Coming up, June 30, 2012, the re-union party of the decade! This is going to be great, 100% vinyl dj’s rocking it like they did back in the day. Back after 20 years, come out and have fun! I can’t wait and I am really looking forward to this.
http://www.facebook.com/events/331627830232023/
So I have been watching the original Twilight Zone series, and I’ve realized a couple things watching it as a “mature adult”.
1. Regardless of how many Twilight Zone marathons I have seen, how many times it was on TV aside from the marathons, I actually haven’t seen quite a few of them.
2. Some of the ideas they tackle, were, well, at the time, very forward thinking, and challenging, which made me respect that it was on when it was and for the time it was. Also, kind of made me re-think what I thought of the time it was made in. Maybe not everyone and everything then was well “Ward and June Cleaver”.
3. Renewed my respect, awe, and admiration for the creators, writers, and directors of the series.
The past 48 hours have been hell dealing with you. You have crap customer support, you do not do things as directed or asked, replace servers when you are not supposed to, create down time that you aren’t supposed to, your employees suck. I am so glad that my personal stuff is hosted here at Dreamhost. They are professional, no fuss, no muss, and they actually have people who know how to correct issue, or can at least follow directions if they know that their admin-fu is lower than yours. This is horrible. I highly suggest that no one use Rackspace. Fanatical support? Yeah, how about idiotic support. Morons I tell you, morons. Hire better and more knowledgeable staff. You guys seriously lost out when you didn’t hire me, at least you would have had at least one person there that would have been able to fix the issues that I have had over the past 48 hours in 1/4 of the time.
On Thursday, November 17, 2011, Droid Behavior brought out the Detroit techno legend Claude Young. The last time I saw him was probably in 1998 at a party that Green Galactic did. Those were the days of the almighty Technics 1200, laptops only existed as part of a 100% live act, CDJs were relatively new, and parties were affordable. Needless to say, he blew my mind then, so I was really looking forward to him today. The last time I saw Claude Young, he just, well, it can only be described as a turntablist techno dj. The people he played with then, were all Detroit techno legends, with Dj Rolando, and some other people who I forget. I love turntablist techno / EDM DJs, cutting, scratching, samples, everything that a “traditional” hip hop DJ does, but faster beats. Considering all the new technological advances between last time that I saw him and now have well, astounded even me, so I was very interested in what and how Claude would take advantage of it, or if he would just be using the good old 1200s, either way I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be disappointed. I was a bit on the fence about going to this, when I first heard of it because I was unemployed at the time, but then they added another awesome DJ who ended up relocating from his hometown of Chicago, to the warmer, less windy climate of Southern California, D.J. Hyperactive. Hyperactive is another great who has been known for his great Techno and House sets, but in my mind, he is one of the great Hard Acid and Acid Techno DJs and Producer. Don’t get me wrong, I love listening to him play Techno and House, but I have been blessed to hear him play Acid, and holy crap, just wow.
In case you don’t know by now, this event was put on by the Droid Behavior people. If you are in L.A., are into techno, and do not know who they are, then, well, you probably really aren’t into techno or don’t live in L.A. These guys have been bringing out classic, awesome talent that L.A. has not seen ever or in a really long time. They have brought out Chris Liebing, Kevin Saunderson, Octave One, DVS1 (Dan Bell), Derrick May, and many others. They have been doing one off parties on Thursday (for the most part) and call them Prime. The Prime events usually happen in the Silverlake district at a bar / club called the Medusa Lounge. Droid as a whole have been doing great things, and I highly suggest you all check out the next event, which is next month with another techno great, Speedy J.
On to the actual event. The line up consisted of Matt Rissi, D.J. Hyperactive, and Claude Young.
I have honestly never heard of Matt Rissi, and he was the opening DJ. I like his style, good Techno / Tech-house, with huge deep bass. He’s also a very energetic Dj behind the decks. My friend Gil and I got there and immediately found our spot next to the speaker stack and started dancing to Mr. Rissi. He was playing mostly newer stuff, which I’m not all to familiar with, but it was solid. Good mix, lots of knob twiddling, over all good set.
Well, as usual, he never lets me down. He opened up with a classic Acid track, which if I’m not mistaken was one of his productions from legendary Drop Bass Network label. If not, I’m still pretty sure that it was a Drop Bass Network track. This lead me to loose my shit, well, technically it lead to me and my friend Gil loosing our shit and just being as happy as kids in a candy store. We just started bouncing around and freaking out. Way to open up the set. He proceeded to just open up a can of kick ass, as he usually does unless he’s playing house, and let’s just say, me and Gil were hard pressed to move in front of the speakers. I couldn’t stop dancing and really didn’t like going back to get me another drink or go out for a smoke, simply because it put a damper on my dancing. There were many times throughout his set that I was bouncing around like a freak, it was just super good. He started off very acidic, went more into regular techno, then dropped his last track, which was another acid banger, to which of course, Gil and I lost our shit again. Solid, great set that primed the way for Claude Young.
