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CUT TO KILL Liam's musical career started in an Essex hip hop act Cut To Kill. After Liam had bought his first pair of Technics and learned to do all the tricks with decks, he approached the local band - originally called Original Vision. The band already had a DJ but they took Liam as their second turntablist. The band's first turntablist was DJ 4Tune with who Liam is still friends with. Liam became known as DJ Fame - the name was from his graffiti tag. In early 1988 Liam's workplace's art director decided to invest £4,000 in recording Cut To Kill and putting out an album. "We basically spent the whole four grand on recording. We got ripped by Chas Stevens, the guy who was doing it. We basically spent a day recording it, and ended up with about 12 tracks or something, but didn't save enough cash to do the artwork and promotion. ... We sent out a few white labels to hip-hop labels, but I just knew nothing would come out of it," recalls Liam in the book "Prodigy" by Martin James. Soon after Liam left Cut To Kill, after he had been involved with the guys for two years. Liam had some bad experiences from hip-hop parties and the music didn't excite him anymore. He had became more interested in breakbeat based dance music and he started to try his songwriting skills with a keyboard. Besides, his hip-hop career wasn't going anywhere. Cut To Kill signed a record deal with Tam Tam records. Their first single contained two songs: 'Listen To The Basstone' and 'Talkin' Facts'. Liam was credited for 'Basstone' as part-time member as DJ Fame but Liam believes that both tracks were by him. Their second single, 'Just Callin'', was - according to Liam - his song as well but he wasn't credited for it. But by this stage Liam didn't care about the band anymore: "I knew I'd written the tracks, but I also knew it was over, anyway. I wanted to be in bands with people who I respected. The MC's were wack, anyway. I did the tape of 'Basstone' as an instrumental - it was bad hip house rip-off - but they took the tune and took the money. ... I was just happy to get out of it." RECORDS : 'Listen To The Basstone' Tam Tam promo 12", TTT 032 'Listen To The Basstone' Tam Tam 12", TTT032 'Jus' Coolin'' Tam Tam promo 12", DJTTT41 |