Month: July 2007

Andaz, Andaz, Andaz . . .

Almost 5 years. July is technically our five-year anniversary, since it was July of 2002 when we threw our first bhangra dance party at Lola’s Room. We celebrate our anniversaries in November, because that is when we started at the Fez Ballroom.

Anjali’s first set was a very atypical (for Andaz) selection that included the new State of Bengal and plenty of British Asian hip-hop. I went on at 10pm and promptly cleared everyone with my first song. And they stayed cleared for quite a while. I worried that no one would dance until Anjali went on in an hour. Often I will get people to dance from 9pm-10pm when I am DJing the early slot, so playing to an empty dance floor from 10pm on was really unnerving. (Flashback to opening for Karsh Kale years ago. Other than one bhangra song, people kept off the floor for my whole set. When Anjali went on everyone mobbed the floor. Pay no attention to the white boy in the corner choking on a shotgun.) When I finally got people back on the floor I would clear them again with my next song. The whole first half of my set was like that. I don’t know if I have ever failed so badly at keeping people on the floor at Andaz. New Shinda hip-hop didn’t work, Bombay to Goa did. The night was very slow to get started. I don’t think the dance floor was really going until I dropped “Do U Wanna Partner” from the Partner soundtrack, which is ironic, because I am suspect of the song’s cheeziness, and not at all sold on it. I played it out of curiosity to see how it would go over. Very well, apparently. The only stellar mix of the night I can take credit for was going into “Bluffmaster” after that. Easy enough, since they ride the same Pon De Replay-derived riddim.

There is so much new filmi I never quite get around to playing at Andaz, and I really wanted to make sure that didn’t happen this time. The tricky part is that no one is really looking to hear my new favorite Bollywood songs. Everyone wants Dhoom 2 and the Don remake which do nothing for me, to put it mildy. People request songs from these soundtracks so much, they probably think we don’t know them, or aren’t up on them. The joke is that for months before they were released I was going to Indian stores in different cities asking if either of them had come out yet. When I finally got my hands on them I was quite disappointed, especially with Dhoom 2, which I thought didn’t have a single decent song on it. Of course when they came out, no one was requesting them, but a year later, that is Portland Hindi-song requesters’ idea of what the latest, hottest stuff is. Yuck. Against my better judgement I did play the “Khaike” remake very late in the night, but by the time I played it I doubt anyone who requested it was still around.

Normally I don’t play much filmi until later, when the Desis start arriving in force. However, I was getting such a positive response from the new filmi I was playing during my early slot that I ran with it for the rest of my set. I got in “Dekhoon Tujhe To Pyaar Aaye (Remix),” “Imaan Dol Jayege,” and “Thare Vaste (Remix)”(which got a lot of screams when the chorus came in), but didn’t make it around to the songs I love from I See You, amongst dozens of others. Unfortunately, since many of the Desis weren’t there yet, they missed out on the most concentrated filmi block of the evening. Once the Desis arrived, it was the Panjabis who ran things so aggresively from the stage, it was hard not to want to keep them happy. That means filmi lovers suffer.

In my first hour I got a Daler Mehndi request. There is usually at least one person requesting his songs at a typical Andaz. In five years only one half of a Daler Mehndi song has ever been played at an Andaz night. Anjali would never bring him or play him. I once played half of a dhol-heavy remix of “Ek Dana” and then felt so mortified, I pulled it. This time I told the Daler-requester we save Daler for weddings, and the requester actually laughed. Normally I get nothing but hostility when I explain that there are certain artists we don’t play at Andaz. I took it as a good omen that the guy took my refusal with a smile. No one else requested Daler Mehndi all night.

Anjali was all over the map, even throwing in “Reggada” from the new Outlandish, and a Panjabi 2-Step track from Panjabi MC’s Steel Bangle in honor of DJ Tarsier, who was in attendance. We used to play a lot more Panjabi 2-Step at Andaz, but because of the narrow focus and aggressiveness of both the bhangra faction and the filmi faction, little else gets played. Atlas becomes our forum for those sorts of sounds now.

