DJ AM played it first

01 Saturday Aug 2015

August 1st, 2015 edit:

Last night I went to see the film As I Am: The Life and Times of DJ AM, created by Kevin Kerslake. This was an emotional journey for me as AM or Adam Goldstein, had been a mentor for Solomon. He was at the top of the DJ world six years ago this month, when he died, but the Berkeley theater was half-empty, and when the woman who introduced the film asked the audience who knew about this man, only about 15 of us raised our hands.

The film points out what a genuine, heartfelt friend, genius musician, and man-with-a-mission to help others give up addictions. Sadly for me, the movie stresses AM’s relationship to drugs much more than his wizardry at the turntables. I wanted to see and hear parts of a set, instead of seeing the girls wiggling to his music. The filmmaker was clearly an observer, not a fan.

Here is my blog on DJ AM from 2009, after I saw him play with Travis Barker, the drummer, at the Mezzanine just before the plane crash when he was burned and on pain killers and anti-anxiety drugs that let to his death August 28, 2009.

Original 2009 post:

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He’s gone now, connecting tsunamis of sound in heavenly gigs. DJ AM, (or Adam Goldstein) died last week in New York City. His was considered the “top” of his genre of Mash Up DJ music. I like the best of anything musical and he was it, so here is the tribute.

It was April, 2006 and my son Solomon was playing San Francisco’s Mezzanine Club south of Market Street – a very high profile DJ event. He and Guitarist-Songwriter Chris Clouse were opening for DJ AM and Travis Barker, drummer for the group Blink 182. Each duo was a good match: a live musician and a DJ.

DJ AM and DJ Solomon

Solomon had been educating me in his niche music for sometime. Years before, he took me to see the film Scratch about the birth of the rhythmic and inventive art of manipulating vinyl in new ways. Now Solomon, like DJ AM, was on the cutting edge of digital, and he had offered me mixes of AM, so I could see what he could do. I listened on my i-phone and liked what I heard.

My friend Cynthia and I passed a line that snaked around the block for the sold out event. At the door we were given passes and entered to find Solomon already at work on the stage, alone. He was warming up the crowd. Chris would join him as soon as the room filled. AM and Travis were due at around 11. An hour later I stood on a balcony wondering if it could hold under the weight of the gathering crowd. IMG_0070_2

Somehow Ean found us and took us backstage for the last 20 minutes of and Chris and Solomon’s set. Then AM and Travis took the stage. The crowd was screaming and the volume was turned up way above ear safety. My heart began to experience an a-rhythmical take-over by bass tones. It occurred to me that I was in a territory where anyone up to twenty years younger would fear to tread. I had stepped over the line of audial sanity and entered something not unlike the film Close Encounters … standing beneath the gigantic Mothership as it lands… with DJ AM at the controls. n500248739_1302718_4856

As a writer my job is to translate his music into words. But that is impossible.I offer my own sample 45 second flash of AM and Barker at Mezzanine when I can get this page to up-load it. He is all over You Tube. Here are some clips:

If you want to feel like you are with the band with reasonable volume, try this cut with Travis on drums– recommended by Solomon – (T-Mobile Sidekick Launch Party, Paramount Studios, May 2009): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-n1V-YSLo&feature=fvw

Stunningly unusual recent stuff – (BFD Festival, June 2009)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyykVQcN57c you mostly can’t indentify the tunes. He’s moved into musical Abstract Expressionism of beats and short lines, not even dance music – though you can’t stay still. It’s like he’s distilled early mixes into this elixir which is internal and physical and new.

Mystery Mix: http://bestdjsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=124 Scroll down to DJ AM “Mystery Mix” part 1 and 2. Good download for the car.

DJ Qbert – tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVERHGpOd0M

I like a couple minutes of a piece recorded outside the loud performance world and nailing the likes of an orchestration of the cool 80’s? song Bette Davis Eyes set to what?? And Jump (for my love)!!

For me his signature opener is Dance to the Music, with “inda da, do do do, inda da do do” –and fast scratches over it. I feel really sad about this loss. DJ AM you won’t be needing those special ear-protectors every DJ mom wants her son to wear… Heavenly tunes to you!

Solomon Kahn: tributes

16 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by Tea-mahm in DJ AM, DJ Solomon Kahn

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DJ Solomon, Solomon Kahn

Speaking as the mother of Solomon, I believed I knew him quite well. I always called him by his full name– no nicknames. I used to say that he was either a wise man or a wise guy. He was both. He was a delight, and he was great at keeping me current with his activities.

I was not prepared for the large long reach of his life. Those close to him, his many long-time friends have called him “their best friend.” He got so many, many people on their feet, dancing. He often included us, his parents, in his activities: wake surfing on the delta, an invitation to an elegant event in the wine country, a last minute pool party at our house with his wonderful friends, and those journeys to Burningman, a decade or so ago. I remember standing in “The Plug,” [a club on the playa at Burningman] in the early hours of the morning, as the MC announced to the packed room: “Lets give it up for DJ Solomon –– and DJ Solomon’s mom!”

Mother's Day last year

The Oakland Arena gave him a standing ovation last week when the photo at the top of this page appeared lit on the screen in the center of the arena – where he was the regular DJ over the last ten years. He got us tickets to the Warriors Basketball games many times. And the Giants games, as he rocked Pac-Bell Park.

