Monday, July 15
i have these vivid memories. the day i encountered endtroducing i was sitting in the commons (we're talking sota) at one of those poorly-designed cafeteria tables with stylish green pipes around the edge which made them nearly impossible to clean effectively, probably with karen and maybe emily but more significantly aijung, who proferred this fantastic-looking thing with no words on the cover, just a phat photograph and nice papery texture. and the cd was that awesome green, not recognizably related to the cover art, but still somehow marvelously in keeping with the design. on a little discman, i skipped ahead to "why hip hop sucks in '96," and a minute or so later sated my curiousity that far.
i borrowed it, probably not then, but somewhat later, and it took me at least a few weeks before the bomb hit me and i saw what a total bleeding masterpiece that album was and still is, not like it's my own personal rosetta stone, but just damn, what a discovery, and kind of cool that i came to it myself. i've always been a solitary music fan mostly, so it's funny how few of my records i feel are truly mine. that nearly is, but it's too good for me alone. i know all kinds of folks have that, seems like it transcends at least a bit.
and i was going to say - but no, that was u.n.k.l.e., and maybe actually beforehand (is that right?) - that that was the same disc aijung lent me by way of apologizing for backing out (yet again) on a wanakena venture, along with a couple of other titles, some of which i distinctly remember not listening too: bjork's post (do you believe i was sleeping on that one?), buckley's sketches for my sweetheart..., the unbelievable truth's almost there (still a soft spot), and maybe something else (definitely, there were five. dunno.) that was the same weekend i read east of eden, on crazy amy's rec. inspiration, in a bright blue library binding, cover to cover, from that longer-than-it's-length intro description of the valley to "timshel."
i was thinking about this the other day, and that's still one of the few endings to a novel that really left me satisfied. novel endings are tough, man, it seems like either you're still wanting more or you've already gotten tired (like lanark and rez blues, in recent memory) of the book. it's kind of important.
while i'm on the subject, i want to point out that chapter eight in part four of Kavalier and Clay is one of the most beautiful (quasi-) love scenes I can think of. what could be more romantic than a wee-hour gourmet picnic in a thunderstorm at the top of the e.s.b.? and after all that build-up. oof! (oh sorry, no spoilers here ma'am.)
but, yeah, when i finally bought the album for myself, the same time as I bought Moon Safari (which I had also borrowed from Aijung for at least a year), and a few others I couldn't leave for college without (Kiko, One Trick Pony, um, sgt. pepper). that was two summers ago. endtroducing... isn't my life. but it is a damn fine record. i like it anyway.
so i decided to see DJ Shadow perform live tonight, in the face of that creating problems for the rest of the company. not entirely my fault, and i don't feel guilty about it. it went down like this:
dan, mami, rebecca, i, and janet (from hong kong and edinburgh, i'm still not quite clear on her connection to all this) were wandering around bread and circus, i guess you could say, grocery shopping. and dan's not the best at realizing that for certain things to happen, other things have to happen.
last night there was this i thought kind of touching moment where we shared our knizowledge - i played endtroducing for dan and he actually listened and liked it, and he, er, told me stuff about mixing boards. then he failed again to satisfy himself with that first african track. mastering and remastering and so on. that's how it goes.
(carla never called, if you're wondering - well, we talked last night, and then this morning she again didn't call. whatevs)
up bright (eleven!) and early (o'clock!) for breakfast with dan and mr. brandon patton (hee-yeah!) at that diner. it occured to me to order a raspberry-lime rickey and two sweet-potato waffles. so that's what i did (and not a monte cristo, but remind me to get one next time). that's almost an ideal breakfast. colorful too.
music flows in and around - new looper, unopened $135 south african cds in the bottom of messy van, guerilla (sing it with me now: "i've got a mobile pho-one, i've got a mobile pho-one") and the strokes (cuz of the mug).