Like I said, the Panjabis were running things this time. The stage was packed with bhangra dancers, and who wants to clear a stage full of dancers? Anjali and I still managed to squeeze in a fair amount of filmi, but no doubt nowhere near enough to please the Dhoom 2 and Don remake crowd. Anjali keeps saying we should throw a separate filmi party. I think filmi-lovers are so convinced that all we do is play bhangra, that they wouldn’t believe us even if we did throw a filmi-only party. They’d probably think we would still be playing bhangra.

Speaking of bhangra, “Putt Jattan Da Jawan” off Original Edit went OFF! Twice. Anjali didn’t realize I had already played it, but the second time through the Panjabis went so crazy you would hardly know it was the second time. This was very notable to us, because when Anjali last played that song at Basement Bhangra in NYC, the Panjabis there hardly moved. I decided then and there that it must not be a big hit. Well, I was wrong as far as the Oregon/Washington Panjabis are concerned, because the energy level was nuts the two times that song was played.

I squeezed in four tracks from the new Sukshinder Shinda throughout the night, so at least I did something right. Sukshinder Shinda, Preet Brar, and Surjit Bindrakhia finished off the last dancers. It used to be that filmi dominated the last hour at Andaz, but all the Singhs in attendance are shaking up the format in a big way.

I like playing both bhangra and filmi at Andaz, but the bhangra and filmi factions in attendance have very little patience. Often Panjabis will be in our face complaining the moment we play a filmi song, and filmi-lovers will complain the second there is a bhangra song. Just because the two musics are “Indian” doesn’t mean they are a natural fit for a party. It is difficult for me to accept that people might leave our party unhappy because we try to cover both bases.
IK

As long as you accept that everything is a fiction, wikipedia can be such a great tool for referencing lots of different information. I was talking out of my ass to Anjali about how Himesh Reshammiya came out of nowhere to rule Bollywood. Tonight I pull out 2002’s Humraaz and see Reshammiya’s name on the cover. According to the wiki his music director credits go back to 1998, by 2004 he cranked out 12 in a year, and according to my half-assed, bleary-eyed accounting, he has been credited as music director on a Bollywood soundtrack 36 times since January of 2005. It was also 2005 when he started doing playback singing, and all of a sudden his career and his prolificness just explode. The wiki does a pretty good job of summing him up positively and negatively, from my experience. I totally understand why people would dislike his voice, and his style, and his music. I totally understand how monomaniacal he his in writing a certain song over and over, but amongst all his songs, I can definitely find plenty that I adore, despite all the chaff. (And honestly, a lot of it comes down to Akbar Sami’s techno-house remixes, who despite operating in a style I am not drawn to at all, manages to take melodic songs and consistenty turn them into stompers that I appreciate far more than the originals. Himesh is smart to work so closely with the guy. They’re a great team for electro-techno-pop-vocal-house songs, something that makes me cringe just to write it.

Turns out that he seemed like a mystery to me because he waited until July 2007 to give his first media interview. All according to the wiki, of course. But my favorite part is his commitment to creating a new music school system: “Reshammiya is planning a “Himesh Reshammiya School Of Music”, which will have ten divisions including Rock, Sufi-Rock, Indian classical vocal, instrumental, pop etc. Each division will have three kinds of curricula (professional, amateur, and hobbyists). Reshammiya is planning eight schools, each on a 25,000 sq. ft. premises in the four Indian metros^[18].”

People who hate Reshammiya should be terrified now. A multi-city school system devoted to teaching his course in music instruction. He agrees with Ravi Shankar in practice, since Ravi said the traditional student-teacher relationship would have to change if Indian classical music is to survive in the 21st century. He realized most people couldn’t do the whole-life-devotion thing, and would have to study as part of a busier lifestyle. Himesh offers three levels of instruction, based on time commitment. I appreciate the awesome utopian societal transformation education model. Placing something in society that’s functional, that can teach a great many people. Good thing to do with his money. Wonder how the idea will survive the transformation to reality. I hope it results in more songs like “Dekhun Tujhe To Pyar(Akbar Sami Remix),” and less like “Just Chill.”

Despite my cringing at the use of English in his songs (“Shaka Laka Boom Boom”) he will break the English language market in a big way, eventually.

“The first is of the launch of the H.R.School Of Music. We have state-of-the-art malls and multiplexes but no such school for music. My father, Vipin Reshammiya, who is the backbone of my success, had dreamt of this way back in the ‘70s when he was a musician and composer and had pioneered the use of electronic instruments in Indian film music. I have been fortunate enough to be in a position to make his vision a reality.”

