Month: January 2007

1/28/07

Andaz is tough. I probably say the exact same things in every post I make the day after this party. So if I have written all of these things a hundred times before you will understand what central fixations these are for me in regards to the particular challenges of this night.

You can’t please everyone. 85 bpm bhangra and 130 bpm filmi do not mix. And its not just a matter of tempo, the tone and mood and texture of these different genres are drastically different. It is really difficult to effectively (and gracefully) span both in an evening. When we started the night over 4 years ago we were much more focused on playing Panjabi music all night. I remember one party where I kept track of how many filmi songs we played. That night we only played 5 filmi songs in 6 hours. Back in those days we would have large groups of angry Hindi-speakers in attendance who would sometimes loudly express their displeasure for every bhangra song that was played. I remember one “gentleman” who would make loud hacking sounds in front of the DJ every time the next song was a Panjabi one.

Some Hindi-speakers have an incredlibly narcissistic view of “Indian music.” They think that only music sung in Hindi is “Indian music.” These people (there are more than one of them unfortunately) will come up to us and ask why don’t we play more “Indian music” when we are in the middle of a long bhangra set. Uh, hello narcissistic Hindi-speakers, for your information, the Panjab is IN India. Yes, that means Panjabi music is “Indian” music. Just like music sung in Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telegu, you name it, is “Indian music.” These Hindi-supremacists have got to learn to respect their fellow Indians, and their linguistic and cultural differences. These are the same people who try to make Hindi the official language of India while South India says, “Fuck you, we’d rather speak to you in English than Hindi.” These Hindi speakers probably don’t even recognize how much of their beautiful Hindi language is actually borrowed Urdu vocabulary.

Anyway, the Panjabi community in the Portland metro area is a tiny one, and after alienating all the Hindi speakers with long nights of bhangra Andaz went through a phase where other than a few Panjabis the night was almost all non-Indian. I realized that if we wanted more Indians at our night we would have to play more Hindi music. And over the years I started very consciously doing just this. Always buying the latest Bollywood soundtracks, trying to keep up with the latest hits. Anjali would continue to play mostly bhangra, while my sets would be half Bollywood or more. The joke is that I read an article about us once where they thought that was my “sound.” As if left to my own devices, I would play a more house-y, electronic set than Anjali, since that is the vibe of most danceable Bollywood songs. I play plenty of all-bhangra sets for a variety of different audiences all the time. It is when I am attempting to please Hindi-speakers that my sets veer Bollywood, and thus house-y and electronic. That is not my usual sound.

For a while the night at Andaz seemed to have a fairly standard rhythm. There would be a big crowd of non-Indians who would show up early and want to dance to bhangra. There would be a late arrival of Panjabis who would show up eager to hear bhangra, not realizing that they already missed hours of bhangra sets. They would have to put up with a mixture of bhangra and Bollywood as the Hindi-speakers and a large desi crowd of Tibetans and Nepalis would show up last. So during the course of the evening the night would progress from a bhangra night to a filmi night. The last hour would be solid filmi.

That has changed lately, because more Panjabis are dancing until 3am. The final hour of the night is now a flip-flop filmi/bhangra hour. There are still the people that want to dance to filmi until 3am, but there are also people requesting Jazzy B up until the last song. Trying to please one of these crowds is more than doable, trying to please both of them is a fool’s errand. Call me a fool, because I try anyway. There are songs that do work for both Hindi and Panjabi speakers, but you can’t play for hours without having to alternately please one group or another. I don’t want anyone to leave, which puts pressure on me to change up the groove very frequently. That keeps people from getting into a groove and riding it. I can please one group or another for a longer time, and then simultaneously displease the other group for just as long a time, or I keep each group happy for brief alternating moments.

In my experience no matter how much filmi I play, the second I play a bhangra song there are people at the DJ booth asking me to play more filmi. Of course if I am playing filmi there is someone in front of me with a Jazzy B request. Meanwhile there are the people who don’t know Hindi from Panjabi, they mostly just want to hear some wicked dhol beats. The songs that work best for them are not the same as the slower-than-slow Panjabi songs with meaningful lyrics that are favored by the Panjabis. That is one of many jokes. Anjali and I love bhangra and collect it like fiends. We love all sorts of bhangra that is simply not on most Oregon-residing Panjabis’ radar at all. We could play hours of bhangra that we think is the hottest stuff on the planet and the Panjabis in the house would be bored and shiftless wondering why we are not playing Jazzy B. Don’t get me wrong, we love Jazzy B, but there is a whole world of bhangra out there. A lot of which does not appeal to many local Panjabis. Funny how the goreh love it though.

The non-Indians at our night who love the dhol beats probably wonder why I get on the decks and suddenly they are hearing a silly-sounding trance or house song. “Where’s the Party Tonight” yaar? Meanwhile there are people asking why we aren’t playing the latest filmi songs, often while we are playing the latest filmi songs. I buy nearly all of the soundtracks and know most of the songs. If I’m not playing it it’s usually because I don’t like it. (Or I still find the supreme cheeziness of a new track utterly repellent and it hasn’t melted my brain through repetition to the point where I’m willing to play it.) There might be a few Hindi-speakers in the crowd who think we are behind the times because we might not be playing the absolute-most-up-to-the-minute filmi hits, but I have learned over the years that very few people in our audience are that up-to-the-minute. We usually start getting filmi requests for popular songs after they have been out six months to a year. When I play sets of all the latest filmi songs Anjali will comment that out on the dance floor she could tell that no one knows the songs yet. I have put a lot of effort into being ahead of the curve just to learn that people want to hear songs they already know. When people complain about us not playing the latest songs while a brand new song is playing, it makes it clear to me that what people want are new songs they already know, not ones they haven’t heard yet. One woman was complaining that we weren’t playing the most current songs while repeatedly requesting a song from 1998. I had a guy ask me if I kept up with UK Bhangra?!?!?!?!? He asked if I knew Bally Sagoo. -Bally Sagoo started in the early ’90s, last solo release was an underwhelmer called “Hanji” in 2003 and the last project he did was under Gunjan’s name in 2004. (This material been repackaged in different forms in different markets.) Yeah, I keep up with Bally Sagoo.- What about the killer stuff that’s been coming out in the last 3 months? Most of the requests we get are for songs 1 to 5 years old. Unless we get an older Indian crowd in which case it’s “Amitabh, Amitabh Amitabh.” I love playing only the latest-latest, but it rarely stokes the dance floor the way familiar numbers do.

