The longer I bobbed my head to semi-familiar beats and gauzy basslines, the farther I fake-danced my way through bro thickets and ho brambles, and the more fragmentary notes I scrawled in my trusty Moleskine, the more obvious it became: there is just no goddamn way to review a DJ set that is even remotely interesting.
No, wait, maybe that's unfair. Hunter Thompson could certainly pull it off. But then it wouldn't be a concert review so much as a lovingly crafted gonzo treatise on the effects of MDMA, with background music. And in any case, I was sober. No, I'd have to rely on a clever angle of some sort. A theme. A motif. A conceit. I stopped paying attention to the music and began jotting down possible titles . . .
What the Hell: Why 85% of Concert-Goers Refuse to Dance
The Brotherhood of the Elephantine Pants
The Glowstick that Time Forgot
A Lovingly Crafted Gonzo Treatise on the Effects of MDMA, with Background Music
. . . until finally I stumbled upon a notion that might actually work. Not only could it make for five minutes of mildly entertaining fluff, it even had something vaguely to do with the show in question! Therefore, with only slight further ado, I present for your reading pleasure:
Everything I Needed to Know about Progressive House I Learned from Sasha and John Digweed
Lesson #1 - Laptops are officially Kosher. Time was, a piece of glowing fruit on stage was a sign of weakness, but evermore it's merely a sign of the times. Sasha runs Ableton Live on his pair of MacBook Pros, and twiddles a custom-built MIDI controller he calls "Maven." Digweed, meanwhile, spins . . . CDs? Ten years ago (much more recently for you Luddites), this would have been outright heresy. Then again, it's not as if these guys have anything to prove in the realm of beatmatching. I do still bemoan the slow death of vinyl, albeit while simultaneously embracing the lightweight, footloose, fancy-free future that is . . . The Google.
Lesson #2 - Content trumps style. Once the DJ learning curve begins to plateau, there's only one major hurdle standing between mediocrity and greatness: taste. No amount of fancypants turntablist gimmickry—be it Grand Wizard Theodore's needle-dropping magic, or scratching with your elbow and nose, Donald Glaude style—will make up for knowing exactly what the audience needs to hear.
Lesson #3 - What the audience needs to hear is rarely what the audience wants to hear. This explains the coolness chasm between the guy you hire to play classic rock at your wedding and, say, DJ Spooky (That Subliminal Kid). I have it on good faith that the latter tends to shun any and all requests for "My Humps."
Lesson #4 - Communicate is a fucking great album. Seriously, do yourself a favor and dig it out of your long-forgotten CD wallet, the one you kept in your car back when trance was still sort of almost cool. Eight years on, and yet somehow it still sounds fresh as ever. Slight caveat: this is coming from someone who used to put Trisco's "Muzak" (disc 1, track 8) on repeat for an entire afternoon.
Lesson #5 - Assuming other electronic acts know at all what's good for them, they will quickly follow in the footsteps of our European brethren (this technique was perfected by Daft Punk), and perform surrounded by massive banks of pulsating LEDs. After all, I doubt very much anyone paid $35 to watch two aging nerds hunched over a bank of faders. Furthermore, what with the modern dearth of glowstick artists (see above), a whole generation of underage drug addicts is in dire need of something to gawk at while the chemicals and tinnitus set in.
**WARNING: Extended Metaphor Dragging On Unnecessarily**
Lesson #6 - Fine! Stupid MS Word paper clip, grumble grumble profanity grumble. If I'm to be completely honest, then, the most important thing I ever learned from Sasha, Digweed, and anyone else who ever released a Global Underground mix, is as follows: "HOLY BATSHITTING CHRIST I MUST OWN THIS TRACK. GET ME TO A RECORD STORE AND UNSHRED MY CREDIT CARDS. STAT." The rest is essentially gravy.
