Art by Matthew Fleming.
This episode was written & produced by Marissa Flaxbart and Casey Emmerling.
In the late '80s and early '90s, a seismic subculture shook the streets… literally. “Boom Cars,” decked out with custom sound systems, roamed neighborhoods blasting the bassiest music ever recorded. But where did this movement come from, and why did it fade away? In this episode, we dive into the world of Miami Bass, dB Drag Racing, and the infamous tapes that could shred your subwoofers. Featuring journalist Jesse Serwer and Bass Music pioneer DJ Magic Mike.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Deja Lou - Move That Thing
Sonido Mundial - Topa Lo
Lofive - Teal
Witchitaw Slim - Simulation
Damma Beatz - Kickin’
Tigerblood Jewel - Faux Pas
Damma Beatz - French Quarter
Damma Beatz - Pull Off Safe Haven
Ballpoint - Feel the Fire
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View Transcript ▶︎
Disclaimer: Warning: Listening to this episode at high volume may result in seriously booting-shaking levels of bass. Twenty Thousand Hertz is not responsible for any damage to car speakers, headphones, or other listening devices.
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.
[music in: Deja Lou - Move That Thing]
Growing up in the 80's and early 90's, I have this very distinct memory of cars driving slowly around my neighborhood, blasting the loudest, boomiest music I'd ever heard. I remember the music was on these cassette tapes that all had bass in the name. There were titles like Nothin’ But Bass, Bass Boom Bottom, and It Came From Outer Bass. And while I never got super into this scene myself, I knew a few people who were all about it.
For a few years, this bass tape subculture seemed huge... And then, it just seemed to disappear.
But I've always been curious... What was this phenomenon? Where did it come from, and what happened to it?
To find out, I reached out to producer and writer Marissa Flaxbart.
Marissa Flaxbart: Hey Dallas. I'm excited to tell you what I've discovered on the topic of ‘90s bass tapes.
I'm very excited about that, because it's just a distant memory from my brain that sounds like a perfect study and examination for our nerdy little podcast.
Marissa Flaxbart: I totally agree. So it's actually not all that surprising that you say, "Oh, I have a memory of this, a distant memory. But I don't know that much about it." Because it's almost as if it hasn't exactly been studied and examined as the phenomenon that it clearly was.
Interesting.
[music in: Sonido Mundial - Topa Lo]
Marissa Flaxbart: The story of bass tapes is a convergence of things that were happening in the mid to late ‘80s. For starters, there was this massive proliferation of hip hop. And in South Florida, there was a subgenre of hip hop that was starting to take hold, called Miami Bass.
Jesse Serwer: As far as the musical innovation of Bass music, that really happens in Miami.
Marissa Flaxbart: That's music writer Jesse Serwer, who's written several pieces about this topic.
Jesse Serwer: Miami being a place that's very much connected to the Caribbean. Specifically, Jamaica is a place where bass is prized, and a lot of the originators of Miami Bass are Jamaican, or from that part of the Caribbean.
Marissa Flaxbart: At house parties, dance clubs, and in the streets, people were building towers of speakers, and relishing in the way those bass sound waves shook their bodies… and the neighborhood.
[Music transition to Miami Vice theme]
Jesse Serwer: It's definitely born in that Miami era, that lawless era that we see in Miami Vice.
Jesse Serwer: It's almost like a comic book or a cartoon now, the way it's been embedded into culture, this outlaw Miami era.
Jesse Serwer: Miami Bass definitely is a product of that. And the bass is the heart of that.
[clip in: 2 Live Crew - Move Somethin’ Instrumental]
Marissa Flaxbart: The biggest group to come out of this lawless Miami scene was probably 2 Live Crew. Their unapologetically raunchy lyrics helped lead to those Parental Advisory labels on tapes and CDs. And their songs were driven by low, bumping bass tones. Here's a 1988 track called Move Somethin’.
