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July 28, 2005
Carolina Theatre R.I.P.
After tonight's 9:00pm showing of March of The Penguins, the Carolina Theatre (Chapel Hill's, not Durham's) will shut its doors for good. I'll leave the interesting 78-year-history and the end-of-an-era analysis to The Chapel Hill News and The Chapel Hill Herald, but I would like to briefly interrupt the decades-back nostalgia trip and take slight exception with the CHN editorial and its claim that the Carolina "hasn't really been the same since it moved in 1993 from its prominent location facing Franklin Street...around the corner into a nook behind that location". That may be true in terms of sheer downtown prominence and pedestrian visibility, but compared to its immediate pre-Gap predecessor, Bruce Stone's post-93 Carolina Theatre has consistently screened far better films and has been a much more enjoyable place to watch movies. At least in my script.
Given that it was the site of a couple of my formative movie-going experiences, I should probably have fonder memories of the Franklin-Street-facing version of the Carolina. I vaguely remember seeing Star Wars there as a really little kid, and I saw the mediocre Lord of The Flies remake there on my first so-called date. But I can't really remember going there at all between 1991 and 1993 - a period of time during which I was constantly going to see movies at The Varsity and the Carolina Union theater. So in my mind, I've been contrasting that mediocre early 90s Carolina Theatre with Bruce Stone's relocated and remodeled Carolina Theatre and all of the great films that it's been showing for the last 12 years. I first went to the new Carolina in fall '93 to see True Romance. My final visit was last night, to see the aforementioned March of The Penguins. An oddly appropriate last film to show there, given the whole stoic take on birth, death, and life-cycles in general.
At any rate, thanks for the last 12 years, Carolina Theatre.
Posted by Tim at 07:56 PM | Comments (2)
July 24, 2005
Maple Avenue Revisited
My accidental side-career in party DJ-ing might never have even reached the idea stage were it not for the fun and crazy years that I spent living at 202-A Maple Avenue in Carrboro. From 1997 through 2000, my housemates and I would periodically open up our humidity-warped doors and invite everyone we knew (and a lot of people that we didn't!) to come inside our home and consume the various and sundry refreshments that we would generously provide for such occasions. As long as we cleared away all the furniture, our sunken living room made a pretty awesome dancefloor that was close to the kitchen and easily visible from both the outside courtyard and the side door/bathroom area. I definitely didn't think of myself as a DJ (except in the college radio sense), but before every party I always tried to make sure that we had a good assortment of dance tunes that would keep things hopping. I took a cue from the festive folks behind the classic mid-to-late-90s throwdowns at 117 Green Street and started making cassette compilations of various songs that I thought would be a lot of fun to dance to: older party-oriented hip-hop, newer more commercial jamz, fun 80s songs, good funk and disco hits...and plenty of Prince. By the summer of '99 I'd bought my first CD burner and I started using it to make mix CDs instead of mix cassettes. This allowed me to occasionally change up songs or mixes on the fly, but I still did 97% of the song-arranging in advance so that I could just let the CDs roll during the actual party. Because, c'mon, all I wanted to do was party and bullshit along with everyone else!
It feels like that whole late 90s era was eons ago, but I still have really fond memories of those house parties, how much fun people seemed to have, even all of the crazy events and interpersonal dramas/interactions that unfolded from time to time. And while I've never been a very good match-maker myself, the 202-A Maple parties actually have a pretty good record in that regard. I now know of at least four married or engaged couples who claim to have either met or had their romance ignited at one of our old house parties. One of these happy couples got married last night, and at the opposite end of Maple Avenue, no less! Several weeks back they asked me if I would DJ a dance party set towards the end of the reception. Of course I said yes, since it would be for a great couple who first got together at one of our Maple Avenue throwdowns!
So last night I followed up Marty Violence's awesome set of vintage funk+soul+disco+groove with my typical Maple Avenue mixture of classic party hip-hop, newer jamz, and funky dance hits from the 70s and 80s. I had a lot of fun and it was a definite honor to come back and DJ on the street that, for lack of a better phrase, "gave me my start" as a party DJ. As things were winding down towards the very end of the night, I put on the long version of "Rapper's Delight" and walked all the way back down Maple Avenue in order to get my car. The soundsystem must've been a lot louder than I initially realized, 'cause it was pretty easy to hear the music from right in front of my old house at the other end of the street. I'm not sure how 202-A's current inhabitants may have felt about the loud late-night party music, but I'm pretty sure the house itself probably felt right at home...
