For the past 11 and a half years, Mike Battaglia has sold only vinyl records at his Lower Haight shop Vinyl Dreams (593 Haight Street, SF). Thanks to the curation and charisma of Battaglia, who is a DJ and the lead singer of local psycho-bluegrass band Big Meat Combo, the literally underground shop has since become a store of international repute, a venue for special guest DJs and producers, and a local sanctuary for the celebration of the worldwide culture of electronic music on wax.
This week, Battaglia has both the honor and the tall order of presenting a sale of the most important private collection he’s ever handled. Owned by the late DJ Blackstone (Curry Brooks, Jr.), who passed away in 2022, it was brought to Vinyl Dreams by Blackstone’s friend Homero Espinosa, who founded the Oakland nonprofit Music Connects Foundation and The DJ Blackstone Grant with Joshua Smith and Robert Brown that same year. Proceeds from record sales will go to the annual grant.
“DJ Blackstone was one of the pioneers of our house music scene and had been promoting parties and spinning records in San Francisco for 35+ years,” Brown told 48 Hills in 2022. “He was a co-founder of Tarantic Records, through which he released many tracks over the years.”
Blackstone performed at crucial clubs like 1015 Folsom, The EndUp, Club Universe, Pleasure Dome, and Powerhouse. He commanded weekly audiences at a time when no other DJ had that kind of pull, and had an unquantifiably huge influence on countless other talents.
“His family knew him as CJ,” Brown wrote, “but Curry Brooks, Jr. made a name for himself as DJ Blackstone. He chose the name after watching a magician on TV called Harry Blackstone. It was an apt moniker because when he was DJing, Stone performed feats of magic. He grew up listening to a wide variety of music and had an encyclopedic memory of grooves, beats, chord progressions, and other musical elements that he applied to his DJ sets, song production, and remixes.”
Blackstone, Battaglia argues, should be as known for his contributions to the Bay Area music community as Sylvester, Patrick Cowley, or even Blackstone’s friend and protégé Doc Martin, who later became world-famous after relocating to Southern California and continues Blackstone’s legacy today.
Vinyl Dreams plans to present Blackstone’s collection for sale in the store in two waves, beginning this week on Black Friday—or Blackstone Friday!—and continuing whenever Battaglia can evaluate, hand clean, and catalog the rest of the mountain of record boxes. Battaglia says the first wave has a lot of seminal house classics and dance music. The second wave will be more R&B, rap, and other styles, though there are plenty of those genres in the first wave.
“I’m grateful they brought it to me,” Battaglia says of the nearly 40 boxes of vinyl singles and albums. “If you want to come and get a house education, there is a lot going to be on offer on Friday.”
I was allowed to preview a small slice of Blackstone’s massive record collection, which I examined with reverence and appreciation for his broad and discerning taste. In the hours I spent browsing, I noticed that many of the promo records he collected have acapella and instrumental versions of popular songs as well as remixes that were only released to DJs. I saw rare copies of singles from Blackstone’s label, Tarantic Records.
Some records have an “Unleash The Queen” sticker on the covers, presumably to indicate Blackstone’s picks for dancefloor fierceness. Unleash The Queen was a party at Club DV8 in the early ’90s that merged the early rave scene with patrons of the LBGTQ clubs.
I also saw lots of pristine rap records from groups like N.W.A and Gang Starr in the collection alongside more industrial-leaning artists like Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult in Blackstone’s crates, as well as a promotional copy of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that is likely to be one of the pricier items for sale at $100. Prices start at $5, with plenty of gold to be found at that price point.
The deadline to apply to the DJ Blackstone Grant is on December 20. Applicants must live in the Bay Area, and one of the application questions is, “How does the business contribute to the Bay Area’s arts and culture ecosystem in positive ways?”
“Our foundation is a necessary measure for the immediate need for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging across the electronic music industry,” Music Connects’ founders Espinosa, Smith, and Brown told Marke B. in 2022. “Just look at the DJMag top 100 DJs and see how many BIPOC or LGTBQ artists are on that list—very few. Black and Latinx artists built our industry, yet few artists are touring and making a living from music.
“Our vision for the foundation is to help the next generation of aspiring artists with access and opportunity to the industry,” they added. “Share the knowledge our member Homero learned the hard way over the last 20 years. He was fortunate enough to stumble into great mentors to learn the business and creative sides in our music community. But we wonder about the next artists coming just getting started.”
One person will be selected to receive the $3000 DJ Blackstone Grant and access to business and music mentors in an indicated area such as music production, music publishing, contracts, and branding/marketing “to support an artist’s continuing education, skills development, or vocational resources to advance their DJ or artist career.”
The recipient will be announced on January 20. The foundation also accepts donations to help keep the DJ Blackstone Grant going through the years.
Fortunately, Jim Hopkins of the SF Disco Preservation Society paid tribute to Blackstone by remastering and digitizing several of Blackstone’s live mixes at club nights from the ’90s and early ’00s, including Club Universe at Townsend in 1997, Fag Fridays at The EndUp in 1999, and even a few mixes of unknown origin, so you can hear how he put songs together. These mixes are some of the best ways we have to get to know CJ after his passing, and they’re full of joy and life.
Meanwhile, Vinyl Dreams DJs will spin from the collection to set the tone on Fri/29 and DJ Spun and friends will perform on Sat/30, so show up to shop as soon as the first wave of the collection is released. This is a rare chance to learn how Blackstone influenced a local vibe that is still thrillingly being rediscovered and celebrated.
“Not only do I think that Curry’s legend should be a little more widely known,” says Vinyl Dreams’ Battaglia, “but I think now is the time. There’s a lot of burgeoning interest in something that he was integral in creating, you know?”
Tamara is a DJ and founder of Music Book Club.
