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July 27, 2009
Monday PM
1. How out of touch am I? It's getting bad but I don't mind. I just listened to Hot 97 for an hour and heard an ad for notorious Buffalo superlawyers Cellino & Barnes on the air. I was blown away. These dudes were the billboard kings of my youth. I used to drive past their smiling faces on the Scajaquada every day on the way to high school. Now they're on Hot 97 with their Buffalo accents talking about 700 million dollars worth of settlements. I love it. When I was done laughing, I realized that they'd probably been advertising on Hot 97 for weeks, months, years maybe even. Then I stopped laughing because I realized it's been a while since I've listened to a solid block of Hot 97 on some whatever weeknight. The high school me would be shocked that I'm sitting here in Brooklyn and NOT listening to Hot 97, that I could be in the airspace of blazing hip-hop and r&b but not listening to it.
2. But getting older's cool with me. And it's cool with Rich Fourfour, too. Rich just djed a Sweet 16 party with a couple of friends - one of them being Morgan Geist (!!!!!!) - for Geist's half-sister Maryssa, and it sounds awesomely refreshing in the way that djing for significantly younger people always is. Here's an excerpt from Rich's ace report:
My favorite request of the night came from some sweaty kid, who between heavy, aerobic breaths, wheezed at me, "Taylor. Swift. Now." I couldn't help him out. Another kid came up while Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You" was playing, mimed shooting himself in the head and said, "Bad song! Bad song!" I guess it wasn't techno enough for him. When Dan played Missy Elliott's "We Run This," a kid came up and asked for "Jump On It." He was referring to the Sugarhill Gang's "Apache," but I didn't know what he meant at first and when I asked him who the performer was, he said, "MC Hammer?" I get the feeling that to these kids, any hip-hop before 1990 was performed by MC Hammer.
I haven't DJed in so long, but this by far the easiest gig of my life. Once the kids were on their feet, they would dance to anything (albeit weirdly -- slow dancing to "Groove Is in the Heart," anyone?). We went from the frenetic Crookers remix of Kid Cudi's "Day 'n' Nite" to the tempered booming of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" to the midtempo "Best I Ever Had" by Drake and despite the tempo decrease and stylistic changes, we lost zero bodies. (Though again, I thought it was weird that they slow danced to "Best I Ever Had.") I got the feeling that the night was just nonstop joy for them, and that was contagious to me. It wasn't even a nostalgia thing, as much as those types of events defined my teenage years. It was actually just nice to enjoy a party like this with my current perspective that finds me perpetually amused by human behavior. It occurred to me that if youth is wasted on the young, we elders just need to figure out a way to siphon it off, that's all.
3. My dude Capski - no relation (ahaha) - did THE DO-OVER, LA's (maybe America's?) best summer party a couple weekends back. Capski and his copilot Lambo got their set recorded, per the Do-Over's useful custom, and you can download it here.
It's hot in Brooklyn and I'm sweating all over the keyboard so I'm done typing for now.
Posted by caps at July 27, 2009 09:51 PM