DJ Stylus – The Vibe Conductor

Hard drive failure.

Laptop failure.

Theft.

Ever happened to you right before a gig?

Just a few short years ago it wasn’t uncommon to lose record boxes on flights. That’s a soul killing ordeal. Remember those check-in battles to carry your vinyl as a carry-on? Remember when you’d lose that battle and damn near have a heart attack waiting for your flight case to emerge at baggage claim? Now that most of us are partially or all digital, the convenience of our current tools sometimes makes us forget that tragedy can still strike.

I’ve read that A-Trak tours with two laptops. That isn’t practical for me, but I do have my music drive mirrored on an external that I bring to every gig.

But what if my laptop AND external drive fail? What if your main AND backup laptop get swiped?

Actually, before you proceed, you MUST read A-Trak’s account of one of the most confounding EPIC FAILS that any DJ could suffer, including a stack of dead Lacie drives. I hope no one is still under that illusion that Mac users are immune to this sort of suffering.

I don’t tour as much as many of my peers, but if I did, I’d look into online backup services. Imagine being on the other side of the world and your whole gig bag gets stolen. You can download a full clone of your hard drive onto a new machine and be up and running again quickly.

DJ Tech Tools has a nice roundup of these services with a helpful summary of all their features.

The comments in that article are even more informative. There are many different approaches to emergency proofing your data.

Of course, we all have multiple backups at home, right? RIGHT?!? They’re just no good to you on the road in an emergency.

What disaster avoidance schemes do you all have? There’s no way that any of us should have our asses hanging in the wind due to computer failure. We just have to prepare in advance and not be lazy.

I played back-to-back classic hip-hop parties this past weekend. I teamed up with two of my favorite DJ colleagues in DC, we had a blast and smashed on both nights but the crowds couldn’t have been more different. One crowd was full of serious heads who got more excited the deeper we went in the mix. The other crowd was more diverse, significantly younger, and only really moved by the same hits that everyone knows. One party-goer described my set from that night as “hybrid house jazzy hip hop.” Pete Rock in particular got a thumbs down and I double-checked the track list for house music but couldn’t find any.

I was reminded that when it comes to hip-hop these days, most people have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.

Not exactly breaking news, I know.

When I was younger and wore hip-hop like a shield of identity, I’d be quick to check you on hip-hop dogma, then I’d strike a b-boy pose. Now that I’m getting older, I’ve started to feel like something was wrong with me. Like I’m the fuddy-duddy who refuses to change with the times. Talking to folks, reading these websites and being in the DJ booth trenches with my comrades are making me realize it’s not me.

This isn’t about people showing up to The Main Ingredient and requesting Gucci Mane with a straight face. The folks in that alternate dimension who think the world revolves around “swag”, tattoos and Patron are a separate discussion and might as well be on another planet. I’m talking about the folks who ride for hip-hop as hard as I used to, except their zeal is fueled by ignorance.

Hip-hop raised me and molded me but on my journey as a DJ and creative soul, I’m always adding new sounds, styles and genres to my portfolio of experience. Ultimately I’m a music person. I always seek to paint from an ever widening palette whether I’m spinning records or making them. I no longer identify myself as hip-hop, pretty much because no matter what I do, it’ll always BE hip-hop. It’s a lens that shapes my perception outside of my conscious awareness. It’s my internal rhythm. It’s not something that I have to proclaim or debate. It’s something I’ve lived so long that it’s like breathing, yet it’s still one dimension among many that I can access when expressing myself musically.

You don’t have to have the same experience in order to love hip-hop. You don’t have to spend 20 years and tens of thousands of dollars collecting records. You don’t have make a pilgrimage to the Bronx or perfect a six-step. I understand being zealous about hip-hop. The difference between my experience and what I’m seeing today is the lack of humility about what you DON’T know.

