Much like the Atmosphere song, I'm trying to find a balance these days. I honestly miss being in school where I'd learn during the day, and then at night let my creative side run loose, whether it was DJing, writing, or even just absorbing others creativity. As a kid, I often wondered why having a day job was such a crushing experience to so many people. People were giving you money for your work (as opposed to doing homework for no money). And if a day job was so awful, why was that the payoff for going to college? Day jobs had to be good.

That's not to say that my current job isn't good. In fact, I think it's quite great for a job. But I do sincerely miss that time during the day when I could be spending time reading, working on music, going to guest speeches and lectures on campus, etc. The obvious answer to that is to just do it all at night. But, if anything, if I want to keep making strides that I am with the DJing, thing I need to invest more time in music, not less.

Anyhow, I will keep pondering this and keep trying to balance everything out. Not surprisingly, putting some words down makes me feel a little less stressed.

The Week of Ska Part 1: American Skathic

I'm going to kick off my week long look at what ska music means to me by posting something from the first ska compilation I ever bought. Plus, because it touches on a lot of other facets of my ska experience that I will be discussing later, it seemed like a great starting point.

While American Skathic was not the first ska CD I purchased (that will come later this week), this 21 track (plus bonus track) compilation of Midwest ska bands definitely had the biggest influence on me getting into ska. I can remember driving around in my friend Chris's van playing this album over and over and over and over. It was the soundtrack to my freshman and sophomore years of high school, and to this day, I continue to listen to it.

The album was compiled by Chuck Wren (who had a major impact on expanding my ska palette, and will be discussed more later this week). American Skathic was the first release on Jump Up! Records and featured songs from Johnny Socko, Mustard Plug, Mu330, The Blue Meanies, The Suicide Machines (back when they were Jack Kevorkian and the Suicide Machines), The Parka Kings, SLK and Gangster Fun. For a lot of those bands, American Skathic was the first time they had a track released on CD.

The range of songs featured on this compilation (Blue Meanies punk ska "Blah Blah Blah", the 3rd wave sounds of Johny Socko, the classic sounds of Heavy Manners) made me ready to branch out into a wide range of ska subgenres, which was important in the Midwest. The Chicago area was very much a melting pot of ska sounds, and it was great to have ears open and accepting of any number of ska styles.

I can't help but post up a few tracks from this compilation, which you can still buy from JumpUp! (it'll be ten of the best dollars you ever spent).

Johnny Socko - Vasectomy

Tom Collins & The Cocktail Shakers - Chuck Taylors

Elevators - Vendetta
(an exclusive to the compilation, and one of my top five favorite ska songs ever)

Gangster Fun - Shook Me All Night Long

Life has been jam-packed as of late, so this blog has been getting the short shrift. But to make up for it, I'm going to churn out a Scatterbrain Sunday and intersperse a few extra songs amongst the entries, so make sure you click those links.

The Morons of the World
On July 7 I had a gig with my DJing partner J Phlip (which went quite well). In order to get promotions out around town (and out in a hurry), I relied on Kinko's. Time after time they have screwed up orders for me. The screw ups range from minute problems to utter disasters. For this gig they completely botched a set of posters (but made me pay for them), miscut flyers so that words were chopped, and the people behind the counter didn't know what a pdf was. I start to wonder if Dave Chappelle's classic spoof really isn't a spoof, but the actual training video (see video below). All I know is, unless it is absolutely necessary, I'm done with Kinko's.



Mr. Watt
On July 18, my musical hero, Ben Watt, returned to Chicago. Thanks to some interruptions in the set, which I will let Mr. Watt describe, the show wasn't as much of an emotional experience that past sets have been. However, as was said at the gig, "we're not in Chicago anymore." Damn straight. The drive up (and awful drive back) on a Wednesday night were totally worth it to hear music that no one in Chicago ever plays. And of course, getting to hear Ben drop his own productions in a live setting is always something to memorable. I remember the first time I saw him at Smartbar, and this song got dropped. Still one of my happiest memories of any DJ set ever.

Go Cubs Go!
Even though my Cubbies dropped their second game in a row today (first time in a month they've lost two in a row), they are still 7-3 in their last ten games, and are hot on the heels of the Brewers. What has me most excited about watching their games now is that Lou Pinella has them executing properly. The fundamentals, which were such an eyesore under Dusty Baker, no longer are costing the Cubs games. The other team has to have a really great pitcher on the mound (like today's loss) for the Cubs to lose games. And that's just great fun to watch. God bless Lou Pinella, and may Dusty Baker rot in hell.

Dirty Birds
Friday night, at Smartbar, I rocked out to the sounds of the daddy Dirty Bird, the one like Claude VonStroke. While one of the openers (Frankie Vega) was fantastic, the man immediately preceding VonStroke (a dude named Soultek) really stunk it up. Have no fear, CVS got on and rocked down the house. One of the most animated, and hyped up crowds I have ever seen at Smartbar. From what I hear, he'll be coming back, so don't miss it when he does. One of the best tunes of this past Friday was Samim's "Heater" which will be out on Get Physical records on August 1. I was able to hunt down a copy, but since I don't want my blog getting in trouble, I'll just link you to this youtube clip of Samim dropping it. Can't wait to play this myself in front of a crowd!

The Last Word on this... I swear
No more need to write about the Sopranos. I'm just going to say that Bob Harris has figured it out. Read it all. I'm the moron, not David Chase.

But more words on this...
After getting drawn into a series that in many ways is much better written than The Sopranos, I'm disappointed to hear that the two promised Deadwood movies only have a 50/50 chance of being made. That means that many plot lines will just remain open indefinitely. Not good at all. Cocksuckers!

Downloads downloads downloads
My latest mix, Walking At Night Volume 2, already has over 350 downloads, with very little marketing. I'm hoping to get it up to 500 downloads, so if you haven't picked it up already, make sure you download it right here!

It's almost fall, so time for more color themed events
Thus far in the last two years I've played a White Party, a Black Party, and this coming Thursday I'll be playing at The Blue Ball. What's next, the Green Gala? The Plaid Party? The Paisley Soiree? Oh well. If you're in Champaign on Thursday night, come out and check it out:


Going out on a limb
Well in an effort to get more writing done on the blog this week, and because the absolutely gorgeous weather is made for this type of music, I'm going to start my "Week of Ska" here on the blog. I won't pretend to give a full historical account of one of my favorite genres of music (and the first underground culture I ever really associated with). So because I didn't want to just include one song from Mu330, one of my favorite ska bands, I'll post "Bagelbird" right here tonight, and then another one later this week when I have the time to write more about the band themselves.

The Mix to Rule All Mixes

Keeping with the notion of putting up a mix instead of a song on Scatterbrain Sundays, I wanted to share with you one of the best Essential Mixes I have heard in years. If you are not familiar with the Essential Mix, it's a show that has been around for well over 10 years, hosted by Pete Tong. It's two uninterrupted hours of music, mixed by the world's best DJs. In the past it featured a very wide variety of artists and sounds. Basically, if someone was a top level DJ, they would get an Essential Mix. These days, the show feels overrun by trance and prog DJs. However, every once in a while, they'll feature someone that plays music outside of one of those two craptacular genres.

While searching for a particularly limited white label, I stumbled across a mix from Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. Without exaggeration, it is the best Essential Mix I've heard since the High Contrast Essential Mix or Ben Watt's (and Ben's is great in my book mostly cause I think Ben is great, the mix itself doesn't wow me too much). Anyway, the tracklisting for the mix can be found here. I've included someone else's link to the hosted mix. If that link goes down, let me know and I'll contemplate hosting it myself.

Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - Essential Mix (2007-05-06)