“When I first came in as an 18-year-old TV serial producer with Andaz they wrote me off saying that a kid like me could not survive among giant producers. But Andaz and most of my later serials were huge hits and they had to eat their words, since I was also the story writer and the music director of their hit title-songs.”

-Himesh Reshammiya

IK

The wonderful Luciana Lopez of the Oregonian wrote a feature on us in the 7/27/07 edition of the A&E.

7/24/07

I had been looking for a used copy of Mike McGonigal’s Loveless in the 33 and 1/3 series for a while, and I finally picked one up today. I had seen the manuscript in DJ Safi’s hands a year ago (which she raved about), but today was the first time I sat down with the book. Even though I am not quite finished Third Coast or the Fats Domino biography I have been working on for a year, I started Loveless at the end of work today, and finished it in a few hours. It is a short book devoted to the My Bloody Valentine album Loveless. It is quite brief, and a quick and amiable read. What I appreciated most about the book were the quotes from Kevin Shields and the other band members that came from interviews they gave Mike in 2005/2006. There was always so much mythology around that record, that I appreciate the inside view.

Loveless is one of those records that has become canonical, but I remember when I didn’t know anyone who even knew who My Bloody Valentine were. I had made a cassette tape of their EPs in 1991 and I would play it for anyone who would listen. The most common response when “To Here Knows When,” the first track, came on? “Your tape’s messed up. It must be warped.” And then it would be pulled and someone would put on Metallica or Black Sabbath.

I discovered the band through the British music weekly Melody Maker, and I was fortunate enough to find promo copies of all their releases for a few dollars each in the Spring of 1991. I was intrigued by their unique sound, but wasn’t completely sold on them until I found a promo copy of the Tremolo EP when it came out. Upon listening to “To Here Knows When” in my bedroom, I realized that My Bloody Valentine were now my favorite band. I devoured all their post-Bilinda Butcher-joining-the-band material, and eagerly awaited the release of the Loveless album, which I copped at Eugene’s House of Records the moment I saw it on the shelves. I feel like it is one of those records like the Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique, where so many people slept on it at the time, but now everyone claims to have always loved it. Sales figures alone put the lie to such claims, and there was no illegal downloading messing with the figures back then. For many years Loveless was by far my most-listened to album, and most likely to be listed as my all time favorite album. As much as I listened to albums like The Dirt of Luck, There’s Nothing Wrong With Love, and The Fox when they came out, I still don’t think it has been supplanted as the centerpiece in my personal sonic mythology. Some of the shows Stereolab put on during their Emperor Tomato Ketchup made me consider if they hadn’t edged out My Bloody Valentine as my favorite band, but they never had a record with the overall lifetime impact on me as Loveless.

For years I read about all the abandoned sessions that followed Loveless. I always wanted to hear all the results, even if they weren’t up to Kevin’s standards. There were reports of a drum’n’bass album, a death metal album, etc. Now that I have long since given up, and never expect to see another My Bloody Valentine record, something will probably come out. I was so disappointed with the Kevin Shields’ tracks on the Lost In Translation soundtrack, that I am fine with him never releasing anything else again. The inclusion of the utterly sublime “Sometimes” on that soundtrack showed just how pedestrian and worthless the new tracks by him were. Having spent many years experiencing private transcendence to that song, I felt that asshole-ish horror of forced sharing. “Oh no, now every schmuck with a hard-on for Scarlett Johansson will buy this soundtrack and have this song.” Private transcendence sullied by ignorant public consumption.

