well, there's always got to be one

last year it was the DC laser light show in brighton and this year it was johnny v & rupix at ye grand olde Kick32. our show last night, postponed from last week due to thunderstormy weather at the outdoor venue, sounded promising enough, as we were to play with popular Berlin DJ/MC duo Smith & Smart. fair enough. we said we'd be happy to open for them, but they wanted to play first. fair enough. whatever football match was on last night was a 9:00 start, as they have been so far, so any music and performances have to start post-fussball. also fair enough. well....we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into with this one. en route to the spot, near the massive commercial circle of potsdamer platz and the sony centre, we took a wrong turn that shot us through a hauptbahnhof (not sure what that means) and travelled down a tunnel for waaaaaay too long. we were spat out on the other end of the city and had to reorient ourselves for a bit before we could right our way round and take the tunnel the opposite way back (we did manage to get a funny bit of video of this misadventure, though, so when i get it from rup, i'll post it up).

klar,

so a few missed streets and turns into oncoming traffic later, we finally made it to the 'venue'. no stage. fine. a bonfire. fine. random bar/pizza joint. also fine. decent PA appropriated by S&S as soon as the 9pm game ended. fine too. a few randoms huddling round the bonfire of old scrap wood. whatever...sure, fine. only thing is, S&S played a crazy ass long set - almost an hour and a half of old breakbeats and other hip-hop instrumentals and amazingly terrible 90s dance/rock/electro tunes, most of which were laced with the relatively mediocre rap freestylings of some random boys who'd been hanging about. not so fine. i'm all for promoting the joys & health benefits of good rap music and everything... but after an hour of freestyled non-content, things were seeming a bit tired. the event organizers didn't of course realize that our deal is not just yer typical dj + mc set-up and when we mentioned words like laptops, vocal efx, and keyboards...they loooked a bit bewildered and worried. ok, then. so now what? they suggestion was that we shouldn't stop the music because people would leave...but by then it was nearing 1am and me and mr r weren't exactly feelin so enthusiastic about doing our own exclusively freestyled set over some boring instrumentals. well, shit, don't you know it. that's exactly what happened.

yup. pointless to go and get all of our gear together for a non-existent audience at too late an hour in the night, when our music would be too closely bookended by chemical brothers' block rocking & les breakbeat annoyances of the prodigy (yes, those chemical brothers and that prodigy). so instead i brought up my trust panasonic compact disc player (the latest in great portable audio technology), and we played a few choons and did some rappings. our mad freestylin' friend amewu showed up to rock the mic for a bit, which is always fresh, but he cornered me into freestyling over a cd of grime beats that he'd brought. let's just say, that it's bit harder rhyming over a beat that's this fast instead of something at more my pace. when your heart ain't in it, there's not much dopeness to be had or found. but we put in our best effort, given the now dwindling fire and dwindling deutsch hip-hop kids and apres-football commercial crowd. with an ironic wink to the towering mercedes logo behind the stage, we made a quick exit. here's hoping tonight's outdoor show has a bonfire with a bit more life to it.

soundtrack: exclusive dance mixes of all yer favourite 90s hits! wow! featuring songs by snap! the chemical brothers! the prodigy! the beastie boys! dr dre! eminem! nirvana! black box! and more! Bonfire Hits Vol. 923 is in stores now! don't mizzzzzzzzz it.........

love johnny

ps- don't let the celebratory slide show (above) fool you.