The unpredictable life of Flosstradamus

Spend a night with the young DJ duo whose name will soon be on everyone's lips-and everyone's playlists. By John Dugan

​Photos by Marzena Abrahamik

Chicago DJ duo Flosstradamus (Josh Young/J2K and Curt Cameruci/Autobot) has only been around since Fall of 2005, but the stars (or perhaps the beats) have aligned to make 2007 the group’s national breakout year. With three turntables and the skills to blend a club tempo playlist that treats everything from indie to crunk as fair game, Floss has gone from creating chaos at a non-descript Boystown bar to banging the hippest parties nationwide. Flosstradamus is at the center of the city’s emergent underground dance-party scene, where the covers are low; the beats are fast; and the rappers, DJs and partiers are particularly chummy. We tagged along for a night out with Floss and entourage when the boys made their triumphant return to a monthly residency in Wicker Park. We were not, at any point, disappointed.

7pm, St. Ben’s 
We knock on the door at Flosstradamus HQ, a compact single-family home in St. Ben’s. Inside, J2K sits around with New York–based Fader editor and DJ Nick (Catchdubs) Barat trading music files from laptops while MTV Jams screens a Swizz Beatz video. The conversation revolves around music and fashion. “Whoa, he’s still got ski goggles; he’s still keeping it alive,” says J2K about Swizz’s “uncle” style.

7:30pm, Floss studios (upstairs)
A narrow wood-paneled stairway leads upstairs to Autobot’s bedroom, which is filled with piles of clothes and a neatly arranged ball-cap collection. A remix session is in progress, and Autobot shows us how he puts the Floss touch on a familiar tune, the Who’s anthem “Baba O’Riley”: He throws a steady bass drum, hand claps and some tambourine underneath, then winds it up to a bumpin’ tempo. He wants to use the mutated track as an intro to tonight’s set, the duo’s monthly residency at Subterranean. He spends the next ten minutes tinkering while J2K hunts for his laptop’s power cord. We chat about Floss and where the duo is headed. Indisputably, the star-making moment for the local DJ outfit is right now. The group built its name at loft parties, a monthly session at the Town Hall Pub in Boystown called Get Outta the Hood and eventually regular slots at forward-thinking clubs like Sonotheque.

In March, Floss turned up the volume at numerous gigs at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. “We seriously made a noise,” Autobot says. An URB cover story and a DJ mix they crafted for Vice Records further amped up the Floss buzz well beyond Chicago.

The duo has largely set aside remixing and producing to hit the road. “We’re striking while the iron is hot and getting our tour on,” Autobot says. The boys recently went to Europe, supporting Craze and A-Trak, though taking an opening slot was “weird” for a duo accustomed to bringing down the house with its three-turntable sets. “We had to learn a bit. It was kind of humbling,” Autobot says. A few minutes later, with turntables packed in the trunk, the group heads for Wicker Park.

9pm, Subterranean, upstairs
J2K’s sister Melissa arrives. Together, they make up the rap duo Kid Sister: quick rhymes with a South Side drawl from the lady, who J2K eggs on. Melissa, radiating star quality, tells us she’s recording one-offs to build hype for her debut album, due this summer. She recently sang on a U.K. house track “about beepers” and joined Floss at the Coachella festival in late April.

9:30pm, backstage
Clubbers start to show up as Autobot spins a warm-up detour into soul and reggae before he turns over the tables to Catchdubs. Kid Sister talks about Tarantino’s flick Grindhouseand graphic designer Dust La Rock. It’s decided that J2K’s tee “is just too crazy” so he turns it inside out, while Melissa’s put-together ensemble (neutrals, jewelry) is a winner. “I’m tired of this hipster stuff, I wanna look like a woman,” she says.

J2K also explains why Floss aren’t the mash-up artists they’re often made out to be: He says  they simply create traditional hip-hop “blends” that “involve putting two tracks on top of each other,” and they usually work live.  Some of those blends include Floss-created samples they dial up with additional beats and rhythms before dropping them into their sets. Some of the tunes they’ve reworked like this include the Beatles’ “Twist & Shout” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

11:15pm
The band area is filling. Chicago rappers the Cool Kids take the stage—or a slice of it, as there’s a growing entourage around the decks.

