The Incredible Blog

6/17/07

Anjali and I had a busy day yesterday. We both DJed an early afternoon birthday party, and then in the evening she went off to DJ another birthday party, and I DJed a benefit to build a community radio station in Brazil. I had been spending a lot of time researching and shopping for this gig. Despite all the Brazilian music I have collected over the years, I wasn’t sure that I had what I needed to keep a room full of Brazilophiles dancing for three hours. Brazil has such a massive musical heritage, with such a dizzying variety of eras and styles, that it was quite overwhelming to try to decide what the exact composition of my musical arsenal should be for the evening. To give myself an out, I billed myself as playing “Afro-Caribbean” music as well, so I could branch out into other styles throughout the night. I knew there were going to be at least some people there that were going to want to hear some salsa, for instance. As it was I played a mix of batucada, samba soul, Brazilian hip-hop, salsa, mambo, merengue, reggaeton and Latin hip-hop. I avoided Funk Carioca for fear of offending activists who were fluent in Portuguese. The gig went very well, and I received a lot of appreciation and applause throughout the night, but one unhappy dancer towards the end really soured the whole experience for me.

Towards the tail end of the night I was playing a drum’n’bass remix of Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente,” when an angry young Latina and her partner came up to order me to begin playing the original version of the song. At this point the song had been playing for five minutes or so, and was nearly over. There wasn’t that much time left in the night, and I certainly wasn’t going to spend a third of that time playing another version of the same song. I said something like, “I’m sorry, I’m not even sure if I brought the original.” The woman was angrily insistent, refusing to take no for an answer. I just kept explaining to her that I was unfortunately incapable of fulfilling her request. In response she said, “this is NOTHING” referring to the remix, still adamant that I begin playing the original. At this point I said, “Well, y’know what, I think I like the remix better.” In a demanding, indignant tone she exclaims, “but WE are the DANCERS,” and storms off with her partner. Uggh.

Well, actually the room still had a number of dancers besides these two, who I had kept dancing for three hours at that point. Other than the one woman, no one had come up to me to complain during that time. In fact people would occasionally hoot and holler, and in general, seemed like they were having a great time, applauding when the organizers were kind enough to shout me out. Unfortunately people like the unhappy woman are toxic to my mind state while DJing. Despite her putting me in a foul mood, I was feeling slightly magnanimous after playing a few more songs. Upon discovering that I did indeed bring the original Elvis Crespo CD, I played “Tu Sonrisa,” the other huge hit off the “Suavemente” CD –which dominated Guatemalan discos when I was there in 1999. The ENTIRE room cleared except for the attitudinal woman and her partner. That is why an individual dancer can never trump the DJ. If their credentials for determing the song selection were that they were dancers, and mine that I was the DJ, I’d say I did a better job, since I never cleared the floor in three hours, and they cleared the floor immediately upon getting to hear what they wanted. Yes, true, I only played a very similar song off the same album, and didn’t repeat “Suavemente” in its original form like they wanted. Maybe if I had played two versions of the same song, instead of a VERY similar song with the same sound and tempo, everyone would have stayed and danced, but I doubt it. That woman and her partner were indeed dancers (which put them in control, according to the woman), but only two among many. I am in charge of keeping the majority of the dancers happy most of the time. (No one can keep every dancer happy all the time, because different dancers have conflicting desires, tastes, and interests.) Honestly, there are individual dancers I love to play for, dancers I will cater to no matter how much everyone else in the room dislikes what I am playing for them. The attitude this woman displayed when she talked to me is the exact opposite of how you want to approach a DJ if you ever want to become a dancer that the DJ wants to please.

I am not arguing that a DJ should ignore all requests. Sometimes a person with a request absolutely has their finger on the pulse of the dance floor and it is wise to listen to them, if not play exactly what they want to hear. Sometimes someone is off in their own world, and their idea of what to play would be a horrendous mistake. The DJ’s job is to decide which one of these people any given requester is. Even though I didn’t think this woman was representative of the majority of the room, and her attitude was rotten, I was still feeling magnanimous enough to try to please her. After all, I am sensitive to the fact that I am a gringo playing to a dance floor comprised at least partially of Latinos, and since I can’t even properly dance to salsa and merengue, I am always open to listening to, and learning from, my dancers. What I learned from this one was that the more entitled someone feels, the more they don’t know shit about how to please anyone but themselves.

