One line in this song that slightly confuses some people is "you scratch my back and I'll scratch your record". Some people assume that the scratching of the record refers to the scratching method of turntablism that hip-hop DJs employ, but there's another possible interpretation. I learned when I worked at a high-school radio station that some DJs will put physical scratches deep into a record to cause a specific song to be impossible to play. This is usually done when there is a level of profanity in the song so bad that they don't even want anyone at the station to be tempted to play it just to be rebelious (or to play it by accident). So I think what's happening here is that, not only is the DJ scamming the poor sap by skipping town with his payola money, but before he took off he added insult to injury by damaging the record in question so it won't get played at all.
One line in this song that slightly confuses some people is "you scratch my back and I'll scratch your record". Some people assume that the scratching of the record refers to the scratching method of turntablism that hip-hop DJs employ, but there's another possible interpretation. I learned when I worked at a high-school radio station that some DJs will put physical scratches deep into a record to cause a specific song to be impossible to play. This is usually done when there is a level of profanity in the song so bad that they don't even want anyone at the station to be tempted to play it just to be rebelious (or to play it by accident). So I think what's happening here is that, not only is the DJ scamming the poor sap by skipping town with his payola money, but before he took off he added insult to injury by damaging the record in question so it won't get played at all.