The Incredible Blog

10/15/06

There have been several gigs lately where I have just not felt like or gotten around to writing a lengthy report back. Sometimes I think I’m going to and then it just never happens. We had 500 people at the last Andaz but I didn’t make a mention of it. (Until now.) That was weeks ago. I’ve been going through a very thoughtful DJ phase. The longer I play music for people the more I second guess what I am doing. For the last seven years I thought it would be the ultimate to get flown around to DJ parties. Now when it happens it is often stressful and involves a lot of unpleasant lugging around of far-too-heavy record bins. (Did you know that a full record bin is automatically overweight for checking on an airline and requires an additional $50 charge?) No, I have not moved on to laptop/mp3 DJing and I’m not particularly interested in pursuing it even if the money was available for the hardware/software.

I have always had a very different sensibility from other DJs, whether, club or radio, or whatever. I have always appreciated the dramatic juxtaposition versus the smooth transition. There is a school of DJing (whose adherents think is the only school) that originated in the gay Black and Latin discos in NYC in the ’70s which is all about the long, flowing, overlapped endless beat. Followers of this school think that all DJ sets should adhere to a set tempo that is endlessly replicated from one track to the next and as much as possible the endings and beginnings of songs should be concealed in an uninterrupted flow. Except for the occasional transition I’ve always been more interested in a sharp contrast between songs and dramatic intros. Most of the music that I play stops and starts and shifts tempos, often drastically. It makes little sense to me that the transitions between songs need to adhere to the New York model since the songs themselves do not adhere to this model of metronomic repetition.

Is this why someone screamed. “You suck!” at me at Atlas last night?

Our Atlas night was preceded by a party at Holocene put on by Unscene. There were already hundreds of people filling the venue when we arrived around 10pm. These people had been drinking for free since 7:30pm. There was much stumbling to be witnessed and the night was punctuated by the frequent sounds of dropped glasses shattering on the concrete floor. Since there were so many people at the party so early it felt like the night gradually wound down after a long early plateau. I had the last shift of the night. While I had been really looking forward to playing all sorts of new music I picked up in San Francisco and online when it actually came down to the night itself I didn’t feel particularly inspired or prepared to entertain the crowd. I was worried that people would have little interest in what I’m excited about and want to share. Recently I have felt that so much of the music I am into is around 95 bpm (whether Bhanga, Reggaeton, or Hip-hop) and the crowds always seem to want it faster than that. I might bring up the tempo briefly, but I feel like my natural impulse is to drop the pace when I get the opportunity. I am not talking about low-energy tracks. There are tracks with fast bpms and low energy. I am talking about slower bpm tracks with a lot of energy.

I started out with a drum’n’bass remix of Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente.” The original was one of the BIGGEST songs in the discos of Guatemala when I was down there in ’99 and I was excited to find a tough remix of this track. I didn’t want to clear the club with my set but I also wasn’t interested in playing it safe. I wasn’t even sure what “safe” meant in the context of this particular group of dancers. Sometimes mainstream might seem safe and that will be what clears people. Sometimes prominent electronic beats seem safe and that will be what clears people. I had no idea who in the crowd was an Atlas regular and who happened to be along for the ride as part of the Unscene party. I was wonderfully surprised to see Jacques in the crowd. He is one of the most informed world music commentators I have found online. He posts frequently in the world music forums on tribe.net and seems to have broader and deeper contemporary world music knowledge than anyone else I have encountered. How he does it I don’t know. Since I knew he was in the audience it gave me a focus. I knew there would be at least one person in the crowd who would appreciate a range of sounds and a real commitment to international variety.

I could have easily played reggaeton my whole set. I’m feeling so much reggaeton these days. The songs I did play didn’t seem to get the crowd going as much as I wanted so I only played a few tracks. I dropped some new Rishi Rich, some Tigarah, some Funk Carioca, some French Hip-hop, some Balkan beats, some Bhangra and even a new bilingual Pitbull track. His lyrical pronouncements are atrocious in their misogyny and catchy as hell in their execution. I brought a whole bunch of Lebanese music that I wanted to represent but a Nawal Al-Zoghbi track was all that ended up in my mix. It may not be anyone else’s favorite Himesh track but I did manage to fit in “Dil Naiyo Maane Re”(Remix) because I love it so.