Now (it's late late late as i write this) superchunk are keeping me company: Here's to shutting up, damn the torpedoes, is tuneful and delicious. why can't I get into the older stuff?
sorry, you thought this was a narrative? no, just cryptic music commentary that is meaningless except to few.
the upshot being, basically, that i in my favorite indie-boy costume (blue adidas, skinny-wale dark green cords, last year's WSRN 3/4tee) found my way to the roxy (hooboy , now there's a link - you don't really want to follow it) downtown. rabi, are you reading this? just checking. once again demonstrating that it's never a good idea to buy tickets in advance, I picked one up off a scalper-by-circumstance for a few bucks less than the door price. and got in the fast (relatively speaking) line for ticketholders. whee!
a crowded place, but i got close (fifth row of heads? and second row for the encore, after a mad scramble for thrown t-shirts and posters left an opening). man, DJ shadow is just so unassuming. you know he's a white boy, but do you realize just how much of a white boy he is? actually, i never realized that cut chemist was white. Shadow reminded me a little of Wes Sconce. or Eminem maybe. he claimed this was his first show ever rocking the house without a hat on.
also his first time ever playing in Boston. I don't know how I feel about being addressed as "Boston."
he was very upfront with us, sort of explaining how the show would go and then proceeding with his business matter-of-factly, pausing at the outset to show a ten-minute film by his boy B+ featuring some fun footage of beat masters old school (james gadson, paul humphrey, and earl palmer[!]) and new (babu, j-rocc, chemist) doing what they do.
the show, commencing in earnest after that, was interesting - i really wish i knew more about what he was doing, because it was hard to tell. three turntables, two or three of those pioneer cd-scratching things, and a sampler or two. i feel like i need to play around with that stuff for a while, just to get a proper appreciation when i see someone like shad really rip it up. i mean, it was obvious he is talented, it's just rather abstract watching him move his hands, when you can only tell half the time what he's controlling, since obviously large parts of the complex mix coming out the speakers are predetermined.
as he described it, the show was essentially his usual dj-mix style, but using only his own records, for the most part, as a mix source. that meant lots of familiar and recognizable elements from his first record and a half, of course plenty from the new record (which I've only given one full listen so far, and i can dig it), and, happily, lots of unkle too. but hardly in their original contexts! he took vocal tracks from one record and set them over other beats, often completely new ones (to my ears anyway). or he just seamlessly mixed two or more of his tunes back and forth, deftly keeping the audience's expectations on edge.
fantastic visuals too - probably the best of any show i've seen (except maybe enon? or sfa?). excellent use of the three-horizontal-screens format (like at the rock hall), which i really like. making records and speakers. the video clips that he took speech samples from (m*a*s*h, mr. rogers, and omigod I was freaking out, what was that awesome clip at the start of napalm brain/scatter brain with "neptune's elixir"? wow. that tune, the last before encore, was so great, totally danced up - too bad it was like a rock concert and not a dance party) and sped-up shots driving down the highway, including what could only be the pacific coast highway (during "you can't go home again"). that really made me want to be in california. what a great place. i think i'll live there, as soon as possible.
a live drummer came on for the encore. i sat in park street station for around twenty minutes. times like that are when i just wind up composing blogger entries, or snippets for them.
man, i'm taking this short paragraph thing to heart, huh.
i just sent out a rash of jivey e-mails to folks in the new york area and elsewhere, but for the rest of you: siren fest! new york city! etc! it's confirmed now, because rae called. yae! her new e-mail address is really cute, huh.
oh, there are things that will no doubt come up, if not here, well they already have elsewhere. i'm sort of excited about relationships once again becoming a prominent topic (okay, they always sort of are.) just a few vague thoughts on that front:
things really do go in cycles.
the same things happen to people, or else, things that people have done to them they then do and vice versa - not that these things are intentional, or bad, or that i'm talking about you.
i'm wearing my sheet like a sort of toga, it's 4:30 in the morning, and i'm going to have to go to sleep soon, or else i'll have to eat something. right rufus?
just for sticking with me, you get two (2) lyric quotes this time. ciao.
