cklarock

This Thursday I finally hooked up the new decks and mixer I've been chasing for the last few months. This is the first major equipment upgrade Ive made since 1999prior, I was rocking on Technics 1210s and a Vestax-06.

My new setup:



The Newmark TTXs really are all that. Ill write more about them in the DJ forum, but other than the unanswered question of longevity, they are superior decks to work on. The +/- 50% pitch shifter is exciting.

The digital effects built-in to the Pioneer 909 are noice. I hadn't even heard about that mixer until 2 weeks ago; I was determined to pick up a Vestax 007, but I saw DJ Craze at a Future Primitive party and was kind of shocked that I couldn't recognize his mixer. I went and searched online for photos of him until I could read the manufacturers name. Looking into the mixer more deeply, I became convinced that it was the mixer I wantedthe quality of sound output is very high, the faders are non-contact (and have a digital curve adjustment), and the built-in digital effects are a perfect starting point for the kind of performing that I want to move into.

< dj geek >
Plus, this is the exact same setup Jazzy Jeff uses.
< /dj geek >

Ill eventually set up one of my 1210s with the 06 as a third turn-table, and daisy-chain it all together, but that is an adventure for later, I think. That will let me drop acapella tracks over blends and mixes, which is a sound Ive wanted to put together for a while now.

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Imagine this: I have just handed 2k in cash to the hippie at the cash register.

I have followed this course of obsession and stubborn determination to Guitar Center and now Im facing the door with two freshly purchased turntables and a mixer. I have no car. I have no exit strategy.

What Would Donald Rumsfeld Do?

I call a cab.

As the driver is taking me home, I notice that he has "Loot" tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand. He drives with his right in his lap, so I cant casually inspect it. As hes helping me unload the boxes from his cab into the entry-hall of my building, I see the left-hand tattoo. From the position I am at, I register it as Viki.

What kind of dipshit puts his girls name on his fucking knuckles? What an ape.

He pulls the boxes out of the trunk, as I open the door to my building. I stack the boxes to the side of the front door, and turn back around to pay the driver.

He isnt there. He is gone, the car is gone; You are mistaken, Citizen, there is no cab driver.

I must have looked like a real assholeI actually turned all the way around, as if the guy had managed to sneak his entire car behind me into the building when I wasnt looking.

Have you ever had anything so surreal take place that your brain refused to accept it? Within seconds, I swear I had decided that I *must* have already paid him. Some shrill, demanding part of my brain made the executive decision that what I experienced as a few seconds must have actually been a much longer stretch of time; some fault in my memory, some collapse of perception; a quantum effect must have warped time and space, because people dont just fade away.

But by the time Ive lugged the gear upstairs and started to put the first turntable together, I know better. That cabbie just fucking disappeared. Was I in a ghost cab? Did my greed for a top-of-the-line DJ setup pull me into some fey realm where the spirits of the dead ferry the morally corrupt bodily to some poetic and cruel reward?

I pick up my cell phone to touch base with a friend, but there are no bars on my phone. I yell down the hall for my roommate. No one is home, and save for the pale lamp-light spilling out of my room, the house is dark. I start to feel a little fluttering in the backs of my legsa tiny, tremulous adrenaline rush. My hands might be shaking, but I dont want to look. I know at this point that I *should* go outsidejust go down the street and grab a bite to eat, interact with the familiar strangers that share my neighborhood.

But Im too frightened to go back to where it happened. I am alone.

I turn back to where Im setting up the new turntables and I notice the De La Soul Me, Myself and I 12. Ha, ha, very funny motherfucker. Despite myself, I laugh. The sound rebukes my fear, and I meditate silently on the inevitability of death, softly steeling my spirit. Whatever May Be.

Thinking back on the cabbie, I wonder what Viki Loot really means? Is it a name? An anagram? When I think about it more carefully, I realize that if you were viewing his fists from a position standing directly in front of him, you would read that v shape as an A. The first word was Aiki, and the second word was Loot. Japanese and English?

A quick Google search confirms my worst suspicion. Aiki is a Japanese word meaning internal spirit, used by many martial artists today, but traditionally associated with Ryohebi No Jutsuthe Serpent Crawling Art.

Warrior Spirit / Plunder.

This man was a ninja pirate.

I am now convinced that this encounter was a message; a reply to my earlier post. But honestly, I cannot interpret it. I know now that I can be touched, anytime, anywhere, and I know that my life lies within the hands of men I have not met, whom I would not recognize and whose existence the rest of my world does not accept.

I also know that they subscribe to Suicide Girls.