At some point towards the end of my set someone leans over the railing to my right and yells, “You suck!” As if afraid that I missed it (I didn’t have much of a reaction) he then comes around to the other side of the stage and screams again, “You suck!” before exiting. Now I can think of a million reasons why someone would say I suck and so not having had an opportunity to discuss the matter with this individual I can only guess as to what must have so inspired his multiple public declarations. The few people left in the building this late at night (this was after 2am) were all dancing so maybe it was to try to enlighten them as to the error of their ways. I have no way of knowing whether he was an extremely ignorant individual, or one of the most educated and discerning of music listeners who happen to reside in Portland. Perhaps he hated international music aka music not in English. Maybe he was an adherent of the New York school of disco mixing. Maybe he didn’t realize that most music in the world is not pressed up on vinyl so that an eclectic international DJ set by necessity calls for a number of CDs to be played in addition to records. Who knows? Maybe he is an active blogger or internet poster and I will someday learn the nature of his beef. Fortunately the dancers paid this individual’s opinion little mind and we had a wonderfully spirited dance floor to my final song: “Pag Ghunghroo Bandh” from Namak Halaal. I didn’t even know there were any Hindi-speakers left in the house until I heard someone merrily singing along.

Thank you to everyone who came out, danced, stayed late, and didn’t scream “You suck!” at me.

IK

10/12/06

As you may have gathered from previous posts I am definitely feeling the new Beyonce. I may hate half the songs, but if there are two or more songs I love on a disc then it is a pretty good disc as far as I’m concerned and I love at least half of “B’day.” I even like some of the ballads and I have never liked a Beyonce ballad before. I wish Jay-Z had stayed retired, however. I don’t think he did her any favors by appearing on “B’day.” It really makes me think his un-retirement record is going to be a very sad affair. I wish Def Jam was putting out the new infinitely-delayed Foxy Brown CD instead. What did I read? That she now has hearing problems? Last I heard Jay-Z was so excited about the tracks for her new album that he was rhyming on several of them but hearing his latest work makes me think that is for the worse.

I find Beyonce’s lyrical obsessions bizarre and troubling. “I’m gonna do for you what Martin did for the people.” Martin Luther King was a hero because he bought the people all sorts of baubles and luxury items? I am introduced to brands and labels of status items I would never know about otherwise. Current favorite songs : “Get Me Bodied” “Upgrade U” “Green Light” “Irreplaceable”

IK

PS Beyonce and Jay-Z are my favorite celebrity couple, even if Jay-Z needs to stop rhyming and focus on his day job of putting out awesome records like the new Roots “Game Theory.”

10/8/06

I performed at a wedding recently. In fact, that performance has been an extreme focus of mine for the last several weeks. When I agree to perform at a wedding I become monomaniacal in my attempts to make sure I own and am familiar with every piece of music that I view as necessary for the event (based on my discussions with the bride and groom and my own instincts). I go to extreme lengths and tend to feel that if it is possible that someone might (appropriately) request a particular song or artist, then I better make sure I bring it. With the amount of money I invariably end up spending on music for the weddings that I DJ I essentially end up making no money, no matter how much I charge.

This particular wedding called for a mix of Persian music and old rockabilly, early rock’n’roll, surf, soul, garage rock, etc. I like to take on this sort of gig to get me listening to totally different music than my regular gigs call for, and to inspire me to research music. I always love researching music. This wedding got me reading not only every published guide to rock and soul, but also “Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture” by Kevin Phinney and “Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Rick Coleman. For a while I saw myself becoming an old rock, soul, and rockabilly DJ. Oldies stations hardly exist any more and most of them have strict playlists that leave out 90% of the popular songs from the ’50s and ’60s era, much less the obscurities. I’m hoping to get around to making a mix of a lot of these older styles. My research kept taking me back further into the origins of “rock’n’roll.” I discovered wonderful artits like Big Joe Turner, Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, and Rose Maddox. And I finally got around to buying stuff by the Collins Kids who I’ve always loved.

Even though the wedding ended up being a six hour gig I still didn’t get a chance to play hundreds of songs that I discovered, so hopefully I will get them out to the world some other way. The wedding was a beautiful event with a great couple, a great setting, and a great group of friends and family. It was my pleasure to be able to DJ the event.

10/4/06

Yeah, I know, it’s been a while. Haven’t really been in the mood the few times that I’ve actually had available to write. My string of technical mishaps fortunately ended before the San Francisco gigs. I was afraid I might be able to work my magic on the plane. We arrived just fine and Vicki Virk, the head of the Dholrhythms troop (and DJ Jimmy Love’s Nonstop Bhangra partner) was kind enough to pick us up at the airport. The wonderful Joti Singh was our host (Thank you Jotu!). We were looking forward to playing DJ Zanne’s “Junk” night on Thursday (Portlanders may remember her “Skervy” parties.) but unfortunately the night was cancelled before we even hit town. We played Nickel Bag of Funk with DJ Jimmy Love at the Makeout Room on Friday. Jimmy was very welcoming and enthusiastic. I more or less did my thing. I don’t think I blew anyone away or seriously embarassed myself so I guess it went fine. I’m trying to remember what I played. Definitely some Bhangra/Hip-hop mashups along the lines of “Ishq Brandy.” Some Reggaeton, some Hip-hop. “Get Me Bodied” by Beyonce went over like a bag of bricks compared to the squealing reception it got at Booty. I think the crowd definitely wanted to hear things they knew but I wasn’t interested in playing the singles. Got a request for “My Humps” and Pussycat Dolls so I guess that tells you where at least some of the crowd was coming from. I can’t remember my set too well so I guess it wasn’t that memorable. I did just realize what my last song was: Gantman remix of “Check Up On It.” Always hated the original despite how much I like a lot of Swizz Beats productions. I liked the White Lion Reggaeton remix and after the last issue of Fader hipped me to Chicago’s Juke scene I checked out the Gantman remix of “Check Up On It” and lo and behold I’m playing two Beyonce songs in my set.

