Finding the funk
Mark Herlihy's simple formula keeps today's Future Primitive Sound in tomorrow's mix.

By Jonathan Zwickel

IT'S NOT EASY building an underground empire, but for seven years Mark Herlihy has done just that, laboring to channel the Bay Area's underground hip-hop essence into a sound and a style that help define the local urban arts movement. He's the founder of Future Primitive Sound – although, given the grueling labor of love the project became, "father" might better describe his role – a group whose influence stretches deep into the evolving realm of hip-hop culture without sacrificing integrity or relevance.

Future Primitive, a tight-knit ensemble of DJs, graffiti artists, and break-dancers, represents the creative solidarity that permeates the Bay Area scene. Beginning in 1996, FPS turned out events – DJ "Soundsessions" that were as much technical clinics for trainspotters as sweaty, skankadelic dance parties – that earned the crew a reputation as purveyors of the best cutting-edge turntablism and DJ music, and beyond that, as the pinnacle of street-smart hip-hop awareness.

If you build it

Herlihy is a passionate, ambitious nightlife prodigy who's been throwing parties and working in clubs since he was 17. "Future Primitive was meant as a backlash against the club thing," he tells me. By age 20 he was managing hipster hot spot Oasis, a demanding gig that eventually soured him on the entertainment industry. "After a while I just got sick of the club scene. I hated what it was all about. I left and tried to be the blue-collar hero, digging ditches for an environmental agency in Berkeley, but that wasn't me either."

Now 30 years old, but still looking 17, Herlihy is an S.F. native of almost three decades and wears his local status proudly (and literally: tattooed on his right forearm in a flowing font are the words "San Francisco"). He's a true impresario – there's no slick b-boyism to describe his sense of quality cool and the grand vision that drives his work. "I had this real love for music and art and wanted to make a living off what I love," he says.

It was the summer of 1996 when Herlihy, along with longtime colleague and friend Mark Wasserman, figured that, given the uneven organization of the local hip-hop community, they could build a vastly improved network featuring local and national talent. "We were like, 'We're on the scene anyway. Why don't we start something up? And if we're gonna do this – we've done it before – let's do it our way and not fuck around.' And we just tried to create the biggest circus possible."

"The trick, we thought," Wasserman says via e-mail, "was to try to marry two styles, where you take one party-rocking DJ, who knew how to command the flow of a set, and pair them with these really dynamic turntable soloists, who would ultimately complement their set. It was a tricky proposition for a couple of reasons. We were generally pairing two DJs who'd rarely (if ever) even met, and counting on them to deliver a great 90-minute set."

Such impromptu pairings had never been tried before, and they ended up becoming the signature style of the Soundsessions. "Mark was really taking it up a notch in presenting these turntablists as musicians and their music as fun, good-time stuff," says Michael O'Connor, founder of late-'90s alternative mecca Justice League. "Before Future Primitive it was all about dudes standing with their arms folded, just watching the DJ. Mark brought a real circus vibe and made the music interesting and made the parties fun." Herlihy also brought the high-end production values and slick visual style gleaned from his nightclub experience to a genre that had traditionally been fraught with sketchy promoters and cut-rate sound systems.

"Hip-hop was always there," he says. "San Francisco has always had a strong scene. All I did was put it in the proper light. I wanted to show the parallels of hip-hop culture: the DJs, the writers, the dancers. That stuff, the four elements and all that, it's kind of taken for granted now, but at that time it had been overshadowed by gangsta rap, and I wanted to bring it back. That was the biggest challenge: going against the mainstream, doing the underground thing. The club scene was all about European house and gangsta rap. I chose to do the stuff that I like, and that was hard. I lost money for three years, but I was doing what I loved with no compromise."

The Soundsession circus frequently included live painters, fire dancers, breakers, and video projection. A "DJ-cam" provided live, over-the-shoulder footage of DJs' turntable acrobatics, revealing to the crowd the ridiculous dexterity of the performers. Within a year Herlihy and co. were blowing up venues all over the city and luring a steady stream of emerging talent into the Future Primitive fold. Soon West Coast phenoms like Cut Chemist, Z-Trip, and DJ Shadow were all flexing their skills as Soundsession guests. In 1997 came the first Future Primitive Sound album release, Live at the Future Primitive Soundsession Vol. I, which pits Jurassic 5 DJ Cut Chemist against Shortkut of Daly City's Invisbl Skratch Piklz at old SoMa haunt Cat's Alley. That shot – a 70-minute, jaw-dropping improv mix of breakbeat and rare groove spun by two DJs who had never met – was heard around the world; the limited pressings of the album quickly sold out and became collectors' classics.