For instance. I love jazz. I started learning about it in high school. I’ve been to a lot of shows and collected a lot of music. I’ve even performed with jazz musicians. But I’d never critique an expert jazz musician without knowing what I was talking about backwards and forwards. So out of all the assholes that regularly give us grief in the DJ booth, why are the most rabid ones almost always on some hip-hop related bullshit?

These days people have a surface grasp of hip-hop combined with a warped sense of entitlement. And there’s a significant thirst for validation involved too. I don’t know if it’s really about the music or the times we live in. The latter is influential, because there seems to be a correlation between talking loud and saying nothing about hip-hop and the ease with which people feel comfortable spouting off on the internet. But I focus on the music because that’s where I’m most engaged.

What is it about hip-hop makes those with the least to say speak loudest? Why are you too lazy to care about anything beyond the same 20 records that we’ve caning to death for 20 years? Maybe it’s because no one listens to albums anymore. I thought I no longer cared but it still gets to me sometimes.

[photos: Vix, Mezzanine SF]

A little over a week ago I checked out Wanda Sykes filming her new HBO special at Warner Theatre. Other than nearly laughing myself into urinary incontinence, I was struck by the strong parallels between the crafts of dj’ing and standup.

My observations:

Timing

This is the defining skill of every good comic. The difference between a huge laugh and the sound of crickets can be measured in micro-beats. And so it is with the DJ. Drop a record a hair’s breadth off of the “one” and your dancefloor hiccups (at best) or you lose all of your momentum and everyone stops to stare at you (at worst). Nail the right transition on beat and everyone goes apeshit.

Narrative, flow and pacing

A comic’s jokes are like characters in a story. Sometimes those jokes are mini tales of their own that are woven together into a grand narrative by linking together common strands. A real DJ always tells a story on the decks. You should be able to follow a narrative that includes setting, plot twists and climaxes. Individual songs become building blocks in a discernible audio journey with all the characteristics of a well written novel.

The role of the opener

A night at a show or on the dancefloor follows an energy arc with a beginning, middle and end. A comic or DJ opening for a headliner is tasked with getting the room warmed up and prepped for peak time energy. Go too hard and the crowd will run out of steam prematurely. Don’t come with it and the crowd sees you as the enemy delaying them from enjoying the headliner. Strike the right balance and everyone wins, especially the opener who earns new fans and more gigs.

The tightrope walk

It’s sooo easy to go from killing to being killed. The crowd loves you until they hate you, although comics have more leeway to dispatch hecklers. The flipside is that it all comes together when the dj/comic builds a relationship with the audience. There’s a tipping point in the evening where trust is established. Once that point is reached, the comic or the dj can really go in, which builds more good vibes in the crowd, and a feedback loop of positive energy is created.

You’re all alone

It’s just you on stage with a microphone, just as the dj commands the decks alone. Some dj booths are set further away from the dancefloor so you’re less accessible but still, all eyes are on you. It’s a position that’s simultaneously powerful and precarious. When you as one individual can command a whole room, club, hall or arena’s emotions, it’s a unique rush that you can’t stop chasing once you’ve experienced it.

Stay tuned for other installments in this series such as:

DJ’ing is like video editing.
DJ’ing is like distance running.
DJ’ing is like sex.
DJ’ing is like being RNC chairman Michael Steele (bad nights can be really bad.)

Not just a perfectly crafted and executed song, but a real sentiment for all of us born in the ’70s. Even as we watched him deteriorate before our eyes – physically and spiritually – we just figured one day he’d turn into a swirl of dust and vanish like in the vid for “Remember The Time.”

I don’t yet have the words but my virtual and real worlds are populated with those who speak for me.

Michael Jackson And The Five Stages of Grief – Thembi

My Hero Ain’t Molest Them Bitch Ass Kids: Phonte’s teary-eyed tribute to The King – Phonte Coleman

For Michael – Bassey Ikpi

In Memoriam Part 2: Michael Jackson – Long Live The King – Scorpeze of Windimoto

MJ R.I.P. – Hua Hsu, The Atlantic

Gone Too Soon – nOva, SoulBounce.com

I Can’t Help It – Harlem, SoulBounce.com

We Love You, Michael, Always. – Ill Mami, SoulBounce.com

All I could do yesterday when I finally broke away from the Twitter wake was head to the designated gathering spot for times when things of black import go down (U Street) and try to process with friends.