I remember at a certain point reading so much about Destiny’s Child that despite never having heard a single song I went and picked up a bunch of promo singles at 2nd Avenue Records. I went to the counter with a stack. The clerk gave me a wary eye. I told him I was catching up on contemporary R&B. He said, “Looks like you’re catching up on Destiny’s Child.” Uh . . . yeah.

So back to the Nickel Bag of Funk gig. I do remember losing a chunk of the dance floor at some point. I decided to completely change gears and played a twelve minute long James Brown track: “People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul.” It gave me a chance to breathe and think about what I was doing, and it is an awesome groove.

I was totally unprepared when the lights went on. Turns out a lot of bars in SF turn on the lights at 1:40am. I know that last call and having drinks off the floor also occur earlier than in Portland. We are very fortunate in Portland to play at two clubs that will let us play until 3am as long as there are dancers. In SF you are just out of there early. Seems like there’s hardly any time to get things going. Almost every night ended at 5:30am anyway thanks to a late night feast of one sort or another. My favorite were the pupusas at El Zocalo. Thanks to DJ Amar for the tip.

The Nonstop Bhangra gig was on Saturday. The party has been going on for two years now. It features the Dholrhythms dance troupe in several performances at each show and that troupe has been around for three years. In fact, they are shortly celebrating these anniversaries. Each night starts with a dance lesson conducted by Vicki Virk. The one I saw was accompanied by JT on live dhol. That was great. The live dhol really keeps you centered for the lesson and makes it very easy to stay with the rhythm. Vicki reaches out to the goras and the newbies giving some cultural background and introducing the dance in a very encouraging, welcoming way.

In general Anjali and I are not in favor of live instruments accompanying a DJ unless the musician and the DJ are used to working with each other. The South Asian music scenes in Seattle and San Francisco utilize this concept a lot. I’ve seen many musicians with giant egos completely clashing with the music and thinking they were awesome. As in rhythmically clashing, as in train wreck, as in all fucking night. This seems to be the rule rather than the exception. One thing that bothers Anjali and I is that there will often be tabla players accompanying Bhangra DJs. Well, other than a few embellishments in Sukshinder Shinda songs tabla doesn’t have any place in Bhangra. It’s South Asian conflationism that only confuses goras even more who already think that Bhangra is the sound of sitars and tablas rather than tumbis and dhols. The best tabla player we’ve seen in this sort of situation is Ferhan Qureshi of the Dhamaal Sound System. He was supposed to play at Nonstop Bhangra the night we were playing but he never showed. As much as we are generally down on the concept we were looking forward to playing with Ferhan because he is the only tabla player we’ve seen who was actually quite good and didn’t sound like shit playing along with Bhangra beats.

As I mentioned before the Nonstop Bhangra night features two dance performances by the Dholrhytms troupe. What this means is that the party is raging, the stage is filled with dancers, and then the call goes out for everyone to clear the stage so that the dance performance can begin. It is definitely a different rhythm for the evening than Anjali and I are used to. We like to bring the party to a raging boil and then just let it sit on the stovetop with the lid off all night. It was somewhat shocking for us to see a packed mass of wild dancers cleared from the stage twice in the night and the energy brought down to that of quiet attention. Jimmy ended up playing before, and between these performances so Anjali and I didn’t go on until quite late. I went on last and was once again startled when the lights went on when I felt like I was midway hrough my set.

This update doesn’t feel complete but I’m preparing for a wedding right now and don’t feel like adding anything. Everybody take care of themselves and each other.

IK

9/10/06

Last night was our MusicfestNW edition of Atlas with DJ Rekha guesting from New York. We met Rekha in 2002 when she was brought out to do a PSU Indian prom on the Portland Spirit. We then played a benefit with her at Fez Ballroom in January 2003. We’ve kept in touch ever since, visiting her when we are in NYC. We subbed for her at a very memorable Basement Bhangra and Anjali has played with her at that night as well. As much as we see her, Portland audiences haven’t had a chance to see her in over three and a half years. Last year we opted out of including our Atlas night in Musicfest but this year we thought we may as well take advantage of their budget and bring in an out-of-town artist. There were some major problems with how the show was promoted and I won’t go into that now except to say that it was “Rehka”(sp.) on all the promotional materials.

