The Incredible Blog

7/04/08

It has been quite a long time since I failed as spectacularly as I did at the Fez Ballroom at the June Andaz. It was a hot, hot, hot day for Portland: 100 degrees Farenheit. The heat was even more startling, given that the nights have been around 50 degrees lately. The number of people at our club nights is usually inversely proportional to how hot it is that day. When I checked the forecast last week, and saw how hot Saturday was going to be, I knew we would be having a really lightly-attended night. Really light. A little less than 250 people through the door makes it our quitest Andaz night in many years, although given how hot it was, we were lucky that anyone was there at all. We were also fortunate to have Joti Singh, founder of the Duniya Dance Company, up from San Francisco, to grace our night out with a bhangra dance lesson.

Before she began the lesson I had started the night out playing a bunch of Telugu soundtracks. My love affair with Tollywood music has continued unabated since I finally got serious about my interest after four years, and started buying just about every Tollywood soundtrack I could get my hands on in the last six months. It has been one of the most inspiring sources of new sounds for me in 2008, and one of my big challenges these days is to figure out how to incorporate more of this music into my sets.

It wasn’t my first set that was a spectacular failure, nor my second set, which I think was generally well-received. In fact, at points during my second set there was such a dense group of people literally jumping up and down near the DJ booth, that I had to grab on to the rocking DJ table to stabilize it in a succesful attempt to keep the music from skipping. I forced “Pappu Can’t Dance” (Remix) into my set, because even if no one knows it yet, I have been obsessed with both versions of the song lately. Major cheeze pop infatuation going on there. I hardly played any bhangra. The few Panjabi songs I did play I felt like I had to forcibly crowbar into my set, and while Anjali appreciated them, I’m not sure who else did. Except for my friends Deep and Cheema, I didn’t get any Panjabi requests all night.

No matter how hot it was, and no matter how much the Fez felt like the inside of an aquarium, Anjali kept the floor filled with dancers until 2am when we switched off for the final time. In the days before Andaz, I found myself reflecting on gigs in the past when Anjali had established such a tight rapport with the crowd that I felt helpless to do anything other than clear the floor once I went on after her. In my reflecting I felt like that was a distant past, that didn’t appply to where I am at as a DJ today. It was like remembering an ancient version of myself, that I have since overcome.

Funny.

Anjali’s last song was “Khai Ke Paan Banaras Wala,” so I knew I was going to need to start off with an older classic that everyone knew. Lately I’ve been listening to the 6-CD Bhangra Grove compilation, which has a CD of filmi bhangra, and rediscovering lots of old songs I had forgotten about. I had resurrected “Kudiyaan Shehar Diyan” from Arjun Pandit for Filmistan recently, and that went over so well, that I decided to take the same tack at Andaz. As a general rule, Anjali and I never play Daler Mehndi at Andaz, no matter how many requests we might get. When Rang de Basanti was huge, I did play the title song several times, simply in response to the tide of requests, but that is the exception to the rule. However, based on the ecstatic response that  “Kudiyaan Shehar Diyan” received at Filmistan, I decided to see if lightning would strike twice. However, I didn’t cue up “Kudiyaan Shehar Diyan,” but another Daler Mehndi song directly preceding it on the CD, “Na Na Na Na Na Re.” Maybe if I had successfully cued up the song I intended to things would have gone different. Who can say?

“Na Na Na Na Na Re” is a hyper-fast spazz fest, and Anjali had already warned me during my earlier set that people were so hot and tired that I better lower the BPMs, since people weren’t going to be able to keep up. In the opening seconds of the song I didn’t even have to look up to feel the energy sucked out of the entire room. I knew that I just made up everyone’s minds that now was the moment to leave for home. Apparently in addition to being an awful song choice, Anjali came in the booth to let me know that the recording sounded horrible. She thought it sounded so distorted that it was as if I was playing a noise rock song or something. As I watched 100 some dancers heading for the exit while my first song played I realized I had to salvage the situation immediately in a major way if I was to be playing to anyone other than myself for my final set. I decided to play another Amitabh classic, “Rang Barse,”hoping against hope, that I could dissuade some of the fleeing patrons from their current course of action. Never mind that it is a Holi song. Never mind that we are months past that celebration. I was just trying to lure some people back with a classic. No dice, although Anjali did say that people were singing along on their way out the door, so I guess that is my consolation prize.

