So Paul and I threw down for the ALASC tonight and, I gotta say it, I think it went incredibly well. I was nervous (as usual), primarily because I didn't know how people would react to our music. Man, did I have that one wrong. I'm trying to think of how this event could have gone better and I'm pretty stumped.
We started off with jazz... 70's Blue Note and George Benson, stuff like that. Then it moved, gently, in to soulful downtempo stuff. Then in to more hip hop flavored downtempo, with dub accents. This percolated and evolved for a good, long while before easing in to low key house tempo stuff. Paul has a similar approach to reading a vibe and pacing sets as I do; it's something that I really respect in a DJ and he's got it. Plus skillz. He does good work and, at least to my ear, has great taste. I'm lucky to have met up with him.
Anyway, people were dressed up, mingling, eating their cheese and wine. As we were winding things down we started to get a ton of positive feedback from the people who organized things and even the faculty advisors (who are in the 50s, maybe 60s). Sarah says this one guy was grooving out all night, and I overheard him and a woman talking about how it was great that we played a variety of music and weren't too loud. She seemed extremely happy with what we did, and he squeezed my arm at one point and seemed well chuffed. I don't know why, but that really struck me. I was happy we could play stuff that appealed to them... and, I mean, it was wide range. Cheers, mate. Sorted. Right. Out.
People were apparently asking if we do parties. Heh.
So, yeah... Mission: Get Gigged, Pwn Bloomington
Current Listening: Something I'm tempted, pending Paul's agreement, to call Live at the University Club. How "Love" Lee or Dimitri from Paris is that? It's two hours and fifty-seven minutes of chilled soul, jazz, and breaks. Want a copy? Drop me a line.
More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.
The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Current Listening: Bobby Hughes Combination, Brass Interruption
Fourteen years after the Rev. Pat Robertson's failed Republican presidential bid morphed into the Christian Coalition, Dean copied the TV evangelist by launching a political action committee to field and financially support scores of like-minded candidates across the country, for offices from town clerk to Congress. The network helped convince Democratic state-party representatives to back Dean for his party's most prominent job: chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Now, as DNC delegates gather in Washington for an election tomorrow that will almost certainly make Dean the next party chairman, the Dean team hopes the candidates he backed in 2004 can seed a movement to tug his party away from the center, as evangelicals succeeded in doing inside the GOP in the early 1990s.
When Dean formally pulled out of the presidential race last February, "we were at the Pat Robertson's-candidacy-has-fallen-apart moment," recalled Zephyr Teachout, Internet outreach director for the Dean campaign. "We were doing extensive research on the Christian Coalition."
(via Media Notes)
We can go back and forth about the direction of the party (left/right/center) all day and in to the night, but the elephant in the room with the last election's values vote thing was that the conservative Christian movement had ground game like nobody else out there. Based on this read (from a paper that's no fan of Dean, if I recall), the embrace of Dean by the state chairs makes a lot of sense.
This kind of stuff makes me positively giddy, and not just because I like Dean. It's more the kind of tactics that they're embracing, at least on the surface. The next couple of years will be very interesting.
UPDATE: Considering the relationship that the GOP has with conservative Christians and Bush's apparent "you people will speak when spoken to" moment a couple weeks back with the gay marriage amendment thing as a precedent, one wonders what kind of relationship will evolve between the party machinery (which I assume will remain pretty moderate) and the footsoldiers (which is increasingly lefty). It's worth pointing out that Dean is a lot more moderate than his press indicates...