Marissa Flaxbart: The rising popularity of bass wasn't just a cultural movement. It was also a technological one. The bass sounds in tracks like Move Somethin’, as well as tons of other hip hop from that time, were created with a legendary drum machine called the Roland TR-808.
[808 beat in]
Jesse Serwer: The 808 revolutionizes bass. Bass before the 808 is a bass guitar. [SFX: bass guitar lick]
Jesse Serwer: When the makers of the Roland TR-808 digitize the sound of the kick drum, it gives people who are using it a whole new way to use bass.
Marissa Flaxbart: Crucially, the 808 had a knob to adjust the decay of the kick drum. And when you cranked it to the right, it stretched those punchy thumps into long, sustained bass notes.
Jesse Serwer: That's really the core of Miami Bass, manipulating the decay, and sustaining the kick drum sound.
Marissa Flaxbart: But there was another factor that was just as important for this movement.
Jesse Serwer: The second technological development is the rise of aftermarket car stereo systems, which starts to a degree in the 70s, maybe even earlier. But it really comes alive, like it really becomes an industry, with its own language and culture, in the mid 1980s.
[music in: Lofive - Teal]
Marissa Flaxbart: The key word here is aftermarket, meaning...
Jesse Serwer: This is not the factory audio system that comes with your car.
Marissa Flaxbart: In the mid ‘80s, the basic car stereo was just an AM/FM radio, and a set of speakers that were relatively weak, especially in the bass department.
[car start + filter to lofi, bad bass speakers]
Marissa Flaxbart: For people who were used to the high end stereos they had at home, or the stacks of speakers that blasted in clubs and at block parties, those dinky car setups just weren't gonna cut it.
Marissa Flaxbart: Soon enough, manufacturers started to give people what they wanted, pumping out powerful car speakers and subwoofers. But if you're gonna spend all of that money to make your car stereo sound amazing, you'll want to be able to choose the music you hear in it. So you'll also want a cassette player.
Jesse Serwer: 1979 is the year that the Walkman is introduced commercially.
[clip: Walkman commercial]
Jesse Serwer: So you’re going to be walking around listening to cassette tapes, you're going to be listening to cassette tapes at home, so why not listen to cassette tapes in your car?
[music in: Witchitaw Slim - Simulation]
Marissa Flaxbart: With each of these new innovations, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Jesse Serwer: The people who are listening to Miami Bass in the mid 1980s, they're listening to it in a car, and they are often listening to it at very high volumes. And that's one of the cool things about how Miami Bass develops is that the music and the system start to be like advertisements for each other.
Marissa Flaxbart: On a physics level, low frequencies travel farther than high frequencies do. So these cars could be heard from blocks away. They were impossible to ignore, which was a big part of the appeal.
Jesse Serwer: Not only are you creating a bass sound, but you're creating a rattling on the chrome of the vehicles at the time. [sfx] So you're doing this to be known. You know, you're making a statement with the music you're playing, how you're playing it.
I can't wait for people who listen to Twenty Thousand Hertz with their kids and they're, you know, suburban folks, driving around in minivans listening with the kids, and their car is going to be rattling due to our podcast. You're welcome.
Marissa Flaxbart: Yes, yes, a service that we can provide.
Marissa Flaxbart: There was a name for this new breed of loud, bass-bumping vehicles: Boom Cars.
Jesse Serwer: Already by like 1987, 1988, there's a very close connection between Miami Bass music and Boom Cars. And this is most famously paid tribute to by L'Trimm who scored one of the first national Bass crossover hits that hit the Billboard charts.
Marissa Flaxbart: L’Trimm's big hit was called "Cars That Go Boom."
[Clip: L'Trimm - Cars That Go Boom]
Jesse Serwer: People kind of treat it lightly, but like that is a very accurate song. Guys looked at having these loud cars as a way to get girls’ attention, and they did.
[car slowdown]
Bass Guy: Hey girl!
Bass Girl: Heeey!
Marissa Flaxbart: The success of L'Trimm helped spread the Boom Car scene from the streets of Miami to cities and towns all across the country. Meanwhile, other Miami artists started pushing the limits of bass further and further. And one of the biggest was DJ Magic Mike.
