Mad I tell you... MAAAAAAAD!

"Ragtime [music] is syncopation gone mad...

...and its victims should be dealt with in the same way in which you deal with a dog who has rabies, with a dose of lead..."

-Edward Baxter Perry (Late 1800's-Early 1900's)

Wow, imagine if Mr. Perry had heard Public Enemy.

DJ Requests: Translated...

Now first let me say that if you come into a club where I am playing and dance, smile, have a great time, I am very grateful. However, I am a people watcher, mediator and lover of language. I realize that what people say isn't always what they mean. So here is the first of what I'm sure will be many installments of what I like to call:

DJ Requests: Translated...

Basically I'm going to translate what people are really saying when they walk up to a DJ at a club and request music. Ready, aiiight let's go.

Request: Jeremiah "Birthday Sex"

(One R Kelly is enough per lifetime.)


Means: Hey, can you kill the dancefloor, make everyone stop dancing so I can commit a PDA with my boyfriend / girlfriend and make everyone uncomfortable?

or... Hey, can you make everyone stop dancing so we can all stand around akwardly for about 5 minutes.

Request: Nelly Furtado


Means: Hey, I'm really only 12 years old and I want to get drunk and hear my song before security finds out my I.D. is fake.

Request: Hey man, play some classic Hip-Hop.
Means: I'm over 30 and I want to prove to my friends that I can still do the running man and the Kid 'N Play kickstep.

Request: Play some T.I.

(How come this man doesn't know how to wear a hat?)

Means: I like songs that go "AYYYYYYY!" and when the song goes "AYYYYYYYY!" I like to pump my fist in the air and go "AYYYYYYY!"

Request: Play some T-Pain.

(When I was a child I was deathly afraid of a metal toothed monster waiting in the closet to eat me, or my Grammy's, wow, he has Grammy's)

Means: I'm tone deaf.

Request: Play Lady GaGa
Means: Don't you just love "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance" as much as I do?

Footnote: If you are a male and straight you have no business pumping your fist to Lady GaGa and singing along.

Request: Hey man, do you have any "real" Hip-Hop.
Means: I will be leaving this club alone.

Request: Play some Akon.


Means: I'm really tone deaf and I like to sing along.


Request: Play some Kanye West.



Means: I hate music (and books apparently).
Footnote: If the requestor is dressed like Kanye when he makes the request it's okay because he's just preparing for his role as Theo in the updated stage revival of The Cosby Show.

Request: Drake
Means: I used to really love DeGrassi High.

or I like songs that sound like Lil' Wayne but aren't by Lil' Wayne.

Request: Master P

Means: I think it's 1994.

Request: Beyonce "Single Ladies"



Means: You hate me.

Request: Prince.

Means: You're awesome.

Now before we wrap up this installment I have to make a couple comments about club fashion. I am a male so feel free to correct me on this but:

If you wear a backless dress and or top isn't it tacky to have your entire bra showing?

FauxHawks are dead.
Colored fauxhawks and deader.
Colored fauxhawks with a gotee and an Ed Hardy-esque shirt, deadest.

I love you all.

-Jason

Get u a book (forgive the bad grammar)

Books are where people keep knowledge, ideas, memories, emotions, past lives and the love of language. Through the invention of written language, one can commit complex emotions and ideas to paper, preserving them for as long as the words survive. You can make your mark, you can express your ideas, they will survive, untainted and pure, immortal, as long as there is someone there to read and experience them. The act of reading is meditative, it teaches patience, but that is also subjective.

In centuries past people were more patient than our society is today, because that was just how life was, no television, no movies, no internet. To gain knowledge and entertainment you had to prolong the payoff. Knowledge took research, entertainment took a commitment, to read is to invest time into a process, you're not watching a half-hour sitcom or reading a tabloid full of gossip, a book might take hours, days, maybe weeks to complete, but in the process you absorb subtleties, nuances and complex emotions that require patience and commitment to absorb and enjoy. This all translates to beauty. The process is just as important as the outcome, the journey is where the rewards come from. In a sense you are "stopping to smell the flowers."

As a consequence of our high tech lifestyles we expect instant returns on anything we do. We no longer require patience and as a consequence, our society and our art suffers. Sure our scientists, now, are light years beyond our ancestors in technology, but that doesn't mean that we as a society are smarter, it means that THEY are smarter. The separation between the "haves" and the "have-nots" grows everyday, not only in monitary wealth, but in spiritual and intellectual wealth.

This, in my opinion, is no accident. The more illiterate we are as a society, the easier we are to control. The less we expect from our art and entertainment, the less we will be given. The less we know about politics, the easier it is for politicians to take advantage of us. It's all relative. We as a people have been in a steady state of de-evolution for centuries. If students today had to take Latin and Astronomy they would lose their minds, most people in society today can only read on a Jr. High School level. Reading frustrates them, therefore they don't learn, don't grow and become easily positioned mannequins for control and exploitation.