I want to aplogize for any resentful tone in this email. I love having the opportunity to play for hundreds of people every month. It’s just frustrating to have 300 people dancing up a storm while someone complains at the DJ booth that you are not playing what they want to hear. Well, if everyone is dancing, and you are unhappy at the DJ booth, your dancing tastes are out of synch with everyone else’s. If I try and play something you like there is no guarantee that anyone else is going to enjoy it, since they clearly enjoy dancing to things you don’t. These are people who are oblivious to everyone dancing around them. They only want to hear what they want to hear even if they are the only person in the club who wants to hear it. I remember a woman who kept requesting salsa at a house party years ago. Every time I’d play a Cuban song the dance floor would clear. I’d shift into house party mode, everyone would go back to dancing, and then she wanted to hear more salsa. Finally I pointed to the dance floor. I asked if she saw all the people dancing. I asked her if there were that many people dancing when I played the last salsa song. She left me alone.

There will usually be some random guy asking for an out-of-date overplayed mainstream hip-hop song. Why? Aura is right downstairs. Go there, or Barracuda, or Ringler’s Pub, or a million other places playing that schlock. I can assure you that you are one of the only people at our night that wants to hear that sort of thing. Actually, I wish there were more people that wanted to listen to Hip-hop at our night. But I’m excited to play the new Roots and the new Nas, and the requests are more along the lines of Lil Jon and Yung Joc. I don’t think my choices would appeal at all to these people. I bring a crate of Hip-hop records to every Andaz. I will play a few of them at most. The majority of the crowd that comes to Andaz does not come to hear Hip-hop. Certainly not the kind of stuff I groove to. So why do we put “Hip-hop” on the flyers? Because modern bhangra and (to a lesser extent) Bollywood wouldn’t exist without hip-hop. When bhangra songs aren’t directly sampling hip-hop songs they are either remaking them, or using the same sort of beats mixed in with dhol and tumbi. Bollywood has never left disco behind, but more and more filmi songs are remaking hip-hop songs, or are just really lame attempts at aping a hip-hop vibe. Hip-hop (and in some cases, its child D’n’B) defines the state of mind of many of the producers of urban music from the Indian diaspora and we want to reflect that in terms of how we describe the party. You may not hear a lot of songs you recognize from the radio, but more and more bhangra and Bollywood songs incorporate “raps,” and reflect the post-hip-hop sonic landscape of global pop and dance music. We try to incorporate the very best in Asian Hip-hop and R&B into our night, despite the efforts of many of the infant genre’s creators. I dropped the single best Panjabi hip-hop song ever, JNas and Deep doing “Boys in the Hood” last night. Anjali and I both have been playing that track a lot recently. Except for Anjali and DJ Blackmarks everyone just stood around and looked confused for the duration of the song. “Why is he playing Dirty South hip-hop?” Uh, nevermind.

So, why all this verbiage? After feeling relatively good about my performance at the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration, I am back to feeling awful about my DJing after my performance at Andaz this month. As much as I describe how difficult it is to DJ to the different factions as Andaz, I still expect perfection from myself. I want everyone to go wild to every song all night. I hate looking up from the booth and seeing a lot of mild shifting in place or motionless bodies. I want to please everyone all night, and I already explained what a fool’s errand that is. Sometimes I ignore requests, and sometimes I’ll play them all night. It is much easier to perform without aggresive requesters. Sometimes a person with a request has a much better idea than the DJ about what people want to hear. Often they are just a control freak who thinks the cost of admission guarantees that the DJ will serve as their personal jukebox for them and their friends all night. It don’t work that way, Honey. There are hundreds of people who paid just as much as you, and they all want to have a good time. If they thought you knew what they wanted to dance to then why aren’t they paying admission at your night? Sometimes I get so flummoxed trying to satisfy all the clashing requests, that my set seems like one long train wreck, with little joy and excitement for anyone. Maybe the trick is ignoring everything except my own feelings. Anjali is much better about performing that way. As much as I like to fuck with people I want them to get at least some of what they want. After all, without the dancers a DJ’s just an awkward figure holding records.

IK

PS: The Nick epilogue

I was utterly surprised and overjoyed to see The Nick. He came late in the night, straight from his first experience DJing a corporate party. He fell into me declaiming “I have a new respect for what you do. I had people mobbing me for requests all night. People were grabbing me and shouting their drunken requests. They never stop. They never leave you alone.” Yeah, welcome to the glamorous world of DJing. Just don’t rip your pants.

1/28/07

Since we first started collecting bhangra Anjali and I have been focused on the bhangra music being made by producers in the UK. The fact that these producers grew up multi-soniculturally with desi music and Afro-diasporic modern urban dance musics made them the best at creating slamming dance tracks with a desi feel. Most of the producers from India have sounded hopelesly dated and lame, with lots of cheezy keyboards and tinny beats. Over the last year I have encountered more and more Panjabis grumbling online about how washed-up and formulaic the British bhangra scene has become. Many of these same critics are now turning their attention to the highly prolific Indian bhangra scene. While British releases are hampered by endless delays and promises of “coming soon” it feels like India is releasing dozens of bhangra albums a week. As expensive as they are, UK Bhangra releases are easy to find online. (We recommend www.punjab2000.co.uk. Tell Tony we sent you.) I have had zero luck finding any listed source for Indian bhangra online. (Tony says he can get you anything even if it’s not listed on his website.)

Outside of Desi Spices in Vancouver, Washington I have not found a single Indian store in the Portland metro area that regularly stocks new Panjabi releases. My only chances to see what is out there are my trips to Indian stores in NYC and Vancouver, BC. Last Spring I stocked up on mounds of releases in Jackson Heights, but since then I have been assembling a massive list of even-more-current Indian releases I find recommended on various message boards. Anjali and I just got back from BC and I have already been playing out some of many finds. Now Anjali is in NYC and I gave her a massive list of everything I couldn’t find in BC.

However, unlike some, I have not given up on British bhangra (too much good stuff scheduled to drop, and the new young producers are revelations) but I am now equally focused on getting all the best stuff straight from the Panjab. Maybe you will be able to hear the difference in my sets. I loved dropping Preet Brar and Miss Pooja’s “Boliyan” at Andaz, even if Anjali thought the CD was speeding up and sounded awful. I love how the bulk of many of the CDs feature duets with female voices whether they are credited primarily to a male or female singer. British bhangra seems so exclusively dedicated to the male voice except for a few exceptions. I am excited that although the cheezy keyboards still taint many a track, the dhols just keep hitting harder and harder. At least that is something we can all agree on.

