Mothafucka i'm ill

I usually hate on Traktor, mainly because it's the DJ software that doesn't require peripheral hardware and therefore can easily be pirated by anybody whose peers deem cool enough to get tapped as a DJ, but don't want to put in the effort/money to actually learn how it's done. That said, Craze totally kills it on their controller.

BONUS:



Dude juggles with his elbows better than 99% of DJs do on their best behavior.

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Boulder Gig Report #2

So I returned to Tusk Saturday night, playing solo.

I don't like DJing by myself for a few reasons. First and foremost, I start to fade pretty hard after about two and a half hours of mixing, at four I start feeling like a zombie.

I saw a few of the same people from last week. Still a lot of bros, but things were a little bit more diverse. Until about 11:45 there was a gray-haired man in his late 40s sipping a glass of white wine and staring blankly at the flat-screen TV on the wall behind me. The television was turned to FuelTV, or maybe it was FuseTV. Either way, there were a lot of skateboarding and surfing videos playing and I have no idea what the fuck this guy was doing watching them.

I began jumping around genres, playing some hip-hop, loungey electronic stuff, and funk edits. I didn't really know what to play, the place isn't a "club" in the sense that people dance. It's a place that people who live in condos go to because they don't want to have to interact with people from other demographics. The bartender complimented my diversity. I tried to monitor the reaction of the gray-haired man the entire time, but he was like a stone.

After the gray-haired man abandoned his glass of white wine, I realized the genre that I needed to play: hip-hop white girls like. We're talking Mo Money Mo Problems, Fantasy, Rosa Parks, Hard Knock Life, The Rain, all the hits. One after another, no filler. I had all five girls in the club going nuts. One guy was dancing with him, it was clear they were wishing they were paying him more attention, he kind of hovered around them.

The girls were an interesting variety that I don't see very often. They were in their late twenties, but were in really good shape and dressed like they were freshmen in college on parade at a frat party. It was pretty sweet. One of the skankier looking ones came up to me and asked for "Freaky Girl" by Gucci Mane. She was pretty obviously looking to get stuffed by one of the guys at the bar that night. It was sweet. Other requests included Soulja Boy and Lil Wayne's Lollipop.

But the real hit of the night was the "Cupid Shuffle". I enjoy the song, I liked hearing it on the radio, but I didn't think it really had much staying power. Apparently it is the ultimate in hip hop white girls like. I played it and everyone in the bar, about 13 people, lined up and did the Cupid Shuffle. If you don't know the Cupid Shuffle, I've included a video of some drunk white girls dancing to it for their webcam. It was later explained to me that the Cupid Shuffle is our generation's version of the electric slide.



After just about the speediest one-man pack-up in the history of speedy pack-ups I got home at about 2:20. I've included a screenshot of my playlist as evidence of how in tune I am with hip-hop that white girls like.

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Boulder Gig Report #1

My new friend DJ Senile , a nice guy and talented DJ, invited me to join him and play some records at his Saturday night weekly at Tusk Lounge.

The bar was in a condo community in Longmont, Colorado, otherwise known as the middle of fucking nowhere. The idea of the community is to be self-sustaining, in that no one ever has to leave and interact with people that are not of their exact demographic. There are restaurants and stores enclosed by about 100 modern looking townhouses. At 10:00 P.M when I drove in circles throughout the community, along streets named Tenacity Road, Neon Forest Drive, and my personal favorite 100 Year Party Court, I didn't see a single car on the roads. As a side note I was listening to Music for Airports by Brian Eno, making the whole scene incredibly erie.

After driving around for about 10 minutes through this maze-like yuppie village, I stumbled upon the only place that had lights on, Tusk Lounge. After looking at their website, I expected a rustic or jungle sort of theme. Instead I found orange and green lighting, white Clockwork Orange-esque furniture, and a few nice pieces of Safari kitch (alligator mouth, whip of some sort of "tribal" hair) and placards advertising $3,500 South African safaris. Oh yeah, and a lot of bros.

There were maybe 25 people hanging out drinking, mainly staring at one of three flat-screen TV's playing Ultimate Fighting Championships. Senile told me that tonight was a "fight night" so there were more people than usual. The clientele were mostly people who lived in the condo village. They were all bizarrely tan for living in the fucking mountains and built like they could kick my ass on accident. Late twenties mostly, a few early thirties. Lots of crisp baseball caps, without the stickers, and ironed T-shirts by a company whose name rhymes with Dicksilver.

