Motivation, Perseverence, and Independence : Jonathon Ramos and REMG

Posted: October 15th, 2009 | Author: serge | Filed under: Props and Praise, ShoMerde Print | Tags: Add new tag, Movers and Shakers, REMG |

Earlier this year, we paid a visit to 20 Maud St., headquarters of one of Toronto’s most prolific promoting machines REMG, cornerstone hip hop presenter in the GTA for over 15 years, and creative juice behind the legendary annual “416 Graffiti Expo“, and “The Roots Picnic”. Founder and main man behind the wheel, Jonathon Ramos sat us down to reel back the years , talk about the uber present and look to the future of remaining independent in the promoters circus that is the T Dot.

Starting at the beginning -what inspired you to get into this line of work ?

There was no one thing . In my house there was always music. The radio was always on, music was always on . In my high school me and a bunch of my friends DJ’d a lot , and when everyone went their separate ways, different colleges and universities, that stopped happening. For most of high school we were always doing something with music and then there was a span of two or three years when I didn’t do anything with music - when our little crew broke up and I said “I’ve got to go get a real job” . Around that time I met Ron Nelson

Through his radio show at the time?  (”The Fantastic Voyage”)

No actually through a mutual friend Errol Nazareth, who at that time wrote a column in the Toronto Sun ..actually still does now , but there was a time in between he didn’t do it. We knew each other through my cousin,when they went to school together and so we connected because we had a mutual love of music when a certain kind of music was coming up

Roughly what period of time was that ?

We really connected with Public Enemy , Errol and I . in the late eighties early nineties. I used to go to all of Ron’s shows and I was kind of halfheartedly looking to get into music again, but I didn’t really have any direct thing so I ended up working up for the Government of Ontario and that was kind of soul sucking – it was a good job, no complaints, but it just didn’t do it for me. Then I remember going to Ron’s last official show at the Concert Hall , and it was Cypress Hill , Chubb Rock, Pete Rock and CL Smooth, FuShnickens UMCs and like a bunch of people , and I don’t think he did so well on the show.  I don’t remember if he had told me directly or Errol mentioned (that) he said “I’m out , I’m not doing this anymore” because he had started to get into the Reggae side of things. So all of a sudden there was a point when there was no credible promoters doing live Hip Hop shows in Toronto. So I thought here’s an opportunity , got some money together , did one show in June of 9′3 – that was the Pharcyde, Bass is Base and Russell Peters at the Opera House while I still had my Govt. Job . That was cool I didn’t lose my shirt , but I caught the bug, so to speak, and I did a second show , a third show ,and after the third show it became a situation where I could think of doing this, because at the time I was growing tired of my day job.

So this is a one man operation at this point ?

Oh yeah , and this was really it. I had to make a decision, I m either doing this or doing that, and I decided to just jump off the cliff. .It was late ‘94 by the time I started doing this full time, and you know you do the things like get rid of your car , get a smaller place , going from a good salary with benefits to no guarantees -have a good show make some money , if I don’t ..how do I pay my rent ?

That was the start of it . There was no one thing but a couple of things that allowed me to get into music at a time when the kind of music I liked was really starting to take hold, and then three or four years later, that’s when it really crossed over.

So within that chronology, what do you feel, as a promoter in Toronto was the “golden era “ of Hip Hop?

I don’t know it’s hard to say,. You could talk about it in two directions ; you can talk about it in terms of Canadian Hip Hop and the you can talk about it in terms of Hip Hop in general. It comes in waves, in terms of music itself – its hard to say but generally the mid to late nineties especially the New York stuff as that really effected Toronto, what we listened to , the sound …everything . You can call any era the “golden era” ,but that time was for me …. around 2000 ish 2001, 2002 was when the Canadian stuff started to get hold. That was the advent of the Circle,.Saukrates put his first record out , Saukrates , Marvel Choclair and Kardi , there was a genuine feeling where it was like “This is about to happen” because they had a couple of false starts . At that time I did marketing for Beat Factory and we put out a couple of compilations

Wasn’t  it the late nineties when the first (Beat Factory) compilation dropped ?

Probably late nineties I’m really bad with dates , but that was around the time the music was big internationally , and even here in Canada the labels were investing in the music. Sauk’s “Father Time” started getting traction in the US and In Europe . Same with Choclair’s stuff and people started to take note . Frankenstein had some stuff that started to take hold , especially in Europe in Japan. We were doing shows . Things were starting to move. It hadn’t really blown wide open , but you just had that genuine sense of energy of anticipation.

