Speaker Terror Upper: When Bass Tapes Shook the Streets

Summary

Podcast Summary: Twenty Thousand Hertz – "Speaker Terror Upper: When Bass Tapes Shook the Streets"

Release Date: February 5, 2025
Host: Dallas Taylor
Guest: Marissa Flaxbart, Jesse Serwer, DJ Magic Mike

---

Introduction

In the episode titled "Speaker Terror Upper: When Bass Tapes Shook the Streets," host Dallas Taylor delves into the vibrant subculture of bass tapes that surged through the streets during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This summary captures the essence of the discussions, exploring the origins, technological advancements, cultural impact, and lasting legacy of this unique musical phenomenon.

Origins of Miami Bass

The episode begins with Dallas Taylor reminiscing about the pervasive bass-heavy music that once echoed through neighborhoods, often emanating from booming car speakers. Curious about the roots and disappearance of this trend, Taylor engages producer and writer Marissa Flaxbart to shed light on the subject.

Marissa Flaxbart explains that the bass tape movement was a convergence of several factors in the mid to late 1980s. A significant driver was the rise of Miami bass, a subgenre of hip hop that emerged from South Florida. Marissa notes:

“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.”
[02:22]

Technological Innovations: The Roland TR808

A pivotal technological advancement that fueled the Miami bass scene was the Roland TR808 drum machine. Jesse Serwer, a music writer, highlights the transformative impact of the TR808 on bass music:

“The 808 revolutionizes bass. Bass before, the 808 is a bass guitar. When the makers of the Roland TR808 digitized the sound of the kick drum, it gives people who are using it a whole new way to use bass.”
[04:44]

Marissa adds that the TR808 allowed for manipulation of the kick drum's decay, enabling producers to create long, sustained bass notes that became a hallmark of Miami bass tracks.

Aftermarket Car Stereo Systems and Boom Cars

The evolution of car audio systems played a crucial role in the dissemination and popularity of bass tapes. In the mid-1980s, aftermarket car stereos began to flourish, offering enthusiasts powerful speakers and subwoofers capable of reproducing the deep bass tones demanded by Miami bass music.

Jesse Serwer explains:

“The second technological development is the rise of aftermarket car stereo systems... 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.”
[05:27]

As these systems became more powerful, cars equipped with booming sound systems—dubbed "boom cars"—became a cultural statement. Marissa Flaxbart notes:

“There was a name for this new breed of loud base bumping vehicles, boom cars.”
[07:59]

The synergy between Miami bass music and boom cars led to a nationwide phenomenon where loud music served both as entertainment and as a means of asserting identity and status.

Cultural Impact and the Rise of Boom Car Competitions

The intersection of music and car culture gave rise to competitive events known as "sound off competitions," where enthusiasts showcased the capabilities of their boom cars. Jesse Serwer recounts:

“By 1987, 1988, there's a very close connection between Miami based music and boom cars... People look at having these loud cars as a way to get girls' attention.”
[08:51]

One of the most notable figures in this scene was Wayne Harris, known for his legendary boom car, the "Terminator." As the competition intensified, so did the innovations in both music production and car audio enhancements. DJ Magic Mike's track "Drop the Bass" became an anthem in these competitions, designed to test the limits of car audio systems.

The Decline of the Bass Tape Scene

By the late 1990s, the bass tape subculture began to wane. The oversaturation of the market with low-quality tapes diluted the original appeal, leading to a decline in popularity. Marissa Flaxbart explains:

“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.”
[28:26]

Additionally, the transition of boom car competitions to using sine wave tones instead of actual music signified a shift away from the musical roots of the movement.

Legacy and Continued Influence

Despite the decline, the legacy of Miami bass and the bass tape era endures in contemporary music. Jesse Serwer observes:

“All forms of music, especially mainstream hip hop... Bass is always becoming more prominent in music. That's a lot of the legacy of Miami bass and car audio.”
[29:20]

DJ Magic Mike continues to influence the scene, releasing new "Feel the Bass" tracks and engaging with superfans who admire the impact of his music on car audio culture.

