Acetate Medleys’ brought him to the attention of New York disco producers and in 1982 John partnered with Sergio Munzibai to create M&M productions.

They have 650 mixes to their name, with ground-breaking records for the likes of Class Action, Jocelyn Brown, Shakatak, Miami Sound Machine, The Temptations, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, Spandau Ballet, Aretha Franklin, Shalamar, Hall & Oates, Candi Station, Billy Ocean, The Commodores and even Peter Schilling and Rod Stewart. In fact, just about every major artist of the day was in some way retouched by the hands by M&M.

John Morales became ill in 1993 and took a self imposed exile until fairly recently, but as well as recently mixing the whole of the last hit album for Tuxedo, we are so lucky to have him performing live again.

Very excited to welcome John Morales, the remix OG, to Pistil!

With:

Tobias Kalleder
C'est Qui (Naone & Closet)
Wood X (CCP)

Entry is 10,000 won