The Incredible Blog

4/16/06

We’ll see how much energy I have to get into this at 3:30am after having gotten home from the gig. Anjali and I just got back from DJing the City Repair Benefit at Loveland called “Love.” The color red was suggested and I’m certainly seeing some red now. We got there at 11:40 something with an expected start time of 12:00am. Well the band Jujuba who were playing the hour before us were still sound checking. They didn’t really get started until after 12:00am. Anjali and I figured our two hour set was about to become a one hour set. We have some experience with bands taking a lot of time and pushing the schedule back, shrinking the after-hours DJ set with every minute they are on stage. Some bands seem to do this with quite a bit of malice directed toward the DJs and probably the very concept of DJs as entertainmers and performers. After all we can’t play instruments, right, just records.

Well Jujuba didn’t seem like jerks, and I totally understand a band wanting to play a full set after spending all that time toting and setting up gear. However, the organizers tried to tell them several times that their set was over, even going so far as to turn the lights off on them at the end of songs twice. The first time the band seemed to be done they actually then started an interactive percussion jam with the audience focusing on clapping, etc. This seemed very appropriate for the theme and the desired energy of the night and I thought it was fine, not being very emotionally commited to playing a long time anyway. When they were finally finished it was after 1am and we were told to be off at 2am anyway since guest David Starfire was still scheduled to go on at 2am. Fine. Anjali and I are used to being smushed together and forced to share a single performer’s slot at festivals, etc. It’s frustrating because we don’t perfom side by side, we take turns and an hour is not a long time for one DJ to present a performance, much less two.

When the band finally was done there was no sound coming from the DJ mixer even though there should have been. Sound person and organizer running around trying to figure out why no sound was coming out. Eventually someone got it figured out and the signal being sent from my mixer was finally being heard over the sound system. But why was it so quiet? Anjali told me to turn it up several times until the mixer was all but maxed out. Still very quiet. Much quieter than the band that had just performed. I’m supposed to get a room full of people dancing to this background vibe? When you are playing dance music that no one in the room has heard before you really need volume and BASS. Nostalgic songs can get by with an audible melody and vocals and one can just sing along. There is an inverse relationship between familiarity of the song and the necessity for loudness and bass. Getting stiff Americans to dance to something they’ve never heard before requires a sound with such force that if compels the body to move. We did not have this going for us at this gig. People were dancing but it was like background music. I just gave up and played an organic, hard dhol sound that rarely crept above 100bpm until the last song, which was my perverse statement alternating between accapella Panjabi proclamations and rapid-fire dhol beats.

When Anjali started her half hour I went out for the first time to hear the sound from the perspective of the dancers and I couldn’t believe just how quiet it was. Now I know you’re thinking “Djs have blown-out ears and they always play way too loud.” Yeah, I know but Anjali and I have both recently had an audiologist exam us and neither of us have any sign of hearing loss. Can you believe it? But, you’re thinking “I’ve been to the Fez and or Holocene and it was way too loud, I had to leave.” I agree, that can happen. DJs try their best but sometimes things do get just too loud at club nights. This was not the case at this gig. I’m talking quiet. Like stand around and have conversations on the dance floor quiet. The organizers had actually been working with the soundman the whole time trying to get him to turn it up to no avail. Ethan, one of the members of Jujuba was saying that they had had a lot of trouble with him as well. That probably explains the long sound check for their band and the delayed schedule. Our friend Nick said that even though Jujuba were still louder than us he was standing right in front of the speaker listening to them without it being that loud.

Anjali played a much more electronic drum’n’bassy set than I had with a lot of songs carried by subsonic bass that was unfortunately hardly audible in that environment. When David Starfire went on he immediately pushed the mixer all the way into the red. Earlier when David wasn’t present Anjali and I had received a stern warning from the sound guy never to do that. I didn’t have the heart to tell David because that was the closest to still-far-from-acceptable sound that we had approached all evening. The sound man clearly wasn’t going to help him so he was left to his own devices. Poor guy. At least we didn’t have to fly to Portland to play in such compromised conditions. We can always play in town over a much better system the next week. There was a second DJ room upstairs. Ironically enough the sound was far louder up in the smaller, less-attended second room. What a joke. Unbelievable. What totally could have been a crazy rockin’ party was a subdued evening of wandering around in a world of background sonics. What a loss. Hopefully City Repair made some funds.

IK

4/15/06

Just back home after our second ever all ages party after having just got back from SF this morning. Would love to tell you all about SF, the Little Baobab gig, and the Nocturnal gig. Tired. Sleep-deprived. As far as “Rang de Basanti” goes, thank you to Russ for working the door, Blaine for souping up the soundboard, and Daljit and Avtar of Indian Chaat House for all the snacks. Thank you to Joti for everything in SF! Thank you to everyone who showed up to both gigs.

