The Incredible Blog

Ashu Rai, resident DJ of Desilcious, and co-founder of Sholay Productions, wrote a response letter to my Desilicous 5-year anniversary party review. I tacked in on to the end of my review, a few posts below, if you care to check it out.

IK

5/09/07

Sorry for the lack of fun and exciting blog updates. I’ve started several, only to leave them unfinished due to lack of interest. Even I get tired of the theme of self-excoriation on occasion. What I have been very interested in lately is superhero mythology. As a child I was a ravenous collector of comic books. I lived in Cairo, Egypt for kindergarten and first grade. When my cousin came to visit us from the States and offered to buy us anything we wanted, I knew exactly what I wanted. I had her take me to a nearby shop with American toys and buy me a comic book. Upon returning to the States I began devouring comic books with a vengeance. I had my mom buy me any comic that looked cool at the supermarket, and followed her to garage sales every weekend hoping to find a stack of old comics for sale. My passion for comics continued unabated through high school. Up until I went to college I was convinced that there was no other path for me in life than to be a comic book writer/artist in the mold of Jack Kirby or Frank Miller. Almost as long-lived was the thought that I would actually wear a costume and battle crime as some sort of holy crusade. As a child I sincerely thought I was going to “keep it real” and don a costume to combat evil-doers. Since then my comic book enthusiasm has died off for a year or two at a time, only to come alive upon the discovery of some cool new creator or creators.

When I was a child there was no such thing as the internet. The only way to access superhero mythology was to read the comics themselves. I rarely had even two issues in a row of a comic, so I had to fill in an awful lot of blanks. Each issue would often end with a cliffhanger and I had no idea how a hero made it from one predicament to the next. Captain America is transformed to a weakly teenager at the end of this one, how did he get out of it? Nick Fury shot Black Widow in cold blood!?! What happens next? It was a mythology in fragments. There were no handbooks or guides. And as I said before, there was no internet. Now if I want to find out some character’s history I can just look on wikipedia, or many comic book-related sites. Decades of comic book history all spelled-out and condensed for rapid absorbtion. Want to know about the Phoenix? Google it. The white hot room? The M’kraan crystal? Google away. I have spent many, many hours piecing together vast temporal architectures of constantly-developing superhero mythology. I have spent many, many hours asking and answering my own questions related to the Marvel and DC comics universes, online. One thing I’ve learned is how hopelessly convoluted any long-term comic character’s mythology is. Characters die and are reborn over and over. Their powers are ratcheted up to godlike levels and then erased and then ratcheted back up over the years. Over the forty to sixty years these characters have existed all sorts of wacky, nonsensical, and just downright what-the-hell-were-they-thinking things have occured. Just like any other mythology!

I loved classical mythology as a child as well, and fantastical stories from any culture I came across, but it was superhero comic books that seemed to have the most vital and captivating myths. Of course these superhero myths are not frozen in time, but constantly revised, amended and overturned for a monthly audience. It was their very slipperiness and temporality that made them that much more enticing to me as a child. Back then there were no such things as trade paperback collections, and if you didn’t get a comic when it came out, then good luck hunting through the back issue bins trying to find it. The knowledge was rare and elusive. Only a comics archaeologist could really know the truth about these heroes and their histories.

I’ve been a massive fan of the comics writing of Grant Morrison since a clerk at Future Dreams tipped me off to his work on Doom Patrol back in 1991. One of the outgrowths of his massively influential Invisibles series was a community that started up at http://www.barbelith.com/. I’ve been vaguely aware of its existence for years but never spent much time there until recently. After having spent hours poring through posts by (mostly) erudite writers, artists, scientists, magicians, etc., micro-analyzing Grant Morrison’s work, I have a brand new appreciation for the man’s writing, and the intelligence and knowledge level of many of his other fans. I re-read the man’s work more than anyone else’s, and I am amazed at all the symbolism and symmetry in his work discussed in the barbelith forum that I often do not have the knowledge-base to spot. Parallels to spiral wave dynamics in the progression of villains? Who knew? The role the kabbalah plays in deciphering the color choices of the heroes’ costumes? Wow. Dense, dense stuff. While this might all seem like ludicrous over-analysis, Grant is well known to shove as much of his scientific, literary, pop culture, and magickal influences into works that operate on a number of symbolic levels.  No doubt soon the man will finally get a property made into a successful Hollywood blockbuser production and then become ubiquitous. I know he’s hoping for it, unlike someone like Alan Moore. Just because of how much insight I’ve gained already, I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot more time at barbelith.com in the future.

IK

PS Oh yeah, and then I learned about a July 2006 comic book convention talk given by Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison called “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes.” Apparently Deepak’s son, Gotham introduced his dad to Grant Morrison’s work. Deepak was quoted as saying, “everything I’ve been trying to say in my nonfiction work and in some of my fiction work had been so aptly, so beautifully and so imaginatively expressed in the work of Grant Morrison.” Who knew? I myself have never read any of Mr. Chopra’s books, but I did see a very interesting and provocative talk that he gave years ago, so I am not one to dismiss him outright, as I imagine many people are quick to do.

