BITERS OR BORROWERS?

Sampling our forefathers has been a vital part in making modern music what it is today. Ideally, would music be what is is today without the creations of those before us? Is there even such thing as a true innovator anymore? Since the beginning of Hip Hop, as well as all mainstream and subculture genres of music, some of our favorite artists have "borrowed", sampled, been inspired by, and blatantly copied the original creators of the work they call their own. Is this unfair? Where is the line between "borrowing an idea" and ripping someone off drawn?

I could rant on and on for days about the concept of inspiration versus imitation, but in reality there is no line, no true boundary. Aside from the legal aspects, the comparison of the two is only drawn by one's own opinion, and I can personally say many of my designs, styles, and even theories have been inspired in one way or another by those before me. Whether it's a drum kick, a millisecond of a bleep, or a full-on 30 second loop, you'd be surprised where many of your favorite songs have borrowed their beats and hooks from.

This post is somewhat of a response to the many Daft Punk, Justice, and Kanye West fans that have recently felt betrayed from a few particular YouTube videos merely exposing the samples they used on their albums. You've obviously been hiding under a rock in the middle of buttfuck for 25 years. Here are the videos:


Kanye West samples from "Graduation"




Various Daft Punk Samples




Justice Samples from "†"




You decide.

MIXED UP.

So, the homie Barry from Philly , aka DJ Avid, teamed up with his homie Snacks from Philly (how rad, I want a homie named Snacks) to make the most amazing mixtape.

Snacks back in Philly had been burning what he called "Skanky Floozy" cds for about a year. Basically all the songs on these discs were classic party tracks, that were performed by ladies and were also somewhat scandalous in nature. Before even hearing it the tracklist itself was enough proof that this one's a heater:




01: Stacey Q - Two of Hearts
02: Sheila E. - The Glamorous Life
03: Debbie Deb - Lookout Weekend
04: Expose Feat. Amanda Blank - Come Go With Me Remix
05: Klymaxx - The Men All Pause
06: Vanity 6 - Nasty Girl
07: The Cover Girls - Show Me
08: Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam W/Full Force - Let The Beat Hit Em
09: The Pointer Sisters - Automatic
10: Samantha Fox - Touch Me
11: Nu Shooz Feat. Lil Kim - I Can't Wait Remix
12: Mary Jane Girls - All Night Long
13: Carrie Lucas - Show Me Where Your Coming From
14: Expose - Let Me Be The One
15: Sweet Sensation - Sincerely Yours
16: Teena Marie - Square Biz
17: Sheila E. - A Love Bizarre
18: Pebbles - Mercedes Boy
19: Shannon - Let The Music Play
20: Teena Marie - Behind The Groove
21: Trinere And Friends - How Can We Be Wrong
22: Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam W/Full Force - I Wonder If I Take You Home
23: Cherrelle Feat. Alexander ONeal - Saturday Love
24: Rebbie Jackson - Centipede
25: Skyy - Call Me
26: The Jets - Crush On You
27: Mary Jane Girls - Candyman
28: Klymaxx - Meeting In The Ladies Room


Download it rightttt heerreeee:

http://www.zshare.net/download/45853065093d56/ (NEW LINK, FASTER DOWNLOAD)


I've been bumping this shit all week. Thanks Barry!

From now until Halloween is seriously nothing but fun stuff. WOOO!

Chris and I (WHITE GIRLS) are going to be hosting this Middle Class party Friday night, with Free The Robots spinning. There are gonna be sexy girls dressed in toilet paper mummy costumes, and our goal is to get 'em nekkid on the dancefloor, then toilet paper the venue. Woooo!




















LADIES: Halloween is your one excuse out of the year to dress as a slutty, like... anything. Pirate, bus driver, waitress, umpire, kitty cat, whatever. Be sure to stop by Girl's Costume Warehouse!

SHORT AND CURLY.

Record collector, party rocker, drum player, disco connoisseur, spinner at LA Weekly's #1 voted dance party, and your favorite Los Angeles DJ's favorite Los Angeles DJ.

DJ Pubes gots the game locked in a cage getting shocked with a pole. Running a record collection of about 20,000+, he's got every right-click-save-as DJ in check by personally ripping all his music straight from vinyl for that authentic sound he's known for.

