ALMA...MUERTA posted by O.W.

So Alma was an unqualified...flop. Clearly, we underthought the importance of outreach for the venue which only makes me respect the success of their Wed and Sat salsa nights even more; they must really have done a bang-up job of getting the word out. I can't be 100% certain about this, but I'm pretty sure our only paid guests of the evening partially comprised of an older sugar daddy and his younger, um, "friend."

Shout out to Bao Tran, the Seattle filmmaker behind Bookie who stopped by with some friends.

The upside to a totally dead evening is that Rani D and I were more...shall we say...creative in our mixes? It actually reminded me of my radio days, when I'd be on late at night, had no idea who was listening, and therefore, felt empowered to just do whatever.

Here's an edited-down, 80 min set from Friday evening. DJ Phatrick says that people prefer individually tracked mixes so I want through and hand-edited that sucker. No tracklisting however mostly because neither I nor Rani wrote down the songs as we were playing. Consider it the price of free-ness (that plus the low audio quality but that's what recording on high-capacity minidisc sounds like).

On that "just do whatever" tip: you might note a subtle yet copious amount of scratching in the set...that'd be by yours truly...especially those scratches not-quite-in-tempo. I'm ashamed to say that despite learning how to DJ in the Bay Area and being Asian, my scratching skills have never really been very strong. I learned how to DJ from mixers not scratchers and never had the patience or time to train intensively to get my crabs or flares in working order.

That said, when there's literally two people in the room (not including yourself), and the sound system is good, why not get in some practice time? To wit:

"The Ill Advised Scratching Bonus Set." Rani D on the mix, O-Dub on the scratch (though I may deny this at a later point).