During the early 70's there was a commercial about the RIF program. This programs aim was to get young people interested in reading. As a child RIFF 170 was a very big reader and could always be seen with comic books.

One day in 1971 while at home the commerical came on th tv. While watching it he liked how RIF sounded and what it stood for. At 11 years old this is when RIFF 170 chose to add an extra f. and Reading Is Fundamentally Fantastic 170 was born and the rest would be history.

One day while RIFF 170 was out with CHRIS 170 and BONANZA 1 they went by Marty's coffee shop. The brothers told RIFF 170 that PHASE 2 and a group of other well known writers were there. Even thought he was warned not to go RIFF 170 went and introduced himself to everyone.

When he was asked what he wrote he said RIFF and no one had heard of him. All you could heard was the echo of the writers saying toy. PHASE 2 asked RIFF 170 to write it down on paper for everyone to see. Some of the writers had seen this on the insides but thought it had said RISS.

RIFF 170 showed the others that his tag wasn't RISS. Someone asked him what did RIFF mean? Was it referring to talking to others or playing a riff on a guitar. Once RIFF 170 told the meaning of his name others were shocked that such a young kid came up with something like that. PHASE 2 was highly impressed by this and told RIFF 170 he could hang out anytime if thats the knowledge he was going to drop. Shortly after this RIFF 170 was a name that everyone would know when it came to style. This was the start of a life long friendship between RIFF 170 and PHASE 2.