I went up to Seattle with friends and saw My Bloody Valentine at the Moore Theater in the Summer of ’92. It was the best show I ever saw, and the worst show I ever saw. There were tables selling earplugs in the lobby, which I had never seen before. I took the hint and for the first time ever, bought some ear plugs. We caught the last throes of Yo La Tengo’s set, and judging from the crowd response, they were great. (Years later I was able to confirm how amazing they are when I caught them at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.) I wished the band order had been switched, because we had to sit through the entirety of Buffalo Tom’s craptastic set. I never liked them (to put it mildly), and they had no business being on a bill with My Bloody Valentine. The show was LOUD. Every song seemed like two alternating chords played really loud. The drummer and bassist (Colm and Debbie) thrashed around like maniacs while Kevin and Bilinda stood perfectly still. No vocals were audible the entire show. I am not even convinced the mics were plugged in. I read an interview with the band that was conducted after the show, and the interviewer complained about how there were no vocals. Kevin claimed it wasn’t intentional. All of the melodies on the album were faintly audible, but since they did not appear to be related to what anyone was playing on their guitar, I imagined it must all be triggered samples. Here I was, wondering how they were going to recreate these fabulous sounds live, and I learned that they weren’t going to, instead playing two chords accompanied by samples. The songs were mostly only able to be differentiated by the rhythm track. If you recognized the rhythm, you could tell what song it was. My friend had learned the bass part to “Feed Me With Your Kiss” prior to the show, and claimed they didn’t play the many repeating parts the way they are recorded.

My friend Rick had told me how My Bloody Valentine would play the noise section from “You Made Me Realise” for twenty minutes live. We timed them, and sure enough, it was twenty minutes. I was down in the pit the whole time. I took turns putting earplugs in, and pulling them out, because I didn’t like how they altered the sound. Eventually I got one stuck down my ear canal, and I had to wait until we were staying at someone’s house in Olympia later that night, before I could get it removed. While they were playing the noise section bright white lights shone out at the crowd. People stared around at each other, confused and in pain. I started wondering what going to hell was like. I wondered if it wasn’t a dramatic transition, but entirely subtle. I imagined that we were all already in hell, and that hell was simply this period of noise, in this space, strung out until infinity. Well, I wasn’t in hell, and they finally finished the song, and no one asked for an encore, but simply shuffled out stunned. One of my companions spent the night tripping and listening to Loveless on his headphones. I didn’t own headphones, and never listened to music on headphones. As many times as I had listened to Loveless, it was always on a stereo. “It’s all about the headphones. You gotta listen to it on headphones.” I still haven’t tested his theory.

IK

Balkan Beat Box were scheduled to play our September MusicfestNW edition of Atlas, but they have had to cancel. This is a bummer, but we still have Balkano Gitano DJ extraordinaire, Joro-Boro, coming from NYC to play our August 11th Atlas night at Holocene. Joro-Boro blew Anjali and I away when we had the chance to play with him in NYC. We are really looking forward to playing with him in Portland. You all are in for a treat. And Balkan Beat Box even has a song named after Joro-Boro on their new album, so it all comes around in the end.

IK

Third Coast by Roni Sarig is a freaking great book. I picked it up primarily out of interest in the Virginia scene, Missy, Timbaland, Neptunes, etc., and got so much more than I bargained for. A very different history of hip-hop that asserts the primacy of the South, both from a hip-hop origins stance, but also from a popular music stance. Since the last several years, the popularity of Southern hip-hop has been clear from listening to commercial hip-hop radio, but this book does so much to show how much popular hip-hop music has been coming out of the South from the beginning. So many connections are drawn, both from the earlier eras of funk and soul to the hip-hop present, but also from one hip-hop project to another, all linked through the involvement of particular individuals. Very compelling attempt to create an entirely new hip-hop narrative contrasting with every other hip-hop history book’s New York-centric approach.

I so rarely write about any of the books that I read. Even if they are interesting enough to finish, I rarely feel like I have anything worthwhile or intelligent to say about them. I haven’t accomplished that with this book either, but I’ve been enjoying this one so much I had to share. I have a much greater sense of how certain people stay active in the music industry for decades, possibly out of the public eye, and yet responsible for so many different musical projects over the years.
IK

7/16/07

Thanks to everyone who came out and danced and sweated with us on Saturday. We’ve got several exciting guests lined up for the next months’ Atlas events, so it will be a while before it is just the three of us DJing again. We’re very excited to have Joro-Boro in August, Ori from Balkan Beat Box in September, and possibly Maga Bo returning in October. We only like to have guests a few times a year, but we are excited to have this level of talent gracing our night.