12:15am, onstage
Just as Autobot is about to step up to the mixer, he’s accosted by a lady who sounds like a feisty ex. He evades her, hits the turntables and works in OutKast’s “B.O.B.” and Green Velvet’s “Shake and Pop” as spazzy local MC Hollywood Holt commands the crowd to “juke,” then get their “hands up.” Melissa tells the crowd it’s her “first sober show” as she takes the microphone and bangs out a set of her animated odes to fabulous living (including “Pro Nails” and “Telephone”) with J2K chiming in.

12:45am, upstairs
After dramatic dead air, Floss comes on, with Autobot’s “Baba” intro working. The stage is crazy, the joint is sticky and a few tracks into the set, folks are asked to make some space just before the duo launches into an updated version of hip-hop staple “Apache,” complete with a blistering synth bass line. A kid in a fedora and white tie boogies a few feet from a girl at the edge of the stage in a classy charcoal frock. Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” comes on at 1am, as bits of Missy Elliott’s “Pass That Dutch” weave in and out.

1:20am
​Floss crams in more crowd-pleasers, including versions of “This Is Why I’m Hot” and the group’s ravey “Act a Fool” remix. Peter Björn and John’s “Young Folks” closes out the set as the room lights turn on and security kicks everyone out. The guys have gigs in Orlando the next night, Chicago on Friday, Atlanta on Sunday and New York on Wednesday. They’re running ragged and seem eager for June to come around, so they can hunker down, do remixes and start working on something to call their own, something that lasts longer than a damn good party.

Duran Duran at Chicago Theatre | Live review

Posted in Audio File blog at TIme Out Chicago by John Dugan on Oct 22, 2011 at 11:08am

​Photo by Matthew Reeves

Birmingham, England was not a glamorous place in the 1980s. The decline of industry in the once prosperous city had led to unemployment, unrest and bad vibes. The city has given us the mighty Move, Black Sabbath, and UB40, but few associate it with yacht-racing and half-naked jungle chase scenes. Somehow, Duran Duran with its fantasies of louche living in exotic locales and marriage of funk, New Wave and indulgence emerged from that haze of decline and neglect, to take the role left by art rock sophisticates Roxy Music and disco hitmakers Chic. It even broke through to America via MTV. So now, with a not so bright future and present before the regular folk of the modern world, is it any wonder that the glam pop outfit is once again on the rise? Of course, there is a successful Mark Ronson-produced All You Need is Now album backed by the almost all-original line-up (guitarist Andy Taylor returned to, then left the fold a few years ago) giving the oft-critically dismissed band a dose of cred that few '80s acts can muster. Also, I tend to think there is a darkness that lurks in the band's pop music that has helped it stand up in the long haul. That darkness isn't imagined, frontman Simon Le Bon is an artist intellectual that has a bitter streak from years of not being taken seriously. A few years ago, the band scrapped a more cimmerian effort influenced by contemporary events called Reportage that would have thrown fans for a loop.

So what we got last night at the Chicago Theatre was the cathartic, charismatic and only a little nostalgic Duran Duran, in a set full of plastic, but fantastic New Wave pop tunes and atmospheric modern rockers executed with the kind of confidence and panache that comes from hard work or making deals with the devil. With Le Bon looking probably better than he ever has (more tan and fit than the pale and soft Le Bon of the early '80s) and John Taylor looking like an Anime avatar come to life (long limbs and famous cheekbones that made him a heartthrob for your sister), the Durans looked the part, sporting slick and shiny clothing that gave them each a lounge lizard vibe. The band's deep reservoir of cool allowed it some wiggle room—John Taylor hyped the live twitter stream on screen and admitted his own twitter addiction. 

With touring guitarist and co-writer Dom Brown, a glamazon back-up singer named Anna and a red-haired percussionist, Le Bon, two Taylors and Nick Rhodes burned through a well-balanced set that never leaned too hard on ancient history. Incorporating fresher material like "All You Need is Now" and "Blame the Machines" with ingrained hits "The Reflex" and "Is There Something I Should Know?" and neglected fan favorites such as "Careless Memory," the band made a case for its mid-period and recent output. Admittedly, I'm not spinning any '90s Duran Duran discs at home, but last night I wondered if I shouldn't give them another try. The likes of "Ordinary World" were pulled off with class, Le Bon's voice sounding more than up to the task and Brown's guitar simmering on the epic solo. Outside of perhaps "Leave a Light On" which features Le Bon on rhythm guitar, there wasn't much slack in the set. The newer number like "Girl Panic!" seemed to fit right in, buoyed by a solid rhythm section of Taylors that's never gotten its due from the music establishment.