Jesse Serwer: So when he starts making music, he's got a group called the Royal Posse, and they're just making Miami Bass music. But very soon, that's going to change for him, because he creates a record called Drop the Bass.
[clip: DJ Magic Mike - Drop the Bass]
Marissa Flaxbart: In 1989, Drop The Bass became the song to test your new car stereo with.
Jesse Serwer: You know, it has a section to like really focus on that 808 whoosh sound, that sustained sound.
Mike Hampton: “Drop the Bass” was a, really, really, really big song for me, and us.
Marissa Flaxbart: That's Mike Hampton, also known as DJ Magic Mike. Once his music got people hooked on bass, they just couldn't get enough.
Mike Hampton: So what wound up happening is someone took “Drop the Bass” and they slowed it way down.
[Drop the Bass Slowed Down]
Mike Hampton: And they said that when they slowed it down, it was more bass in the song.
Mike Hampton: Well, me being an artist, I didn't like my song being slowed down. I just, it didn't sound good to me.
Mike Hampton: So, the engineer that I had in the studio at the time, I told him what was going on. And he says, "We can do something about that." He says, "Let's work on something." So we got in the studio, and we did a slowed down bass track called "Feel the Bass."
[clip in: DJ Magic Mike - Feel the Bass]
There it is, "Bass." That's what I remember a lot of, is just people saying, "Bum, badabum, badabum, bada, ‘Bass,’ bum, badabum, badabum, bada, ‘Bass.’" Like most of the lyrics were somebody saying “bass.”
Marissa Flaxbart: Yes, and something that is important to note about "Feel the Bass" is that it has a subtitle, and it's “Speaker Terror Upper." “Terror” like “scary” terror, “upper.” And that was the promise of "Feel the Bass."
Mike Hampton: We called it "Speaker Terror Upper" because the way we designed the song, if you slowed that song down, it would literally tear your speakers up, because the air would get behind the speaker and below the coil out.
Mike Hampton: And it was just kinda like a joke at first, and like, "Okay, let's see what happens." And “Feel the Bass” just blew up.
Marissa Flaxbart: Did you ever hear about anybody tearing up their speakers with the song?
Mike Hampton: Oh, constantly. If I had a penny for every time I heard that every day, I'd be a millionaire times and times over. It's just every single day, whether, you know, it's me and my wife working, or we're out somewhere, "Man, your music tore my speakers up! You tore my speakers up!" Like "No, I didn't tear your speakers up. You tore your speakers up!"
[music in: Damma Beatz - Kickin’]
Marissa Flaxbart: The destructive power of pure, unadulterated bass only served to make this music more exciting. Now, there was an element of danger to it, of a dare. “I DARE you to play this tape in your car.” It all added to this image of glamorous rebellion.
As a child of the 90s, I know from first hand experiences, part of the joy in this entire thing is because old people hated it.
Marissa Flaxbart: Yes, absolutely. There were special reports on the news about the scourge of teens riding around with their bass rattling, and their music blasting.
[music stop for TV click into clip: 1989 CBS Report]
CBS Reporter: Trouble is, if you don’t roll your windows up as Leslie does, innocent bystanders can feel Michael Jackson in their teeth, too… which is why some California police have taken to issuing citations for noise pollution.
80s Cop: We get complaints from the citizens, we get complaints from businessmen. And it’s deafening. The sound is deafening.
Marissa Flaxbart: By the early ‘90s, the Boom Car scene had become a kind of sonic arms race. On the one side, you had DJs and engineers pushing bass frequencies to deeper and deeper depths. On the other, you had people tricking out their cars with boomier and boomier sound systems. Tons of people got in on the action, including plenty of Twenty Thousand Hertz listeners.
[sfx: answering machine beep]
Straker: I was one of those guys that had one of those cars that you could hear from two or three blocks away.