IK

1/22/07

One year ago Anjali and I attended the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration in Vancouver, BC. I wrote quite a bit about it earlier in this blog. We’re always looking for opportunities to play in Vancouver and thanks to Lady Ra and the Beats Without Borders crew we got a chance to headline the opening night party of the Celebration for 2007. I had really been looking forward to DJing this party even while I have been in my rut. I love DJing bhangra for an appreciative and knowledgeable audience. Since the night was called “Bhangra Love” and it was the opening night of the celebration, my intentions were focused on a hardcore bhangra set and nothing else. That kind of focus really channels my energy, especially when it is something I am as devoted to as Panjabi bhangra. Vancouver has more Panjabis than anywhere else in North America, going back to waves of immigration in the early 1900s. It’s the best place I’ve found in North America to buy Indian music other than NYC. Also the best place to get Indian sweets, which we always stock up on. And you can see the latest Bollywood films in the theaters, which is always cool. Anyway, the Indian population is centered in Surrey, and not downtown Vancouver, so we weren’t sure how many Panjabis were going to be in the house, but it ended up being a really good, packed turnout all the way around.

Anjali and I arrived with our wonderful host Sarah around 10pm. There was a line out the door and who should be wandering around but the inimitable Nomadic Noize. He said it was already packed inside. We ventured in to see DJ Reminisce rocking Sanj’s “Nain Tere” to an empty dance floor. There were plenty of people packed around the perimeter of the club, but it didn’t look like anyone had been brave enough to start dancing. Lady Ra then went on and got people to the front with some Zeus and Lehmber action. She only played briefly and then Reminisce went back on. The schedule got really messed up from what we were told. Apparently Juggy D and members of DCS who were performing at the bhangra competition and the closing party later in the week were supposed to show up to the club. The band Signia did not want to perform until these bhangra stars showed up. Juggy D and some members of DCS did show up and grooved along to Anjali and my sets, which was cool. Juggy D should be dropping a new album at some point, which I am looking forward to, especially if it moves in a more desi direction, as he’s been hinting at in interviews. Our friend Sharon from Vancouver, who we were reunited with that night after years, introduced Anjali to Juggy D, and they got a picture together, so maybe Anjali will be dropping that in her blog at some point. Here’s a photo Lady Ra posted on the Beats Without Borders site to give you an idea of what the night looked like:

I had been so focused on a hardcore bhangra set that I found myself really surprised by the stuff DJ Reminisce played in his set. I had left behind all my Indian pop and more electronic stuff in favor of straight dhol-bangers. Reminisce was playing stuff like JNas “So Into You,” Raghav, and Jay Sean. I was a little paranoid, thinking, he is the hometown DJ, he knows what they like, and I didn’t bring anything like that. I was surprised by his selections because the year before I remember him playing a lot of Shinda, Jazzy B, and Jassi Sidhu, as well as some of the pop stuff. Eventually he played some more electronic-styled bhangra like B21’s “Jawani (Remix)” and RDB’s “Balle Balle” which also threw me for a loop, because I didn’t bring any of that sound, nor thought that is what people would want to hear in 2007.

I met DJ Reminisce after his set. He told me he DJs all the desi parties in Vancouver put on by A-Town Productions. They were the ones behind the VIBC after-party this year and last. He has also started a second-Friday monthly in Vancouver that has been around for a couple months now. He was also hyping desiorb.com, a new desi myspace-type site put together by a friend of his.
After Reminisce, Signia finally went on, well off schedule. They started with some a cappella Panjabi vocals from their two singers before the full band came in. Along with the two singers the band included a dhol player, drummer, keyboardist, bassist and DJ Reminisce on scratches. They seemed much improved from last year, and a lot tighter. They certainly did their thing to get the crowd hyped. They seemed to me to be what an 80’s British bhangra band might have been like. I just wanted more dhol in their sound. They had the crowd really going right before Anjali went on.

Anjali took a complete left-turn from the uptempo bhangra that had preceded her and dropped Deep’s Panjabi-crunk anthem “Dirty South.” “I needed to rep the United States,” she told me. Which is funny, because I had been spending weeks researching all the bhangra singers and musicians originally from Vancouver/Surrey so I could pay tribute to their community. We think different like that. Probably why we’re such a great partnership. “Dirty South” sounded amazing at our last Atlas, rattling everything in the space, but this time it came out quiet and muffled. The audience seemed confused, not sure what to make of the slow hip-hop after all the jump-in-the-air bhangra. No one seemed to know the song, although I sensed what might have been faint ripples of recognition in parts of the crowd during the chorus. Then, after that song, complete silence.

There had been all sorts of technical issues all night, with faulty equipment belonging to the club. The club’s regular soundperson wasn’t working the night and he wouldn’t let the Beats Without Borders crew use any of his equipment. That meant we got the club’s second-tier gear and a bunch of rental equipment. Turns out one of the connections on the mixer was bad so sound would only come out of one of the CD players. This went on for a while, where Anjali could only play one song, and then silence. Various technical people were swarming the DJ setup so I didn’t feel any need to get up on stage and be another dude trying to figure out what was not working. At points it would seem like it was fixed and then the sound would be all crackly and distorted. What a nightmare. Horrible way for a DJ to begin her set, especially in another city. Eventually the sound got fixed and by the time Anjali dropped Specialist and Tru-Skool’s “Nach Ke” the place was fully rocking and the sound was all good. It was only when I went up to relieve her that I learned that the solution (which was Anjali’s) was to move the left player into the far right channel (the only other one working), so the channels were reversed. The left player was in the right channel, and the right player was in the left channel. This kind of simple reverse, as I know from past experience, can really mess me up. I knew it was going to take a great deal of concentration to not forget this reversal, and sure enough, there were several times where I adjusted the wrong EQs or the wrong volume. Minor problems according to all the feedback I got from my friends on the dance floor.

I haven’t been feeling like DJing much these days, but I really did at this night. I was as prepared as I have been for a gig in a long time, and I was ready to let go. From the stage everyone looked motionless, but all the reports I got from the floor was that the place was going crazy, it was just so packed there wasn’t much room for moving. I received nothing but compliments and praises about how the place was “blowing up,” “going off,” you name it. It felt good to drop nothing but the best Panjabi stuff and know that people were loving it. After all the schedule jumbling Anjali and I ended up with one hour set to split and one half hour set, which is hardly ideal for two DJs, but understandable with such a full bill. I really had to narrow down what I wanted to play to just a few songs, given how little time we had. I started out with “Oh Na Kuri Labdi” and DJ Sunny’s dhol-heavy remix of Sarbjit Cheema’s “Dhol Vajda” to represent the Vancouver/Surrey crowd. Anjali said that Sarbjit Cheema’s vocals were really low in the mix, but that everyone was singing along, which was my purpose all along. I had been obsessed with playing Lehmber’s “Boliyan” track from PJD’s “Rumours” album but Anjali beat me to it, so I settled for “Aaja Nach Le” from the same album instead. Before I knew it my half hour was over and Pardesi took the stage. I had avoided hip-hop mashups in my set, but I played the original “Hypnotize” sampling “Ishq Brandy” to finish off my set.

