Friday at The Blackcat, DJ Spooky made me dance.
His moment of genius, for me, was a mix of The Beatles' 'Paperback Writer' and Outcast's 'Hey Ya.'
I remember in college the amount of time I spent listening to terrible hobbyists, who's parents gave them too-big allowances, with lots of amazing toys that they didn't know how to use... in any event, back then it was easy for me to forget that I love a good DJ.
Spooky had three digital turn tables that were attached to video that reacted to all of his changes, moves and scratching. Mike and I have been talking about incorporating video and animation into our work, and now that I've seen it done so beautifully, I'm really anxious to start experimenting.
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Paperback Writer + Hey Ya definitely equaled rad, but there was really something missing from this show.
In college, even the terrible hobbyists that Katy speaks of had a certain following, and generated quite a buzz despite their mediocre technique. For so many years in Detroit, "spinning" was the home-grown art form -- accessible to anyone with a couple of turntables and a collection of relatively obscure records. In Ann Arbor, EVERYONE wanted to be a DJ.
I never followed the scene that closely, but I was aware enough to notice when the scene started to die down, with the polished and professional DJs sticking around, and the passionate-yet-uninspiring enthusiasts moving on to other things. Somehow, maybe the dwindling off of the amateur DJs made the professionals lose their luster -- maybe nobody realizes just how good guys like DJ Spooky are, because they don't have anyone to compare him to. Or maybe with the advent of the "Detroit Techno" Ford Focus and other assorted abominations, the whole thing just went too mainstream to be cool anymore.
Anyway, my point is that the smallish crowd that turned out to groove with DJ Spooky was rather bland -- homogeneous, bored, boring, and seemingly unimpressed with the amazing sounds and sights that were on display at the Black Cat, in DJ Spooky's hometown no less. I thought the Subliminal Kid was amazing, but he really deserved a better welcome home.
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