To clarify , what exactly were you doing  for Beat Factory at the time?

I was head of marketing for Beat Factory.. It was basically a label set up to do Canadian Urban music . That was our thing. Ivan Berry started it .It was done in partnership with EMI Canada For a while it was good . I think with everybody at the time, we had released their first commercial (outside of vinyl) release with the exception of Saukrates and the Rascalz who had a previous release through Sony .So on Rap essentials volume 1 Marvel was on it Kardinal was on it , Choclair was on it , Rascalz were on it , Wio K , Dan-e-o all the people that were the cream of the crop at that time.. You genuinely felt like you were part of something. All the labels had urban departments and some people were actually gainfully employed by this music

Would you describe that scene as coming primarily from the suburbs, as opposed to the downtown core ?

A little bit of both. It depends really where people are , but I’d really call it a downtown thing It was everywhere. A lot of it was based in Scarborough , not so much in the west end , but then downtown you had a bunch of dudes from Regent Park and St JamesTown that were putting out good music. I wouldn’t call it totally a suburban thing , but where it actually all came together was a downtown thing; all the events etc . People were from Scarborough , but the only thing that would happen there was in peoples basements and then they would congregate downtown . Its not like when Hip Hop (originally) started… it didn’t happen downtown it happened in the Bronx, and then to an extent in Brooklyn, and it kind of spread to all the boroughs , before it actually spread downtown so there was this kind of invisible barrier and then when it came downtown is when it exploded. But here that’s where everything would take place because that was sort of the coming together of everybody.

So at the time, because of everything that was coming up locally did that effect how you were programming your (REMG) events or was that a separate thing that was going on ?

It operated separately – it was a separate business. That was the agreement I made with Ivan when he offered me the position. It kind of informed both, where I brought my marketing thing through doing the shows because at that point it was really guerrilla marketing, this was ( I hate saying this because it kind of dates you ). pre internet. That was the advent of “the street“ everybody was like “the street the street” everybody had street teams .Flyering was the crux of our marketing program for the shows. So that informed a lot of what I did for Beat Factory and then vice versa.. A big part of the Beat Factory thing was creating a national platform, so we did a couple of tours , we built a national college radio network, we had people in every (Canadian) market and that was one of the hardest things. It still is the hardest thing about this country is to connect it. We’re not big enough to do anything regionally .

So you have to jump from Montreal, to Toronto to Vancouver ..?

Yeah and you know Montreal and Toronto might as well be oceans apart because they’re just different cultures , so the fact that they’re just five hours apart doesn’t help anything for a bunch of different reasons , and then you have Vancouver all the way over there and the markets in Edmonton and Calgary, there was a demand there that hadn’t been developed. It wasn’t about do they want to hear it? but how do we get it to them?. There was no urban radio it was all college radio

On that note how would you say over the years media has helped you with promotion of your events and currently what’s the primary media in use by REMG?

Back then there were really only two mediums , which was street , which was flyers and sometimes posters and there was college radio .That was it . There was no commercial radio , we had some support from MuchMusic because they had “Rap City” , but that would come in listings and they would support in terms of the artists, so people would look to “Rap City” to see what was new and that’s how they would get their information . There was a small small small , I wouldn’t really call it effective print media thing you know there was a couple of magazines like Mic Check and WORD to an extent and a couple of things floating around like one based out of Vancouver called Spectrum and that was it . But really the crux of our stuff was college radio cause that was the community , that’s where the DJs the artists the promoters the labels to an extent converged , that’s where it all came together and you had a sense of community because it wasn’t a station so much as it was shows. With FLOW its harder to foster a sense of community because it’s the station, you can listen to it anytime, but when you have , lets use Power Move at the time as an example , you have 3 hours. So you know if you go to CKLN Saturday from 1-4 , then you can get a lot of your business done. You’ll see people , if you are an artist you know you can go down there and hit up DJs, you’ll see some promoters down there , not to mention just the promotion that you’ll do So that was one of our primary ways to get to people,.and now its basically like everyone else , the internet

Do you think that the internet is the primary means because it is simply the default media of the times, or that other media has fallen off, or is a closed door?