One of my big challenges as a DJ is managing to play all the music I am so excited about at home, once I get up on stage. I am frustrated that month after month, so much great music in my collection never gets played for the dancers that come to our nights. I always bring hundreds of hours worth of selections, not sure where I or the crowd are going to want to go. I want this freedom of choice, but then I often don’t play all the latest, hottest stuff I am most excited about. Many times the pressure and time-crunch of being on stage in front of an audience means I reach for more comfortable and familiar selections rather than the totally new. I am generally happier with my sets, the more I play things that are new for me, and the dancers. That may not be what the dancers are looking for, but that is what is personally more artistically satisfying for me.

Sometimes it seems like it would be easier to only bring the newest material I am excited about, to guarantee that it gets played. However, the dance floor is not always on the same page as I am, and a DJ often has to revise their plans on stage if they have any desire to effectively connect with the crowd. Despite all my at-home listening to reggaeton, I rarely drop more than a few songs in my Atlas sets, and they are often (disappointingly to me) the same ones. I could play dozens of hours of non-stop reggaeton from my collection, if the opportunity were to arise, but when I am only playing a few tracks, I don’t vary my selections as much as I would like. It often comes down to the crucible of the stage, when I reach for my trusted and reliable tools, rather than something new and untried. It is frustrating and a source of personal dissatisfaction.

My friend Alissa has been kind enough to share with me a bunch of Kuduro CDs she picked up in Angola while filming a documentary about two Angolan boys. The CDs are great, and I was very excited about them as I listened to them the week of Atlas, but no songs from them made it into my set. There is a great comp that has been out for six months called “Urban Africa Club.” It is the best collection of Afrcan club music I have heard. I’ve been turning other people on to it, but it doesn’t get featured in my sets the way I’d like. I’ve been listening to a lot of Brazilian music lately, but I didn’t feature any batucada selections in my Atlas sets on Saturday. I’ve been stockpiling Balkan music like nobody’s business, but only a few tracks manage to make it into my sets. The list goes on and on. Often I’m covering five or six genres in an hour set, and I’m down on myself that I didn’t include five or six more.

The one that really gets to me though, is reggaeton. Despite a lot of recent critical interest that has been directed at the earliest manifestations of reggaeton, I have found the last three years to be the most exciting period in the development of this music for my own interests. There are so many songs I like so much, and I never play most of them out. I really want to change this.

We have a regular rotation at Atlas, but due to outside events in the lives of Anjali and E3, my headlining slot turned into an opening slot. I wasn’t prepared to open, and didn’t bring any of the downtempo sounds that I would want to bring for an opening set. I had to improvise. Jorge Ben, Ruben Blades, Brazilian electronica, “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom,” French hip-hop, “Kamjaraf” from the new Bombay to Goa soundtrack (it sounds totally ripped off from another song, but I can’t place it yet), Orishas, but some Balkan action actually got some people on the floor, despite how early it was, and how few people were at the club. This is the danger of the opening set. While I might be playing rhythmically enticing songs, I’m not really shooting for a dance floor, because of how early it is. Invariably, half-way through some song, people will start dancing, and by that time, I already have the next song lined up, and it was not chosen to maintain a dance floor, so, unless I have time to do a quick switch, the dance floor is cleared after one song. Which is what happened when I went into an odd track off the new Mala Rodriguez after the Balkan track. Eventually E3 and Anjali showed up, and E3 went on next.

E3 sounded great, but unfortunately his sets are the only time Anjali and I have to hang out during Atlas, so I regret that I do not focus more on what E3 plays. I heard some Balkan Beat Box, French hip-hop, Rai, etc. Good stuff.

When Anjali went on she started out with a New Flesh song and then went into a dancehall set that the crowd was really not feeling. She will often rebel against what she feels is expected of her, regardless of the crowd’s response. She played the Cham remix of “This Is Why I’m Hot,” and this brought a bunch of people to the floor. Eventually she was playing Panjabi beats, and this is what really got people going. I was not feeling up for going back on when it was my turn. It had snuck up on me. I had been futzing with the soundboard all night, but I still wasn’t sure I was happy with the sound. Things had been sounding fried-out and distorted, and I didn’t want that to happen during my set when I was dropping heavy beats.

