Mr. Mixer Francis Grasso, much like King Stitt of Jamaica, got his start as a dancer, on a ledge at Trude Heller's club in the Village. Grasso’s personality was more reserved than Terry Noel, who would often incite the crowd into frenzy by broadcasting his energy through the music encoded in his ever-expanding record collection. Grasso was more introverted and preferred to use technical skill to feed off the energy from the crowd and reflect it back at them. The main complaint of the DJs’ music among owners and club-goers was the lack of a smooth transition from one disc to the next. Before Grasso, djs had made many attempts to combine to records live, with little success. This experimentation was generally limited to the transition between records. Grasso, a dancer, noticed this lack of continuity when he would have to switch his pace or stutter-step to keep up with the DJs’ changes. He also knew that the turntable needed alterations to achieve its full potential as an instrument. By placing a felt pad, a ‘slip-mat’, above the platter but beneath the record, Grasso was able to isolate the record from the movement of the platter. As the platter moved underneath, he would hold the disc, and then, release it right on time with the beat of the disc playing on the other turntable. Instead of the crowd hearing the next disc slowly catch-up to playing speed, the onset of the next audio stream was not distorted in any way, allowing the dancers to keep on groovin’. This method, ‘slip-cueing’, is common practice today, and forms the basis for contemporary disc manipulation, allowing the movement of the record separate from the platter. This simple improvement was a work of pure genius, and Grasso wasn’t done revolutionizing the art form, he would need to update the instruments at his disposal still further before he could continue his contribution to the art. Grasso used headphones to ‘pre-cue’ the music. By listening to the record before putting it on the dancefloor, he could find the exact spot to drop the beat without the audience hearing what was coming next. The addition of headphones allowed the dj more precision than ever before. Previously, the labels on the records were used as visual cues, often with poor results. With an audio cue, the live disc artists now had definite control over the sound pouring out of the speakers. The next logical step was to alter the speed of the records so the music from each turntable would blend together better. Grasso solved this dilemma by acquiring a pair of Thorens turntables with pitch control. By adjusting the pitch, he could slow one disc or speed the other until the beats matched, ‘mixing’, the two different records seamlessly. More specifically, using the drums and snares from each record as audio cues, Grasso would change the speed of the record using the pitch control until the music from each turntable came together to form a coherent audio stream; or, if one disc had vocals without a steady beat, and another disc was only drums pounding away, Grasso would superimpose the vocals on the drums to create an entirely new composition live, through improvisation! Using two copies of the same record, Grasso could extend a song indefinitely, or extend a drum solo contained on the discs, feeding the dancefloor with music that was beyond edible, it was delectable, and the audiences ate it up in heapings. Grasso’s innovations marked a monumental transformation in djing, similar to the introduction of the slam dunk to basketball, the game would never be the same again. Grasso would also raise and lower the bass and treble, as the Jamaican sounds had. The result was a mixture of heavy rhythms enhanced by vocals and multiple drum beats. Grasso was creating fresh music, live, from pre-recorded sounds. By selecting specific parts from two discs, he created a sound entirely his own. The result was more than the sum of the parts. Grasso’s live mixed versions of songs were preferred by audiences more than the originals encoded on his discs. Before Grasso took the leap, most djs could barely handle small snippets of one record superimposed on the other. Grasso eventually grew so prolific that he mastered two minute long extended mixes. A true visionary, Grasso humbly acknowledges this difficulty and his ease in overcoming such obstacles: Back then you couldn’t adjust the speeds. You had to catch it at the right moment. There was no room for error. And you couldn’t play catch up. You couldn’t touch the turntables. I had Thorens, and you couldn’t do that on Thorens. All you had to do was start at the right moment. Nobody mixed like me. Nobody was willing to hang out that long. Because if you hang out that long, the chances of mistakes are that much greater. But to me it was second nature. I did it like I walk my dog. Unlike today’s turntables, the equipment available to Grasso and others was extremely sensitive. It took a very light touch and practiced skill to produce a sound that could be mistaken as only one disc, when it was in truth an intricate blending of two separate discs. As Einstein was for mathematics, so was Grasso for the art of djing, a genius that was light years ahead of his time.