Now on to Claude Young. He took the techno reigns and well, rode that pony until security said stop. He ran the gamut. Here’s a brief overview. Coming off of Hyperactive’s last acid stomper, he dropped another classic, then just went everywhere. Stomping, banging techno, disco, then I stepped out to smoke and was drawn back in by a familiar industrial chant. He was rocking Nitzer Ebb’s “Join in the chant”. I am pretty sure that he was using the normal Nitzer Ebb version as well as the techno remix from like 1999 or so. He dropped another Nitzer Ebb remix (or remixed on the fly, you can never tell with him) shortly after that. More banging techno, another couple of funky / soulful disco tracks, and some more techno to close it out. All the while, he rocked the shit out of the CDJ’s. Trust me, you more than likely have not seen someone abuse CDJ’s like they were 1200′s and it was quite a treat to hear someone beat up both the mixer and the CDJ’s in the land of the laptop djs. One day, I would love to see a Techno / House / EDM producer beat up a Traktor or anything else digital as well as you could do with 1200′s and apparently in Claude Young’s hands CDJ’s. If anyone is going to pull it off, I’m sure Claude could and I would love to see him destroy lappys, mixers, and whatever else he could the way he has with just 2 decks and a mixer.
For those of you who missed out, boy did you and you better not sleep on this shit again. I don’t care if it was on a Thursday, all you bastards in LA have no excuse to not come out since the venue is closer to you guys than me now.
Make sure that you connect / follow and stay up to date with the Droid folks. Support these guys so we can continue to get blessed with good music.
Droid Behavior’s Prime information for this even in particular is here
Droid Behavior’s Podcasts (pretty sure there was or is a Hyperactive podcast)
Next up from the Droid crew is Speedy J in December. Perfect way to end the year….. more classic techno from legendary producers. Hell yeah. Get connected with the Droid folks to find out more info.
Here’s some mixes from Hyperactive and from Claude Young.
Hyperactive’s Record Player Volume 12
Hyperactive’s Mixes on Rave Archive (READ DANGER ACID)
Pretty sure either me, or society is broken. From what I have gathered, and my long-standing morals, I’m pretty sure it’s me. I’m sorry to disappoint some people, but regardless of how pretty or beautiful your girlfriend might be, if I am friends with you, I don’t consider your girlfriend to be hot, or any other term. Also, if you ask me about a friend’s girlfriend, then I am not going to tell you if I think she’s hot, because I don’t think about her in that way. I was brought up to not covet, desire, or think any of my friend’s girls are hot. You see it’s a little thing called respect. I may not be rich, or have a lot of shit. Never really did. But I can tell you a couple of things that I have had, and will always have, regardless of what society at large does and says, I have respect (both self-respect and for those I consider friends), and in my world, with respect comes honor. Respect and honor mean more to me than some banal bullshit to try to prove what a “man” I am. Having true respect, honor, and honesty make one a man, not who you want to have sex with or how many you have had sex with.
Also, I will say that she is pretty / beautiful / nice / whatever, but whatever I say, will have no sexual overtones, and if you get that, well, you are misreading what I am saying. You can appreciate a person’s beauty without being sexually attracted to them. If you think that’s not true, but have thought that a sunrise, or sunset was beautiful, did you want to have sex with that? If you did want to have sex with the sunrise /sunset, then you are the person with a problem, not me.
Electro is not what you think it is. I am so pissed about these new people hijacking a name for a genre of music that I love and trying to apply it to whatever they are calling electro now a days. Here’s a pro tip, this generation’s so called electro is not electro. It’s about as electro as death metal is actually ska. Two totally different things. I digress, I highly suggest you people go read up and educate on what electro is.
Get with it, and stop co-opting musical genres when what you are doing has absolutely nothing to do with the original genre.
It is said best with this blurb from a Facebook group:
“Now that everyone is using “electro” to refer to any “electronic” music, who will remember what electro actually is?
Electro is Afrika Bambaataa, Anthony Rother, Aux 88, Cybotron, Direct Beat, DMX Krew, Dopplereffekt, Drexciya, Dynarec, Kraftwerk, Mad Mike, Model 500, Underground Resistance, Ultradyne or Viewlexx, not all the commercial crap they sell under this name.”
Here’s the FB group: Electro Facebook Group
17 years ago today, you were born. You changed everything for me and gave me hope. I learned so much about myself and about the world through you and through being a parent. One more year and you’ll be an adult, and unfortunately I haven’t seen you or spoken with you directly in years. I abhor the situation that I am in with you, I wish that I could snap my fingers and make everything the way that I wanted it to be all along, however, that’s not possible. At least with you being closer to being an adult, I yearn for the day that you will contact me. I will always be there for you, you are my daughter, I miss you, and I love you. Happy Birthday monkey. Happy birthday Heracyn (formerly Heresie). No matter what I will always be there for you, and so will my family.
WOOT! Got me a job! Will be starting at Warner Bros / GDMX next Tuesday! Can’t freaking wait! Need to study up this weekend and get up to speed on the Veritas Backup and Clustering, so I can hopefully hit the ground running. This is a contract gig, but I’m going to do my best and work my hardest to have them convert me over to full-time. This is going to be a great gig that I will be learning a lot at and will get to play with interesting technology and hardware that I haven’t used before.
So I’m back at home from the interview at Yahoo. Not sure how the interview went (big shock). I do think that me and the hiring manager got along, as well as one of the middle guys since him and I got along and just hung out and talked shop during the break time. I feel a little wonky about how the middle part went (prior to the break), which is why I’m not sure. The offices are nice, and I think it would be a good opportunity if I can get in. It’s obviously a much larger (exponentially) than any environment I have had to deal with, and the importance of the group I would be working with is huge, which makes me both nervous and excited at the same time. The guys I did meet with were super cool regardless, and I really hope I get to work with them. I feel like I could learn a lot there.
I highly suggest all of you out there watch this documentary. Very informative documentary that solidifies everything that I have felt about the music industry, and popular music for well, ever. Educate yourself and liberate yourself from crap music. Thanks.