I started with reggaeton, the Fergie remix of “Impacto” which has been stuck in my head for weeks, so I guess Daddy Yankee knew what he was doing when he dropped it as the first single off his new album. I felt totally unprepared to be on stage. I spent my whole set looking through my reams of music having trouble finding what I was looking for, and what I had been so excited to hear at home. Frantically I put on LDA’s “Ooh Aah,” which I LOVE, but I feel like I have been playing it every month for a long time. I played some Yomo and I may be forgetting something, but I played another version of “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.” From here I went into “Para De Gracinha (Euro Crunk Mix). This is my favorite 12” in the Man Recordings series, but I felt it was a little too hardcore electronic for the Atlas crowd.

I went into spazz mode with some kuduro, speed Klezmer, chutney soca, and merengue on crack. I really pushed the crowd to the point where very few were willing to keep up with my spazz fit. I managed to end with a mad dance floor by playing “Sajanaji Vaari Vaari” and a J-Skillz-produced bhangra finale two-fer. There was quite a lot of applause at the end of my set, which felt really good, especially after I forced my audio perversity on the crowd to such an extent.

E3 was up next with a set that sounded great. I especially liked his playing some berimbau Funk action. I really wish I could have studied his set more closely, but I was enjoying my downtime. Anjali finished out the night with a mostly Desi Beats set, some Sean Paul (including his duet with Beyonce), ending up with some old filmi. Another night at Atlas wrapped up. Thanks to everyone who made the night such a success.

IK

PS The only request I got all night was for “Dhoom 2” aka “Dhoom Again.”

7/16/07

Growing up I found eye pillows weird and disturbing. I didn’t like how they looked on other people (especially with open eyes painted on them) and I didn’t like the feeling of the pillow pressing against my eyes when I would try one on. I never thought I would ever use them. One point several years ago I was trying to take a nap at Anjali’s sister’s very brightly-lit apartment. I borrowed her eye pillow, and discovered, surprise, that it did a good job of cutting out the light and helping me sleep. As an adult I have become very conscious of the brightness of my sleeping room, and especially since I am often sleeping through daylight hours, I go to great lengths to seal out all light. I realized that an eye pillow really helps seal out light. I have used different eye pillows in the last few years, and have found them especially useful for sleeping on planes. Upon debarking in New York on our last trip I saw a $40 Tempur-Pedic Swedish eye pillow in one of the Newark airport shops. I decided that was what I needed. Ironically, after leaving the airport, I realized I had left my eye pillow on the plane, and so I knew I would be looking to replace it when I returned to the airport.

According to the Tempur-Pedic eye pillow product package hype it is “made of a unique open cell, visco-elastic material that uses your body heat to mold to the countours of your face and seal out light.” It seals out ALL light. It is amazing. No matter how brightly-lit the room, it is pitch black once you put on the eye pillow. No cracks of light around the edges, nothing. This worked so much better than any other eye pillow design I have tried, that I was an instant convert. I am usually wary of what I call “chemical nuclear death” and although I had some concerns about this space-age material, I wagered that it was safe.

My DJing lifestyle results in large, dark circles under my eyes. Upon returning from NYC I noticed that my eye skin looked even worse than usual,  the dryness and texture resembled lizard skin,  and there were even raised rash areas. I started using moisturizer, which I rarely do, but it got worse every day, not better.  Eventually I noticed that although this discoloration and dryness was concentrated underneath my eyes, there was a radiation-burn pattern all around my eyes in the shape of the pillow. Yikes! I immediately stopped using the pillow. I don’t know how many people have this reaction to the product, but it really scared me. As much as I am convinced about how effectively the Tempur-Pedic pillow keeps out light, it’s not worth the severe skin reactions. No thanks, Swedes, I guess I’m going back to silk, or some other time-tested natural material.

IK

7/14/07

Flew out to NYC Friday night and flew back Monday morning. The Monday morning flight was so early that the earliest bus to Newark wouldn’t work, so we had to catch the latest, and then spend four hours at the airport in the middle of the night when everything is closed. I neeeeed my sleep, and two nights with barely any sleep in one weekend, really wiped me out. Straight back to work after that. It’s funny, because in the Spring of 2000 when I started getting really serious about DJing as a career, my goal was to be flown around internationally, DJing from one end of the globe to the other. Now that I am just making baby steps towards that goal, playing on the other coast, I question whether this is really the lifestyle that I want. I need sleep. Eight to ten hours a day. I used to be able to sleep through all flights, and now I have much more trouble with that. I don’t like playing a gig the day I arrive in town with no sleep. Then again, it is difficult for me to relax and enjoy a “vacation” when I know I have a gig to perform in a few days. I’m also paranoid about trying to keep all my music safe in another city.

