Out on assignment again for Discorder, I found myself out on a Monday night at The Commodore Ballroom, enthusiastic to take in my first live foray into the world of performance turntablism. Admittedly knowing only enough about the genre to understand that DJ Shadow had revolutionized it back in the late 90's, and that local buzz DJ My!Gay!Husband! was about as essential to hip-hop as '2 Girls, 1 Cup' was to foreign film, I prepared myself to be blown away by a world of new, innovative sound. Or, at the very least, a new and innovative take on old sound. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, after all, are DJs. Their compositions are based virtually entirely on samples from acts that are either dead or dying.
I arrived shortly after Kid Koala's half hour opening set and as I dragged my camera gear through the hordes of drunken yuppies and a dreadlocked couple who appeared to be hotboxing a toque, I couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a distinct lack of excitement weighing down upon the room. Perhaps it was the $45 tickets. Or perhaps the crowd simply expected something that they could dance to. From what I'd heard of Kid Koala, his turntable technique is impressive but the soft jazz brass and ukulele samples are nothing to headbang along to. I can appreciate a resurrection of classic 40's croon-and-swoon as much as the next guy; I just don't think the crowd got it. And maybe I didn't either. I have to be feeling either very Hawaiian or very drunk before anyone catches me swaying along to the tunes that my parents were probably conceived to. Either way, though I didn't witness it live, Kid Koala is a masterful scratch artist.
But enough about him. You're here for this guy, DJ Shadow.
For the uninitiated, here's what you need to know. Back in '96, when most of the people I knew still thought Hot Wheels were the shit, DJ Shadow released Endtroducing, an album that changed an entire generation's perception on what hip-hop was supposed to be, and that later went on to receive a Guinness World Record for being the "world's first entirely sampled album". With more critical acclaim behind it than any DJ before had been able to muster, DJ Shadow eventually joined forces with the noticeably more up-tempo Cut Chemist, which some of you may know as one of the initial members of Jurassic 5, but that more of you will probably recognize as the chemistry teacher from Juno. In any case, the two are currently touring side by side, making sweet musical babies together, and though the critical acclaim has faded somewhat, the history of their contribution to hip-hop remains unforgotten. I'm sure you've all repressed this by now, but these were the trip-hop warriors that rescued an entire subculture from the foul clutches of Vanilla Ice.
And yet, their show was a mess. Though interesting to watch from a purely scientific perspective -- a veritable orgy of video cameras broadcast the DJ duo's experimental turntablism onto two twenty-foot high screens behind them -- the mixes lacked cohesiveness, the tempo changed every few seconds like a sexually inept teenager, and the only time there was ever any real connection between the crowd and the DJs onstage was when something mainstream would surface amidst the disco rock history lesson. The loudest cries I heard all evening were when: 1) Dave Grohl's grating vocals dragged the show into about 90 seconds of some Foo Fighters single, and 2) when Queen's infamous boom-boom-clap sound bite from "We Will Rock You" was mixed into some eclectic, but still aurally boring, electronic mashup. Attempting to be fun, Shadow and CC got out from behind their eight turntables after their first few edits and made a show of sitting down to what was supposed to be an alfresco wining-and-dining experience. This elicited cheers from the crowd, but stage antics aside, an artist's music has to be able to stand on its own and I failed to see the relevance.
I mentioned before that Shadow and Chemist were very experimental with their turntablism, bringing to mind images of safety goggles, lab coats and oversized headphones. In reality, this wasn't too far from the truth. Shadow had one particular technique of boring an additional off-centre hole into one of his 45 RPM records, and then letting the vinyl rotate in an elliptical orbit as the needle skipped along the grooves, producing an otherworldly warbling effect. Two guitar loop pedals allowed Shadow's and CC's respective scratch solos to play off each other, and the performance finally culminated into a Hendrix-Metallica mashup, with both DJs front and centre, spinning away on two wearable turntables, securely strapped to their shoulders like square Dadaist guitars. I assure you however, this was all far less fascinating to watch than it sounds. After two hours of what sounded mostly to be mind-numbing noise, the mass exodus from the floor to the coat check during their half-hearted encore was a bit like Black Friday in a Wal-Mart.
DJ Shadow's albums are a hit, there's no denying that. But Monday night's performance didn't even come close to winning me over as a new turntablism fan.