Thanks to everyone who came out and helped support a good cause.

IK

6/15/07

It’s DJ Anjali’s birthday, but she’s sleeping in, so I get to write a quick note about the Rainbow Fantasy Booty party we played last night at Acme. We love playing Booty, and we want to extend our warmest thanks to Puppet and Stormy for having us. Speaking of stormy, when I was getting ready for the show, I never anticipated rain as a potential guest at the show. It was held in Acme’s now-expanded, super-large patio area. I feel like they could fit 700 people in there now. Around the time Anjali was taking over the decks from Stormy, I started to feel little plips of rain, and looked up at an overcast sky. Uh-oh. There was no tent, and none of the DJ equipment was under cover. Puppet and gang began draping a tarp over the light set-up above the DJ. The tarp only just reached over the DJ gear, so if the rain was accompanied by wind in a particular direction, the electrical equipment still would have gotten wet. Fortunately, the rain only slightly plipped for a while, with no accompanying wind to soak the DJ. With all the bubbles in the air, one could be fooled into thinking that it wasn’t rain, but bubbles, that were making faces wet at they burst.

I used to collect a lot of booty music, and always wanted to be prepared to play all of its various manifestations at my parties. My usual gigs these days don’t call for much music of this sort, so I felt like I didn’t have a ton of new stuff in this vein to bring to the party. I had a very memorable time the last time I played Booty. A very positive memory, despite some hideous technical issues. Long blog post about it buried somewhere in the archives. I played a lot of raw and nasty hip-hop, and got a great response, but didn’t want to find myself repeating myself too much this time. I was scheduled for the last shift of the night, after Anjali had taken over from Stormy. Since her birthday began at midnight, it was the plan to have her start shortly after that. After seeing Anjali play so many different Panjabi 2-Step and D’n’B sets lately, I expected her to go in that direction, or maybe South Asian Grime. (You really should be checking her Hunniez sets these days, she has been absolutely killing it!) Instead she went into a hard bhangra set, and was greeted by a large and enthusiastic dance floor. Unfortunately, even when the rain proved that it wasn’t going to ruin the event, the cops called Acme in response to a noise complaint. Throughout the second half of Anjali’s set, the sound kept having to be turned down, until it was so quiet that only a few dancers were moving to the subliminal rhythms. This was what I was faced with when I went on. A large group of no-longer-dancers, wondering why it was so quiet, and a few people still moving, telling the DJ to turn it up. Few things are harder for a DJ to overcome, than mandated low volume levels. Oh boy, this was not what I had planned for at all.

I started out with “It’s the Time to Disco” since Johnny Mozzarella and Irina were in the crowd, and I knew that would get them dancing at whatever volume. As I attempted to line up the next song in the CD player, it wouldn’t play. Great. I was the only person using vinyl all night in addition to CDs. I hadn’t bothered to set the turntables up before putting on my first song. Now I was faced with mere seconds before unwelcome silence, and the only thing I had prepared was in a CD player that wasn’t working. Great. With little other choice, I rewound the “Kal Ho Naa Ho” disc that was already playing to “Mahi Ve” while I figured out what to do. It was not the song I wanted to play AT ALL, but at least it was something. Fortunately Stormy was nearby, and he turned the player off and on, and explained that that is sometimes necessary to get it to work. Great. And right after my first song. I went into some reggaeton, and felt like that beat was not doing it for the dancers, although I made them listen to several tracks. I basically felt like people were not into anything I did for the most part, but the people left standing at 2:30am were so complimentary and diligent in trying to get me to feel like I did a great job in my set, explaining that I had to realize that the music was required to be so quiet, that it was amazing people were dancing at all. After the reggaeton, I forced people to listen to obscure nasty hip-hop, filthy Baltimore Club, Bassnectar feat. Kristina Maria “Yo” [Speaker Junk’’s Jackin Brazilian Rave Remix](the first time I have ever played a Bassnectar track), some Funk Carioca, Fulanito, the Rondelles covering Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Fergie, Outhere Brothers, some more Bollywood, and ended with Bell Biv Devoe’s “Do Me.” It was tough, because it seemed like people didn’t like it slow, didn’t like it fast, didn’t like it pop, and didn’t like it obscure. The requests I received during my set were for JJ Fad’s “Supersonic”(over and over, and I didn’t bring it), Nelly Furtado, “hip-hop with a bangin’ beat,” and “classic deep Chicago jackin’ House.” I tried with the hip-hop and don’t know if I succeeded. Definitely disappointed all the other requesters. Thanks to those of you who put up with me until the end. Sorry I couldn’t have been louder. Super thanks to Puppet and Stormy for having us as guests. I hope that the noise complaints stop, because that is some real rain on the party.
IK