Posted by Tim at 11:49 PM | Comments (3)
July 20, 2005
506 Dance Party
I'm psyched to be teaming up with a couple of longtime area DJs for a dance party at Local 506 this Friday night. Uzi put this joint together and was nice enough to ask me and DJ Marco to join him. Should be a big melting pot of different styles, with each of us probably taking the opportunity to play some things that we don't always play during our more regular parties/gigs. Not sure exactly what that means and/or what to expect? Well, neither do I, but it's gonna be hot so come on out and hit the dancefloor anyway! No cover charge as long as you're already a 506 member.
While I'm promotin', the Hell dance parties are about to go monthly. The first of the new "first Saturday" parties is set for Saturday, August 6th. More details in the next week or two...
Posted by Tim at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2005
A Beat Like This Might Tempt Me
It's been a long time....since I threw a DJ mix up here. One of the few upsides to the nasty summer cold that I caught several days ago is that I've suddenly found myself with a ton of free time at home. So over the last couple of days I got a chance to go back to the lab again and finally finish up a mix that I've been meaning to work out for several months now. Listen to it:
What is this MP3, you ask before you download? Well, I took the acappella from Eric B. & Rakim's classic "I Know You Got Soul" and mixed it on top of Cool and Dre's amazingly soulful beat for "Hate It Or Love It" by The Game & 50 Cent. And then I threw in a few of the relevant 50 vocals here and there to spice things up. Admittedly, the whole idea for this mix seems a little obvious, given that "Hate It Or Love It" has an actual Rakim reference in the intro and a hot beat flavored with the very soul that (to paraphrase his own lyric) we know Rakim has. But obvious idea or not, I have yet to hear any other example of these two songs being mixed together. So I'm throwing my version out into the world. Let me know what you think. Oh, and one more thing:
As you hear it, pump up the volume!
Posted by Tim at 04:12 PM | Comments (3)
July 13, 2005
Band That Could Be God
And this year's Indie-Rock Reunion "Best in Show" Award goes to...
...Dinosaur Jr. By a mile. And quite a few decibels.
I was a bit too young to go to shows when Dinosaur's Bug tour stopped at The Brewery in 1988, but I am having a really hard time imagining how that particular show could've been that much better than Sunday night's Cradle performance, save for its more authentic Reagan-era post-hardcore context or maybe the sort of revelatory in-the-moment realness that isn't quite as mindblowing once a band's records have been canonized and memorized.
In any case, Dino 2005 was truly awesome. It's been a long time since I geeked out about a show enough to lookup the setlist online afterwards. Incidentally, that version of the setlist is slightly incomplete since it's based on the pre-written band setlist. Folks who stuck around just a little longer were rewarded with a (seemingly unplanned) third encore: an intense version of that amazing noise-dirge "Tarpit". Quite the sludgefeast!
Posted by Tim at 10:30 PM | Comments (2)
July 06, 2005
Watermelon, Sponsored By Mercedes
Posted by Tim at 12:34 AM | Comments (2)
July 03, 2005
That's What's Up
Ibiblio director Paul Jones recently discovered that his former student employee Marisa Brickman is the main subject of a new BusinessWeek article about "lifestyle marketing" and hipster-focused "product seeding". When she lived in Chapel Hill, Marisa DJ'ed at WXYC and started up the zine 'Sup. Now Brickman is the director of event marketing and public relations for Cornerstone Promotion, the company that publishes the overly consumption-focused but really well-designed and generally on-point music magazine The Fader.
Someone with a black-and-white worldview that is more purist than mine could probably go on a tirade about Cornerstone's brand of cleverly insidious "lifestyle marketing" or whatever. Personally, I'm not going to go there since I regularly enjoy flipping through The Fader, skipping over most of those ads in favor of the lengthy photo spreads, and reading up on all of the hip new artists that I may or may not actually end up liking. Plus, I entered a Fader contest a few months ago and wound up winning a copy of the new Public Enemy "London Invasion" DVD autographed by none other than Chuck D himself. If Marisa and her coworkers want to regularly send me free stuff like that, they can "product seed" me all day long!
Anyway, the most surprising thing that I learned from the article was not that the ever-ambitious Brickman is now in charge of event marketing for Cornerstone Promotion, but rather that ex-Bitch Magnet guitarist, avid metal fan, and all-around-nice-guy Jon Fine is now writing for BusinessWeek online! Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Man cannot live on music alone...
Posted by Tim at 02:51 PM | Comments (1)