Yeah also, but here is the thing you’re dealing with – the base of this music ..way wider. So now you have generations. Before you just had a generation , or maybe a second generation coming into it, but really one generation and it was a very targeted market and you could all find them in one place , for certain music they’d listen to certain shows and they’d have to go find it and you’d have to go find them. But now it’s such a broad base that what you term as urban music you can hear on pretty well on any station that plays contemporary music, even CHUM FM and when you are talking John Legend even EZ Rock. So now its all over the place , where you can’t expect a place like FLOW to be everything to everyone

Well they’re top 40

They are top 40 .You could call it urban because that’s how it skews but now KISS is back (92.5) and Z103 play a lot of urban stuff so FLOW is just in that game. They still cover a lot of stuff for us in terms of mass stuff and we do pop music like say we are getting the Jamie Foxx show and that’s the best way to get to his audience is through FLOW. And we still have internet but internet is like “hey lets advertise” or TV, but its not that focused

Are you using Twitter, Facebook ?

We use Twitter and Facebook but at some point its like “everybody’s using it” so how do you cut through ? We still have quite a loyal following for our base, the difficulty comes when in the last four or five years we have expanded the things we do our offerings in terms of shows, and that’s just in keeping with how people listen to music. There used to be a day when you d ask what do you listen to “I listen to Hip Hop” I wager that (now) when you ask people what they listen to 8 out of ten say “Everything”

But Hip Hop itself and “Urban” music has stretched out into more popular and accessible formats (the rise of the hook)

Yeah even now though you can’t really say . Just to be a devils advocate, if someone says I’m into everything I’ll say “So opera ? Jazz?” “ Well some of it” “ Vocal jazz?” “Not really” …and Hip Hop is the same way .- “What do you listen to - Souljah Boy ?” “Oh hell no thats’ not Hip Hop” “Marco Polo ?” “Yeah I love that. “”Or Flying Lotus”… Lotus actually mentioned something that happened to him (on a cross Canada tour this summer) where someone came up to him at the Cafe de Calgary show and said “You’re not Hip Hop!” I guess the guy came to the show expressly to tell him that and he was pretty aggressive about it . They just blew it off and thought it was funny , but that’s just what the music has become now it’s all things to all people. Before, years ago , you could like something better than you liked something else , and you really didn’t hate any kind of Hip Hop/ You would say yeah that’s just not really my thing, but now its such a huge genre- its so polarizing that people will be like “I hate that stuff” But that’s to be expected -otherwise it would still be this kind of niche thing that we’d all be doing.

I’ve noticed with REMG, there’s an expansion into other musical realms , which is understandable based on everything that you have just said . At what point was it that you said the games going to be a little different ?

It’s like anything there is no one moment where you just switch gears , or you turn or you have that realization. You always have the realization after the fact when you look back and say “When did this happen?” and you realize its been happening for the last couple of weeks or months or years or whatever, but for us , it just came down to people listening to different things .For example, in record stores the categories don’t matter as much , so now people will look for music alphabetically as opposed to by genre .The subsections , genres are that much smaller and the mainstream section is that much bigger, so really the whole industry did it The whole industry evolved as people’s listening habits evolved. And with the advent of the internet people’s listening habits changed and they have access to more music. So if you’re talking about Hip Hop – I discovered jazz through Hip Hop , I discovered blues through Hip Hop- now I can actually go and find things out so when they start talking about Robert Johnson , I can go find out more information than I could ever retain about who he is. Now there are (again) kids in high school who’s favourite band is Led Zeppelin.

Speaking of the music industry, you worked at Sony - when was it 05- 07? So that was a time when the industry was already changing the way it made and sold records What did you see going down from inside ?

I was head of A& R 2005 and 2006 for Sony/ BMG Canada. It was an opportunity that was offered to me where initially I didn’t really give it much consideration and after some talks with the president at the time I thought this was something I’d like to try. Having a good team here it afforded me the opportunity to do both. For years you’re on the outside looking in, speculating how a major label works Most of the time people are just dissatisfied with major labels -its just the way it is. That’s what they are an aggregator of music and they help to distribute it, but it helped to give me an understanding as to why it is, some of it positive and some of its not so positive. So you could actually look at it and go “Now I know for a fact why this model has not functioned well., but then do I have a solution for it … not really, because they do so many things”

You mean in terms of manufacturing distribution ?