Having cleared nearly everyone in the club except for Cheema and Deep, I played their respective requests, Diljit’s “Sharaab” and Surinder Shinda’s “Put Jattan De,” and then without much thought, put on the Safri Boys “Pao Bhangra,” before leaving to move the car, which was parked far from the club. This was at 2:25am, and I figured that the four dancers left in the club wouldn’t have a problem with my shutting things down a half hour early. I had sympathy for the Fez staff, and didn’t want to keep them late, if most of the dancers had gone home. Anjali and I had not had any food since lunch, so she was eating her dinner at 2:30am at a table outside the DJ booth when I left her to go move the car. I find out from her later that the four remaining dancers flipped her shit for shutting down at 2:30am instead of 3:00am, and she didn’t appreciate my abandoning her to deal with unhappy dancers when I had simply left and not even announced, “last song” or anything. Oops. I couldn’t imagine the few people left would have any problem with a 2:30am closing time, after such a long, hot night. I was wrong. They weren’t quitters, unlike me, so I will give them that. Just don’t abuse Anjali having her first meal in twelve hours, when its my fault the music stopped.

See you next month.

IK

Anjali and I caught Firewater at the Doug Fir last week.  I had never heard of them before, but when DJ Rekha was in town recently, she had told Anjali that the legendary dholi and leader of the Dhol Foundation, Johnny Kalsi, was touring with them.  Anjali and I weren’t aware that the show was happening until the day of (or I would have writtten about it in my blog), and I was very skeptical that Johnny Kalsi was actually going to be on stage with them in Portland, Oregon, but shortly after we arrived (forty-five minutes after their start time, according to the posted schedule) at the Doug Fir, Todd A, the leader of Firewater, introduces a song called “Bhangra Brothers” that featured some solo dhol action Johhny Kalsi.

As I watched the pumped and packed crowd respond raucously to Johhny’s acrobatic dhol solos, I realized that after nearly six years of Andaz, we have yet to feature a live dholi at our night.  Anjali and I travel so much, and see such a range of Desi events, featuring dholis of many different ability levels, in many different contexts, that I forget that people stuck in Portland, who rely on our nights for their bhangra fix,  have possibly never seen the power and thrill of a live dhol performance.  We have to do something about this.

The problem is that there are so many mediocre dhol players, and so few real talents.  A lot of Desi DJ nights in other towns regularly feature dholis who often can’t play in time with the music, and just create a clashing, clanging mess.  Sometimes they can stay on rhythm briefly, and then they veer off into trainwreck territory.  I was once in the balcony of a club at a Desi DJ night, and I heard the downstairs dholi consistently playing a completely different rhythm from the DJ, that sounded awful. I couldn’t see him from the balcony, so I went downstairs to see what was going on.  The dholi was in the crowd, not on stage, and playing for a group of his friends, showing them his licks, while completely ignoring what the DJ was doing. No wonder it was such a train wreck.

Quality first.  That is why you haven’t seen Anjali and I feature a dholi yet, because we would only want to spotlight the very best.  Raymond Bhullar of the Dhol Nation Academy often comes up in our discussions, so we may just have to arrange for him to come down from Canada at some point. After the Firewater show we asked Johnny Kalsi about performing a solo show in Portland, but he says he wouldn’t do that to his band.  The Dhol Foundation are an awesome and powerful sight, as I discovered when I had the joy of seeing them at the Basement Bhangra Ten Year Anniversary show, but we are going to need to source some major funding to bring a fourteen-piece percussion ensemble from London.  Their albums don’t even come close to capturing the force of their live presence, and I highly recommend checking out the Dhol Foundation if you happen to be attending European Summer festivals, where you will probably be most likely to see them.  Our fantasy is to have them play an all-ages outdoor Summer show at the Oregon Zoo some year.  That would be amazing.

IK

6/8/08

Thank you to everyone who came down to our first night of Filmistan yesterday evening.  It has been a long time since Anjali and I threw an all-Bollywood party, and it felt good to have the dance floor full all night.  We went on after an early show of Mortified, and the owner of the Someday Lounge said that Filmistan was the most success they have ever had throwing a late event after an early event. Because of my experience playing at spoken word events, I know that most people that pay to sit around and listen to people talk for hours don’t stick around to dance afterwards. The place was PACKED with screaming, howling, laughing audience members when we arrived, and I predicted to the promoter that they probably wouldn’t stick around for the DJs. I referred to Mortified as a spoken word event and the promoter corrected me, explaining that it was not “spoken word,” but a “comedy” event, and that therefore people would be more likely to hang around after the readings stopped. Yeah, right. However, even I was taken aback at the rapidity at which hundreds of thoroughly-engaged people immediately vanished after Mortified ended. There were only a few stragglers left when I made it to the stage to begin setting up after Anjali and I had been introduced as, “Filmistan, a Bollywood DJ.” Given how much name recognition Anjali has in this town, I wonder if any more people would have stuck around, if we had been introduced by name.

The event would have been a total bust without all the people who showed up and danced and sung along, so thank you to everyone who came for making the event a fun one. We don’t have any future dates set up at the Someday Lounge currently, but don’t be surprised to see future installments of Filmistan.

