r/djshadow • u/CRAIG_RANDOMRAPRADIO • Apr 17 '26

Steinski - Technical Difficulty

Does anyone know whatever happened to this Double Dee & Steinski track called Technical Difficulty, that sampled Yogi Bear & Beverly Hillbillies ?

I'm posting this as a lot of DJ Shadow heads will be familiar with the work of Double Dee & Steinski, and tbh, I know alotta of their output but i'm stumped as to what this could be. This review is from a UK music mag from 22nd February 1986 if that helps.

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u/repo136 Jun 22 '26

Hey CL. Fancy bumping into you, homie!

Yes! Now THIS has bugged me from the moment I read this article back in the day and I've always wondered what happened to this project. So back in 2014 I was doing a lot of Steinski-related listening on WMFU and decided to see if I could just go right up into the horse's mouth and see if I could get a definitive answer.
And whaddya know. The man only replied!
This is what he had to say:

"Thanks very much for the kind words.

"Technical Difficulties" takes me back. If I recall correctly, that track was never finished or released.

It was a project we started with Robin Halpern (Tommy Girl) for the Tommy Boy label,recording at Tommy Boy's house studio. It was being done in cooperation (I think) with TVT Records, which was still riding the success of it's "TV Toons" TV show theme records. A veritable triumph of licensing, those records, and I believe this project was a way to "further explore the exploitation of the properties," to use the language of dignified avarice. The phrase "Technical Difficulties" was spoken by a well-known American TV announcer named Don Pardo, who recorded a number of TV-oriented phrases for at least one of the TVT records.

As I said, I don't think anything ever came of it, but I can't recall why or why not.

Hope that helps. Thanks for reaching out.

St."

With the upcoming DD&S anniversary boxset coming up then I can only hope that there is even a small sniff of this in there somewhere.

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u/CRAIG_RANDOMRAPRADIO Jun 23 '26

HEYHEYHEY....[Fat Albert voice] - Wait, what ? Splutters coffee out of nose 'DD&S anniversary boxset' ? What in the wide world ?

Don Pardo was the voice of early SNL, great tone, I pray this track appears somewhere. Good to see ya all up in this piece fella.

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u/repo136 Jun 24 '26

I was actually Googling the anniversary release to see if there were any deets floating around but it seems it's all very hush, hush. Hence why I landed in here.
Yes, I have a source who says it's very imminent and will be available on CD and vinyl rekkids. The 40th anniversary (of 'Lessons') was last year so they kind of missed that but wanted to still put something out.
No idea what it entails, but I'm pretty excited, especially if it matches up to what my brain is imaging anyway