I had opening slot, which was just fine with me. I played a very different around-the-world hip-hop set from my usual with an emphasis on France and Spain. I will often feel more under the microscope when there are only a few people lounging in a large empty space then during the peak of the night with a packed dance floor. I really enjoyed my songs but I felt my transitions were perfunctory at best and somewhat of an embarrassment. Up next was E3 starting out with some Balkan beats and French hip-hop and then moving on to a wicked international D’nB set. By then we were experiencing a great turnout of wonderful friends and acquaintances including some truly wonderful surprises (Hi, Nimmi!). Anjali was up next. She started out with Balkan D’n’B and other Eatern Bloc beats, moving into Panjabi 2-Step and D’n’B. Her set was nearly two-thirds over before she even dropped a Bhangra beat. After playing Sangra Vibes’ awesome “Hai Rabba” she went into an Indian hip-hop set including “Punjabi Whisper.” Somewhere in there she played a D’n’B Raghav remix and the Rish Rich Project “Push It Up.”

Rekha started out with Missy’s “Lose Control” and then went into a top 40 hip-hop set, remixes, etc. It was quite a while before she played anything Indian. She finally went from some Middle Eastern house into a filmi remix set, DJ Aqueel’s “Disco 82” and a remix of “I Am a Disco Dancer.” When I was outside catching up with the door staff I heard a few reggaeton numbers. It was a long time in before any Bhangra emerged, several Lehmber songs coming to mind. I have to admit to holding court in the Green Room for awhile and not being 100% focused on the music although it was certainly doing a fair job of shaking the wall right behind me, coming in loud and clear. I made it back to the floor when she dropped “Dus Bahane” curious to see the response to relatively recent Bollywood hits including “Salaam Namaste.” I was scheduled to relieve her and after a long night and a lot of socializing I was actually up for having Rekha play out the rest of the night. Regardless at 2am she was done and it was my turn to go on.

Here comes the fun part.

Rekha’s last song was “Kaja Re.” We had two turntables, two CDJ-1000s and Rekha had a Serrato setup. For those of you who aren’t immersed in the DJ world I will explain that Serrato is a hardware/software setup with two specially coded records that allows a DJ to pick any mp3 from their laptop and the program treats the record as if it was the mp3 you picked, so that whatever happens to the record will affect the playing of the mp3 on the laptop. So, for instance if you were scratching the record the program will create sounds as if the mp3 were physically encoded on that record and it was being scratched. Basically you only need the two special records and you can play any song in the world on them if you have the mp3 for that song. Hope that was a little clearer than mud. Here’s the link if you haven’t yet been aware of this phenomenon.

I have never gone on after a DJ was using a Serrato setup. I was straightening out the 4 channels on the mixer in my head and trying to determine what channel to cue up my song in. While doing this I was removing the music that Rekha had left in the players before I went on. I became focused on the song playing on the display in the laptop. I have played after DJs who were just DJing straight from a laptop. After watching the screen display of the mp3 I totally forgot about the specially-coded vinyl record that was playing. I just thought it was a song she had been playing before switching to the song on the laptop. I picked up the needle only to hear complete silence and realize that the song was only playing on the laptop because the vinyl was playing. I immediately set the needle right down all too aware of what a bonehead manuever I had just pulled. As it was I set the needle down earlier in the record so the mp3 backtracked to early in the song. So an already eight minute song became an eleven minute song. Fine, plenty of time before my first song to reflect on my boneheadedness. If it was our Andaz night I would’ve gone into a classic Hindi set. There were certainly a handful of Desis getting down to “Kaja Re.” However, I felt like there might still be a group of people hanging out in the club who would be up for switching up the sound. I honestly wasn’t sure entirely where to go but I settled on Rachid Taha’s “Rock the Casbah.” I thought the familiarity of the song combined with the sick Middle Eastern cover version would be a great way to refresh the dance floor. Instead everyone cleared the dance floor immediately. Great, white guy goes on after Rekha and clears the floor. Sweet.