Being a gora who has only been listening to filmi for a decade, who is often playing for Desis who grew up listening to filmi all their lives, I am always curious as to how Desi audience members will respond to my sets. I went on first, and I started out playing vintage Bollywood disco and funk. I entertained the idea of going more contemporary before the end of my first set, but I never did, instead choosing to play nothing more recent than the early ’80s. It turns out there were a few attitudinal Desi girls from Seattle at the show, who complained to Anjali about how “awful” I was. No doubt if I was playing more recent songs from Tashan, Race,and Jab We Met, like I did in my second set, they would have been much happier. I don’t think they stuck around that long, which just goes to show that while there are plenty of Desis that appreciate the eighty year history of filmi music, the ones I often deal with at dance nights, are the ones who only care about the songs that in their minds are the latest and the coolest. If you only care to hear songs when they are at the height of the charts, and don’t want to hear them once they have aged some, how good were they ever really?

Contemporary Bollywood may be slick, but it is mostly missing funk and soul. While some of the goreh had trouble with the percussion breakdowns on some of the older Bollywood numbers I played, I was happy to feature so much vintage funkiness in my first set. Thanks to those who danced and supported from my first tracks. See you next time.

IK

It has been a while since we had a guest at Atlas, and we are thrilled to have Toy Selectah from Monterrey, Mexico at our night.  Here is a bit from the myspace-cribbed press release I sent out:

Atlas presents…

Toy Selectah (Control Machete/Sonidero Nacional) from Monterrey,
Mexico.  The founder of Mexico’s most important hip-hop band, and a
member of Mexico’s most cutting edge cumbia sound system plays a
guest set at Holocene’s longest-running dance party.

http://www.myspace.com/toyselectahdj

Saturday, June 14th, 2008

Hope to see you all there.

IK

It has been quite a while since Anjali and I threw an all-Bollywood dance party.  The last one was years ago at Saucebox, and it just so happened that the bathrooms flooded at Saucebox that night and the floor of the club was swimming in overflowing toilet water.  Let’s hope the bathrooms at the Someday lounge don’t suffer a similar fate on June 7th.

IK

As far as I know, a major league reggaeton artist has never performed in the Portland area.  This Friday the 16th of May, Nicky Jam will be performing at Studio 503 in Beaverton.  Thanks to Alissa for the heads up.  I will be busy DMing a D&D session that night, or I would be there, paying the grossly inflated cover price.  I’m not the biggest Nicky Jam fan, but I have played “Gas Pela” off his new album at Atlas on several occasions.  You aren’t going to get many chances to see a Reggaeton artist perform in the Portland area, I can tell you that. If you go, shoot me a line and tell me what  I missed.  Thanks.

IK

Last Wednesday was superhero twofer day. First, the Nick, Dark Bambi and I went to see a preview screening of Iron Man. I was hopeful from seeing the previews, and I was excited by the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, as I’ve always liked Robert Downey Jr., ever since his sidekick role in Back to School. I liked the satirical portrayal of arms dealers in the preview, but I was afraid the movie would devolve into a jingoistic battle of the all-American hero armed with superior weapons of mass destruction taking on the evil Muslim terrorists. While I concede all of the political points made by Aaron Mesh in his review of the film, I guess my standards are much lower for superhero popcorn flicks. I was pleasantly surprised to see that killing brown people isn’t the primary narrative thrust of the movie. In fact, it is the American arms sellers who are the ultimate evil in the film. There is a scene with terrorists terrorizing Afghani families, and I really appreciated the film showing that the terrorists are a minority in a society of regular people just trying to get along. There is even a sympathetic portrayal of a Afghani scientist working alongside Tony Stark in captivity.

Gwyneth Paltrow was OK as Tony Stark’s assistant, but her acting just falls apart at the end. There are several scenes where she’s standing around trying to act scared talking into a headset. I guess she doesn’t do a good job of acting when she only has a headset to play off of. (This is in stark [ha-ha] contrast to Robert Downey Jr. who does a great job of playing off of inanimate objects throughout the film.) I was disappointed to see Pepper Potts as the love interest, as my early childhood exposure to Iron Man was when he was dating the fabulously sultry and deadly Bethany Cabe, who would make a far better foil for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark than mousy Gwyneth Paltrow.

I was disappointed that the final battle scene in the movie has Stane and Tony Starks de-masking mid battle so you can see them emoting, which directors apparently consider necessary in the climactic battles in superhero movies so the actors can properly practice their craft without the interference of masks, but which I just find silly. (Hey, in ancient Greek tragedy, didn’t they wear masks the whole performance?)

