RJD2 - The Third Hand

It was about time for me to like a record so much I feel it is worth being recommend. My new favourite album is RJD2's The Third Hand.

Well, as far as I know RJD2 has released quite few records so far, and I know him has a hip hop sampling dj. However, the new record quite blew me away because it combines a number of styles. What drove me to listen to it was a review I read that stated something like "RJD2 seems to be more relying on psychedelic and the beatles here than on hip hop beats." And damn right this is! The first song and, as far as I know, new single you never had it so good is based on piano chords. The second one, have mercy, is extremly funky. I find the lyrics quite amusing, as they remind me of German train workers being on strike recently:

Oh my goodness
I've been waiting for a train all morning
Lord Allmighty
I got a downtown shot to get to
Oh please
I got no car to bring me
...
Lord have mercy
have mercy have mercy
on these old fools
Lord have mercy
have mercy have mercy
'cos I won't do

Probbaly not what RJD2 wanted to say, but nevermind. Same goes for laws of the gods, which sounds like a angry girl's revenge on her ex-boyfriend:

Oh lazy man
you broke the laws of the gods
...
don't come home for a week

Enough interpretations...I discovered this record just three days ago, and already came up with some weird conclusions. One suddenly hit me this morning when I listened to the record in the queue at the post office: The thing is, one of my favorite songs so far is sweet piece. The chorus just appeals to me very much, and now I think I know why: May I be so presumptuous to claim it's like the electro hymn George Michael has not been writing recently? "Not him again again" I hear you scream, but listen for yourself. It's electronic, a soft electronica, it's about unaknowledged love or misconceptions on love, and his voice sounds so, well, like George Michael.

Likewise noteworthy: rules has perfect bonds to good old triphop and someday is played with an acoustic guitar. Not quite your average hiphop dj, ey?

We are now coming to the sadder part of this blog. What ever happened to radioblogclub? Is it just me or is it gone, making room for a page full of advertisement? What happened to all the radioblogclub links I put on this blog?

Not all the songs I mentioned are available there, but do try and listen to RJD2 on his myspace.

CSS and The Gossip Myspace Secret Show @ Roadhouse, Manchester

This is gonna be a long one, but worth the read! ;)

Some bold facts: Myspace UK has been organising two secret shows so far, this was the second one. I learned about it in a bulletin sent out by the Myspace Secret Show UK page. It announced the date and place, May 18th Manchester, but I only found out about who would play a couple of days before the gig.
To get a ticket I had to befriend the myspace profile (which I had already done ages ago) and CSS's and the Gossip's myspace page. Then put the three in my top eight, print out my profile page, and then, they day before the gig, go to the local book and music store Fopp to queue for my ticket.

My friend and I arrived at the store two hours before they started giving out the tickets, only two be quite surprised that there were people queuing already! So we took our place in the line and waited. Somebody took pictures of us holding the prints of our profiles. I mention this because we were exposed to photographers let loose quite often. They started handing out the tickets on time, and soon, after showing the prints and an ID, we got a wristband, a ticket and some buttons which said things like "you looked better on myspace" or myspace is for losers but you're all f*cking on it.

Holding the tickets in our hands we thought of two things. First: we got the tickets, no more queuing! (how wrong we were...) Second: oh, the tickets say dress code: shock. What are we gonna do about this?
I won't explain what we wore, in case you may read my description too well and then I got no idea if weird pics of me will finally come up on the myspace page...

But we did dress up a bit the next day and went for a nice pint. The tickets said Doors 8:30, so we where there 8:30. Only to have to queue again, for an annoying one and a half hour. Why this was like this, I do not really know, but I got my suspicions: there were cameras again. People handing out flyers, people taking pictures. And a film team that filmed the queue, encouraging everyone to cheer. Of course, if you wanna persuade people who weren't there about how busy it was, you got to make the audience queue. But for one and a half hours?

Nevertheless, we finally got inside, only to wait a bit more. Then CSS played. To be honest, I did not know any of their songs before, and one gossip song only. And to be honest, I was not particularly found of the music. I liked both bands attitude, the singer from CSS with glasses painted on her face and a fake tooth gap. I read about them afterwards that they started the band without knowing how to play any instrument. If that is true, bless them. But to me all the songs sounded the same.

Things were similar with The Gossip. Again, not really an idea what they sound like, yet I was familiar with some of the modern myths surrounding Beth Ditto, and maybe she fulfilled them again this night with her ultra-short dress and her party-attitude which could have resulted from drunkenness. But she does what she wants to (at least I hope she still wants to be like this, and it has not become a necessity to stay popular), and I appreciate this. Plus there was something else about her, which was clearly my highlight of the evening: her voice. Let me tell you, no matter what you think of her and her band, her voice IS amazing. They opened their set with a cover version of George Michael's Careless Whisper, and I as an old George Michael fan say they did it very well.