Ryan: There was one bass tape that was feared and revered and asked for more than any other.
Dave: It was truly like contraband.
Marissa Flaxbart: That's coming up, after the break.
MIDROLL
[music in: Damma Beatz - Kickin’]
Marissa Flaxbart: In the early ‘90s, Boom Cars were all over America, blasting thunderous Miami Bass songs designed to show off just how low their speakers could go.
Like me, many of our listeners remember the Bass craze fondly. In fact, plenty of them joined in on it.
Chris: In Metro Detroit, on the Northeast side, there's a boulevard called Gratiot. And what you did in your formative years in the early ‘90s was you got in your friend's cars and cruised Gratiot. You would go from about 10-mile to 12-mile, and just go in loops. And you would talk to girls, you would show off how loud your bandpass box was, or your bass system was.
[sfx: answering machine beep]
<span data-preserve-html-node="true" style="color:rgb(127,44,202)"Ryan M.: I remember being a teenager in the mid 90s looking through the Crutchfield magazines, looking at all the new amps, boxes, enclosures, and different types of speakers, dreaming of what that might be one day to put some of those in my 1988 Mercury Tracer hatchback.
[sfx: answering machine beep]
Straker: I was one of those guys that had one of those cars that you could hear from two or three blocks away. I had two 15 inch subwoofers in the trunk. I had a total of, I think, 16 speakers throughout the car.
[sound design in incl. Maggotron - Welcome to the Planet of Bass] Straker: And the car was so loud that sometimes, we would be rolling down the street, and not only would it be rattling the windows of the car and the trunk, but we'd actually be setting off car alarms as we rode down the street.
Dave: There was this guy in my high school who had like a secret notebook, and each page of the notebook had a track listing for a different cassette tape that he would make for you and sell you. So for like five bucks, you could get your own mixtape with songs like “Bass Mekanik” or “Give the DJ a Break.”
[clip: Bass Mekanik - Bass Mekanik]
Dave: It was truly like contraband.
It really was like a high school endeavor. Somebody you hear in the parking lot at high school blasting this. "What's that about?" Talk about it in school…
Marissa Flaxbart: Right?
…duplicate the cassette tape, put it in your car, realize your car is terrible, go spend your teenage job money all into a nice radio system…
Marissa Flaxbart: Absolutely.
…that plugged into like an amplifier and a subwoofer....
Marissa Flaxbart: And among the teenagers who were trading these tapes around, certain titles earned a reputation for being especially dangerous.
[sfx: Answering Machine Beep]
Ryan: Back in the day, I used to work at this store at the Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, Michigan called Tape World. And there was one bass tape that was feared and revered and asked for more than any other, and I think the guy's name was DJ Billy E, and it was called Nightmare on Bass Street. And there was a track on it called “Ultimate Bass Scare.”
[clip: DJ Billy E - Ultimate Bass Scare]
Ryan: And it would just get lower, like every four or six beats or so, it would get lower and lower…
Ryan: And lower, and lower…
Ryan: And apparently, it blew out a couple people's speakers as they were trying to play the Ultimate Bass Scare Challenge.
Ryan: After a while, I started warning people that when they came in asking for Nightmare Street, I would say, “Listen, be careful when you play ‘Ultimate Bass Scare,’ because it will mess up your car stereo.”
Marissa Flaxbart: Nightmare on Bass Street was the first release by a new label called Innovative Bass Productions. It was founded by a man named Ed Firestone, who worked as a sales rep for a subwoofer company.
Jesse Serwer: He was one of those people that noticed that Bass music was a great way to promote what he was trying to sell, you know, to sell people on custom audio installs. So that's how he's looking at it. He's looking at it as software for his hardware.
Marissa Flaxbart: Soon enough, the speakers and the music started being sold together.
Jesse Serwer: I know that Nightmare on Bass Street album was sold primarily through these install shops. It came with a cover warning, "The price does not include new woofer." You know, so back then, the parental advisory sticker was really big. The car audio bass people started riffing on that.
