15. Tim 'Love' Lee

15. Tim 'Love' Lee

I knew one track by Tim ‘Love’ Lee (‘Again Son …’, which the Chemical Brothers had put on a mix album) when I arrived in San Francisco in January 1998. By the end of February I had heard his debut album (‘Confessions of a Selector’) about 20 times at 10 different parties and in 10 different record/clothing/head shops. I owned it myself by then, because in winter 1998 in San Francisco you had to own that album. In the days before the web it was unusual for music to get genuinely popular without any corporate or mass media push. But ‘Confessions…’ was just too San Francisco to be denied, psychedelic thrift shop world perv funk that put a roll in in the collective stroll and was, for the City’s sizable underground, the only album that really mattered at that moment.

And that was the moment that I got to see Tim ‘Love’ Lee DJ. He was a sort of special headliner/really obvious secret guest at a tiny bar called The Top on Haight Street. The Top had absolutely nothing going for it other than being full of magic – everyone who was really dialed in seemed to know exactly when to go there, and there was always someone spinning who could have filled a much bigger club but who seemed wildly enthusiastic to be playing a dive bar where the toilet doors opened directly onto the packed dancefloor. Around 2 a.m. ‘Love’ Lee began lurking around behind the DJ, dressed in a beige leisure suit, hirsute to his boots, grinning like a loon at the rising delirium on the dancefloor.

In the grand scheme of things, he was a small-time musician playing to a small faithful in a small nightclub, but he was absolutely larger than life at that moment, and his mere presence sealed the deal before he even played a record. The honest truth is that I don’t remember much about his actual DJing, but at that moment Tim ‘Love’ Lee was the best DJ in the world. And it was the moment that was the thing. It almost always is.

http://soundcloud.com/tummytouch/sets/tim-love-lee-old-dj-mixes/