While Anjali and I were in NYC the Asian/Pacific/American Institute of New York University presented a film festival entitled Emerging and Emergencies: New South Asian Film-Making from Britain. We saw a documentary about young Muslims in the UK post 9/11 called Young, Angry, and Muslim directed by Julian Hendy. It was shown with a made for BBC TV dramatization called Bradford Riots by Neil Biswas about July 2001 riots in Bradford by mostly young UK-born Pakistani Muslims . In the aftermath of the riots 191 men were jailed for a total of more than 500 years. The soundtrack was by Asian Dub Foundation, and Steve Savale, the guitarist for that band, led a discussion after the film. The movie was well-done despite having elements of that made-for-TV feel. Anjali and I also saw a double feature of Skin Deep by Yousaf Ali Khan and Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music by Vivek Bald. Skin Deep is a very affecting thirteen-minute short about a self-hating half-Pakistani, half-English teenager trying to pass for white in racist ’70s Britain. Mutiny is a movie that Anjali has been wanting to see since it was finished in 2003. She even tried to bring Mutiny to Portland years ago, but Vivek turned down her request to show the film in Portland, and cancelled a scheduled Seattle showing. He is very selective about letting the movie be shown. In the program guide for the festival Mutiny is described as “rarely screened in New York.” Yeah, rarely screened anywhere. Which is a shame, because it is such an exciting and inspiring movie. It traces the roots of British-Asian second generation music from the dub/ska/punk and hip-hop scenes in the ’70s. All sorts of musical figures that I associate with the late ’90s are shown as early punks and break-dancers. Archival television footage from the British ’80s included in the film showing desi break-dancing crews is just too cool. Mutiny features Asian Dub Foundation, State of Bengal, Talvin Singh, Fun^Da^Mental, DJ Ritu and great footage of the British Anjali, both as a hard-rocking member of the Voodoo Queens, and in her new sultry lounge singer incarnation. Most of the footage is from the late ’90s. Steve Savale from Asian Dub Foundation, who talked about the film afterwards (along with Vivek Bald and NYU’s Professor of Punk, Vivien Goldman), said all of the Asian Dub Foundation tour footage in the film was from 1996.

I remember reading about a lot of this music in the British press at the time. Looking back it was such an incredible flowering of talent. Unfortunately major labels stepped in, swallowed up, and spit out many of the promising Asian bands at the time. Most of them without ever releasing an album. The movie chooses InvAsian as a new (at the time) artist to feature as the bright young hopes, since Vivek didn’t want to end the film on a pessimistic note. They look and sound great in their first performance and I have to wonder what happened to them. Nowadays there are many young British Asian producers that show a clear debt to the sonic pathways forged by the late ’90s innovators. I only wish that more of them shared the insight and politics, and not just the sonic thunder.

IK

Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m finally sitting down to write up the Desilicious 5 Year Anniversary Party Anjali and I attended in NYC. We have been aware of the party for most of its existence, but had never had the opportunity to attend before. It was held at Club Shelter which I have never been to before. We arrived to the sounds of “Nach Baliye” which then faded into silence. We made our way through a sparsely-attended lower level up to a very-full upper level where we watched performances by two South Asian drag queens. Then it was time for us to become the show. Dance music started up, the stage filled with revellers, and the party started raging. The crowd was a mix of brown and white and very boy-heavy. Despite all the images of shirtless male desis from prior parties projected on the screen, no one took their shirt off while I was there. Because I had dressed so poorly for my NYC trip I was wearing a sports coat at the club. My shirt underneath was too embarassingly shlubby to wear without the jacket to a club night, so I sweated it out, realizing early on that I was the ONLY guy with a sportscoat on at the body-filled space.

I have always assumed that New York City club DJs are required -by their employers and the crowd- to exhibit high levels of technical DJ skills. I imagined that the birthplace of technical DJ forms such as disco/house and hip-hop would place high demands on the DJs in the clubs. My experience at the Kush Lounge with the laptop-enhanced trainwrecking of their DJ had me rethink that. I thought Desilicous would feature seamlessly beat-matched Bollywood house sets; instead the DJing by resident DJ Ashu Rai, featured songs that faded out while another was faded in, or brief out-of-time overlaps of two songs with different tempos. Nothing was horrendously jarring or drawn-out, although energy levels definitely sagged during the transitions between songs. The DJing was all about the selecting, and not the mixing.

I showed up hoping for a night of current Sunidhi Chauhan-sung dance songs. I don’t know if I heard her at all. The songs were a mix of new and old; remixed and original. All were Hindi songs during the time I was there, except for M.I.A’s “QT” vocals over Madonna’s Abba-jacking “Hung Up.” People did not seem into it, even with the Abba-by-way-of-Madonna rhythm. Some of the ther songs DJ Ashu Rai played: a remix I really liked of “Bolo Churiyan,” two songs from Kya Love Story including Alisha’s “It’s Rocking,” the new “Khaike Paan Banaras Wala,” “Salaam Namaste”(which sounded like the best song of the night to me), a mix of “Say Shava Shava,” “Dum Maro Dum (Take Another Toke) Asha Bhosle Punk-a-wallah’s remix,” the house remix of “Signal” from Bhagam Bhag, the house remix of Himesh’s new “Shaka Laka Boom Boom,” “Jhoom Jhoom (Remix),” Stereo Nation’s “Nachangi Sari Raat,” “Dhoom Again.”

Anjali and I left after an hour or two. It was still going on, but we were tired from many nights of hardly-adequate sleep. We stopped to dance to Destiny’s Child “Lose My Breath” which was playing on the lower floor on the way to the exit. I noted that the DJ on the lower floor wasn’t mixing either, which I thought at least the DJ assigned to play Western music would be doing in NYC. I always thought that only Portland had so many DJs that were selectors as opposed to mixers; now I know NYC has plenty as well.

