Our intent on Saturday night was to catch Adventures in Illegal Art at the Henry Fonda Music Box. But, since shows in Los Angeles often end at ridiculously early times, when we showed up at 11:00 p.m., we were told by the box office attendants that we had missed Negativland and that there was another club taking over shortly.
In an attempt to find something else to do with in the vicinity of Hollywood-proper, we headed over to the Knitting Factory. After going through the whole ID-check twice, standing in line for a half-hour and enduring a security patdown on par with the most embarrassing of doctor visits, we got to see legendary LA DJ crew Beat Junkies in action.
Saturday night was Rhettmatic's birthday, as the MC reminded us about six or seven times during the DJ's set. Rhettmatic played a wild mix of organ and Moog samples, James Brown loops, video game bits and old school a cappellas. At one point, it sounded as if he had dropped "Popcorn" pitched down to the point where it sounded like the Inspector Gadget theme. Mr. Choc and Shortkut followed with sets blurring the lines between hip-hop, house and dancehall.
I don't pretend to be anything resembling an expert in hip-hop. My own evolution as a music fan essentially went from new wave (both dance and rock) to industrial, indie rock and techno. But the one thing I can say with a certain amount of authority is that people are much more willing to dance at hip-hop events than any other kind of party in Los Angeles. In fact, the main room of the Knitting Factory on this particular evening essentially functioned as an oversized dance floor. Towards the stage, a tall guy with a mohawk raised his arms in the air as a Sebastian Bach look alike walked with a groove towards the front of the room. In the back, one polo-shirt wearing fellow grabbed the edge of the balcony as his underdressed date performed some of the raunchiest moves of the evening on him. Basically, if you weren't in the mood for dancing, you were shit out of luck as even the kids on the couches were bouncing to the beat.