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DJ Flash brings his ‘Mash’ mix to radio

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Pioneering DJ Grandmaster Flash was overlooked this year by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but he hasn’t been overlooked elsewhere.

Sirius Satellite Radio is giving the DJ -- one of the creators of the landmark 1982 rap single “The Message,” which almost single-handedly brought a social conscience to hip-hop music -- his own radio show.

His “Flash Mash” mix show premieres Saturday on the satellite network’s Boombox Channel 61. It will feature a broad mix of music, similar to the approach Flash and the Furious Five brought to rap in the ‘70s.

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“I’ve done various radio shows, but I’ve never been given the green light to play whatever I wanted,” Flash said. “I said I would like to do [this show] in the 1971 template which I invented, combining pop, rock, jazz blues, funk, R&B;, house and techno. They said, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

That combination, fused with the social commentary Flash and the Furious Five injected into “The Message” and subsequent works, led many pop aficionados to think of the group as a Hall of Fame shoo-in.

Although Flash didn’t get enough votes from the 1,000 record company executives, musicians and critics during his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility, he isn’t complaining: “In my mind I thought maybe it might not happen this time. When I heard the O’Jays went in, I was so happy for them. I’m pretty happy for the nomination itself. It puts hip-hop in a whole other level.... In a chronological sense, if anybody [from hip-hop] is going to go in, we should go in first.”

As the name of his show suggests, Flash will be spinning mash-ups, the current rave.

“I think hip-hop is the only music that integrates rock, pop, jazz, blues and R&B;, but radio has become very sectioned. I just came back from doing a tour in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur, and it’s amazing how you can hear all this on one radio station -- not just in a mix but regularly played,” he said. “So when I was asked to do a mix show, this gives me a chance to play whatever I want and reteach the rest of the world where this came from.”

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