Shortly after, the real obsession began. I greeted the sun this morning without sleep, having spent the entire night whipping my Michael Jackson discography into shape. I did the same for James Brown, for Dilla. As we are essentially musical evangelists, it’s a DJ’s sacred duty in times like these to canonize our musical heroes output and feed it back to the faithful in a way that maximizes the boost to the spirit.

We’re going to be ministering to the flock for a long time on this one. Please do it with verve, creativity and an avoidance of cliche. So many of our icons are plagued by personal demons, the way to balance it out is to expose as much of the beauty as possible. And since Michael’s catalog is so deep, there’s epic beauty beyond the obvious hits.

I’ll have to return to this, it’s just too much to absorb now. Download these, then holla at me and the homie Jahsonic at Marvin on Monday.

6/25/09 – Soul Controllers & LSP remember the King of Pop on Decipher
(89.3 FM WPFW, Washington DC)

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Mos Def is about to bust us all upside our collective nuggets with this new record. Quiet Dog is already banoodles. Now there’s this joint:

As soon as the first stanktastic bar kicked in, I bugged, and not just because Dante was rhyming like Ali hitting the speed bag in his prime. This bamma pulled a Ghostface and straight rhymed over a whole existing song! One of my favorite songs by a group I first got hip to on my trip to Brazil last year. Vinyl heads on the internets were already on the case, digging up the original Banda Black Rio joint for comparison.

I would have known about this if I actually went to Mos Def shows because he’s been rocking this joint live for like the past five months. At this point, I wouldn’t be mad if he did a whole album rhyming over funky, contrapuntal jazz fusion classics. Some Return to Forever maybe? Weather Report? Head Hunters! Let’s go!

But before I get carried away, let’s take a moment to trace the origins of a tune that Mos also discovered (and kirked out over) on a trip to Brazil.

“Casa Forte” was originally written and recorded by Edú Lobo for his North American debut Sergio Mendes Presents Edú Lobo. Lobo was already pushing the development of Musica Popular Brasileira after building on the work of Jobim and Gilberto but despite his important contributions to bossa nova, his acoustic rendering of “Casa Forte” takes a back seat to the many cover versions of what is now a standard.

A few of my favorites:

Sergio Mendes gives it a pretty straight interpretation, but with the trademark vocal style of Brasil ‘66. (listen / buy)

Legendary vocalist Flora Purim’s take is less pretty and a bit psychedelic. She gives the tune a wild edge. (listen / buy)

Ellis Regina lends a slightly mournful feel to her version and her rhythm section sounds like they’d also been playing some bop over the course of the recording session. (listen / buy)

Madlib teamed up with original Azymuth drummer Ivan “Mamão” Conti for the Jackson Conti project. Their rendition of “Casa Forte” puts the samba percussion up front and features what sounds like a melodica running through a wah pedal carrying the main melody of the tune. Probably Madlib’s idea. While he was high. Loving the keyboard work on this. (listen / buy)

And finally, DMV beat scientist Nick Tha 1da snuck in a version of “Casa Forte” on his Bossa Bang! mixtape last year. Since it’s a seamless combination of vinyl finds and re-worked productions, I’ve had the damnedest time ID’ing the origin*. Maybe I’ll ask him next time I see him. I ain’t too proud to train-spot. Click the cover above to download the whole project.

Update:
*Nick came through! Crate-diggers never reveal their secrets, but I guess he was feeling generous that day. Dig up a copy of this record and you’ll find another unique Casa Forte to add to your collection.

The title quote comes from a pretty ill interview with Roctakon over at the Turntable Lab blog. Reading it got me reflecting on the choices I’ve made in my DJ career, the state of the art of dj’ing and the environments and markets in which we practice this craft.

