DJ Shadow / Cut Chemist - HARD SELL tour…
last night i attended the Hard Sell Tour here in Denver… and it’s definitely a hard sell in my opinion. amazingly this was not your average hip-hop show, there was no hip-hop time! they actually got the show started at about 9pm! wow.
Kid Koala opened the show up - if any of you don’t know the Kid - definitely check him out, he has a unique edge on the tables creating a very talkative/story telling style with his scratching - with a heavy jazz influence mixed in with electronic beats. There have also been a few music vids that are somewhere out there in the internets that are most excellent as well. Last night he opened the show up, and played a most excellent set! I had never seen him before live, however been listening to him for the last 5-6 years, and the kid got skills.
Now let me mention that i have been a follower of both DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist from the beginnings of their careers… and for any of you that don’t know about Shadows’ and Chemists’ history together, here is the quick version:
‘The Hard Sell’ is their 3rd installment of a live collaboration set that they started back in ‘99 with an incredible performance called ‘Brainfreeze’, with a bunch of crazy samples from 7-11 Slurppee sounds to classic folk rock all played from original pressed 45’s only. It was a very limited find back then, but has now become legendary and duplicated and much more available… a couple years later they did a second installment called ‘Product Placement’ (VHS only release!).
and now, currently on tour, they are pushing - ‘The Hard Sell’…and it is… Shadow talked way too much, the first half of set was super low energy, there seemed to be not much rhyme or reason to the style, the beats, the mixes, the samples… the crowd was just wandering, they couldn’t catch the attention or engage very well, and the vibe was fucking wack. My friend mentioned it well:
“…it just seems like these two crate-digger champs are on a tour to show off their own crate collections! It’s just a jam-athon to show off all the good, bad, bizarre, and whatever other random things they’ve procured from our fathers & grandfathers forgot about collections…”
basically the stage set up was the most interesting part - they had 8 turntables, 4 mixers, 2 pedal samplers. also worth mentioning is the video samples and montage - half educational- half vinyl heavy effects. it was nice… check out the show intro opener below - and to wrap this rant up, basically i still like both DJ’s, their history, and their individual work - this installment, or at least this particular show here in Denver was simply a huge let down after following them all these years… and i’m spent.
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