IK

PS Support Halo Thai on Alberta. We just discovered them and they are a significant cut above your standard Portland Thai restaurant.

So, I feel like I still have a great deal of work to do to get ready for our San Francisco gig. I hate packing. And packing for a gig on top of that? Uggh. Enough procrastinating. Hope some of you are up for coming out to Atlas and having some fun tonight. I need to get in the mood and the packing is proving a serious buzzkill.

Peace to all.

IK

3/29/06

One thing that has been amusing Anjali and I lately are all the DJs who are ashamed of their age. You’d think that with a name that includes the word “Kid” I’d be somewhat circumspect about matters of age but Anjali and I both celebrated very public 30th birthdays. Meanwhile I see other DJs in the biz perpetually turning 27 or 28 even if I swore I celebrated a thirtieth birthday of theirs at some point. There is a sentiment of at least some in the industry that the people in power in the biz consider you washed up at 30. That is so much bullshit. Any DJ worth their salt has had years to listen to music, and the better the DJ the better they get the more music they discover. As a teenager the concept of the child prodigy had me feeling washed-up and a failure at age 16. It was too late to do anything or achieve anything artistically meaningful. This is such a worthless thought process. We are only limited by our own belief in our limitations. There is nothing to keep you from doing something wonderful except your own thoughts and beliefs to the contrary. If everyone pretends to be younger than they are then the kids today will have unrealistic and potentially damaging notions of what they should have achieved by a certain age. Instead of the instantly brilliant child we need more role models of those who came into creative flower much later in life whether they be Henry Miller or Laura Ingalls Wilder.

3/28/06

So, I was looking at our website this morning and I noticed that the first line of our first page mentioned a “non-smoling”(sic) dance floor. I was terribly embarrassed having written that myself and until now never noticing the misspelling. I tend to be very critical of obvious spelling errors on other people’s sites so it was quite humbling to see that I had left that as the first line on our site for a few weeks. It doesn’t help to know that we had hundreds of visitors during that time and who knows how many people thought, “idiots.” Feel free to write me if you ever notice bonehead manuevers like that. I somehow made it all the way through school without a single grammar lesson so I know anything I write is probably a grammarian’s nightmare but I do what I can.

IK

3/27/06
So, as if heading down to play in San Francisco for the first time wasn’t enough, Anjali and are I playing at least once if not twice a weekend all five weekends in April. If you think our main page looks busy that’s just part of the story. The month also has it’s share of private parties and weddings. I haven’t been to SF since the tail end of the 90’s. I would love to go for at least a week and two weekends but our schedule won’t allow it. We are thrilled to be staying with our friend Joti who has done so much to put this all together. We are even fortunate enough to have her give a Bhangra dance lesson at our show. Hopefully we can get a bunch of people to come out that night, things being relatively last minute as far as press release schedules and things go.

Thank you to everyone who came out to Andaz on Saturday. Another great night and another great crowd. Seth and Jeevan, welcome back from India! Great to see you. Shira, thanks for making us sound so good. For the people who requested “Dola Re,” I did play it at 2:50am in the morning. Sorry if you didn’t make it that long.

IK

3/27/06
Thank you to everyone who listened to our radio show last night. And thank you especially to everone who pledged and became KBOO members. KBOO is the longest-running community radio station in the country. It’s thanks to people like you that the station has lasted as long as it has. For the first time ever KBOO is hosting the National Conference of Community Broadcasters. We will be playing at Doug Fir lounge on April 21st as part of the conference. This will also be a benefit for KBOO.

Well, now that I have some concept of how many people come here to take a look at my scrawlings I end up feeling guilty if I don’t put something up here regularly for your delectation. Since the last post was about Booty I will let you know how that went. It came together at the last minute so I was bummed I didn’t get more a chance to promote it and get the word out. It is a party I’ve always wanted to DJ since a really crazy crowd comes out to get down. I played a mix of reggaeton, baile funk, bhangra and A LOT of dirty Hip-hop. I don’t know how much people appreciated the nasty hip hop but it is what I wanted to play since I love it so and I get few chances to spin it out. Anjali and I have both learned it is not so appreciated by our Andaz fans. Anjali thinks she permanently alienated some fans when she dropped Shawna’s “Shake that Shit” some time ago. We love that song. Actually, we love Shawna period. RPM!! Here’s hoping she drops a hot new album soon. Anyway, point being that although I love to focus primariy on international music I love me my US born and raised Hip-hop but people might be disappointed at my playing it since they might be hoping for something more unusual and unknown from me. What do I know, I kept people dancing and that was what I was there for. Thank you to Puppet and Stormy and MoRocca for letting me share the evening with y’all.

