5 Questions with Rags #69 - DJ All Good

in

Have you ever walked into a place completely foreign to you and just felt wholly and completely welcome? One of the few times as an adult I've felt that was the first time I walked into the Turntemple. A true monument of Hip-Hop, The Turntemple (A travelling DJ school housed in a 26-foot U-Haul) is unlike anything I had ever seen; a place where one of the pillars of Hip-Hop is tended and shared. The incredible human at the head of this low-key important space is DJ All Good (aka Peter Poole), Western Canada DMC Champion, Redbull Thre3style Finalist and human beam of Love. It didn't take more than a few seconds of me being in the Turntemple for him to come up to me, welcome me and notice my eyes on those turntables. Despite my crucial error in my first minute of touching them (“As long as you don't hit the needle, you're golden...” BAM! Right away, needle off the record.) he encouraged me to stay on and try it more, get closer to this foundation of the Hip-Hop that I love so much. Everyone I know who has crossed paths with the homie (This is a very high number of people) has glowing things to say about him and for good reason. His passion for music and willingness to share his vast reservoirs of knowledge – and his straight-up phenomenal skills – have made him a staple of West Coast festivals, strengthening the deep bonds between hip-hop and modern bass music whenever he sets up shop.

Finally getting a chance to do this interview thing proper with All Good was a thrill and I couldn't just pass up the opportunity to pick the brain of such an incredible DJ about all things scratchy and turny. So, in addition to the usual nonsense, we've mixed in a generous helping of queries about the Turntemple and the Art of Scratching.

Recently the U-Haul truck that housed the original Turntemple drove its final roads and breathed its final gasps of life. If you dig the noble mission of preserving the Art of Djing, check out the Turntemple's GoFundMe page and considering supporting the cause with a donation to help cover the costs of getting this educational beast back on the road.

1. Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money?

It was one of those 1 penny for 10 albums things. I got 10 cassette tapes. I remember in that collection there was Pearl Jam Ten, INXS Kick, The Cure Greatest Hits, The Doors Greatest Hits, the Jimi Hendrix Experience Greatest Hits. Don't remember all of them but those were in there. As I matured I was a little bit ashamed I had so many Greatest Hits albums. There was Kids in the Hall skit where Bruce McDonald is running a record store and the guy comes in, “Hey, I'm looking to buy some Doors.” And Bruce says, “I'm not selling you any Doors! Greatest Hits albums are for grandmas!”

1a. How'd you get into the whole DJing thing?

Jam Master Jay...hearing “Peter Piper.” That song totally blew my mind. That and “Rocket” by Herbie Hancock. A lot of scratch DJs credit that song with being the song that got them into DJing because it's the first song that highlighted the turntable as an instrument. I'm talking turntablism here, not just DJing. I remember walking to school and air-scratching on my zipper, pulling it up and down. Hearing those songs really got me into it. Then I started making mixtapes for friends and house parties and stuff. I think if you're making a mix cassette tape it's a form of DJing – you're taking the time to curate and compile music for other peoples' listening experience, creating a journey.

Read More

#festivalseason - Ragslandia: Rifflandia gets groovier than ever.

Every year in Victoria, Rifflandia is the highlight of the music calendar. Bringing hundreds of artists from different genres and aesthetics, Rifflandia has established itself as a celebration of music like nothing else in the area. This year's Rifflandia had me excited like past years haven't. I'm all about groove and this year the pool was deep, overflowing with hip-hop and electronic tastiness I'm constantly on the lookout for. Here are just a few of the highlights I was lucky enough to get into my ears this year.

Jurassic 5, De La Soul and the importance of world-class Djs.

Part of the delay on the release of this piece has been the need to let things lay fallow in my mind for a bit, to see how they stick with me when I’m no longer a prisoner of the moment. Since some of the Rifflandia smoke has cleared from my mind, I can still say that Jurassic 5’s Rifflandia set was one of the finest sets of music I’ve ever seen. I assume this is the standard festival set they’ve been playing since their reunion a couple of summers ago, and why would it be anything different? Everything the group did was so well-done, so on point. “Concrete Schoolyard” (Complete with kazoo interlude), “Freedom,” “Jurass Finish First,” “Quality Control,” the whole set was hit after hit. Their Four-MCs-As-One, synchronized rap thing was as fresh as ever – as lively and crisp as any of the songs’ recorded counterparts.

Even more impressive than the four MCs and their interchangeable raps were the beats, the music, delivered with the utmost imagination and dexterity by two of the great DJs in hip-hop, DJ Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist. DJ desk, turntable-guitar, vest of music (I don’t know a better way to describe this)...This wasn’t just two DJs laying beats for rappers. The show wouldn’t have worked the same without them.

A similar thing happened a couple of nights before when De La Soul took the stage at the Phillips Backyard stage. Pos and Dave could get an crowd amped on their own, for sure, but the amount of attention Maseo commands behind the decks while his cohorts are doing their thing out front is kind of staggering. Throughout the trio’s stellar set, Maseo proved once again that he’s a real director of the party, the man all the energy flows through. Dude can rap something nice too. I was more than thrilled when he stepped out from behind the wheels to take Redman’s place during “Oooh,” a personal favourite of mine. It’s just further proof as to how important the DJ is the landscape of hip-hop, even when you have world class MCs there rock the party.

Read More

5 Questions with Rags #31 - DJ Roast Beatz

in

Ghetto Funk was my way into the vast world of electronic music. A few years in and I’m still sold on the easy grooving sounds that the label/genre has spawned. You can imagine my giddiness when the Ghetto Funk Podcast started showing up on their soundcloud page early last year. In this case, a podcast worked like it was supposed to and I sought out the maker of the ‘cast. Well, the man behind that wonderful funky document is DJ Roast Beatz and man, this guy knows what’s up. Steeped in hip-hop goodness, Roast Beatz’ mixes and tracks reside in that lovely middle-ground that all party-goers can agree on. It’s taken nearly a year for this little chat to see the light of day, but now, I present to you dear friends, DJ ROAST BEATZ.

“The only thing I’d say about any music is just keep it funky, with meaning. That’s what makes us dance, nod our heads, learn things about life, come to terms with things and sing the tune the next day. Whether your using a drum kit or a drum machine, synth or trumpet, if it’s funky people will get down to it.”

---------------------------------------

Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money? Fav track? Does it still hold up?

With my own money? Either a Jacko album or 3 Feet High and Rising. They were both on tape. My first vinyl was Fugees’ The Score. Favourite track is a tough one. I haven’t bumped much Jacko lately, would either be “Smooth Criminal” or “Bille Jean.” These days I’m more of a Jackson 5 kind of guy! 3 Feet High and Rising, is too hard to pick. De La had a massive impact on my life, especially De La Soul is Dead. That album got me through some really hard times as a kid. I’ve only just started to grasp the albums importance in my life as I’ve got older and faced a lot of shit from the past. 

Favourite from 3 Feet though? Either “Buddy,” “Change in Speak,” “Eye know” or “Say No Go.” “Buddy” is more for the remix, “Change in Speak” for the Cymande sample. “Eye Know” always reminds me of Daewon songs skate section in World Industries New World order. And “Say No Go” is just an absolute banger! I still play all the De La songs regularly in my sets.

Read More

5 Questions with Rags #30 - DJ Jimi Needles (w/ Exclusive Remix!)

in

As I’ve ventured further into the world of electronic music, more pointedly – BASS MUSIC – I’ve noticed an incredible gap between the accessible and the challenging. It seems the entry-level stuff gets discarded quickly in favour of darker, harder-on-the-ear music. The artists that newbies and vets can agree on get further and further away from one another. Sometimes though there are artists, DJs, who dwell in that vast chasm, building tiny bridges so friends on either side of the divide can find each other once again. Jimi Needles is one of these DJs. His mixes and mixtapes are places where people who aren’t familiar with the increasingly large world of bass music can sit comfortably with the ones who need the harder stuff after years of the easy shit. His soundcloud has become an invaluable tool in my life for finding a quick solution as to what to put on when the downtime in a group comes, or even better, when trying to listen to something new with people who have less clue than I and still want their electronic music rooted in the comfortable rhythms and grooves of real life. This is all a long way of saying Jimi Needles makes bass music that everyone can love. If you’re having a party and need to get asses shaking, I promise, you can’t go wrong.

--------------------------------------------------

1. Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money?

Fatboy Slim, You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. That album was fucking sick and it’s still the sickest thing ever.

What’s your favourite track on there?

One is “Praise You.” I don’t know about you, but you know when you get older and you just want to investigate where the DNA of these songs comes from? For instance, you go onto Who Samples and type in any song and it’ll tell you who and what was sampled. As a 10 year old I had never had anything like that and now it really appeals to me. I was kind of aware of hip-hop at the time because I had a CD I was given around 1996, it had Public Enemy and stuff on it and I was just like, “Whoa, what the fuck is this?” It was a compilation disc and I thought it was completely sick. I could make the correlation that I really liked the funky beats and aggressive lyrics then I heard Fatboy Slim and thought, “Okay, I still like this but it’s not hip-hop.” I didn’t even know what it was called. I mean, it’s breaks, but when I was a kid I didn’t know what the fuck it was. But that album, when you take samples and arrange them, you still can’t make it the same as it is on the album. It’s absolutely mental how someone does that. It takes the most extensive musical mind to pull that off. And Norman Cook, Fatboy Slim, paved the way. There was also scratching on there and scratching was something I was aware of but not being cool or a DJ, I had no fucking idea what it was really was. So, there’s “Praise You” and there’s also a track on there called “Fucking in Heaven,” that I used play really loud. My parents would come upstairs and say, “What the fuck is this?”

Read More