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty
your little old doll with a frown
and
i'll always love my mama
because she's my baby girl
(that's actually a lyric, in one of those old philly soul tunes.)
ps. [or should that be bs. or, no, pb] well look there, my archives have decided to come back, the real ones not the fake-r ones that i made up in their absence. i'm not sure i trust it though. what's with all this?]
pps. i'm excited about tomorrow (you know, today) because: hopefully this cdhq thing will be more sorted out. i'm going to call my mother. my kid606 and princess supastar records should be arriving from insound (well, they better.) gosh i'm a disc junkie.
i borrowed it, probably not then, but somewhat later, and it took me at least a few weeks before the bomb hit me and i saw what a total bleeding masterpiece that album was and still is, not like it's my own personal rosetta stone, but just damn, what a discovery, and kind of cool that i came to it myself. i've always been a solitary music fan mostly, so it's funny how few of my records i feel are truly mine. that nearly is, but it's too good for me alone. i know all kinds of folks have that, seems like it transcends at least a bit.
and i was going to say - but no, that was u.n.k.l.e., and maybe actually beforehand (is that right?) - that that was the same disc aijung lent me by way of apologizing for backing out (yet again) on a wanakena venture, along with a couple of other titles, some of which i distinctly remember not listening too: bjork's post (do you believe i was sleeping on that one?), buckley's sketches for my sweetheart..., the unbelievable truth's almost there (still a soft spot), and maybe something else (definitely, there were five. dunno.) that was the same weekend i read east of eden, on crazy amy's rec. inspiration, in a bright blue library binding, cover to cover, from that longer-than-it's-length intro description of the valley to "timshel."
i was thinking about this the other day, and that's still one of the few endings to a novel that really left me satisfied. novel endings are tough, man, it seems like either you're still wanting more or you've already gotten tired (like lanark and rez blues, in recent memory) of the book. it's kind of important.
while i'm on the subject, i want to point out that chapter eight in part four of Kavalier and Clay is one of the most beautiful (quasi-) love scenes I can think of. what could be more romantic than a wee-hour gourmet picnic in a thunderstorm at the top of the e.s.b.? and after all that build-up. oof! (oh sorry, no spoilers here ma'am.)
but, yeah, when i finally bought the album for myself, the same time as I bought Moon Safari (which I had also borrowed from Aijung for at least a year), and a few others I couldn't leave for college without (Kiko, One Trick Pony, um, sgt. pepper). that was two summers ago. endtroducing... isn't my life. but it is a damn fine record. i like it anyway.
so i decided to see DJ Shadow perform live tonight, in the face of that creating problems for the rest of the company. not entirely my fault, and i don't feel guilty about it. it went down like this:
dan, mami, rebecca, i, and janet (from hong kong and edinburgh, i'm still not quite clear on her connection to all this) were wandering around bread and circus, i guess you could say, grocery shopping. and dan's not the best at realizing that for certain things to happen, other things have to happen.
last night there was this i thought kind of touching moment where we shared our knizowledge - i played endtroducing for dan and he actually listened and liked it, and he, er, told me stuff about mixing boards. then he failed again to satisfy himself with that first african track. mastering and remastering and so on. that's how it goes.
(carla never called, if you're wondering - well, we talked last night, and then this morning she again didn't call. whatevs)
up bright (eleven!) and early (o'clock!) for breakfast with dan and mr. brandon patton (hee-yeah!) at that diner. it occured to me to order a raspberry-lime rickey and two sweet-potato waffles. so that's what i did (and not a monte cristo, but remind me to get one next time). that's almost an ideal breakfast. colorful too.
music flows in and around - new looper, unopened $135 south african cds in the bottom of messy van, guerilla (sing it with me now: "i've got a mobile pho-one, i've got a mobile pho-one") and the strokes (cuz of the mug).
