Every Wednesday night... Get Get Down at Berlin with Djs Zebo & Popstatic. Dance music from all eras. No cover all night long. $2 PBR and $1 Secret Shot Special.
TONIGHT: SPECIAL BIRTHDAY DJ SET BY ALENA
We are celebrating Alena's birthday so come out early and hear her b-day set!
Next week on Tuesday the first of September, DJ Intel and I will be reuniting for the third edition of our 'We Can Work It Out' night at The Darkroom. We're super excited for the occasion and per usual, will be bringing our highly orchestrated, collaborative efforts to the table. As mentioned in the past, the night is dedicated to the music of The Beatles and the band's collective influence in as expansive a variety as possible. The following is our manifesto of sorts with regard to the night:
"On Tuesday September 1st DJ Intel and Popstatic will be holding the third installment of our 'We Can Work It Out' DJ night at The Darkroom in Chicago. 'We Can Work It Out' is a night devoted entirely to the music of The Beatles and all the band's collective off-shoots and by-products. By that I mean that over the course of the night, we cycle through Beatles originals, cover versions, live versions, solo projects and much, much more, melding it all into a seamless pastiche of sounds from different genres and eras... But all under the greater Beatles musical umbrella. With the two of us on four turntables and two mixers, you'll hear us play funk, disco, reggae, pop/rock... Whatever. We try to make it as expansive, colorful and diverse as possible while never straying from our Beatles-related theme over the duration of the evening."
I couldn't have said it better myself (actually, I just did). But anyways, the both of us will be putting in a lot of effort to make this one the biggest and most successful 'We Can Work It Out' party yet and we'd be thrilled to see you there. Feel free to drop me a line if you need additional information. In the meantime, have a look at a few of these sweet Beatles-related vids to whet your appetite...
Tonight at Berlin. Yours truly & Zebo keep the party going all night long. $2 PBR's and $1 shots of course. Plus, lots of bangin' tuneage to keep the asses in motion. Yes.
Oi, oi! I recently stumbled on this amazing blog called 'Kaleidoscope Eyes' and it's been a near-constant source of visual inspiration since. As far as I can tell, the site is mostly concerned with fashion, art, photography and graphics; all with decidedly retro, mod, psych and generally nostalgic sorts of leanings. The site is a fucking bottomless reservoir of beautiful images, and I couldn't recommend it enough to those of you with a hankering for the sublimely visual. There's a nice mixture of what appears to be both original material from the head blogger in charge, and a variety of posts about other artists' work and the like. Check out a few samples below:
The growing popularity of our 'Get Get Down' night is no doubt becoming one this summer's most welcome surprises in Chicago nightlife and we intend to keep this party cracking in unrelenting fashion. This Wednesday's 'Get Get Down' festivities will include the singular talents of Chicago's very own Noise Floor Crew collaborators Local Hero and The Lady Foursquare. These two folks need no introduction around these parts and we obviously look forward to hearing them do their thing at Berlin this Wednesday.
Check the flyer for all related info... Otherwise, feel free to comment or contact me with all related 'Get Get Down' questions or inquiries.
Last Friday night I went and saw the midnight showing of 'The Room' at the Music Box. It had been recommended to me by a friend of mine at our last 'Bad Meaning Good' event and he had sung it's praises as a gloriously terrible movie, undoubtedly worthy of inclusion in the 'Bad Meaning Good' pantheon of shitty films. Being the self-styled connoisseur of shitty movies that I feel I am, I was naturally intrigued and wanted to know more.
So when I recently saw that The Music Box was running midnight showings of the movie, it felt like a rather serendipitous turn of events... Something I dare not miss under any circumstances. The stars had aligned themselves and I was destined to be there watching that very, very stupid movie.
However, I was not the slightest bit prepared for what I was about to get myself into. When I arrived at the theater it was a madhouse. There were large groups of people cheering and shouting at every visual cue that the credit sequence had to offer. They cheered fanatically at the first on-screen appearances of individual characters within the movie... They spouted dialogue in unison... They seemed to have a ritual to correspond with nearly any and all scenes in the movie, no matter how arbitrary or unimportant (and believe me when I tell you that virtually every scene in 'The Room' could be characterized as both arbitrary and unimportant). Clearly I had found myself in the midst of a serious cult phenomenon; one to rival any other I've ever encountered in the world of midnight movies.
Apparently this movie has been logging screen time in L.A. for several years now, earning it not only a huge, ritualistic cult following, but also a variety of recognition from noted folks in the comic community who have even been known to host private screenings and the like. The cult of 'The Room' is a refined beast of simultaneous mocking and adoration that MUST be witnessed in it's proper setting (the midnight show) to truly be appreciated.
There's little I could say about the feature itself that hasn't already been repeated ad nauseum across the internet. I can assure you though that what you may have read is absolutely true... 'The Room' is a mind-fuckingly retarded trainwreck of a movie from start to finish. It is a heaping, steaming pile of shit that defies description or even reasonable comparison. It exists in it's own sort of unique micro-universe of idiocy and it is... Absolutely, 100% bloody fucking hilarious from top to bottom.
'The Room' is a movie that could seemingly have been written by a 4th grader. It's a kitchen-sink drama that offers little in the way of ACTUAL drama and lots in the way of half-assed ideas, dead-end subplots and the like; none of which have even a remote sense of depth or gravitas. The sets are ridiculous, the acting atrocious, the writing is the stuff of junior high drama... All things considered, it's an epic failure on every level that a movie is meant to succeed.