As Mondrian-inspired videos streamed behind the outfit, it closed out the regular set with an extended "Notorious," "Hungry Like the Wolf" and "Reach up for the Sunrise." Returning for "Wild Boys" and a bit of Frankie's "Relax" before a "Rio." 

It was fashionable at one time to cite Duran Duran as modern music's lightweights, but we hadn't experienced the likes of the Black Eyed Peas at that point. If Duran Duran has had a weakness over the years, it has been that it was all too ready to believe that it was innocuous or tried to hard to be dangerous. What we learned last night—amid Le Bon's between song indictment of Bush/Blair as "war criminals"—is that Duran Duran is at its best when it combines that effortless pleasure and a taste for the risqué, teasing out our decadence and playing up the complications of overindulgence. 

Duran Duran set list, via setlist.fm
Before the Rain  Planet Earth  A View to a Kill  All You Need Is Now  Blame the Machines  Come Undone  Safe  The Reflex  The Man Who Stole A Leopard  Girl Panic!  Is There Something I Should Know?  Tiger Tiger  Careless Memories  Leave A Light On  Ordinary World  Notorious  Hungry Like the Wolf  (Reach Up for the) Sunrise  Encore: Wild Boys/Relax (Don't Do It)  Rio 

Os Mutantes | Interview

For the many fans who fell in love with Brazil’s influential psychedelic group Os Mutantes during the three decades since they stopped playing together, it’s a dream come true that this cult favorite is having a reunion tour. And it’s a bit of a freak-out because they’re coming to Chicago for the first time to play at next week’s Pitchfork Festival. 

But what seals the deal is the fact that Os Mutantes (pronounced “ohs moo-TAN-chees”; it means “The Mutants” in Portuguese) founder Sérgio Dias will rock the giant, gold-plated, custom-made guitar—with distortion and delay effects built in—that his elder brother Cláudio handcrafted in the late ’60s. (Cláudio, though never in the band as a musician, engineered many of Os Mutantes’ custom instruments and effects.) “We’re gonna blow your head off! Get ready, man,” Dias laughs.

Once universally praised for its Technicolor pop-art albums—which combined literary references like Don Quixote with samba and psych-rock—the group had a May show at London’s Barbican that brought brothers Sérgio Dias and Arnaldo Baptista together onstage for the first time in 33 years.

Like the young Beatles tuning into Radio Luxembourg, the teenage brothers first heard rock via shortwave radio in1960s Brazil and formed a band with Arnaldo’s girlfriend, singer Rita Lee. The trio went on to become the backbone of the kooky, intellectual and artistic movement Tropicália, which rebelled against Brazil’s cultural and political stagnation. Mutantes made its way to Paris, where the band cut an English-language album. But tension between the brothers, heavy acid use, and Arnaldo and Rita’s breakup led to reshuffling in 1972, a move toward prog-rock in 1974 and the band’s eventual demise in 1978. Lee went on to Brazilian mainstream stardom and Mutantes faded into obscurity—Dias played jazz and new age, and Arnaldo spent some time in a mental-health facility.

But the band’s inimitable sound developed a cult following: Kurt Cobain invited the group to tour with Nirvana (even though it hadn’t existed for 15 years), members of Fugazi collected paintings by former Mutantes members, and Beck named his 1998 Mutationsalbum in their honor. Mutantes’ earlier albums became available on CD in the late ’90s—David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label issued a compilation of early material, and this year the group’s catalog is being reissued worldwide by Universal.

In one sense, the Mutantes comeback is right on time. “God, can you imagine if we surfaced in the ’80s?” asks Dias, who’s stayed hip producing underground acts in his São Paulo studio. “This would be a total disaster. It didn’t have anything to do with us. Now, I think the musical scene is more toward what we did and what we do. I think it was a very healthy way to come back and come alive again.”

It’s unclear who sowed the seeds of the reunion, but Dias’s account points to an ambitious festival curator in England. “I started to receive mail saying that we were going to play in London, and then suddenly we started to talk about it because we didn’t know anything about it,” he says. “It was really amazing. Suddenly I was talking to Dinho, the drummer, and he said, ‘If you want to, we can try. I can try to play.’ I never heard him say anything like that before.” Lee won’t be joining the band, citing family commitments. “She will always be a Mutante—she is more than welcome to come over,” Dias says. Brazilian pop singer Zélia Duncan will sing Lee’s parts on the U.S. tour.