I tried sparking up a few conversations, and for the most part everyone was really nice to me. One bro wearing a tribal T-shirt and sea-shell necklack knew a thing or two about Austin.

"Austin? I love Austin! You know Sixth Street? Yeah! Bone Daddy's? I love Bone Daddy's! Bikini Bar and Grill?? Oh Yeah!!!"

He patted me on the shoulder and nearly knocked me to the ground, he could have been on American Gladiators or some shit.

Senile and I take turns doing 30 or 45 minute sets. He was incredibly technically competent, it was clear that he was a hip-hop DJ. He could scratch well and his mixes were quick and concise, with a little Kaoss Pad to add some flair. He played mostly hip-hop sure shots, a little bit of house stuff, a Bob Marley song, and that Sublime song about the L.A. riots. 

I played disco edits, some funk tracks, a few accessible hip-hop cuts I thought people might recognize, and some loungey house tracks. People seemed to be enjoying it. DJ Senile made a somewhat nervous comment about me stealing his job. Somebody went on a McDonald's run and offered me a cheeseburger, which I declined. The bar staff were being generous, I had some absinthe, a few pints of Newcastle, and a shot of something called Blueberry Kamikaze. 

At one point while Senile was playing, two of the bro-dudes started pushing each other and the bartender had to kind of break it up. It was sweet. A really attractive woman asked me to play some techno shit that I had no idea about. Another woman in her mid-twenties, who I later found out has a 7 year old child, asked for a Francois K edit, which I would have obliged (probably his version of Arthur Russell's Go Bang!), except my time to play was up. 

By this point in the evening DJ Senile was getting kind of belligerently drunk, and by that I mean totally shit-faced, and talking trash to the bartenders. One of them started calling him DJ Penile, which I thought was hilarious. There was a light fixture which apparently costs $800 hanging over the DJ booth area and he knocked it loose from the ceiling, luckily catching it before it hit the ground. He also propositioned the female bartender to come spend the night at his pad. As a new friend I tried to help convince her, even though I haven't been to his house I told her he has a sweet pad. She wasn't too into the idea and went home.

As Senile was packing up his things the bartenders and I tried for about 20 minutes to convince him to get a cab or let me drive him home. He wouldn't have it. As we're walking out he explains that next week he will be out of town for his grandfather's wake, he is in charge of the eulogy, and offers to let me to hold down the Tusk Lounge for him while he's gone. I agree. He tells me how much they pay, it sounds good, and I follow him out of the village.

At a stop light where the yuppie zoo meets the highway he motions for me to pull up next to him. He explains that he usually runs this light but he doesn't want to risk it. He then explains to me that he wasn't "completely straight-forward" with me about how much I would be getting paid next week, and tells me a figure that is 50 percent more than the original number. This thoroughly confused me. He went on to talk about some networking he was doing in the area, how he wanted to set up some shows. I swear to God we were sitting at this traffic light for 5 whole minutes. I told him we should just run the light. I followed his lead. At this point I noticed he had a sticker on the back of his car that said "www.myspace.com/djsenile." 

A few minutes after I got home I missed a call from him, getting a message making sure I got home safe. It was nice of him.

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Maths and English

Here I am at Lambert's, sitting on a black piano bench waiting to DJ again. Andrew and I have started doing a weekly thing on Wednesday nights. Cheap drinks and such. The place is at 2nd and Guadalupe, it is really cool. I promise.

I downloaded the new Dizzee Rascal record today and as much as I would like to write a review for it I'm not quite ready. I've been following him since before his first album dropped in the U.S. and so I feel like I've got as good a view of his career as any.
Maths and English is his third album, following Boy in Da Corner and Showtime. One of the things that I really dig about Dizzee is that his albums are extremely topical. Boy in Da Corner was all about breaking out, Showtime was his declaration that he had made it, and now we've got Maths and English. It seems like a statement that he has made it, he has learned at thing or two, and he knows he can do whatever the fuck he wants. There are big name collaborations with U.G.K and Lily Allen. There are extremely vulgar songs called Suk My Dick and Pussyole. There are three music videos that have already been shot, one of which you might see me dancing in the background. So, in the next few days I'll shoot out a decent review, but for now I'm trying to figure out if I like the direction Dizzee has chosen. So wait on it. And, uh, come to Lambert's on 2nd and Guadalupe next week so I can play electro and won't be sitting around bloggering.

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