For Mirth Only

well, i’ll be damned

www.mtvmusic.com

mtv’s putting up every video ever on here!!!

i know there’s youtube and shit out there, but this… this could be grand.

watch all your favorites again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!

Mad Muggy Mix circa May 2007

i made this mix a month before leaving new york, a conscious tribute and send-off to the city (although in no way is it regionally a new york mix, despite featuring new york artists). my homie jay swears i’m crazy, but i work with mixes synesthetically; i see colors through melodies, and with this mix, made in the sultry, oppressively muggy month of may in brooklyn, i tried to coalesce the spectrum of colors humidity brings: orange, gray, red, green… yellow… black (hot asphalt)… in essence, i tried to capture the feeling of walking down myrtle avenue and hearing those big basslines blasting out of cars, blinding sun in my eyes, sweating, bass amplified greatly by the warm kinetic energy in the air…

i miss new york. i had a great time there. the mad muggy mix is my thank you and good-bye to that final summer in brooklyn…

DOWNLOAD (Mediafire – faster)
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chopCHOPped screwEWeeed

hoooly, shit… this one’s crazy. here’s what is, if i’m not mistaken, the first readymade chopped n screwed track for mass consumption. just listen to that chorus!!! i can’t wait for this to hit the radio and have the kids going, “whaaa?”

t-pain and ludacris – chopped n screwed

now we need a gabber pop song and that’s it, pop is complete…

Plastic Caramelo

Hailing from Colombia via Brooklyn, Plastic Caramelo are spearheading a new movement christened Glampeta, a “fusion of Colombian Dancehall, Cumbia, and Champeta,” as the band puts it.  Their self-titled first single deftly melds all of the above genres and electronic, while maintaining great pop-sensibilities sans the cheese and overproduction that normally plague songs with cross-over potential.

Plastic Caramelo recently performed at NYC’s Latin hipster party Nacotheque and are close friends with Isa GT of London’s Girlcore collective.

Download “Plastic Caramelo” (Rapidshare)

Another Birthday Party

Same place as last time. Should be fun.

No Dynasty Fix Tonite =(

Pete Rock at Hudson Last Night

Instead of immediately writing about the party with Pete Rock last night, I wrote about stupid jewelry – but that was because it was late and I needed my Dynasty fix.

Every other Monday the company I work for throws a party at the Hudson Hotel, a swank, midtown boutique hotel with a bar.  No matter how hard I try I can never get any of…well not any, but most of them don’t even reply to me when I ask…anyways, like I said it’s in midtown, the uncoolest place in NYC, so they avoid it like the dickens.  Their loss.  (How you can turn down a free event with DJs like Danny Krivit, Bobbito, Louie Vega, Spinna, The Rub…etc. whatever).

To the point, a month or two ago I submitted a list of DJs I thought might work at Hudson.  It went something like this:

Theo Parrish
Harvey
David Holmes
Pete Rock
J-Rocc
In Flagranti (Codek)
*Mike Simonetti (Italians Do It Better, Troubleman Unlimited)
**The Martin Brothers (Christian Martin & Justin Martin of dirtybird records in SF) doing a half hyphy, half hyphy-inspired nu-techno set.

*My personal fav at the moment, best 1 hr set I’ve gone nuts to in nyc.
**Not serious, but thought the idea was fun.

Admittedly, the reason I did the list was because Mike Simonetti had completely killed it at Love a few weeks prior.  But the only filler on it was In Flagranti – and I only say that because I’ve never really seen them play out.  A couple weeks later my boss announced Pete Rock – yus!

—
My first few months in NYC 2 years ago (wow), my buddy luis and I went to a lot of hip hop nights: Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Premier, Pete Rock, Babu, J. Rocc, Kool Herc, Rob Swift, Prince Paul, Bobbito, Skratch Mekaniks at clubs like Southpaw, Triple Crown (R.I.P.) and APT – pretty tough to beat a Monday at APT with the funktion 1 sound system.  Anyways, as I recall Pete didn’t actually play ANY hip hop and I remember him dropping in particular Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs at Triple Crown (shit system btw).

So fastforward to the party at Hudson.  It’s like moderately packed at 915 when I get there.  Pete’s playing kind of…I don’t know.  Not a lot of dancing going on,  just a lot of staring, which got me a little nervous and I started looking for a drink ticket.  Met some people and some friends, chatted, stood around.  So, I’m holding my free $18 glass of wine and Pete drops BBD’s Poison full volume – hands immediately go up in the air, the place lit up.  Totally reminded me of this one time I was in the middle hating on a DJ when all of a sudden he dropped a Mr. Oizo track, and I ran off to dance floor while my friend luis – ah we used to be inseparable – was still talking mid-sentence.  Instantaneous reaction.

