Recently I had the pleasure on being on this wonderful pod, The Truth In This Art. Inside I toss it up with Rob Lee over artistic influences, Freestyle music references, and much more.
It was a whole lot of fun!
A Deep Chat With Rob Lee
Breakin’ Out (Like The Weather)
Mid-Atlantic weather is all over the map in Spring. I mean, it’s always been like this, but climate change has made it quite a bit crazier.
It was good though, to get some solidly nice sunny days and decent temperatures of late.
My first foray into Mt Royal Soaps Night Market was a lot of fun! The cloudiness and the misting rain gave way to a bit of sun just before sunset to make it less chilly. I am at Night Market this entire season. Night Market runs from 5PM to 9PM on the 3rd Fridays of the month through October right on the corner of Huntingdon Ave and west 28th street in Baltimore.
The next day–and I can’t remember the last time I did back to backs–I with the folks of the Fierce Chicks bike team spinning some tunes. The sun kept peeking out and it was definitely warmer and more inviting.
Both were great ramp ups to being able to release music again.
I have secured a new distrobution company for my record label, mGrooves Music. So I hope you will be ready to dance with me as I and the rest of the mGrooves gang start to drop tracks again. We will be both relaunching music we have previously released and publishing new works.
Until any of that, don’t hesitate to visit with me on Twitch every Wednesday at noon (12PM EST). I can help turn that humpday into thumpday.
The Producer vs The DJ
Every year or two in the DJ and dance music world, this irritating debate raises its head concerning whether this or that DJ is talented based on whether they are also a producer or not.
The debate is tiring?
Confusing the Radio DJ with the Performance DJ
In my opinion, it seems to arise from confusing the work of most radio DJs with those that are performance DJs. The radio DJ plays music, talks about the music, in the old days before radio consolidation into a handful of corporations had much more programing power–that is, deciding what to play and what to ignore, take requests, an on-air personality. Your typical request DJ, bar DJ, and wedding DJ is a reflection of the radio DJ.
The performance DJ comes from a different place. Born out of Hip-hop (NYC) in the 70s, House Music (from Chicago) in the 80s, and Techno (from Detroit) also in the 80s, the performance DJ took devices that were tools in the studio, from the radio DJ, from also the producer and sound engineer, and turned them into instruments. Devices like the turntable, the 808 and 909 drum machine, the 303 bass player, the mixer, which were designed for stand-ins for studio musicians, through experimentation, were now front and center in production and in performance.
A Producer From The Beginning
The performance DJ was a producer from the beginning. That Hip-Hop DJ was playing the ‘get-down’ part of the song, while rewinding it on the other deck. That is re-arranging the song and therefore a production task being used as a performance feature. That House and Techno DJ was also back spinning records to repeat a certain part of the song, while lining it up with a beat laid down on an 808 or 909. The 303, the mixer knobs, and sliders were now being used live and in innovative ways. These devices were all being used outside of their intended designs. These are production skills being used as performance features.
Those DJs were also building beats or loops at home and test driving them at the club. They would see how it would work, go home to tweak it, and bring it back out again at the club. They may even use it across several different records, thus creating several iterations of the beat or loop. This gave way to the beat or loop being built enough to stand on its own; the feature, not the backdrop. Afterall, the inspiration in the culture of dance music is just that, dance, for hours and hours.
In today’s environment, these roles of producer and DJ are not mutually exclusive or binary. Rather depending on the person, where and how they learned their craft, they may embody many of the elements of either of these roles. The equipment–digital turntables with features that used to take racks of very expensive hardware, digital audio workstations (DAWs) which likewise would require very expensive hardware and virtually limitless instruments, even karaoke machines–further blends the boundaries of DJ and producer or engineer.
To put down a few studio producers who happened to be average performance DJs to elevate oneself as different is a bad look
If you are in the camp of proclaiming you are not a producer and yet you have done scratching, used an equalizer, looped a track, chopped a track, use a host of effects (FX) like echo, flanger, ring, even cross-fading and up-fading, you are actually producing on the fly. These skills are a part of the toolbox of what a producer does. The only difference for the producer, it’s happening in a studio rather than happening live on stage.
To put down a few studio producers who happened to be average performance DJs to elevate oneself as different is a bad look. We are just using most of the same skill sets in different environments, some live, and others back at home in our bedrooms. The converse is true as well. If you are a DJ more invested in producing, putting down DJs who don’t is also lame.
The Pop/EDM world in an effort to make something marketable often develops shortcuts that end up hiding the full story, thus the culture. Sometimes this is by accident; sometimes it’s not.