Wasserman says, "The Cut Chemist/Shortkut set really put the FPS on the map. There was definitely a feeling in the room that we were watching something really incredible. I knew it was breaking big when I walked into Tower Records the next day, and all the clerks were talking about it, imitating Cut's moves."

Synchronous city

In May 1998, Herlihy produced the first Soundsession party at the young Justice League. As it turned out, the club and the party played a crucial role in kicking each other some serious underground acclaim. "Future Primitive and the Justice League were a really good match, that was obvious," says O'Connor, who shares a common background, as well as a love of progressive DJ music, with Herlihy. "We're both from the city. We like the same kind of stuff. I was agreeable to the budgets Mark needed, and the space was perfect for the art and video projections he wanted to bring."

Their local standing didn't always prove beneficial, however. "In a way we're cursed by being from here," O'Connor says. "It's a locals' scene, and people tend to think more parochially. It's a risk – you know a lot of people and so you can't front, because they'll dog you. You have to stay real, and I think Mark always has."

Despite the risks – or maybe because of them – five years of Soundsessions brought technical turntablism out of the bedroom and into the mainstream. Music that was once considered esoteric became widely accepted as essential to the hip-hop canon. "I always knew that we didn't want to cater to the crowds," Herlihy says. "If they're not hearing you to begin with, then you're not saying anything. Play new, raw shit, and let them figure it out. We'll educate the people this way. We'll change them, if they're open to it."

The people dove headfirst into the infectious, urbanized soundtrack alternative hip-hop provided – and the media weren't far behind. The music's underground cred headed upward, and soon artists were selling tons of records and headlining huge festivals.

But mainstream acclaim wasn't attractive to Herlihy, whose sights had always been set on developing new artists and maintaining a low profile. "I know we'll never be big because I don't want to compromise what I do," he says unapologetically. "I'm really in my element at those 500-person shows, breaking new talent. That's what gets me off."

The next step toward major success – bigger venues, pricier acts – was one Herlihy didn't feel like taking. The niche he'd created was the one he wanted to sustain. At the end of 2002, after rocking more than 30 parties, breaking several grand-slam DJs, and releasing six albums on his own label, Herlihy temporarily pulled the plug on Future Primitive.

Was the hiatus a loss of momentum, sabotaging the opportunity to burst into the mainstream? Or did the time off give Herlihy some much-needed room to reexamine his original intentions and keep Future Primitive at the level he wanted? Longtime FPS collaborator and local beat hound DJ Zeph posits a new type of success: "You can be underground these days and still be successful," he says. "You don't have to be all Hollywood to pay the bills. Look at Quannum and Def Jux. Their shit's known across the country, but they don't get played on KMEL. It might sound weird, but I think a lot of artists would rather stay at that mid level and do what they want to do than get rich."

Ground zero

It was almost a year later that Herlihy plugged in again, and this time the power was flowing to a myriad of Future Primitive projects more in line with his original vision. Last October the Future Primitive Sound Headquarters opened in the Lower Haight at the site of the former Compound Records store. The H.Q. represents all the potential in the Future Primitive concept. "I think at the time I didn't have my business down," Herlihy says of his earlier days. "We didn't have the chance to utilize the reputation that was growing. Plus we never had any resources. We didn't come in with any backing; we just did it on our own. We put out the first CD with $2,000 we made from doing shows." Taking 10 months off to strengthen the Future Primitive foundation has paid off, he believes. "It's been a long time, but really I just wanted to focus on the store, focus on the clothing line, and now that's done, and I can focus on the music."

The store, a gleaming shrine to urban fashion, is a retail and gallery space, offering the FPS catalog on CD and vinyl, locally designed T-shirts and hoodies, a small assortment of sneakers, and a selection of b boy-oriented books, magazines, and videos. The walls are dedicated to rotating art exhibits. "I want people to see what I intended to begin with, so it's exciting to have a home base to put everything in. A lot of people have ideas of what we're about from the shows, but I wanted to expand on those ideas in a physical space."

