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April 09, 2006
DJ Neil Armstrong
Dinosaur was done with their encore by 12:30-ish on Thursday night, so after the feedback faded I scrambled over to Local 506 in hopes of catching the one and only DJ Neil Armstrong. When I arrived, the world-famous hip-hop DJ, turntabilist, and mixtape-maker was totally tearin' it up....in front of about 15 people. As expected, dude was effortlessly going back and forth between original and sample, in his Original and 2 Original style. Edie Brickell and Brand Nubian, Bobby Caldwell and Common, Herb Alpert and Biggie, etc. The few of us who were in the club were way into it, but it's too bad that Neil's highly entertaining history lesson couldn't have been dropped on a full house at the Cradle or Wetlands or even Hell**. Maybe it wasn't such a smart business move to make Neil Armstrong a "pre-party" adjunct to the much more electronic-focused SIGNAL Fest? I dunno, but I for one was psyched to have caught it.
Here's a short snippet from Neil Armstrong's Original mixtape:
DJ Neil Armstrong - "Rakim remix"
Unfortunately, this MP3 ends right before Surface's awesome "Happy" kicks in. That song is the jam!
Oh, and Dinosaur was pretty great too....not nearly as amazing as last summer's show, but whoa....both "The Wagon" and "The Leper" within the span of 20 minutes?!? On the down side, the band did not answer or heed our incessantly repeated calls for "Cats in A Bowl"...
** 4/12 CLARIFICATION: By listing other venues I did not mean to imply that 506 was the wrong place for this event or that they were at all at fault for the fact that it was underattended. I would've loved to have seen a packed house at 506, and I think that would've been very possible under different circumstances. When I wrote the above I had just been thinking about the possibilities of (1) Neil Armstrong opening up a big hip-hop show at the Cradle (say, Ghostface the next night), or (2) Neil Armstrong DJ-ing a dance-club-type venue with a built-in audience of people ready to get down. No 506 slight intended, Glenn!
Posted by Tim at April 9, 2006 11:56 AM