The brothers and drummer Dinho (who joined the group in 1970) will play as part of a ten-piece band to reproduce the multiple layers of Mutantes’ recordings. “There’s a lot of things to be covered,” Dias says. “We don’t want to use a damn computer and play with a click. Everything is played. There’s flutes, there’s recorders.”

Mutantes will also mix in some English-language versions of songs to court the American audience. In addition to Pitchfork, they’ll play venues such as the Fillmore in San Francisco, where Dias saw psych blues band Ten Years After at age 17. “It’s outrageous—we’ve never been in the States and suddenly I’m going to be playing at the Fillmore,” he says. “It’s something that can make someone very humble and humbly proud of the right decisions that we took when we were at such an early age.”

Os Mutantes headlines the Pitchfork Music Festival Sunday 30.

Brazil's Os Mutantes, the psychedelic pop group that inspired Nirvana, Fugazi and Beck, plays its first Chicago gig at Pitchfork. By John Dugan Photograph by Nino Andrés

Pete Townshend | Interview

The Who guitarist chats about his new memoir and touring Quadrophenia.
​By John Dugan Published: November 29, 2012 in Time Out Chicago.

Pete Townshend may have finally answered the question posed by his iconic band, “Who are you?,” in Who I Am, his recent autobiography. In the brutally honest tome, Townshend takes us from his rough-around-the-edges upbringing all the way through the rise of the loudest rock band ever, interspersed with dramatic rock-star ups-and-downs—especially downs, namely drugs and infidelity. It’s cut with a dry humor, but Townshend’s memoir is serious and thoughtful.

We reached the Who guitarist-songwriter on the road as he and Roger Daltrey tour their 1973 rock opera, Quadrophenia. Chatty, funny and deadly honest, the 67-year-old rocker seemed to relish taking the long view of his life and work.

You write about schoolyard gangs in your book, and you’re back in a band again. Do you find comfort there?
With the Who, I feel comfortable. I think you’re right, I feel this is an extension of the gang. I think people love it when at the end of a show, Roger and I, who have allegedly hated each other all of our lives, hug. It’s ‘Ahhh, look, they’ve overcome their obstacles.’ It’s like fucking On Golden Pond or something. We take great stock in the fact that we’ve been working together such a long time and there’s so much that can be left unsaid that goes back to the neighborhood. The fact that the Who were a gang at one point did give me a sense of continuum. After Chinese Eyes, I did try to create a gang—I hired a bunch of people and tried to create a band. It felt as futile as when Bowie did the Tin Machine thing, it really wasn’t a band at all.

You also write about having a spiritual enlightenment at a Holiday Inn in Rolling Meadows.
Yeah, it was one of those kind of sublime moments. The only reason I know it was Rolling Meadows was I wrote about it on a piece of Holiday Inn notepaper. There it was with a little drawing of the nation’s innkeeper.

Rolling Stone ran a cover story of yours titled “In Love with Meher Baba.” Where are you now in terms of seeking spiritual satisfaction?
In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I’d have to suspend a degree of disbelief. In a sense, the god we trust politically is a slightly different god than the one we bring into the fray when we enter a rock concert. One of the things I can say with absolute conviction is that I worship that god. I think that when a crowd is at a really great music event and they start to lose themselves, they find themselves in a crowd and because it is physical and mental and looking for something uplifting and life enhancing…. I think when people gather together in large numbers to do that, there’s a sense of congregation, and I’m happy to be a part of that.

What have you got in store for us with the Quadrophenia tour?
Well, I haven’t had a lot to do with it. I was worrying Roger for the last five years to try to bring Quadrophenia back out again, and he has insisted that he has complete control of it. So I first saw his video presentation a couple of few weeks ago when we were rehearsing it. It’s a story about life in the U.K. and our neighborhood, rather than the story ofQuadrophenia—it’s almost like a biopic in some ways. It’s Roger and I performingQuadrophenia in a very pure way. At the end, we play some old hits and say good-bye and crowds seem to like it. We’re getting reasonably good reviews but it’s early days yet. I can’t see what’s on the screens behind me, but I get a feeling from the crowd that it’s working.

The Who plays Allstate Arena Thursday 29 and Friday 30. Who I Am is out now.

David Johansen of the New York Dolls | Interview

David Johansen of the New York Dolls chats about the band’s comeback glam wonder Dancing Backwards in High Heels. Yes, and Buster Poindexter.

