The Incredible Blog

6/26/06 Early

Finally home from a long day at work with our KBOO radio show squeezed in between; the day after a 4:30am Andaz bedtime. I had fun covering for Anjali on the first half of our show (more Hindi pop perversity and hard bhangra) but I enjoy the banter a lot more when it’s the two of us. She even got on me for talking over her. Am I that bad? Must exercise verbal self-control, often one of my greatest challenges. I love to talk and I often never run out of things I want to talk about. Tonight with Nomadic Noize and DJ Safi was a perfect example. Imagine being cursed in such a way that the more you like people and the more they interest you the more you talk and the more you talk the more excitable you get and the more you talk and the more you alienate your listeners. The people you like the most will be the most alienated and driven off by a constant stream of idea expectorate. There are people in the world who I love, lost to me, probably still running from my word volleys pursuing them like a band of hornets in their quest for peace and an end to that INFERNAL BARRAGE.

6/25/06

Hey, guess what, I’m tired. My flight out of La Guardia was
delayed by an hour and I would have missed my connecting flight in
Denver if that flight hadn’t been delayed two hours as well. Got
home after Friday had turned into early Saturday thanks to a kind
and generous Mr. Blackmarks and then stayed up until
dawn(6am) listening to the dozens of new Bhangra and filmi CDs I
acquired in New York. I feel such a compulsion to absorb
everything before a gig so I don’t miss a shot at playing the
latest hot shit for people. The joke is that so often it is nigh impossible to absorb that much at the last minute that you will actually be able to confidently employ in a show shortly therafter. I could have played three hours of Himesh Reshammiya alone last night but when you are juggling dozens of new songs in your head freshly previewed its hard to have a firm enough idea about each song to know when and how to play it. One of my big frustrations is drowning in so much music that I question whether I am presenting the very best music I could each time or whether I am often falling prey to coercion and habit.

Anjali’s flight wasn’t until late Saturday so I knew I would have
to DJ the first part of Andaz without her (and possibly more if
her flight was delayed, which it was). In our three and a half years of DJing that party we have always switched off every hour. All of a sudden I was faced with DJing more than three hours in a row. Now I am no stranger to 6, 8 and 10 hour sets, but the hour rhythm is so established at the party for me I had to get into a totally different groove. I felt really rough for most of it. Three hours of sleep and a day of travel with no opportunity for a nap had me at less than peak performance. Thank you to the wedding party for sharing your day with us.

IK

PS New York thoughts : Delhi Palace. I’ve always liked this place much better than
Jackson Diner or Taj India (sp?) its neighbors on the Jackson
Heights strip. This trip confirmed my opinion about how good it is. Kick-ass Pao Bhaji and Kadai Paneer that took me back to India. If only they could chill the kheer because the sitting-out-for-hours-at-room-temperature thing was sketching me out.

I haven’t been to New York since Anjali and I were flown out to play Basement Bhangra in December of 2004. The most disconcerting change was the closure of Udipi Palace. This was my gold standard Indian restaurant and the only must-eat destination for me in NYC. When we went to 27th and Lexington looking for a lunch buffet the other day I couldn’t believe it when I saw the place a gutted room filled with building materials. What the hell?? Temporary closure or permanent erasure? There had been both a vegetarian and a non-veg restaurant by the same owners on the same strip and they were both gone. Major bummer. Don’t know if I will ever find a suitable replacement. The (presumed) success of Chinese Mirch means that there is now a second Indo-Chinese restaurant on the strip, Indo Wok. We ended up eating at an expensive, “classy,” “refined,” “elegant,” spot called the Copper Chimney. The buffet was select and quality, without being mind-blowing. The tamarind rice was good.

The next day we received a similar shock when we got to Stern’s Music and it too was gutted and filled with building materials. A call to their phone number resulted in a number out of service message. Quite disconcerting. This was a solid around-the-world music store with a unique selection. It is possible that somewhere in the five boroughs there is a similar store but despite having a few hopeful names on an old list I’m not convinced a suitable replacement exists for this spot either. One of their employees, Oscar, was my superb hook-up for all the latest Punta Rock so I will send him a query as to what the hell happened.