The more “successful” I get as a DJ, the more I question whether the goals I set for myself seven years ago will really make me happy. In concept, I like the idea of flying all over the world and DJing, but the more I’m on planes (coach, natch) the more I realize I don’t like to fly. I know I don’t like to lose sleep and mess with my sleep schedule. Flying internationally will only exacerbate those things. Most of my adult life I’ve avoided having any kind of plan, goals, etc., figuring that there are few things worse than getting what you want. Lately I’ve certainly been questioning whether what I’ve wished for is really what I want for my life.

Playing our own party on the other side of the country, as opposed to being a guest at someone else’s, presents quite a challenge. Anjali and I feel like we only do a partially-decent job of promoting our parties in Portland, and we live here. Trying to promote a party from 3000 miles away is something with which we have little experience. We are not there to flyer or poster. We don’t know what websites are effective places to post our parties. There might be very important email newsletters to become a part of, but we don’t know what those are. There are probably distribution lists to tap into, but we don’t know what those are. We are really lost. From my first visits to NYC when I saw club flyer messes at the front of record shops, I thought “I would sure never want to promote a party in New York!” Too much competition, too much area to cover, too many establishments to visit, too big a populace to effectively reach. We feel like we barely scratch the surface in Portland of all the avenues to promote ourselves, and NYC magnifies that task to an extraordinary degree.

We did what we could, but I had no expectations for our first night at the Knitting Factory. The club had never printed any flyers or posters, which could come down to our taking a week to get all our info to them, as we needed time to come up with a concept and a focus for the party. I sent out press releases, which apparently went ignored. Our names were printed in the TimeOut, but that was it, and over in the live music and not the DJ section of the magazine.

The Knitting Factory will often have early shows and late shows every night on all three of their floors. We knew there was an early rock show on our floor, and we were scheduled to go on at 11pm. We were supposed to load-in at 10:45pm, which hardly provides time to set up and do a soundcheck by 11pm. We were running late, and yet when we got to our room, the band’s equipment was still on stage, the band were still taking down their equipment, and there was no sign of a DJ setup. The soundperson, Alex, was very nice, as he tried to get the bands to hurry up and move their stuff. The DJ equipment was not in the room yet, and he went searching for it, bringing it back piece by piece. Because 99.9% of all international music is not available on vinyl, we had made clear to the production manager two weeks before the show that we needed CD players in addition to turntables. At one point it looked like no CD players had been set aside for us. A group of production employees (the manager was not around this night) came to us to break the bad news. We explained that the production manager had bought new equipment just for this night, and after further searching, two CD players were located and brought down. Unfortunately, there was no sign of any RCA cables to connect the CD players to the mixer. An RCA cable, so central to home electronics, and DJ setups, is not a very common cable at a rock club. Alex spent quite a bit of time searching the club for some. At this point it was so late, that our guests began arriving, and we got to hang out while we looked at our unconnected DJ equipment sitting on the stage. Of course Anjali and I have dozens of RCA cables at home, but didn’t think to bring them 3000 miles to our gig, since we were told all the equipment would be provided. It started to look like for want of RCA cables, the show would be lost. Finally Alex showed up with the necessary cables, and by the time everything was hooked up, it was now 11:50pm, 50 minutes after our performance was scheduled to start.

I put on the new M.I.A. track “Boyz” to make sure everything was working. I knew the single was out in New York when I went looking for it in Portland the week before the gig, but as I expected, we had to pick it up in NYC the day of the gig. Anjali decided to go on first, and she had the awkward job of playing to a small group of people sitting and listening, staring at the stage. She played a mix of South Asian hip-hop, grime, bhangra, a Funk Carioca instrumental and another (unreleased) M.I.A. track. She did a good job under very frustrating circumstances. People were slowly filtering in, but it was still a very small group that came to check out the debut of our new night. I went on and started playing Balkan music, when a dance floor started. I played several Balkan tracks but then wanted to go on to something else rather than stick with that sound. I played some Edu-K metal funk and Anjali promptly came up and informed me that sticking with the Balkan music was a good idea. I was feeling contrary and played French hip-hop, eventually making my way to bhangra and Bollywood selections, much to the approval of the mostly Desi crowd. Eventually it felt a lot like I was playing a Desi party, and I thought it funny that we were attempting to do something that wasn’t strictly a Desi party, but that is who showed up. The people in attendance were very enthusiastic and supportive, all promising to return to our gig in August. Since Anjali already had a wedding booked on the East Coast for Saturday the 4th, we will be playing the Knitting Factory Sunday, August 5th for our August show.

