CURATORIAL PROWESS
I'm pretty sure this is my first ever post about DJ's.
Up until last Friday night I considered DJ's to be superfluous interlopers playing between live band sets, and playing music that was too often not quite as good as what the venue or the sound guy would normally play themselves.
Until last Friday night when I was given an attitude adjustment. … big time.
Last Friday I went to Mercury Lounge and the first music playing as I walked in the door was some intriguing vinyl spinning by "Tony LoFi" of Brooklyn's "One Chord Progression". This was something different. Each song he played seemed like an individual little gem that begged to be listened to.
I talked with Tony that night and then later with his partner, "Anna Anabolic" to find out some background information and how they went about picking these songs! A lot of thought went into these selections. The passion they have and the care they take in selecting their music is clearly evident as you listen.
Anna tells us ::: Tony and I launched OCP March of 2012. It's a blog where we post interviews and rock n roll news, although we've let it slide a bit lately due to being too damn busy at work! We mostly just book shows and DJ these days under the OCP name. We'll revive the blog soon though.
Regarding the songs we play...we go record shopping all the time, it's a big hobby of ours. Any song with a food title is gonna be awesome, nine times out of ten...also, anything with 'twist', 'hop' or 'boogaloo' in the name is almost certain to be a winner. We got one of those nifty battery powered portable turntables recently so we can finally listen to records before we buy em, cutting down what we buy by about 50% (and making us 50% nerdier in the process). We have our favorite singers and bands of course but we're always trying to learn about new singers, bands and labels to check out. Tony's really into French and Quebec 60s records too, often french covers of soul or girl group songs (but lots of originals too). I'm obsessed with 60s soul, R&B and girl group - mostly just the real high energy stuff - and also love finding cool covers. I just bought a 45 of Solomon Burke doing 'Maggie's Farm' that I'm pretty psyched about. And Etta James doing "Security."
The duo has a Bandcamp page with two volumes of free downloadable songs. Here is a sample, the lead song on "One Year Regression Vol 2". The track is titled "Conjure Man", and it's by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds :::
If you'd like to hear more, here is the click to their One Chord Progression on Bandcamp (CLICK HERE).
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