From then on it was like APT on a Monday with 5x the energy, 5x the floorspace, -1 for the sound.  Jam after jam, stuff I didn’t know (of course, everyone else was spitting it right back), stuff that’s normally cliche, stuff that’s always a party bomb.  It made me so happy – most of all to live in New York, where it’s possible to oh-i-don’t-know go see a rap revolutionary like Pete Rock throw down on a Monday night to an incredible crowd.  He was just feeding the fire and it was just straight up murder – so many people going silly to music. Pics here (yeah, i know it takes forever to load).

Word on the street/in the office is that we might get one of my favorite DJs to play at the end of the year.  Thank god I didn’t booked my flight for the holidays yet.

Mike Simonetti at Love…err, do I get partial credit for turning this in late?

I have to preface this story with the first time I saw Mike play out. Just two weeks prior to his gig at Love, he DJ’d at this bizarre Chinatown venue in a restaurant on the second floor of a mall. It was full of Manhattan hipsters, the kind that frequent the Tribeca Grand, Soho and Nolita. I showed up at around 230 (after a Dope Jams party that fizzled out and chilling at a friend-of-a-friends in bed-stuy). Justine D. was on before him, playing the standard b-more/electro. I surveyed the area, went to the bathroom and sat down near the dancefloor. Walked around a little to hide the fact that I was there by myself, sat down in another spot further out, walked to another spot in the back and sat down – this went on for almost an hour until Mike finally went on. I stood up next to a pillar. By this time almost everyone had left, but there was still un petit fou dancing their hearts out on the floor. I can’t remember his first record, but the next one he turned up loud, as he does, and it was a really fun flamenco-ish record. He walked away from the stage in between records to take a piss or something. I love it when DJs sneak away from the decks when no one’s paying attention. I think it’s funny. It was apparent he didn’t give a fuck. The set was only a half hour, but it was full of classic disco – short but fulfilling.

So yeah, two weeks later and I’d finally convinced a couple friends to come out to see Mike play at Love, a venue that really does have the best sound system in NYC but can never seem to bring in anyone but NYU kids. I ran across town to meet one of my friends who’d arrived early/on time. After bullshitting with the doorman about my friend’s ID, we went in and there was a band I’d never heard of on; it was their record release party. Middle of the first song, my friend says I can’t stand this place and walks out. I didn’t disagree, so I followed him out of the main room. He went back outside to see if our other friend had arrived, and I played tetris on my mobile in that ridiculous mcdonald’s playground-ish room. He called and said she arrived and that they don’t want to come back in. I got convinced to go outside to say “hi.”

“Oh that party is so not cool, why don’t we go somewhere in the LES that’s cool, I know a party there,” he says.
“I want to go somewhere to chill out. Can you guarantee I’m going to like Love?“ she says.
“I forgot my ID and can’t get a drink inside…Let’s go somewhere else,” he says.
etcetera etcetera etcetera.

Normally I would have given in, but I was just beginning my “i’m gonna go it alone if i have to” phase, which manifested from situations like this one and just being generally dissatisfied with life.

Furious – I think my friend had said something to the effect of “Wow, you’re really angry aren’t you?” – I strode back inside and played more tetris for about an hour in the second floor cubby, while the jazz band played whatever it was they played. I was beginning to lose hope as the night approached 1, so I went in to the main room. Good timing, Mike went on just moments after. It wasn’t particularly packed – still the same crowd as earlier in the night, though Kon and Amir were there kuz they were playing later.

First record was a non-dance, set the mood, folky thing. The trick worked again, and at full volume, the second record sent everyone nuts. I can’t really say what he played – stuff that sounded like early house, disco, vocal stuff, a record that had a nice sonic breakdown, which was probably awesome for its time and could only work on Love’s sound system. I had 3 beers, which is a lot for me. One record had this bass melody that kept returning to me for weeks on end, which rarely happens. Turned out to be pointer sisters’ send him back (pilooski edit). The whole room was dancing really hard and Mike was playing shit probably only Kon & Amir knew. The bartender was genuinely interested: “who is this guy?? he’s tearing it up.”

It was another short set, about an hour long. But unbelievable. I want to say it’s the best 1 hour set I’ve ever heard in a club, and I said as much in the phone call to my sister at 330.

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Funny Jewelry

Oops.  Been a while since I posted last.  I’ll tell you honestly I spent the last month or so watching full seasons of Moonlighting, Remington Steele and now I’m on Dynasty (it’s commercial free on veoh with the firefox adblock plugin – took me a while to discover that one. durrr).  And that’s what I’m going to do after this post.

Hopefully put some more stuff up soon.

Sometime in late June (I know because I had to search through my bookmarks and match the date modified of the pics files), I came across Beatica.  The main site is down right now, but lucky for google cache, you can still find the gallery here.  My fav is Large Pendants, but it should really be called plastic parts glued together by montessori kindergarteners.  So simple.

And then a couple weeks ago I saw something that was kind of Charlie Le Mindu-ish by Husam El Odeh – but equally simple. More here.  If anyone has an account for the Valery Demure site, please email me.

There’s a great interview with Valery Demure in issue 1 of The Fashion Almanac, which also has pretty genius articles on comparative fashion.