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Looney tunes
Gorillaz at Bill’s; a guitar shop throws a DJ battle
BY WILL SPITZ
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Damon Albarn will tell you that Boston is home to "one of the best record shops in the world." It’s always his first stop when he gets to town, and so a couple Tuesdays ago, while his fans were busy buying up freshly pressed copies of the new Gorillaz album Demon Days (Virgin) at Newbury Comics, the former Blur frontman and creator of the biggest cartoon band in the world was picking through the dusty used-record stacks at Looney Tunes. Albarn was not disappointed: he bought 40 albums. Later, after a radio interview and a stop on Newbury Street to sign copies of the Gorillaz disc, he settled into a booth at Bill’s Bar on Lansdowne Street, picking perhaps the loudest seat in the house, directly in front of a massive PA speaker blaring Demon Days for a listening-party audience of fans and industry folk. "There would never be anything like this in England," he said, surveying the room. "We’re much too reserved." Albarn is congenitally reticent; being the center of attention made it difficult for him to relax, and he said he’d rather have been "listening to someone else’s music." Nonetheless, in the presence of his gregarious American fans he was in good spirits, sporadically singing along with his own tunes and excitedly pointing out the song "Dare," which features a cameo by Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder. It took a while for the rain-soaked fans to realize that Albarn, Jamie Hewlett (the cartoonist behind Gorillaz’ artwork), and Danger Mouse (the Beatles’ least favorite DJ, and the producer of Demon Days) were sitting inconspicuously at the back of the room. But soon a crowd was hovering around the trio and queuing up for autographs, photos, and handshakes. The three kept themselves entertained by cracking jokes and doodling on piles of flyers displaying the cover of Demon Days, a take-off on the sleeve of the Beatles’ Let It Be. One fan presented a 1995 issue of Melody Maker with Blur on the cover and Albarn jokingly stuck out his tongue and let out a scream before scribbling on the magazine and finally signing it. He bore no grudges: he made a point of hugging those Blur enthusiasts who told him they had been fans of his for years. But later, when a young woman brought over an early Blur album and asked for his John Hancock, he considered the disc and its bearer and looked a bit exasperated. "How old were you when this came out?" The following night, a handful of DJ hopefuls crowded into a tiny room at the back of the Guitar Center on Commonwealth Avenue, gearing up for the local final of the chain store’s annual Spin Off competition. The stakes were not small: the winner would be moving on to the district final on June 15 in Natick, followed by regional final, and then the grand final in LA at which the winner will be awarded prizes including top-of-the-line turntables and an automobile. There were supposed to be six contestants, but only four showed up, and so the judges — Berklee professor Stephen Webber, author of the book Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ, and local DJs Val Beats, Two Plus Two, and Jinx — nearly outnumbered the performers: DJ JCO, DJ Who’s That, DJ Scientific, and DJ Rugged One. Before the actual competition started, the competitors tried to psych one another out by pulling a few nifty tricks on the turntable set-up. Eventually, Jam’n 94.5’s Hustle Simmons got on the mike and announced the rules: each DJ was to have five minutes and would be rated on originality, technique, style, skills, showmanship, stage presence, and overall performance. With the exception of Who’s That — who might as well have called himself What Movie Is That, what with his lack of beats and overabundance of movie dialogue — the turntablists were pretty evenly matched. JCO tickled the fader back and forth with unparalleled speed, Scientific worked in an unexpected jazz hook and the riff from Cream’s "Sunshine of Your Love," and Rugged One, who prevailed, proved to be a master beatmatcher. At the end, no one seemed to care all that much; a couple of the contestants quietly congratulated Rugged One and that was that. Will Spitz can be reached at wspitz[a]phx.com
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