Medford sings the Blues

Finally made it out to this virtually legendary monthly event called Blues Cafe.

Admittedly, I didn't know what to expect. I'd seen tasteful flyers, and heard good things about the night, good things about the venue, good things about the turnout... but, well, y'know, people tend to overexaggerate their own or favorite nights (hell, just talk to any ex-Defmatch'er). It's kind of like the "I'm in a band" syndrome; it's never good and they've never released an album - because otherwise you'd have been asking to meet -them- instead of the other way around.

And then there's the 'monthly' thing. This isn't meant as a critique of this particular event, but having a -monthly- night in the nightclub scene is a sure sign that you're a bunch of amateurs, or that your night is failing, or that you don't have enough cred to convince a club to take a leap of faith for you and block off a bunch of saturday nights for you. I always cringe when someone tells me they have a monthly night - it makes it so, so much harder to promote and retain people, especially in a larger urban area like Boston. Sometimes that's what you're given tho - and in fairness, sometimes for "special" events, monthly schedules are far more appropriate.

But... wow. I was truly impressed. Stunningly nice venue designed specifically for dance with a great stage complete with pro lighting and solid PA... plus great acoustics for a school cafeteria-sized room. Despite being told that attendance was slim, I felt they had a proper-sized crowd for event and certainly everyone came dressed to respect that the night was a special occasion (hell, even I rocked a hot new outfit; a black blazer, white shirt, newly fitting jeans, and my fedora). This was clearly a night that I would be proud to endorse to my friends - even those just considering an intro to the scene.

And the band was terrific. I question nearly every time I see Shawn Hershey do *anything* at all if he sucks at anything. At all. The guy is a tremendous dancer, a really nice, genuine guy with a solid sense of humor... and he apparently is also a really solid trumpet player as well?? It could be said that my only critique of the night was that I might've wanted to just sit and watch the band rather than have to pay attention to dance. And Alex - who I'd literally JUST asked "Why haven't you and Shawn ever played together?" was invited up to play along and kicked out a totally rockin' ragtime piano performance with them, which was just a ton of fun to dance along with.

I did have a great dance or two that night to some of the more fun music I've had a chance to hear, though I've been working a ton lately and sadly, dance (and practice) has fallen to the wayside. Hopefully the next few months bring more available personal time... because my 8, no 7, count has been slipping, badly. I'm propping myself up on too few moves, and everything-but-especially my basic swingout is suffering from lack of practice, which means it's time to figure out if I want to succeed at this swing dance thing or not.

Time will tell...

Push the button, go go go

I kind of prepared some things to say here about djing on Friday, but I'm going to opt out of them as this isn't really meant to be a personal journal per se. Things went as well as I'd wanted, which is to say that I accomplished a return to form without much difficulty.

I will say that djing with mp3s or virtual/digital dj systems is very, very different. The disconnect between you and the music is interesting; with turntables you adjust speed by touching something; be it the spinning platter, the record itself, the spindle... with an mp3, you're clicking a mouse or pushing a button. I'm not sure I like it - as I left djing from CD quite some time ago due to the same reasons (though mostly due to pitch-adjust and key lock filters really destroying the music) but thankfully the higher-end systems combine the best of both worlds. After careful review I've chosen traktor scratch pro; similar to serato scratch, the control input is actually your own turntables, using a special digital timecoded record. It's tons of fun, even just rocking tracks in your bedroom for cute girls lounging in their skivvies to enjoy.

All in all, it was a successful night; and though the (tiny) crowd was most definitely not my target demographic, I was told that people were actually coming in from off the streets just due to what they were overhearing... that's a pretty big win, especially considering we were in the ass-end of downtown providence with virtually no foot traffic. Still, it was the first time I'd had to struggle to keep a dancefloor going, as this night centered around resident djs who preferred to play cheese such as one might find on "Greatest Internet Memes vol 4 - Lightstick Raves"... which is notedly lower-brow than I generally cater to.

I did have one bit of my set recorded and will post that here soon as I get my mitts on it.

What the devil want... believe the devil gonna get...

Wow, I've got a ton to write about from this weekend... but first, this:



Yes, it's amazing. They're coming to boston - The Paradise; Oct. 19th... let's go.

Forever Freestyle

Got this dj gig at about the very last minute; and it's my first gig spinning strictly mp3's... which is pretty insane considering I've got a vault of vinyl records sitting in brookline that are entirely unavailable on mp3.

Great. Two days to pull together an hour and a half of music that I'd spin at a club, on mp3. On top of working nearly 60 hours already this week (it's only friday)... and it's been something like four years since my last formal gig.

So I've been forced to source from my cd collection, which has been interesting to say the least. I've dusted off some stuff that I've probably only ever heard outside of my house once - and that was when a roommate spun it. I've also pulled some interesting newer stuff from my recent sourcing expeditions - so I'll be dropping some electroswing, some nujazz, and some funky stuff that I've got no idea what the real genre should be other than just cool shit.

But I did kind of take this gig intending to completely sandbag it - going to play some tracks that I'd like to try out in clubs, and play some other tracks that I'd never spin billed under my dj name, but under my new alter-alias... sure. I'll be taking the technical stuff pretty easy, as I'm a complete newbie to djing on virtual dj systems, but I've downloaded the software and been playing with it a bit ahead of time and I think it'll be technically pretty sound (though the software has difficulty finding the beat correctly with a lot of my stuff, but, whatever).