6/11/07

I’ve been doing a lot of music shopping the last week in preparation for my performance at the Movimimento para Terra benefit this Saturday. I have accumulated quite a bit of Brazilian music over the years, but the gig has inspired me (as per usual) to deepen and diversify my collection a bit. In my shopping at various music stores I have still not seen any sign of the new Zion or Daddy Yankee CDs, nearly a week after they were released. And no, my copies haven’t arrived in the mail yet either, so I was not able to play them at Atlas. As far as more obscure fare goes, of course there has been no sign of Cuban artists like Interactivo and Telmary or Czech Roma rapper Gipsy. What is available everywhere is the new Bonde do Role.  If it’s contemporary international music that appeals to hipsters, and is effectively marketed to them, (hello Diplo!) you bet you will be able to find it in Portland.

New York is so much better to me. Large groups of Indians, Arabs, Dominicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Garinagu in NYC means my musical needs are fulfilled to a much greater extent in that city. Portland needs one thing more than anything else: DIVERSITY! The more people from everywhere in the world move to Portland, the more Portland will actually be the great city many people think it is. I’m sure some old time Portlander’s miss the legally-enforced homogeneity of Portland’s racist past, but I welcome all the “problems” that a broader cultural mix will bring to this city.

IK

Chantelle Hylton is leaving Portland, and few people probably know what a significant role she has played in the lives of DJ Anjali and The Incredible Kid. Besides being a wonderful person, and a great friend, Chantelle has done so much to help us get to where we are today. In the Fall of 2000 The Incredible Kid played his first club gig at Satyricon on Halloween Night. However, the first time The Incredible Kid and DJ Anjali shared a club stage together was New Years Eve 2000 at the Medicine Hat Gallery, where Chantelle was the booking agent at the time. In 2000 Caleb Peregrine and the Kid had been throwing some wild and out of control dance parties at the Borthwick Manor. (How often do both the police and the fire department show up at a party at the same time, in response to reports of witchcraft and devil worship accompanied by open flame? Really, we were just recreating the French Revolution complete with a working guillotine and a mob of cursing French peasants in our back yard. –Technically this Bastille Day party was in 2001, but it gives you an idea of the sort of craziness we were getting into.) We were really eager to throw a New Years Eve party, but we needed a larger venue than our much-abused home.

One night in late December Caleb was seeing a show at the Medicine Hat and saw his old friend Chantelle. He talked to her and found out that she was working as the Medicine Hat booking agent, and there was a last-minute opening for New Year’s Eve. Chantelle reserved the space for us to take over on New Year’s Eve. The Kid knew he wanted to feature Anjali in the DJ lineup for the New Year’s Eve show. The Kid introduced Anjali to DJing in the Winter of 2000, and was impressed by her eclecticism (which rarely overlapped with his own), and the bhangra and Bollywood tracks in her bins, which were a revelation. A lot of last-minute planning and promotion went into that New Year’s show. It almost didn’t happen. The then-owner of the Medicine Hat was one of the higgest assholes I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with in this business. He threatened to shut down the night before it had even begun, because he decided at the last minute that he would only open the doors to the public if we raised the cover charge from what we had advertised. It was only through Chantelle’s skillful negotiation and willingness to give up her own fee that things went ahead as scheduled. Despite the unbelievably craptacular sound system, and the eagerness of the security to throw people out for nudity and flagrant drug use, the Medicine Hat show was a raging success. Those of you who were there will remember the scaffolding and black plastic recreation of the 2001 monument, and the staggered black and white balloon drop at midnight.