What makes something like 'The Room' so endearing is that the man behind the whole production, the mysterious and elusive Tommy Wiseau (not just the writer/director but also the main character in the film itself), appears to have been trying to make a serious movie. There's no clear evidence in the movie that the endless parade of camp and unintentional humor that you're witnessing on the screen was premeditated or controlled in any way at all. It is this very evasive quality that gives the movie it's accidental magic and trainwreck-like qualities. It is an element that couldn't possibly be forced or somehow bottled; it is merely a colossal failure on the behalf of the entire production that somehow manifested in an end result that is both endlessly watchable and hilarious.
This brand of humor is extremely difficult to categorize or accurately describe given the accidental nature of it's existence so ultimately, attempting to explain the brilliance of 'The Room' can be a frustrating, if not entirely futile endeavor. If you're interested in reading more though, I would suggest giving the following resources a look:
-The Onion AV Club: Interview with Tommy Wiseau
(My favorite part of the interview being Tommy's response when asked about the predominance of cheesecake in one of the movie's famously absurd scenes: "I do like cheesecake, I’ll be honest with you. That to me, is coming from my life. Some people do like it, I’m one of them.")
... So yeah, there is apparently an endless amount of verbiage devoted to this movie in the internet and because of this fact, I've decided to forgo indulging too many plot or scene details and instead suggest that you all go see this movie as fast as you can, preferably in theater if possible, but if not via Amazon, where it's available for the modest price of $8.99. It will be the best $8.99 you've ever spent.
'The Room' will be showing again at The Music Box on July 24th and 25th. I will be enthusiastically indulging in my second viewing of the movie on Friday the 24th at midnight of course and I would encourage any and all interested parties to tag along for the fun!
Tonight we do it again at Berlin. Our special guests will be local favorites (and our close, personal homeboys) Bald Eagle and Pr3-Frosh - Two of Chicago's finest selectors. And yes, we will be playing... wait for it... wait for it... HOUSE MUSIC ALL NIGHT LONG. That's right. You know what to do! See ya there...
Greetings good listeners the world over! We are now on the verge of a new July and the summer is fully upon us. With our new month comes a new mix from my 'Kaleidoscope' series and as is usually the case, this one is about two months in the making. However, what it lacks in the quickness of it's arrival, it surely makes up for in the quality of it's programming and hopefully after all is said and done, I'll have crafted something that the rest of you lot can appreciate for the remainder of this lovely summer.
I started this mix about a year or year and a half ago and this should be no surprise to those of you who pay attention to the various happenings around the world of techno because you'll notice that the mix is front-loaded with tracks that came out around that period of time. The second half, however, is full of tracks that are very current; some virtually brand new. This is because I revisited the mix after having originally abandoned it, liked the early results more than I initially had, and then began re-working it until I eventually finished it now. Not to worry though, I worked hard to retain a certain amount of stylistic consistency across the entire mix and the end result is in my opinion a mostly successfully one.
You'll also notice that this mix is a completely 4/4 techno/tech-house mix, which is of course SLIGHTLY outside the boundaries of what I'm used to doing. The bottom line though is that I feel more excited than ever before about techno and it's evolution. There is such a huge wealth of spectacular music coming from the global techno community that seems to be going relatively un-noticed on these shores. Yes, of course there is and always will be a dedicated techno faithful in the United States who remain very much entrenched in the subculture's most current trends and ideas and I certainly would never under-value these people in any way. However, speaking as someone who makes a living as a full-time DJ in the city of Chicago, I feel like this music is enormously under-represented in our city and also as someone who would LOVE more than anything to be out playing this music in public, I find it virtually impossible to get involved in events where I can push this music and still pull something more than even a modest crowd. Seeing as that this is the general route that my personal musical evolution is taking, and that I plan future musical endeavors of my own to fall in line with these sorts of musical aesthetics; it would seem that barring a huge social transformation of this city's musical identity, the future of my musical career seems to likely reside in other, distant locations. What this means to me will remain to be seen but the bottom line is that Chicago is no home for someone with aspirations to launch a techno career and that's an unfortunate reality for those of us who want to help make this music flourish.
Location-specific issues aside, I'm still feeling good about being a local ambassador for these sounds and feel like my personal growth with regard to programming this music has come a long way. I don't believe I've yet reached the degree of programming excellence that my favorite techno DJ's (folks like, say, Michael Mayer or James Holden) have and of course just getting there takes years of practice in front of live audiences (something I'm not getting a lot of around here, as previously mentioned), but I'm undoubtedly confident I'll make those strides in time and further build upon my ability to sequence techno and house music with the best of them. Perhaps this here mix could be the beginning of a sort of permanent re-invention of my musical identity... I suppose we shall find out.
So anyways, without further ado, here is the mix itself in all of it's glory...
Deadset 'Farm House' - Front Room Recordings
Sascha Funke 'Mango' - BPitch Control
Silicone Soul '3AM' - Soma Quality Recordings
Daso 'Meine' - Spectral Sound
Robert Babicz 'Dark Flower' (Joris Voorn Magnolia Miix) - Audiomatique
Kolombo 'Acai' - Boxer Recordings
M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade 'Donut' - Get Physical Music
Anja Schneider & Lee Van Dowski 'La Roulette' - Mobilee
Ada 'Maps' (Michael Mayer & Tobias Thomas Mix) - Kompakt
... As is always the case, you can stream or download the mix in it's entirety from my podcast page, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or you can always catch all my 'Kaleidoscope' mixes directly from my Samurai.fm showpage. Feel free to chime in with any thoughts, comments, suggestions, or whatever else you might have in mind. Most importantly though, I would suggest you take the mix out in your car or on your soundsystem of choice and let it lend a little bit of bump to your summer. ;)