Here are some pictures my friend took:

CSS

The Gossip

The glowsticks

After these nice impressions, here is what the press said:

First of all, myspace UK still has not managed to put reviews, videos and pictures up on their profile yet. Maybe they will have when you read this, but they certainly did not have when I wrote this. Considering the fact that the gig was friday night, and I am writing this on a monday afternoon, I must say that's pretty lousy and lame of them.

However, the NME was really quick, giving us this story. Do I approve what they wrote there? Frankly, no, not all of it. But first, my congratulations to the author who figured out the setlist. How you can keep all these songs apart and recognise them is a miracle to me. But maybe he just nicked the setlist? Yet I do not remember Beth Ditto shouting for Paris Hilton to be put into prison. I also do not recall her dedicating the gig to Yoko Ono. And I was really sober. The rest seems true, though.

After the gig was over, there was a bit of djing going on, were once more I realised that either my electro time was ten years ago and is over now, or the best electro songs simply were made ten years ago, because what got me (and the crowd) going the most were some old nice tunes such as daft punk's around the world and mr oizo's flat beat. When we left they gave us free posters of both two bands, and we still had these glowsticks they had been throwing into the audience extensivly. Having spent less than five pounds for this night I was quite satisfied with the outcome. lots of annoying things, but who am I to complain when it's a bargain!

dj me

i made my debut as a dj last night, when the real dj had to go to the loo. i played three songs. one was a tune by dogdy, the second i dont remember, the third one was cigarettes and alcohol by oasis. i jsimply put the records on the player and faded in when the other one was over. i didnt get the chance to use the headphones because i didnt know how they worked. i counted the people that were in the bar afterwards - there were 21 people listening, bar staff not included. nobody danced, but nobody danced anyway. i think it was mighty sucessful. it was great.

Robosonic Mashup-Mixes

Recently stumbled over two guys from Berlin called "Robosonic" who are doing minimal electro-tech-stuff as well as playing mash-up-nights all over the world. Their myspace-page offers two sets for download and I urge you to grab those. Mash-up at its best, all from 80s, hiphop, house/tech-stuff over to metal, it's a wild ride.

download set1
download set2

And while you are at it, make friends with them.

Laurent Garnier in my Hometown

Laurent Garnier is DJing in my hometown this saturday and I would love to go there, but ... The club where this is going to happen is not very big and they anticipate alot of possible visitors, which leads to the crazy situation that there is currently a kind of lottery for the sheer possibility to buy tickets. You need to write them an email and then get an answer if you are allowed to come by on saturday and buy a ticket. Which is way too much hassle for me, also this means that the club will be packed with people and the evening will not be too pleasant.

However, this is kinda disappointing for me because I would really love to see him. For years now I did stay away from evenings with "famous" DJs or "famous" musicians DJing in clubs because I had a few rather boring nights which is especially bad if you pay alot of money. The problem is basically that they are mostly not better or different from most other DJs, sometimes they are even worse.
There are only a few people left that I would really pay alot of money to see DJing, those include DJ Koze, DJ Shadow, RJD2, Bad Boy Bill and a few other. Laurent Garnier is on that list too, but it seems I will just pass on that opportunity.

roni size @ maria

one not-so-nonrelevant reason why i moved from boredom to berlin was the idea to be able to see all my favourite artists live. and last night i ticked off another name on my list: roni size. overhearing people i heard it has been ten years since he last came to berlin, so everybody seemed to be quite excited. i went to the venue about half past eleven because the entrance fee would be cheaper up until midnight. however, ten to 12 there was no queue in front of the club, people just walked straight in. my friends were not in sight yet so i decided to wait for them. i just walked up and down the street and when i returned to the club 5 mins later the queue was very long. sort of looked like it was planned that way so people had to pay more.

when i entered the club it was still empty, but the music was awesome. the dj was playing fantastic drum'n'bass and the mc really screamed and shouted.

club was slowly getting full and at 2 o'clock sharp roni size began his dj-set. i was very excited, getting in the mode and danced a little while.

interlude: dancing to drum'n'bass music
when i dance to drum'n'bass music, i have two different ways of moving.
one is jumping around heavily, tossing my legs.
the other one is swaying the hips and upper part of the body.
good drum'n'bass makes me switch between those two,
very good drum'n'bass makes me do both at the same time.

unfortunately i must say that last night i only jumped around. i wasn't satisfied with roni size because he didn't play any of his great hits (which i of course longed to dance to) - except from throwing in parts of brown paper bag once. instead he put on the bassline of the white stripes' seven nation army twice, which made me think he'd been running through his progamme and was starting from the beginning again. sometimes there were long experimental parts and it was impossible to dance, it was merely disturbing sounds.

at the entrance i got a free cd of the dj and mc who performed before roni size appeared, mtc yaw and mc soultrain, which i am listening to right now. i like this stuff much more. last night, mc soultrain seemed like a modern shaman, singing himself and the audience in trance. that's what i realised last night. so even if roni size didnt live up to my expectations i know i should start going to d'n'b parties again. and definitely see goldie and bukem again.