Still haven’t made it to Spanish Harlem. Since my flight is in a handful of hours I doubt if I will make it. Despite already loading up on Bhangra and Bollywood at Jackson Heights I think we might end up back there since we only had time for a cursory visit. Spent quite a bit of time at Virgin Megastore last night. They have a very impressive and diverse world music section so it is always on my must-visit list. It’s too bad the one in Vancouver, BC closed. The reggaeton section has expanded to become 4 entire walls in the back. Two walls of strictly comps. I didn’t even have it in me to go meticulously through the entire section which I have always done in the past. Such an absolute flood of releases. I feel sorry for people just starting to get into this music because of the endless repackaging of material.

Anjali has been sick and I’ve been exhausted from shopping all day so we haven’t even gone out at night once this trip. We’ve managed to miss: a Fader release party with DJ Rekha, Eddie Stats and Nina Sky, Turntables on the Hudson, Slavic Soul Party, Nanuchka (with members of Balkan Beat Box, DJ Spooky, Raz Mesinai, Macka Diamond, and YERBA BUENA! If you were to tell me in Portland a few weeks ago that I would be too wiped to attend these shows I would no doubt be incredulous or devastated or both. None of these artists ever play Portland (although we have confirmed DJ Rekha for our September Atlas). Yerba Buena plays Seattle fairly regularly but no one has ever brought them to Portland. I’ve suggested it to a few promoters but no one thinks there would be a draw.

I’m looking forward to Andaz on Saturday. I’m hoping to spend what time I have in Portland before the gig cramming all the new Indian music I’ve purchased. Some major new Bhangra releases and a bunch of interesting new soundtracks.

I’m still reading “House of Leaves” and am quite engrossed. I had to break off this morning because I was afraid I’d be left without reading material on the plane which is a frightening thought. I haven’t been able to find a single issue of La Connexion or any other reggaeton magazine in New York which is a bit disappointing. You sure don’t find any in Portland.

See you on Saturday,

IK

Made it to New York. Exhausted. Got up at oh dark thirty to return the rental car and catch a train from Philly to NYC. Only slept a few hours. Spent all day on trains without being able to get any sleep. Even got told by a Septa employee to keep my feet off the seat. Took a nap just now but am wasted zonkered on a hot New York summer afternoon. Haven’t had anything to eat in 18 hours except a few strawberries.

I always feel such a frenzy in New York to hit a million record stores. Philly was fairly disappointing in that every store we went to would have taken hours to find something interesting and we only had time for brief visits. I did turn up a Fulanito single (never seen them on vinyl) and a Nigerian hip-hop collection I’ve never seen before. We did find an Indian grocery and they had some interesting stuff but it was bootleg central.

I know I want to go to Spanish Harlem for Reggaeton, Jackson Heights for Bhangra and Bollywood (Too many bootlegs though; Anjali and I must be among the only souls willing to pay a lot more for legitimate copies.), Virgin Megastore for their massive international selection, Rashid’s for Middle-Eastern music, Stern’s for more international variety, and Beat St., Fat Beats, and others for the Hip-hop. Also have a special request from DJ Blackmarks to pick up the latest Dipset mixtape so I need to be on the lookout for streetside vendors with blankets of cds.

IK

6/18/06

Writing to you all from Philly. If I was ever here before it was only as a toddler so I am experiencing all of this with new eyes. First thing I noticed were oil refineries, billowing smoke, and huge mounds of demolished cars on the way from the airport. What a way to make an impression. The members of Gemini Wolf were getting married and we witnessed a beautiful unification at a spot called the Old Mill. The vegetation here is so lush and green. Far more jungly than Portland. Things are plenty hot. I’m glad I won’t be wearing a suit again here. Believe it or not we have been here for several days and have yet to buy a single piece of music. I believe that will change in the next few hours. I found out before arriving here that Philly has the U.S.’s third largest population of Puerto Ricans but I’m not counting on being able to find the Reggaeton hot spots before we leave tomorrow. We came in on a red eye and going out at night has hardly seemed doable do to our weakened conditions.

