July 31, 2006
Bonde do Role - "Still Tippin' Freestyle"
Ok first, as promised, here's the MP3 of Bonde do Role's freestyle on Damage Control
Radio. Enjoy dat.
Secondly, as you may or may not have heard, Marina from Bonde do Role dislocated her
arm yesterday while crowdsurfing during Bonde's performance at the Pitchfork
Festival. It's a shame on so many levels (not the least of which is the fact that
crowdsurfing hasn't been cool since like 1993) but Marina is sticking it out for the
rest of the tour and will be ripping it up nightly with her arm in a sling and,
presumably, lots of drugs in her system.
Aside from the bands on the Mad Decent tour, the rest of Pitchfork Festival's 2nd
day was pretty lame. (Didn't even get to see Mutantes.) I think I saw Jason Mewes
watching Aesop Rock, though, and it was good to see them boys A-Trak and Ghislain
Poirier, even if they performed the day before. And Diplo and Ralph definitely
appreciated the nearby pool...
Even if Lawrence, Kansas was the worst show on the tour, they did have the biggest
screen so far, which meant a bigger, nastier Mad Decent logo for all to see.
July 29, 2006
A couple links from the last few shows:
-
free downloadable MP3 of Diplo & Bonde do Role on Damage Control Radio -
lots of pics from the Houston show & Damage Control Radio Bonde do Role "Still Tippin'" freestyle MP3 coming as soon as I can upload it.
Guest photo post tomorrow from Diplododocuz
In the rec room of a Denton, TX restaurant, we found what has to be the only surviving Johnny Mnemonic pinball machine on the planet. If you're not familiar with one of the finest Keanu Reaves vehicles of all time, do yourself a favor and... play the pinball machine instead. Check out the incredibly detailed drawings of Gilbert Godfried and Ice Cube on the right hand side! On the playing surface, the game also offered this eerily prescient piece of advice:
Meanwhile, Pedro and Wes killed some bears
And Lovefoxxx made me very glad that she's not the one driving the bus.
Gorky soaks up some AC. Hooray air!
I warned Pedro before we got to Houston: in Canada and the Northeast, he was an accented foreign stud; in Texas, he's just another Mexican. The boy lucked out after the Denton show, though (I guess?).
Later!
July 29, 2006
Man, what I wouldn't have given for one more night in Houston! As much as I'm
totally ready to get the fuck out the south, it would have been pretty dope to stick
around for Houston's biggest night ever: our boy
Matt Sonzala was putting on a huge show
with DJ Semtex from the BBC featuring all sorts of huge Houston names. Bun B, Devin
the Dude, Trae... everyone, man. It would have been crazy nice to have been there.
It took long enough, but I finally made it down to Sonzala's Damage Control radio
show. Bonde do Role and Diplo wrecked it live and direct on radio, swearing and
drinking, generally stressing Matt out and making all the H-town rap dudes flee the
normally crowded station. Soon as I get some stable internet, I'll post up the
chopped-up version of Bonde's "Still Tippin'" freestyle -- it's really, really good.
In the meantime, you can hit Houstonsoreal above and download the full 3 hour show.
Really nice to finally meet DJ Chill, too, who was buggin' at our ridiculous 3AM
alcohol consumption. Me and Pedro lifted a bottle of vodka from the venue and were
swigging while Diplo was mixing. Chill was looking at us like we were from
Brazil, like "y'all drinkin' that
straight, huh?" I'm like
"yeah, man... don't you guys drink cough syrup down here??"
Bonde do Role and Diplo did an interview for ME TV in Houston while we were in
Austin. It was cool, I think.
Pedro decided to thug out with the Shaq jersey, eye black and bandana while we were
in Texas, home of the Geto Boys, creators of his favorite song, "Damn It Feels Good
To Be A Gangster."
We got one more show in Texas -- Denton, tonight -- and then Kansas and then up to
the Northwest and shit. If I never have to see another bale of hay in my life, I
will be a pretty happy dude.