Iron Man does look as cool as possible. In fact, I think its the first time I thought the movie version of a comic character looked better than the comic book version. They really did a good job on the special effects with this one, even if I didn’t buy Robert Downey Junior knocking out the suit after a few weeks in his private lab. Much less at a desert campsite. Since Jon Favreau has two sequels planned, I am looking forward to seeing where he takes Tony Stark. We know from the comics that Tony’s battle with alcoholism lies ahead.

Anjali joined the Nick and I for the second part of our superhero-twofer and she and I finally saw Batman Begins on DVD that night. In general I never watch videos or DVDs, because I only want to see films on the big screen. I made an exception for this film since I missed its theatrical release and Anjali and I are planning on seeing the sequel this summer. I really liked Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and figured that his take on Batman would be hard-hitting, dark and scary. Certainly not cheezy. Christian Bale did OK as playboy Bruce Wayne, but the first appearance of the Batman was laughable to me. Bale’s hoarse whispering from behind the bat cowl only elicited groans from me, not any sort of fear or awe. Why whisper in a raspy voice? I don’t find it intimidating or threatening. Just silly. “I’m Batman.” Indeed.

The movie radically changed all sorts of details from the Batman comics, and while I don’t think a film has to slavishly adhere to the comics continuity, I do think the changes should serve a purpose and not just be done willy-nilly. The myth of Batman is of the perfect, self-actualized man. A man who has trained his body and mind to their highest potential. We never Nolan’s Batman use his brain at all. Batman is supposed to be a scientist, inventor, and genius of advanced technology and organic chemistry. In this film Batman is a frat boy with some martial arts skills who turns to Lucius Fox for every kind of technological fix he needs. That is a fundamental derivation from the Batman myth. Batman created everything he needed, he didn’t turn to another genius inventor whenever he needed a technological solution to a problem. They changed Spider-Man in the movies in the same way. In the comics Peter Parker was a genius who created his own web shooters and web fluid. In the movie they make these an organic part of his powers, he doesn’t invent anything. I find it interesting that the geeky adolescent boys who have supported these characters in comic book form for many decades delight in the brainy, tech-y side of these characters, but no doubt in order to make these characters appeal to a dumb-ass, mainstream audience, they remove the genius inventor side of the character, and just make them punch people. Granted, Peter Parker is still portrayed as brainy in the movies, but not a super-genius.

In Batman Begins we see Bruce Wayne live with thieves, and even become a thief, to understand them, but he never becomes any sort of investigator or detective. Batman is a master detective, the “world’s greatest detective.” We don’t get any sense of that.

One thing I did appreciate about the film was the way Christopher Nolan tried to give you the thieves’-eye view of the Batman as a frightening figure who appears out of the darkness and tortures you or beats you senseless. I liked that he tried. It could have been far more effective. These scenes should have been filmed to create far more fear in the viewer, like a good horror movie where the viewer identifies with the crooks, and dreads what might be in the shadows hunting them.

Mostly I was really underwhelmed by the direction. I found the camera angles boring and typical. While I liked the Batmobile’s design, and it actually seemed practical, I found the chase scenes totally uninvolving. The Batmobile racing around on rooftops really didn’t do it for me. In general I like Gary Oldman, but I really think his portrayal of Jim Gordon fell flat. I didn’t buy a lot of his dialogue. It’s like he was trying so hard to get his American accent down that he forgot the put any life into the role. Katie Holmes was awful. I’ve never seen her in a movie before, and couldn’t understand for the life of me why they cast her. She has a really odd, unattractive look, with the right side of her face pulled into a lopsided grimace, making it appear stuck in some sort of paralyzed tic. The kissing scene at the end was completely creepy. Easily the scariest thing in the film.

I liked how Nolan tried to make the Scarecrow a character that was actually scary, because that is the last thing I have ever found that character, and while they found a sufficiently creepy actor to play him, I found the drug scenes to be pathetic. Shaking the camera a lot does not a scary scene create. Some of the scenes with worms were cool, but all of the drug scenes could have been directed with far more creativity and intensity. Wasted opportunities for the most part. I was really shocked at how amateurish and TV-movie-from-the-’80s the direction felt. I’m amazed at all the positive reviews. Then again, I HATED Burton’s first Batman film, and never bothered to watch any of the others. Bale is a better choice than Michael Keaton, but they are both not the right actors for the job. I thought Kim Basinger was such a bad choice in the ’80s Batman, but Katie Holmes actually makes her look good by comparison. Ugggh.

Going right from Iron Man to Batman Begins, I thought that Batman Begins was going to be the better film, but even though it is a fairly predictable popcorn flick, I thought Iron Man did a much better job of actualizing a comic book character than Batman Begins. I am still looking forward to The Dark Knight, if only because I liked the Joker’s card scene at the end of Batman Begins. Appropriately creepy, and I liked Gordon’s speech about escalation, implicating Batman in the creation of any future supervillains that might emerge. We shall soon see if the sequel does any more for me than the highly-disappointing first film in the series.

