The book 'Last Night a DJ Saved My Life' has a very interesting addition to this notion of covering over labels. It seems that this began in the Northern Soul era, when the records being sought were all collectors items and having one record that the crowd liked but nobody else had would actually get you gigs.
But the origins go back even further, not surprisingly to the Jamaican sound systems of the late 1950s. Lee Perry's often-repeated story is about passing the word on the sly to a rival sound system that a new shipment of top records had just come in, and the rivals dashed off to grab them first, but, Perry said, 'they were all old stuff, duds!' I've only seen one DJ actually cover labels. That would be Jeno of the Wicked crew back in 1992 when things were at their craziest in San Francisco. I think he did it as a matter of self-defense. Wicked always insisted (rightly) on having the turntables on the floor and so the trainspotting mob could get overwhelming. At least one guy was writing down his sets, finding as many oif the records as he could and duplicating the set down to the order at some club in San Jose. But this lasted only a short while and Jeno like most DJs seems happy to show what he's playing. I had heard of DJs particularly in the 'funky breaks' realm doing the same thing but have never seen it. You could say the 'dub plate' phenomenon reflects this as well; all of these cases reflect a real imbalance between supply and demand. Frankly, with as many different records as are out there, I see no reason at all to hold back, in fact, my idea is you want to promote the good records so that people will raise their expectaions generally for what gets played :) phred
