now playing
i went to see Norman Jay at APT last night and it was…interesting. first of all, i haven’t been to APT in a while and i had it in my head that they had a great sound system. i am not sure where that came from because the sound was thoroughly ‘muddy’ and unspectacular. i came in between 12:30 and 1:00 and it was totally packed. he was playing “(a roller skating jam) named saturdays” by de la soul and the place was definitely moving to it. i had never heard him spin before and i expected that he was going to going all over the map based on the spectrum of tracks on his Good Times compilations but i don’t think i was ready for what happened. he mix and beat-matched a couple songs here and there but more often then not the tempos and genres of the tracks he picked varied wildly. i wasn’t sure if this was “his thing” and people were used to it or not. the answer came when the place started to thin out not that long after I got there, around 1:30-2:00 which is still ‘prime party time’, especially on a saturday night. it was a little sad, actually. i wasn’t there to dance, i just wanted to hear good music but the transitions even started to get to me after a while.
not to paint too bleak of a picture - he played some slammin’ tracks, which brings me to an ongoing frustration of mine. i love hearing good dj’s and love hearing good (new) music but i hate being out and hearing several great tracks and not having any idea who the artists are. i don’t mind going up to a DJ and asking what something is once…maybe even twice but 7 times is just not an option! then there’s the shows where the DJs are literally on stage and you can’t even ask once. i am still trying to find out a track that Jazzanova played at Irving Plaza in like 2002 or 2003. i’ve ascertained that it may have been “forss” or something like that; if anyone was there and knows the answer, please put me on!! it was the second song they played and it was chopped-up, syncopated heaven. so, i am not trying to ruin the mystique and all but can some DJ start a trend where they have a “now playing” screen so everyone can put a name with their musical crush and maybe even go buy some under-exposed music?
the picture below is from last night, although it’s misleading as to how full/empty the place was. it was taken around 3:00 AM and it’s pointed towards the back corner. there was a core of about 40 people that stayed that late but i couldn’t get a them to actually show up in a picture without using my flash…and i was being shy. i always loved the walls in the basement there; they’re backlit wood-patterned paper but they look like front-lit real wood…its quite confusing the first time around.