On the night of the show I was wearing a black suit I had hand-tailored in New Delhi. Getting ready for the show I stepped on one of the pants’ cuffs and ripped it. Our host Sarah was kind enough to provide me with a safety pin that would hold the cuff together for the evening. After my first set I left the stage and Anjali and I retired for a breather in the hospitality room. I went to sit down on a chair not realizing that the arm of the chair was pulled apart and some jagged dovetails were sticking up in the air. In sliding into the chair I managed to shred a large L-shaped hole in the butt of my pants.

Now I hate being cold. I tend to wear long underwear underneath my clothes from October to March. I usually wear black thermals but on the night of the show I was actually wearing white thermals underneath my pants. So now I had a big peek-a-boo L-flap with white underwear sticking out beneath my black suit. We took the pin from my cuff and Anjali was sussing up the hole, trying to pin it closed with the safety pin. As she was assessing the damage two giggly British girls entered the hospitality room. They were very friendly and curious and were soon unofficial members of the how-do-we-get-the-Kid-stage-ready committee. Anjali determined that she would need to fasten my pants from the inside, thus necesitating my pulling down my pants. Not being the particularly modest type I looked to the British girls who said they would block the view and I dropped my drawers. Anjali fastened the tear and I began pulling up my pants. At this point several members of the band Signia enter the hospitality room to see me with my pants undone and three girls in the back room. “Whoa, sorry, didn’t mean to intrude,” they said as they began awkwardly backing up. We tried to assure them that there was nothing going on but they beat a hasty exit. Rockstar, huh? It was amusing. Fortunately my pants held up the rest of the evening.

Lady Ra and Timothy Wisdom performed as Pardesi, essentially a bhangra-mashup project with lots of live scratching. They even played a D’n’B remix of “Zingy.” Anjali felt I had done such a good job in my first set that she decided I should play the last half hour of the night. I followed Pardesi with another short Panjabi set beginning with “Soorma” and ending the night with the classic “Dupputa Tera Sat Rang Da.” It was great to see people putting arms around each others’ shoulders and singing along. The song ended two minutes before the local shut-off time and someone jumped on stage begging me to play one more. I thought we had ended on the perfect note. I felt a need to shout out the local Panjabis but everyone just stared blankly and silently at the stage when I got on the mic and yelled “Vancouver Panjabis we love you,” so maybe I should just learn to shut up. I felt such a need to show respect to the community but apparently I came off like an ass. The LBC bhangra team were pointing to their shirts and trying to get me to shout them out, but I wasn’t wearing my glasses and didn’t know what team they were until later.

The next night of VIBC featured a performance called bhangra:authentic at the Orpheum Theatre. Anjali and I were really looking forward to this because it was put on by the Surrey India Arts Club whose performance at last year’s VIBC was one of the highlights for us. bhangra:authentic was a narrated stage production choreographed and scripted by Tejinder Singh from Surrey India Arts Club that introduced bhangra instruments, rhythms, dances and history with lots of performances. Raymond Bhuller, the founder of Dhol Nation Academy, was onstage along with one of his students for most of the production. He was an amazing dhol player, and if we could afford him, we would certainly bring him down to Andaz for a performance. We learned that the sarangi is the only instrument that can play every Indian raag. We learned that there used to be many different folk dances from Punjab that have all disappeared. The only traces of these dances that survive are elements from these dances that have been incorporated into bhangra. The production included folk singers, several performances by a full band led by Gogi Bains, choreographed dances and a rousing giddha performance with some very spirited young girls. I was so glad that a production like this was part of the celebration but unfortunately it was very sparsely attended. There was a couple from Portland in attendance who introduced themselves to us. They had come up for the competition and recognized us from our parties in Portland. We did not stay for Saturday’s competition or after-party because we needed to return to Portland to surprise my father at his retirement party. I heard the UBC Girlz team won. They are definitely good. Anjali and I have been fans of theirs since we witnessed them perform years ago.

IK

Sorry it has been so long since the last installment of this fabulous series. Since the last party at Holocene was such an overwhelming success I thought I might take us on a stroll down memory lane to another Atlas night several years ago. This particular night of Atlas was the only time I am aware of where I lost a potential gig due to my errr. . . experimental ways. It was the middle of the night and I was doing my thing on stage. I was playing a couple no-brainer bhangra mashups. I had the crowd in a frothy frenzy playing a quick bhangra house take on Billie Jean. Now the thing about absolute dance floor slayers is you have to be able to follow them up. Some songs create such insane dance floors that I almost don’t want to play to them because it is difficult to find another song that can match that level of insanity. As I was watching the pandemonium below me I wondered exactly how I wanted to follow this particular song. Sometimes a DJ has the crowd going so crazy that the DJ can do whatever s/he wants. Sometimes the DJ only thinks s/he can do whatever s/he wants. Sometimes the DJ doesn’t care, the DJ’s gonna do what the DJ wants.  And me, I wanna experiment.
Well, a little side story first. In the Spring of 2001 I played a crazy art studio party in a big lot overlooking the Willamette River in North Portland. All sorts of random people were there and my set was appropriately random as well. I can vividly remember the tribal rush of a Pixies-twofer. At one point I was playing a brutal Drum’n’Bass tune that was more about the thrill of the noise than it being a good dance number. A concerned friend came over to inform me, in case I hadn’t noticed, that it was not an easy song to dance to. After having said this, she then paused, had a moment of realization and said, “Oh yeah, you like to fuck with people, don’t you?” Uh, yeah, guilty as charged. Its not that I don’t want people to dance and have a good time, its just that I would rather challenge a crowd than play it safe.