But first, some back story.

I remember Roctakon from the ’90s in DC, when he was working at 12-Inch Dance Records, battling with the O.G. Goonies crew and dropping mix cd’s. All of us had tight backpack straps and lived to juggle doubles of pretty much anything that was recorded in D&D Studios. Dirty Hands was still DJ Static, The Trooperz were repping in DMC battles at the old Black Cat and State of the Union was in its prime. Eventually Rocktakon moved on to Turntable Lab in NYC, downplayed the scratch nerdery and started building his name on the club circuit. Turntable Lab got its weight up as a brand and business and started transitioning from its turntablism niche into a driver of hipster DJ culture.

I was also expanding beyond my purely underground hip-hop background but in a different direction – away from the popular trends towards deeper soul, house, electronica, funk, world music and the like. I gave up my big room mainstream club aspirations as other peers of mine dominated that lane just as the music was becoming increasingly unbearable.

So considering that I come from the same scene (that now feels like centuries ago) but went in an entirely different and non-lucrative direction, Roctakon’s screed is a pretty fascinating assessment of a world that I don’t really encounter but check in on occasionally.

It’s stuff that I know but I’m not living day to day.

On the worst place to dj:

I’d say the current manifestation of bottle service clubs in NY is one of the worst scenes ever. I mean its dead but nobody will admit it, they just try and keep it going, its like going to dj a funeral, but nobody will look at the body. 1Oak will stay around and so will the B&T spots but the rest of ny bottle service will die in the next year or so and i say good riddance.

On life as a touring club dj:

Its lowest common denominator shit like you just end up playing Move Bitch and Party Up by DMX its miserable..

Yea some football player counted 9 hundred dollar bills onto my laptop cause i was not playing the Plies song he wanted quick enough…

This is a popularity contest and don’t forget it. being nice and kissing ass and knowing the right people and being likeable…

Dude might be experiencing burnout, and I’d counter some of his assertions that creativity doesn’t matter in the commercial world with examples of really skilled and technical cats that can rock for the boo-boo heads, but… he’s dropping mad nuggets of truthiness in this jont.

[photo: myslavelake.com]

I want to talk about gain control today. Because it’s really out of control.

As DJ’s, we’ve spent hours, weeks and years honing the various aspects of our craft: mixing, scratching, blending, programming a set, reading a room, digging for new sounds, mastering various types of equipment, learning about different genres of music…

But truthfully, most of us fail at monitoring and maintaining optimal sound levels. It’s the one aspect of the craft that has been completely abandoned and I’m aggravated about it.

If you’re not wearing earplugs at any show or nightclub these days, you’re in for a brutal assault. A few years ago, I started leaving a set of earplugs in every bag that I use. My regular day bag, my dj bag(s), travel bags. With the type of schedule I keep, I never know when I might end up at a party, a show or a session, and I ALWAYS have to be prepared with plugs.

With most DJ’s these days, if you take a look at their mixer at peak time, the meters are slammed in the red, their gain knobs are maxed and their master volume knob might be topped out too.

Red means “Turn the volume down, you asshole!”

If there isn’t any dynamic processing in the signal chain, at best the music will sound horribly distorted. If there are compressors and limiters and they aren’t set right and/or you’re pushing them too hard, you’ll get that irksome pumping sound. At worst you’ll blow a speaker or two, or all.

Then you have people on the dance floor looking like this:

[photo: addicted2salsa.com]

These people are not enjoying themselves.

Understandably, many sound systems are poorly set up and maintained. They make it difficult to pump the music so people feel it in their chests and asses, but aren’t being assaulted. Note that I said “difficult” not “impossible”. Our own judgement and attention to detail are the best tools for creating an optimal experience for the folks on our dance floors.

- EQ your tracks as you play them.
Cut those shrieking mids or that rumbling sub-bass. You’ll often find that perceived loudness increases with clarity as opposed to simply cranking it up.