Because I played the first set of the evening people were coming up to me all night saying that they had missed my set, asked how it went, told me how much they liked me, asked when I was going on again, etc. I have no idea how many of them lasted until after 2am when I went on. Needless to say it was a real kick in the face to go on and instantly clear the floor. Granted “Kaja Re” is a really hard song to follow and I made the call not to go into a filmi favorites set, so what do I expect? Such was my consternation and over-all flustered state that as I transitioned to the next track I pulled the Rachid Taha track a moment too soon so that the last thing the crowd hears is “Rock the Casb- . . .” There are few mixing mistakes worse than pulling a vocal early. I went into the “Sohni Munda (Remix)” from the new “Dil Apna Punjabi” soundtrack strictly for myself. If the floor is going to be empty I may as well play something totally leftfield that I adore. After that I decided to at least try to regain a dance floor playing Outlandish “Guantanamo (Maximum Risk Remix)” but as pull the crossfader over there is now no bass of any kind, no monitor, and half of the house speakers are off. All the subwoofers have stopped responding and I was instantly left with the most tinny sound ever. What the fuck happened? Tim, the Holocene sound guy said that even with the “ghosts” in the soundsystem he’s witnessed over the years that was the worst soundsystem fuck-up he had ever experienced. I think the soundsystem was so traumatized by my supreme suckitude that it commited suicide rather than to have to play party to my ineptitude.

I then try to line up a track on the other turntable and I get no signal at all. Nothing in the headphones and nothing coming through the system. I’m left with dead air as the song on the right turntable comes to a close. Rekha comes back on stage to try to figure what the fuck happened along with Tim. At Rekha’s suggestion I quick swap the record to the other turntable and start playing it over the sound system that now sounds like a tiny boombox in a large club. After some cable jostling at least the bass comes back on but half the system is still down. While they are trying to determine why the other channel is completely dead I am left to pick out another track. With all this commotion around the mixer I am winding around people with my headphone cord trying to get a CD cued up. Literally reaching round Rekha as she stands directly in front of the mixer trying to determine if the Serrato channels are still working I very abruptly crash from Sean Paul’s “Temperature” into “Deedar De” ensuring that everything I do after getting back on stage is a complete and utter fuck-up. While all this is happening Tim informs me that several people from Musicfest have shown up to reclaim all the rental equipment that was on Rekha’s tech rider. Since she was only scheduled to play until 2am and it is now 2:39am they want to remove the equipment pronto, thereby shutting down the party in the process. Dogpile of bullshit. We will often go until 3am at Atlas and despite the frigid welcome my first song received there were a group of people who made it back to the dance floor relatively undeterred by all the sound issues and the floundering DJ. I decided to not fight it any more and call it a wrap. Rekha then played the last song, a new DJ Sanj track from “America’s Most Wanted IV.”

Sometimes you just don’t feel like going on and when you do nothing good comes of it. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an extreme collection of personal and situational fuck-ups cluster-fucking me into abject humiliation. Actually, I probably have.

In five days we hit San Francisco for some gigs so I can only hope that I will rise to the occasion and perform my best. I’m sure you’ll be able to read about it either way. Thanks to everyone who came out. Great to see so many familiar faces.

IK

9/8/06

Wasted tired morning. Anjali and I DJed Booty last night at their new digs at ACME. I’ve always admired the Booty parties and always thought I could provide a killer soundtrack but figured my status as a het male wouldn’t make it easy for me to get a gig at “Portland’s Queer Party For The Piratecore.” Well, head party-person Puppet has been great about letting the Kid give it to the people nasty style, regardless of my orientation, for which I am quite grateful.

Both Anjali and I had to work all day. Afterwards we buzzed by a Musicfest VIP party at the Jupiter to check out some of DJ Safi’s set and score some free dinner. Successful on both fronts. There was a long line for free haircuts and I thought I was foiled in my attempts to get a trim but the kind folks at Rudy’s gave me a coupon for a free haircut. Thanks for that one.

Then we raced home to get ready to head down to Booty. It was a lot of running around and madness and we barely made it to ACME by my start time at 11pm. I prefer not to arrive like that for a number of reasons. One, it doesn’t feel good for the promoters and the other DJs to see the guest DJs waltz in just in time to go on stage. Two, I don’t know what the person before me was playing and I never want to inadvertently repeat a song. Three, I like to hang out and catch the vibe of a party before going on, check out the DJs, see what the crowd is or is not grooving to, etc.

Entering the back patio I was unprepared for just how much they had tricked out the space and what an incredible vibe they had going. When we did our Ghetturista night there recently we didn’t bring in any lights or props and we played a (far too) well-lit barren patio. I was immersed instantly in Booty as colored lights spun throughout a much darker, more inviting space. An enormous ship’s mast sporting shredded sails towered above the space near a huge treasure trunk overflowing with Booty. The sound system had been beefed-up to include four main speakers and two subwoofers. The Booty crew had been hard at work making trip after trip and working on the space since 4pm. It looked great and all their efforts really paid off.

As we made our way to the stage and I looked out at the bodies moving on the dance floor I didn’t feel up for going on immediately, even though it was about that time. I asked Puppet for a few minutes to catch my breath. I begged Puppet not to introduce me but she insisted on getting on the mic and letting the crowd know who was up. Hardly any response other than unmoving bodies and doubtful stares. I tried to look game anyway. I started off with some Reggaeton. After a few songs I looked up and saw the dance floor was now limited to four people. I couldn’t help but notice that before I went on the size of the dance floor was directly proportionate to how big a hit was being played. Realizing that the Reggaeton was not having the desired effect I switched into some dancehall-hip-hop-Bhangra stylee which went over far better. I felt like people were responding to the English portions of the songs far more than the Panjabi vocals so I realized it was time to start dropping some good-ol’ hip-hop. I dropped “Can’t Stop” my favorite track from the last Missy album (More of that Rich Harrison drum clatter.) and then purely for myself, went into “Here I Come” off the new Roots album. I have been feeling that song hard ever since I first listened to it on myspace. Nothing like Black Thought when he starts ripping into a groove. Criminally underrated MC. The crowd flipped when Black Thought started rhyming and I thought “Wow, maybe I can rip some straight hip-hop.” I had more perverse intentions however, I wanted to play some Booty, not just B-boy classicism. I played some truly nasty Trina, some classic Dis’n’Dat remix action, and something I bought special earlier in the day just for Booty.

When I first heard “Crazy in Love” on a DJ white label bootleg I imagined I was one of the only people in the world who knew that song existed. Never watching TV and only listening to the radio a few minutes a week I have no idea what white label bootleg is completely unheard-of and which is already a massive hit when I check them out at the store. It wasn’t until I was in Canada at a cupcake shop a few weeks after first hearing that song that I realized it was a hit, since it was playing on their shop system.

Flash forward to this Summer: I hadn’t liked the “Deja Vu” song at all. It was the first time since Jay-Z’s retirement that I felt he really should retire. He just embarasses himself on that one (Yes, even in comparison to his “Crazy in Love” performance.). I hadn’t yet heard “Ring the Alarm” but when I saw the new Beyonce “B’Day” in the store after being frustrated for the umpteenth time hoping that “Rio Baile Funk 2” would have hit Portland shelves I knew I had to buy it. Grossly overpriced and soon to be flooding used bins everywhere I just knew I had to get that CD for Booty. I gave it a quick preview at home, and dropped the “Get Me Bodied” track in the middle of my set. It went over bananas as Beyonce’s unmistakable pipes entered the picture. I knew some diva action would work wonders for me. I realized that the title track from the new “Golmaal” film would be a good next song, but didn’t have enough time to track it down in my pile of music (Also unsure of how the Hindi would go down with a crowd that was seemingly much more in tune with American songs.) so I went with another Swizz Beats production for Mashonda which I love. Nas’s feature vocals on the track got people goin’. Makes me proud of a crowd when they’re feelin’ Nas.

After all that hip-hop I thought I would try some Funk Carioca but I wasn’t sure how the crowd would like the Portuguese lyrics and the minimalist Brazilian percussion breakdowns. I went for the rock-style Funk and played an Edu-K remix and then a proper track by the man. At this point it was time for Anjali to take over. I felt like I flubbed my final mix, which always sucks, but it turns out that was the least of my problems. The two turntables were in channel two and three on the mixer and the cd players were in channel four and five. I went from a record in channel three to a cd in channel four. The confusing thing is that channel three is left of channel four on the mixer but I had the crossfader set so that the turntable was on the right side of the crossfader. So a channel to the left is in the crossfader to the right. Somewhere in my mix I got it all messed up in my head. I couldn’t remember what channel I was moving to or what side of the crossfader. I wish I could tell you that I figured this out quickly and painlessly but that was far from the case. Blame it on the fact that Anjali was coming on and I was trying to make the transition between DJs and trying to get out of the way. Multiple times I either pulled the volume down on the wrong channel or moved the crossfader to the wrong side. Comedy of errors. I kept getting it wrong, the song would disappear, get loud, go quiet, I’d be playing one song only, then the other, then both. Finally got it sorted. Total embarassment. A textbook example of how not to end a set if you don’t want to look like a total twat. However, this was just the beginning of the nightmare.

As Anjali is rushing to go on with only a few minutes to spare she swaps out headphones only to find that half the headphone tip broke off in the headphone jack. Minutes until a new song is needed, full dance floor, no way to cue up a song. Panic. We tried pulling and pulling on the thin strands of metal but fingers were not enough to pull the beastie out. I quickly played another song off the same CD after a pause to further end my set in ignominy. Puppet shows up with scissors. Pull and pull and pull. Only manage to break the headphone plug tip again until it is completely out of reach, stuck deep in the mixer. Fortunately a fire dancer went on (Sorry, with my focus on technical mishaps I don’t remember the name of the performer.) buying us some time to get things sorted. Luckily there was another mixer lying around. A frantic switchover involving horrible noises broadcast over the soundsystem and a long pause, and finally Anjali was able to go on. What a mess. Horrible way to begin a set. And my headphones were responsible. My sincerest apologies to Anjali and everyone within earshot for the technical malfunction. Fortunately good friends were in attendance and the conviviality kept me from being too depressed. Thanks to everybody who came out.