IK

I picked up Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon just recently, and tore threw it in a very short amount of time. I had put off reading it for a while fearing that it would repeat a lot of the material from Ronin Ro’s Tales to Asonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution which I reviewed in this blog last Summer. Actually, despite involving a lot of the same figures, and a lot of the same creations and timelines, they read like totally different books. Other than a few quotes and anecdotes, I did not feel like I was re-reading something I had read previously. I think the book does a good job of trying to assess exactly what Stan Lee’s role in the creation of Marvel comics was, since all of his “creations” as a writer were co-creations with visual artists, most importantly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

What is amazing to think of is that from 1961 to 1964 Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were responsible for creating the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Iron-Man, the X-Men, and Daredevil; and based on a Jack Kirby concept, artist Steve Ditko and Stan Lee created Spider-Man. Now these creations dominate the cultural landscape, but before 2000 when the first X-Men movie was released, Stan Lee had little luck in interesting Hollywood studios in Marvel’s characters, which was his job to do for decades. There were a few cartoons, a Hulk TV show, and a few cheapie movies, but for almost forty years, Stan Lee struggled to interest Hollywood in his co-creations. People weren’t interested. Amazing to think about, now that the X-Men movies have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, the Spider-Man movies have grossed more than a billion, and Iron-Man just earned almost a hundred million dollars in its opening weekend. Who knows how successful the new Hulk movie will be later this Summer? It took only a few years for Jack Kirby and Stan Lee to create all these characters, and then it took forty years for these character concepts to take over the mainstream. Talk about being ahead of their time.

Stan Lee was a company man from his earliest days in the comic biz, the cousin-in-law of the publisher, and Marvel will continue to pay him a million dollars every year until his death. Jack Kirby was a freelancer, paid by the page, and never received a penny in royalties in his life from all of his creations. (Hell, he created the Silver Surfer and Galactus entirely on his own, but you can be sure his estate didn’t see any money from the second Fantastic Four movie which featured those concepts.) When he died in 1994, he knew he lost out on millions of dollars from his creations, but little could he imagine the extreme wealth that his characters would continue to generate for other people who had not a hand in their creation, within a decade of his death.

Stan Lee doesn’t come off as some evil scum in the book, but the book does show that he is largely responsible for the fact that most people think he alone created all the famous Marvel characters. He appointed himself sole media representative of the company for decades, and made everyone think he was the genius behind all of the Marvel properties in interview after interview. “Stan Lee presents” was emblazoned across the front page of every Marvel comic I read as a child in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and he was a legendary figure. In retrospect it seems that he was little more than a dialogue writer, who has made a living off of taking credit for the conceptual and visual creations of his artists. He does great cameos in movies, but he has always been a figure head, a representative, not the source of ideas that someone like Jack Kirby really was. If Marvel was the “House of Ideas,” it was Jack’s house. He built it. Not Stan Lee. He was just the realty agent. And over decades, he couldn’t interest anyone with big pockets to invest. It was only after Avi Arad took over as chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment in the ’90s that all of the big deals have gone down, and all the big money has been earned. Stan’s job for most of his later life was to sell Marvel comics and Marvel characters. It took a businessman with a bachelor of business administration to broker the fantastic deals that Stan Lee always strived for and never achieved. After several hundred pages of examination, the book concludes:

Stan Lee stands larger than life, lighter than air, and thinner than the pulp on which he made his name–a disposable product that better exists in our collective memories than under the yellowing light of serious examination. But, thanks to Marvel Comics, we expect our heroes to have feet of clay.

Excelsior!

IK

Anjali and I spent a week on the beach in Mexico at the end of April and got back the day before our April Andaz party. Other than a boutique called India Bazaar right outside the Zocalo in Mexicio City which was playing current Bollywood hits, we didn’t hear any Indian music in all that time. (I did have Jay Dabhi’s bhangraton remix of Taz’s “Jawani” running through my head the entire trip, however.) This was very different than our usual routine which involves lots of listening to popular Indian music. We had to really switch gears from lazy days in San Pancho to playing Indian dance music for hundreds of people at the Fez.

Anjali started out with an hour of Asian R&B. Not sure how much this threw people off, either first-timers, or long-time attendees, who may have wondered about the lack of filmi and bhangra tunes. It took quite a while for us to start laying down the bhangra and Bollywood. I started my first set with quite a few Hindi-ton and bhangraton songs. The crowd seemed rather listless and less than energetic, and I couldn’t tell how much that had to do with the music I was playing, and how much had to do with the beautiful sunny day that much of Saturday had been before our club night started. I eventually got around to playing some bhangra and filmi, and then Anjali took over. She played a great all-Panjabi set, that featured new songs by Tigerstyle and Aman Hayer.