Originally from Jersey, he's been killing it out here for years now, and it apparently runs in the family (his older brother Mike is head designer at Obey Clothing). Here's a peek at what goes on inside his hairy ass dome:



Top 5 Records that cost you under 5 bucks:

That's tough to say, you find rare stuff worth a grip for under 5 alot. On the other side of it, alot of good records regularly cost under 5. Here's 5 I like, rare or not that cost under 5.

1. High Hopes - SOS Band
2. Abracadabra/Macho City - Steve Miller Band
3. The Bob Seger System
4. Cerrone - Brigaide Mondaine
5. Shocking Blue


Top 5 Ebay bid battles:

1. Early era Patagonia reverse pile jacket, my dad used to have the same one
2. Introducing Drago Ep (still can't get over the loss, first track is stuck in my head and I may never see that record again)
3. Men Of Respect True Bad Boy 12"
4. Philadelphia Eagles Zubaz size Med, most of the time when Eagles Zubaz show up on Ebay they are XXL with a pizza stain on them
5. Trying to negotiate the price on a mixer from some guy in Burbank who had listed the mixer along with his phone number. So I went to his house and offered sweet sweet cash. I have no shame in my eBay game.


Top 5 parties in 2007:

1. Dafterparty w/ Blu Jemz, Dark Alley, Mike B and myself
2. Rockognized #4
3. Ass & Titties w/ Low Budget
4. Dance Right with fromElsewhere guys. Everytime they are there I have a good time. The only time I can actually relax when I'm there is when they play. They know how to build the night.
5. I have some short term memory or something cause my mind is going blank. Maybe we'll leave one blank for an upcoming event that will be epic.



++Pubes live at Rockognized #4




Top 5 halloween costume ideas:

1. My old lady wants me to be Jen from Dark Crystal
2. Because I don't want to cut my beard I told her I'd be Jim Hensen and I'll tie strings to her costume so she looks like a puppet from Dark Crystal. I guess if I had Kermit the Frog puppet on my other hand it might make a little more sense.
3. Stevie Nicks and Lyndsey Buckingham, a costume for couples
4. Target is doing it big this season, my brother got a sweet keg costume.
5. If you're a lady you could always be a sexy ???? Generic costumes are where it's at though. I want to be a mummy or a pirate, maybe a wizard.


Top 5 ways to show affection to the ones you love:

1. A big 'ole kiss
2. Give them something that reminds you of them, maybe a nice swap meet find
3. Buy them drinks, get them drunk
4. Pat on the back and say you're my pal like Judge Smails in Caddy Shack
5. If it's a "special" one you love, you can do whatever Keith Sweat would do


Top 5 things about your big brother:

1. Pretty generous guy
2. They used to call him crack baby growing up
3. Looks identical to my dad at his age
4. First company to buy any of his freelance work was Hurley while he was still in college
5. He's my biggest supporter with DJing



++Pubes with Shepard Fairey at Dance Right




Top 5 annoying song requests while spinning:

Play something we can dance to!

1. Soulja Boy. Get over it LA, you are way too late on this song to get a free pass.
2. Play some Prince while playing Prince. I'm sure every DJ has a story like this.
3. Play some reggae in the middle of an uptempo dance night. I guess the song would have been something like Welcome to Jamrock. Don't get me wrong I like that song, just doesn't fit the night. Do people not realize a certain type of music is being played all night?
4. Any Girl Talk track. Unless you are 15 and a girl this is not acceptable!
5. One More Time - Daft Punk. Reminds me of meatheads at the Jersey Shore. I'm alright with Daft Punk but that song just blows.

Honorable mention: Them Jeans, Blu Jemz and I were doing a party and someone requested Elton John in the middle of a hip hop night. If the dude didn't fork over $100 this would have been annoying.





Here's a little crime scene evidence from some of his recent murder convictions:



DJ Pubes killing the decks live at Rockognized 2007 (as mentioned in "Top 5 parties"), courtesy of Glenjamn





DJ Pubes in Episode 1 of "Pube$ Was Here!" (featuring Don Nguyen)





::BONUS:: DJ Pubes live at SXSW 2007






The Pubelog
DJ Pubes Myspace
DJ Pubes Website (Coming soon)

JOCK JAMS.

YEESSSSSSSS!!!


Zombie Nation - Kernkraft 400





2 Unlimited - Get Ready 4 This





C & C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat





EMF - Unbelievable





Gary Glitter - Rock And Roll Part 2





I love the 90's.

