Got back last night from a pleasant road trip to NYC and back. We were there to check out "Celebrate Brooklyn". More specifically we wanted to check out Blackalicious perform on stage. ;) The show was great and boy Gift of Gab is certainly one of the quickest rhyme spitters around...

However, watching their performance did give the same feeling that I had gotten from being at the Gangstarr concert which is that it doesn't sound very live... I think one of the reason is that there isn't anything special they did that I couldn't have gotten from listening to their CD... nothing to consider a "lil sumthin sumthin for comin' out to see us", ya know? The other thing is that when you hear a full band perform live, the acoustics and the nuances of the instruments being projects to your ears through the carefully positioned sound system gives you the genuine experience of a live performance, but when all you got is a DJ who stands in the back just playing pre-recorded tracks you don't get that feeling at all... This further strengthens my belief that in order for a DJ to take on the role of an actual live band he/she has to bring a lot more than his/her production mojo to the table. Simply mixing and throwing in scratches here and there isn't enough... Got to have something more going on... I suppose doing the entire song by juggling could be a bit annoying, but even if it has to come to that I think the DJ should go all the way...

I also had good convo with Yunshik and Jaewoo (with Jaewoo on the way to NYC, and with Yunshik on the way back to Pitt) about music in general, and about Hip Hop music in specific in terms of MCs, and DJs. It's really good to be able to have people close by whom I can talk about music in more depth than I'd normally be able to. Man, life only gets better! Gimme some time to figure all this out... Enough inspiration to last me awhile, so here I go! :D