Dick's Rendezvous in the Burroughs!!!

I had a chance to chat with Rich "Dick" Burroughs. For those that are not in the know Dick Burroughs has just penned his first novel titled " "A Rendezvous with Destiny. The hat of an author is far from the only chapeau that he dons. Mr. Burroughs is also a rare grooves spinning party promoter and marketing maniac by day. Check what he had to say on his own personal rendezvous with destiny.

Where are you originally from?

I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey. I also spent years in East Orange and in Newark, NJ

When did you start throwing parties and where?

I threw my first party while I was in college. I didn't throw it at college, but during my college years. I threw it in a rental hall on the border between East Orange and Orange. I rented the DJ equipment and liquor, printed up some flyers and invited all of my friends. Me and my friend Mook. I did it mainly because i loved to dance and to party and figured i could do it myself and create a really good party that i would have wanted to go to.

Describe young preteen Rich?

My preteen years i spent in East Orange, I lived there from the 4th grade to the 8th grade. I was a pretty smart kid. Definitely getting into a bit of trouble with girls. Having them at my house when my mother came home from work. I guess i wasn't sneaky enough. I Played a lot of pick-up sports. I liked to play football but I wasn't down with the practice. I was pretty fast and had the real sick juke moves! When I lived in East Orange, I often spent the summer in Jersey CIty with my father. That was always fun. I was always a clothes horse, even as a preteen. I always got fresh!

What is your niche when it comes to throwing parties?

I don't know if I have a niche. I'm a fan of smaller, sexy and intimate parties. Parties where women can come to feel sexy and dress sexy, yet feel comfortable and have intelligent, engaging conversation. That was the ingredients to the Sunday Night party i did at Halo in Manhattan. It was intimate and attracted a great celebrity clientèle. Every week, me and Maurice Caple (who brought me on to do the Sunday Night party with him while it was in its infancy) would talk about who came through and it was either Usher or Lenny Kravitz or Venus and Serena or Ted Fields or Lauren Hutton or Sandra Bernhardt. We didn't have a VIP area, the whole party was important and special and everybody was in close proximity to each other. The party went famous when Diddy (Puff Daddy at the time....or maybe it was P. Diddy.....I don't remember), put the party on the Ludacris' "Welcome to Atlanta" remix. So yeah, I like smaller, sexy and intimate parties......With really good music. Music that is not a continuous stream of Top 40 (isn't that term outdated!) music. Considering that Top 40 is now Fifty Cent and Justin Timberlake and Kanye West.

Were you spinning before you before you became a promoter?

No, i started spinning about two years ago. I always liked the whole DJ think. I came of age in the 80's and 90's, a really golden era for DJ's. It was still a time where if you really wanted to become a DJ, you apprenticed with a big DJ and humped his crates around and went to argue at the door when to get the big DJ's friends in.

What prompted you to cut off your dreads?

It was just time to do it. I had them for quite a while and people always asked me when was I going to cut them off and I always said that i would cut them when i wanted to cut them. I didn't anguish about it or vacillate between cutting and not cutting. I woke up one morning, on my birthday, looked in the bathroom mirror and cut them off. I then showered, got dressed and left the house. It was funny because nobody recognized me. I had a birthday party at Pop Burger in the meatpacking district on the same day that I cut my hair and nobody recognized me. It was actually the first night that I DJ-ed, at my birthday party at Pop Burger and some people came up and asked me "if I saw Rich" So, it was quite spur of the moment. So many things were different after that, like I could no longer be referred to as "Rich with the dreads" :) and I also no longer get that knowing head nod from other dudes with dreads that are complete strangers. I also don't get asked if i'm selling weed or coke by random white folks at clubs!

What was the best relationship that you have had and what did you learn from it?

My best relationship was a love relationship with an ex-girlfriend. At one point we lived together and I was also managing her recording career and though we had been together for several years (about 3-ish, then we broke up and got back together for another 2-ish), i didn't think we were going to have a great future together. I didn't think that the love was enough because we had too many differences that caused friction. So we broke up and I learned from that relationship, that you can't be afraid to let go of things that you're comfortable with or to be afraid of the unknown. And you definitely can't be afraid to be by yourself.

What was the most memorable event that you were associated with?