Like Hip-hop, House, Techno… It’s in my DNA
Me? I was born in Hip-hop, House, and Techno culture. Producing and experimentation is as much part of my style as what most refer to as the DJing part. I endeavor to always try my hand at producing and remixing for it was part of what excited me about this music since I was introduced to it in the late 70s and early 80s. Like Hip-hop, House, Techno, and most of the foundations of all the music generally referred to as EDM, it’s in my DNA.
Blazing Eyes (Old School Revisited Remix) [Voetry Version]
A Little Butter Never Hurt
I haven’t said anything since the pandemic reached the United States, but I will say it now. I miss deejaying in front of people.
I have tried to be a good sport about it. In all honesty, playing in a studio or room is just a flashback to a deejay’s beginnings. Also in all honesty, it’s old–and boring.
How I long for a return to those last Saturdays of the month of the last few years; the excitement, the anticipation, the nervousness. Yes, even after many years of being a DJ and the honor of doing some large stages like the gallery opening for Art Whino in their 1st space in Old Town Alexandria or Future Classic shows as a part of the Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach, I still get nervous before every show.
Every show I am consumed with the emotion of wanting to putting the best forward. I know you want to have a good time. I want you to have a good time too. I want to revel in the afterglow, watching all of you file out of the space laughing and smiling.
This is especially sweet when the show is before a group of people who don’t quite know what to expect, like the crowd at the patio bar Mezcalero in Long Beach, or the way a random group of graduate students mixed with Metal or Punk Rock heads pour upstairs at Ottobar for Butter. The transformation from trepidation to celebration is nothing but sublime.
Don’t get me wrong! I love the regulars too. It’s just a different type of love! They roll in and help get the party started with no prompting. They are also very gracious in explaining how they were looking forward to the night all week. I still blush in gratitude every time this happens.
So yeah, this pandemic is old. Boring. And it’s a huge steaming turd.
Yet, I will persevere. I am hoping you will too. Butter, or something like it will return. I will return to the decks in a live capacity when we all can do so in optimum safety.
In the meantime, there is always Stay House!
A Song About Life
So here is some stuff about Lo-Fi Hip Hop. It’s not new.
Just because something is new to you, doesn’t mean that it is new. Other monikers this ‘genre’ has gone by is Downtempo, Instrumental Hip Hop, and just plain ole Lo-Fi to name a few.
No offense to newer artists like Kaytranada or Sango. Such well established artists such as Mark Farina, King Britt, Nightmares On Wax, and J Boogie has paraded sounds of this type for decades. Yet, there is a growing number of people who are talking this style of performance and production as if it just climbed out of primordial soup.
So on this throwback Thursday, I am re-introducing you to some of that older Lo-Fi. This mix of mine, A Song About Life, from the mid-2000s includes some great tunes by Morcheeba, DJ Shadow, and was compiled all from vinyl.
Photo by Nuno Alberto on Unsplash and edited by JR Design Studio
The Dog Toy
Recently in my inadvertent adventures as a cat dad–I grew up and had dogs most of my life; never a cat–I was doing something a lot of pet owners do while roaming a grocery store. I was coerced by a pet display to buy a new tow for Milla.
What was presented to me royally pissed me off. Why?
Because almost all of the toys presented for cats had copious amounts of unnecessary plastics in their construction. Why?
Well, since I was already spending money, the last thing I was going to do was spend money in even a more shitty way than I was already doing.
So I bought a dog toy made of fabric shreds for her. Yes, I probably could have made one myself from old t-shirts I no longer wear. But did I tell you that I was coerced by the display and I realize that I’m spending money in a shitty manner?
The result.
She drags that toy all around the apartment even though it is a bit big for her to carry in her mouth. However, I often come home to find it in an interesting, unsuspected (by me) place.
So win for me, the environment (somewhat), and Milla.
I’ll Call U Back
Ghosting is an epidemic.
Most of us have done it at one point or another…
However, I still don’t understand when people go on a dating site or app and fill in the spot for what they are searching for as ‘don’t know’. You don’t know what you are looking for? And then in the body of the profile you post ‘no FWB’, etc.
What is worse are the ones you match with and ghost you. Or as in the case of Bumble when the ladies go first, send you a one word message, ‘hi’.
You know that men are castigated for that behavior so why are going to do the same thing?
Better yet, why are you wasting time on a dating app if you have no intention to date?
Do we even know what dating really is anymore in this swipe left, swipe right world?
Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash with additional editing by JR Design Studio LLC
The 4th Doesn’t Apply
This is especially true if you are a black man. Or any other marginal or disenfranchised minority group.
I was meeting a new friend for a 1st date in the Petworth area of DC. It was broad daylight shortly after 5PM.