I’m reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” right now. You may not realize how remarkable this is. For the most part I haven’t read any fiction since the early 90’s when I had a few bad run-ins with academic creative writing programs. When I (very rarely) feel the need to read any fiction I pore through a stack of Henry Miller books I haven’t read yet. Most of the time I am content with music history books. “Queens Reigns Supreme” gets a recommend if you want some insight into the names commonly dropped by NYC rappers. “House of Leaves” was recommended to me by a coworker when I mentioned recurring dreams I have about living in a space that I discover is far larger than what I always knew (back stairways, underground chambers, undiscovered rooms and hallways). Well, I am quite engrossed in the book now. Last night my sleeping was quite compromised by my obsession with the book, along with being both simultaneously sticky from the heat and cold from the rotating fan, while cramped on a too-small couch. I kept finding myself paralyzed and having to exert a great deal of effort to snap out of it and regain control of my limbs. This kept happening on endless repeat all night. Since the book deals with being watched/hunted by something you can’t see it wasn’t reassuring to find myself frozen over and over again all night. Even though the book clearly sets itself up as artifice within artifice it is amazing how easily a piece of fiction can become more gripping and immediate than the events of the “real” world.

I currently can’t stand the taste of Philly water. Even run through a Britta it tastes like crap to me. Since I live on a diet of constant water I wonder if I will break down and start buying it bottled.

Gemini Wolf introduced us to Giannas’ Grille yesterday. Having been a vegetarian since the 90’s I never imagined I would have a chance to eat a Philly cheese steak. Well, Gianna’s is thoughtful enough to provide both vegetarian and VEGAN cheese steaks, sausage sandwiches, meatball sandwiches, pepperoni or sausage pizzas and a whole case of vegan deserts. I loved the sandwiches but the cannoli filling was far too sickly sweet and tasted like icing. Big recommend on the sandwiches, no recommend on the vegan cannoli.

It was cool to not only meet some more of Anjali’s family here in Philly but also to reconnect with some members who recenly moved stateside whom I haven’t seen since India. I even learned at least two versions of the story of Anjali’s Rajput great great grandfather. And I got a double Indian uncle recommend for the book “Freedom at Midnight” on India’s struggle for Independence.

I hope everyone is safe and happy wherever they are.

IK

6/16/06

No, not an actual hangover, I only had a sip of a 7 and 7. More just that typical IK wasted tired that I get from getting to sleep near dawn and only getting a handful of hours of sleep. Anjali and I took a real risk with throwing her birthday party. Cities like New York and San Fransisco have Asian Underground/Massive/Drum’n’Bass/Breaks scenes and Portland simply doesn’t. Anjali likes to play a lot of that material at our Atlas nights but there is not a big crowd for it in Portland. There wasn’t a lick of Bhangra or Bollywood to be heard all night. E3 did drop a wicked Middle-Eastern drum’n’bass song though!

It’s hard to know what to do with Portland. We’ve had a lot of success doing certain things but our ambitions are wide-ranging. When we have the opportunity to hook people up with something new and different it is hard not to try. A lot of artists/DJs/producers don’t understand the realities of Portland and there are many shows we are never able to bring because no price can be agreed upon that will really work in the Portland market. Portland is a really cheap town. Often in order to charge enough to pay the artists many kids decide the show is too rich for their blood. However, a cheaper admission is no guarantee that people will try something new and different and then it is even harder to pay the artists.

Thank you to everyone who came out and supported. Thank you to Javier for arranging the amazing Tres Leches cake. Thank you to Michael for all the help at the Fez. Thank you to Ezra and Tracy for being willing to come out and get the night rolling. Thank you so much to Jeevan and Seth for the extra-generous hospitality and the amazing meal. And thank you to State of Bengal and Sub Swara for giving it a go in Portland.

IK

Man, I am exhausted. Do I even need to tell you all that anymore? Well, State of Bengal and the boys of Sub Swara made it safely in to Portland last night. Today is one long gear-up for the Birthday Bash tonight at the Fez. I get to take the night off and see these boys bring it, which is good. It also means I have more time to scarf up the 25 pound Tres Leches cake. Yum. Thank you so much to Jeevan and Seth for the hospitality and the amazing meal. I think my stomach is still emptying.

Happy Birthday, Anjali!

