Having been to the Mike Clark and Delano Smith show myself, I must
concur with Fred 's earlier post about the last 45 mins. of the show,
though I thoroughly enjoyed all of Mike's set, and the very tail end
(about three tracks or so) of Delano's as well. Though the sound
quality of the venue may have been less than stellar, I think Delano
played well, if a bit too mid-90's techno-rave-y (which is fine in the
right quantity and the right variety of tracks, which he certainly did
have).
Mike's set was very good. I haven't really enjoyed the brand of
(loosely termed) deep house before, the kind of which he played, but
given the context and sequence of tracks it ended up being quite
enjoyable and varied. Ron Trent's Altered States and some Relief-style
tracks also made a very welcome appearance, along with Prince's
"Controversy".
After their show Saturday Mike played at Pink (formerly known as
Liquid) Sunday night. Given this town's perceived affinity for ecstasy
and drug culture, he fittingly began his set with the Green Velvet
track about pills (La La Land). It was fitting for him to play the Abe
Duque track "What Happened?" with Blake Baxter saying "what's up" to
Detroit techno, as the local music scene of late rarely plays host to
any Detroit talent, largely favoring and booking the dj's who play the
current so called "minimal" sound instead. But then again, SF has been
a trend following city lately. But I digress.
More power to the guys who put on Saturday night's show, in a "proper"
venue, where the sound is loud and just a tad bit unclean (in that Theo
Parrish kind of way), the roof is made of ruffled tin (giving it that
stripped-down warehouse feel) and the location is far away from where
the liquored-up yuppies in search of the current "cool"
sound-of-the-moment roam.
Wojtek
- (313) Mike "Agent X" Clark and Delano Smith in SF Wojtek
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