By John Dugan Published: March 9, 2011

Punk precursors alongside the Stooges, New York Dolls are perhaps the most influential band people have never really heard. Both the Sex Pistols and KISS built on the Dolls’ gritty glitter and street-gang sleaze. But more shocking than their history is their future—even with just two original members remaining. The new Dolls album, Dancing Backward in High Heels, is glam-rock perfection, swirling a syrup of R&B, doo-wop and punk in a tongue-in-cheek milkshake. We spoke with lead singer David Johansen about the sucker punch of a comeback.

The Dolls’ second act has lasted longer than the first. How did that happen? 
The first time around if certain things had been different we probably would’ve not broken up. [Guitarist] Syl [Sylvain] and I still wanted to play. I think that was a lot of impetuousness of youth. Maybe we needed somebody watching us who could say, “Go to your mutual corners and come back in a month and we’ll talk about it.” As opposed to, “Well, fuck you. Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you.”

Why did you decide to record this album in England? 
It’s nice to go some place different to make a record. But of course I’m saying that in retrospect, because there’s this company in England that had been pursuing us to make a record in their studio so they could put it out in the U.K. So, that was the most… let me think of a good word… fiduciary [Laughs] responsible way to make the record.

I hear a lot of ’50s pop music in the new record. 
Oh, yeah, there’s so many little quotes in there. Which has always been like a Dolls kind of trademark. Some of them I don’t want to say because I don’t want to wind up in plagiarism prison.

Do you find it difficult to write? 
I don’t know that I’d write a song unless it was at gunpoint. It comes time to make a record and we write a bunch of songs. Otherwise, if left to my own devices, I’ll write two songs a year.

After the Dolls broke up, you scored a huge hit as Buster Poindexter. Do you feel you have to explain some of your pop-culture past sometimes? 
I had a lot of fun doing the Buster Poindexter thing. It started in this little bar in my neighborhood. I was going to do on Mondays, like, a little cabaret of jump blues and stuff like that, and it just mushroomed. I started doing weekends and I could walk to work and I was 
making a nice living.

Are you still associated with that character? 
It’s got that “Hot Hot Hot” curse. People go “Oh, Buster Poindexter. ‘Hot Hot Hot.’ ” I think Buster Poindexter, I think [1940s bandleader] Jimmy Liggins and songs of that sort. It’s just selective memory in my case.

The Dolls were famous for looking fabulous onstage and causing a reaction. Do you still try to re-create that or is that a thing of the past? 
Well, I’ve always been chic like a motherfucker, what can I tell you? [Laughs]

Dancing Backward in High Heels 

is out this week on 429 Records.

Eleven David Lee Roths

Not online anymore, published by the Onion AV Club in 2012. This is rough, unedited text.

Why loving Diamond Dave in Van Halen is not a crime.

Like so many things about the ‘80s, we didn’t know what we had until it was long gone. Van Halen’s classic lineup held court in American rock arenas from 1978 and reached artistic peak with 1984, an album which blew up the decade’s artificial and indulgent charms to totemic scale. In “Jump,” it expressed a footloose ife-loving exuberance with more bleached coiff swagger than most rockers muster in an entire career. Once at the top of the charts, frontman David Lee Roth dabbled in a cabaret-ready solo act and the rock circus tent collapsed under the weight of the massive egos it supported—regular joe rocker Sammy Hagar was called in to keep the machine rolling.

It was once fashionable to dismiss DLR as a buffoon—I once giggled dismissively when I found my unknown band playing a venue on the same Portland street as DLR’s in 1994—big hair wound around the block. But for my money, one of America’s greatest rock bands was never anything special once DLR had jettisoned. Certainly the most interesting character to emerge from the Sunset Strip scene, DLR can be seen as rock’s quintessential  loudmouth asshole by some (http://www.avclub.com/articles/david-lee-roths-crazy-from-the-heat,37187/). You can’t find an interview with the man that’s not exploding with vitality, humor and almost superhuman ego. But in this day and age, DLR is a welcome change for us from the faux humility of self-important indie rockers. Love him or loathe him, David Lee Roth contains multitudes. Here are a few.

1. The showman. DLR has long seen himself as “a song and dance man,” and he has never settled for simply fulfilling the requirements of the rock aesthetic. Like KISS, the unbridled excess in his art/music is no accident, but the result of studying the greats in ‘60s rock (witness VH’s great Kinks and Roy Orbison covers), Broadway musicals, the American songbook even vaudeville. Roth is fond of telling tales of the likes of Yip Harburg, a millionaire industrialist who lost it all in the Depression only to find a rebirth as an American songwriter—that’s what inspires him. No wonder, Roth’s roots in American pop culture run deep. His uncle Manny ran Café Wha? where everyone from Lenny Bruce to Bob Dylan got their start and Roth caught the showbiz bug.