Well not even that . In terms of they’re trying to reach so many people. If you’re an independent label, you’re targeting this group of people and its great to talk to them You have dialogue you have a reputation with them. There’s that trust and it goes both ways you know what they want they know what your looking for and they keep delivering what your looking for , Now you try to make that bigger and all of a sudden you start to lose focus and then you don;t have time. And all of this is happening while the market is shrinking because of technology and other things

With the passing of Michael Jackson a lot of people are saying this is going to be great for record sales just as MJ also set the bar so high so high in the era of “Thriller” that it cemented the notion that for big labels it was all about ultra units sold…

And that’ just because they’re running a business because you’r'e talking about multinationals who have bottom lines, who are publicly traded and the pressure then is from the shareholders . It used to be , in the old days , bands had sometimes 3.4. 5 years between records because the cycle basically went if you put out a record , you spent a couple of years doing the record , you released it, then you spent a year or two touring the record and touring was more spaced out. Then you went back in the studio for a year or two years and you recorded and in that gap between those two records is your creativity and your energy and that discourse, and all that stuff that fuels it

And what do you view the role of A & R in that period ?

Well the A & R there was to discover music and to develop music and there was more time to do it, because then it was harder to get it to people. There were tours and interviews – this was pre MTV but then they (the labels) were bought by media companies and it became how do you create content for all parts of it ?.What I learned from Sony is how the whole machine works, where at the beginning of this year, these are the goals that have been set for us in terms of our profit and our year end numbers and then it starts to be “Then how do we meet those goals”. Then it’s like “Well we need that big Madonna record.”or if you don’t know how, then you have to figure it out . You have to pick up that phone and call Madonna and say “We need to put out a record this year”  I mean, if your Madonna, then its “Whenever your ready” , but there are some artists where its like “are you doing a record?….”Well I’ve started on it” .. “Well I need it to come out this year” and that’s the pressure So you have people who aren’t music people making these decisions and then conversely, when I was at Sony we missed our year, because there were three or four big records that never happened Outkast decided they weren’t ready , Maroon 5 decided they weren’t ready , Justin Timberlake decided he wasn’t ready and the Fugees were supposed to get back together, and they weren’t doing a record. So at the beginning of the year they’re (SONY Head Office)  like “In the fourth quarter we’re going to have records from Justin and Maroon 5 and Outkast and the Fugees” and were talking about 10 million units and all of a sudden that goes away, and Canada is supposed to sell the units but Canada doesn’t make the music So you just have to call and you’re like “We’re not going to make our year this year” .And then the scramble is how are we going to make our year

Is there any consideration for signing artists from Canada or is that out of the picture ?

It still exists, but now that we know that the actual market for music is shrinking so where else do you look to it ? So in the the ever present 360 model it becomes how is everybody making money?

Clarify what you mean by the 360 model

The 360 model basically means if you look at an artists income or music as a pie chart and record sales are just one part of it, the other parts of it in terms of revenue are publishing, touring merchandise, sync, film and television, and in some cases management income – those are all part of the business model of music . For the record companies that part (record sales ) used to be the biggest part of it and they didn’t really have any need or desire to go after any other parts of it because everything revolved around the record cycle.  You put a record out and you went on tour to promote the record. You put a video out just as a single to sell the record. Everybody in that entire configuration was geared towards one thing - selling a record . And now selling a record is a secondary thing. Its sort of like a loss leader -your putting out a record so you can go on tour and make money with merchandising , you have new music you can sell to television all of these other things.

The Rolling Stones I think, half stumbled into it because there was a while they were putting out records and nobody gave a shit .Michael Cole came along and said “You know what? You guys are just wasting your time .You guys are worth something”  So then they started the cycle of putting out records so they could go on tour.  So they put out the “Steel Wheels” record -nobody cared what was on it , nobody cared if it had a single- what it did was , it gave them a name and a concert for a tour. A tour in which 90% of the songs were their back catalogue The record came in at no 10 and no one cared. They weren’t playing a lot of stuff from “Steel Wheels” but you got the “Steel Wheels” stage, and the “Steel Wheels” merchandise and the “Steel Wheels” DVDs,  and they toured the whole world for three years and then they put out “Bridges to Babylon” and all of a sudden they take all of the “Steel Wheels” stuff wiped it clean, and they call it “Bridges to Babylon” so it’s new merchamdise, a new stage and what are they playing? They’re playing the same shit they played on the “Steel Wheels” tour,. stuff that they recorded two decades ago That was the whole concept. Do a record -the record is a loss leader they didn’t do anything with the record . How do you know they have a record? - oh well they have a tour. I don’t know how intentional that was, but really that was because they owned the rights to the tour revenue and that’s where they felt the money was

Was it in part the revelation of the methodology of modern major labels that made you eventually want to get out of that area?