So I’ve been stressed out for quite a while now getting ready for a huge Greek/Lebanese wedding at which I recently performed. Now that it is over Anjali can attest to my greatly reduced stress levels. When I perform at events largely attended by people of other cultures (just like I do for any audience) I go crazy trying to make sure I have every essential song that anyone might request. It had been a while since I had spent a lot of time and money exploring contemporary Arabic music. I have quite a large collection that just got a lot larger. In an earlier post I shouted out maqam.com and Chadi in particular for being so helpful. Well, I was under the impression that they are the largest distributor of Arabic music in the US. Well, I have also frequented Rashid Music Sales in Brooklyn and their website claims they are “the largest and oldest distributor of Arabic music.” I have certainly found a lot of great stuff there as well. You can check them out at rashid.com.

I went absolutely maniacal for a while there trying to get every Arabic and international pop hit I could get my hands on. Trying to imagine every direction that crowd might want me to go. Most of it was for naught as is often the case. The Greek music for the wedding was not my responsibility and instead I was to be handed a CD the day of the wedding. Interestingly enough they put the song “Bure Bure/Boro Boro” from the Bluffmaster soundtrack on there twice. I wondered to what extent Bollywood pop was saturating the international dance scene. Funnily enough I had to depend on that CD like crazy and not the entire suitcase of Arabic music I brought. The Greek relatives were the aggressive dancers who kept making requests and packing the floor. I couldn’t even get a proper dabke dance out of the Lebanese contingent. Well, don’t be surprised to hear a lot more Arabic music at Atlas since I now have a GREATLY expanded collection of Arabic pop and electronica. The second half of the wedding became a strictly Western music free-for-all: 70’s funk, 80’s, Hip-hop. I knew someone was going to request “My Humps” I just didn’t expect it to be an older white guy. Maximum saturation. Radio programmers say a song is only played out when not only all of their listeners are sick of it but everyone who doesn’t usually listen to their station knows it as well. Congratulations, “My Humps.”

The next night Anjali and I were to go to Stereolab but their bus got stuck in the snowy mountains so the show happened on Wednesday, March 8th. Well, I kind of psychically knew that we were arriving for their last song. Which we were. One of my favorites off Emperor Tomato Ketchup. We caught that and their two song encore with a song from Dots and Loops and “We’re Not Adult Orientated.” Anyone have a set list for that show? (Actually their offical website just helped me out www.stereolab.co.uk) I’ve seen them around 15 times and the last time (post-Mary) was by far the worst. Slow, uninvolving songs with Laetitia playing an unconvicing trombone. Well, she didn’t have a trombone for the few songs I saw. I love her voice, but I really think the songs benefit from a second voice. Never appreciated Mary enough when she was alive, unfortunately. Despite the sucky sound at the Wonder the show (what I saw of it) was a million times better than the last one I saw. I miss going on the road and seeing them several times in a row. I only wish they realized how much some of their fans want them to play long, noisy freak-outs. Yeah, they have amazing songs, but they are also great at the mind-melt.

The Stereolab show was an early one, so despite the fact that we never go out Anjali and I ended up at three shows that evening. Anjali wanted to check out Controller, Controller at Lola’s (thanks, Chantelle) because of their desi singer. We got to that show for the last song as well. Very metallish, and the singer had quite the stage presence. The 15 people at that show were a million times more energetic than the entire Stereolab crowd. Several people had come from quite far away to see that show and people were jumping so hard the ball bearing floor was rocking out of control. Next we went to see Dengue Fever at the Towne Lounge. We arrived shortly after the start of their set, packed crowd and the singer was so short we barely caught a glimpse. They do the retro-Cambodian pop thing so well we left shortly after with my thinking I could be listening to an old Cambodian pop recording at home without being in a packed club. She has the voice, for sure.

On Saturday we went to a packed showing of “Rang De Basanti” at the Valley in Beaverton. A little slice of India in the NW, the showing was a mob of Indian families. They oversold the viewing so we were sitting in the aisles along with families in chairs blocking the fire exits. Every walkway was filled with sitting people. The sound sucked and sounded distorted during the songs, which are bad, sorry A.R. Rahman fans. “Loose Control?” Yuck. The movie gets quite bloody and intense and there were a lot of children all the way down to infants. Some of them will be having some bad dreams I imagine. We got out of the movie with only hours to make it to our gigs. Anjali was opening for Sky Cries Mary at the Doug Fir and we were both playing Atlas that night. Of course we left everything for the last minute, weren’t prepared at all, and ran around like crazy to make it to the gigs on time.