Towards the end of the night the general manager of the Knitting Factory came down to check out the show and talk a great deal about his vision for the night with me. Shay is a British Desi who moved to the United States twelve years ago to manage the Skatalites US tours. He has spent most of his life in the dub, punk and ska scenes, and is now looking to do something exciting and cutting edge with Indian music. He has some very interesting ideas for alternative Indian festivals and the like. He is now Talvin Singh’s tour manager in the US, and talked to us about our playing with Talvin in the Fall., hopefully tied into our night at the Knitting Factory. Even though what Talvin does is very different than what we do, and we have often been frustrated by people assuming that we play Talvin Singh when we say we play Indian music (we don’t), he is still the biggest South Asian electronics artist in the world. I don’t even count chicks when they are hatched at my feet, so I am currently detachedly amused about this very large carrot dangling in front of us.

Thanks to everyone who came and danced. It would have been very depressing without you. Your happiness and enthusiasm makes it all worthwhile.

IK

Despite alll my prior ragging on the English lyrics to “Dhoom Again” there are plenty of other songs with cheeezy English lyrics that I do play quite frequently in my sets. In fact, many of my favorite artists prominently feature dumb-ass lyrics in their work, such as my long-time favorites: The Jesus and Mary Chain. So why do I happily play songs like “Where’s the Party Tonight” and “It’s the Time to Disco” while dissing “Dhoom Again?” Well, it goes back to an earlier post about the subjectivity of taste. I might like something that has a million suspect elements, but none of those elements interfere with my enjoyment of it. They may even enhance my enjoyment, like when Jim Reid sings “feels like, feels like, pain . . .to my brain.” Or how about “don’t know why, don’t know why, things vaporize and rise to the sky.” Or how about “get your lips around a cool black pepsi coke.” While I fully understand that such lyrics might inspire revulsion in others, I derive enjoyment from them. No doubt like some people derive enjoyment from the lyrics of “Dhoom Again.” Not me, however. I re-listened to the track the other day and realized that even with wildly-soloing guitars, I don’t have any problem with the instrumental to the track, it’s just the awful lyrics. Maybe they could re-do it in Hindi, and with my limited language ability, no matter how bad the lyrics were, they wouldn’t bother me.

That is one thing of which I am all too aware. Since I am only fluent in one language, I don’t fully understand the lyrics to most of the songs that I play. Even with my knowledge of Spanish, I can hardly penetrate the linguistic intricacies of most Reggaeton tracks, due to my ignorance of the peculiarities of Puerto Rican slang and pronunciation. –I bought a book specifically on Puerto Rican Spanish. The gringo author claimed that he had lived in several Spanish-speaking countries and believed he was fully fluent, but after moving to Puerto Rico, had to practically learn a whole new language.– Because of my limited language abilities, I am very possibly playing dumb-ass (or highly-offensive) lyrics all the time, that would offend my sensibilities a great deal, were they in English.  In my ignorance, I play them happily.  In fact, when one is not fluent in a language, simple lyrics are great, because you can understand them.  –Hey, the singer is saying “I love you, Baby, tonight,” that’s great!–  Whenever there is a popular song in another language, if the beat doesn’t grab me, I assume there has to be something in the lyrics that is meaningful to native speakers.

When I criticize a song for cheezy lyrics I am not making any objective claims about the content of the song.  I am merely making a strongly-worded personal judgement. I don’t pretend that my tastes have any validity outside my own nervous system.  In fact, with my years of dance floor-clearing experience, I know my taste has no validity outside my own nervous system.   It’s not that the songs I play have “better” cheezy English lyrics, they just don’t bother me as much, for whatever reason.  You can have your “Dhoom Again” and I’ll gladly take New Order, all Mark Robinson projects, The Ramones, and the Reid brothers.

IK