Apparently, Stüssy (umlaut over the u), which is a clothing company,
was having some sort of celebration so all of their folks had all-access.
Last time (when Hooky dropped by Popscene), I dragged my wife along,
and had to leave early because she wanted to get home and we needed
to get an early start for the next day...well, that was the day
before Kaiser and my trip to So. Cal to see Coachella. Not sure
how long he played, but this time, it was for about three hours!
Popscene was packed. For some reason, this event was more sparsely
attended, and the location is about 2x the size of Popscene to boot.
The special guest (whom I found out only last night) was Andy Rourke
formerly of the Smiths. He's looking all right these days, he was
drinking quite a bit during his set, which was basically performed
with an iBook. I happened to tape much of his set, so you you can
hear for yourself that he's basically just playing music and not doing
much in the way of mixing. [Hooky, too, it turns out, to quite an infamous reaction]. I didn't get a chance to go up to him, but a couple of people asked for (and got) autographs and took pictures with him.
One disappointing note. No Freebass tracks, as far as I tell.
Doubly curious since 2/3's [well, not really, but that's what I thought back then] of the group were there.
So, while I'm watching Andy do his thing, none other than the
man himself comes walking by...but by the time I react, he's
well past me, and there's nothing worse than chasing, both in
poker and in brushes with greatness. However, Hooky and a
young man came by again, and I had a brief chance to talk to
him. I found out that he's working with LTM on releasing all
the gems he has in his vaults....no, just kidding. I only had
the werewithal to ask him how long Andy Rourke had been beatmixing...
er, DJ'ing. Hooky laughed, shrugged, and referred me to the young
man that was next to him. At the time, I didn't figure out
until afterwards that young man was his son Jack! The cool part
is that I was taping at this point, so you'll likely be able to
hear this. I'm about 90% sure this was Jack, since I recall reading
that he would accompany the old man on his nights out, but I'm not
totally positive about it, but he does bear a bit of resemblance to
his father, but has curly hair and will probably have no trouble
with the ladies.
The first part of Hooky's set was the pretty bog-standard sequence
(Captain and Tennile's Love Will Keep Us Together mixed with LWTUA
followed by Grace Jones' SLC, etc)...a well-put together set, actually,
which, by the end turned into an 'Item' listening party, with New Order
track after New Order track. This is not a bad thing at all, mind you,
as there's nothing more transcendent than having tracks played to you
by one of the people responsible for their composition, especially by
the person I daresay is now [was] the heart and soul of the group.
He was clearly enjoying himself, at several points trying to get a cute-looking girl who was probably affiliated with the club to help mix. And at one point Jack grabbed her to keep her from going. Smart lad, that apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, as they say.
By the time Hooky was done, there were only myself and 20 other
diehards out of the total of 100-something from before left...
we were having a blast, singing along and dancing along like
the drunkards most of the group were at that point, I only had
a single Pale Ale, I'm dangerous enough as it is without getting
pissed. I taped most of it, but ran out of disc (and battery) during the
latter part of Crystal, after approximately 2hr 40m of music. Not
bad, and I may have gotten even more had I used the wall outlet AC
instead of USB to charge it (the MD-RZ10 also takes a single AA
attachment to extend battery life). I could have probably gotten
a couple more hours of bat life (and certainly enough room on
a single 1Gb disc) had I recorded in ATRAC SP mode, but I believe
in keeping it lossless if at all possible. [funny that I've only sharing this in MP3 format]
And unlike my Kaiser
recording, this one was quite listenable without any further
processing. In fact, it turned out surprisingly good. The
AGC on those units is wicked fast, it's not easy to tell that
the unit is constantly volume limiting.
So I missed out on (going by memory) EGG, Temptation ('83 version),
True Faith, Regret, WIM (full singalong in effect), and the first
part of Moby's Temptation to chill-out and give the message to the
faithful to sod off, even I was yelling out, "Haven't you lot had
enough?".
It was well worth the price of admission plus nearly that
much to park.
As I was walking out, a couple of the lads were putting their best
Blighty on and singing to WIM and "Manchester, la-la-la" as they
staggered out the door. Well, I use "lads" loosely, one was
wearing a nose ring. I'm sure they're NOOL'ers...didn't run into
anybody I had met earlier, though I did recognize one lady from
Popscene.
Near the end, one individual goes up to me and asks whether I'm
Arthur Baker! I nearly doubled up from laughing, but still had
enough breath to tell him that nope, I wasn't, pointing out that
Arthur Baker is quite a bit fatter and older than I am. I'm not
sure if this made the tape or it had cut out by then [ed: it made
in onto the recording].
I managed to give Hooky a copy of 'Excerpts From Recycle'. He accepted it and shook my hand...For all I know he might bin it, and it's a bit late to the part after Item, but there's still a few interesting things on there. Will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. He might even play a track off of it, who knows.
One other bit of trivia. Hooky was smoking at a couple points,
and so was Jack. Shhh...Don't tell...