Jesse Serwer: It was a playful way of sending a real message, which is like, “You can destroy your speakers. You should not turn the bass all the way up, unless you're able to properly receive the music. If you don't, you're gonna actually have catastrophic financial consequences."
[music in: Tigerblood Jewel - Faux Pas]
Marissa Flaxbart: For the Boom Car crowd, if you could afford a top-of-the-line sound system, the place to show it off was at a special type of car show, called a Sound Off Competition. That’s where Wayne Harris comes in. Wayne was a Texan electrical engineer, who was known for his legendary Boom Car, The Terminator.
Jesse Serwer: The Terminator is the most famous Boom Car of all time. It was a 1960 Cadillac hearse. And the interior, and the panel, and the front seat was rearranged to look like an airplane cockpit.
Marissa Flaxbart: Inside The Terminator was the most advanced technology available at the time.
Jesse Serwer: He actually was a pioneer in utilizing a computer inside of cars. He utilized the Apple II to monitor and activate four 12 inch woofers in a 50 cubic foot enclosure. You know, the reason why he used a hearse is ‘cause there was a lot of open space to fill in. So he could add a lot of speakers.
Marissa Flaxbart: To fill that space, Wayne installed seven amplifiers and twenty three speakers.
Jesse Serwer: He had a navigation system as well, he had a mobile phone, he had a VCR, and a very early CD player.
Marissa Flaxbart: In Texas, in the early 80s, Wayne started going to so-called Sound Off competitions, where people would compete to see whose car could get the loudest. At first, these were small, informal events held in parking lots.
Jesse Serwer: But in 1984, there was an event called Thunder on Wheels. It was a national call to have people bring their Boom Cars to Houston to the Astrodome, which is the most iconic venue in Houston. And Wayne Harris shows up that year, and he wins.
Marissa Flaxbart: Wayne's passion for Boom Cars went beyond just competing. Over the next decade, he worked for multiple car stereo companies, using his engineering skills to develop louder and more powerful sound systems.
Jesse Serwer: By the ‘90s, he's the man in this world of Boom Cars. And he creates this spectator sport version of head-to-head competitions, kind of like boxing matches, but you're just trying to compete for the highest output of bass.
Marissa Flaxbart: This new spectator sport was called “dB Drag Racing,” as in, Decibel Drag Racing. And in order to have a fair fight, all entrants were given a specific disc of songs to play. These compilations featured tracks by artists like Bass Mekanik and DJ Laz.
Jesse Serwer: DJ Laz, who's a legendary figure in Miami Bass music for a completely different style. He's the one that brought Latin music into the Bass fold.
[clip: DJ Laz - Esa Morena]
Marissa Flaxbart: And of course, there was DJ Magic Mike's classic, “Feel the Bass,” AKA “Speaker Terror Upper.” In the ‘90s, Mike would often go to these competitions, where he got to see the song live up to its name.
[car competition scene in incl. DJ Magic Mike - Feel the Bass]
Mike Hampton: I've seen windshields cracked. [sfx] I've seen windshields blown out. [sfx] I've seen speakers being dismantled [sfx] just because of the low end and the air pressure.
Mike Hampton: And the thing is, people aren't mad about it, they get happy that it happened, and then they get happy that I was able to see it happen, you know, that it happened in front of me. And then what they do after that is they say, "Okay, well now we got to go back to the drawing board, and we got to put something bigger and better in the car that can handle this song."
Marissa Flaxbart: For artists like Mike, these competitions were the ultimate showcase for the power of their music. But for the dB Drag Racing Association, licensing these official compilation albums was starting to get expensive.
Jesse Serwer: So it's not too long before they realize that they actually don't need this music. They could just create a CD with just a test sound. It doesn't need any other aspect of music. It's just a sinewave.
[SFX: Low sinewave in]
Jesse Serwer: It just creates that wave that lets you know how strong the bass level is. And that's how it's been ever since.