- Start your set with optimal gain levels.
This might seem so basic but it’s so misunderstood. Unity gain is generally marked on most volume controls as the 0 (zero) level. That means that the signal coming into the channel is the same level as the signal going out. YOUR JOB IS TO MAINTAIN UNITY GAIN ALL NIGHT. You should set your master and the front end processing (if you can access those controls) to allow you some headroom over the course of the night, but you should NOT use your individual channel gains for overall volume control.

Gain creep is a fact of life for the DJ. Over the course of a gig, the amount of distractions grows, the energy in the room increases, the noise floor increases as more people pack into the space, and one must compensate. But rarely is this done with any sort of specificity. For far too many DJ’s, louder is always better.

- Walk the room.
I regularly leave the turntables to assess the volume levels. Some folks find this odd. (“What are you doing out of the dj booth?!?”) If it’s a room I’ve never played before, I do this a lot. Few of us have the opportunity to always play clubs with optimal DJ booth monitoring, so it’s almost a given that the sound in the booth will differ drastically from the sound on the floor. YOU MUST ALWAYS BE AWARE OF WHAT YOUR DANCE FLOOR SOUNDS LIKE.

Please, all of you. You’re killing folks out there. People going home from parties with migraines and ringing ears. Sound systems being blown. Records sounding like crap because of distortion. We all want our parties to crank, but ultimately Bob Marley knew the way things should be:

“One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” (Trenchtown Rock)

I’ve been back for a while so I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not going to get around to detailing all the historical, cultural and social experiences I had in Bahia. This weekend I carved out some time to hit a pile of not yet listened to vinyl so I can at least post the digging wrap-up of my trip (with covers, since that’s a big part of the fun.)

Unfortunately, the holy grail remains outside of my grasp, even though I did visit their hometown. I saw a couple of vinyl copies that cats were not trying to part with and it’s been out of print forever. I’ll probably have to find a questionable Japanese bootleg or something.

I didn’t have much room to bring stuff back to the U.S. so I kept my aspirations low. I scouted out four spots and managed to hit three of them. One of them had massive stock but everything was too beat to be worth buying. Record condition was a recurring problem that I had been warned about.

Right around the corner is another spot I highly recommend to anyone traveling in Salvador. Cana Brava is all CD so it caters to you normal folks that don’t share the wax addiction. Pardal runs the store with his wife and he’s very helpful and knowledgeable. We ended up talking music for so long that I almost forgot to shop. But on impulse I came away with…

Banda Black Rio – Gafieira Universal (CD) [Basically the Brazilian Earth, Wind & Fire. I saw the afros and the disc pretty much jumped off the shelf into my hand. My hunch was rewarded by not a single fast-forwardable track on the whole record. Word to reissues. They've got four other albums that you can find with some due diligence.]

The main transaction went down in this random closet of a store in Barra. The mission posed several challenges. I had to whittle down a huge stack to a handful of critical purchases while dealing with a language barrier, no turntable to screen the records and large holes in my knowledge about the artists.

Then I had to haggle. I was somewhat concerned that I might have been hustled but my gut told me that the proprietor was a serious music head who recognized a kindred spirit. As I dug and asked questions in infant level Portuguese, he went deep into the stacks pulling more stuff and explaining it to me. I definitely paid more than the pieces would be worth in the U.S. but I haggled him down by a significant amount, had fun and most importantly, learned a lot in the process. That’s worth a few reais. Here’s the haul:

Egberto Gismonti – Corações Futuristas (LP) [Fusion bordering on free jazz. Definitely bugged out. I asked for something like Chick Corea and Azymuth and this was the recommendation. Apparently out of print and not often seen stateside.]

Miucha & Antonio Carlos Jobim (LP) [Sweet bossa jazz that's been reissued on CD.]

Olodum – A Música Do Olodum Banda Reggae (LP) [The sound of Salvador and an organization for community activism as well as partying. They even reminded Mike that he's black welcomed MJ with open arms.]