In 2009 he invited his father, Shabda, and me to attend the Black and White Ball. The city of San

The Black & White Ball

Franciso voted him to open for Cool and the Gang on the stage in front of City Hall that stretched across the North bound lanes of Vanness Avenue. This was the big fundraiser for the SF Symphony and tickets were $200 and up. He got us in through catering at the last minute. He had such delight and wonder at being asked to provide the music for the opening of the Salesforce.com event with Stevie Wonder, put on by in SF a few months ago.

Yesterday a letter arrived, addressed to us.

“The Board of Supervisors adjourned its regular meeting on February 7, 2012, out of respect to the memory of Solomon Kahn.” What? Doesn’t the city of San Francisco have important business to discuss? Wow. And the SF Chronicle. We still get the paper to look at during breakfast, our old fashioned habit. February 3, 2012, there was a half-page obituary written by Aidin Vaziri, who wrote: “His no. 1 goal was to make people happy.”

And that he did. Solomon Kahn was a happiness maker, all the way to City Hall. <>

letter from the SF Supervisors

PRECISION –––

16 Monday May 2011

Posted by Tea-mahm in DJ AM, Jacques d'Ambois, Poetry, precision

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Light show on City Hall,San Francisco 2010

I’ve re-done this blog post dozens of times. Precision takes practice……..

This visual was made by 4 very expensive projectors from Obscura Digital tec company during the Black and White Ball last spring. My son, Ammon, works for Obscura. Their technology is mind boggling. Here is the equipment, worth around 2oo grand. Their reputation with light and color is built on edgy modern precision.

The book, I was a Dancer, by Jacques d’Amboise is my current favorite read. He tells this story about precision that I love. The set up: he’s teaching 100 kids. “All one hundred of you have exactly 30 seconds to get out of your chairs and move to the stage. But when you arrive, spread out and hold still. But – no noise, like ghosts.” It doesn’t happen. “They run, yelling and giggling… You failed the test. There was noise and most of you got there too soon… They usually get it the second time.” He congratulates them. “Once the children see that we are having a class of precision, order, and respect, they are relieved. It’s the beginning of dance. Precision and exactness are steps toward truth.”p. 366.

Precision. In the arts, in life.

an inlayed tile from the Taj Mahal

The Precision of Pain      by Yehuda Amichai/ trans. Chana Bloch
The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I'm thinking  
how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor's office. 
Even those who haven't learned to read and write are precise: 
"This one's a throbbing pain, that one's a wrenching pain, 
this one gnaws, that one burns, this is a sharp pain 
and that––a dull one. Right here. Precisely here, 
yes, yes." Joy blurs everything. I've heard people say 
after nights of love and feasting, "It was great, 
I was in seventh heaven." Even the spaceman who floated 
in outer space, tethered to a spaceship, could say only, "Great, 
wonderful, I have no words." 
The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain —  
I want to describe, with a sharp pain's precision, happiness

and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.

~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~

Zuleikha

W.S. Merwin had it about right when he spoke of the insufferable need for precision. He said, “Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you’ve lost the whole thing.”

Gustave Flaubert had a different way of saying the same thing: “Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.” Conrad Geller

“What (Emily) Dickenson sought to achieve in poetry was, a mathematical accuracy applied to human “ardor and grief.” “All of Dickenson’s poetry,” comments Helen Vendler, “is an attempt to fix precision… on a maelstrom of emotion.” Because I could not stop for death –– /He kindly stopped for me––/ The carriage held but just ourselves––/ And immortality… [Emily Dickenson, poem #712].

the late, great DJ AM

I am planning to attend the WCU formalist poetry conference in Pennsylvania the beginning of June. I’m going to study meter with Timothy Steele. Sonnets and Iambic Pentameter. Hard stuff for a poet not in school. <>

Masters of Precision:

DJ AM comes to mind here. Precisely. He took rhythm and music into another dimension…

In the world of drum rhythm there is the Indian-born Tabla Master, who lives in Marin County, California, Zakir Hussain and the American trap drummer who grew up in Marin, Terry Bozzio.

The wonderful Zakir Hussain is the best in the world at what he does. Here is what some reviewers have said of him: tabla drum master with intricate, continually nuanced rhythms, virtuoso, intuitive player, uses swift, precise, rhythmic articulation... These words are far from the experience. Poetry serves better.

Zakir Hussain

Terry Bozzio is a favorite drummer. I like this description of Terry Bozzio’s drumming by Ryan Baker. <www.precisiondrumming.com> (commentary on the drum solo in the song, “I will Protect you.”) It’s like the split second lift at the crest of a roller coaster, or the feeling you get just as your parachute catches. The fury is the heart of the solo… Toward the end, when the rhythm simply can’t go any faster, he again creates an illusion that it does by the rate of movement between different instruments, particularly between the snare and those tiny splashes in front of his face.

Terry Bozzio

And I might add, that I have had similar experience listening to Zakir, but you gotta hear it and feel it in your body! Words can only take you so far. But precision can take you further than most anything.

PRECISION. Pay attention to where it shows up in your life. <> <> <>