IK

Ashu Rai wrote the following response to this review:

Hi,

I came across your review of Desilicious. Thanks for
the writeup and we’re glad you were able to come.  I
had a couple of minor quibbles:

–  Because this was our 5-year anniversary, we played
a larger selection of older songs (more than normal),
or our most popular Desilicious dance songs over the
years, including Shawa Shawa, the Stereo Nation track,
Bole Churiyan, etc. Specifically, I pulled tracks from
my playlist from our debut March 2002 party.
–  I am the resident DJ, as well as the co-promoter
and co-founder of Sholay Productions, which has been
throwing Desilicious for 5 years.

Hopefully, you can attend a future party next time you
are in town!

Cheers,
Ashu Rai

http://www.myspace.com/sholayevents
http://www.sholayevents.com

4/29/07

Another packed house at Andaz last night. We were thrilled to have Joti Singh up from SF to lead everyone in an early bhangra dance lesson. She had everyone doing a bhangra-soul-train line dance that was awesome. Thank you to everyone who showed up early to get your moves down. Things got going right away, and the dance floor packed up shortly after the dance lesson. I took the opportunity to play a lot of recent bhangra releases from the Punjab, many of which feature a strong female co-singer, a sound I am very happy to include in my sets. However, throughout the night, I didn’t get any requests for the recent bhangra from India, only classics by Gurdas Maan and Surjit Bindrakhia. At one point a guy gave me ten dollars and asked for Gurdas Maan. He then went and found Anjali in the crowd, explaning to her that he didn’t think I understood him. “He understands,” she assured him. I only played one track featuring Gurdas Maan, because my set ended shortly after the request, but I would have played more given the opportunity.

I faced my typical challenge of how to balance the varying desires of the crowd. At one point after a riotous mini-bhangra set I played a few new hindi-house releases. I knew the filmi-lovers in the crowd were hungry for some Bollywood action. An older white woman in tribal mode comes up to the DJ booth all hyped-up and attitudinal. She asks accusatorily if I am going to be playing any more Indian music in the night, or if it is just techno from here on out. -Ha! No doubt she thought of the bhangra sound as being “Indian” music, and didn’t recognize Bollywood dance songs as being the most popular Indian music in the world today. Little does she know that I usually have many Indians in my face asking when I will be playing “Indian” music when I am in the middle of a bhangra set, since Panjabi music does not count in their minds. So this non-Indian woman was complaining that I had stopped playing “Indian” music at precisely the same time that many Indians in the room were finally happy that I had begun playing “Indian” music. What a riot. I explained to the woman that we play a range of Indian music that covers the folk and pop spectrum. She didn’t seem particularly trusting, or satisfied with my explanation.

It is a tricky spectrum to attempt to cover satisfactorily in an evening. I could easily play all Indian bhangra all night. I could easily play all UK bhangra all night. I could easily play Bollywood all night. When I play a smattering of all three I marvel at how many artists, albums, and tracks DON’T get any airtime over an entire evening at the Fez. Anjali suggested we have three different nights for the three different sounds. I think we’re lucky to have one successful night in Portland where we cover the three sounds, and I don’t think we should divide up our audience in a community the size of Portland.

It is very tricky trying to please every group that attends our night for more than short periods at a time, without alienating another group for an equal amount of time. At points I would see the stage full of people going off to a particular sound and know that in order to include everyone, I was going to be changing direction, and no doubt losing the energy and enthusiasm of the current stage dancers.

“Why not just keep pleasing one group of people? You’ve got a stage full of people going nuts, why dampen that energy?” –Well, there were more than 400 people at Andaz. I want there to be at least that many next month, and the month after that. If I focused on pleasing one group to the exclusion of all others, the party would not be as successful, or as diverse. As it is, I feel bad that we don’t play South Indian music at the night. Maybe that will happen at some point, but right now its hard enough to cover the bases we already promote as it is.

Despite all the Panjabis in attendance the night still morphed into a filmi-fest by the end of the night. Since I had forced people to listen to a “Rang Barse”/”It Takes Two” mashup earlier in the night, I made sure to play the Amitabh original for the late-night crowd. When I dropped “Barso Re” Anjali kept telling me I was “perverse” and “this is not a club song!” but as the sounds of women screaming from the dance floor and the stage kept going and going, she grudgingly admitted that it was working. –Thank you to Crystal for the floor show. Anjali says it wouldn’t have worked without you.– Things actually wound down early (by 2:30ish) after the much-requested “Beedi” was played. I haven’t seen Omkara yet, so I can only imagine the visuals add immensely to the song. Despite all the requests I get for it, it never sounds that good to me, or works that well on the dance floor. So I took a break from filmi classics and requests and played a newer cheezy filmi song that I actually like, “Parvar Digara (Remix)” with K.K.& Tulsi Kumar. Tulsi Kumar is my current favorite playback singer after the incomparable Sunidhi Chauhan. Of course with this choice I utterly and completely cleared the floor. (Well, OK, maybe a few couples stayed to dance.) Then I played an old Amitabh disco-funk track and called it a night. Thank you to everyone who came out and danced. Let’s do it again next month.

IK

4/22/07

I could not have prepared worse for my trip to New York as far as clothes were concerned. The weather had been miserable and cold and wet in NYC before our arrival, and I expected it to be even colder and wetter than Portland. The forecast said that during our visit it would be wet and gray with some sun in the middle of our visit and on the hottest day a high of 62 degrees farenheit. I hate being cold so I packed only wool pants and sweaters, and certainly not T-shirts and shorts. As it turned out every day was hot and sunny reaching as high as the mid 80s on one day. I spent the whole trip with wet clothes stuck to my back with sweat.