I have events that are memorable to me for different reasons. Like, one of the more memorable events for me was doing a press/wrap party for this reality show back in maybe, 2002. We did it at the Russian Tea Room, on 57th Street in Manhattan. What made that memorable was that at the end of the night, me and a few friends sat around in the Russian Tea Room, this very historic place with a society pedigree and we smoked a big, fat blunt! We smoked a fattie and I had a red wine/7-Up spritzer. And I don't usually smoke blunts but couldn't pass that one up.

Another one was a party I did in Toronto for Caribbana. I went up there with a former roommate who was born and raised in T.Dot. We rented out a warehouse, rented the sound system, brought some booze and got the promotions cracking. As the days to the party got closer, I found out that the whole promoter community in Toronto was conspiring against me. They all tried to screw the kid from New York. They ripped down our posters, threw out our flyers from any of the stores and told anybody and everybody that would listen that our party was cancelled. Mind you, i had been up there for nearly two months before that an got to know some of the folks, so i was surprised that they was shitting on me like that. But you can't hold a good thing down, and all the controversy made people come out even stronger. We had one of the best parties of that Carrabana. I came back to NYC with a STACK of money. Funny things was at that time, the exchange rate from Canadian Dollar to American Dollar was quite horrendous, so I traded in that stack for sixty three cents of American money! (it was actually a few thousand bucks, which was good, but i left Toronto with enough Canadian cash to stuff a dam)

I also liked the "Welcome Home ODB" party that I sponsored. I provided beer from Sam Adams, my former client, for Old Dirty Bastards first performance out of jail. I was amped up to see him perform a bunch of his songs. I really like "rawhide" "brooklyn zoo" and a bunch of other Dirty joints. After waiting for over an hour past his arrival time, the crowd started getting antsy. By this time, ODB had become sort of a hipster darling, so the audience was primarily downtown Manhattan. When he finally started to perform, most people didn't recognize it was him. Initially because he had a bunch of friends on stage that were singing his songs while waiting and secondly, he had one of those "just came home" bodies, kinda dieseled out and all. He looked fresh off of some "that's that shit" from backstage and didn't remember alot of the words to his songs. When the crowd finally realized it was actually Dirt up there, they went nuts! He was a bigger hit with many people when his self-destructive tendencies were on display.

How did you make the transition form promoter to marketing?

I didn't actually transition from promoting to marketing, i transitioned from entrepreneurship to marketing. I jumped out of college on some DIY type thinking, flush with the idea that the world was mine. Working from 9am to 6pm with an hour for lunch and two, ten minute breaks just wasn't gonna cut it for me. So off i went. I opened a talent agency with my friend Taede, who was a dancer. He and I knew a bunch of house music dancers and those folks needed representation for all of the music video and concert tour work that they were getting. No one else seemed to be servicing that community, so we decided to do it. That morphed into a talent agency with actors as well and then ultimately, we became a model and talent agency. It was called Bonafide Model & Talent Agency. We had some good people and good clients but ultimately, it was a huge struggle. I felt that to get the excellent clients and the excellent models where beyond us. We closed that agency down and my friend Taede opened up a new agency. Having Bonafide put my vision on the photo industry and in particular, on the testing photography industry.

I knew that i had to keep getting my models tested and i knew that most of them had to pay to get tested. I saw a business with a constantly replenishing customer base because it's a bunch of models coming to NYC everyday. I took a few months off to write and business plan and ultimately got my brother to give me some seed money for a new company. It was called Test Room and we had a studio on Broadway and Houston. We rented the whole floor, built out the front half into offices for other companies (mostly hair & makeup reps and independent record labels) and kept the back as our studio. We had the whole set up; the studio, the lighting and the cameras. We hired photographers, hair & makeup and stylists by the day and would shoot 4 models a day. I eventually started doing the styling since it was basic looks that we provided and hence something that I could do myself (and keep that money in house). I eventually started working as a fashion stylist. I worked for Vibe, Details, Time Out New York (I did a few covers for them.....One of which is a funny story) and Blaze.

