 You hear it all the time...about DJs who got their start making mix tapes as a kid. Well that was me. Littering up my friends' bedrooms with tapes, insistent on knowing if I rocked their pre-pubescent party. Back then the concept of 'high fidelity' was not re-recording over tapes more than once... thanks to that inevitable bleed-through of the ghost tracks that came before. You had to preserve the sound as best you could, even if the radio DJ had obliterated any notion of quality by talking over the first 10 seconds of the song you were waiting to tape for "the right mix." Now I litter up friends' living rooms with CDs. Not much has changed.
My first love, after departing from radio's meager offerings, was jazz. My dad had jazz records, so some of the first songs I ever heard were Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and Miles Davis' "So What?" I knew I liked what I heard on "So What," but at the time 9 minutes seemed like an eternity to my childish attention span. Pretty amusing thinking back on a 9-minute track being so long. I worked my way through vocal jazz, cool/West Coast jazz and many other styles and found my favorites: Blossom Dearie, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, as well as Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Miles & Coltrane (spluh!) amongst many others. I'm thankful that Austin is home to talented jazz musisicians such as Blaze and Torch - to be able to hear them play live moves me time and time again. Admittedly, I may never evolve to comprehend the 'genius' that is Ornette Coleman.
As for modern giants, there are so many musicians I admire... Quantic (Will Holland) is among them. Anything he puts out is worth buying, even if it's only available as an import. Anyone responsible for bringing Spanky Wilson out of semi-retirement deserves high praise. DJ Day (Damien Beebe) is absolute heaven - he is the quintessential blend of tight beats blended with incredible samples, making for a totally modern yet retro feel. It's hard not to rave on & on about him. RJD2 (Ramble John Krohn) is consistently impressive and constantly breaking new ground - he deserves a lot of credit for doing things his own way and changing it up. And it's pretty cool to buy your concert t-shirt from the artist himself, working behind the table (not the tables) for a change. Gilles Peterson is the man.
I love doing what I do but don't do it often enough. If you like what you hear, please let me know. I'll try to get more mixes up quickly to keep things moving. |
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