A lot had changed since my last visit to NYC ten months ago. My favorite Indian vegetarian restaurant, Udipi Palace, was gone. The Barrio Music Shop in Spanish Harlem was gone, but according to a worker at Fernandez music down the street, they had just moved, although he wasn’t sure where. Funnily enough the Fernandez Music in Queens had been replaced by “El Tunnel,” with which I was not as thrilled. (I was looking for the reggaeton compilation series “Flow Salvaje” which I had only ever seen at that shop.) I already dealt with the blow of Stern’s Music having closed down on my last trip. Brooklyn’s Beat Street had had “going out of business” signs up on my previous trip but a worker there claimed it was a scam. I didn’t make it to Fulton St. this trip to find out if they are still there or not.

I feel like I barely scratched the surface of my usual music shopping expeditions, but I still managed to effectively drain my bank account collecting recorded cultural artifacts. Some of my lack of thoroughness was down to bad timing. I went to Spanish Harlem on Sunday and learned that a lot of music stores in El Barrio are closed that day. I also found that Rock & Soul is closed on Sundays, after spending a fair bit of time walking through midtown to get there. I didn’t make it to most of my usual hip-hop vinyl spots, but I still managed to swing by Turntable Lab.

Instead we spent a lot of time hanging out with Anjali’s family. So much so that the day of the Basement Bhangra 10th Anniversary Celebration we didn’t even bother to try to hook-up with any of the DJs and musicians involved. Instead we figured we’d catch up with everybody at the show. The production was massive and there had been many of Rekha’s people overseeing the production for twelve hours at the Hammerstein Ballroom before it was all over. We arrived around 10:30pm-ish and Atul told us things were behind schedule. We entered the ballroom in the middle of Rekha’s first set. We missed Phil Money’s opening set, but had the pleasure of surprising him in the crowd. (I hadn’t seen him since we last played together at Basement Bhangra in December of 2004.) According to mixonline.com, “The current capacity of the Hammerstein is 3,700 when the audience is standing. The floor holds 2,500, and each of the two open balconies holds 600 seated patrons.” It was a beautiful, massive space with a 75-foot ceiling. The ticket structure had been staged from $35 for the open floor, to $100 for the highest-tier VIP tickets. The downstairs was more than half-full while the balconies seemed largely empty throughout the night; especially when the banks of white lights above the stage would flare up and illuminate all the shadows.

Rekha was playing some big bhangra tracks from the last ten years (surprise!) and I thought the sound and the bass sounded great. Unfortunately the sound soon deteriorated. The bass began farting and distorting, the sound would clip, and several times the entire sound shut down, interrupting some of the DJ sets. I wondered if the Hammerstein system was used to having DJs push their mixers up into the red. There was a huge projection screen above the DJ setup. When we entered it was playing video clips of desi women dancing bhangra, which I thought was a great way to assert the new role of women in bhangra: one of participation, as opposed to the traditional exclusion of women from the male dance. In preparation for the night several videos were filmed of different creators in the bhangra scene bigging up Basement Bhangra and DJ Rekha. The first one we were there for was Tigerstyle, which was the only one that successfully played over the projection screen above the DJ set-up. The other times the music was stopped for one of these tributes it wouldn’t play, except for a video that was a cut-up of Rekha’s appearance on CNN.

The party had gotten a great deal of print media attention. It was the pick of the week in all the New York weeklies with paragraph descriptions riddled with errors. The New York Times preview was the least embarrassing, largely accurate, but making the curious choice of the word “musky” to describe the bhangra sound. I can’t find most of the previews online, and didn’t think to keep them, so my attempts to highlight the specific errors of specific papers are currently frustrated. However my online searches have turned up many more articles than I was aware of at the time, showing just how much print media attention the party got across the board. All positive, from what I’ve been able to find. Anjali and I often cringe at the mistakes made by local writers when they attempt to write about our party, and I was surprised to see that the New York papers were little better. One paper said she played “grime”, another said she played “Bollywood” (not at Basement Bhangra!) another said she played something like reggae-disco-house. (I wish I could find the exact quote because it was so wrong. –Just found it, “she brings her Southeast Asian/reggae/house music party out of the basement and into the Hammerstein Ballroom.”).– That paper even made the most common and aggravating mistake made by papers in Portland, which is to call bhangra “SouthEAST Asian music.” One paper talked about “tablas” instead of DHOLS!

The crowd didn’t seem like the usual Basement Bhangra crowd. There had already been an observance of the 10th anniversary at the club S.O.B.’s, the night’s regular home during all that time. Rekha described that observance as being completey off the chain. I bet it was. From my past experiences at Basement Bhangra I imagine there was some really intense energy there that night. This party at the Hammerstein Ballroom was a completely different event. It had been advertised in full-page color ads in the Indian papers with several corporate sponsors listed. The crowd that showed up was very mixed in terms of age and ethnic background. The young were really young, since eighteen-year-olds and up were allowed to “party.” The crowd seemed a mix of the inexperienced, the apathetic, and the distracted, with only small pockets of excited dancers. (One of the excited groups of men did manage a three-person-high pyramid!) Any attempt at crowd interaction from the stage fell largely flat. Attempts to get the crowd to scream or clap in acknowledgment of different performers had to be repeated several times and the response improved only slightly with forced repetition. Instead of being hyped a lot of people seemed only curious or uncommitted.

