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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: Every (under)dog has its day
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 28 September 2009
Now I’ve had a week to recover and think about it (I needed a week as there was no actual recovery time after the Remix All-nighter cos I was playing with Kissy on his ‘Youth’ tour in Sheffield the very next night), there were two things that really delighted me about that amazing Matter birthday party. Actually, there were a lot more than two, but I’m picking my top two for the sake of brevity, you know me, I can go on a bit in these, given half a chance.
First off, and Andy touched on this in his intro to last week’s Remix Update… Mixhell. The fact this humble husband and wife team from Brazil stole the show was incredible. And what a show to steal! There was a stellar cast including the biblical ElHornet and Ben Verse of Pendulum, not to mention Hervé, either of whom you’d expect to walk away with set-of-the-night in most people’s eyes…
But despite their brilliance, and that of the marvellous Whip, the supercharged Crystal Fighters, the brilliant Streetlife DJs and all the rest, it was the underdogs who climbed to the summit of that night and planted their flag at the top, for all us losers.
OK, half of Mixhell has sold more records than Oasis, but this was an electro DJ set, with live drums over the top, and his mrs is the DJ! They were truly awesome on every level, and worked the crowd like DJs with ten times the experience. And the music was spot on, in much the same way as The Japanese Popstars are able to whip crowds into a frenzy because they make you feel like what they are playing is THE PERFECT MUSIC for that time and place.
Now, amongst such DJ deity as the aforementioned bill-toppers, Tommy and Chris, better known as Stereo:Type (pictured), could have come and gone while everyone in the club was waiting for the big guns. But no, they basically performed a jaw-droppingly brilliant LIVE version of their never-beaten-for-quality-even-if-it-was-for-quantity All Time Top Ten.
Rage, cut up there and then, Candi’s a capella laced over the top, Chemical Brothers underpinning the groove, all live, with five CD decks, one Technics 1210 and two mixers.
I was standing right next to Tom for the best part of 20 minutes, smiling, nodding, waving, trying to get him to see my thumbs-ups or that sign you make in SCUBA diving that means AOK. He never caught my eye. Not even once. He was so focussed on this incredible journey he and Chris (Screwface) were taking Matter on that nothing else could register on his radar.
At one point he paused to take a few big lugs of water, not five centimetres from my face, but he never noticed I was right there. That is a measure of the intensity of that set. The only DJs I’ve ever seen do what they did are Steph and Dave Dewaele, and even the mighty Belgians were technically humbled by Stereo:Type.
How wonderful then, that it was a night for losers, ironically on the night Losers (the band) had to pull out because there were just too many acts on the bill. You know by now that ‘Losers’ are unsung heroes, underdogs, people for whom the taking part is more important than the outcome. Every dog has its day, and this day, or rather this night, was a night when, against all the odds, the losers turned out to be the winners. It restored my faith in the order of the universe and made me smile even more broadly than usual.
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
