WAYNE BLIZZ STORY

One day I had a meeting with Wayne and we didn't know what to do, so he came up with the idea of writing down his story:) Thank you Wayne for sharing your history. Now everybody can enjoy this big pack of knowledge and information.

Wayne Blizz:

"Dancing was always part of the black culture and I always used to watch Soul Train on TV from when I was living in Washington D.C. to North Carolina. Thanks to the inspiration from Soul Train, my first dances were the robot and locking. But my very first dance experience was copying James Brown. At young days, I used to do the church dances, which were happening in the hall of the church during weekends from 7pm till midnight. They played a lot of James Brown music. I wasn't shy, so everybody was always like "let him dance, let him dance" and I did my James Brown! Throughout the time, I went to different cities, different boroughs and I saw different dances. Once I got to New York, it used to be the spank, patty duke, the freak, webo, uprocking, hustle. Everybody hustled. I was living in Spanish Harlem and around 1978-79 I moved to the Bronx with my brother. I was back and forth Harlem and the Bronx, because part of my family was still living in East Harlem. I started to do a little breaking in 1976. Around 1976-77 we established The Executioners with my schoolmates Poboy and Dougles. East Harlem was full of different gangs, but after coming of bboy crews and Hip Hop, gangs started slowly disappearing. Some gangsters started dancing. Every project had their own little crew. The other members of The Executioners were John Rich, William Rich, Mac, Cool Cliff, Mike G, Mike Teller, Jeff Hunter and we all came from different projects - Johnson projects, Taff projects, Carver projects, Foster projects. We had a club located on 104th Street in the basement of the Carver projects and we used to practice 4-5 hours a day. We used to go all over NYC battling different crews - for example Floor Master Tops, Metromasters, Scrambling Feet (in the Roxy's). We used to go to the clubs like CNC, BNB, Celebrity Club, later Ritz, Roxy, Funhouse, Danceteria, Roseland, Studio 54. But my first experience seeing somebody doing breaking in a club was in 1978 in the club called Mr. Souls on 115th Street. The crew we used to work with was The Crusaders. Bboy Smoke was the leader of the crew. We were rolling with them even before we created The Executioners. There were also other bboys before us. For example bboy Grego, who inspired me a lot. For us the basics of breaking were the spins, leglocks, tornado spins, different freezes - jackhammers, elbow freezes, chairfreeze. We used to break left & right, spin to the left, spin to the right. We did headspins. We did toprock, but different from today. It's hard to describe, but today's toprock looks more like uprocking to me. We used to do it with different style. Back in those days, everybody dressed fresh. There was a certain style of bboy fashion. You didn't go breaking wearing jeans. We used to wear Nike sweat pants, Nike sweat jackets, Pro-Keds, kangols, mocknecks, farmer suits, ice cube pants, sometimes pants called AJ's, sweatshirts with the crew name, bandanas in the pocket. Suit jackets, British walkers or playboys for party and chilling. We always used to be not only breaking, but also rapping, writing, DJing. We had a crew called Shisko Disco Brothers composed of me, Poboy, Paradise and DJ Shisko. Harlem was full of MC crews in the late 70'. We had Dr. Jackyl & Mr. Hyde, Foster 4, Def Comittee, Treacherous 3, Fearless 4, Disco 4, Magnificent 7. There were Donald D, Doug E. Fresh, DJs like Spivey, Louie Lou, Ron Green and many others. Little later we also started experimenting with electric boogie and around 1983 The Executioners were renamed to The Float Comittee. In the 80' (1980-81), we started getting into hitting, but we were already first trying to do it around 1979 on 96th Street & Madison Avenue. Our all time favourite places were 59th Street & 5th Avenue, 42nd Street & 5th Avenue, 14th Street, 34th Street, West 4th Street. Around 1984 we started hitting full time and some of us do it till today."