Conclusion

"Speaker Terror Upper: When Bass Tapes Shook the Streets" offers an insightful exploration into a distinctive chapter of music and car culture history. Through engaging discussions with experts like Marissa Flaxbart, Jesse Serwer, and DJ Magic Mike, the episode illuminates how technological advancements and cultural expressions intertwined to create a lasting legacy in the world of bass music.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The 808 revolutionizes bass... Gives people who are using it a whole new way to use bass.”
  Jesse Serwer at 04:44

• “There was a name for this new breed of loud base bumping vehicles, boom cars.”
  Marissa Flaxbart at 07:59

• “All forms of music, especially mainstream hip hop... Bass is always becoming more prominent in music.”
  Jesse Serwer at 29:20

---

Additional Information:

Listeners are encouraged to visit DefactoSound.com to explore the sound design studio supporting the podcast. The episode also features endorsements for products like Shure's microphones, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Shopify, which are integral to the production and dissemination of the podcast content.

Transcript

[Dallas Taylor]

Hey listeners, 20,000Hz started as a passion project nine years ago out of Defacto Sound, which is my sound design studio. Today, Defacto still covers about 25% of the cost of this podcast, so in a very real way, the work we do over at Defacto sound helps keep 20,000 hertz going. We just spent eight months rebuilding the Defacto Sound website from the ground up and it's finally ready for you to check out. If you make videos, we'd love to collaborate. We've worked with lots of 20,000 Hz listeners over the years and even if you don't need anything, we do just just visiting the site gives you a peek behind the curtain of this show and helps keep us high in Google rankings. Take a [e-mail] thanks one of the best choices I ever made for my health was prioritizing regular checkups. Because when it comes to health, knowledge is power. Fortunately, Zocdoc makes booking a doctor a breeze. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.comHertz to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's Zocdoc.com ZocdocHertz Zocdoc.comHertz warning listening to.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

This episode at high volume may result.

[Dallas Taylor]

In seriously booty shaking levels of bass. 20,000 Hz is not responsible for any damage to car speakers, headphones or other listening devices. You're listening to 20,000 hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor. Growing up in the 80s and early 90s, I have this very distinct memory of cars driving slowly around my neighborhood blasting the lap 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 Nothing But Bass, Bass, Boom Bottom and It Came From Outer Bass. And while I never got 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.

[Dallas Taylor]

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.

[Dallas Taylor]

Interesting.

[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. Are 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.

[Jesse Serwer]

It's definitely born in that Miami era, that lawless era that we see in Miami Vice. It's almost like a comic book or cartoon now, the way it's been embedded into culture. This outlaw Miami era. Miami bass definitely is a product of that. And the base is the heart of that.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

The biggest group to come out of this lawless Miami scene was probably two 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 Something. The rising popularity of bass wasn't just a cultural movement. It was also a technological one. The bass sounds and 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 TR808.

[Jesse Serwer]

The 808 revolutionizes bass bass before. The 808 is a bass guitar. When the makers of the Roland TR808 digitized the sound of the kick drum. 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.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

The key word here is aftermarket, meaning this is not the.

[Jesse Serwer]

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. 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 going to cut it. Soon enough. Manufacturers started to give people what they wanted, pumping out powerful car speakers and subwoofers. But if you're going to 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 was introduced commercially.

[DJ Magic Mike]

The Walkman from Sony, the one and only.

[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?

[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 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. 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.

[Dallas Taylor]

I can't wait for people who listen to 20,000 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. There was a name for this new breed of loud base bumping vehicles, boom cars.

[Jesse Serwer]

Already by 1987, 1988, there's a very close connection between Miami based music and boom cars. And this is most famously paid tribute to by Latrim, who scored one of the first national bass crossover hits that hit the Billboard charts, Latrim's big hit.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Was called Cars that Go Boom.

