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Winter Music Conference Update
Number of Hotels: 2 Nights on a Boat: 1 Sets played: 2 Solid contacts to followup with: 3 $13 Vodka Red Bulls: 1 Fave Venue: Bash, 655 Washington Ave. Fave Vibe: Osunlade/Jojoflores/Wunmi Fave Grub: Rabo Estafado from El Viajante vs. Tortas de Carnitas from Roberto's Nubilicious Latina count: 394 at last glance around the street Number of “It's Lenny Kravitz!!!” moments: 3
Friday: Gotsoul, Yoruba & Aquabooty party @ Goddess This was my stylish debut to getting jiggy in Miami Beach. It was quite a treat after a solid Jojoflores set to see a cowrie-adorned Wumni sway on stage to a packed house singing “Oya! Oya! Oya!” before busting into serious pidgin and Yoruba. Afterwards, Osunlade came on with a live band and gave rather average performance, definitely not up to snuff. He played the keys, while some others I didn't know held down the riddim and vocal sections. Fortunately afterwards though, he got behind the decks and made us all ask if “you Rader Du or you Rader I Du ”. hehehe. Overall, a very chilled vibe, met some interesting characters from NYC and Chicago, among others.
About a month ago, when plans for this night were coming together, I reported that the gig was supposed to go down at the Indian Creek Art Deco Hotel. Well those plans changed in the week before the conference and the masterlist reported that we were scheduled for a club called Johnny V's in Fort Lauderdale. Fast forwarding to the night of the gig, Eddie (Zero G label head) gets a call saying that the club had cancelled our night. In a mad scurry, some folks manage to nail down a venue, and Gys and I end up playing at the ... *drum roll* ... Fox & Hounds British-American Pub in Fort Lauderdale. After some minor cables-are-plugged-in-but-we-have-no-sound scary moments, I was sorted out, went on about 1 am, played for an hour and which point, Gys came on and closed out the night. All in all, not bad, quite happy to be playing out. Nice and funny how playing out shows you what works well and what doesn't, and sheds a whole new perspective on live arrangements. Needless to say, I'm ready to kick things up a coupla gears.
I played a chilled set. Traffic was prohibitive to mad guestage, but we had fun. Afterwards, we all took a nice boat cruise through the ultra-wealthy Fort Lauderdale residential canals, stopping over for a pint at this canal-bar with a dock for your boat!!!
After getting past the pretentious bouncer trying to “fake the funk” with us, we got into B.E.D. hehehe. Beds with bamboo posts and white bedsheets throughout the venue could be rented by VIPs to drink champagne, dance and be “exclusive” on. An hour into taking it all in Mr. Mills came on and rocked the house. I wasn't especially familiar with his music, but knowing techno DJ sets, it can be tough to show your mad metacarpal dexterity like you can in hip-hop. Mr. Jeff made effective use of the kill switch, riddmic silence and just plainly tight arranging to weave one of the best straight-up techno sets I've heard live. Why isn't this guy bigger in North America ?? Afterwards, headed over to the Opium garden, but was blocked by a retarded French bouncer distracted by all the “chaire fraîche” caressing his corneas. The scene looked beat and mean, so we split to grab some breakfast @ the Big Pink before heading over to the by-then-closing Nikki Beach Club.
@ Bash: DJ Sneak, DJ Heather, East Coast Boogiemen and others. Amazingly chilled vibe here, great venue and wikkid patio out back. Lots of chilled 'heads getting down. Packed to the hilt. @ Mirage: Onionz, Doc Martin, Fred Everything, DJ Peoples and others. Music was okay, nothing that really inspired rump shaking, also quite sparsely attended. Met some “interesting” people. @ Privilege: Matthew Dear, Christian Smith, Justin Robertson and supposedly Luomo. Got no love though, 'cos after hopping back and forth between Bash and Mirage, I hoped to catch a late Luomo set, no such set happened. verrrrrry grrrrrrrrrrr. The vibe there wasn't my style anyway, waaaay too aggressively tripped out.
After randomly meeting up with Eddie, Kiran and Cat at the door and getting in [pretense] free (woohoo!!), I was pleasantly surprised to see Luomo doing his thang in the booth so early in the night. This of course, meant that the floor was congestion and riff-raff free, enabling mad bad baby-powder-inspired swervage. A lot of Luomo's set was from his latest album The Present Lover, that I happen to have on vinyl. Some ridiculous basslines later, Mr. Pullen graced the stage. I was digging the vibe, but got *ahem* ... distracted ... After checking out the always deft Telefon Tel Aviv boys, sitting upstairs schmooozing, I noticed the basslines downstairs had changed drastically. They were no longer defined notes but more like pulsating bass slides with some rough melodic contour .... That could only mean one thing. The man from Kompakt had taken over the decks and was shredding them. As in November when he tore up the SAT, I was again dazzled by the simplicity yet effectiveness of this guy's music. The closing song was a very simple bass progression, quite banal actually, the tone was earth rumbling and the envelope never quite released before it was off to the next tone. Juxtaposed with a thumping kick, it was quite a powerful combination and a good reminder to keep things simple. Now on my way back to my hotel, still buzzing from the whole everything, I asked this dude walking behind me about the set of red puma adorned promo records he's carrying. We get to talking and soon enough I feel like I already know him somehow. As he talks more about Mutek in Chile and Mexico, it dawns on me that he's none other than Philip Sherburne, one of my favourite writers/music critics, who you know, if you read this blog, has been linked over to the right under my READ section since its inception. Anyway, was pretty damn fresh to run into Philip and a nice way to wrap up the conference.
Saturday, Mar 13 2004 - 12:27
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