So, I’m on stage at Holocene, the crowd is raging as a double-time Billie Jean beat has the majority of the club packed on the floor. And then . . .I decide to take a radical left turn (sound familiar?). I go right from a galloping house beat into . . .the slow syrupy strains of the beginng of the Kelly Roland and Nelly ballad “Dilemma.” “IK, did you really play “Dilemma” to a packed dance floor?” No, I fucking hate that song. No, the melodic intro then turns into Spanish singing, and then gears up into a merengue-house version of the song in Spanish. Uh, yeah. It’s silly, but I thought it might be fun. Instead every single person cleared the dance floor. Hmmm, not as much fun as I thought. Not one person entered the perimeter of the dance floor for the entire song. What, you thought I was gonna cut it early? Instead I thought “an empty dance floor, what a magical opportunity,” and played a completely wacky electro bhangra tune from the Notorious Jatt’s first album with chirpy sped-up Panjabi vocals. That song actually brought a few dancers back to the floor and by the next song, whatever that was, things were back to dance party central. However, I found out after the show that there were several promoters in the audience who were looking to hire Anjali and I for a gig. After my perverse set they commented to Anjali that they were not interested in hiring me because my set was inconsistent and I “couldn’t hold a dance floor.” Uhhh, what dumbass promoter thinks I was trying to “hold a dance floor” by going from a Billie Jean rip to a fucking Kelly Rowland ballad cover in Spanish? Did they really think I was doing the best I knew how to “hold a dance floor” and that I somehow thought that juxtaposition was the trick? It’s called fucking with people, or experimentation, if you prefer. Any idiot with a knowledge of popular songs can hold a dance floor. The trick is to see how far you can push it and still show people a good time. That time I slammed up against those limits big time. Ah well, I’ve never had an opportunity to play that Notorious Jatt song since, so its all good.

IK

A very strange thing has happened in the world of DJing where one’s skill as a DJ is judged by some as one’s ability to play two or more songs at the same time. I don’t know about you, but when I am sitting at home listening to music I never put on two pieces of music simultaneously to enjoy. One song at a time works just fine for me. This dynamic doesn’t change when I’m dancing or when I’m Djing. I like one song at a time. Maybe if you DJ “tracks” based around little more than a kickdrum and some synth squiggles, then you very well may need two, three, or even more sources of music playing simultaneously to create anything of marginal textural or compositional interest (It probably won’t do anything for me, however).

There are certain forms of repetitive dance music that always begin and end compositionally with 8 bars of percussion, specifically for the purpose of overlaying with another song of the same bpm. Most international music does not come with such “DJ-friendly” features and is not designed to be overlayed with another song. I don’t play tracks, I play songs. Usually with vocals. I have seen some bhangra DJs try to apply disco-mixing techniques to Panjabi music. Even when the primary beats are lined up as well as can be, the mix often sounds distractingly busy with the flurry of dhol beats, and often the vocals of the two songs will end up overlapping and clashing. Not a good look. I fully understand the importance of smooth transitions and keeping bodies moving, but I have seen many a dance floor undone by a DJ who was trying too hard to mix their selections. I will often witness that no matter how smoothly a technical DJ brings in a new song, the dancers will still clear the floor if it is not a song they want to dance to. Conversely, I have seen horrible train wrecks result in absolute abandon on the part of a room full of dancers if the next track is one they love. Two tracks that are not mixed may cause a slight hiccup on the dance floor, but a long awkward mix creates a much more distracting energy-depleting environment. Many DJs are convinced that they are not really DJing unless they traumatize the crowd with these embarrassingly drawn out episodes of ugliness. I see this often with DJs who are moving from DJing Western electronic music to more international music based in traditional rhythms. Their mixes sound great when they are DJing house music, and awfully embarrassing when they are attempting to play something more complicated rhythmically. Not all music is house music. Not all music is designed to be played simultaneously with other music that shares the same bpm.

People obsessed with mixing are usually “DJs” who have never played outside their bedrooms. Real DJing is about getting people excited, getting them moving, and keeping them moving. It all depends on the crowd, but I have consistently watched seamless beat-matched electronic sets wage a war of attrition against the dance floor. People get fatigued by the lack of variable tempo and the monotony of an entire set where each song is chosen not because it is the best song for that moment, but because of its ability to match the exact same rhythm of the song before it. BORING. You can practice your techniques in your bedroom all you want. There is no guarantee that anyone will want to listen once you finally leave the bedroom. Better to force your unpracticed self to DJ for actual dancers, however limited your ability, so you can see what actually works, and not just wank off in your room thinking you are some badass.

David Mancuso is as much a father of the original underground disco movement as anyone. He learned how to mix and then decided it didn’t agree with him. Now when he DJs he lets each song fade out to applause. After each song has been properly acknowledged he then goes on to the next. Now there is a man who realizes that the point is to feel music, not geek out on technical mixing.

I saw a Drum’n’Bass show at the Ohm with Anjali many moons ago. There were only a few dancers on the floor. However the DJ booth was mobbed by heavy guys with baseball caps and hoodies. They surrounded the DJ staring motionless and silent until she began a mix. Then they all jumped up and down and went crazy. Then when she went into the next song they returned to their silent, fixated, stationary ways, only to get amped up again when she began her next mix. Uhhhh, isn’t MUSIC the point of this? No one surrounding the DJ booth expressed any interest in any of the tracks the DJ was playing, either with their voices or their bodiess. All that mattered was the mix. Technical DJs will sacrifice anything for the mix. I remember when I first went to see the Beat Junkies play a decade ago. They would drop some classic old hip-hop jams. But even when I was on the floor going “Yeah, they’re playing Eric B. and Rakim” I wondered why Rakim’s voice sounded so high-pitched. To me the voices of the greatest MCs are not to be trifled with. You don’t pitch Chuck D. up or down for the benefit of the mix. Fuck you. In fact I don’t like the casual up-and-down-pitching of songs to fit a mix. I want to hear the music as it was intended to be heard, not chipmunky or Oscar-the-Grouchy just so you can maintain your same bpm.

I have no interest in playing a set where each song must match the tempo and rhythm of the song before it. If anything I want to vary the rhythm and tempo as much as possible in a set to keep things constantly surprising and challenging, both for me and the dancer. One of the best compliments I ever received in all my years of DJing was many years ago at a house party where a very musically-informed individual said he liked my sets because, “you never know what’s coming next.” I try. Yeah, sometimes I lose people by being too crazy and all-over-the-map (OK, I probably always lose them.), but I would rather lose people by being too crazy than for playing a set that is too monotonous. I understand there are people (on drugs) who want to hear an uninterrupted rhythm of the same bpm for an entire night. They hate “starting over” when the rhythm changes, and want to lose themselves in the dance (of one rhythm). That’s fine for them. I get bored no matter what the genre if it is the same rhythm over and over for 15 minutes or more. “But what about bhangra,” you ask, “doesn’t that get boring?” Well, for me, no. Bhangra is not the same as house, techno, trance, Drum’n’Bass. It is not limited to one rhythm. Bhangra is a folk music that contains dozens of rhythms. The bpm can vary from 80 to 180 depending on the song. Often an individual track will have different sections that jump from slowest to fastest and back, or vice versa. Modern bhangra will also incorporate any variety of other rhythms in with the traditional patterns. An “all bhangra” set could include, house, techno, drum’n’bass, reggae, dancehall, trance, 2-step, grime, hip-hop, along with the traditional rhythms. Some people may get sick of the tumbi and the dhols and the constant Panjabi vocals, but that is my idea of heaven. When I’m listening to the tumbi, the dhol, the algoza, and a good Panjabi singer, I don’t need anything else. That’s my idea of trance music.

