For those of you tuned in, you may have noticed lots of layout and content changes, but few blog posts. I’ve been spending the creative energies on beats and learning enough tech know-how to manage this site, though I’d greatly appreciate someone who’d like to step up.

Last night madlib & J.Rocc played at Circolo in Rome and it was pure fire:

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[lg_image folder=”Roma140509″ image=”10.jpg” align=”center” width=”140″]
[lg_image folder=”Roma140509″ image=”17.jpg” align=”center” width=”140″]

See the full gallery here.
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Throughout the night we heard a lot of dilla, dilla influences, other bangers, a suprising amount of movie dialogue/stand-up samples, and other stuff. My only critique from last night is this vocal stuff. I had a hard understanding it, and non-english speakers probably weren’t getting much at all. During those sections, J.ROCC & Madlib were the ones having the fun.

There were 2 MADVILLIAN II tracks (one of which they rewound and played again just for kicks), and they had a real funky, slightly disjointed feel to them. There was new Simpson, and Strong arm steady tracks. I’ve got some videos, which I’ll upload once I master this whole .mov -> youtube process.

Other things I picked out (I think): The Sylvers, Galt Macdermot, Raymond Scott (that sample is a diamond among diamonds…), Shuggie Otis, 10cc , Dionne Warwick, and the comedian from the beginning of “Mash”. Name escapes me for the moment. Leave a message.

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During the show, I befriended Ari (excuse the misspelling if there is one), who had the easiest bouncing job in the world– the people there didn’t look to be either threatening nor half of them really banging around (though this didn’t stop me and my lovely companion for the evening). Ari cleared out the back porch after the autographs were done. I had handed off three copies of the mixtape to Egon with Stones Throw, though I had the feeling he hadn’t delivered them like he said he would.

As good fortune and a little blessing have it, I was in the inner concert area when at about 3:45A.M. this morning, I was able to slip in an “excuse me, Mr. Jackson & Mr. Jackson” to the two as they were walking out the door. I asked for thirty seconds and got a few minutes. I explained the project, the target audience, and how I want both their MC & DJ skills and how I had slipped in billions of Zimbabwean currency to the mixtapes as leverage for them to give it a listen. Madlib said something along the lines of

“Well, if it’s bangin’, we’ll be in touch”

And that was almost good enough for me. Of course, we all want a golden ticket, a “hell yeah, love the idea, sign me up”. But I’ll take the silver ticket. Now it’s a matter of J.Rocc and Madlib liking what they hear. And that’s the stretch. I know what I’ve got: a good idea. I’m confident — but trying to avoid hubris here — that my production is quality. I could always use critical feedback from seasoned vets.

Either way, the big question mark in the sky is when I will hear back from them.

Tick, tock.

Update: Egon’s blogpost can be read here

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ May 15, 2009 8:35 pm