July 26, 2006
Special guest post today from
Mr. Nick Catchdubs while we try to shake the brutally muggy Nawlins heat and roll on to Texas:
Just as the Bonde / CSS / Diploosaurus tourstravaganza hit NYC, the
scheduled performance at the Avalon got cancelled. So that night's
"afterparty" at Stereo (pics
here, courtesy Oxy Cottontail) turned into a full-on show. The dynamic Nossa DJ duo
kicked a MisShape off the turntables and warmed the crowd up with
custom baile blends and on-point mixing. Dip got on for a mini-set,
then the Bonde kids climbed up a stack of speakers to perform their
songs, passing the single microphone back and forth and screaming their
lungs out. To finish the night, Gorky took over the turntable duties
and bashed us in the face with all sorts of high-BPM electro madness
(if it wasn't for the funk tracks, Gorky would soooo be an Erol Alkan
type rock/house dude). I'll gladly wager that the Stereo gig will
probably go down as one of the best shows of the entire tour, mostly
because it was in an actual CLUB setting were people actually danced
(with - gasp! - each other!!!), jumped on couches, took off shirts and
enjoyed the music in the drunken, sweaty setting it was designed for.
The next night at BK rock venue Warsaw, there were twice as many
people, three times as many nerds, and half the shaking. Go figure.
July 25, 2006
Every time we pull up in front of a hotel or any kind of heavily populated area,
it's like a wireless feeding frenzy. We gotta get it in while we can! Everyone
quiets down and you can hear keyboards being beaten mercilessly. We were supposed to
get wireless installed on the bus (!) when we got to Atlanta today, but there was
some kind of problem with the piece, and we all wept. It's probably for the better,
though: if we all had access to the internet all day long, it may well have meant
the end of any verbal communication on the bus for the rest of the tour.
The Warsaw was a real cool venue. It's part of the Polish National Home in
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and when they say Polish, they mean POLISH. While I was
selling merch in the lobby, there was a table set up across from me selling
pierogies and kielbasa.
The Philly show was at the Mummers Museum, and I'm not fully sure what was up there.
It's definitely a Philly thing: grown men wearin' wild Carnivale-esque costumes with
sequens and shit, playing banjos while marching up and down the street on New Year's
Day. We heard the Hollertronix reunion at the afterparty was retarded, but while
Diplo did his thing, the rest of us had to get on the bus and move on to Baltimore.
Speaking of Baltimore (and that's all I can do, 'cause my camera ran out of
batteries after Philly and I've yet to buy more)... but yeah, speaking of
Baltimore... you hear Jonny Blaze and the club dudes talk about how house music
faded out of the NYC scene when rap came up in the 90s, but how it never really left
Baltimore. You know what else never left Baltimore?
Glowsticks. There was a
full-on drum'n'bass show happening the next room over from the Mad Decent tour, and
when it ended there were a couple hundred raving stragglers who wandered over and
definitely appreciated Diplo playing "Zombie Nation" and "Pump Up The Jam" in his
set.
D.C. and Atlanta are kind of a daze -- lots of driving and rib-sticking food and now
we're in New Orleans is all I know. We had an offer from a local guy to take us to
see some of the really fucked up Katrina shit, but I'm pretty torn about it. On the
one hand, I feel like it would be a pretty important thing to see for a lot of
reasons that I probably don't need to go into. On the other hand, shit really is
still fucked up, and if I lost everything I had, I wouldn't want some kids riding
through just to peep and say how awful it is.
We're in the long stretch now, leaving straight after every show for good-sized
drives. D.C. to Atlanta, Atlanta to New Orleans, and now a handful of Texas shows to
round out the week. I promise I'll get batteries today or tomorrow... Merch monkey
gets a day off at the Pitchfork Festival, which is cool in a way because I get to
see Mutantes! But also lame in a way because I'd really like to be able to see this
tour from the front row of a club for once instead of the back!
July 21, 2006
July 18, 2006
THIS JUST IN: the NYC show at the Avalon has been cancelled because Manhattan is not real enough. Brooklyn show at the Warsaw is still on, though!
Check out pictures from the Boston show taken by Mike from
Brilliant Mistake.
Okay, listen. Before I say anything, I need to tell you that Clear Flour Bread in Brookline, MA is the best bakery in the entire universe. After I whined on here about how bad the food was in Montreal's Chinatown, a wonderful girl (whose name I could not hear for the life of me last night) brought us a huge bag full of baked goods from Clear Flour and let me tell you, they are KILLING IT RIGHT NOW. Sticky buns, big ass chocolate chip cookies, lemon pound cake... I mean damn. Clear Flour Bread girl, from the bottom of our tummies, we salute you.