Really, it was that I went there for a certain reason, and to work for a certain person , Lisa Zbitnew, who ran the company, and she had a mind set in terms of A & R, and what she wanted to do that kind of fell in with what I wanted to do- developing domestic talent globally , not just here, but also developing other talent around them -agents and managers – and also developing how we marketed that and presented that.( There was ) a lot of different things and we kind of saw eye to eye.  So we tried it for two years and some of it worked , some of it didn’t , but there was a lot of resistance from up above., specifically New York.  She never had the ability to do it . There was a lot of pressure, and she ended up leaving, and her departure signaled a shift in how the company was going to function. Where the company was evolving (under Zbitnew) in that she placed a lot of importance in domestic artist development – it was now shifting into a marketing company that basically packaged distributed and sold international content with the A & R thing playing a small role, with not a lot of priority and not a lot of investment So at that point for me if they had come to me two years ago and said this is the way we are going I would have said no. But it was fine it was two years it was a great education , great insight , great relationships, really good people,but when you take the downturn , the shift within the music industry , combined with the plummeting economy – recipe for disaster and it coincided with REMG starting to hit a growth spurt in terms of expanding into the music we did , starting to produce festivals, bringing in sponsorships so it worked out that it was an obvious choice for me.

So the festival you are talking about is “The Rogers Picnic” that started out as the …

It was originally “The Roots Picnic” and that was sort of an organic thing where the Roots were one of the bands we worked with. We’ve done now something like twenty shows with them-  I can’t remember – but we started the first show with them in ‘95 and we’ve managed to grow with the band and they’ve been pretty loyal to us and vice versa. I’ve always wanted to do a festival. I’ve been a fan for years of the European style festivals, Glastonbury and things like that, and I always wondered why they couldn’t replicate that here. Because its just a place you get music .You see music , you discover music , its great.

The Roots were one of those bands , I wouldn’t say the future of music, but they were leading the way in terms of what they were doing, and how they were expanding and pushing the envelope , because they were listening to everything. You talked to Questlove? And you say what are you listening to and he’d be like”ah I love The Black Keys record and I love this” but this was five or six years ago. He was talking about bands like that , which was kind of unheard of, and he was really well versed in jazz and other music, .And this is when people started to discover a lot of music and they stopped being so isolated in terms of genres.

So we said lets do something called “The Roots Picnic” and we tried to do it once. It was more a Hip Hop thin.  It was at The Docks This is five or six years ago It was them ,some of the guys from A Tribe Called Quest, a bunch of other bands, and it actually ended up getting canceled, because they ended up getting an offer to do one of the big late night shows , a week after we had tickets on sale they called and said “We have to move this date.”  For a rap band having a national TV audience, that opportunity rarely comes. So we never rescheduled it and the idea went away. Then around ‘05, ‘06, I said “Ok we’ve got to do this The Roots Picnic”. (At that time) They were playing festivals in Europe with bands like TV On the Radio and there was this synergy with them  So that’s when I got back on the idea and when I left the label to come back here.  I said we have to do this festival. I called the band up -they’re down .I sent them a list of probably 18 or 20 bands, who I saw as sharing the stage with them. I said “Here’s my ideas. I haven’t talked availability , but add to this list make changes or whatever.”  They came back -they didn’t pull anybody off the list- and they added two names. So we were on the same page. We thought the first year :TV On the Radio , MIA, Bad Brains De La …so this was March at this point of ‘07 and we wanted to do it that summer, which is late in the game to be doing it . So we started looking for sponsors. We can’t really do any festivals these days without sponsors. We ended up at Rogers doorstep. They loved the idea, they loved the concept , “but our mandate this year is to name a festival so we’re not really interested in “Rogers Wireless Presents ;The Roots Picnic” , we’re more interested in “The Rogers Picnic” . For me it was “ah …F.$%^!” because I had already sold the concept to the band., and the band was down , the band was cool . So we talked about it I was the first against it but we didn’t have another option – for them (Rogers)  it had to be ”The Rogers Picnic” and with that comes way more money then what we asked for. So at some point I made the realization I don’t have a choice I cannot do the Roots Picnic without a sponsor . At this late point in the game the only person at the table is Rogers and the only thing they’ll do is this. So I had to explain the situation to them. Because when I said the name (”The Roots Picnic”) they said “hey that’s kind of cool” and where I got the name from was years ago, before I got into music. The Garys used to do The Police Picnic .I loved the idea of the Police Picnic because one year I think it was Ultravox, Flock of Seagulls Ziggy Marley , James Brown and The Police . It was insane . It was Lollapalooza before Lollapolooza. It was all this stuff coming together. I’d never been, and that was my idyllic thing. So when I pitched it they (The Roots) said this is good and we’ll agree to it if you give us the rights to use this outside of Canada. And I had no global plans outside of the Toronto show and that’s how the one in Philly came about.

