DJ Ron Slomowicz: How did you get started as a DJ?
Ray Roc: A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away... No, actually my cousins used to DJ and they wouldn't let me touch their turntables. So I had to sneak in and play with their turntables while they weren't around, and that's how I really got into it. This was when I was about eleven years old, maybe even younger.
RS: So you started young, music was always around you and you just started DJing as soon as you could touch the turntables?
Ray Roc: Yes, anything that involved music would be what I would want for Christmas. It was never toys, always musical equipment or turntables and a mixer of my own so I didn't have to beg to use my cousins'. We were a large family, so every weekend we had some type of event in someone's house and we were bringing equipment down and having fun. My cousins used to play around the local places in Queens and we used to do block parties as well. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, those were the kind of environments where we always were jamming.
RS: So you made the move out of the bedroom into the block parties; how did you then make the move into the clubs?
Ray Roc: When I was in high school, there was this local club called Club New, where I just started promoting and playing. Actually, prior to that I had won a teen DJ contest at the Silver Screen. They had me playing every Sunday afternoon and that's what gave me my first taste of nightclubs. Then I moved on to another club in Long Island called Focus where I was playing every Friday and Saturday. My partner Kato and I played after that at Roseland and it kept on evolving from there.
RS: How did you get started with the production?
Ray Roc: We started getting into production at that point and we hooked up with Todd Terry and started doing stuff for his label.
Back when everybody was just getting started, when Little Louie Vega
from Masters At Work was Just Little Louie from Heartthrobs, the Old Fun House nightclub that made Jellybean Famous, we were all in the same game. I started out editing for Arthur Baker- actually, my partner was employed by Arthur Baker and there was too much work coming in, so I was hired to come in and give a helping hand.
RS: How did the production correlate with your Djing?
Ray Roc: As a DJ, I was already doing my own versions of records using a drum machine, a Roland 707, and a reel-to-reel, editing the break and rearranging the songs. This lead to a big megamix I did for Warlock records which was nearly 90 percent Todd Terry records. I added keyboards and we made this big fifteen minute medley that sounded like a track. That's how Todd got a hold of us! That's also when my sampling was just coming of age and we were sampling everything on the label, as well as mixing and editing it, and pretty much that's what gave us our reputation.
RS: And so you really started like remixing other people's tracks and that led to you doing more production kind of work.
Ray Roc: We were doing productions on the same album, we submitted some tracks and they picked up one as well. Then from there, the projects kept moving forward. In 1990, I did a record called "Jungle Love" which was distributed on Digital Dungeon. Eventually we were signed through them to Soho Sony, which only had two artists - me, under the moniker Roc and Kato, and Roger Sanchez, under the moniker Orchestra Seven. I did a follow-up record called "Jungle Kisses" which got licensed to the UK in '92 and started traveling to the UK from that point on.
RS: And so when you're traveling, you're traveling as a DJ?
Ray Roc: Yes, traveling as a DJ. As a production team, the way we performed was through DJing. The DJ culture was growing big time in the UK and there was a big demand for US DJs because we were the happening house sound.
RS: May I ask, where did the name Roc come from?
Ray Roc: Roc came from being young and playing the house parties and the basement jams. When break dancing was in, I used to DJ for a few crews who used to battle it out in the basements and at the end of the day they all used to say "Ray Rocked!" I grabbed that name and decided to call myself Ray Roc. Everybody had a moniker, like Funky Fresh Phil, so I pretty much just said my name's going to be Ray Roc.
RS: Talking about names, what's the difference between let's say Ray Roc and the Roc Project?
Ray Roc: Ray Roc is me and the Roc Project is a project that I developed where I wanted to dabble into the mainstream and kind of use the underground influence of what I've grown up with.