Boston, I salute you too. You're my hometown, and I love you (and the Sox) to death, but I told the bands before the show last night not to get their hopes up, since we just had some particularly great shows in Canadia. Not only was it a Monday, but Great Scott isn't a venue that's necessarily condusive to dancing. On top of everything, we had to sit in the bus for about an hour with no air conditioning while the US authorities decided whether or not to let us in. They did, thankfully.
So we're running late (like,
real late -- got there about 1/2 hour before doors) and everyone's hot and tired, but when we get to the venue the show is sold out! Shocked and amazed, I wondered how this could happen in Boston, The Town Who Hates To Dance. Once the show started, I was even more in awe: everyone sang along to Bonde do Role, clapped along with CSS and danced for hours to Diplo's set. As is par for the tour, the place was so hot by the end of the night that equipment was basically melting and even the merch with no bodies in it was sweating.
So I ask you this, Boston: what happened?! If you guys danced like this a year ago I wouldn't have had to move to Brooklyn. Y'all got bit by the dancing bug or something? Anyway, I'm real proud to be a Bostonian right now. You guys done good. Let's do it again in September when I come back to DJ, yeah?
Extra big shouts and sorries to Mad Decent affiliate and DJ extraordinaire
DJA (aka Doc$) who stood outside for a while as we tried to get him in the door... to no avail. Fortunately for you all, his shit hot remix of Bonde's "Melo Do Tabaco" will be on their tour CDEP, which should be with us any day now...
I can't say everything was peachy, though. I was really hoping to get down to Fenway last night, not to see the game, but to buy some of those cheap Sully's Tees from the vendors outside. My 'Ortiz Has A Posse' shirt has seen better days and it would be nice to rep for the home team in hostile territory for these next two shows.
(Side note: everywhere we go, Yankees hats! Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto -- Yankees hats! They haunt me and they are the bane of my existence. Where is the love?)
Day off for everyone today. CSS is making crazy shit for their video blog, Bonde are gonna try and find some sweet used synthesizers and I'm gonna go back to Brooklyn and sleep for about 48 hours.
July 17, 2006
This just in: Canada ain't no poussez. After a weird night in Toronto and very little sleep for everyone, we pulled into my very favorite city in North
America -- Montreal.
Our hotel was right on the edge of Chinatown, so Diplo and I ventured out to see what food we could find. What we found first was the most mediocre fire
dancing performance ever.
DOWNLOAD:
firedanceguy.MOV (6.57 MB, QuickTime)
Dissatisfied by the fireman (fire, f-fireman) and the 80-year old tai chi instructor who took the stage after him, the hunt for food was back on. Diplo was
looking for poutine, which I previously thought was the worst thing in the world. I was wrong, however, because the Chinese buffet restaurant that we ended
up eating at was, without doubt, one of the worst meals anyone could ever have. It was just one of those places where even eating lettuce is a scary
proposition. (In retrospect, the chicken wings were a bad call, but yo I was
hungry!) I wish I knew the name so that I could warn you, but past
experiences lead me to say: just steer clear of Montreal Chinatown cuisine in general. And $0.75 hot dogs on Saint Laurent.
Admittedly, the restaurant in question had the Jell-O / general dessert game on lock. In fact, Montreal's game was tight all around: beautiful Frenchie
girls, much love and singing along during Bonde's set and everyone (like,
everyone) stayed all the way 'til 3AM, dancing to "Surfin' Bird" and Dick
Dale in a Sala Rossa which must have been 200 degrees.
Some of the kids had a little too much fun and the cops had to come in and clear errbody off the sidewalk in front of the venue and out of the street in
front of our bus. One girl was practically throwing herself under the tires, saying she wouldn't leave until she could "say goodbye" to Pedro, who was
cowering in fear in the back of the bus.
The next morning, we awoke to find that either (a) that same girl has some wild fingernails on her, or (b) our bus had been sideswiped. Luckily, they just
broke the frame of the door and only one lil guitar amp got scratched up. I say "luckily" because if the driver had done any worse damage, tour manager Edu
would have pieced together the evidence
CSI-style and bodied him.