After this night Chantelle kept the Kid in mind, and when she started booking the Blackbird, I was brought in for several events. One was a group DJ night that Chantelle thought would be perfect for the Kid. Eventually she turned the night over to me entirely, and I invited Anjali to share what would become a six-month residency at the Blackbird. During that time Chantelle worked hard to bring some attention to the night, and eventually got Zach Dundas, the music editor at the Willamette Week in those days, to come check out a show. He wrote us up, but unfortunately by the time the article came out, the Blackbird had decided that DJ nights weren’t working for them, and bands were the way to go. The article brought us so much attention at our next residency, the Kalga Cafe, that one has to wonder what would have happened had the article dropped when we were still playing the Blackbird. At the time Lola’s Room was having great success with DJ Gregarious’ Friday nights, but had had a hard time establishing something successful on Saturday night. Chantelle highly recommended me to Lola’s booker, Jimi Biron, and the night was all set to go, when Jimi decided to instead go with a hip-hop promotions company at the last minute. That hip-hop night failed after not too long. So, after the article came out, I contacted Jimi again, to see about doing a one-off bhangra event at Lola’s Room. He was intrigued by the article, and decided to go for it. It was a smashing success, with 300 people through the doors our first night. After another equally successful party at Lola’s room, we chose to move to the Fez Ballroom, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years Chantelle has always thought of us, and provided us with wonderfully unique opportunities. While she was booking at Berbati’s she brought us in for our six-month Rocket Rickshaw residency. We were able to host the first John Peel Day show there, the year following his death. Chantelle provided DJ Blackmarks and myself with our Ghetturista residency at Berbati’s. She also booked DJ Anjali and I to open up for Digable Planets for their reunion tour. –A great show!– Through her graciousness and thoughtfulness, the Kid even got a chance to perform under the big tent for the Cirque de Soleil opening night after party. (If only I had brought more Madonna for the fourteen-year-old Russian ballerinas.) The day we found out that Berbati’s had decided to let Chantelle go, we were scheduled to perform at Rocket Rickshaw that night. We called and cancelled our weekly on the spot, out of solidarity.

Since then our professional lives have not crossed very much, but now that she is leaving Portland to book the Knitting Factory in New York City, she has shown just how much she has not forgotten us over the years. In the next months we will be starting our new first Saturday monthly at the Knitting Factory. Chantelle, you have always been such a sweetheart. Thank you for all you have done for us over the years, and we look forward to seeing you in NYC.

IK

6/05/07

Aaaaaargh. Today the new Daddy Yankee and Zion CDs were released. Good luck finding them in Portland. Other than B.S. cash-in CDs with names like Reggaeton’s Greatest Hits (which are usually anything but) it is next to impossible to find reggaeton CDs in Portland record stores. I have had better luck finding new reggaeton at places like Fry’s and Fred Meyer’s than any of the independent record stores I would much rather be supporting (despite their total ignorance of, and lack of support for, contemporary international music). Timbuktunes, Portland’s leading world music store, has never carried any reggaeton. I know hipster-indie Jackpot won’t carry them. I called larger more broad-based stores like Everyday Music and Music Millennium and they didn’t have either of them. I had no luck at Fred Meyer’s either, although I was glad to see that they stock dead prez’s Let’s Get Free. I live in a city of more than a million in the greater metro area, and I can’t find new releases that will easily sell in the hundreds of thousands in the US. It’s not like I’m looking for anything obscure, or imports, or anything.