2. The dancer. Roth takes dancing (and other types of movement, such as martial arts) seriously. Sure, MJ gets all the credit for making the moonwalk a part of the pop R&B musician’s toolbox and the Madonna and a rash of 80s artists brought in choreography via their videos, but Roth—like David Bowie with his mime training—brought art elements to the rock stage without losing the audience and literally kicked our expectations to the ceiling. He cites tapdance legends the Nicholas Brothers as a prime influence—and he hasn’t been shy about copying their magnetic moves over. He’s unabashedly and unashamedly a fan of the art form—check out those Peter Allen dance pants in the “Tattoo” video.

3. The film director. DLR (with Van Halen advisor and manager Peter Angelus) was the visionary behind VH’s visuals, its videos, unique image. When he went solo, his videos (albeit for novelty standards like “Just a Gigolo” and “California Girls”) had a seismic influence on MTV and a kind of broad appeal that cemented Roth as a pop music figure. Those two videos work almost like silent films—wherein the broad, easy-to-read action rolls along like a Charlie Chaplin movie. “Gigolo” even mocks the band performance video format via pots of burning flames and leather get-ups—both were standard at the time.  His weren’t the only videos at the time to use a prelude and postscript around the song but easily among the most popular.  Every time Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj release a “short film,” you can blame Diamond Dave.

4. The raconteur. Roth goes off the rails in every interview, but interestingly so—he may weave equal parts bullshit and brilliance in his stream of consciousness, but DLR’s outlook and zest for life usually operates with the tap open fully. At this point, we’ve all read hundreds of rock interviews—few interviewees are as far ahead of their interviewers as Roth.

5. The author. Crazy from the Heat (1997) is simply one of the most beloved, most over the top unfiltered rock bios ever. It begins with Diamond Dave waking up after a tryst with a dancer only to find he and his one-night-stand are covered in the legal tender she earned the night before. It’s stream-of-Dave for hundreds of pages.  In one anecdote, he paddles a groupie with a hairbrush at her request. Is this book entirely factual? Dunno. Does Roth’s ever present need to impress make him the  only star in his movie? You bet.

6. The big mouth. DLR’s mid-song ad libs (“Hot for Teacher,” “Panama”) don’t break the tunes, they make the tunes. And on stage Roth, sensing that the Clash were taking themselves a bit seriously, mocked Strummer and Co. from stage at the 1983 US Fest: "I wanna take this time to say that this is real whiskey here … the only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel's bottles is the Clash, baby!". Van Halen was paid a cool 1.5 million for the gig. While the Clash’s music has certainly stood up, which band was it that soon fired their genius guitarist and let their manager in the band?

7. LA rock’s class clown. Van Halen in the Roth years, followed no leader and threw spitball at the paragons of good taste. Most of the LA hair metal blather that followed is woefully unsophisticated in comparison to the tongue-in-cheek of a Van Halen album. Clumsy double entendres, sleazy outfits, over-the-top testosterone were never handled as cleverly as they were in VH’s, or DLR’s hands.

8. The EMT. Once his career had cooled off, Roth showed the kind of chutzpah that few associate with pro rockers. He updated his certificates and licenses and got to work. Licensed as an EMT in the state of New York, Roth took hundreds of calls as a paramedic in New York City around 2004. 

9. The adventurer. David Lee Roth, a student of Portuguese who claims to be fluent in Spanish as well, tells us that he’s canoed around the island of Moorea, scaled Himalayan peaks, fallen ill in the Amazon, trekked into Papua New Guinea and kayaked around Manhattan. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Roth may have enjoyed every flavor of rock star excess in production, but his wanderlust didn’t fade.

10. The Midwestern boy made good. Indiana-born Roth (who’s thespian mother was from Chicago) says he grew up “chasing muskrats” in Newcastle, IN. Raised in a Jewish household, he claims got into rock in part to overcome anti-Semitic stereotypes.

11. The rocker. Because Roth’s vision wasn’t exclusive to the Sunset Strip, VH soaked up everything from surf and biker gang culture to Latino music to the stoner scene at Ridgemont High (which counts the Van Halens alumni). From its debut album on up to 1984, it made bold, unsubtle records of lasting influence. In a commercial and artistic sense America’s answer to Led Zeppelin, Van Halen relied less on the blues and folk traditions, but expanded the production dynamics, guitar wizardry and built on the sexual bravado blazed by the Brit rockers. All would have been for naught without Roth’s vocal range and bigger-than-life—the leg kicks were a bonus. That this combination dominated radio for years and inspired a thousand dumb shitty rock bands the world over isn’t his fault. 

