Friday, March 30, 2007

DJ Pagan Poop Destroys the Social



well everyone, last night was magical. for those of you who didn't know, i was in a small "DJ" competition last night at my second favorite bar the Social. The format of the event was this: Girl vs. Boy style, 5 guys + 5 girls, each guy went head to head against a girl, each DJ had four songs to spin, basically the guy played a song and then the girl played a song, we each got one half the deck.

the fun part, well for me, was that when my opponents song was spinning i was able to to mix in my track with hers, you know fiddle with the pitch, the volume, esentially i wasn't gonna let the beat drop from one song to the next (the competition was basically for people who had no DJ experience, their were two guys there to "supervise" which meant that when one song was over they just threw the fader to the other side of the board while the contestant watched).

my DJ experience is very small but it works in this day and age. the DJ world has shifted so that the main obligation of the spinner of tunes is to pick good songs and effortlessly weave them together so as to keep the booty shakin' to a maximum. my playlist was as follows:

Spank Rock- Backyard Betty
Clipse- Trill
Dan Deacon- Crystal Cat
Girl Talk- Bounce That

the crowd ate it up. the lady that i was facing didn't have a clue, she stared at the cd players as if they were explosive chemicals not meant for human hands to touch. Now in terms of the actual low down of winners and such it was a bit sketchy as to who was really "the best". All of the boys lost their respective bouts for the evening but the girls were cheaters.

You can't play Pulp and have breasts and tons of friends and compete it is just not fair to anyone, needless to say the battles were judged off of crowd participation and while i did convert the majority of the middle aged room (which was freakin' packed) to my sonic preferences i just didn't have the firepower, that and i only brought david, whitney, phoebe, and hayley (thanks guys for coming out!).

well whatever the case it was very fun and as always i forget that the social is basically a college kid/yuppie hang out and last night the yuppies were out in full force. I think that DJ Pagan Poop is gonna make it in this town. he has the gumption he has the gusto he has the god damn heart. (from now on i am going to try the dave hutch approach to writing posts which breaks up the massive amount of words for easier eye balling)

Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Marvellous Mac Mello at Bardens Boudoir


so i spent my saturday night in the ghetto, the east side, better known as hackney. i was running solo but felt confident because i had been to this venue before. it's called Bardens Boudoir; i saw black lips play there a couple weeks ago; it's an awesome venue hands down. i really enjoy places that have a stage which is only 8 inches off the ground. that, and the crowd is usually really polite and also too timid to stand close to the stage so i always get a front row standing spot; however, the photographers were in full fuckin' force last night, four of them up in every artists grill like a god damn dentist, oh how we all want to be a star. well to the music. the highlight of the night was Mac Mello, london rapper and word spitter of the grimy persuasion. since we are talking about london and grimy rap, here is where i make my comparison to Dizzee Rascal. i will say that they were fairly similar, minimalistic beats with a rhyming flow that could a)barely be called rhyming and b)barely be called flow but somehow they both know how to mysteriously hold it together. now i haven't seen Dizzee perform, boy would i like to, but this may be perhaps where he has the upper hand, his recordings. when i got back last night i was hyped on Mellow so naturally i went to his myspace page (www.myspace.com/macmello) and listened to his tracks. i was thoroughly dissapointed. this man was jumping all over the stage, his guttural projection of words was savage but griping, his hype man seemed to be actually intelligent, needless to say the whole crowd was feeling him. it was a swagger that reminded me of Baltimore's own S dot Rock. however, Dizzee somehow managed to channel that fire into his recording while Mello took an approach that, while it could be seen as more sophisticated and a little more controlled, was much less effective for the world o' grime. or maybe i really shouldn't judge anything that comes out of my computer speakers because they can barely handle the startup sounds let alone beats to shake your booty to. whatever the case, Mac Mello is an awesome performer and if he gets his tracks in order perhaps we'll see him on the next kanye album. (the last statement was composed to be a joke; however, after two seconds of retrospection i have concluded that it really is an amazing idea)

Saturday, March 24, 2007

2 Jack and Cokes and a Whole Lotta Jukebox


so to get down to it, this week was kind of boring. i had two papers to hand in as well as a draft for a play and of course i'm supposed to finish two more novels for next week (currently i'm reading Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard, i enjoy it very much). so i will spare all of you the video treatment (which is starting to fail mind you, last weeks video had 30 views and this weeks had 10) but whatever the case this is the tale of a fun night that whitney and i had. after our assignments were turned in on thursday (a very complicated process that involved a submission to a plagerism detection service online (which needed a sign in code and password which i couldn't find for days) as well as a hard copy with formal cover sheet due to a certain box in a building 20 minutes away) we decided to get a celebratory drink at my second favorite bar The Social. Usually this place is pretty packed and it is impossible to get a seat at the bar let alone a table so we moseyed over to the jukebox in the corner which happened to be my all time favorite jukebox in the world even before this evening (i mean who else has backyard betty for 20p a spin) so this was the point in the night where we decided to play DJ (i was DJ beach blanket and whitney was DJ bingo). after inserting about a pound and a half into the machine we picked the tunes that would determine the course of everyone in ear shots night. here is the playlist (i can't remember the order in which they played so feel free to have your imagination rearrange at will):