Our night in Ottawa didn't fix the bus, but it definitely fixed any other problems we may have had. (i.e. tiredness, crankiness) Everyone -- the crowd, the
venue management, the bar staff, our pals in Disorganised -- was super friendly. Marina sang "Melo Do Tabaco" about 3 or 4 times, since literally all the DJs
who were spinning had their own remixes that they wanted her to perform live.
Que lastima! You can check out Jokers of the Scene and Bonjay's remixes
right herre:
DOWNLOAD:
Bonde do Role - "Melo Do Tabaco (JOTS
Remix)"
DOWNLOAD:
Bonde do Role - "Melo Do Tabaco (Bonjay Remix)"
Of course, things can get a bit boring for a lowly merch lackey, so Luvfoxxx and Marina helped me pass the time with a little dancing during Diplo's surf
rock set. My good (great, even!) friends Alanna and Pho from Bonjay hung out too, and Linus and Chameleonic from JOTS set up their dope lil mixtape distro
table. (It was just like Brooklyn but cleaner.) I wish I had taken some pictures because they're all quite beautiful people, but I'm retarded.
Lastly: DJ Gorky, brought to you by Jagermeister (in more than one way). Over and out for now, kidz. NEXT STOP: BOSTON!
July 15, 2006
So the first night wasn't without a few stumbles, but I think that's the way most good things start. The venue in Buffalo was real dope though, a nice outdoor patio with the bands playing with their backs to the street -- lots and lots of interested onlookers stopping and scratching their heads, wondering if they should come in. (Some actually did, and the cluster of middle-aged couples who dared to try ended up really liking Bonde's "doo wah diddy" song.) That's the view from the patio up there; I kept wondering if we were keeping anyone awake. Best dude of the night was the video guy, who provided this projection for Bonde's performance:
DOWNLOAD: bondecarnivalevideo.MOV (5.9 MB, QuickTime) 
But before any of that could happen, tour manager Edu and the CSS kids had to perform their ceremonial urban drum circle in the hotel parking lot.
My view for the summer, basically.
The first satisfied customer of the tour. He came out of nowhere, hours before the show started, and Pedro from Bonde told him that he needed to buy a t-shirt. Apparently, he agreed. He wasn't at the show, though -- I guess the intensity of the shirt was all he could handle. (Also could have been the intensity of Pedro's sales pitch: "Buy this so we can eat! We come from the third world!")
As this picture illustrates, Toronto was a different story completely. If Buffalo was Rock City, T-Dot was Rave City. Dudes walking around outside selling glowsticks; girls running backstage and tryin' to grab the bands' beer, then threatening to call the police because security tossed them out; and of course, groupies. Luvfoxxx and Luiza from CSS had at least one big fan, obviously. A few girls even asked me what hotel they were staying at -- come on, they're only on Sub Pop! (I keed, I keed.) But the truth was, there was no hotel, and I'm writing this, on the verge of falling off my bunk, on the bus at 6:03 AM.
Lack of details, I know, I know. But the Toronto show sucked for me 'cause the merch table wasn't even in the main room, so I couldn't even watch the bands play! Bonde sounded great, though -- louder and tighter than the night before, and Marina even learned the lyrics to my favorite song of theirs. It's called "Comigo" and BDR tell me the lyrics are really corny. But to my non-Portuguese-speaking ass, it sounds like pure 80s Miami bass/freestyle throwback hotness. And Egg Foo Young produced it! I think it'll be on the album.
Ok sleep now.
July 13, 2006
Number of Mad Decent Radio discs stuffed into CD sleeves by moi:
445
Hours that Bonde Do Role waited at Newark Airport's Terminal A:
14
People on tour bus, including Jimmy the driver:
13 (uh oh)
Bunk beds on said tour bus:
12
Minutes that it took the Brazilians to find the Jack Daniels on the tour bus:
10
Minutes I spent trying to get a wireless internet signal on the tour bus:
25
Time at which the Brazilians had to awaken today to get their Canadian visas:
5:45 AMBuffalo tonight. The first show is exciting, obviously, but made even moreso 'cause them boys
Capswell & Jonesington and
Steve Kream are doing the unofficially official afterparty. You'll have to pardon the brevity of this first one, since there haven't really been any exciting developments/theatrics, unless you count Bonde being mildly annoyed (but still polite!) after waiting in the terminal without internet, cell phones or any way to know what time we were going to show up. In fact, everyone seems swell and charming. But isn't that what they all say?