IK

6/10/06

Saw Spankrock at Holocene last night. Far better than the horrible DJ set played by their producer XXXchange several months ago. People definitely turned out and were ready to get down. Naeem said there could be no “drawers” on the dance floor and everyone had to throw them on the stage but no one obliged him. They got into it anyway. There was a Black hype man with Naeem whose name I didn’t catch and two white DJs. Didn’t catch their names either. I’m not entirely convinced of their humorous booty bass but Naeem did actually spit on a couple songs making me wish he would do less moronic couplet repetition and more verses. “White girls shake it til my dick turns racist. Black girls shake it til my dick turns racist” ???WTF I know idiocy is the whole point, but come on. My knowledge and use of English has yet to enable me to see how that is a compliment to anyone. It just sounds stupid. He even turned the music off to re-emphasize those lines and throw in references to Puerto Ricans and Filipinas as well. Some of the beats were nice and I think Naeem has real talent, I’d just like to see him do something other than a joke project. Their set ended with a bunch of girls dancing on stage, which sounds typical, but in all the shows I’ve seen I’ve never seen people getting down as un-self consciously on stage. Good work, Spankrock. Loosen up those Portlanders. Whatever DJ started playing immediately afterwards got me focused with a Baile Funk song but then went into a disco rock-overload song (Gossip remix?) that cleared almost everyone, myself included. Thanks to Scott and Jarkko for the guest slots.

Hopefully our Atlas show at Holocene tonight we’ll go off as well. See you there.

IK

6/4/06

I feel bad. People have been finding my blog by typing in key words surrounding the Gurdas Maan show at the Elsinore Theater in Salem. The reason they find my blog is because I typed just those words a while back mentioning that I had seen the show but at the time I said I was going to comment more later. Well, I never got back around to it and I’ve been feeling lax in my duties. I’m probably the worst person on earth to review the show and so much time has passed I am struggling with feeling that if I had written about it at the time then there would have been a lot more details to share. The theater is gorgeous. I had no idea it even existed. Anjali and I got there late and had to buy $75 “VIP” (not $100 VIP, VIP) tickets since the $50 tickets were all sold. I’m now wondering if Indian promoters usual obsession with different layers of VIP tickets and seating has something to do with a conscious or unconscious recreation of the caste system and the need for hierarchy in the Indian mind. Or just a profiteer’s desire to make some money from others stuck in such thinking. Regardless we ended up in the middle balcony. Gurdas Maan was already performing. I think the show got started an hour or so late so we didn’t miss much. The white ticket seller seemed a little flabbergasted at how late the show got started but I imagine she hasn’t worked many Indian events.

The sound was good. The level was slightly more than a classical performance but not anywhere near a rock show. There were 10 or more musicians. Several male backing singers with percussion. A dholak and a dhol and maybe another. No tumbi but a keyboard and two guitars. The songs were mostly quite fast and as furiously as the drummers were playing it never got that crazy simply because the house speakers were kept at relatively restrained levels. The band was expertly trained and rehearsed, songs rising and falling in volume with a gesture from Gurdas Maan. It made me think of James Brown and his old bands. No song maintained a volume level. The songs would alternate between portions with Gurdas singing and portions where the band let it rip. When Gurdas was singing the volume level of the instruments would drop to a hush allowing for maximum focus on and absorbtion of, his words. Here is the tricky part. My Panjabi is currently limited to a handful of words and I can’t make any comments about the content of the songs and how authentic, folky and cultural they were or weren’t. I would say from the style of the performance that they were certainly importantant to Gurdas Maan and that communicating those words to the audience was paramount. At one point a young Panjabi leaned over and asked me if I understood the words to which I had to respond in the negative.

There were many Indian families in attendance, mostly Panjabis. I have been to other local performances such as Balkar Sidhu and Surinder Shinda and this was by far the most well-attended. There were packs of Gabroos trying to get rowdy despite the overall tenor of the event. Many families looked on in consternation. The dancing would get so furious in one pack of Gabroos right at the edge of the balcony that Anjali and I expected one to fall over at any moment. This was on the staffs’ minds as well as they kept speaking to the group trying to get them to sit down. There was another group to our left that was seemingly allowed freer reign to dance throughout the performance and I’m not sure what accounted for the different levels of tolerance from the staff.