!!!- heart of hearts
CSS- let's make love and listen to death from above
Clipse- ride around shining, trill
the DFA- remix of NERD's she wants to move
the Horrors- sheena is a parasite
LCD Soundsystem- time to get away, north american scum, all my friends, new york i love you but you're bringing me down
the Raconteurs- together

sadly, whitney and i received no thanks for our philanthropic act, that's right no free drinks, no solicitations from drunk hussies lookin' to give away the clap for free, nothin'. but it felt good.

in other news, spring break is in two weeks. basically i fly to budapest with my friends phoebe and hayley, pick up a eurail pass, and pretend that im in "on the road ".

Monday, March 19, 2007

Adam in London 7 (mostly in manpurse paris)

ok kids, time is of the essence. i think i pretty much covered everything in the video but in case i didn't elaborate enough all you need do is close your eyes eat a madeline (they sell them at starbucks) and imagine a whole bunch of paintings and clothing that you've only read about, perhaps you could put on "we are your friends" by justice. oh and after just finishing don delillo's "white noise" (which was great) i stumbled upon a line that i felt i must share with you all. mr. will krieger is the one who told me that his religion is pretense; however, delillo had a nun say that her "dedication(in terms of faith) is a pretense". so because this book was published in 1984 i'd say that its delillo 1 and krieger 0. (will im just kidding, you are my boy, book your tickets or i'll kill you). ok and just one more thing, i know how much this other kid gets a kick out of it so just for shits and giggles: matt bradshaw.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Move Over Helen Mirren, Mrs. H is in town


ok, so the proverbial seed and egg of my existence are visiting at the moment. tomorrow will be our last day in the luscious jackson city of london. then off to paris. i'll do a video when we get back, so all you get now is the words on the page. ya know we've done a pretty normal shtick so far: portobello market, shopping on regent street for new hi tops, the london eye, eating mussels and drinking belgium beer with whitney, seeing spamalot with my mother playing a small but clutch impromptu role. perhaps our last feat shall be the crux of my tale at the moment. i spent the day indoors finishing salman rushdie's book shame. i met up with my parents at dinner time where we took food at a fish place near the theatre. spamalot was really the only concession to a musical that i was going to make because let's face it, monty python inspired anything is going to be good especially when they too have embraced the song and dance routine for their entire career. the first act went swimmingly with my dad and i laughing at the funny things that we never forgot from the holy grail while my mom had to re-learn them all over again. as the play was drawing to a close i felt as if lady luck had sat right next to me. that my mother had transformed into a dame judy dench look alike ready to hit the silver screen. well my premonition was confirmed when king arthur's servant barreled down the isle with eyes set on the only mum i've ever(whom i'm sure they chose as the patsy before act I commenced). as the holofcener threesome sat with bated breath as to the hunched man's intentions he calmly said to janine holofcener, "excuse me love could you stand up". at that moment he threw the grail into her seat just to momentarily retreive it and hoist it like a big gold baby jesus. after returning to the stage, and sufficiently tricking my mother into thinking that the grail was there the whole time, he pondered whether my mother should be compensated for her help in their noble quest. the rag tag crew unanimously agreed that she should be paraded around stage and showered with awards of the most fictitious nature. my mother who is known for bad reactions to even the slightest interaction with celebrities sat dumbstruck. we all remember such great moments in her history like her feigned heart attack in the presence of sigourney "ripley" weaver while in aspen. luckily for edward and myself she pulled the part off without a hitch. she was the star. she had all the perfect attributes necessary to steal the show: a petite body structure, a terribly difficult surname to pronounce (especially on the tongue of a briton), a large black scarf which allowed for tasteful readjusting, and a face that doesn't get washed out in the bright white light assault that one encounters on the stage. of course after her second set of applause from a completely jealous crowd of tourists who "have worked to damn hard their whole life to have this woman get a polaroid picture with the entire cast on stage" she returned to her seat ready to talk about her experience, too bad the show wasn't quite over yet. after some polite shushing on my part we made it to the end in one piece and as we left the theatre my dad and i flanked mother just like we were the body guards and she was the queen (she received many kudos on the way out from those particularly in her demographic). as everything has been so far on this trip for miss nina the play was no different, it was part of the "best" experiences of her life. of course after doing the best at anything one is inevitably ready for a drink but i needed to finish my reading so i seperated from the giddy parent of two. thhis transmission shall continue after we get back from paris. hopefully i'll be enlisted to participate in an interpretive dance group show that involves the throwing of fecal matter. we all have dreams.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Panda Bear at 93 Feet East