So long story short, my brother and I could not get along and our indifference was affecting our earnings, so I decided to give up the dream of DIY (Do It Yourself) for a minute and DIFSE (Do It For Somebody Else). I didn't know where to start really, I had been talking to someone at Source Magazine about a position but it was a few months premature. It was before we decided to close Test Room down. I called up the designer Maurice Malone, who i had booked some of my models with for his 7th on 6th shows during Fashion Week and took him to lunch. During lunch, I convinced him that I should be heading up his marketing department. I started working there about a week or two after our lunch. My stint at Maurice Malone was crazy and very informative. It's what somebody means when they say they got great experience from a place!

It was after I left Maurice Malone and went to work at August Bishop that I really started throwing parties. I threw a few before, but nothing serious. I started doing the Sunday Night at Halo when I was working at August Bishop.

What are some projects that you are currently working on?

The project that I like the most right now is DOT.TUNES which is a web app that allows people to share the contents of their iTunes libary with friends, family and clients across the internet, via any web browser. DOT.TUNES It's a front runner in media sharing with a utilization that spans across the professional and social music enthusiasts. There my client. I perform marketing services for them, basically developing new marketing partnerships. Check it out at www.dottunes.net.

What influence have your parents had on your personal style?

My mother's influence was that she kept me fresh to death while I was growing up. I always had at least two leather bombers, a sheep, pair of Cazells, pair of Yves Saints, crazy sneaks, Playboys, Fresh pair of British. I remember hitting Delancey Street as a youth with my mom and brother. My mom would go in the store and negotiate the price with the fast paced gentleman wearing the yarmulke. She would then leave the store and walk down the street until the guy from the store would run after her with a lower price. The world was a little more honest in that time or perhaps I should say, i little more racist, as my mother always said she was going to "Jew Down" the store to get our coats cheaper. My Mom was also a fashionable dresser so I knew early what it meant to get fresh and fly.

I didn't get any style influences from my father. He's a fireman and went to work everyday in a uniform and when he wasn't in uniform, he never wore anything with a style that I wanted to emulate or incorporate.Those dark fireman uniforms, the ones he would wear when he was a captain was type sharp though!

What clothing brand could do you absolutely no wrong?

Adidas

Where and what did you go to college for?

I went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick and studied Criminal Justice

Was "A Rendezvous with Destiny" your first novel that you wrote and what prompted you to start writing?

It was my second novel. The first novel that i wrote was stolen along with my computer. This was about five years and it was very stupid of me! Funny how the same thing almost happened with this novel. I went to a party for a fashion trade show and somebody tried to walk off with my computer bag. I bugged out though. I looked everywhere, ran down to Penn Station looking for anybody with the bag, ran back to the loft on 31st street and then found this dude with the bag on his shoulder, talking to his friends by the elevator like it was his. I took it back without incident, though i should have collected his fronts!

How hard was it to get your novel in circulation after you wrote it?

Technology is a futher mucker bro, because i was convinced that I didn't want to go to a publishing house. I figured what I really needed was a Literary Agent that could hold me down and work with me. I tried printing up copies of the manuscript at Kinko's but it was huge, came in an ugly white binder and cost $33 to print each one. I went the print on demand route because not only can I sell it, but I can give it to Literary Agents in a sleek and sexy novel form. Something that they'll be quicker to read without it feeling like work.

Once i decided on the Print On Demand route, it was simply a function of researching all of the companies that offered that service and figuring out which one was ideal for my needs. The process of uploading the actual word document and the images for the cover is a bit tricky, but with a few days of trial and error, it's possible. Just gotta have patience.

Drop a jewel for the people on how to jump start a strong networking circle themselves?

Know your friends, embrace your friends and try to help them out with their needs. You'll feel good about it and you'll ultimately put people together, which is good for you. Makes people wanna do things for you if you're genuine. People remember that you've helped them and will ask again if you know someone who can do this or do that, or ask if your skill set can help them out. On top of that, stay active! Energy attracts energy! Volunteer, become knowledgeable beyond your niche. I think it's dope when I watch ESPN and the dude that does the football games also knows the NBA! That dude works twice as much as the guy that only knows the NFL.

And stay up on the internet. The internet is the final frontier. Back before man went to the moon, they said that space was the final frontier, but i beg to differ. You can probably buy some moon rocks on ebay and get yourself some of yesterdays final frontier and display it as your avatar. Yeah, Moon rocks baby, that's when something is not fresh, when it's behind the Zeitgeist.........that's called Moon Rocks!

tell a friend to tell a friend so we can BUILD!!!