I won’t have any luck at the local Latin music stores either. While reggaeton has become a pan-Latin music over the last few years, the Latin stores in Portland stock almost exclusively Mexican music, since it is Mexicans who own, operate, and patronize these stores. I would certainly have better luck than when I was asking for reggaeton at these stores six years ago, but in my experience I’d be lucky to find something as obvious as Daddy Yankee’s first solo CD. Truthfully I am way more excited to hear the Zion CD than the Daddy Yankee. I never liked “Gasolina,” from the first time I heard it in New York, the summer it came out. Nothing on Barrio Fino ever grabbed me. However, I like “Rompe” and I like several of his cameos, like his verse on Wisin y Yandel’s “Paleta.” He’s spent three years putting his new album together, so with the money he has to hire the best producers, I am expecting some fire, if he doesn’t stretch too far towards the crossover pop market. I’m undecided about the first single with Fergie, to which I have only briefly listened. Zion, however, earns the album title The Perfect Melody, as far as I’m concerned. I’m stoked that the epic “Fantasma” finally has a proper release. I hope he doesn’t goop out, without the complementary roughness of Lennox as his partner. I’ll be curious to see how strong the songs are. Now I have to wait for the CD to arrive in the mail. Thank you, Portland. If I’m lucky I’ll have them in time to play out this Saturday at Atlas.

IK

photos by Serena Davidson

photo by Serena Davidson

Hello all,

Here is a post I started about May’s Atlas event, followed by sketchy notes about what I remembered from the different DJ sets. It’s been sitting unfinished for nearly a month, so here is something, rather than nothing.

Thank you to everyone who came out to Atlas last night. When I woke up and saw grey, overcast skies, I wasn’t sure how many people were going to bother to leave their homes and come down to the club in the evening. I had spent all week listening to stacks of CDs purchased during our last New York visit in preparation for Atlas. As we were getting ready to leave for Holocene I had already mostly packed my bags when I spied the stack of new discs off by themselves, and realized I had almost left them. It was only as I was on stage performing that I realized that even after almost forgetting them, I actually did forget them. Apparently after having noticed them set aside, and moving the stack, they never did make it into my DJ bag. This was quite upsetting as all of my preparation was focused on these new CDs that didn’t even make it to the gig. I had even commented to Anjali on the way to the gig that there was all this music from the last few months that was still really new to me that I had ignored in favor of the new new material from NYC. It was this unprepared and unrefreshed new (but not new new) material that faced me as I tried to pick out songs onstage. It was very disconcerting and unbalancing to have to pick out an entirely different set of material than what I had been planning to present.

One really cool thing about the night was how late everyone stayed. When I went on for my second set I was convinced I’d be clearing a large number of people with my audio perversity, but the crowd hung on tenaciously, even when the theme of my set seemed to be centered on how much silence I could insert between tracks. I opened my second set with a “sexytime” Borat speech, but there was such a lack of audible response from the crowd that I’m not sure how many people heard/understood what was happening.
Anjali set 1
Abstract
State of Bengal?
Nitin Sawhney
Raqstar Music

ADF?

Asian downtempo
Amsterdam Klezmer Band

The Incredible Kid set 1

New Fanfare
Balkan beat comps
Vaqueros surf
Alexis y Fido
Calle 13 first disk
Bonde do Role
Dam track
Slower track off new Said Mrad
Elephant Man Hurr
Busta Flex(2nd set?)

Tru Skool 8
Manak E Boliyan

E3 set 1

Elephant Man RDB
Balkan Stuff

Anjali set 2

JB Tru skool
Panjabi Garage, 2-step, DnB,
Untouchables UK
Bhangra

The Incredible Kid set 2
Borat speech
Edu K
Rang Barse remix
Under pressure baile
F242 Baile
Jags Heer
Tito “mia”(1st set?)
LDA
Northern Lights
Lehmber Mitran

MIA Xr2
Shinda soniye DNB
KAWAn DNB

E3 2

Middle-East DNB Mashup by E3!
Middle-Eastern DNB tune
French Hip-hop
Ishq Naag reggaeton? 1st set?
Rai’n’b
dancehall
bhangra song