After 15 + years in the business , what do you consider the the biggest difficulties that you’ve had , or continue to have as a promoter in Toronto?

In Toronto , specifically in this market -its the competition . Toronto’s a great music city , we have great venues. Its just there are a lot of promoters here., which in some cases makes for a healthy situation, but in some cases not so much so There is ever y level of promoter from the guy doing it out of his basement who does stuff on the weekends to companies like Live Nation

What’s your current staff compliment?

There’s 5 of us I have two partners Jeff Brandman and Neil Shankman, also Jay Cohen (Talent Buyer), Mike Kennedy (Marketing), Cameron Wright (Production Manager) full time, and then a couple of occasional staff depending on shows .

Best Show / Worst show ?

Ok. Best show toss up Tribe Called Quest , De La Soul @`the Palladium (1994) on the Danforth because they were both part of the Native tongues touring together and they’d both come off what I’d thought was some of their best records In the case of Tribe it was Award Tour and in the case of De La it was .. the one with Ego Trippin (Buhloone Mindstate) and I thought “Oh my god, together on one tour”, because normally it was done separately and it was on of those things you wanted to see done together. But probably my favourite one - we did this show for the CNE in 1996 The Roots,  Dream Warriors, Intricate, Choclair.  It was an all day thing, outdoor at the bandshell at the CNE. They hired us to program it, and it was free with admission to the CNE, and if you came after 6 o’clock it was free . That show was amazing. The CNE was nervous. They had a lot of police there just because it was a rap show. This ampitheatre reminded me of the bandshell in the movie “Wildstyle”. Same kind of heart shape.  Beautiful weather. These guys murdered it.  Turnstylze did a set. All these people came together. Dream Warriors were on while we had graffiti writers doing some murals closed off by The Roots, who did this 90 minute thing .Rahzel did his Hip Hop 101 and probably by CNE estimates there were 6-7000 people there

I don’t know if there’s any worst show -worst experiences. I’ve lost a couple of shows because of immigration – I’ve lost a NAS show because of that. I’ve lost a Method Man show because of that , I’ve lost a Ghostface Killah show because of that. The NAS one - we were at the border and we did a lot of work to get him through – he got through and the one thing that sank the whole show was the fact that his DJ, who was eighteen years old was carrying a high school student I.D. card as his only form of identification . There  are guys that are linked with NAS that have been through some real bullshit with long rap sheets , and with a lot of work and a lot of fenegeling and a lot of begging , we got them all through .We thought “This is great” , and the last two people that were crossing were his DJ and his tour manager . The tour manager had a kidnapping charge, because he used to be a bounty hunter in Texas, that nobody knew about . We could have still done the show because it was his Tour Manager and he was fine with letting him do it. But the DJ who is a little kid pulls out his beat up laminated high school id card and that’s what sank the show..Then basically for an hour we sat in the parking lot of Casino Niagara. They’d sent him back so he was in a hotel in Buffalo trying to get his birth certificate faxed, while we spent the time on his tour bus hanging out with all of them figuring out how we can do the show without the DJ and after an hour he was like “I’m sorry I can’t “ the show was sold out. The Method Man show , the Ghostface show , those one’s were nightmares , but this one especially, because I was there with them on the bus talking, which for the most part was fun because we were watching videos hearing about why they think Puff Daddy was gay all this crazy shit . Hearing stories you wouldn’t normally hear cause we were just waiting . Waiting for a phone call from the Tour Manager and the DJ saying they got his birth certificate and they’re sending it