Rory Phillips | Interview

One of dance-punk’s key insurgents reveals what he learned from John Peel. By John Dugan Published: January 17, 2013

A decade ago, dance punk was preparing to storm the gates of big clubs and dance charts. In London, on the street level, the revolution was stoked by a wide-ranging, punk-spirited club night called Trash run by Erol Alkan and Rory Phillips. With Phillips headed to Berlin’s Stardust party, it seemed natural to ask him about the era and what he’s gotten into since.

What made Trash different?
It was a special time, fueled by youth and passion—just a collective playing records they loved but didn’t hear in the clubs elsewhere, to a community that got it.

It was a Monday night success story, correct?
I had a day job for the first few years, so I felt the pain of everyone that had to then go to work till Friday. Totally worth it.

We met in Miami at the Winter Music Conference. Do you still go every year?
There was a very exciting time out there back around 2003–4, with bands like LCD Soundsystem playing alongside the new breed of DJs, but we’ve gone back to the bad old days of the superstar DJ. That said, I have started going over the last few years as there’s always a lot of fun to be had. The Fixed party is fantastic every year. You just have to look beyond the headliners and stay on the outside.

Is there anything like Trash in London now?
I’m a resident at Durrr, which was Trash’s successor on Monday nights until our venue closed down. Now we just do big, irregular parties around London as well as my bimonthly disco party, Say Yes. Residents are a dying breed as weekly and even monthly clubs are practically nonexistent now.

You were on the forefront of the dance punk scene. What’s your current passion in terms of DJ sets?
There’s a lot of disco and a lot of music informed by disco, like house, postpunk and the like. It’s different from night to night, I play a wide range of stuff, really. I like to join the dots.

Is it tough to make things like krautrock work in the clubs?
We’ve done a fair bit of that at our Say Yes parties; krautrock is so rhythm-based that it makes sense. I’ve seen Can records destroy a dance floor.

You’re releasing a series of 12" records (Mixed Fortunes). Do you still believe in vinyl as the medium of the DJ?
I don’t deejay with vinyl anymore outside of London, as I grew tired of lugging huge boxes around only to find the club’s turntables were neglected or badly placed. But the cliché is true: Nothing sounds like it at home or in the club. Not so much the warmth, more the thump. I’d say it’s more the medium of the music lover than the DJ.

I know you love John Peel. What about his approach do you keep in mind when deejaying?
If it works it doesn’t matter if it’s at the same tempo. Oh, and when playing vinyl always remember to play songs at the right speed.

Django Django and Night Moves at the Metro | Photos and review

​Posted in Time Out's Audio File blog by John Dugan on Mar 18, 2013 at 11:03am

To mitigate any jealousy I might feel about colleagues and friends hitting Austin to gorge on potential buzz bands, aging Top 40 acts shoring up their cred, cold Lone Stars and tacos from trucks, I usually try to hit one of the "SXSW tours" coming through town in March. U.K. band Django Django is not an unproven act, rather one championed by NME since 2009. It had a very big 2012 with a Mercury Prize–nominated album. But this year, "Default," a 2011 single from the band's debut, has wormed its way onto FM radio in Chicago, a format which might be discounted in this day and age, but usually means commercial viability—thus 2013 is Django's year in Chicago. And yet, the band is far from overexposed in the States, and a SXSW trip was clearly arranged to change that.

At Django Django's way-sold-out early show at the Metro (it played Austin before and after Chicago, which just goes to show how nutty SXSW has become), the band proved it is as unique as it is genius in translating its abstract, distant, '80s-derived sound into something with the freshness of the next wave, not new wave rehashed.

But first, Night Moves, a Minneapolis band with a debut album on Domino Records, took the stage. The band's Colored Emotions is one of my favorite albums of 2013 so far. It recalls the psychedelic side of T. Rex and Syd Barrett, but embeds it in a light funk feel and adds echoplexy guitar jams. Live, it lives up to the promise of the album. Singer John Pelant (who told us he works at a bakery) achieves an effortless organic dynamic on the microphone, he voice rising and falling and following notes in ways that recall the spine-tingling Jeff Buckley. At the same time, the band (playing as a quartet tonight with two guitars) plays a bit rough around the edges; some endings seemed a bit untied. Guest drummer Jared Isabella, however, has the chops of a pro, producing tight and subtly funky beats at mid-tempo or employing mallets to keep the trip soft and cushy. The only real complaint one could have was the shortness and promptness of the set, which was over and done by 9:30.

