went to see jon carter (aka monkey mafia) tuesday @ the viper room--even
though i had to pay (i'm getting a little too used to that vip treatment,
maybe). i hope none of y'all is friends w/the resident dj (carbo?) cuz he
*sucks*!!! i was there a few weeks ago when they had mickey finn (i really
wanted to go to the x-ecutioner's show across the street, but i didn't have
the chedd...) and carbo must have loved his set, cuz he played about half of
it last nite! now i admit that there's a few records i've dug out since
hearing mickey play them, but... maybe i was just bugged because carbo is on
that amtrak tip (major trainwrecks, babe). i have friends that can't beatmix
well, but they try not to make it painfully obvious!! enough about that...
apparently jon's records were pinched in chicago (so if y'all folks in the
windy city start seeing some *interesting* wall of sound promos, whites, etc.
--you know where they're from) so he had to buy some out here--damn, i woulda
loved to have gone shopping w/him... anyway, he started out w/hiphop, both
abstract (think react's "dope on plastic" series) and party oriented (ll's
"mama said..." and digital underground's "humpty dance" got bumped). he also
threw in some dancehall flavor (featuring a capleton acapella--sorry, don't
know which one). from that he moved on to more electronic sounding stuff as
the bpms began to rise. for a breakbeat fan like myself, it was really nice
that he was spinning some fairly uptempo stuff w/o resorting to four-on-the
-floor for most of his set (i left near the beginning of his house set, but
that was sometime after 1:15 am). one of the surprising tunes was a remix of
"ghetto heaven" by family stand. i'd heard there were speed garage mixes of
this out, but this was much more breakbeat oriented (i.e. no "boom boom
boom")
than i'd expected. it was really great to see jon go from the party jams to
stuff i could imagine the chemicals playing (as djs, not the group) and still
having the crowd w/him--if they would just allow locals the same leeway we
could get this town rockin' (sorry, personal beef). i have to say at this
point, that he was a lot less skill-flexing than i expected (a few other
people commented on this, too). he wasn't just playing one tune and then
another--he was doing some blends, drops, & deck stops--but his scratching
was
miniamal, though present.
in summation, if you like his records, you'll like his spinning. you get to
hear what influences him (and if some a**hole hadn't stole his records, we
probably would've heard some dubplates!!!), and why he does stuff that seems
all over the map sometimes.
-t