Cesar Camargo Mariano, Victor Assis Brasil, Helio Delmiro – Performance (LP) [Electric jazz cats I'd never seen or heard of. Quite luscious with killer guitar action. This is going to yield some juicy beat fodder. I think I made a come-up.]

Zezé Motta – Dengo (LP) [Lightly funky post-'70s tropicalia with pop accents from this major brazilian actress who also had a singing career.]

Elis Regina – Elis (LP) [If you're ever at a loss for a place to start exploring Brazilian music, you can't go wrong with Pimentinha. Her tone and phrasing are unforgettable]

MPB-4 – Antologia (LP) [This is a 1974 compilation of MPB (otherwise known as Música Popular Brasileira) and it's quite a goldmine. It sounds like an in-house vocal group at the record label doing medleys of the works of significant composers but I have to study up more to get the back story.]

Andre Harris – “10 Things Not To Say To A DJ”

I mean, how is it that stupid people ALL OVER THE WORLD all end up reading from the same script when they decide they want to inflict psychic pain on you while you’re trying to rock the party?

I’ve built upon this with scores of my DJ colleagues and the uniformity of the stories is fascinating. Someone has to do a psychological study on it. I’ve collected tons of data first hand over the years. Is there some shared genetic defect in stupid people that is triggered by a nightclub environment? Does that have to do with the fact that stupid people are statistically more likely to go out to certain clubs? It’s like a perverse feedback loop of causality. Do they all get together in a huddle before they come to the club to maximize the annoyance factor of their strategy? Perhaps it’s a conspiracy waged by an international cabal of stupid people with the shared goal of driving all DJs into early retirement.

The one that makes me want to beat myself in the forehead with ball a peen hammer is:

“Everyone wants to hear it.”

AAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!

I’ve actually asked folks if they really polled the whole club to arrive at this assertion, just like in the song. Things usually go downhill from there.

I’ve grown pretty heartless over the last couple of years. My patience has been worn away to a cold, hard steely sheen, especially because there’s something about DJs that make people want to heap abuse on us in ways they would never dare in any other aspect of human interaction. Folks consistently say things to me that would automatically earn them a punch in the mouth if I weren’t behind the decks. Of course, I can’t do that, even if it’s warranted.

But woe unto the clubtards that approach me these days because I don’t hesitate to dispense liberal doses of non-violent face crack. And it doesn’t matter how fat your ass is and how much cleavage you jiggle in front of me. That will actually make me more likely to hurt your feelings. It’s funny to observe the strain on the faces of attractive women who can’t process the idea of a heterosexual man telling them no. Actually, that applies mostly to an environment where the primary goal of every man is to catch their attention.

Despite the effective coping mechanisms I’ve developed, I can’t WAIT to play this song. Thanks Andre.

In my preparations so far, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the rich musical heritage of Bahia, but I’ve already got a prize to track down when I get off the plane. I was clicking about on this very informative site and caught a clip of a vocal trio that hit me with the same feeling I had when I was 13 and heard Take 6 for the first time. And after years of their records being incredibly rare, there are reissues floating around now.

The group’s namesake is a a bird native to the region and still being a pan-africanist at heart, I can’t help but draw a comparison to another legendary singing group named after an iconic bird.

I have a feeling I’m going to be connecting dots like this the whole time I’m down there.

The last surviving Tincoã Mateus Aleliua is still active and still infuses his work with the candomblé influence that he brought to the group. Please don’t leave this site without listening to Os Tincoãs sang the heaven out of “Lamento às Águas” in the player below.

[courtesy of www.bahia-online.net]

I get chills thinking about what Dilla could have done with that.

And to close, a Mateus Aleliua cameo with Margareth Menezes for a live medley of “Cordeiro de Nanã”, “Deixa a Gira Girar” and “Atabaque Chora”.

Black sho’ ’nuff don’t crack. Lawd.