Although I have driven through that part of town many times, I haven’t stopped to smell the flowers so to speak in a while. This in a town I was born in–yes I’m a DC native–and grew up mostly inside the beltway.
I matched the description of a suspect, 5’9″ black man with dreadlocks.
On foot, I saw the fun wall painting at the mouth of an alley on Upshur St NW near Georgia Ave and went to take a picture.
There I was approached by a DC police officer who seemed friendly. He offered to take my picture with the mural as a back drop. How nice, right?
Well, yes. Right up to the point where he is handing my phone back. Then he grab my wrist tightly and applied hand cuffs.
Naturally, I started to protest, gently. Why gently? Because police are notorious for using any reason for escalation. If you are a person of color, you have been taught this at least from when you were a teenager.
I ask why am I being detained. His partner had arrived by then.
The officer who was applying the handcuffs, “It’s okay. Everything is fine…”
I know I had a look on my face like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? How does this look like everything is fine.’ Meanwhile, I see the people in the restaurant across the street where I was going to meet my date looking. Gawking. People are starting to slow down as they walk by to their happy hour spots nearby, or home as the neighborhood has been heavily gentrified from it’s look from when I was a kid here in the 70’s and a teenager in the 80’s.
His partner chimed in with this expansive statement. I matched the description of a suspect, 5’9″ black man with dreadlocks.
The look I described above I doubled down on. Quietly, I stare down the second officer.
‘Really? In this town? In this neighborhood?? Are you going to go around and handcuff about a third of the black men who still live, work, or hangout in that neighborhood who probably number in the hundreds??’
Their answers were meant to be benign and run of the mill, as if handcuffing someone before you tell them why they are being detained is not in direct conflict with the rights of individual in a so-called free and just country.
“All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ — Martin Luther King Jr, — “I’ve Been To The Mountain Top’, April 3, 1968
The other uninformative questions I was asked: Where are you from? What are you doing here?
The last time I checked, this was supposed to be ‘the land of the free’. I still haven’t been told of what I have been accused of or what the probable cause is.
For this to happen in a city I generally love and will always call home, it is an embarrassment. To quote Rich Medina in A Foreigner No Longer on King Britt’s Album Adventures in Lo Fi “Shit, free or not I hate this fucking place. Because I know how it cheats at cards and lies to serve its own purpose…”
By the way, it matters not much (if not most of the time) if the police officers are people of color as well. In most places in the United States, they apply very similar tactics. These tactics are still heavily rooted in high altitude stereotyping about race, class, and religion. They wear a veil of the same name, ‘Profile‘.
Both of these officers were black.
Now, I’m the one in handcuffs. I’m the one without a gun. I’m the one without information as to what is the problem.
I’m the one with nothing.
Make no mistake. This is where it all begins for people of color; at an extreme disadvantage from the start of the interaction; not given the benefit of doubt; somehow less than. A negative prejudice in the public eye, at least to the people passing by in the surprisingly sunny DC afternoon. This it where it begins for the Philando Castiles, Freddy Grays, Emmet Tills, or the guys in the Starbucks in Philadelphia. This is my ‘black hoodie’ moment, even though I am in a button down shirt and light brown jeans.
How many of you would be extremely upset by just being cuffed for something you know you where not apart of? You are just living your life, right? Wouldn’t you want to fight back? Wouldn’t you want to protest? How do you think this would be perceived by the strangers passing by, or a business partner, or as in my case a potential new love?
By the way, no. This is not the 1st time this has happened to me. It has happened enough that I have lost count. Who of you who are not a person of color where this has happened even once?
There is no such thing as ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in this country for people of color, or for people who happen to be poor.
I was fortunate. The 1st office walked away to the marked SUV on the radio. After 15 minutes the 2nd officer, who looked a bit older than the 1st, removed the cuffs.
Then both officers attempted to justify the cuffing in a less than convincing attempt to apologize. They repeated the description again. And again.
Still, I was lucky. I get to walk away. I get to not have my face plastered on the 11 o’clock news. I get avoid the lock up with an untenable and unattainable bail amount. I get to walk away from the very slippery slope of how the so-called ‘justice’ system stacks the cards against people of color. By overly prostrating myself to a point lower than most human beings would find acceptable, I avoid a conflagration of the soul, spirit, and being that has been the stuff of highly publicized news in DC and across the country; where the human-ness of a person is forgotten about to sooth the feelings for the mirage of safety which excludes people who look like me, or the woman wearing a hijab, or Spanish speaking dude who is just looking for day-work.
I got to have my 1st date.
I get to tell this story.
The larger question is, will enough of you, whether you are so-called, progressive, liberal, conservative, or libertarian; whether any of you will listen…
Where is ‘and justice for all’?