After Rekha, Bikram Singh came out to perform with a dholi and a DJ playing backing CDs. When Bikram was singing a cappella, or just backed by the dholi, he had a great live voice that carried well. Unfortunately the backing CDs were not instrumentals and so when he was singing to a CD his live voice was joined by his own recorded voice, creating a distractingly canned effect. How hard would it be for an artist to bring instrumental CDs of their own recordings to their show? He sang over the Jay Dabhi reggaeton remix of “Kawan”, when it came time to feature that song. While he obviously had several female admirers in the front row, I wish I could say his hometown crowd gave him more love. It wasn’t that no one was feeling his set, its just that the general vibe of the crowd was unenthusiastic and stand-offish towards the performers. I thought Bikram was great, he just really needs to lose his pre-recorded vocals in the live setting.

Eddie Stats was up next. I wish I could comment more fully on his DJ set, but I took too long to write this, and a lot of the set details have faded from memory. He played a mix of bhangra, and dancehall, and hip-hop. He played “Sanehvaal Chounk” (or maybe the remix). He played a series of songs on the Diwali riddim: Sean Paul’s “Get Busy”, Wayne Wonder “No Letting Go”, and a mashup with Jay Sean and Juggy D’s vocals from “Dance With You.” Unfortunately his set was plagued with the same sound system distortion, clipping, and ugliness that all the DJ sets suffered from.

There was a performance by the NYU Bhangra team. They performed on the floor in front of the stage since there wasn’t room otherwise. I watched them at eye level from the side. Since the performance is geared for people viewing from the front, I don’t know if I got the best sense of it. They seemed solidly competent, but didn’t really blow me away. The pre-recorded mix they performed to was the most contemporary mix of bhangra of the evening, including Sangra Vibes “Darshan Kuriya De.” I love that song and didn’t know anyone else repped it at all. The climax of their performance was rudely interrupted when Bikram’s DJ started cueing a track for after their performance and didn’t realize it was going out over the massive system, blaring over the NYU Bhangra team’s song, right at the dramatic finish of their mix. They stayed focus and finished their performance like pros.

Rekha was on next, and unfortunately the sound continued to distort during her set. At one point it got so bad I worried that the sound system would shut down for good before the Dhol Foundation or PMC were to go on. She played the Basement Bhangra theme song she created with Bikram Singh and Sharmaji and another exclusive track off her forthcoming compilation that sounded great. September 25th is the currently scheduled release date. Rekha did play a raw dhol instrumental that I thought was from DJ Moody’s “Pure Dhol” CD, or at least it sounded like a track I used to play. The bhangra dancers in the crowd appreciated the increasingly intense tempos of the track. Dave Sharma, aka Sharmaji, joined her onstage at one point, accompanying her on percussion. Unfortunately there must have been something awful going on with the monitors. Dave Sharma is an amazingly talented musician and producer. He toured America as part of the Bombay Dreams production, and he is responsible for the best Bollywood remixes I’ve ever heard, by far. He leaves everybody else in the dust. -In fact Anjali and I have been listening to the incredible dubstep-y disc of his productions he gave us after the show as I write this.- We are hoping to bring him out to Portland this Summer. The reason I think there was a monitor problem (or there was some sort of delay in the system) is because of how off the DJ and the percussionist were. The rhythms were not in agreement throughout their performance. I know how talented Sharmaji is, and it was very sad to see their set wrecked by sound and equipment issues. The sound was clipping and distorted. People were leaving the sound was so bad and the headliner wasn’t going on for a long time. I had never heard such consistent sound problems at such a big show, and I didn’t know how much longer the night was going to go on.

When we saw that the Dhol Foundation were taking the stage, Anjali and I made our way through the crowd to the front. The thing about a space like the Hammerstein Ballroom is that it is so big that 1500 people doesn’t seem like a lot in that immensity. No energy was contained, instead it dissipated into the large space above. Johnny Khalsi of the Dhol Foundation played with the crowd quite a bit from the moment he walked out on stage. He kept referring to the crowd’s lack of energy and involvement, and made a sleeping motion with his hands and his head at one point. His band was PHENOMENAL. Their recordings have been too polite and ambient for my tastes, but the power of their live presence is thrilling. The band was comprised of five dholis, a keyboardist, a guitarist, a bassist, and two men behind drum kits. One of them was an UNBELIEVABLY sick young Danish drummer. (Johnny kept raving about him after the show. He plays kick drum parts that most drummers need two kick drums to do. As Johnny was raving a sound tech came by and agreed with how technically accomplished the kid is.) His breakbeats hit so hard and were so dope and so sick. -I met him. He was a really sweet guy but I can’t remember his name. Gotta find out- Anyway, the other drummer was fucking SUNIL KALYAN (whose percussion appears on “Mundian To Bach Ke”) who had a unique drum kit featuring tablas he played with hammers. Again, he sounded SICK. So dope. The whole band was a powerhouse. They were definitely a fusion band, although the tracks they previewed from their forthcoming album “Drums and Roses” seemed more calculated to attract the mainstream bhangra crowd then anything else I’ve heard from them. Their set was mostly instrumental, but they played a few tracks with pre-recorded vocals from their new album. The singers on their new album include Gunjan, KS Bhamra, and Lehmber Hussainpuri. I loved the uptempo hard-pop bhangra sound of their new tracks. At one point they did some just dhol tracks for the “folk police,” as Johnny called them. At another point they introduced a song called “2 Go Mad,” dedicating it to the “youtubers.” They claimed every dhol player plays the track, taken from them, but they have never recorded it. They invited everyone to take out their video phones and record it before they started playing. I wish they would record it! Or release a live version.

Their set went on quite a while. Eventually Rekha came out and got behind the decks. The band continued to play. There were some on-stage conferences. The band continued to play. Rekha looked pissed behind the decks and it seemed like the band might be overstaying the host’s welcome. All ten band members then played solos, beginning with their youngest, an 18-year old dhol player. Rekha was still stationed implacably behind them at the decks. Then they said they would play TWO MORE songs. It was going on 2am at this point and things had started to thin out. It looked like Rekha was prepared to play after them, but by the time the Dhol Foundation finally left the stage it was Panjabi MC who began DJing. He had Metz from Metz’n’Trix serving as his hype man. A choice I found odd. Once their association with RDB ended I certainly didn’t expect PMC to work with one of them. Panjabi MC began with “Mundian To Bach Ke” and winded it down and started it up again at least once. He mixed into 50 Cent’s vocals from “In Da Club” over the “Mundian To Bach Ke” instrumental. He did occasionally just wind down a track, but for the most part he displayed amazingly tight mixing skills. He would consistently bring in little bits of say Cassie’s “U and I” or somesuch, and it would be right-on-time, sound great, and not be just unnecessary added busy-ness. The only unnecessary bits of added busy-ness were the many, many scratches he incorporated into every song. To be honest, they were only the slightest bit over-the-top, and I think they were a response to going on after a very full and very powerful band, and wanting to put on the most attention-getting show he could. He was certainly skilled, and impressed me much more than he had at a show in Seattle years ago. His set went up and down in tempo and featured a lot of his own productions. He played his new track “Snake Charmer” which sounded great, especially the bass, even though there were still sound distortions during his set. He played the Magnum P.I. Theme-sampling “Jatt Ho Giya Sharabee.” He played “Main Hogaya Sharabbi” off Steel Bangle along with the reggae version of “Dhol Jageero Da”. He played some Hip-Hop, including a mix with Rob Base’s “It Takes Two.” He played “Sona Sona”, which may have been the only filmi of the night. He stopped and started three times an exlcusive off his new album 420 which is based around the A-Team theme. It actually took Anjali and I a bit before we placed that super-recognizable riff. Now, you might be groaning at yet another PMC song based around a television theme, and while I can see why people would pigeonhole his sound on the surface, it was actually a very different sounding track, utiliziing a very different tempo, than his other variations on this “theme.” It was such a nice future forward rhythm that I am eager for it to be released, so I can get my hands on it. If he’s going to make himself an easy target by doing a series of television-theme-song-based hits, than more power to him if they sound this hot. Just before 3:00am PMC got on the mic and accused the Dhol Foundation of stealing his time. He came out from behind the decks and rapped over his own vocals to his “Mirza (Part 2)” track off Legalized. After this Metz starts freestyling. I’ve never been impressed by his rapping but his freestyle was the best and most convincing thing I’ve heard from him. I mostly tuned him out during PMC’s set and only noticed him “rapping,” as opposed to just being the hype man, hardly at all, to my comfort. A camera man was onstage filming Metz’s freestyle and PMC started freestyling into the camera. At this point it is 3:00am and the sound is shut off. PMC continues to hold the mic and rap into the camera but we in the crowd were rudely cut off from hearing the hottest thing I’ve ever heard the man spit. Startlingly good, and I have always been underwhelmed by his rhyming, despite the fact that I think he is one of the world’s hottest producers. (Timbaland, anyone?)

We joined Rekha and Sharmaji on stage after the show ended. Sharmaji was very friendly and inviting, and it was great to connect with someone gracious, and someone who just happens to produce some of North America’s finest desi beats. He’s touring the West coast in July and we’ll see if we can get him to Portland. Johnny Khalsi was very friendly and I told him I have to get some serious money together in Portland (patrons and sponsors speak up!) to bring the Dhol Foundation out here. He introduced me to the mind-blowingly good Danish drummer whose name I need to remember. Panjabi MC was respectful and chill but before entering the Dhol Foundation’s room he joked(?) about giving it to Johnny for taking up his time. It was cool to officially meet him. A while back we had shipped him the book Musical Instruments of the Punjab which came with a sample CD, which he wanted at the time. He thought the CD was cool but he thought the writer got snowed by her sources in the Punjab and she didn’t know any better. He felt like her outsider status kept her from getting the real story. I was greatly impressed by both his DJ set, and his skills, and his new productions. His performance revitalized my enthusiasm for his work and I’m actually curious about his future rap tracks, rather than dreading them.

The coolest part was ending the night and bringing in the dawn with Phil Money and his cousin Will in a 40th-floor corner suite at the Ramada New Yorker Hotel in midtown. A sweeping panorama of New York City skyscrapers greeted our eyes from one corner of our vision to the other. From up in their midst we were looking out at all of them. I’ve read comics all my life, but this gave me the most visceral feeling of the Spider-Man concept. I could look out and see, and even feel what it would be like to be, the impossibly agile young man, swinging through the towers like a playground. Since I had never seen New York from this perspective in real-life before, I had media-instilled visions of spacecraft, tidal waves, monsters, or bombs, destroying everything around me as I felt myself fall with the building, as it crumbled to the ground. The company was great, but we left after dawn, and watched the beginning of the day as we strolled through midtown. We slept a great portion of Saturday but managed to make it out to the five year anniversary of Desilicious, New York City’s queer South Asian party. That story will have to wait until after I get some sleep.