Towards the end of her set I was getting ready to go on when a Panjabi man standing outside the booth got my attention in order to make a request. He really didn’t want to tell me directly, probably assuming that I don’t know any Panjabi names or something, but when I forced him to tell me, he said he wanted “Tera Yaar Bolda” which, just to show him, I asked “Oh, you mean by Surjit Bindrakhia?” knowing that, of course he wanted the song by Surjit Bindrakhia. He seemed surprised that I knew him, but come on, if you play a single party in your life to a group of Panjabis, you will probably get requests for Surjit Bindrakhia, and Anjali and I have been playing to Panjabis for nearly seven years. Give me a break. Of course I know about Surjit Bindrakhia, but as much respect as the singer has earned, that doesn’t mean dropping his songs at the peak of the night to a mixed dance floor is a good idea. So I hear this man’s request, and then I look at the request sheet to see that there is an hour-old generic request for “fast filmi songs.” Well, I know that none of those got played during Anjali’s all-bhangra set, so stepping into the booth I am already aware of two highly-conflicting sets of desires at play in the crowd.

I get anxious in the presence of these oppositional hungers. I lose touch with anything I might want to do outside of these desires, fearing disappointing or potentially angering one segment of the crowd or another. While sometimes I play a raft of filmi-house, I wasn’t particularly in the mood at the time. As much as I love playing Surjit Bindrakhia songs for appreciative Panjabis, I knew what a bad idea it would be to play any of his songs at midnight, as I was going on, during the peak of the night, with the particular group of dancers I was facing. How can I explain this to an aggravated Panjabi? “Hey, I love Surjit, can you wait a few hours until when it might be more appropriate to play him?” Yeah, that will go over really well. Panjabis love goras telling them why they can’t play their requests. I have much less trouble blowing off requests in situations other than Andaz, but since Andaz is devoted to Hindi and Panjabi music, and I am a farangi, it is difficult for me to dismiss the desires of people who have far more of a cultural connection to the music than I do. I am just a gora, that thanks to Anjali, discoverd this music in my late-twenties and have been highly devoted to it ever since. So yes, I have been a slavish follower of this music for over seven years, but that is hardly a lifetime, and I cannot pretend to be as connected to the music as someone who was raised with it, fluent in the language, and appreciative of all the subtleties of meaning and emotion contained in the lyrics. I just know a song that moves me when I hear it, and bhangra and filmi move me, gora that I am. So I can play a mainstream party and ignore requests all night long, and not have any qualms about it, but I have a hard time ignoring requests by Hindi and Panjabi speakers who are often very emotionally involved with the music we play at Andaz.

I am lost. I am at sea. Even if only one person in the room wants to hear Surjit Bindrakhia; I know he is out there. I know he has returned to make his requests several times, from looking at the repeat handwriting on the request board, and I know I will have to continue dealing with him if I do not honor his request. And probably will still have to deal with his additional requests, even if I decide (foolishly) to play his Bindrakhia request. And what to do with the long-ignored request for fast filmi songs? Lost in all of this is any concept of what I might want to achieve or what I might want to share with the crowd. Although there are certainly people who come to Andaz with the idea that Anjali and I are jukeboxes there to play nothing but their requests, who knows, there might actually be people who trust Anjali and I to do what we want to do, and play what we want to play, but those people are often bound to be disappointed by my sets, because I am often influenced unduly by the demanding people besieging me in the booth, telling me to play what they, and not I, want to hear.

How did I start my midnight set? I don’t even remember. Maybe I started off well, but I know I was floundering before long. There was some angry woman in my face who I couldn’t hear, who refused to write in the request book, and instead slammed the request binder several times on the edge of the DJ booth in a futile attempt to get my attention while I was trying to focus on the task of DJing. She came back several times angry and intense, and without any written communication from her, or any way to hear her over the DJ monitors, I have no idea what she wanted. At one point in my set, I got around to playing my new favorite Bollywood cheeze anthem, “Dekho Nashe Mein [Latin Fiesta Mix], “which probably drove a certain portion of the crowd out the door with its unrelenting cheeziness. Feeling a need to return to Panjabi I mixed the track into the very uptempo “Lottery” by Guddu Gill and Miss Pooja, in an attempt to change languages, without drastically altering the pace. I had been enjoying the song earlier at home, but very few people in the crowd seemed to appreciate it. In fact, I felt it seemed to quickly encourage large members of the audience to leave the club and make their way home. To make matters worse, it was a long track, and I found myself indecisive as to what to do next, so the whole track played out. As every minute of the track played, I watched more and more people leave the dance floor, yet I was paralyzed with indecision, even in the face of a mass exodus.