[DJ Magic Mike]

They're always adding speakers when they find the room.

[Dallas Taylor]

As they know, we love the guys.

[DJ Magic Mike]

With the cars that go boom. We like the cars, the car that go boom. We're acting grow and bunny, and we like the boom.

[Jesse Serwer]

People kind of treat it lightly, but, like, that is a very accurate song. Guys look at having these loud cars as a way to get girls attention, and they did.

[Dallas Taylor]

Hey, girl, hey.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

The success of Latrim 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. 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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

The bass magic is controlling, and it'll work that way. So let me see you sway because the room with the boomers when you're on the state. Yo, Michael S rattled this place. I think it's time you drop that bass drop.

[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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

So what wound up happening is someone took Drop the Bass and it slowed it way down. And they said that when they slowed it down, it was more bass in the song. Well, me being an artist, I didn't like my song being slowed down. I just. It didn't sound good to me. 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.

[Dallas Taylor]

There it is, bass. That's what I remember a lot of it's just people saying, bum bada bum bada bum bada bass Bum ba da bum bada bumba da 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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

We called it Speak a tear 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 blow the coil out. And it was just kind of like a joke at first, like, okay, let's see what happens. And feel the bass just blew up. Feel the bass face.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Did you ever hear about anybody tearing up their speakers with the song?

[DJ Magic Mike]

Oh, constantly. If I had a penny for every time I heard that every day, I'd be millionaire. Times and times over. It's just every single day. Whether, you know, it's me and my wife working or we're. 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.

[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.

[Dallas Taylor]

As a child of the 90s, I know from firsthand, as 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. Trouble is, if you don't roll the.

[Dallas Taylor]

Windows up, as Leslie does, innocent bystanders can feel Michael Jackson in their teeth, too.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Which is why some California police have.

[Dallas Taylor]

Taken to issuing citations for noise pollution.

[Jesse Serwer]

We get complaints from the citizens.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

We get complaints from businessmen.

[DJ Magic Mike]

And it's deafening.

[Dallas Taylor]

The sound is deafening.

[Jesse Serwer]

We like the cars. The classic.

[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 20,000 Hz listeners.

[Jesse Serwer]

I was one of those guys that had one of those cars that you could hear from two or three blocks away. There was one bass tape that was.

[Dallas Taylor]

Feared and revered and asked for more than any other. It was truly like, contraband.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

That's coming up after the break.

[Dallas Taylor]