I had the early slot at Atlas and was quite pleased with myself, dropping all sorts of great Arabic percussion pieces I discovered along with the amazing “El Hawa Sultan” by George Wassouf. I even got a micro dancefloor going to a Tigarah track and the Casiocity remix of Mr. Shin San. My second set was certainly mega-poppy opening as it did with Zion y Lennox “No Pares.” Anjali may have been playing drum’n’bass but I wanted to slow it down and not try to match that tempo. Now that international music is being integrated much more commonly into the pop mainstream I could play Sean Paul “Legalize It,” Daddy Yankee “Rompe” the Elephant Man, Pitbull remix of “Shake” and Rihanna’s “S.O.S.” (Hey she’s Caribbean!) and be playing radio hits while also sticking to the international theme. Welcome to the 21st century. Anjali absolutely killed it with her second set. Blazing Asian drum’n’bass up until an eclectic ending at 3am. Still with a floor of dancers. Quite a scene. Glad I was there to witness it.

Now I sign off and get started on my 2005 taxes. Let’s just say I have grocery sacks filled with receipts that I need to itemize. Last year it took me 20 some hours and I swore I would never get that far behind again. Ah well, looks like I know what I will be doing the next week. I hope everyone is well. Take care.

IK

PS I just read the second collection of Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency. I like it way better than the first 6 issues, possibly because the art is far slicker. Love the kinetic harpoon episode.

I’ve always wanted to drop a variety of madness at one of DJ Puppet’s Booty parties up in the hood in North Portland. This Thursday, March 2nd it will finally happen. I’ve always appreciated the chaotic energy of the Booty parties and with some subwoofer power brought in for the occasion I will be eager to rock the tin shack with some heavy stuff. Since Mr. Kevin Sampsell has not thrown a “Booty Call” reading/dance party for some time I’ve been sitting on a lot of the nasty stuff waiting for the right crowd to rock it to. Whether it’s Baile Funk, Old-School Miami Bass, Reggaeton or Baltimore Club; the nasty stuff is the fun stuff.
BOOTY HOMEPAGE

IK

PS I found out that with Northwest Film Center guests our last Andaz had well over 600! people. Crazy.

So, I have a laptop that likes to act up occasionally and delete things I’m in the middle of writing, like say the blog post I was just in the middle of composing. Arggh. I’ll recap. I’m quite tired. Anjali and I DJed Andaz on Saturday and I am feeling the 5am bedtime for sure. I learned it is the second day after getting no sleep that is the worst. I’m currently in the midst of listening to a huge stack of Arabic CDs I recently ordered to catch me up on the latest stuff for a Lebanese wedding I will be DJing. My collection of Arabic music is already quite large, but I can be quite obsessed about making sure I have all the latest and greatest for particular gigs. If you are at all interested in Arabic music I highly recommend you check out www.maqam.com. They are the US’s largest distributor of Arabic music and there are sound samples for just about everything. Chadi helped me enormously in putting together my order.

Andaz was as crazy as it always is these days. It’s quite something to get used to more than 500 people showing up at our parties. We weren’t happy with the sound and I was tinkering with it all night so I hope it didn’t interfere with anyone having a good time. I guess the bass is never big enough and the drums never hit hard enough for me. I want the music to HIT. HARD. When I’m playing music that not everyone is familiar with it becomes really important that the sound is heavy enough to move people. The more people are familiar with a song the less important the sound quality is because people can just ride the wave of familiarity and nostalgia.

I had a fun time at the Ghetturista we did at ACME the other week. It was good to hang out with DJ Blackmarks and hear Anjali play nasty things like T. Waters “Throw’d Off.” The sound there is a million times better now that they have the two ENORMOUS bass bins. That soundsystem can now easily handle all my favorite bass-heavy musics. I would love to go back there and drop some more of that low, low stuff.

Anjali and I did another episode of our KBOO show. Since it is on fourth Sundays it often falls on the day after Andaz and we are wiped out and less than optimally coherent. We had a good time but we are still getting used to hosting the show together. It can be tough to talk on the air together without stepping on each other’s toes or leaving awkward silences. It’s not as easy as it might seem from listening to your average blabbing radio hosts.

I went to my first Black Metal show in more than a decade last night. Actually, probably my first any-kind-of-metal show in the last decade. My friend leads L’Acephale and I had the pleasure of checking out their show at the Ash Street Saloon. My ears were already fried from Saturday night when I woke up Sunday and realized that their show was happening in the evening. Well, my ears were fried in all new ways after getting back from their show last night. High-pitched guitar shred creates a very different ear-ringing than a booming dance party. My ears got to experience the whole range of ringing and whooming and screaming. Good show guys. Nice and ceremonial and emotional and intense. And 4-inch spike arm gauntets! Nice.