Because of my limited Panjabi I do not know whether Gurdas Maan was performing culture or pop or both. I know that pop Bhangra artists with traditional training and older Panjabi folk musicians and singers will lament how many of the rhythms and lyrical subjects of old are thrown away in favor of an endless string of “debased” songs designed for dancing in the clubs and being played on the radio. I think a linguistic and cultural insider would have a great deal to say about where Gurdas fell in this spectrum and I regret to inform you that I am not that guy. He did sing a Bhajan in praise of Hindu deities at the beginning of the show which I found quite fascinating at an event that I imagined would be mostly Sikh. The nature of religious expression and tolerance in India is very different than in the States for sure. I am not enough of an expert on Sikhism to know how common shout-outs to Hindu gods are.

Gurdas definitely played with the crowd. He sang to children and ended up surrounded with a pack of them at one point. One little boy was a spirited and natural Bhangra dancer. Gurdas loved singing to one of the white female bouncers on the side of the stage. I think he reached out to some elders up front as well. He played for 2 and 1/2 hours or more. There was an intermission after which all the promoters surrounded him on stage, gave him a bouquet and had several photos taken by a very serious and professional Sikh photographer who had been working the event all night.

I wish I had more lyrical and cultural insight into the performance than I did but I certainly don’t regret seeing one of the biggest Panjabi singers of all time with a full band. In Salem!

IK

6/4/06

Out of curiosity I was looking on wikipedia and learned (according to the anonymous wiki scribe) that Russell Peters has been a DJ since 1985. Maybe we should have stuck around but I couldn’t get excited knowing how typical the songs available in the crates were going to be.

The best comedy is truthful and finds a clever if not uproarious way in which to speak unspoken and/or uncomfortable truths. I think Chris Rock is great at this. This is different from simply breaking taboos and saying things to be offensive. Early on in the show Russell asked for members of different ethnic groups to make their presence known one at a time. Where my Indians at? Latinos? Blacks? etc. He never called out for “Arabs”(his term) until long after making them the butt of a lot of harsh jokes that had a timbre and reception different from any other ethnic humor during the night. The jokes revolved around the stereotypical image of Arabs as insane, homicidal, bomb-wielding terrorists. The best humor doesn’t reinforce stereotypes but flips them and yields a new perspective. The crowd would get incredibly loud, hooting and hollering and stamping their feet during these bits. Unlike much of Russell’s comedy these bits showed little insight or perspective. Bringing people with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds together just to laugh at the mainstream media’s current scapegoat people is hardly revolutionary or inspiring. Now obviously my ideas for Russell’s comedy and its potential are very different from his own. He’s just trying to get paid. I just see lost potential. “He’s just being funny. It’s just comedy. Don’t take it so seriously, yaar.” Well, no shit he’s just trying to be funny but there are a number of ways to be funny and some require little more than eliciting knee-jerk responses.

Russell also did a bit making fun of deaf people. To me this was an example of breaking taboos and being offensive that was actually funny and insightful. His bit revolved around not feeling sorry for deaf people because they don’t miss anything of the hearing world and are probably a lot better off in most situations not being able to hear. Knowing the pride and self-sufficiency of many in the deaf community I think he pegged their resistance to hearing-world condescension right on. He also pointed out the stereotypical and inflammatory ASL signs for different races which I can’t vouch for as far as accuracy because I only know a few ASL signs.

When I’m watching comedy I’m rarely thinking of ways I could improve the comic’s bits. I’m usually either entertained and following along or bored. With Russell’s act there were many times that I thought of very interesting places that he could push his routines that he didn’t use. There were a lot of points where I thought things could get very interesting and instead the thread just stopped not pushing into any new places. At one point he was talking about how you can’t tell different ethnicites by looking at them but the way they speak English will always give them away. People were obviously psyched to see him do this bit since well-done accents are a huge part of his act. He did a funny impersonation of a Vietnamese English speaker and then a Korean speaker that fell very flat, a broad exaggerated slow speech that didn’t accurately reflect any Koreans with whom Anjali or I have spoken English. And then that was that. I was expecting some tour de force of an around the world collection of accents but I think truthfully Russell has only a few accents that he relies on for his bits.