IK

4/20/07

Anjali and I are in NYC this weekend. We were lucky to have a weekend free to visit Anjali’s family that just happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary celebration of DJ Rekha’s “Basement Bhangra” party. Tonight we will see Bikhram Singh, the Dhol Foundation, and Panjabi MC at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to hang out with some of them today as well. We arrived in NYC to hear from Rekha that the interview carried out by India Abroad with Anjali in honor of the 10th anniversary had been published with a photo. We bought a stack of the newspaper in Jackson Heights. Anjali was kind enough to send press photos that included both of us but they chopped my half of the photo off when they printed it. Which is odd because they started the profile off talking about me and quoting extensively from my online bio. Oh well, I’m just glad Anjali got some much-deserved national press. We ate a lunch buffet at Delhi palace and bought loads of bhangra and Bollywood at the Jackson Heights music stores. With Anjali’s family we ate at a really good Indo-Chinese restaurant in Queens called Tangra.

In NYC there is usually so much going on each night that I often wimp out and don’t do any of the amazing things that are possible in an evening. Last night was a Balkan Beat Box record release party, DJ Hutz of Gogol Bordello performing at Mehanata, and DJ Kazzanova (whose reggaeton mix I’ve been listening to in the car a lot recently) at the Copacabana. As it was DJ Rekha invited us to hang out with her guests at the Kush lounge, which became our first stop of the evening. Rekha and crew were late, and while the Kush lounge was a nice space, the DJ was horrendous. Lots of way-too-obvious songs from the last twenty years train-wrecked or brutally-scratched-over in the most unpleasant sounding way. Anjali and I had given up on waiting and were on our way out the door to see Eugene Hutz when they arrived. So we turned around and went back in the club. Unfortunately the reserved table for the crew was in the middle of the dance floor with all the mid and treble heavy speakers blasting right at us. It was impossible to listen in to conversations and you had to be directly screaming back and forth in each other’s ear to have a conversation. At first only members of the Dhol Foundation were there and Anjali met a very nice member who is also the keyboardist for Alaap! Unfortunately because of the noise I could barely make out the conversation.

The DJ and his music were so unrelentingly abysmal that we took a break to see the new location of the Mehanta bar and check out DJ Hutz for the first time. The bar was empty when we first got there which was shocking given how much we have read about this party over the years. However it has been all too apparent to us over the years that you can throw a tiny party in NYC and have the attention of the national print media and throw enormous (and distinctive) parties in Portland, OR for years and never get any sort of shine. After midnight it started to fill up and was much more raging by the time we left. Eugene played mostly up-tempo Eastern European tracks which I didn’t recognize, plus a song in Spanish whose genre I couldn’t even guess, plus a dancehall and a bhangra song while we were there. We’ve been trying to get him as a guest to Atlas for a long time now. We’re hoping to bring him to next September’s Music Fest NW edition of Atlas. Anjali introduced herself and gave him a note and some info. Working through other channels hasn’t proven very effective so we’ll see how the direct approach works. We went down the street to check on the Balkan Beat Box show but by 1am it was already over. Maybe the Balkan Beat Box show explains why Mehanata was empty earlier on, and why it filled up later, seeing as how the shows were right down the street from each other.

Back at the Kush Lounge the DJ had gotten even worse. He was no longer train-wrecking Prince, MJ and Bobby Brown, but instead Bon Jovi, AC/DC and ’80s Bowie. Rekha introduced us to Panjabi MC who had arrived. He actually remembered Anjali from when they had briefly met in Seattle years ago. He was very engaging and wanted to hang out with us but having caught a red-eye to NYC the night before and not having gotten any proper sleep, combined with the ear-shredding volume and difficulty in holding a conversation, we said our goodbyes. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to hang out more today before the show.

IK

PS Not only is tonight the tenth anniversary Basement Bhangra celebration, but Ivy Queen is playing NYC as well. Damn!

4/17/07

Thank you to kittenmouse radio on KPSU 1450 AM for having The Incredible Kid and DJ Anjali on as guests this past Monday.  It had been more than a decade since I was on KPSU, guesting on Nomadic Noize’s “Space” show.  KPSU is raising funds right now.  If you can donate, please do.
www.myspace.com/kittenmouse

4/14/07

Last night Atlas was slammed. More than 500 people throughout the night and people were complaining about the heat inside the club so much you would think it was July. We DJed from the front room but once the club filled up they opened the back room and cranked the volume for an overflow dance floor. One of the owners told me there were 150 people dancing in the back room, the most that had ever danced back there while the party was raging at capacity in the front room.

Having felt relatively good about some of my recent performances I sensed it might be my turn to take a dive. When it came time for my first set I didn’t want to go on. Anjali was playing before me and I kept asking her if she wanted to play “one more song” while I looked through my music. As it was we had arrived to the club late, so when Anjali took over from E3 we were already off schedule. When I was heading to the stage a woman asked if Anjali was going back on, obviously concerned that it looked like I was going on next. When I assured her that Anjali would be playing again she was very relieved saying, “We just love Anjali so much.” Which is all fine and good, but not the kind of pep talk a DJ who is not Anjali needs when they are heading to the stage. Fortunately I am nothing if not inured to expressions of fawning adulation for Anjali after introducing her to DJing and being her partner for nearly seven years. Hell, she’s my favorite DJ and I’ve seen her perform more than anyone on earth.

Typical daily encounter: Anjali and I are out in public. Someone comes up to her. “Are you Anjali? Oh my god, I love you so much. I am such a follower. I love you. I come out to see you all the time. I love your DJing. I am such a fan.” This will go on for quite a while. At some point Anjali will say, “This is my partner, The Incredible Kid, we DJ together.” There will either be an awkward silent pause while the person looks blankly at me, and then returns to praising Anjali effusively, or they don’t even pause to look my way and with eyes steadily focused on Anjali, will continue praising her. I should probably just get a T-shirt that says “Second Banana.”

