Ebn Ozn

Did You Know?

• It was also the first hip hop record by a white emcee to chart in the US.
• Ned "ĒBN" Liben engineered for Jimi Hendrix at the Bitter End in New York City for one night when he was 16 years old.

Career

ĒBN-ŌZN formed in 1981 in New York City after ŌZN met ĒBN through record producer and recording artist Jay Aaron Podolnick. The two began spending time together in clubs listening to various types of dance music. ŌZN had been a Broadway actor and singer in the original casts of Shenandoah and Marlowe, and had recently completed a tour of The Pirates of Penzance playing the lead opposite Karla DeVito. After returning to New York, he started recording hip hop demos in the style of the Sugar Hill label. ĒBN, along with Michael Ewing, owned and engineered Sundragon Recording Studios, which he had created at age sixteen; the studio hosted recordings by Talking Heads, Ramones, and David Johansen.

At sixteen he also engineered for Jimi Hendrix at the Bitter End in New York City for one night. ĒBN was a founding member of the guitar band Riff Raff on Atco/Atlantic Records. Mentored by promoter Ron Delsener, the duo was signed in 1983 to the London arm of Arista Records-Ariola by A&R executive Simon Potts and to Elektra Records in New York by Bob Krasnow. Their only LP, Feeling Cavalier, was released along with singles and 12-inch dance singles "AEIOU Sometimes Y" and "Bag Lady (I Wonder)," both remixed by John Luongo.

The album included a variety of musical styles and a sense of humor, and featured Latin jazz percussionist Tito Puente on the salsa track "Video DJ." The self-produced single "AEIOU Sometimes Y," produced with Ed Steinberg of RockAmerica, became an international MTV hit in heavy rotation and a dance club hit, reaching number twenty on the Billboard Club Chart. It received airplay on alternative stations such as KROQ in Los Angeles and WLIR on Long Island, as well as on Black radio stations including Stevie Wonder's KJLH in Los Angeles and WBLS in New York City. AllMusic wrote that the song "combines intelligence, melody, and weirdness in just the right doses."

Breakup and subsequent activities

The duo split in 1985. ĒBN later collaborated with Scritti Politti and producers Phil Ramone and Arif Mardin. In 1988, ŌZN launched the house-music project Dada Nada, recording in Los Angeles and Chicago and putting out music through his own One Voice Records. Dada Nada signed with Polydor/London, while North American distribution remained independent via One Voice Records. The act scored two Top Five hits on the Billboard Magazine Dance Chart: "Haunted House" (1989), remixed by Mike "Hitman" Wilson, and "Deep Love" (1990), remixed by Bad Boy Bill, Frankie Knuckles, and David Morales.

Critics widely praised Dada Nada, with Music Week in the UK running a feature titled "The Wizard of OZN." As Dada Nada, ŌZN toured large U.S. dance clubs with two backup dancers, playing to both house-music and hip hop crowds in the early 1990s. His final Chicago show was cut short by a gang shooting, after which he stopped performing live for thirty years. Ned "ĒBN" Liben died of a heart attack in Manhattan, New York, in 1998, survived by his wife Sallie Moore Liben and son Max.

Robert "Ozn" Rosen legally changed his name to Robert Ozn and built a career as a Hollywood script analyst, award-winning screenwriter, and producer. Following the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks and the Pulse nightclub shooting, ŌZN released his first Dada Nada single in years, "Je Suis Paris/I Am Orlando," which reached number thirteen on the Music Week Commercial Pop Dance Music Chart. The next single, "We Can Feel It," climbed to number nine on the Music Week Dance Music Chart, went Top 15 on the Billboard Magazine Dance Music Chart, and made the Top 50 on the World Digital Chart.

In 2022, Jimmy Page, guitar historian Perry Margouleff, and Mitch Colby founded the guitar amp company Sundragon, named after ĒBN's original recording studio. ŌZN returned to the stage after 32 years for his West Coast debut on July 21, 2023, at the Huntington Beach Biergarten in California, introduced by former KROQ DJ Richard Blade of SiriusXM as part of the venue's '80s Rock Star Nights series, which also featured Gina Schock, Josie Cotton, Romeo Void, and other notable acts from the decade.