DJ Shadow: DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist have no trouble selling their act
You may remember the 45-rpm record. It's the little one with the big center hole, a lowly thing that might have had a cute vinyl carrying case, or more likely a home in a dusty corner of the attic. It was the disposable single with the picture sleeve, and it's hard to imagine a more arcane object in this iTunes age. But during "The Hard Sell," a performance by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, the abject 45 is given its place in the sun -- and the workout of its life. On Sunday night at the Showbox at the Market, the two Bay Area DJs stood in front of two projection screens with eight turntables in front of them and pounds of vinyl behind them. They frenetically spun and scratched their way through singles like "Eye of the Tiger," "Apache" and the "Gilligan's Island" theme song with mind-boggling dexterity, while the packed house cheered sonic layer upon layer. At one point, a passel of experimentally goateed white boys stood slack-jawed as Cut Chemist embarked on a musical journey from De La Soul's "Potholes in My Lawn," to the Parliament song "Little Old Country Boy" (sampled by De La Soul's Prince Paul in "Potholes in My Lawn") to a full cut of "I Likes To Do It" by the People's Choice, sampled in part on the De La Soul song "Tread Water." It was only a few dense minutes of the two-hour show, and only the most serious pop musicophiles could pretend to keep up.
Luckily, you could just dance.Before the show began, a kind of video primer played to explain to anyone unfamiliar that the DJs would only be spinning original format 45s without any other live instrumentation. Just the turntables, a guitar pedal and an echo effect. They wouldn't, the video explained, be using any samplers, drum machines, computers or synthesizers, an admission heartily cheered by the crowd, as if the two DJs were a couple of Ozark buck dancers thumbing their noses at progress. Technological ironies aside, the performance itself was a little like watching a musical Iron Chef, or like watching two writers compose a collaborative novel without using the letter "e." Most of the showmanship consisted of the performers staring down at their hands or spastically twiddling knobs. And while such Oulipian feats might sound more like avant-garde performance art than a South Bronx block party, well, they are. But "The Hard Sell" is supremely entertaining -- it's performance art whose best compliment is a heartily shaking booty.
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You may remember the 45-rpm record. It's the little one with the big center hole, a lowly thing that might have had a cute vinyl carrying case, or more likely a home in a dusty corner of the attic. It was the disposable single with the picture sleeve, and it's hard to imagine a more arcane object in this iTunes age. But during "The Hard Sell," a performance by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, the abject 45 is given its place in the sun -- and the workout of its life. On Sunday night at the Showbox at the Market, the two Bay Area DJs stood in front of two projection screens with eight turntables in front of them and pounds of vinyl behind them. They frenetically spun and scratched their way through singles like "Eye of the Tiger," "Apache" and the "Gilligan's Island" theme song with mind-boggling dexterity, while the packed house cheered sonic layer upon layer. At one point, a passel of experimentally goateed white boys stood slack-jawed as Cut Chemist embarked on a musical journey from De La Soul's "Potholes in My Lawn," to the Parliament song "Little Old Country Boy" (sampled by De La Soul's Prince Paul in "Potholes in My Lawn") to a full cut of "I Likes To Do It" by the People's Choice, sampled in part on the De La Soul song "Tread Water." It was only a few dense minutes of the two-hour show, and only the most serious pop musicophiles could pretend to keep up.
Luckily, you could just dance.Before the show began, a kind of video primer played to explain to anyone unfamiliar that the DJs would only be spinning original format 45s without any other live instrumentation. Just the turntables, a guitar pedal and an echo effect. They wouldn't, the video explained, be using any samplers, drum machines, computers or synthesizers, an admission heartily cheered by the crowd, as if the two DJs were a couple of Ozark buck dancers thumbing their noses at progress. Technological ironies aside, the performance itself was a little like watching a musical Iron Chef, or like watching two writers compose a collaborative novel without using the letter "e." Most of the showmanship consisted of the performers staring down at their hands or spastically twiddling knobs. And while such Oulipian feats might sound more like avant-garde performance art than a South Bronx block party, well, they are. But "The Hard Sell" is supremely entertaining -- it's performance art whose best compliment is a heartily shaking booty.
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