IK

Caught the final Oregon Zoo concert of the summer. I always try to make it out to their international shows (despite being highly dubious about giving any money to a zoo) because they bring artists that either would never play Portland otherwise, or would play the Aladdin for $25 or more, thus ensuring that I would never see them. I was particularly interested in catching El Gran Combo because touring Latin bands seem to play here so seldom. (Yerba Buena plays just north of us all the time and THEY HAVE NEVER PLAYED PORTLAND!) For a while it seemed like Cubanismo was the only Latin band touring in the US and no matter how good some of their shows were I got bored of seeing them after awhile. In the late ’90s I feel like quite a few bands came through town and I blew several of them off because the tickets were $25-35 a pop.
If I knew what a drought there would be from then on I would have splurged more often.

In past summers the Oregon Zoo concerts always started with the headliner going on promptly at 7pm. The few that I witnessed this summer went on much later, often with unannounced opening bands. Well, I was making my way down to the concert grounds shortly after 7pm and I could hear the sounds of El Gran Combo playing. No late start and no opening bands this time. I got to the grounds in time to hear part of a speech about “unity” and “bringing people together.” The band’s setup was very different from any other Latin band I’ve seen in that the horn section was limited to only two trombonists. There was a stand-up electric bass, a keyboard, congas, timbales, a very large, squat sit-down hand drum, four guys out in front dancing, singing, playing percussion, including panderetas.

At one point they did a bomba track and they explained that there are 30 different bomba rhythms. There was a segment of the dancer leading the drummer in the rhythm. They did a plena. Their songs seemed like there were 17,000 rhythms going on at once. I tried to count clave or any other repeating rhythm and found myself hopelessly stymied. So dense, so fast, so much syncopation. So many percussion instruments.

Despite all this I left during their set break. I was cold, improperly dressed for the chilly evening, and overcome with a draining ennui. I used to love to go to shows. I imagine I still might in the future. Lately I check something out, say “hmmm,” and after I think I get the drift I’m ready to leave. Only certain DJs keep me focused because I realize the next song might be an entirely different sound and you can’t say that of many bands.

The band was constantly calling out to the Boricuas. They kept asking (in Spanish) for the Boricuas to raise their hands and of course all the white Portlanders did. In Spanish they would ask just the men or just the women to scream and of course all the gringos (male and female) yelled both times. They were certainly speaking to the crowd in English at times, so I wondered if they were intentionally playing with the gringos when they would give instructions only in Spanish. Despite talking about unity and bringing everyone together their shout-outs to the Boricuas in the house were the dominant theme. No problem, there. I even saw a Puerto Rican flag. One thing that was interesting to note was how little salsa dancing was going on. Despite my decade-long love affair with Latin music I still can’t dance a Latin rhythm. Usually at a show like this I am one of a handful of awkward gringos solo dancing in the front and this time in a whole sea of dancers I could only make out a few couples partner-dancing. Fascinating. I imagine it will be a very different scene at this Sunday’s “Salsa en la Calle.”

IK

I’m basically interested in just about any sound ever recorded but lately my fiercest interest has been the collision of electronics and breakbeats with musical traditions throughout the world. I am especially interested in any form that the hip-hop virus has taken around the globe. Having said that these are areas in which I am particularly interested in learning and hearing much more than I do currently:

Tamil and Telegu film songs (and other South Indian hits)

Dangdut

Kwaito and every other style of African hip-hop (there are 1000s of artists with minimal distribution)

Russian Pop (especially the Middle-Eastern sounding club stuff I
heard at an Armenian Gyro cart in downtown Portland)

All eras of French Hip-hop

The crazy J-Pop and K-Pop Casiocity has played for me

Chutney Soca

Bangladeshi Pop

Dancehall Riddims

Garage Rap to Grime

Older Bhangra hits from the 80’s and farther back

Bootleg Hindi remixes THAT DON”T SUCK!!! (I’ve got thousands that do.)

Sri Lankan hip-hop

Any help in these or other areas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

IK

8/20/06

Lately I’ve been thinking how amusing it would be to catalogue some of my all time favorite moments of dance floor clearing. Seeing as how there are some memories that have never left me after many years I figured I could open up the joy to all and share these precious moments with you, dear readers. One of the all-time classics was at an Andaz night at the Fez many years ago. Anjali and I have tinkered with the order of our sets at Andaz over the years. Back in the very beginning I would start off the night and we would alternate every hour with her playing the final set. This story I am about to relate to you explains one of the reasons why I now usually play the last hour of the night. I used to try all sorts of things in the 1am-2am hour that would leave a great deal fewer dancers for Anjali to entertain when she went on for her final set. I can remember playing “Fanaa” from the Yuva soundtrack and discovering just how much the crowd was not looking for any sort of Trance vibe that evening. But this next story was the topper.