well, first off the not fun news. i was supposed to work this show but this morning the fella over at 93 feet east emailed me and said "i am so sorry adam but we don't have work for you to do today, sorry". so i had to be a normal person who saw the show just like everyone else. ok but to the show. it was surprisingly not so great. first of all it was really quiet. not only could mark, whitney, and i carry on a conversation with our voices at a normal volume but at one point during the set the crowd was actually louder than mr. noah lennox. that being said the crowd wasn't really into it. now it was a sold out show but after about 10 minutes of Panda's set 25% of the crowd left. on all the flyers for the show the only mention of opening acts were "special guests" so either some locals brought everyone out or the crowd was really here for animal collective having not heard the bear's solo stuff. personally i thought it was an ok show. for an experimental venue 93 feet east is way too big and way too yuppie. i think that a little more effort could have been put in on Panda Bears part but i would still give him a b+ and as we all know that is still above average. he played what i would hope is basically all of his new album person pitch and after having heard "comfy in nautica" and "bros" i hate to say it but it seems that only 50% of the album will be mindblowing. the other 50 will be nice music to fall asleep to perhaps but i want to be sucked into his shit like a yves klein painting. the other funny thing about the show is that no one in the very shitty crowd was moving at all. this is the town of new rave for fuck sake people could have at least swayed. basically everyone just slowly sat on the floor and fell asleep. however the only true consolation of the evening is that Panda Bear and i were the only two people wearing baltimore orioles hats, perhaps in the whole country.

oh but here is something really special. i found a podcast of panda bear playing a whole set on this guy's portuguese radio station (even though noah's from baltimore he now lives in lisbon)

http://podcast.radio.ist.utl.pt/mafama_20070107.mp3

hands down this is freaking awesome

this post is dedicated to will collins

well it's pretty boy collins birthday tomorrow and the coincidence that i experienced last night made this post necessary to write. i found an el paso. mind you, this is a fredericksburg thing. next to playin' poker this might be the manliest thing that i can lay claim to. mr. collins as well as his cronies mr. clint woods and mr. frank franciose are responsible for showing me this proverbial fortress of solitude. it's a dinky little tex mex place off of route 1 that has an even dinkier bar in the back. it has the most amazing happy hour deal ever, dos XX with salt and lime for a buck. they are the only place in town that accepts my fake id. not only that but because we are recognized as frequenters of the establishment our chimichangas can sometimes cost as little as 3 dollars, that's a lotta beans my friend. well ok now that the footnotes are out of the way i will get to the brass. i found an el paso here in london. on my way to a place called catch last night where i witnessed two subpar improvisatory noise bands i noticed a bar that said BEST TEX MEX FOOD IN LONDON. now i was under the impression that there were no tex mex places in london because i checked the internet and it told me so. right next to this fading manifesto laid a metallic sign with purple lights that screamed EL PASO BAR. i was already full from a dinner that included microwaveable vegetarian spring rolls so i didn't even chance a glance at the menu for fear of inciting my lustful burrito hankering which has gone unfulfilled for so long. i scampered off to the club and was so happy from my discovery that i didn't even mind the fact that i was alone, going to a show that i would soon find out was not worth the 4pounds i paid to get in. so when my busy schedule of mostly fun and little work calms down a bit i shall go back to el paso dos (as i shall call it) and raise a glass to mr. collins (they probably won't have dos XX, the only mexican beer they have here is Sol and if San Miguel is mexican too than that counts also) and let out a genuine Cumpleanos Feliz.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Adam in London 6 (mostly in the city of vice)

shortly you will hear of the horrors of amsterdam. it may be too scary for people like matt bradshaw so he should turn back now. when i got back to my room after my travels this morning i talked to my friend lauren who was also in a'dam with us but took an earlier flight back to london because she had class. basically she said that even though it was 6am in the morning, a strange man chased after her on her way to the train station. luckily she got away, more importantly, luckily we all got away. on a much brighter note my food review of gung dten finally made its way onto the mcsweeneys site, so after youre done watching my facial movements stuck in weird constricted poses overtop of a series of grunts, you should go to:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/newfood/