I expect tonight's going to kind of be like manually removing a rib to fellate myself. Messy, painful... offensive to some... but ultimately totally worth it.

All praise and glory to the eternal beat... AMEN.

I had an interesting discussion (in fairness, I'd accept "argument", "display of shocking arrogance", or "blatant dick-sizing session" from those involved) regarding bpm in swing, and my follow-up research only left me with more questions than answers.

Much of modern dance music falls into a few distinct sweet spots; you'll find hiphop at 90bpm, house at 120-130, breaks at 125-145, and drum & bass around 180bpm. What your average weekend club dancer doesn't give a crap about is how this happened. Much of these modern tempos comes from the turntable itself, how that works is easily shown with some of dance music's most popular stolen beats; you take The Winstons - "Amen Brother". They don't call it "music's most important 6-seconds" for nothing... and no doubt you've heard it.

You play that 45 on 33rpm and you get the basic Amen break as used in hiphop; made hugely popular by NWA - "straight outta compton". Now you take Amen Brother, but instead of your crackly old 45, you press the song to vinyl at 33rpm; and play it at 45rpm. You get up around 180bpm - and you've just made a jungle (drum and bass) breakbeat.

Then we come to my favorite genre; breaks. Breaks centers around 125-135 - in laymen's terms, it doesn't require a speed adjustment at all when sampling the original source break. It generally is a direct sample of the original breakdown drum solos in soul, jazz and gospel; the breakbeat. You can hear all this working here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQLk7NcpO4&feature=related - the first speed is a very comfortable, tried-and-true break; modern breaks tracks would have a beat at roughly this tempo. The next segment; a classic jungle tempo. And the final segment, a very recognizable gangsta rap tempo.

This holy relationship of 90-133-180 (or more accurately, the conversion of (90bpm@33rpm = 133bpm@45rpm) , (133bpm@33rpm = 180bpm@45rpm) ) is to the broken beat dj, a godsend. Take your favorite hiphop loop and bump the pitch to 45rpm, you have a breaks loop. Take a drum and bass record and drop it to 33rpm, you have a breaks loop. Take a breaks track, and gradually spin the record up to 45, you have a seque from breaks to drum and bass. Done right, it can make for a very good, varied, mix guaranteed to get your dancers sweaty and happy.

I've spun all of these genres (ok, perhaps not house) at one point or another, and I stuck with breaks for a very specific reason; it hits a sweet spot around 135bpm that is extremely accessible to dance to. It's energetic, moving, upbeat. It's an exercise pace; a speed that most of the gym-rats would note as a moderate jog. It's fun, bouncy, and maintainable for long periods of time.

But what about the area in between? The jump from 133 to 180 is a pretty significant tempo change - and somewhere just above 150 the average dancer gets tired; this is a pretty significant tempo to match for extended dancing. You can bop around in short periods to 155 quite easily (see The Prodigy - "Everybody is in the Place") but unless you're a marathoner, you'll be heading for the sidelines quite quickly; this is an extremely energetic pace to maintain.

This realization has become law in drum and bass production; where early tracks might clock in as slow as 160, today's records are rigidly 180-185bpm; making dancing more accesible to people accustomed to popular hiphop tempos as they can easily halftime the beat to the laid back nod that makes hiphop so damned great.

So to bring this back to the starting topic - somehow we'd ended up talking about bpm at the local swing dance, and I was told I was listening to 150bpm. Obviously, this conflicts with tried-and-true dancefloor knowledge I've just lovingly bestowed upon you, above, so obviously, I wouldn't hear such a thing. A beer was bet, an iphone was retrieved to seek the sage wisdom of the internets, let's just cut to the chase and say the gauntlet was thrown.

And, as would come as virtually no surprise to anyone who knows me, I was wrong. The song, Count Basie's "Corner Pocket", clocks in at a hefty 155-160bpm.

So now I'm out a beer, and left to wonder... why? Why is 155bpm completely palatable in swing but not in electronic music? Why will we leave the breaks dancefloor clutching our chests for air at 145bpm but settle in for a nice brisk walk at lindy's 155?

Is it duration? Is it impact? I'm not sure. Maybe it's exertion. Listening to the both of the 155bpm examples I've listed above, I find myself throwing my entire body into electronic music... and yet, despite the same tempo, swing inspires a casual, relaxed stroll. So if it's not tempo in music that drives you to exert more... what is it? What is that edge that The Winston's one hit has, that Count Basie's many brilliant, celebrated hits do not?

Has modern music production and mastering squeezed more energy out of tempo? Is the answer in the compressor or the subwoofer? I know - quite well, in fact - that tempo alone doesn't dictate danceability nor even inspiration. But what makes those six seconds from 1969 so compelling, so energy draining, so exhausting, so... fucking awesome?

Eh, only about two of you probably cared to read this to completion anyways. Maybe one of you will have the answer... until then... beer on me?

Easy...

This video goes out to all you dance geeks; not super-fond of this song but you can't argue with the performance:

RJD2 - "Work it Out":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URao4jlBU1k&feature=related
(sorry, embedding not allowed... but seriously, watch.)

I hope this song will find you

I've always loved this track but never seen the video... strange how one of the dearest love songs to me has a video of... wafer fabrication? I've always had a fetish for factory automation and machining / manufacturing (my dad's a CNC machinist among other skills...) and if I have a 'happy place' it could easily be sitting daydreaming and watching a robotic assembly line do its thing.

Anyways, thought I'd share 'cause maybe you all had missed the video as well: