P-Thugg (Patrick Gemayel) and Dave 1 (David Macklovitch) make some of the most entertaining music on the scene today. Hailing from Montreal, Quebec, the duo met as childhood friends, and share an encyclopedic knowledge of the rap game. Dave is also the older brother of A-Trak (Alain Macklovitch), arguably the best DJ on the planet, winning international DMC battles as early as 15 years old. To boot, they bill themselves as the only successful Jewish/Arab collaboration since the time of Christ.

Their breakout album, Fancy Footwork, was actually the band’s second, launching the duo into the indie forefront, with songs like the disco-tinged “Bonafied Lovin” and “Momma’s Boy,” which sees P-Thugg and Dave 1 at their most Hall & Oates. Their next release, Business Casual (out September 14^th), seeks to take the funk to the next level.

While they’re currently on the road in support of the new record, I got to talk to P-Thugg about what it means to work, and bear the vision, in the music world.

Chromeo is set to perform this Friday night (July 30^th) at the House of Blues with Neon Indian.

– Matt Rohr

Hey P thank you for joining me. So, do you like Boston?

I love BAHston, Jammin’ 94.5 guy! (laughs) But tough loss for the Celtics this year, I hate the Lakers, and all west coast sports teams. Don’t talk to me about west coast sports.

Well, talk to me about the new album, Business Casual. Personally, your last album Fancy Footwork, was a huge favorite of mine, can we expect a direction shift, or anything different?

Basically the new record is kind of like Fancy Footwork. We took two of the directions we already had, and accentuated them. There’s still a lot of fundamental funk and electro, but with some more dramatic shifts– kind of like electronic Parliament. You’re gonna get straight ahead funk, but at the opera. It’s a little tough to describe, but you can rest assured that the funk element is still very much present.

It’s just a bit more musical. The other kind of direction we took, was late 70’s style piano chord progressions and some more two-part harmonies. We did a lot of work on piano. Really, the whole record was written on piano and vocoder. Our thought was that if our songs could survive on such a simple framework, then we’d be able to really develop and gel our ideas better. That’s how you find your winners.

Certainly, a lot of funk is based upon a jam, or a groove, so this approach really must have opened some new doors for you guys.

Absolutely, there’s always a loner on the album too. Last album, it was “Momma’s Boy.” The song was still very much Chromeo, but we always try to include something a little different to keep things from heading too much down one direction. That’s always tough with the funk.

What has it been like working with someone you met and have been friends with since a young age? It must have been difficult wading through the younger, less focused years, and still standing together to do something you guys love.

Well I think the key is what you just said; it really is something we love to do. It’s easy to get distracted when you set yourself some goals, and then aren’t 100% convinced on what it is you’re doing. You get a couple of riffs together and book gigs, and you start to think, well, maybe I should just get a 9-to-5 and get married. But if you fiend for it when you wake up in the morning, and all you wanna do is get to your piano. I think that’s the key, the true love. And as far as being a duo, when you wake up every day, for the last 20 years, and you have someone who is digging the exact same stuff, all the time. That’s where the magic happens. Something will give at some point. It’s hard work and it’s definitely not easy, but if you have the vision, it will happen.

I know Dave-1 is a professor of French Literature at Columbia, and I believe is pursuing his PhD as well, but has there ever been anything in your life that you’ve tried following like that?

Music is my full-time job, especially when Dave is in school. I take care of more of the day-to-day things that a band needs to do, the blogging, the maintenance, the bill paying.  That basically takes up all my time. I’m more of a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy, not really a scholar. I was a travel agent, and I was an accountant, which I went to school for. I used to make didgeridoos and sell them. I even used to make gold fronts and sell those too.  I grew up in an immigrant family with a strong business sense, so we did everything we could to pull in money. At times, it was kind of all over the place. And it kind of carried over to my music. You know, if you have a clear vision, and you can taste and see what you want to make, then you can turn your music into that product, that didge, or those fronts.

So what’s on repeat these days?

Hm, let me open my iTunes…. Oh yeah, I just got Big Boi’s new album, and it’s pretty sweet. Also, a lot of Boz Scaggs. I’m an early hip-hop and funk guy. A lot of Zappa too.

So the ultimate question then must be, how important is to stay Business Casual?

Incredibly important. Business Casual is definitely the way to be.

Flyer: King EvRock

Supertonic and Hub Media want to get down and celebrate summer with you. Most importantly, we want to celebrate you, Boston. This Thursday at Enormous Room, we have curated a night full of some of our favorite Boston artists to say thank you for all the continued support of our site’s mission: supporting local arts & entertainment! A live show from Dirty Dishes will be sandwiched between DJ sets from Bodega Girls, Leisure, Gentleman Hall and The Wandas.

As an added bonus, our friends at Heineken have hooked us up with an hour of free beer (while supplies last), so get there early and ready to party. Make sure you RSVP via Eventbrite to get in for free (otherwise, admission will set you back $5).

See you there!

–Teaparty | Supertonic

PARTY INFORMATION:
Who: Live Set by: Dirty Dishes
DJ sets by: Bodega Girls, Leisure, Gentlemen Hall,… and The Wandas
When: Thursday July 22nd
Where: Enormous Room in Central Square, Cambridge
Time: 9:15PM
Cost: FREE with RSVP on our Eventbrite event page, $5 at the door otherwise

RSVP LINK: http://bostondoesitbest.eventbrite.com/

MUST RSVP TO EVENTBRITE LINK TO GET IN FOR FREE.

Please Note: That an RSVP does not secure entry. Therefore, please come early so you can party with us! We look forward to seeing all of you

Wine guru T.J. Douglas and marketing extraordinaire Hadley Douglas might just change your life.  Their fresh approach to the wine shopping experience takes form in The Urban Grape, the spanking new addition to the Chestnut Hill Shopping Center. (Yes, it’s T-accessible!) Their mission, as T.J. puts it, is “to take the intimidation out of wine, and to help you understand why you drink what you drink.”

We recommend that you check out the two enomatic serving machines–one for whites, one for reds–just to the left of the entrance.  The tasting flights within are organized by weight, employing the system of Kevin Zraly, legendary wine director of Windows of the World. Like Zraly, The Urban Grape analogizes wine to dairy: very light wines (e.g. bubbles) are likened to skim milk.  Very heavy wines (e.g. Barolos) are likened to heavy cream.

Your selections here will lead you to the bottles, which follow the same progressive light-to-heavy system.  “Usually wine stores are organized by varietal, and then by region.  There are very few stores that do this way,” Hadley explains.  T.J. concurs: “This progressive format is only used in restaurants with a really great wine program.”

The proprietors ask that you think of them as your concierge.  We like to think of them as the viticulture version of the Apple Genius Bar.  Based solely on the flavor profile you want (or even tonight’s meal) T.J. Douglas and his staff will “build you a bottle.” For example, if you express a preference for medium-bodied reds, they will bring you to the section that includes Bordeaux, but also some Pinot Noir and anything else that shares that structure.

This method effectively frees up a number of options that you might not have tried otherwise.  This is great fun for those of us who are new to wine and just learning that one varietal can be manipulated to produce vastly different results. Once you have made up your mind, your choice is stored in The Urban Grape system, making it easy as pie to track your new favorites.

Speaking of favorites, given the chance to quiz the wine enthusiast couple on their preferences, we could not resist!  His and her favorites below:

TJ – Sandrone Barbera D’Alba from Piedmont (sold at the store for $44).  Hadley says, “Cat Silirie, the wonderful sommelier for Barbara Lynch’s restaurant group, tasted us on this wine at a dinner party many years ago.  TJ fell in love…it was the first wine that he bought for himself – a half a case – and that he laid down to age.”

Hadley – Trefethen Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa.

Wine to Woo a Lover:

TJ – 2002 Ferrari Perle Metodo Classico – 100% Chardonnay Sparkling Wine (sold at the store for $41).  “We poured a Ferrari sparkling wine at our wedding, so I guess it did its job!”

Hadley – Billecart-Salmont Brut Rose Champagne (sold at the store for $110) “In a word, the greatest rose champagne ever made.”

Best Summer Wine:

TJ – 2009 Palagetto Vernaccia di San Gimignano. (sold at the store for $13) “Bright, fresh, floral, great transition wine for those that love Pinot Grigio.”

Hadley – 2009 Commanderie de Peyrassol Rosé. (sold at the store for $21) “I love this wine. We bought a case last April to last us the summer and it was gone by Memorial Day. You literally can’t stop drinking it once you’ve started!”

Bang for the Buck:

TJ – 2007 Piazzo Barbera from Piedmont ($11). “Great with pizza, BBQ, serve it with a slight chill.  This is one of TJ’s favorite weekday wines.”

Hadley – 2009 Chapoutier “Belleruche” Cotes-du-Rhone Blanc White $11.

–Christine del Castillo

This is our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty | Supertonic

THE LIGHTS OUT

[ ] Love on Boston rock

With The Organ Beats and The Lights Out at the Mideast Upstairs

[ ] Get soulful

With the folks of Langhorne Slim, Ha Ha Tonka, Chris Warren (of Viva Viva) at the Mideast Downstairs

[ ] Try to outdress these babes

at TraniWreck: GOLD III at Oberon

[ ] Get gleefully dizzy

with Sidewalk Driver, The Motion Sick, Brendan Boogie & the Best Intentions, Leo Blais at TT the Bear’s Place

MARCONI

[ ] Adore some dulcet sounds

With Au Revoir Simone, Alexa Wilding, Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, Marconi at TT the Bear’s Place

[ ] Dance ’til you just can’t get enough

With Flavorheard at Enormous Room

[ ] Fall in love

with Heartless Bastards, The Builders and the Butchers, Cassavettes, Peter Wolf Crier at the Mideast Downstairs

[ ] Get wordy

with Lizard Lounge Poetry Night feat Jeff Robinson Trio

[ ] Get on the good foot

With Left Turn at Enormous Room

[ ] Don’t be afraid

Of Sea Monsters at Precinct

Joshua Decosta, better known as local rapper HW, first got his start in his hometown of Fall River. “I started when I was 14. I was heavy into rap–bad rap. A lot of Insane Clown Posse,” he admits. “I started trying to make rap songs and they were terrible. I listen to the recordings when I feel bad about where I am now.”

“Eventually, I got to the point were I had some songs that I liked and other people said were good. I decided to do a show. I booked a hall and rented the equipment. A riot broke out. Some kids decided to show up that really wanted to pit. They punched the wrong kid and… it was ridiculous.”

From those auspicious beginnings, things have grown steadily for Josh. He eventually dropped out of college and relocated to Boston to pursue his rap dreams. His commitment and hard work have earned him a place as a regular local opener for national alternative hip hop acts, including Sole, Eyedea and Abilities, Astronautalis, Cage, and Themselves. It’s clearly a point of pride for the genuinely humble musician: “I piss off local rappers so much, because I’m like the weird, emo rapper of Boston.”

Though his delivery and production fall more along the lines of traditional rap than the aforementioned acts, his subject matter–frank revelations on depression and unsuccessful interactions with women–aligns him squarely with the movement embodied by independent hip hop stalwart Atmosphere.

“Most people would say I’m more influenced by Atmosphere than anything else. I write depressing songs about women,” he explains. “I don’t sound like them though. I make normal rap music; it’s just sad and depressing.”

As the title of his most recent full length would suggest, A Year’s Worth of Worry, is drawn from plenty of heartache and life upheaval. Explaining the origins of the album–which was released in December of 2009–HW offers: “I had just moved to Boston. I split up with the girl I had been with for two years. There was a year with a lot of transition. From 2008 to 2009, I was really depressed, I was bouncing around, living a lot places. I did three or four tours, dated a lot, and made a lot of songs.”

Rather than spiraling, HW focused his energy on his work. “I don’t like the way my voice sounds, and I feel like I always perform better on stage than in the studio. I always perform a song live as many times as possible before I record. So, I recorded A Year’s Worth of Worry as a live album and put it out for free. It was just a lot of sad, depressing music, and people really liked it for whatever reason.”

Beyond the problems in his personal life, he’s also experienced frustration with his attempts to break into the Boston hip hop scene. “As far as anyone knows, all the rap in Boston is hood. My scene–whatever you want to call it–is not very well-respected. One of the bigger hip hop blogs in the city will not put anyone not hood on their site.”

“The point is,” he explains,” I’ve done a lot of stuff, and I feel very disrespected in this scene, even though I’ve put in a lot of work.”

Though he’s vocal about the flaws he sees in the local scene, Josh isn’t letting it discourage him. He’s currently working on four solo projects. He’s nearly finished his next full-length, which is due out at the end of 2010, “hopefully on Leedz/Traffic Entertainment.” There’s also an EP in the works with Arizona producer Mobb Rob entitled, Wallpaper Exit Wounds, and another with Recaall entitled, When In Rome, Burn the City. He’s also recording material for a yet-to-be-titled EP with his regular DJ, Emoh Betta of the Deck Demons.

The next release in line, however, is the debut album of The Scribblenauts, his pairing with rapper/producer Redlist and DJ Emoh.

HW performs at the Western Front on Friday, July 16th.

–Tim Burdick

Kirsten Amann is living what might be considered an upscale tippler’s dream. When not behind the bar at South End hotspot Toro, this multi-talented lady can be found helming her eponymous PR company (bringing many delightful cocktail-related events to fruition, including the seminar and tasting with The Bitter Truth). And as if that weren’t enough boozy goodness, Amann is a founding member of the Boston chapter of LUPEC: Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails. We recently sat down together for a chat about the group and its seamless melding of cocktail culture, American history, and even a little bit a of feminism.

First, a brief history of LUPEC. The first chapter was founded in Pittsburgh in 2001. Its cheeky tagline (“Dismantling the patriarchy, one cocktail at a time”) underscores a deeper truth: much like high-end kitchens, mixology is still, according to Amann, “very much a boy’s club.” Which is not to say that male bartenders or cocktail enthusiasts are at all bad. But it left a small but vibrant niche to be filled, with women teaching women about cocktails.

Here in Boston, those ladies came together in 2007 under the leadership of Misty Kalkofen (currently rocking the bar at Drink in Fort Point). The group’s membership is diverse, containing everyone from bartenders to media types to a water treatment engineer.

Because each chapter has its own personality and spin, the local group has had the chance to branch out in many directions. Their charitable endeavors run the gamut from a tiki-themed luau to a published work, The Little Black Book of Cocktails. The generative process behind this pocket sized handbook gives a delightfully telling look at the incredible energy of the group. It began with a collaboration with a photographer friend on a series of black and white photos based on classic images of silent film star Louise Brooks.

“We just did it for fun, and then we wanted to use them as a fundraising tool,” Amann reminisces, “We loved the images, and were going to do a calendar but couldn’t get it together in time – so we did a book.” All proceeds from the book’s sales go to charity, and it’s an accessible example of the way that creative, motivated people can turn a whim of a project into a powerhouse for the forces of female empowerment.

When I ask about feminizzle and its place in the world of drankin’, Amann gets thoughtful. She points out that during the golden age of the cocktail, women were not allowed to be in bars unless they were working there or (ahem) working there. Possibly as a result of this exclusion–and the saloon’s ensuing reputation as a house of ill-repute–women were a driving force behind temperance leagues and eventually Prohibition itself. The speakeasies of the Roaring Twenties, then, were the first places where men and women were allowed to mingle and drink as relative equals.

The ladies of LUPEC

Bringing it from the past and into the present and future, Amann points out that women are frequently judged by what, and how much, they drink: which often comes out in coverage of LUPEC itself. “I don’t think we necessarily drink more than the men in the industry,” she says, “But every time someone writes about us, that’s what comes up.” She goes on to discuss the gender stereotypes inherent in certain shapes of drink glasses, and even in various different hues of beverages. The discomfort some men have, for example, when they order a drink only to find when it arrives that it is served in a martini glass and has a dangerously pale red–dare I say pink?–hue can be amusing to the bystander for its squirm factor, but is also fascinating on a sociohistorical level.

Kirsten describes the rabbithole of cocktail enthusiasm that goes into that history, and how it starts. “The thing about beverages is that you can’t really separate a spirit from a culture,” she begins. (A total social history nerd, my interest is piqued.) “Once you start to dig and go into that infinite well, you learn that the cocktail is an American invention, and that people here have always drank spirits. And also that ice is an American invention, which is why Americans order everything with a ton of ice. That’s not to say that there haven’t been cocktails that sprang up all over the world, but the invention is a huge part of our country.”

We delve a little deeper into where that concept evolved from and how it changed over time. “Before cocktails, a major category that people drank was punch. But here in America, people decided that that was something they couldn’t do because we’re a very rugged, individualistic country–no one has time to sit around a bowl drinking punch all day! So we came up with a smaller version: the cocktail. And they’re an incredible window into history; they’re so affected by the politics of the time (quite literally, because of Prohibition). It really gets the part of me that is interested in history, and in why we do things the way we do in the present. This is an important, interesting part of our culture, and you can recreate them if you find the right ingredients. You can drink a little slice of the past.”

For Amann, that interest began when she first made her way into the restaurant industry, waitressing during high school and college and then finding that the industry had become a kind of a home (“I’ve met some of my closest friends while wearing an apron,” she quips). Her involvement with LUPEC has enabled her to be a bit of an educator when it comes to discussing Toro’s beverage program with guests, many of her PR clients are spirits brands and she works with in conjunction with Debbie Rizzo of Drink PR, whom she met while representing the Boston chapter at Tales of the Cocktail.

It’s an interesting life, and she is practical but excited about the paths it may lead to in future: “Misty and I are currently at work on a cocktail book which would be a huge dream come true for me. I’ve wanted to write books since I was a little girl, so this would be just amazing. Beyond that, who knows? I’m trying to position myself as an eager student right now and allow that to guide me in this. So, whether that will lead to more PR projects, more writing projects, work with a brand or maybe some sort of teaching some day, I don’t know. But I am totally 100% thrilled with all of it. I cannot stress how much I love my job and how blessed I feel to be able to learn about, write about, talk about and drink cocktails and call it work.”

Jonesing for some information on our national invention? Check out LUPEC Boston’s site, or slide on down to the bar at Drink, Toro, Trina’s Starlite Lounge, Green Street, Eastern Standard, No. 9 Park, or any of the other fabulous spots around the city that are actively bringing classic back. You may find that the drink you receive comes seasoned with history, flair, and joie de vivre – which means the ladies of LUPEC will be succeeding, one cocktail at a time.

–Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong

Photo: Matt Rosadini

On Camden’s Myspace page, you’ll find one quote by jazz regular Brandford Marsalis that reads like this:

“Many years later, a lot of younger musicians were hanging around with Elvin Jones, and they were talking about, ‘Man, you know, you guys had an intensity when you were playing with Coltrane. I mean, what was it like? How do you play with that kind of intensity?’ And Elvin Jones looks at them and says, ‘You gotta be willing to die with the motherfucker.’ They started laughing like kids do, waiting for the punch line, and then they realized he was serious. How many people do you know that are willing to die—period? Die with anybody! And when you listen to those records, that’s exactly what they sound like. I mean that they would die for each other.”

When you hear Camden play with one another, this seminal connection rings true in every note they play. Taking production styling of artists such as Caribou and Passion Pit, and incorporating song forms that could be translated into the likes of Modest Mouse, and even the Smashing Pumpkins, the result is a heavy hearted, yet relentlessly optimistic release entitled Vale EP. Off the stage, the group interacts with one another with such serious fun, that it’s easy to see why the group would find that quote a fitting description.

Camden is playing at Great Scott on July 13^th at 9 PM.

–Matt Rohr

Photo: Matt Rosadini

Hey guys, thanks for joining me. So tell me about the group, and what instruments you play.

JS: Well, we should mention that our 5^th, Chris Dwyer, is not here. He’s in Flagstaff, AZ right now playing and recording some folk stuff. I think he’s out stalking Joanna Newsom, he’s seriously obsessed with her [everyone laughs]. But my name is Jason Sibilia and I play guitar and I sing backup, but I also do a lot of the sequencing and production.

J: I’m Jim and I play bass and sing.

JB: I’m Jason Bergman and I play drums

T: And I’m Tim and I play guitars.

JS: Yeah, it started as a school project for me, and I was always friends with Jason and Jim, and I had taken a few classes with Tim at Northeastern. Jason was always over and Jim has an incredible voice, so I just kind of asked them if they wanted to make music together. At the time I was writing instrumental stuff, so I asked them to join me– and Jim could add vocals.

J: That was October of 2008, and Timmy and Chris joined around 2009. I used to be in a band with Chris called Giraffe. We had one show.

Do you guys have any releases as a full group?

J: We just dropped our first EP as a full band, but Jason [Sibilia] had this release called Other Weather that was just him, and it was like this psychedelic instrumental stuff, and that was the first Camden release.

JS: We did the full band release pretty much by ourselves. I have a makeshift studio in my room. The EP came out very recently, on May 27^th actually. I’ve got an MPC and use that to sequence everything.  All of our songs came from Jim and I sitting down in our rooms working everything out on acoustic guitars.

J: You know how it is in a city, rehearsal spaces are few and far between and they charge so much to use the space. Camden was definitely born in a bedroom.  Just a lot of file passing, back and forth, and seeing how things stick.

What’s some of your favorite moments from playing shows together as a full band?

JB: We’ve only been a full band since December, before that, it was just Jason [Sibilia] and Jim playing together. But we’ve been playing very consistently since our first show in January at the Middle East Upstairs.

J: We played this little record store/café in Ithaca, NY.

JB: A friend of mine from home plays in this band called Caution Children and they invited us out there to play, and it was great. The place was packed and they loved us and Caution Children both. We had our record release show not too long ago, and we had them come out to Boston for that, and it was nice to give them the same experience here that they gave us in Ithaca. The Ithaca show was really reaffirming for us, since it was our second or third show together as a band, and we didn’t know anybody at all in Ithaca except for the band, and it was refreshing to see the response from people and see how excited they got.  And we’re also going to be playing at Enormous Room in September with some DJ’s.

T: We’ll also be playing a show at Great Scott on July 13^th, that’ll be our first upcoming show!

JS: I was wondering when somebody was gonna bring that up! [laughs] Yeah, the Ithaca show was great, but we’ve had some less than great moments…

[all laugh]

J: You gotta let me take this one…

Photo: Matt Rosadini

Oh yeah? Tell me about that.

J: We had been offered to play a show, the day of the show, because two bands had dropped out and they really needed to fill some space. We played with this band called Personal Finance at a bar in Cambridge. It was a really rainy spring night, and we got there very early and we were just kind of wierded out from the start. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but it is not a place for bands, they usually only have DJs. The stage is the size of a coffee table. The sound guy told me to plug my bass directly into the subwoofer.

JS: (laughs) Yeah, and we were promised free drinks

T: What? I paid for my drinks all night, and I made sure to let them know I was in the band!  [all laugh]

J: An $80 tab later, it was time for us to go on stage.

JB: Yeah, I don’t think we’re ever allowed back.

J: [laughs] Yeah, we said and did some things on the stage, also stopped playing some songs in the middle of them…

Well, by the sound of the place, it seems like it had less to do with drinking and more to do with the fact the venue didn’t have their shit together.

J: Yeah, I mean we got really drunk, but only because it was really lame. There were, like, set up tables and people eating meals all throughout our set.

T: Trust me, we let everyone know how lame it was. I mean, the game was still on the TV…

JS: I mean in hindsight, it was kind of badass. Jim, being the lead singer, started calling people out in the crowd, shouting things at the bartender. At one point he started calling a guy in the front a hippie and telling him to cut his long hair. He came to the afterparty and we saw him there, but he was a really chill guy, having long hair and all.

JB: At one point I just remember thinking, ‘Man, something’s missing’, and then looking over at Tim, and seeing him leaning against a wall with his guitar still on, just staring off.

JS: It was definitely an important lesson, as a young band, we try to take everything we can get, but now we understand the importance of self-preservation. Since then, we’ve only played great shows, at least to us. We got that out of our system for sure; we’ll never do a day-of show like that again.

J: Yeah, the show was free, and there weren’t a lot of people there, so it didn’t really hurt us either, it was just one of those things we couldn’t believe was even happening at the moment.

This is our weekend to-do list. Print it out. Check it off. Enjoy.

