after all that talk of u2 in past weeks, i didn't even go to the concert. i planned to, but something else came up. only a couple weeks before the day of the concert, i find out that dr butcher md has been invited to play in muncie on the same night... & i was invited to perform also.

the decision was thrust upon me. should i go to the large corporate-sponsored area event as a spectator? or the small diy gig as a performer? if i'd already arranged a date for the concert, i might not've decided to play in muncie. but the date situation had been still unresolved (there had been a couple hopefuls, but one seemed to vanish & the other turned out to be crazy). so i said bollox to mtv & vh1 (who likely paid a good penny to get their names printed on every ticket) & agreed to dj at the muncie gig; it would be my first time djing in a performance setting & not just in a friend's basement.

i forsook my dating opportunity for the sake of art. i'd gotten the tix free anyway, so it wasn't a tangible loss. (or so i thought; it turned out later that a girl i invited to the muncie gig couldn't attend because she was going to the u2 concert to see pj harvey... if only we'd met earlier.)

i went on the flier as dj selly-out, on a bill with dr butcher md, bobby vomit, & all the way from rhode island: pleasurehorse. it was a pretty last-minute, spur-of-the-moment thing. plus it was on a weeknight (i took the following day off), in a college town, on the week after finals. so it wasn't too surprising when only a handful of people showed up. or maybe nobody came in because my opening set scared them all away.

i don't use many of the tricks of the standard dance dj. i can't really beatmatch, so i don't even try. i try to build a wall of collage by playing strange records on top of each other. that's not too easy to do with only two turntables (i'm used to having 3 when i spin), but i thought i put in a decent performance considering that handicap (& the fact that the stage was so shaky in spots that the needles would skip if i took a step or even thought about jerky motions). i spent most of the set constantly changing records, so i can't remember much of a playlist, but a few choice moments i remember are juxtaposing aphex twin's "ventolin" with bagpipe music; haunted house sounds into the ghostbusters theme (instrumental), with the haunted screams being replaced by bad a capella rappers; as always, the jewish children's songs; & of course, my closer, "california girls" by both the beach boys & david lee roth, crashing into each other in one big california mess. it was fun, but i think in the future i'll only spin when i have 3 or more tables to work with.

dr butcher md then rocked the house (all dozen or so people who were there) with his breakstravaganza. his mistakes were far less noticeable because his computers didn't skip when he moved around. people seemed to be enjoying it. he played a bunch of unreleased material... some of it's got to be released soon, so keep an eye out.

pleasurehorse came equipped. he brought his own speaker rack & everything... & he still asked to be over the venue's p.a. it was loud as hell; one of the most intense performances i've ever seen. the sheer volume drove much of the meager crowd away; at the end of his set, only one person remained who wasn't performing there that night. but those of us who stayed were in for a spastic noisy treat. it was pounding, almost constantly changing, & almost impossible to describe. that performance alone was worth skipping u2 (& even pj harvey, who i used to love).

bobby vomit was last, with a much more subdued noise. he clearly had more control over the turntables than i (it was his setup), but it was quite a different performance nonetheless. all in all a good night, even if we made no money.