…apparently tonight might be my last night on the planet. (Which is cool . . . I have jury duty next month.)
But if I DO shuffle off this mortal coil—or survive—it’ll be in a blaze of vinyl at tonight’s DJ Battle to the Death! at vitaminwater uncapped LIVE. Yours truly is going toe to toe, track to track, with some of the city’s biggest music nerds (and I mean that in the most self-reflective way possible.)
As the City Paper’s Jon Fischer concisely put it, I’ll be up against him, and “…Aaron Leitko (WaPo/Pitchfork), Rick Taylor (of DJ night We Fought the Big One), Patrick Kigongo (of various cool local bands), man-about-town Andrew Bucket, Comet Ping Pong booker Sasha Lord…” and our host and ring leader, Mr. John Foster.
Here’s how John spelled out the rules to all involved yesterday:
“Two people start off head to head for a half an hour. Again, the idea is to build/react to the song played before you. I will be judging based on how creative you are with your choices while keeping the flow going. I will do a loose 1-3 points system per song and then total it up. We will be just having fun, but we need a system to send people on each round. Don’t get too crazed over it. I also don’t know everything, so I may ask you why you chose something if it is not obvious to me. Holding the vibe is a legitimate reason, it could be a play on a lyric, other band with some member, band from same city, used to date so and so – any connection what so ever.
The next two come in and start by building off the last song played from the previous pair, and then go head to head. That will continue until we have four winners that do it all over again in the semis and then a head to head for the winner.
What do you need to bring with you? Great question!
Basically, as many songs as you can have on hand, while not making transport uncomfortable. You won’t know what you need exactly until the person before you has played their song. I am sure you can make do with an ipod or a single crate of records. I leave it up to you. I have to think a crammed laptop gives you the best bet but everyone has their individual favorites in whatever format they can grab them. You may play as few as 8-10 songs or it could be 30-40 should you go all the way.”
Interesting, hm?
I’m playing it all with vinyl or CDs. (Yea, I do have a few of the latter.) So, can the physical media triumph over the digital?
We shall see friends, we shall see. . .
