Action Bronson London matinée gig and new mixtape

So Bam Bam Bronson is rolling into town in two weeks and I left it too late to get my ticket for the evening show. “But Mike?” you ask. “Why don’t you use your list of extensive contacts in The Industry™ to score a VIP pass?”. Here’s why. I got me a ticket to the 4pm show. Yeah that’s right. The hip hop matinée.

To prep me for this My Bronson has been kind enough to plop out a mixtape. In my day we called them EPs (shit, I already made that joke) but it’s pretty good and funded by Bolton’s own Reebok. You can download it here. Or peep my favourite track NOW!

Action Bronson – Tan Leather

Me at the Antelope, Tooting Sat 28th – funk, soul etc…

I’ll be DJing at the Antleope in Tooting this Saturday 28th playing funk, soul and general party tunes. Come on down, 8 till late!

Nearest tube is Tooting Broadway, about 2 mins away.

SHOWBIZ!

There will also apparently be a photographer there taking pictures of me and interviewing me. I am not making this up.

Now this is live

Here’s a glimpse of Run-D.M.C. performing live on Graffiti Rock in 1984. This is seriously one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen – no exaggeration. Perhaps years of seeing mediocre live rap has jaded me but they are just a cut above. It actually looks like they’ve practised, the DJ and the MCs [*gasp*] are doing things that compliment each other (01.31) and both Run and DMC are delivering the lines like they mean it, rather than sloppily rambling off two verses before the DJ does a spinback and they go “YEAH!”.

Watch out for the popper in a white shirt who self consciously muscles in front centre in front of the camera as Jay start cueing up the record as well. It’s hilarious.

This is ghey

I’m currently chez my dad for the Christmas holidays and because we share similar tastes in a lot of music, he often records gigs of Sky channels for me, seeing as I don’t have Sky. One such gig was Frank Zappa live in New York from 1984. The whole film (Entlitled Does Humour Belong in Music? is fantastic, mixing as it does concert footage and short interview snippets with the outspoken one himself. The band are incredible performers, combining absolute mastery of their instruments and an ability to act and goof around on stage like children.

This clip of He’s So Gay demonstrates perfectly what I mean. Bobby Martin on keys and bassist Scott Thunes are really yukking it up.

There’s just nobody like Zappa – sigh.

Hey Mariaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

Came across this the other day. This was from back when Mariah kicked it live. The sound quality’s not great though.

Would you like a sample?

I’m wondering if anyone else in the DJ game has more success than me using a Roland SP-303 as an effects unit.

It seems to offer that function but there’s no real easy way to configure it. I can hook it up to my mixer effects easily enough but then to apply the effects you have to set an effect going and select “EXT. SOURCE” when you want the effects to be played. I just want to be able to do killer reggae echo stops and then cut in the next record but I appear to be making a royal hash of it because I need about four hands to make it work.

I have a few more points to make about the wonderful 303 (aka Dr. Sample) but I’ll save these for another day. Keeps my post count up.