So I didn’t want to go on, but I did. Some times I just have a bad feeling. In my first set I played a lot of new stuff for me. My first song was a Turkish reggaeton song. (I’m now starting to doubt that. If it wasn’t my first, it was somewhere in there.) I didn’t play a single Panjabi song of any kind in my set and I only played one Bollywood song from the new “I See You” soundtrack. As always I could have played reggaeton all night, and was planning on it, but instead I only managed to play two songs in my first set. I played some Arabic hip-hop songs only to achieve one of my most embarrassing moments of the night. The songs were not quite the same tempo (8 bpm off). They were both new songs for me which I had never played out so I was doing things on the fly. Typical. I didn’t want to adjust the pitch of the tracks so I figured I’d do a quick transition at the end of the first track. Nervously I started the second track too early and created an unecessary and jarring few seconds of transitional overlap. I know it’s bad when out of the corner of my eye I can see dancers stop in their tracks and then attempt to start dancing anew to the new rhythm. I played several kuduro songs which seem highly danceable to me but DJ Blackmarks commented on how “broken” the rhythms were and I wondered if my new interest is a little too abstract for Portland dancers. E3 started setting up on stage and I could tell that he didn’t realize that we were technically off schedule. I didn’t care. I was more than willing to cut my set short on both ends and get off the stage as quickly as possible. As E3 was on stage getting ready during the final songs of my first set a crew of his cheerleaders started screaming for him from the front row. “E3! E3!” Now, I had a similar cheering squad last month, so I can hardly complain about my man getting some shine. However, having someone interrupt my ascent to the stage to tell me how much they wanted to dance to Anjali at the beginning of my set, coupled with people screaming for E3 towards the end of my set certainly had me feeling like I was Head of the Class of the Unwanted 2007.

The club was so full when I exited the stage -both front room and back- that Anjali suggested a trip to the Green Room to chill out. While we were back there we kept hearing people scream and scream and scream throughout E3’s set. I thought the Beatles were in the house. Anjali had told me earlier in the day that she was planning a set in honor of Vaisakhi. Sure enough, even though she played a lot of 2-step, some hip-hop, and bhangra, it was an all-Panjabi set. Lots of 2-step, but lots of different selections from her similarly-themed set last month. One thing that was really nice was how pumped the bass was at the club this month. I was standing in the doorway between the two dance rooms and I was caught in a wind tunnel of bass blowing from both directions. Awesome. Anjali was of course killing it, and I still didn’t want to play. While some of the crowd was loving the 2-step beats, the dance floor would get hectic when the dhol beats dropped. Since I had the last shift of the night I knew I would be clearing the club as I played, sooner or later. Sooner as it were.

Wasn’t sure what to do. Couldn’t bring myself to look up at all during my entire set. A lot of DJs have been coming to Atlas lately, and it makes one feel under the microscope, as it were. It doesn’t help that most of our music is only available on CD and not playing vinyl is quite a negative mark against us as far as a lot of DJs (whose music is all available on vinyl) are concerned. I started off with a song from New Flesh that seemed to have the whole dance floor paused in wariness. I found myself playing songs I had played to death more than a year ago like Sean Paul’s “Legalize It” and the Elephant Man-assisted, bilingual remix of Pitbull’s “Shake.” Anjali thought the songs went off, but I am never happy playing old familiar songs when there are hundreds of brand new ones I would rather be featuring. There is a slogan-y placard for sale at Powell’s I noticed today that says: The sign of god is that we may be led where we did not plan to go. I guess God wanted me to play Sean Paul and Pitbull and not all the new reggaeton I’ve been enraptured with. At one point I had mere seconds to find my next song and out of desperation I grabbed the “Bhagam Bhag” soundtrack. The Bollywood chutney soca-ish “Signal” comes on and I feel vast waves of people leave the club. I play some metallic Funk Carioca and I manage my second most-embarrassing moment of the night. I eyeball the record grooves and think I have some time to find my next song. As I am going through my music I hear the song end. “Uh. . . I thought there were minutes left in that track?!?” I have nothing lined up and as I feel the whole club pause and wait I realize that the next song on the album is a banger and I have little choice other than to wait for the next track to start. After all, the space between songs can only be a second or two . . . right? Five of the longest seconds on earth pass as the club waits and wonders and when another guitar riff starts I feel like everyone thinks I’m replaying a song or something awful and I can only grin and bear it as I wonder how many local DJs are watching me make a fool of myself. I play the Turbo remix of MIA’s “XR2” and feel like nobody gets it or appreciates it. Anjali figures it didn’t sound so hot since it is only available as an MP3. Official release, please?

I felt mortified and off my game for the bulk of my set, playing the soundtrack to hundreds of people leaving the club. I played some more kuduro and just thought, “Ya know, this is too much for people right now.” Eventually I was playing bhangra and Bollywood for the desi crowd that had stayed until the end. I played six songs in a row where I thought each was the last, but people kept staying and dancing and singing along so I played last track after last track after last track. Eventually around 3:00am I ended it. Still plenty of people dancing and singing. A satisfying ending to a personally-frustrating evening. I’m glad I at least know enough to successfully play filmi classics to a desi crowd. There were even quite a few non-desis who stayed until the end, which is a beautiful thing.

Thank you to everyone at Holocene for such a great night. Thank you to Austin Sellers for the new flyer design. Thank you to Miko for collecting so many email addresses from the crowd. Thank you to Anjali and E3 for doing your thing, and thanks to everyone who came out and made Holocene so darn sweltering all night. Here’s hoping I’m more on my game next month, and better able to focus on all the new stuff I’m so excited about.

IK