In my experience, really good DJs, who also happen to be technical DJs, have no issues with DJs who use feeling and not tempo to guide their track selections. (DJ Safi says the Japanese call these DJs “Free Soul DJs.” Or at least I assume that’s an English approximation of the Japanese term.) Real DJs love music. Succesful DJs don’t need to berate anyone else’s skills. Its the people who don’t really love music, but imagine themselves as some sort of rockstar DJ while they play free turntable night, if they ever even leave their room, that talk shit about DJs that can’t mix. Oftentimes these DJs’ entire musical knowledge will consist of the usual mainstream pop detritus we are all surrounded by, a few years of an electronic subgenre or two, and a few record labels that produce these subgenres. Their knowledge of the vast range and history of recorded music of this country is woefullly narrow, and of course they will have no knowledge of any traditional or popular music from anywhere else in the world.

I’ll never forget a quote I read in a British DJ magazine years ago. A DJ was quoted as saying DJing is judged on a 5 point scale. You get 2 points for the songs you play, 2 points for the order you play them in, and 1 point for mixing.

Peace,

IK

1/14/07

If you happened to miss it, let me just start by saying that Atlas was off the hook. After celebrating three years at Holocene we took a month off and came back with our largest night ever. More than 500 people paid, with the club at capacity for hours, and a line out the door. I had a dance floor during my first set, and since that was the first set of the night, ending shortly after 10pm, that is pretty significant. Both rooms of the club were open and there was a packed dance floor in each room simultaneously all night.

The OPB Art Beat episode featuring Anjali and I was re-broadcast last week and they highlighted our Saturday show at Holocene. I haven’t watched more than an hour or two a year of television since 1995. I had never owned a television personally until last year, when the dearly-missed Hyon Son Won left town and told us to raid her apartment for anything she left behind. We grabbed her TV and VCR, just because, yet they are still sitting unplugged in our laundry room on top the dryer many months later. TV simply doesn’t enter into my life at all, unless I want to watch Colbert excerpts on youtube. (Dave Chappelle and Ali G DVDs are another notable exception.) Because of this, when we are featured on televison, I am amazed to discover how many people do watch television, and happen to catch our fifteen minutes. I have no idea just how many people television reaches, until they are recognizing me on the street. Apparently people were arriving at Holocene all night telling Jacob our hard-working doorman that they were there because they had seen Anjali and I on OPB. At the end of the night he requested, “Can you guys not be on TV for awhile?”

Our super-high attendance at Atlas was the result of a confluence of benevolent events. We had taken a month off. The month prior was our three year anniversary, which was featured in an article in the Willamette Week. There was the Art Beat episode. We got the pick of the week in the Mercury. Holocene was kind enough to run a prominent 1/4 page ad in the Mercury. And we had our guest Maga Bo. I had hoped these factors would combine to create a good party, but they created a GREAT party.

I started the night out with a set designed to feature all sorts of stuff that was either brand new to me, or that I never play out. Kept to my plan pretty well. Anjali thought it was one of my best sets in forever and that I should have taped it. Needless to say I was far more critical of my performance than she. I’m ust glad I got to drop some Garifuna beats. (Los Juveniles de Garifuna, where are you?) E3 was up next with a wicked set that touched on a number of continents, with some nice Middle-Eastern and Balkan segments, among others. During his set the crowd swelled to capacity and the night just rolled on from there. Anjali was up next.

One of the brilliant things about Anjali’s DJing is that she will often push things way beyond what people want or even expect. (Even I am often surprised at the direction she takes things.) When she started her set off with hardcore Panjabi Hip-hop and grime I knew she was going for broke. She very easily could have pulled off a bhangra set. The crowd was ready to lap it up, but she wanted to do something very different. She started off with “Boyz In Da Hood” featuring Deep Da 1 and Kamla Punjabi. Man did that sound good. The whole club was vibrating along with the track. She stayed with the hip-hop and grime feel for awhile. By the time she got around to dropping tracks like “Ranjha” by Himmat Singh the crowd was HYPED, jumping up and down during the bhangra breakdowns. After her set she told me, “I felt I just wanted to play Gypsy music.” That she did, with the later portion of her set featuring Balkan tracks and the new Ojos de Brujo amongst other surprises.

Maga Bo then proceeded to get on his laptop and wow the crowd with a very dense collage of reggaeton, dancehall, hiphop, Funk Carioca and more. Nothing was a straight song, but a fusing of different rhythms and vocals. It was so dense and shifting, and except for some Missy vocals, and the song “Zingy” by Ak’sent and Beenie Man I don’t think I recognized anything from his entire set. He used the reggaeton beat a lot, but he wasn’t playing reggaeton songs, just using the rhythmic platform as a base. There was a touch of Funk Carioca rhythms, but once again, not straight songs. He only played an hour and a half, but during his mix time felt endless. In a good way. So good that I forgot I was going to have to go on after him. I rarely get out of my DJ headspace at a party, but I certainly did on Saturday. I had to refocus my energy on getting back on stage after enjoying talking and dancing with friends while listening to the other DJs.

I’ve been wallowing in my DJ depression for a while now. I think I forget the few times were I feel OK about my DJing (assuming these times actually exist) and so my depression feels like one long interrupted bout of dissatisfaction, stretching back for years. I try to snap out of it. I certainly don’t have any problem finding music that excites me and that I’m eager to share. Its the part about feeling good about my performance while I”m onstage and afterwards that is so hard for me. Even when I receive a lot of praise.

I felt the need to play another set at least partially dedicated to James Brown. The opening to “Make It Funky” is just too perfect at intimating what I have in store for people:

(Bobby asks:) What you gonna play now?

(James Brown says:) Bobby, I dont know but whats it ever I play Its got to be funky!