The Indian pop star Alisha did an album of Hindi Madonna covers called “Madonna Jadoo” with music by film composer Anu Malik in the early 80’s. Anjali had found a copy covered in dust at Stern’s Music in New York (retail store saddly shuttered now). One listen and I became quite enamored. We have always had a crowd composed at least partially of older-than-average clubgoers. I thought I would be sure to blow some minds both for busting out some old Alisha and some crazy Madonna cover action as well. So proud I was of this idea that I got on the mic and loudly asked “Yo, we got any Alisha fans in the house?” as the strains of some early Madonna cover (Burning Up? Papa Don’t Preach? Can’t remember now.) drifted out of the speakers. There were probably 250 dancers at this point. I watched 200 of them immediately file for the exits. Not leave the dance floor. Not stop to take a breather. Not head to the bar for a final drink. Bolt for the fucking doors. Cleared the place the fuck out. All I could do was stare transfixed as the great cattle stampede headed down the stairs. So if you ever wonder why the Kid is playing the filmi classics during the 2am slot these days, now you know. Thank you Anjali for humoring me in my long and stumbling learning process.

IK

8/20/06

Did another installment of Ghetturista last night with Anjali and DJ Blackmarks. There were all sorts of confusions about the date between booking agents and the date was moved back and forth. We were confirmed for the end of September after having the August date cancelled but then one and a half weeks ago we find out that they actually wanted us for August after all. Well, one and a half weeks is not a lot of time to promote a one-off party and Anjali and I were heading to Vancouver, BC for the week (Jagga Sweets in Surrey!). Blackmarks hustled, came up with flyers and posters (Thank you, man!) and did some street promotion. Thank you to the people who came out.

Was looking forward to playing the large patio space at Acme. Unfortunately when we got there we discovered that the one subwoofer (our sole supplier of bass for the evening) had a big tear in the cone and sounded like a flatulant hippopotamus. Damn. I was resting all my sonic hopes for the evening on the subwoofer. We didn’t manage to rustle up any last minute replacements either.

The evening began slowly with just a handful of tables along the edges of the patio filled with seated patrons. By the time I got up to play there had been no more than a few people doing a little booty shaking around the edges of the space. I started out with some Grime, moved into some Japanese hip-hop and found myself with a small dancefloor. At this point a drunken woman came up to me with her friend and announced that they were part of a large bachelorette party that had just arrived and asked if I could play Young MC “Bust a Move.” Now I DJ weddings and the last one I did proved the power of that song without a doubt, but that is decidely not what Ghetturista is about, and I am nothing if not a DJ commited to theme. I explained that the night was dedicated to international hip-hop and that we might get around to good-old American hip-hop but seeing as how Blackmarks played a bunch in his set I didn’t see myself going there any time soon. Now I try to be polite in these situations but it is hard not to get aggravated. She kept asking me what I could tell her to bring back to her girls so that they would have something to look forward to as far as dancing. I explained that they might be happier in a more mainstream club. “Oh no, we’re not going anywhere else.” Yet she kept wanting some positive news to bring back to her girls. I was flustered and clumsy as I moved on to French hip-hop. This time the dance floor got crowded (New 113 killing it!) and suddenly I’m faced with a mass of dancers. I got a request for Reggaeton (That’s more like it. Someone who knows what I’m about.) and that’s where I went next. The Reggaeton was working so well I went with it for most of my set. I wanted to bust out some Carioca Funk but as soon as I made the transition I lost some of the dancers. I stayed with it anyway until it was time for Anjali to come back on.

What was funny about the woman from the bachelorette party who got in my face was that once I got everyone dancing she came back to me very apologetic about having bothered me. That was nice. I don’t think anyone has ever come back to apologize after getting in my face. However, she was so drunk that she kept coming up to me all night once I had stopped DJing apologizing over and over for having bothered me. At one point I was sitting with the Cannonator and she apologized to both of us. Then she ended up going up to him alone throughout the night and continued apologizing to him. She kept going up to Anjali all night and telling her how awesome she was. As she was leaving she came up again to thank us and apologize. Alcohol, it’s something else.

Despite there not being a whole lot of people there the dance floor kept reviving itself up until they shut down the club. Even then there were a group of dancers wondering what to do next. Thank you again to everyone who came out. We had a great crowd. And Blackmarks had a blast.

Anjali and I will be back at ACME for the September 7th First Thursday edition of BOOTY. It’s a theme party: Treasure Island meets Lord of the Flies.

IK