Anjali and I were booked to play the Black Lodge at Reed College for their annual Renne Fayre festivities a few weekends ago. I had only been to Renne Fayre once, a decade ago. At the time a Reedie ex-girlfriend gave me a bunch of wristband scrap ends that were taped together to form a makeshift wristband that worked surprisingly well throughout my attendance at the event. I remember naked jello hillslides, a human chessboard, and a bug eating contest featuring either hideously large, or maggoty insects. I vaguely remember that there were musical performances, but I couldn’t tell you who was playing. I really had no idea what to expect of Renne Fayre in 2007.

It wasn’t until very near the date that we learned that we were sharing the bill with Bigg Jus and Myka Nyne. Since what we do is in no way related to underground hip-hop, I wasn’t sure how that bill matchup was going to work. I pictured a bunch of underground hip-hop heads fleeing at the first sound of “foreign” vocals. The more I thought about it the more I figured this slot would give me an excuse to play a lot of the hip-hop in my collection that I rarely get a chance to play, since my regular gigs are so focused on international music. The lodge was lit all in black light, with many white sheets giving off an eerie blue glow. The sound was fairly quiet as an MC rapped over low-key beats, to a room of bopping kids. Things were off-schedule by an hour, and when it was finally our time to play, Anjali played first.

Anjali played an amazing set of hard-hitting bhangra (on the future tip), British Asian Hip-hop and heaping dollops of Panjabi 2-Step. The crowd seemed to be remarkably receptive, yet I wondered how many people had no idea what was going on, and were hoping for something else. I definitely heard a group of kids discussing how they wanted to hear some Justin Timberlake.

I didn’t go on until after 2:30am. I started with a set of hip-hop-heavy bhangra mashups which got an ecstatic response, and then very excitedly, went into Nas’ “Made You Look.” Total dance floor damper. This is a song that has caused me to spontaneously leap from my seat and run great distances in order to dance in front of the speakers while it plays. Not this crowd apparently. But I had just seen a whole dance floor of kids bopping to far-from-energetic hip-hop!?! I play one more bhangra hip-hop mashup and then find myself lost with seconds to go and I grab frantically for Eric B and Rakim, dropping “I Know You Got Soul.” Total dance floor damper. Wow, I thought this was a hip-hop crowd and nobody wants to dance to Nas and Rakim!?! I take one more stab at something outside of my usual international stomping grounds and play XXXchange’s remix of Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” which I had just received in the mail. A few couples are grooving to it, that’s it. That was my token crowd-pleasing lowball, and there is nothing more embarrassing than an unsuccessful lowball. Eventually I find my footing and after some Zion to cleanse my palette, I start playing a crazy mix of Bhangra, Bollywood, Reggaeton, and Balkan Beats, and get a positive response, doing pretty much do as I please.

Even though I eventually felt good about what I was doing, and people were appreciating it, I was really thrown off by my how much I misjudged the crowd initially. Anjali had played a consistently aggressive and ahead of the curve (even if several years old) set, and got a great response. I tried to get a response with what I thought would be more familiar enticements, and relatively fell on my face. Only after the performance did I see a Renn Fayre schedule and see us billed as “Legendary Portland club DJs” playing “four hours of Bhangra, Middle-Eastern Hip Hop, and Asian Techstep.” Well, that would explain why Anjali’s very future forward set seemed to be right in line with what the crowd was expecting, since “Asian Techstep” described a lot of what she was playing. Meanwhile I, not knowing how I’ve been billed, or even that an attempt to describe my style was made in a guide to the Fayre, look like a dumbshit lowballing the crowd with familiar American hip-hop and R&B. The joke is that there are no doubt thousands of DJs that are forced to play hip-hop by their crowd’s insistence at their gigs, who would like to play something different, and I, who spend most of my time playing songs most gringos have never heard before, long to be able to drop some more familiar hip-hop every once and a while. I definitely picked the wrong place to do it this time. Fortunately Joti Singh was in town to keep us company and make the night a lot of fun.

IK