Every single episode of this podcast has been recorded with the Shure SM7B. It's an incredible studio microphone that I absolutely love, but it does require an audio interface to connect to a computer, which means one more thing to pack. If you want to take it on the road. That's why I'm a big fan of Shure's new MV7i mic. It's lightweight, portable, and plugs directly into your computer or phone with a USB C cable. With the MV7i, the interface is actually built right into the microphone itself. It also allows for you to connect a second mic into the MV7i, which makes it perfect for recording podcasts and interviews on location. You can record these two channels as one merged mono track, as two multitrack mono files, or as a single stereo file. It also has an optional auto level mode that dynamically adjusts the gain based on your proximity, speech, volume and room acoustics. And with the Shure Motive app, you'll get top notch audio processing that makes your voice sound professional no matter what your level of experience is. The MV7i has come with me on several trips. At this point, I recommend it to both professionals and to anyone just starting out. To learn more, visit Shure.com that's S H-U-R-E. Congratulations to Keith Hahn for getting last episode's mystery sound right. That's the digging theme from the classic arcade game Dig Dug. During the game's development, composer Yuriko Kaino was asked to make a movement sound for the main character. Since she couldn't create a realistic sound using the game's hardware, she composed this loopable melody which starts and stops along with the player's movements. And here's this week's Mystery Sound. If you know what that is, submit your guess at the web address mystery.2000. Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win a super soft 20,000Hz T shirt. And finally, a quick reminder. My sound design studio, Defacto Sound just launched a brand new website. If you make videos, we'd love to collaborate. And even if you don't, just checking it out helps keep this podcast going. So take a peek behind the scenes and explore what we [e-mail] the direct link is in the show notes AI is everywhere right now. Self driving cars, molecular medicine, you name it. If it hasn't reached your industry yet, it'll probably be on its way. But any good AI system needs speed and computing power to work. So how do you keep up without letting costs? Spiral? That's where Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci comes in. OCI is a fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, databases and application development. It also handles all of your AI and machine learning workloads. Compared to the competition OCI costs 50% less for processing and 80% less for networking. This means you'll save money while getting all the power you need. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters, and Sunoai. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI. The offer is for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends on March 31, so sign up now. See if your company qualifies for this Special [e-mail] 20k that's oracle.com 20k When I'm online, There are certain brands that stand out with their memorable marketing campaigns. Brands like Death Wish Coffee, Cotopaxi, and Magic Spoon Cereal. So what do these companies have in common besides great advertising? The answer is Shopify. Shopify makes selling simple. Their smart shop pay system speeds up the checkout process by letting customers save their info across Shopify websites. According to their own data, shop pay boosts conversions by up to 50%. That means fewer abandoned carts and more completed sales. With Shopify, you can sell wherever your customers are, on your website, in your brick and mortar store, on social media, and the list goes on. If you're ready to grow your business, Shopify is ready for you. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout as companies like Cotopaxi, Allbirds and Aloe Yoga. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com 20k all lowercase go to shopify.com 20k to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com 20k in the early 90s.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Boom cars were all over America blasting thunderous Miami bass songs designed to show off just how low their speakers could go.

[Dallas Taylor]

Like me, many of our listeners remember the base craze fondly. In fact, plenty of them joined in on it.

[Jesse Serwer]

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 friends 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 band has box was or your bass system was. 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. 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.

[Dallas Taylor]

16 speakers throughout the car.

[Jesse Serwer]

And the car was so loud that sometimes we would be rolling down the street. Not only would it be rattling the windows of the car and the trunk.

[Dallas Taylor]

But we actually keep setting off car.

[Jesse Serwer]

Alarms as we rode down the street.

[Dallas Taylor]

There was this guy in my high school who had, like, a secret notebook.

[Jesse Serwer]

And each page of the notebook had a track listing for a different cassette tape that he would make for you and sell you.

[Dallas Taylor]

So for, like, five bucks, you could get your own mixtape with songs like Bass mechanic or Give the DJ a break.

[Jesse Serwer]

It was truly, like, contraband.

[Dallas Taylor]

Yeah, I mean, 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. 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.

[Dallas Taylor]

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.

[Jesse Serwer]

Back in the day, I used to work at this store at the Briarwood.

[Dallas Taylor]

Mall in Ann Arbor, Michigan, called Tape World.

[Jesse Serwer]

And there was one bass tape that.

[Dallas Taylor]

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.

[Jesse Serwer]

Nightmare on Bass Street.

[Dallas Taylor]

And there was a track on it called ultimate Bass scare. And it would just get lower. Like every four or six beats or so, it would get lower and lower and lower and lower. And apparently it blew out a couple people's speakers as they were trying to play the Ultimate Bass scare challenge. After a while, I started warning people that when they came in asking for.

[Jesse Serwer]

Nightmare on Bass Street, I would say.

[Dallas Taylor]

Listen, be careful when you play ultimate.

[Jesse Serwer]

Bass Scare, because it will mess up your car stereo.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Remember, the heat flash and concussion map problem are dangerous. 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 Bay street album was sold primarily through these install shops. It came with COVID warning. The price does not include new woofer. You know, so back then the parental advisory sticker was really big. The car audio based people started riffing on that. It's a playful way of sending a real message which is like, you can destroy your speakers. We should not turn the bass all the way up unless you're able to properly receive the music. If you don't, you're going to actually have catastrophic financial consequences.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

For the boomplar 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 because there was a lot of open space to fill in, so he could add a lot of.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Speakers to fill that space. Wayne installed seven amplifiers and 23 speakers.