(Bobby says:) yeah

I started out with one of the wonderful JB-jacking tracks off the new Specialist and Tru-Skool. I then went into some hard bhangra. I knew there were desis in the room that had been waiting a long time to hear some Indian music and so I wanted to give them some of the hard stuff before deciding what to do next. I was torn between different people’s desires on the dance floor. People I know want to hear Hindi songs. People I know want to hear Panjabi songs. People who want an around-the-world mix, who would appreciate something other than bhangra. People who don’t know what they want, they just want to dance. It’s so hard for me when I want to please more than one person and I know that in so doing I will not entirely please anyone, especially myself. What I want to hear is probably not what anyone wants to hear. I’ve been aching to play what the wonderful Murray Cizon calls “merengue on crack” in my sets for a long time now, but rarely get around to it. Whiteys don’t always do too well with hard Latin rhythms. I say “dance and have fun” but a lot of goreh clear the floor because they feel they don’t know how to dance “the right way” to a Latin beat. To make matters worse, the few Latin dancers in a crowd usually want to hear salsa, and not the more straightforward merengue beat. Much less a “merengue on crack” beat that is so fast and unrelenting all they can do is hope to keep up, much less show off some fancy footwork. So as much as I had lightning merengue on my mind (La Banda Chula!!), that is not what I ended up doing. Because of the television feature I knew there were people at the club eager to hear more bhangra. When my first Panjabi tracks were greated with a renewed dance floor I figured I could probably go that route until the end of my set. But I didn’t want to. The supernaturally-informed world music afficianado, Jacques, had flown in for the gig, and I always try to rise to the challenge of playing something especially envigorating for him. After a blistering opening salvo of dhol-bangers I made a radical left turn (surprised?) for some hard techno kuduro (It being a new discovery for me). Then the fabulous (fabulous!) new “XR2” by M.I.A. Not sure where to then. The time passed very quickly and before I knew it, it was 2:45am and I still had a dance floor. Hmmmm. Time for a classic . . .

For the second time in recent months at Holocene the sound system shut down during my last set. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something. At first only one CD player died, rudely interrupting the classic “Tera Yaar Bolda” by Surjit Bindrakhia. To make matters worse the only thing I had lined up on my various media playing devices was “Frikitona” by Plan B, which was hardly an appropriate follow-up. Some time in the next song or so the sound system shut down again entirely. It came back in time for me to end the night with some ’50s James Brown ballads. All in all a crazy, epic night. I’m still not feeling great about my DJing but I am very excited about my next gig. Anjali and I are off to Vancouver, BC to play the opening night of the Vancouver International Bhangra Competition with the Beats Without Borders crew. There are more Panjabis in Vancouver than anywhere else in North America, so I’m twitching to drop some of the hard stuff for the community. Brrrraaaaaaahhh! Whenever I’m down I just need some bhangra to get pumped.

IK

1/13/07

Our friends Kyle and Nimmi invited us over to a fabulous Indian feast last night followed by a screening of the new remake of Don. First of all let me just state the obvious by saying that Sharukh “The Blubberer” Khan is no Amitabh Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor is no Helen, and Priyanka Chopra will never be Zeenat Aman!

From the beginning the movie was ridiculous, Bollywood trying to do knockoff HK fights by way of the Matrix. And we are supposed to somehow believe Sharukh is the fearsome head of a criminal organization. Like we are supposed to buy his hideously busy matching shirts and ties with the collars unbuttoned and the ties around his bare neck. Yeah right.

Kareena Kapoor trying to recreate the Helen dancing scene is an absolute joke. The choreography is truly awful (as is the case throughout the entire film). She dances like an awkward, spasmatic chicken. Putting her in a tight, short gold lame dress does nothing to make her sexy, just embarrassing. At some point we are introduced to the Zeenat character played by Priyanka and we are supposed to believe this skinny girl is a martial arts badass. Just as unbelievable as “Kill Bill” trying to get us to think that Uma Thurman is some deadly assassin. The movie offered me no reason to stay awake, and I questioned the other viewers’ interest in my constant scathing commentary, so I passed out on the couch. I came to, here and there, in time to see some more sub-Matrix fighting and more awful choreography. I was fully embarassed, realizing that I have been playing the remakes of the original “Don” songs from this film at our gigs. Techno-sounding versions of these classics are very functional on the dance floor in the 21st century. However, after seeing how catastrophically these songs have been “picture-ized” I was retroactively mortified for every time I played one of these versions. They sounded OK on the soundtrack, but they sounded a million times worse as I watched their inept visualizations on the screen. There is a bhang lassi scene, though, and you can’t really front on bhang lassis. There is a twist ending which I will not reveal, which is probably the only thing the movie has going for it. Lame. You can’t top the twenty-minute-martial-arts-showdown-in-the-cemetery scene from the original. Oh well. Everyone knows you can’t remake a classic.

What do you think, have the people behind the marketing campaign for the new Don seen “The Matrix?”

1/11/07

Thinking about Frank Miller’s impact on my early life has caused me to reflect on my longtime love for choreographed violence. There was an amazon reviewer writing about one of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight projects mentioning that what Frank does best is visually is depict violent acts. Yep. As someone who has no interest in the perpetuation of real-life violence on a small or large scale, I have still somehow always loved the fictional representation of violence. And not Saw III type violence, the lurid inevitability of serial killer films, but what John Woo calls “romantic violence.” Whether the fists, feet, and improvised weapons of Jackie Chan, or the ballet of bullets of Woo’s own work, I love me some highly stylized and choreographed violence. In fact, a martial arts film, or a highly stylized action film, are more likely to get me into the theater than any thing else. (Except for a new mind-twister David Lynch film. “Inland Empire” anyone? Or Sacha Baron Cohen’s next opus.) I never want to fire a gun at someone or inflict violence with my hands, but I love watching portrayals of this, done gracefully, and artfully. I know I am not alone in this among peace-lovers. There is something about fantasy violence that appeals to all sorts of otherwise pacifistic, non-violent personalities.

When I was living in Egypt as a child I saw a Zorro movie (My attempts to track this down have me convinced it was a 1975 Italian version directed by Duccio Tessari and starring Alain Delon, but I have never re-watched it to verify this.) with a climactic duel winding up the inside stairs of a tower. This movie so affected me that my mother made me a long Zorro cloak that I would wear in the hot Egyptian sun, stalking the gardens of our apartment’s front yard, looking for any signs of evil-doers. In my childhood I loved Westerns and was simultaneosly confused and put-off by War films. I liked the loner romanticism of the Western and not the order-following pursuit of death of the War film.

There was this AMAZING zine out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the mid ’90s called “Trash” that had an excellent article on Sam Raimi, John Woo, and Peter Jackson and how they were being courted by Hollywood at the time precisely because of their ability to artistically portray violence. Lotta money in that, the portraying of violence. In fact, what with Sam’s success with Spider-Man, and Woo’s with MI2, and Jackson’s with Lord of the Rings, I’d say Hollywood got their money’s worth. The main guy behind “Trash” was a genius (Not least because unlike nearly everyone on earth he realized what an incredible film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” was.) The zine had stopped and he had left Chapel Hill by the time of my last visit there in the summer of ’96. Where did he go?