So basically two hours after this whole ordeal, I had made some calls and I said “ok here’s the deal, I’ve got this DJ, he ’s got all your records , he’s in Toronto He’s the guy , he can play your show..We’ll hold the doors for an hour so you can do a run through at the show you give him a set list and we’ll do it “ and I could see him thinking about it . There’s a huge line up at the Koolhaus, and I can see him thinking about it, and his security guy says “No boss (they called him boss) I don’t think its a good idea. All they see is you and your show and if you don’t put on the best show it looks bad on you and then he (Nas) was like “yeah you’re right “ I remember doing a call on FLOW and I said “It’s not going to happen” They said “Can we put you on air” and I said “Sure” and Jwize said “Just before you start thinking about promoters, REMG does that best shows , so if they can’t make it happen no one can make it happen” and that was the prefaced to the call and then he said “Lets see if he’s here” “Hey Jon whats up I heard the bad news “ and I apologized to everybody, apologized to people that were there. I just spent two hours to make it happen and I couldn’t make it happen, and I didn’t get into it. I didn’t blame anybody . It just came down to the fact that they just couldn’t get in. Nas aplogized. “Everyone can get refunded ,and we will try and make up the date” .It was a shitty night and all my guys - there were four of us - went to the Keg and had this crazy dinner a couple of drinks to drown our sorrows and just called it a day .

On that note what is the formula of your success and longevity in this business from the one man operation to the present day entity that is REMG ?

You have to be thick skinned . You have to do it for the right reasons .The whole thing about meeting and hanging out with artists you get over it real quick . You do it for the love of the music because that’s where it is, but its also a business. For me its just having a good team I took on partners that all bring something to the table to help the company grow . It s not the easiest business but you just persevere and there have been a lot of setbacks. Mainly that was competition .At some point the big promoters discovered Hip Hop and that made your life a lot harder,.and there’s lots of times when you have a shitty show and you think “I don’t want to do this anymore” and then your just like “Fuck It”.  I have one of those moments every year But you just persevere. In my mind, as far as we have come, I envision it going even further whether that’s realistic or not.

Is there an artist, or a couple of artists , not necessarily that you have done shows with, that are grabbing your attention ?

There’s so much out there . When someone says “What are you listening to?” I say “What am I listening to?”, because there’s so much music coming at you . There used to be a day when we were growing up, you had an album, and you memorized it because you just listened to it over and over again and you could tell what song came when, and all that kind off stuff. These days I can’t tell you an album I’ve listened to front to back and know.  I listen to a couple, three or four times- half the time its here but you start listening to it and you get busy and all of a sudden the albums over and your like “I only remember two or three songs “ and it was 12 songs long . There’s no one thing. I would say- Drake - I’m just excited about whats happening for him, because that’s the farthest that this city this country has ever come in terms of where he is, and he still has a long way to go, because you’ve got to put out an album. A a lot of it now is just hype, but he seems to be willing to do it . There’s tons of stuff out there, I couldn’t tell you any one specific without having some time to think about it. To me, I love it now because people send me random shit and then I can go find whole albums. The other day I went to the Dead Weather concert. Dead Weather is Jack White’s latest project . It’s him, one of the guys from the Raconteurs, the girl from The Kills .A good friend of mine called me and said “Lets go to the show”, and I like the Stripes and the Raconteurs , but I’m not really that guy. The show was crazy. It was amazing. It was this psych blues rock that they really delivered, and I loved the music - hearing it for the first time live it’ s hard to do. Mostly you hear a song and then you go see it live and hearing it live is not always the best time in terms of getting it, but man it was a good show.  It wasn’t like “Oh it was cool he had a couple solos” That was good music. This is the way I like discovering music now . That shit would never happen back then That’s what I like about now .

We were talking earlier about Flying Lotus ...

Eyeopening stuff. Just the music he’s doing. When I first listened some of the music,  it could sound monotonous , but I kept listening.  Like last night, I was with Henri who did the opening set for the tour and he was playing me some stuff and I was like “Oh my god “ and you just understand the complexity That’s what I love - new shit all the time .

Supplementary question - what was the first piece of wax you bought ?

This is debatable it was either the 45 of “Planet Rock” , by Afrka Bambatta or the full length “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash – I d have to ask my sister – both of which I still have

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