[tone out into music in - Damma Beatz - French Quarter]
Marissa Flaxbart: Suddenly, these competitions that had formed around this hyper specific genre of music didn’t actually include that music.
Jesse Serwer: So now, the Sound Off competitions, which still exist, there's not really a musical element to it. So the people that are coming, they're not in these cars that are in the competitions now, because the bass levels are so high, if you were in the car, it would basically cause your eyes to bulge out. So they're controlling the output through a remote control.
Jesse Serwer: And the cars aren't being driven to the competitions when they have them, they're being put onto the truck beds. And they're purely a demonstration tool.
Marissa Flaxbart: By the late 90s, interest in car audio bass music was waning. Around that time, DJ Magic Mike recorded some tracks with fellow Bass artist Techmaster PEB.
[music clip: DJ Magic Mike & Techmaster PEB - Bass Planet]
Mike Hampton: We did our two albums together, we did Back in Bass and Gods of Bass. I was glad that we got those albums in when we did, because the genre was dying a rapid death at that point.
Mike Hampton: It got to a point that people would just buy anything that had the word “bass” in it, or a subwoofer, or a girl with a car on it. And then you had some labels that was just flooding the market with stuff that just wasn't good. And people got tired of it. And then people stopped buying it.
[music in: Damma Beatz - Pull Off Safe Haven]
Marissa Flaxbart: After more than a decade of popularity, the car audio bass scene had run its course. It had gone from the streets of Miami, to the cassette shops of the Midwest, and ultimately to a CD of sine wave tones, in cars with speakers so advanced, you couldn't safely sit inside and listen. But the impact of this subculture still reverberates today.
Jesse Serwer: All forms of music, especially mainstream hip hop, you know where you're getting the best mixing engineers, using the latest technology, they're always coming up with ways to make the bass clearer.
Jesse Serwer: Bass is always becoming more prominent in music. That's a lot of the legacy of Miami Bass and car audio bass is just creating a desire for music lovers of all forms to want to have that be a part of their music.
Mike Hampton: Musically it changed a lot, because now everything that you listen to has 808 in it. Naturally in hip hop, but it could be country, it could be R&B, and especially dance music. You just can't have music without some kind of sonic frequency underneath that low end. You just can't have it.
Marissa Flaxbart: These days, DJ Magic Mike is still making music. In fact, he's still making “Feel the Bass” tracks. His latest album will include a “Feel the Bass 8.”
[clip in: DJ Magic Mike - Feel the Bass 8]
Marissa Flaxbart: The song hasn't dropped officially yet, but Mike and his wife did live stream it on TikTok. In the video, the two of them dance together behind Mike's turntable, grinning from ear to ear as that thundering bass moves through them.
Marissa Flaxbart: When he's out and about, Mike still runs into super fans.
Mike Hampton: I've seen cars that had my Final Frontier CD, the whole album cover painted on the car. And you look and you're just like, "Wow, my music had that kind of magnitude on you." Ahh, you can't put it into words.
[music in: Ballpoint - Feel the Fire]
Marissa Flaxbart: Nowadays, cars come with sound systems that are much more powerful than they were in the ‘80s. But installing aftermarket speakers is still quite common. And if you turn on a Top 40 station, you'll hear track after track with booming 808 bass lines. If you wanna feel the bass, just crank up the volume. But be careful out there... You don't wanna get a citation for disturbing the peace.
You know, if someone gets pulled over listening to this Twenty Thousand Hertz episode, I want to know about it.
Marissa Flaxbart: Absolutely, yeah. Send us a voice memo. What laws did you break listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz?
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more at Defacto Sound dot com.
Marissa Flaxbart: This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart.
Other Voices: And Casey Emmerling. With help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Jade Dickey, Colin DeVarney, and Justin Hollis.
Thanks to our guests, Jesse Serwer, and DJ Magic Mike. And thanks to Rob Williams for helping connect us with Mike. Finally, thanks to everyone who sent in messages about their bass tape memories, including Chris, Dave, Drake, Straker and two different Ryans.
I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.