I'm not saying you can't watch silly movies or read fluff-pieces in the paper, we all need to turn our brains off in order to stay sane. However, we need to turn them on too. We need to learn patience, to enjoy the journey, the process, not to focus solely on the end, but to realize that the knowledge and reward are attained on the road to the end. We need to stop being so obsessed with youth, your life isn't over after High School, it's just beginning, so live damnit!

As a DJ and musician I see this daily. The most popular songs on the radio and in the clubs are basically nursery rhymes and jumprope songs over the most primitive of arrangement and melody. They are the most basic of ideas and emotions and sure, some of them are catchy, some of them are fun, most of them are crap. The quality control is gone, people don't demand greatness, so they don't get it and in the process they devolve. It effects every aspect of society.

Sexism, racism, ignorance, war, greed... all products of ignorance.

I'm not saying you can't have fun. I'm not saying you can't have your guilty pleasures. I'm not saying there isn't room for everyone. Just make sure there really IS room for everyone and make sure you take in more than just mental junk food. Being intellectual is fun, keeps you from being bored, makes you fun at parties and grows your sense of balance, awareness and humor...word.

"Dig" & "Dig (Deeper)": Groovy Jazz mixes for download:

Here's another couple from the DJ4AM vaults. Volume 1 & 2 of my "Dig" series, highlighting classic funky Jazz and spiritual grooves. V.1 contains tracks that have been pretty famously sampled, V.2 does get a bit deeper.

Enjoy...

Click to download:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VWBZ47T1

Click to download:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PYP80R8F

via thesmokingsection

Rainy Wednesday (PsychedelicSingerSongwriterSoul) mix download

I made these mixes a few years ago to highlight some of my favorite experimental 70's dontempo soul.I mixed them with a lot of ambient noise and record static...

DJ4AM presents "Rainy Wednesday" Volume 1 & 2...enjoy.

Links:

Volume 1:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PE4FGNIG

Volume 2:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q7IMQPRE

Where are all of the female MC's? (free mix download)

I've been hearing a lot of people lately talking about women rappers and if there are any. Even my dad, as we watched Queen Latifah on Good Morning America, asked if there were many female rappers. There ARE many, however, we are dealing with a male dominated industry and many, very talented female rappers are overlooked. I've always loved female MC's because there are so many dope, unrecognized talents out there who rap from a different perspective than most people are used to hearing. I put together this mix a few years ago while I was working at Amoeba SF in the hip-hop section after a customer asked me where all of the female rap cd's were, I was ashamed that I could only come up with a handful of in-print titles. So a tribute, retrospective, compedium was necessary. I present the DJ4AM classic mix "The Ladykillers," because these ladies be killin' these mic's. It's in no way complete, but it's a pretty solid start.

Word.

Click the link to download:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JMFWM5AF

(original cover circa 2004)

goth. shoegayz. rap. cold wave. acid.

...somehow this just feels right... more than right... it feels like everything.
this is how everything feels...
someone (coralcola) made a near perfect summertime mix... and it makes me feel like everything is exactly as it should be in the world.
side a
side b
(found this on the lemur blog)

Slowed & Surrealed (mix download)

I've been a fan of "Screw Music" (the Houston based legacy of slowing down music) for a few years now. I recently found that peeps were slowing down all kinds of music, it really gives it an eerie quality. So I gave it a whirl.

Instead of "Chopped & Screwed" or "Slowed & Throwed," I call my take "Slowed and Surrealed." It's less of a DJ mix and more of a production experiment (slowed, flanged, bassed and reverbed).

DJ4AM - Slowed & Surrealed 1:

The Flamingoes "I Only Have Eyes For You"
Jimi Hendrix "...Electric Ladyland"
Bob Marley "Slave Driver" (Jamaican Version)
Prince "The Beautiful Ones"
The Doors "Indian Summer"
R.A.M.P "Everybody Loves The Sunshine"
Lenny Kravitz "Black Girl"
The Notations "I'm Still Here"
The Tequniques "Love Is Not A Gamble"
The Deftones "Teenager"

This is some real late night hype, downtempo for the end of the world (Le Fin Absolute Du Monde).

Get U Some!

Dear Def Jam recording "artist" Jeremiah...

As a club DJ, music fan & human being... I feel that you owe humanity an apology for your new "R&B" single.

Not only for me, but all of the future children that your "song" will no doubt "inspire" into existance.

(If this becomes the new "birthday song" I will officially retire from society, move to the mountains, hunt squirrels for food and use large leaves as bathroom tissue).



Oh and... "Oh yeah..."

Thanks to DJ Platurn for the heads up...

lame discovery...

it's like they're the same song...

Moonlight Feels Hella Right

The "War and Peace" of 4AM edits...

Edit Videos (back catalog)

New 4AM edit videos

i'm speechless.

pearl merkins. and's that's just the tip of the iceberg...

(fyi, this video is widescreen hd, so i suggest watching it at youtube to get the full effect of the awesome)

dating is hard.

OK so I'm not totally sure how I came across this series but it really needs to be viewed. It's called 'green porno' and stars Isabella Rossellini - yes the same woman who was in Blue Velvet and used to model for Vogue. I'll let her take it from there...