Now (it's late late late as i write this) superchunk are keeping me company: Here's to shutting up, damn the torpedoes, is tuneful and delicious. why can't I get into the older stuff?
sorry, you thought this was a narrative? no, just cryptic music commentary that is meaningless except to few.
the upshot being, basically, that i in my favorite indie-boy costume (blue adidas, skinny-wale dark green cords, last year's WSRN 3/4tee) found my way to the roxy (hooboy , now there's a link - you don't really want to follow it) downtown. rabi, are you reading this? just checking. once again demonstrating that it's never a good idea to buy tickets in advance, I picked one up off a scalper-by-circumstance for a few bucks less than the door price. and got in the fast (relatively speaking) line for ticketholders. whee!
a crowded place, but i got close (fifth row of heads? and second row for the encore, after a mad scramble for thrown t-shirts and posters left an opening). man, DJ shadow is just so unassuming. you know he's a white boy, but do you realize just how much of a white boy he is? actually, i never realized that cut chemist was white. Shadow reminded me a little of Wes Sconce. or Eminem maybe. he claimed this was his first show ever rocking the house without a hat on.
also his first time ever playing in Boston. I don't know how I feel about being addressed as "Boston."
he was very upfront with us, sort of explaining how the show would go and then proceeding with his business matter-of-factly, pausing at the outset to show a ten-minute film by his boy B+ featuring some fun footage of beat masters old school (james gadson, paul humphrey, and earl palmer[!]) and new (babu, j-rocc, chemist) doing what they do.
the show, commencing in earnest after that, was interesting - i really wish i knew more about what he was doing, because it was hard to tell. three turntables, two or three of those pioneer cd-scratching things, and a sampler or two. i feel like i need to play around with that stuff for a while, just to get a proper appreciation when i see someone like shad really rip it up. i mean, it was obvious he is talented, it's just rather abstract watching him move his hands, when you can only tell half the time what he's controlling, since obviously large parts of the complex mix coming out the speakers are predetermined.
as he described it, the show was essentially his usual dj-mix style, but using only his own records, for the most part, as a mix source. that meant lots of familiar and recognizable elements from his first record and a half, of course plenty from the new record (which I've only given one full listen so far, and i can dig it), and, happily, lots of unkle too. but hardly in their original contexts! he took vocal tracks from one record and set them over other beats, often completely new ones (to my ears anyway). or he just seamlessly mixed two or more of his tunes back and forth, deftly keeping the audience's expectations on edge.
fantastic visuals too - probably the best of any show i've seen (except maybe enon? or sfa?). excellent use of the three-horizontal-screens format (like at the rock hall), which i really like. making records and speakers. the video clips that he took speech samples from (m*a*s*h, mr. rogers, and omigod I was freaking out, what was that awesome clip at the start of napalm brain/scatter brain with "neptune's elixir"? wow. that tune, the last before encore, was so great, totally danced up - too bad it was like a rock concert and not a dance party) and sped-up shots driving down the highway, including what could only be the pacific coast highway (during "you can't go home again"). that really made me want to be in california. what a great place. i think i'll live there, as soon as possible.
a live drummer came on for the encore. i sat in park street station for around twenty minutes. times like that are when i just wind up composing blogger entries, or snippets for them.
man, i'm taking this short paragraph thing to heart, huh.
i just sent out a rash of jivey e-mails to folks in the new york area and elsewhere, but for the rest of you: siren fest! new york city! etc! it's confirmed now, because rae called. yae! her new e-mail address is really cute, huh.
oh, there are things that will no doubt come up, if not here, well they already have elsewhere. i'm sort of excited about relationships once again becoming a prominent topic (okay, they always sort of are.) just a few vague thoughts on that front:
things really do go in cycles.
the same things happen to people, or else, things that people have done to them they then do and vice versa - not that these things are intentional, or bad, or that i'm talking about you.
i'm wearing my sheet like a sort of toga, it's 4:30 in the morning, and i'm going to have to go to sleep soon, or else i'll have to eat something. right rufus?
just for sticking with me, you get two (2) lyric quotes this time. ciao.
can't expect the world to be your raggedy andy
while running on empty
your little old doll with a frown
and
i'll always love my mama
because she's my baby girl
(that's actually a lyric, in one of those old philly soul tunes.)
ps. [or should that be bs. or, no, pb] well look there, my archives have decided to come back, the real ones not the fake-r ones that i made up in their absence. i'm not sure i trust it though. what's with all this?]
pps. i'm excited about tomorrow (you know, today) because: hopefully this cdhq thing will be more sorted out. i'm going to call my mother. my kid606 and princess supastar records should be arriving from insound (well, they better.) gosh i'm a disc junkie.