The Bindrakhia requester came back with more slow Panjabi song requests that no one but him or perhaps a few other Panjabis were going to dance to. Maybe he figured if he kept writing down requests I would eventually play one of them. Well, it worked. He requested “Collaborations” by Sukshinder Shinda, which is an amazing track, if not the best club banger for a mixed crowd. After ignoring so many of the man’s requests, I ended up playing “Collaborations,” and feel like, as I expected, it didn’t connect very well with the crowd. Normally it is the 1am -2am DJ shift that clears the crowd, and here I was thinning out the dancers an hour early. No good. No good at all. At this point, at my most hopeless and disheartened, I got another request. A helpful request. A request that got me back on my feet and right where I needed to be. The request was for “Sajnaji Vaari Vaari” from the Honeymoon Travels Pvt., Ltd. soundtrack. A song I’ve probably played at every single one of my appearances since it was released the beginning of last year. A song that I have rinsed, hammered, flogged, you name it. And here was a request for it. Perfect. A kindly Fiji-Indian set me right by reminding me to play one of my favorite Bollywood songs. Thank you. You saved my set. From that moment on my set went from one filmi hit to another, and while it may not have been to everyone’s taste, I at least did a solid job of pleasing one faction in the crowd.

Anjali started her set with the longest string of Bollywood house numbers I’ve ever heard her play. She claims she plays that many Bollywood songs all the time, but outside of Indian weddings and private parties, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her play such a stretch of filmi house. She eventually began playing Panjabi songs, and by the time I went back on at 2am there was still an enthusiastic group of dancers left on the floor, including the wonderful Purnima, Raminder, and Prashant, along with Anjali herself. Anjali finished up her set with PMC’s wildly alternating in tempo “Kori (Giddah).” There was some manic dancing going on, and as I looked out on the floor at 2am, I wondered, how could I possibly follow this? I decided to stick with crazy and wild and abrubt tempo changes by playing Preet Brar and Miss Pooja’s “Boliyan.” Not everyone left, and we actually had a spirited dance party going for quite some time. Anjali passed on Purnima’s request for a “rail” song, and the two of them led the whole club in a train for “Rail Gaddi.” I managed to keep at least the core dancers going until 2:45am when I finally got around to playing “Dupatta Tera Satrang Da” by Surjit Bindrakhia, hours after it was requested, and hours after the requester had left, no doubt in disgust. I failed to line up something in time to follow Bindrakhia, so as the last tones of the song faded away I asked everyone if they had had enough, and a little shy of 3am, everyone agreed they were exhausted and it was time to go home.

Thanks to everyone who came out and danced. Thanks to the hard-working staff at the Fez Ballroom, and thanks for the “Sajanaji Vaari Vaari” request.

I was sick again for this month’s Atlas. Does that make three or four times that I’ve been sick on stage at Atlas in the last year? I was laying down in the green room between sets, wishing I could be at home resting instead of performing for hundreds of people. My symptoms had been pretty low-grade all week, yet felt at their height while I was at the club. The night before I had gone to bed at 7pm and didn’t rise for good until 9am. No wonder I wasn’t doing so hot at the club, since my last DJ shift wouldn’t be ending until close to 3am.

After writing my blog posts detailing how I’m more inspired by DMing Dungeons and Dragons these days than DJing, I felt like that started switching around after I poured myself into my last D&D game, only to feel empty and spent afterwards, like I had accomplished little of what I set out to do. One of the players, a long-time gamer, said it was the most intense gaming night in his life, so I must have done something right. When I fail really bad at DJing I put more energy into my gaming, and when I feel like I have failed as a DM, I start putting more energy into DJing. I was actually meaning to post in my blog last week to say, “Hey, I’m inspired again, please come out to Atlas,” but being sick all week, I didn’t post anything at all.

There are things that really frustrate and annoy me about my every performance at Atlas, that repeat themselves, no matter how much I try to do things different the next time. I feel like I am always swimming in music on stage, staring at hundreds of CDs and records, and never finding what I want to play. Sometimes I know exactly what albums I’m looking for and no matter how much searching I do, I can’t turn them up, and other times I have a vague notion of, “Hey, remember all those great songs you prepared the last couple days? What albums were they on, and where are they?” I’m often putting things on I don’t want to play, because I can’t find what I am looking for. I feel trapped without hundreds of options, but then I overcompensate and inundate myself with such a sprawling amount of music that I often can’t find what I am looking for and want to play. I so badly want to play the hottest, most exciting music I have discovered, and then can’t seem to surface those items from my collection when I am on stage. Instead I reach for familiar songs that I am already self-reproachful about having over-played already. I was poring over so many devastating reggaeton songs at home the day of the gig and I found myself playing a bunch of other reggaeton songs during my two Atlas sets because I couldn’t find the ones I wanted. At home I try to pare down what I am bringing and I still end up bringing enough music to DJ for several days straight. You would think I was going for the Guinness Book of World Records for longest DJ set from the amount of music I bring to my gigs.