BE HERE.

Wipe last week's blood off your hard hat before you come. J-Logic was seriously hurting you. We asked him very nicely numerous times to show mercy but he really felt like leaving the crowd in pain. Like, really good sensual pain.




The one and only fromELSEWHERE crew. You already know what it is. We've been over this.


For now listen to these:


In Flagranti - Melodymaker (Recommended)

Klaxons - As Above, So Below (Justice Remix) (Recommended)

Black Devil Disco Club - On Just Foot (Dub Version) (Recommended)


I recommend all of them.

ONE WORD.

SUPERSTUDIO.












Superstudio is the epitome of future-primitive design in the 20th century. It's so amazing to see how people imagined the world would be by the millenium. We made it through Nostradamus' vague and questionable prediction of the end of time in the year 2000. How will the world be 25 years from now? How will it be 50 years from now? Will we still be around? Will there really be flying cars and interactive robots with human personalities? The human imagination is endless.

BIG FISH.

The homies at Barracuda on Melrose have launched their website, and the blog is in full effect. Here's some of the fun shit they do/see everyday, via Miguel's iPhone:

















BARRACUDA
7600B Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90046
+323 852 71 79

Barracuda Website
Barracuda Myspace

Google Video is the shit.

I just found Daft Punk's Electroma in it's entirety (74 minutes).





This movie is slow as fuck, but really trippy. Shrooms!

For full size click HERE.

SHRED.

Tonight is the premier for the world famous MASH video. MASH is a fixed gear bike crew from San Francisco, and have made themselves famous for being some of the craziest dudes to ride a fixed gear.

From bombing hills at 40+ MPH without brakes, to doing 3-block long wheelies, they have held it down for a few minutes now. Some of them were actually pro skaters at one point of time.

Anyways, there are 2 showings tonight. Here's the flyer:





You can see a few photos from their SF premier HERE, and here's a clip of the MASH crew in action if you're unfamiliar. This is the official trailer:





Special thanks to Anthony at Stussy for hooking up some extra tickets. Considering the overwhelming amount of bikes in those photos, I think I'm better off skating there tonight.

FORECAST.

After getting off the bus today on my way home, I was at the crosswalk when a random guy comes up and says "It's gonna rain tonight." Before I could tell him how full of shit he was, he proceeds to say "I broke all my bones in a motocross accident a long time ago and still have a lot of sensitive hairline fractures, so the second the air pressure starts to change I could tell you exactly when and where it's going to start raining, and for how long." The only bone I've ever broken being my big toe in junior high, I decided to shutup and take his word for it.

SOOOO 30 minutes ago the clouds just flooded the sky and decided to send a big fuck you in advance to all the sun-loving Los Angeles residents anticipating a good day tomorrow. If I ever run into homeboy again, his new nickname's Doppler 7000.


Here's my rainy day soundtrack, from me to you:


Radiohead - Everything In It's Right Place

Prefuse 73 - Nuno

Broadcast - Echo's Answer

Bjork - Hidden Place

X-Ecutioners - DJ Premier In Deep Concentration

Digitalism - The Pulse (Recommended)


Whoever's responsible for this weather is gonna get smacked upon sight. Immediately.


UPDATE: Fat Joe and Lil' Wayne just came forward and took full responsiblilty:

Been a long ass week. Came across this bootlegged video of Daft Punk playing a live show in Wisconsin a LONG time ago, and without their helmets.

Most of it sounds like random crazy noises, but if you know their music you can make out some of the songs being played, just at much higher tempos. This has to be at least 10 years ago.





Wisconsin loves to rave!

In related French guy music news, Justice was in LA recently and made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Being that they are DJs/Producers as opposed to actual performers, they found a way to make a live television set a little more interesting than Laptops and CDJ's:




I think they used some of the random street performers on Hollywood Blvd that dress as celebrities. Those dudes are down for anything.

I didn't get to make it to their show at the Henry Fonda, so we went to Cinespace instead to celebrate my longtime friend Nancy's birthday. Chris (WHITE GIRLS) and I were wasted as fuck and luckily made it home ok, but only to come home and find So Me, Gaspard (Justice), SebastiAn, Franki and Travis (IHEARTCOMIX!), DJ AM, Trevor (Skeet Skeet), Royal Rumble, Ron (Cobrasnake), and about 30 other people in my living room (Not to mention my roommate Tyler, who is 1/2 of Young Americans). I had to ban some random fucker, who for the first time in history, actually tried to sell me a beer. In my own house. Come on.