–TeaParty | Supertonic

THE REX COMPLEX

[ ] Define a new musical genre

with The Rex Complex at Lizard Lounge

[ ] Get shorn

with Mike Gent & The Rapid Shave at Bull McCabes in Union Square

(BONUS ROUND – if you are on the Cape):

Play some beach blanket bingo

at the Apollo Sunshine Beach Party at The Beachcomber (Wellfleet, MA)

BAD RABBITS at Boston Music Awards Photo: Michael Basu

[ ] Hip Hop around

with Bad Rabbits at the House of Blues

[ ] Pub crawl

with Greater Boston Beer Marathon

[ ] Get a fever, have a vision

at VISIONS VS. FEVER at Good Life

[ ] View the visuals, sip the cocktails

at Videodrome Discothèque Episode 26: “Fix It In The Mix” at Common Ground

[ ] See some absurdist dinner theater at

Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant at Oberon

[ ] DIY with this awesome collective

at Whithaus Presents: Chillers and Grillers Summerfest 2010 at Whitehaus and the Temple

[ ] Get tingly

with Vibrator! at Zuzu

[ ] Shout all the words to your favorite songs whilst looking damn fine

at RESCUE NITE at The Model Cafe

If you strongly prefer witty repartee and tilted fedoras to this summer’s explosions-and-gore film offerings, you might want to check out the Boston Public Library. The epic, inimitable pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy is the focus of the BPL’s Summer Film Series. The library’s film set-up is good, with spacious stadium seating and that most precious of hot weather accommodations, air conditioning. Bring your own popcorn, ice cream, or person you would like to kiss, and file under “that which is awesome and free.”

The series kicked off  July 1st with Keeper of the Flame, and continues up until mid-August.

Here’s the lineup:

07/08 – Woman of the Year 114 min. b/w 1942
07/15 – Without Love 103 min. b/w 1945
07/22 – The Sea of Grass 123 min. b/w 1947
07/29 – State of the Union 123 min. b/w 1948
08/05 – Adam’s Rib 100 min. b/w 1949
08/12 – Pat and Mike 95 min. b/w 1952
08/19 – Desk Set 103 min. color 1957
08/26 – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 108 min. color 1967

More information here.

–Christine del Castillo

Friday night, El Bugalu will bring his special brand of 60’s dynamism to the Oberon for Discoteca Sexadelica, an “atomic, cabaret dance-off.” Go-Go dancers will be in attendance. Burlesque will abound. And the rock ‘n’ roll is sure to move you. Bring your A-game.

Supertonic recently chatted with the man behind the music.

– Lis Owuor

You’ve been spinning retro dance parties in the Boston/Cambridge area for 4 years. What dominates your vinyl collection? Any obsessions?

My music taste is diverse but my vinyl arsenal is dominated by hip-shaking 1960’s era soul, funk, Latin, bubblegum, garage, and psychedelic records that were criminally ignored by the pop charts at the time. I have many musical obsessions. Most notably, French Ye-Ye girl favorites such as the famed France Gall and Charlotte Leslie. I also dig American ex-pats who recorded fuzzed out soul records in Europe and the UK. Think: Lester Wilson, Rocky Roberts, Jack Hammer, and anything with gratuitous amounts of Hammond organ, funky drums and sitar. Sub-genres fascinate me. And like any other sub-genre, the majority of records that fall into either of these categories aren’t particularly interesting, but the best ones have a sort of apocalyptic quality combined with amazing music production—this is always sure to catch my eye.

We live in a transient town. How do you motivate Cantabridgians to get up, dance and come back for more? Have tastes changed over the years?

Trends come and go so I don’t bother paying attention to them. I’m only interested in playing timeless records that are fast, loud, funky, furious – and of course, deliciously danceable.

Most DJ’s dabble by night, but you quit your day job while the economy was imploding to take on your passion full-time. Are you surviving? Any practical suggestions for aspiring careerists?

It’s true. I have managed to not have a day job for the last 2 years. It’s certainly been a fun ride. Here are a few pointers:

• Develop a strong work ethic. For a while I rotted away in a cubicle and spent all my free time DJ’ing. I didn’t like the day job but learned a lot of practical people skills and business skills that came in handy when I was ready to DJ full time.

• Think critically about music.

• If you are normal, learn to empathize with the musical sensibilities of abnormal people. If you are not normal, learn to empathize and understand with the musical sensibilities of normal people.

• Be prepared to sell your soul to Satan.