While Night Moves might have ticked off my classic-rock-vibe boxes, Django Django satisfies my postpunk hunger, even as its contemporary touches (a video wall with noir images, matching shirts) are meant to be of the current moment.

The band might look like a rock band with bass, guitar, banks of analog synths (one of which, a Roland, would fail during "Skies Over Cairo" and be replaced during the set), but it operates much more like a programmed music application like Ableton Live where rhythm and atmosphere create the backbone of the music. Drummer and producer David Maclean (cousin of Beta Band's John Maclean) is obscured by toms and pads, which he plays almost incessantly in engaging, rolling patterns. Singer Vinny Neff and bassist Jimmy Dixon's cryptic, layered vocals are the focus in their tunes—which have a kind of impersonal, almost militaristic delivery over Maclean's precision machinations. 

While the songs might be stripped of emotional histrionics, the band members humanized the experience between songs. Neff took the time to explain that he'd visited Wrigleyville before, and lo and behold, he's actually an Irishman from Derry, not Scottish—a big plus in drunken St. Patrick's weekend Chicago. While not sounding much like them, the band of former Edinburgh art school kids has the mannerisms and haircuts of another trailblazing Scottish indie act, Franz Ferdinand, which was oddly comforting.

The band's recognizable, modern sound shows room for some rock detours. "Firewater" has a westernish bassline and it picks up elements of early rock & roll, echo-drenched Link Wray guitars on "Life's A Beach" and spooky updates on Bo Diddley jams (which the band completes with woodblocks and extra tom-tom thumping).

With only one album to draw on, it was over in a flash of a strobe, but Django Django held up. And there are few bands out there with such an unusual, almost progressive, sound that can also compete on the big-money airwaves. The band's fervent following is clear evidence that slightly challenging music has a wider audience. And there are fewer bands presenting the slightly weird with this kind of warmth.

A Certain Ratio: Early; and Various Artists: In the Beginning There Was Rhythm

VARIOUS ARTISTS

In the Beginning There Was Rhythm
Soul Jazz Records

A Certain Ratio
Early
Soul Jazz Records

When 1977 slash-and-burn punk rock flamed out, a new sound emerged from England's industrial corridor. In the late Seventies, with the economy in deep recession, England's postpunk youth thought better than to sport "Disco Sucks" T-shirts and crank up the Zeppelin. Rather, it was American R&B, funk, reggae, and, yes, the dreaded sounds of Studio 54 that kept them boogying their blues away in the nightclubs. Groups like Gang of Four, the Human League, and the Pop Group took elements from this dance music that saw them through the bleak times, and treated the songs with an attitude that was part art school and part street party.

Soul Jazz Records' new compilation In the Beginning There Was Rhythm catches British postpunk funkers (Gang of Four), industrial-noise pioneers (Throbbing Gristle), and experimenters (This Heat) in their fruitful early days. These groups either blasted the system (Gang of Four on "To Hell With Poverty"), pumped up the groove (the Slits), or existentially pondered futile romance (the Pop Group). But they held one thing in common: They required that you move--and move now.

A more detailed time capsule of the era is Early, a double-CD anthology of recordings by Manchester's A Certain Ratio (who also appear on Rhythm) spanning from 1978 to 1985. Tracks such as "Blown Away" consist almost entirely of percussion that could be field recordings from Latin America. In fact, the band picked up on Nuyorican rhythms after playing a gig in Manhattan (with Madonna opening, no less).

What's incredible is that the fresh sound on both albums hasn't passed its sell-by date--as has, say, "Like a Virgin." It hasn't been overexposed, but it's been influential. You can hear A Certain Ratio's influence on the Manchester sound of New Order in ACR's new-wavey almost-hit "Shack Up." And on In the Beginning There Was Rhythm, Cabaret Voltaire's "Sluggin' fer Jesus"--with its preacher sound bites--is a blueprint for today's abstract electronica. But it's the Pop Group's "She's Beyond Good and Evil" that's the comp's key track. Jerky, alien funk with shards of staccato guitar and dense rhythms, the tune jars the listener with its desperate vocals in a way that most music of the decade to come--the Day-Glo Eighties--simply couldn't.