Not many pics from the house party, but here's some of Ron's photos of the dudes at Burrito King across the street (whoever took them there should know the taco truck is 10x better than that shithole):









Everyone's favorite DJ couple. Gina and Dan at the crib:




The next morning we got a nice little notice from our landlord to either pay a $600 fee for disturbing the peace, or move out... IN 3 DAYS. Basically a bunch of bullshit, but I'll keep you posted on that whole situation. Ironically enough there actually used to be a monthly party held at the house called Hush Hush. This isn't the first time we've been in trouble for noise complaints, so we'll see if we can squeeze our way out of another one.


UPDATE: We JUST got another notice from the landlord, this one basically saying we have 30 days to get the fuck out. STAY TUNED!

NEVERMIND.

THIS dancefloor takes the cake.







And on something visually related, I was doing little research this morning on a company called Monome. They're based out of Philadelphia and make these insanely minimalist, completely adaptable/reconfigurable interfaces. This one is called The 256:




Bound only by one's creativity, the 256 has buttons that can be configured as toggles, radio groupings, sliders, or organized into more sophisticated systems to monitor and trigger sample playback positions, stream 1-bit video, interact with dynamic physical models, and play games. It's also gained wide notoriety lately from Daedelus's live shows.

This is Conway's Game Of Life being played on a 256:






And less towards the boring side, here's a clip I found on YouTube of Monome's 64 model being used with Ableton to make live beats:




These interfaces aren't specifically designed for music (though they're well suited for such) and have been used in lighting control, video mixing, and even neural network simulations.

Trip the fuck out.

This can be added to the Amazing Music Videos post from last week. No running backwards underwater with shoes on, but probably the coolest puppetry ever.


Shit Disco - OK




Not a huge fan of Shit Disco, but gotta love the video concept. These guys were actually supposed to play Neighborhood Festival but word is bond one of them overdosed and was in the hospital (?).

If I had to guess it's the drummer.

Tonight is the night big homie Blu Jemz tears apart our favorite Thursday night know as Dance Right.





Bring your hard hats.

EPIC.

This has to be the most intense dancefloor ever.

LOST & FOUND.

It's 7:41 AM, and I was going through my entire library of random photos, graphics, files, just everything. I really need to organize my shit soon, being that it's all located in ONE fucking folder on my computer, and it takes like 5 hours to load thumbnails. I have no idea why the hell I named half of my files what I did either. ONE benefit is that it sort of has the effect of a treasure chest. Or like a huge 60 GB rummage bin. After a little digging, I found a lot of old things that I forgot I even designed. Here is some of the stuff I came across:



This was a party flyer for The Hundreds and HUF for an event they threw at LAX around May last year with DJ Mike B. The concept of the graphic was based off one HUF previously released that depicted the "Tenderloin" district (one of the sketchiest parts of San Francisco), and my job was to create an LA version of that for The Hundreds. You can see the original graphic by HUF here.

I was actually 18 at the time and couldn't get into the club, so I ended up wandering around Hollywood (which back then I had NO geographical knowledge of) until the friend I came with (who got in without a problem) stumbled out the door hours later and proceeded to throw up all over his new kicks. Awesome.




This was technically the first real (meaning decent) computer graphic I ever made. It's a vector illustration of Scarlett Johansson that I did when I was 17, which I actually made entirely using Photoshop (technically disqualifying it from being a "vector" I suppose). It took me about 36 hours straight with no sleep, of which I wouldn't be surprised I contracted long-term brain damage from. I think I'll remake this one in Illustrator someday so it's a little less primitive. We'll see.




This one is kind of epic. I actually did a series of 4 or 5 of these prints when I was around 16, and I made them all with a fax machine. I had NO access to a computer, nonetheless one with Photoshop, so I was either painting or making collages all the time. My mom had a subscription to Elle Magazine, and I remember getting my ass beat for ripping out pages from it, as well as using all of the fax machine toner. I guess this one represents how much that hurt.




There are hundreds more pictures I could post, but quality over quantity has always meant a lot to me. We'll see where it takes me...

This is what I missed out on while at Neighborhood on Saturday. Thank god for YouTube.