About a year before I left Kansas City for San Francisco, I was asked by a colleague of mine if I wanted to DJ at his restaurant. It was a hip new sushi spot in the downtown area and he’d just had his Saturday night slot open up for one reason or another. Of course, I was totally interested.
My colleague, the owner, had also been a DJ with me during another Saturday night gig at a different spot for a few years. It was an all 80’s/Retro night and it was one of the busiest nights in Kansas City for I don’t know how long. And it’s not like we were playing anything new those nights, but for some reason, the place would be packed, asses to elbows, every week.
Anyway, my friend knew that I understood he was looking for mood music rather than trying to turn his dinner rush into a dance club. “Do what you want, just remember it’s a restaurant first. I trust your judgment.”
Since I had recently started messing about with Serato (a digitally based music platform) that allowed me to play pretty much anything and required no vinyl, this gave me a lot more musical freedom. For the next several months, I treated my Saturday night gig at his restaurant like a musical lab or experiment, trying to throw all manner of styles together based purely on BPM alone. Some experiments were more successful than others, like this mix.
I REALLY love this mix for a number of reasons not worth going into, but the amount of blending and layering of vocals over tracks is something that’s become part of my normal style now all these years later.
I hope you enjoy:
http://www.mixcloud.com/bucho/bucho-live-nara-110108-kitchen-sink-1/