First in the new lineup is DJ Romanowski, an eclectic eccentric who just might be the ultimate example of Herlihy's Future Primitive ideal. Coming to San Francisco from Switzerland in the late '80s as a teenager, Romanowski is a lifetime record collector, omniscient DJ, and accomplished visual artist. He's been working with Herlihy since the early Soundsessions, usually supporting big-name headliners with an encyclopedic mix of funk, rocksteady, and hip-hop. In line with Herlihy's approach to promotion, Romanowski has long been a stalwart of the S.F. DJ community, but he still keeps a low profile. "Good shit speaks for itself," he says. "I don't like so much hype behind what I do."

Romanowski's diverse original material occupies the immediate future of Future Primitive. His album Steady Rockin' – a funked-up rethinking of the bouncy ska-reggae hybrid known as rocksteady – has already hit the shelves in the city, and its nationwide release is set for later this month as the first installment of a trilogy of Romanowski albums. These albums, rooted in vintage styles but colored by Romanowski's inventive, worldly soul sound, will form the backbone of the new FPS catalog.

Future forward

Today Herlihy is confident of Future Primitive Sound's direction. The label will have five or six scheduled releases this year, and the store will feature regularly rotating exhibits of urban artists from around the world. This month a show by European painter Mode2, one of the most celebrated street-to-gallery artists in the world, goes up on the walls. Herlihy says, "My approach is to be in a position to break new talent – musical, artistic, all of it – and work with them over the long term."

There are plans to renew the Soundsession series to spotlight emerging FPS artists like Romanowski, junglist UFO, and local veteran MC Azeem. Herlihy is working to update what he started more than half a decade ago, applying the same forward-looking hindsight to his business that his artists use in making music that's progressively retro. "To me that's the meaning of Future Primitive," he says. "Understanding your roots and moving forward."

Herlihy's easy attitude and prescience in picking real talent belies the thousands of hours of work that go into building a reputation – an empire – people believe in. Plus the economics of throwing a successful show, especially in the volatile world of live hip-hop, are laughable by any serious business standard. Wasserman says, "It's difficult on so many levels: using new and interesting spaces, booking the right talent, dealing with sound systems, and of course there's all sorts of egos involved. Imagine if you went to work every day for 3 weeks, and at the end of it, you not only don't get paid, they take away $500."

O'Connor puts it this way: "You can drive to Vegas right now and have better odds than if you tried putting a show together." He continues, "These independent promoters, they are incredibly valuable. They're crazy to do what they do. People like Mark, Chicken John at the Odeon, Audra with Incredibly Strange Wrestling ... They're doing the shit that nobody else will do. They make the music scene, they make the city, what it is."

To the DJs and promoters who built it from the ground up, the turntablist movement that so many critics want to bury with 1999's trends remains where it belongs: in the underground. "Those big names who we brought in and then blew up, they won't answer my calls anymore," O'Connor says. "It's out of their hands now and with the younger generation. But Future Primitive always put more emphasis on the whole show as entertainment than just the headlining act. That's why it's been so successful."

"Suddenly the media decided to talk about turntablism," Herlihy says, "but it's always been part of hip-hop culture, which is 30 years old. I was never happy with how it was defined by the media. These guys DJ Shadow, RJD2, they're way more musical than the media made them out. The initial hype has died down, and I'm glad it's not in the media right now."

DJ Zeph emphatically agrees: "A trend? That's crazy. This shit started hip-hop. Maybe it's not making noise in the media like it was a couple years ago, but for people like me, and like Mark, it's for real. This is our thing." The smaller venues that play host to the current FPS parties are a reflection of a smaller audience, he says, but "we've also been in the DNA Lounge and at Barneveld in the last three months and had major crowds. New people are still turning on. The skepticism is just finger-pointing from the media and the music industry. We know we're here to stay."

And the music? As always, innovation is everywhere, if you know where to look. "Think of it like jazz," Herlihy says. "There are standards, and then at a show they'll improvise on those standards. We're building the standards of this music. I'm looking for real compositions." This he says with the conviction and insight of a true impresario, or kingpin, or father. "Back then it was too early for that kind of composition-based music. It was still developing. Now there's so much more depth. Shadow said something to the effect of, 'a hip-hop DJ is a filter. You can take anything and make it hip-hop.' It's not just about playing hip-hop records but taking any genre and finding the funk in it. That's hip-hop. It's limitless."