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SERIOUS FUN: CB are the first to tell you it's all for the partying crowd — but they take the party seriously.
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In recent years, our random cultural generator has produced a new breed of DJ, blog-fueled crews who brazenly mix R&B with post-rock and reggaeton with pop punk as they host parties in cities from Seattle to Atlanta and cultivate their audience on-line. Yet these smartypants kids who put rap a cappella over indie-rock riffs have a precedent: Certified Bananas. Max Gitlen (from Albany) and Sam Posner (Cambridge) have had a residency at Central Square’s Enormous Room for more than a year, and in that Internet time imitators have sprouted up all over North America. Philly’s Hollertronix crew or Brooklyn’s the Rub have been doing their street-accepted DJ thing for longer, but CB, educated at Brown and still based in Providence, have done more to stretch the definition of DJ blends than their predecessors. In the process, they’ve redefined what a club night can be.
“There’s a lot of other DJ teams that do that as well,” Posner says over the phone from Providence. “But we come from more popular stuff, maybe even cheesy stuff. We play it only because we like it and that’s what we’re into.” What they’re into is putting Don Omar atop a Green Day riff, or working Soul Coughing inside Dirt McGirt. This month, the two are traveling across the US in support of their first mix CD, the self-released Sprang. The tour ends with their residency at Enormous Room this Friday, May 12, with special guest and fellow beatslinger Ghislain Poirier.
For almost two years, Posner and Gitlen have been cultivating their audience mostly on-line, through MP3 mixes hosted by friends like Lemon-Red and the Fader. But the time is ripe for a genuine Certified Bananas CD. “It feels like it’s been kind of leading up to this, so it’s very exciting,” Posner says.
Sprang is as smart as you’d expect from a pair of Ivy League grads. Yet in spite of the cheeky references and nimble cuts, it rocks the party. It’s hard to articulate the funk of a mix that layers 60 songs in 60 minutes, but here’s a taste: after the sixth minute, a jazzy Tortoise jam kicks in and, seconds later, Usher rides over the top.
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy,” Posner says. “But that is my personal favorite part on the mix. They’re in the same key and the same tempo.” Posner, who also plays in the band Miss Fairchild, has an ear for harmony. “Max and I were listening to that track, and I started humming Usher to it,” he laughs. “We thought, ‘That sort of sounds similar, that’s pretty funny, I’m sure they’re not and I’m sure I’m making this up.’ But later we tried it just to see and basically nothing had to be done to either one of them. . . . We’re interested in matching things not only tempo-wise but melody-wise. Just because they are at the same tempo doesn’t mean it will sound good together. There’s another level in finding things that are actually in the same key.” What Posner describes happens time and time again on Sprang.
There is a lot of frivolity in CB’s style — they’re the first to tell you it’s all for the partying crowd. But they take the party seriously. Poirier, who recently produced tracks for Lady Sovereign, says in an e-mail, “I basically decided to start my irregular monthly night ‘Bounce le Gros’ when Certified Bananas came for the first time in Montreal. It was one of the most packed crowds ever. . . . It was insane. Just insane.
“I think their main quality is they are musically flexible. They can go from a really obscure track to a huge pop track in five minutes. They sincerely love pop music and indie music with all the links in between. Also, as tag-team DJs . . . well, it’s like having two hard drives on your computer.”
Putting über-cool club tracks from Metro Area underneath Three 6 Mafia is something only the Banana crew can do, but it doesn’t stop the imitators, many of whom are hosting the pair on their weekends-only tour. “It’s part of the way this whole thing has come together,” Posner says. “Everyone has their little outpost.”
Posner and Gilten are playing nights like Superfriends in San Francisco and Nanci Raygun in Richmond. Since these are all weekend party nights, the duo will return to Providence a few times during the tour to resume their perfectly non-ironic day jobs — Posner is a lab technician and Gitlen runs a food co-op. “Max is Americorps-funded, so he’s working with a small organization,” says Posner; he adds that he himself has always been a big “fan of science.” And there are many chemical composites on Sprang, along with plenty of co-operative moments. Minute #50, though, had this writer laughing out loud. The blend? How about a Baltimore breaks remix of Little Mermaid’s “Kiss the Girl”?
“I would like that song even if you didn’t put it on a mixtape,” Posner says. “We definitely bring a pop-music angle. We’re not interested in genre bashing. We’re going to look for stuff that works, and it could be from any genre of music.” Despite thousands of Internet downloads, Certified Bananas have pressed only 500 copies of Sprang. They’re hoping to stay under the radar of any desperate lawyers. And though sampling Disney isn’t the most subtle of moves, CB can take comfort in the fact that Diplo and the Rub have been moving units through mixtape outlets for months.
“We wanted to call the mix Fair Trade,” Posner laughs. “But we realized that if people searched Google for ‘Fair Trade Certified Bananas’ they’d get links to, uh, Fair Trade–certified bananas and not us.” He laughs again. “That idea got squashed — oh, the only time I make [banana] puns is when I don’t realize it.”
From Poirier’s point of view, there’s no mystery to Certified Bananas’ success. “Work and curiosity. They worked and still work hard. That’s the only way.”
Certified Bananas + Ghislain Poirier | May 12 | Enormous Room, 569 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.491.5550
On the Web
Certified Bananas: //www.certifiedbananas.com/