E3 played the first set at Atlas, mixing in a bunch of great French hip-hop in his selections. Anjali went next and she played some Bhangraton and Bollyton in her set. I crawled out on stage with the intention of starting out slow. I pulled out reggaeton, cumbiaton, African hip-hop, and other slower genres, and then upon returning from a last minute bathroom break I see that Anjali has jumped the energy level (and crowd size) of the room immensely by dropping the original bootleg mix of DJ H’s “Ishq Brandy.” (A million times better than the sub-reggaeton remake with the abysmal “rapping.”) I am now faced with a completely different room than I was originally. A lot more people. A lot more super-enthusiastic people, going wild. Not the room at all that I had prepared to play for a few minutes earlier. I felt I had little choice but to start with bhangra, given how the room had just erupted. I didn’t want to immediately deflate the excitement Anjali’s last track had inspired. I didn’t feel like playing obvious bhangra hip-hop mashups, so I played “Saukhi Di Kammai” by Specialist and Tru-Skool instead. I immediately wanted to move on to something different, and wanting to retain the funky drums feeling of the S&T-S track, I play “Sex and Cookies” by the Eastenders This then put me at 126 bpms which was way faster than what I had prepared to play. I DJed myself into a corner, and found myself playing the remix of Himesh Reshammiya’s “Dil Naiyyo Maane Re,” which I love, but really felt odd in context, and wasn’t really what I shooting for at all. Eventually I said, “Fuck it” and dropped the tempo down for quite a few reggaeton songs. Unfortunately my woozy, dizzy, fuzzy, flustered and confused condition of sickness meant my timing was just enough off that I grimaced every time I clobber-fisted a transition I was hoping to smoothly finesse. It felt that way my whole set; me stumbling from one jarring, off-time transition after another when I was hoping for something far smoother.

For E3 and Anjali’s sets I retreated to the green room, only surfacing occasionally to listen to some of the great tunes. The crowd seemed really light. It had been a really nice day, and really nice days often wreak havoc on club attendance at night, since everyone is passed out at home recovering from barbecues, rather than dressing up and going out dancing. It also seemed like a fairly normal crowd, not necessarily a crowd of Atlas regulars. During E3’s second set he went really experimental. He told me afterwards that he decided to really mess with the crowd after deducing that they were a little unsure as to what to make of our night. There were few enough people dancing, and with enough hesitation, that I actually thought that the night was going to be the least successful Atlas night of all time. It just didn’t feel like that great of a party, which I rarely if ever feel about our parties. E3 left shortly after his set to be with his wife and new child, and he missed seeing that the party people in attendance weren’t dead on arrival, just late bloomers.

Anjali went on at 12:30am, opening with Jay Dabhi’s Bhangraton remix of Taz’s “Jawani,” which sounded sooo hot in the club. I had enjoyed the pop confection at home, but didn’t realize what a stand-up job Jay had done on the remix until I heard the bass pumping out of the subwoofers at Holocene. That song has been going through my head ever since. Then Anjali played Pitbull’s “The Anthem,” and the crowd went NUTS. The energy level just soared, and continued when Anjali mixed into Enur’s “Calabria,” the sample source for the Pitbull hit. Before long Anjali had people rocking to a hardcore Desi set, and I was left to face this crowd in my weakened condition at 1:30am, when my final set started.

I wanted to do something really different, but I imagined I would need to at least throw the dancers a bhangra bone upon starting out, so I played “Desi Boli” from the new Jas Dhingra. I then moved on to Arabic hip-hop, Funk Carioca, a lot of reggaeton tracks, some Baltimore club-styled international tracks, some kuduro, some Persia-ton, and finally, my current cheeze anthem: “Dekho Nashe Mein – Latin Fiesta Mix.” I questioned the wisdom of playing such Bollywood cheeze at Atlas, and although Anjali later claimed that the hipsters in attendance were lapping it up, I pulled it early to play “Mi Dia de Suerte” by Nejo & Dalmata, which was the track that convinced everyone it was time to go. Funny, that: pulling the track that you think the crowd is not feeling, in order to play the one that people reeaaaally aren’t feeling. So I played DJ Eric’s trance remix of “Pegate” with vocals by Jackie to everyone’s backs as they left for home. I love Jackie’s vocals on this track, especially her high-speed rapping. I really wish I could find more by her other than the few tracks I already have. I finished up with “Aao Na” by Nazia Hassan, and “Mujh Pe To Jadoo” for Anjali.

Thank you to everyone who came out. Sorry my illness meant I was so off my game. Hopefully I will do a better job in May of focusing on what I want to play, and actually playing it, as opposed to flailing around onstage and playing a bunch of songs that weren’t really what I intended.

IK