“I’ve only really DJed because there were these guys in Perth who for years would contact me every six months saying ‘Can you DJ for us?’” Safran says. “Then I was doing my live show in Perth last year, Murder in Mississippi, and I thought I might as well. Then I thought I’ve got to have some routine or something – I just thought people would come along and expect something – so I decided that all I’ll do is play ‘80s hip hop and that’ll be the restriction. So if there’s something cool from 1990, it’s out.”
While the title ‘hip hop DJ’ is only a recent addition to Safran’s CV, he’s been curious about the art-form since a young age. “When I first got into hip hop and I realised they were scratching back and forth, I tried it on my family record player,” he says. “It wasn’t equipped for that and I broke it and never told my dad. I told him just recently, about a month ago, and he was pretty cool with it. I had him on the radio show for an unrelated matter then I thought I’d bring it up, but it didn’t end up being this emotional scene that I expected.”
Safran grew up in a Jewish family, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, and it’s fair to assume the hip hop persuasion wasn’t handed down from his parents. Nevertheless, he found his family’s LP collection greatly fascinating.
“It made me come up with this theory that people who aren’t obsessed by music, their record collections are more interesting than people who are obsessed,” he says. “My dad had rumba music and salsa music from the ‘50s; then they had The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s – that seemed to be the peak, like this really was their music; then suddenly Skyhooks’ Living in the 70s – it was like, why that record out of everything in the world? Then Hooked on Classics and then Deborah Harry – why those records?”
With his interest sufficiently piqued, Safran soon looked beyond this motely bunch of records and started to accrue a music library of his own. However, he’s not proud of his chosen listening format: “On one side of the record shop were all the vinyl records and on the other side were all the cassettes,” he says. “At this crucial moment where I walked in with my record voucher, which I got for a birthday, I walked over and picked up a cassette and took it to the counter. [From there] I got everything on cassette. I consider that a monumental screw up, because I could right now have Public Enemy, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest – all of those albums.”
Safran’s never discarded his tape stash, but in recent years he has amassed an extensive vinyl collection. In fact, the ANZAC Day set will exclusively revolve around vinyl, as Safran explores into the far reaches of ‘80s hip hop.
“I’ve got this one, Street Beat, which is a compilation of all this real early ‘80s stuff, like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5,” he says. “I’ve got one that’s a Def Jam compilation too, which has got Public Enemy and Beastie Boys, but it’s also got things that sound really similar to all that but just never took off. I like playing a bit of that because if I just play Public Enemy or whatever, smart arses might go ‘That’s a bit too easy Safran. Good on you jerk.’”
Without question, hip hop is Safran’s number one music obsession, but he’s never turned his nose up at artists from other genres. “When I was bit younger I used to be interested in why someone was iconic and always talked about,” he says. “I’d go out and buy a record by The Smiths or by The Cure or whatever, just saying ‘What’s going on here? Why does everyone wear these t-shirts?’ When I was at uni I was pretty obsessed with the Sex Pistols. I loved them because of their lyrics. They were almost like parody songs. I liked their anger, but I thought they were intentionally funny.”
This active inquisitiveness is evident in all of Safran’s work, both as a documentary-maker and radio host, and also his recent foray into true crime writing. Yet, despite his insatiable curiosity, Safran’s upheld some firm listening principles.
“When I was absolutely obsessed with hip hop – and then also at university looking into different political things and being mega sympathetic to things like social justice – if there was a hip hop act that spoke all these political things that were right-on, but they were shit or I thought they were creatively dodgy, I never just became their slave. I was still like ‘This is someone who’s not that creative, forcing politics into something and it’s not artful enough for me.’ In retrospect, I’ve always had self-respect because I didn’t fall into a cult.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