[Jesse Serwer]

He had a navigation system as well. He had a mobile phone, he had a VCR and 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 at 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 desk of songs to play. These compilations featured tracks by artists like Bass Mechanic and DJ Laz.

[Jesse Serwer]

DJ Laz, he was a legendary figure in Miami bass music for a completely different style. He's the one that brought Latin music into the bass fold.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

And of course there was DJ Magic Mike. 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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

I've seen windshields cracked, I've seen windshields blown out. I've seen speakers being dismantled just because of the low end and the air pressure and. But 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 gotta go back to the drawing board and we gotta 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 can just create a CD with just a test sound. Doesn't need any other aspect of music. It's just a sine wave. It just creates that wave that lets you know how strong the bass level is. And that's how it's been ever since.

[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 soundoff competitions 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. And the cars aren't being driven to the competitions when they have them. They're being put onto truck beds and they're purely a demonstration tool.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

By the late 90s, interest in car audio based music was waning. Around that time, DJ Magic Mike recorded some tracks with fellow bass artists, Techmaster Pebble.

[DJ Magic Mike]

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. 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.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

After more than a decade of popularity, the car audio based 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. 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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

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 and 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. The song hasn't dropped officially yet, but Mike and his wife did livestream 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.

[DJ Magic Mike]

For those that don't know this, this is feeling basic. Yeah. Finally, right.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

When he's out and about, Mike still runs into superfans.

[DJ Magic Mike]

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. You can't put it into words.

[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 want to feel the bass, just crank up the volume. But be careful out there. You don't want to get a citation for disturbing the peace.

[Dallas Taylor]

You know, if someone gets pulled over listening to this 20,000 Hz episode. I want to know about it.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Absolutely, yeah. Send us a voice memo. What laws did you break listening to 20,000Hz?

[Dallas Taylor]

20,000Hz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear [e-mail] this episode was written and.

[Marissa Flaxbart]

Produced by Marissa Flaxpart and Casey Emerling with help from Grace East. It was sound design and mixed by.

[Dallas Taylor]

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 Melbourne messages about their base tape memories, including Chris Dave, Drake Straker and two different Ryans. I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening. Hey, 20,000 Hertz listeners. I'm Doug Frazier. I've written some classic, 20,000 Hertz episodes like into the Hulu Verse and 1 920K Hertz. I have a new sleep podcast for kids that explores the amazing world of wildlife called Cozy Critters and your host Dallas Taylor was on it. Here's a clip. Oh look, there's a ghost bat flying close by. Wow, I see it. That's a lot smaller than I thought it'd be. Asian ghost bats are small, about the size of your hand. Through sounds, they can tell if there's a tree ahead, a tasty snack nearby, or even another bat flying ahead. It's like having super ears that help them see with sound. Join me and my Kitten Co host Ms. Meow Meow on a sleepy bedtime adventure with Cozy Critters. Wherever you get your podcasts, remember, you can support 20,000Hz by supporting our sponsors. Because the more people that use our unique links and promo codes, the more likely these companies will be to book with us again. With that in mind, book a top rated doctor today at Zocdoc.com Hertz explore Shure's amazing line of microphones including the new [e-mail] switch to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at oracle.com 20k upgrade your selling at shopify.com 20k and finally, we need your help. Our studio has launched our brand new [e-mail] and every visit helps tell Google that we're legit. Even if you don't need our services, just checking it out makes a big difference. But if you do need top tier sound design, mixing or sonic branding, don't be shy, just go to defactosound.com or just tap the direct link in the show notes. And while you're there, say hello through the contact form. We'd all love to hear from you. Thanks.