2. Daniel Ormondroyd and Jonathan Nowell (FC Kahuna)
March, 1996, in the basement of Partners’ wine bar in Fitzrovia, London. It’s 12.45 a.m., and the punters are *in the mood*. This is clubbing’s magic hour, when every song sounds like the start of something big, and every stranger on the dancefloor is a potential new best mate. But something unorthodox is happening. The music has stopped. The lights have been put on. Is it the police? A fire? The crowd – maybe 100 sweaty bodies in this tiny setting -- begin an optimistic cheer, willing this interruption to be declared benign. Suddenly Dan Kahuna, still on his knees behind the DJs’ table, turns and smiles at the crowd, and holds a disconnected power cord aloft for their inspection. The cheer of the night goes up as he plugs it back in and the EQ on the mixer blinks into life.
Spring, 2003, the ‘legendary’ Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Jon Kahuna is seamlessly mixing records to a milling, uninterested crowd as the warm-up act to Primal Scream. As he clears another perfect mix, I am stunned to realize that he’s doing it without any monitors, with the only sound coming from the PA 50 meters away and suspended high above the ballroom floor. “How the hell are you doing that?” I ask in disbelief, knowing that the delay should have made mixing impossible. “It’s no problem,” he responds. A disappointed shrug, an extra moment’s eye contact, and a nod to the empty CD case that had been holding their recent mix album, Another Fine Mess, now spinning away on its own and inventing the modern American EDM ‘DJ.’ Faking it, and hating it.
Dan and Jon were the hosts of the best club night I’ve ever attended, and that meant they headlined some of the best nights of my life, so they were always in pole position for this countdown. But that undersells them. The Big Kahuna Burger Co. was magic because of them – their fingerprints and personalities were all over everything from the music to the DJ lineups to the till by the door (into which they would regularly dig to buy you a drink or give you change for other needs). And no matter how big the guest star, they were always the best DJs of the night, full of surprises and clever mixes and pogo-inducing, hug-a-stranger selections at the denouement.
And they could play away, too – clips from their Glastonbury set almost made me weep with envy, and when I brought them to San Francisco to play a totally foreign deep/tech house club to kids who didn’t know them, they played the best set I’ve ever heard and left the crowd buzzing like a live wire.
I’m not sure what the anecdotes at the start of this post say about them. Maybe it’s about the progression from delightful amateurism to cynical professionalism, but I don’t think so. I think it’s about their understanding for their job as DJs, and their respect for the music and the opportunity for connection. Do it right, and you can make magic out of chaos. Leave it in the hands of the ‘professionals’, and you might as well be playing a recording. In every setting they maintained an instinctive spirit of camaraderie with their audience and a zero tolerance policy for all the other bullshit. They always knew what was important, the way the music and the moment can be made electric, and they delivered on that potential better than any DJs I’ve ever seen.
http://www.mixcloud.com/jesseblack/live-at-melon-5-october-2002/
March, 1996, in the basement of Partners’ wine bar in Fitzrovia, London. It’s 12.45 a.m., and the punters are *in the mood*. This is clubbing’s magic hour, when every song sounds like the start of something big, and every stranger on the dancefloor is a potential new best mate. But something unorthodox is happening. The music has stopped. The lights have been put on. Is it the police? A fire? The crowd – maybe 100 sweaty bodies in this tiny setting -- begin an optimistic cheer, willing this interruption to be declared benign. Suddenly Dan Kahuna, still on his knees behind the DJs’ table, turns and smiles at the crowd, and holds a disconnected power cord aloft for their inspection. The cheer of the night goes up as he plugs it back in and the EQ on the mixer blinks into life.
Spring, 2003, the ‘legendary’ Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Jon Kahuna is seamlessly mixing records to a milling, uninterested crowd as the warm-up act to Primal Scream. As he clears another perfect mix, I am stunned to realize that he’s doing it without any monitors, with the only sound coming from the PA 50 meters away and suspended high above the ballroom floor. “How the hell are you doing that?” I ask in disbelief, knowing that the delay should have made mixing impossible. “It’s no problem,” he responds. A disappointed shrug, an extra moment’s eye contact, and a nod to the empty CD case that had been holding their recent mix album, Another Fine Mess, now spinning away on its own and inventing the modern American EDM ‘DJ.’ Faking it, and hating it.
Dan and Jon were the hosts of the best club night I’ve ever attended, and that meant they headlined some of the best nights of my life, so they were always in pole position for this countdown. But that undersells them. The Big Kahuna Burger Co. was magic because of them – their fingerprints and personalities were all over everything from the music to the DJ lineups to the till by the door (into which they would regularly dig to buy you a drink or give you change for other needs). And no matter how big the guest star, they were always the best DJs of the night, full of surprises and clever mixes and pogo-inducing, hug-a-stranger selections at the denouement.
And they could play away, too – clips from their Glastonbury set almost made me weep with envy, and when I brought them to San Francisco to play a totally foreign deep/tech house club to kids who didn’t know them, they played the best set I’ve ever heard and left the crowd buzzing like a live wire.
I’m not sure what the anecdotes at the start of this post say about them. Maybe it’s about the progression from delightful amateurism to cynical professionalism, but I don’t think so. I think it’s about their understanding for their job as DJs, and their respect for the music and the opportunity for connection. Do it right, and you can make magic out of chaos. Leave it in the hands of the ‘professionals’, and you might as well be playing a recording. In every setting they maintained an instinctive spirit of camaraderie with their audience and a zero tolerance policy for all the other bullshit. They always knew what was important, the way the music and the moment can be made electric, and they delivered on that potential better than any DJs I’ve ever seen.
http://www.mixcloud.com/jesseblack/live-at-melon-5-october-2002/
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