To this day I don’t think anyone has topped the Hong Kong New Wave for choreographed violence, and all the best action films not from Hong Kong either make use of Hong Kong action directors or borrow heavily from their innovations. Walter Hill’s film “Last Man Standing” was the first Western action film during the height of my Hong Kong obsession in the ’90s that I actually thought had compelling action scenes, and Buce Willis two-guns-blazing shtick could never have existed without John Woo.

Well, Mr. Incredible, if you are so into choreography and grace, why don’t you go to the ballet? This is something I think about a lot. To what extent is my aesthetic enjoyment of bodily movement dependent on a spin ending with a kick to someone’s throat, or a leap ending up with an elbow on someone’s head (Tony Jaa, represent!)? I’d say pretty important. Even though I do not engage in physically violent acts in my daily life, I am well aware of how my mind is populated by such visions as I go about my work. Are these visions of violence helpful and productive? Do they create a more kind and loving Kid? Probably not. I’ll still go run out to see the new Tsui Hark or Yimou Zhang in a heartbeat. One of life’s contradictions: I want peace, but I want to watch artfully-depicted violence. “Curse of the Golden Flower” here I come.

IK

Now this was a comic I read over and over. Some of the best choreographed fights in comics I had seen at the time. And, unless I’m forgetting something, they were only bested by Miller’s own future works.

So, what is up with all the Miller nostalgia? Well, the last post was written simply to capitalize on the fact that I had just read the “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” miniseries. I have a hard time reviewing anything because I feel my memory is not fresh and accurate enough, unless I have just finished something. Even then, I doubt my conclusions and feel I need to take another look. I read so many positive reviews of “Man Without Fear” online after panning it that I felt like I needed to read it again just to be fair to my childhood hero. Haven’t been able to bring myself to do it again. I don’t like the art and I don’t like the writing. Hard to give it a second chance.

Since writing that post I have meditated on just how much Frank Miller dominated my adolescent imagination. Over and over his works raised the bar for just how awesome comics could be for a male adolescent. I have been so disinterested in his work for so long that I had lost touch with how much Miller dominated my budding imagination. I was having memories of how just the sketches of his then forthcoming “Batman: Dark Knight Returns” caused me to create a dozen rip-offs at the time. His artwork struck me as so powerful and iconic and perfect. In fact I just now went and ordered online an old issue of Amazing Heroes that featured these sketches along with work from “Elektra: Lives Again.” Realizing just how influential he was to me I felt unfair about writing a post trashing him for a perceived drop in quaility. It has made me want to go back and pick up series I had blown off to see if I was missing anything. Yeah, just like I did with “Man Without Fear.” No matter how disappointing that was I am still seeking out other overlooked works. I read “DK2.” Not sure if I had ever gotten all the way through before. I know initially I never bothered to even buy the last issue. Amazon is filled with hateful reviews but I feel like I am more sympathetic than most even if the impact of the series on me was negligible. I also just read “300” seeing how there is a movie coming out and all. My first Miller post has initiated a massive bout of reflection on the man, his work, and its influence on me. I have been so disinterested in his work for 15 years now that I had to remember just how central the man was to my creative consciousness throughout the ’80s. No one’s creative work so impacted me again and again for such a stretch of years. Until Grant Morrison . . .

IK

1/5/07

I just finished reading the collected “Daredevil: The Man Without Fear” by Frank Miller. The limited series was first published 1993-1994, and was Frank Miller’s attempt to go back and re-tell Daredevil’s origin story integrating the characters Miller created during his stint on the title in the ’80s. The original Frank Miller run on Daredevil was one of the major comic book revelations of my childhood. I found a stack of issues from this run at a garage sale for a quarter each back around ’81-’82 which was the only way I could afford to buy more than an issue or two as a child. After Jack Kirby, Frank Miller was the biggest influence on me wanting to become a comic book writer and artist. Frank Miller continued to be one of my all-time favorite comic book creators up through his writing on “Elektra: Assassin,” “Daredevil: Born Again,” and “Batman: Year One.” Then after that point (in the late ’80s) whatever work of his I picked up just didn’t have “it” anymore. His work on “Ronin” and “Elektra: Assassin” were absolutely the most powerful artistic experiences I had as an adolescent. After finishing “Ronin” with the fold-out pages at the end I sat stunned in my room for the evening, completely emptied. I still use the ending of that series and the “Elektra: Assassin” series as my gold standards for the powerful impact I expect the ending of a narrative to have. (I loved Bendis’s recent run on Daredevil but I found the ending of his tenure to be more of a “to be continued” than a powerful finale.) When “Elektra: Assassin” issued in 1986 that was the most experimental comics work I had seen both visually (Bill Sienkiewicz) and narratively (Miller) by a longshot up until that point.

Some people love Frank’s “Sin City” stuff. I’ve read a handful of the collections, and while they are readable, I find them uninspiring, cliche-ridden, formulaic noir. They just don’t do it for me. That is how I’ve felt about all his work since his incredible peak in the ’80s.

I was so uninterested in his work by the time the “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” limited series dropped that I never bothered to even read a single issue. I finally picked up the “Daredevil: Man Without Fear” collection this week to see if I had missed anything when I blew if off during its initial publication. Well, I didn’t miss much. The writing comes off as very amateurish and uninspired. Its attempts at being writerly are flat and unmoving. I have never been a fan of Johnny Romita Jr. as an artist and this series didn’t change that for me. I find his linework totally unappealing. His work is too comic-booky for me to effectively illustrate a “dark” series like this. I don’t care for his depictions of Matt Murdock (at any age) or Elektra. There are moments with some dramatic power that I have to cop to in the art, but I basically just didn’t appreciate him on this series at all. Despite finding the writerly tone of the series embarrassing I was at first open to Miller’s attempts to more thoroughly graft his character creations to the Daredevil origin story. Unfortunately I didn’t buy the character of the young Stick or his nighttime training sessions with Matt. Trying to retcon in a tragic early mistake of Matt’s that would haunt him forever (despite him never having thought about it in the comic before) didn’t work for me at all. The young sidekick was as unbelievable and lame (and unnecessary) at they all are. The kidnapping plot and the assassin Lark, equally uninspired and lame. The only interesting thing for me were the details Miller mentioned showing just how depraved the activities of Kingpin’s crime organization are.

Frank, what happened?