After a high energy, genre-hopping opening set by Kid Koala, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist entered the stage with a few choice words.  DJ Shadow, battling with an evil cold, told the sold out crowd that he had been drinking cold medicine straight from the bottle to be able to perform that evening. The cold didn’t damper his performance one bit.  Following that, he let the crowd know that there was short film to help explain the significance of all that is “The Hard Sell.” 

 

What differentiates the Hard Sell from their previous performances Brainfreeze and Product Placement is the fact that they only use 45s and included the use of guitar pedals for effect purposes.  The mere thought of DJs using guitar pedals is so progressive that I cannot fathom or appreciate how truly crunkbox it is.  However, I have come to realization, while browsing through chat boards, that Mix Master Mike was the first to utilize this evolutionary approach to hip-hop on the Beastie Boys’ 1998 album Hello Nasty.  But hey…people have been DJing for over 20 years, so that don’t mean they should stop because it’s been done before.

 

This DJ duo reminds me of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.  DJ Shadow is obviously Butch because of his outgoing nature and gang leader mentality.  However, Cut Chemist stood silently, letting his turntable skills speak louder than any words could have like The Sundance Kid being dubbed the "fastest gun in the West".  In a group, whether you rob banks or scratch records, both roles are essential and compliment each other, which is why the Hard Sell sold out rock venues throughout the country.

 

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist reentered the stage after the conclusion of the short film, which had the vibe of the commercials that used to play in movie theatres before TV became prominent.  Armed with 4 turntables each, the show began quietly with psychedelic ambience, but quickly escalating in sound, texture, and rhythm.  They started the show with a reinvented version of the classic “Rock Around the clock” with a robotic, monotone voice, obscure vocal samples, and improvised scratching on top.  In the interlude, the guitar pedals became extremely noticeable as distortions were flying all around the venue like fireworks in the hands of the inexperienced. 

 

Next thing I know, “Eye of the Tiger” is being played in a style that I can only call Hillbilly-Hop.  Quickly changing pace, they seamlessly shifted back and forth between The Flamingoes’ and Peggy Lee’s versions of “I Only Have Eyes For You”.  This was a perfect montage for the Philly crowd because of Rocky (“Eye of the Tiger” was on the soundtrack) and the fact that Philly is the soon-to-be home of the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame.

 

Briefly stopping (4 seconds tops), the duo segued into a Brazilian, samba style groove.  A little known fact is that Cut Chemist is a huge fan of Brazilian music and was in a documentary, “Brasilintime”, in which the film’s purpose was to convey the importance of Brazilian music as well as its influence on the world. 

 

A Cut Chemist staple trick is the around the neck turntable, with which he turns face out, so the audience can see exactly what he is doing.  However, with the Hard Sell, there are cameras everywhere including on one of each of their wrists under a wristband.  Seeing what they were doing was no problem as all the footage was linked up to the large projector screen on which the film was broadcasted.

 

Both DJ’s are what are referred to in the hip-hop industry as diggers because they take pride in their quest for and acquiring of rare or out of print records.  In the documentary “Scratch”, the filmmakers spent a decent amount of time on these two fellas.  Shadow believes that digging is “a karmic element of life like I was meant to pull this [record] out”.  It turns out that he snags most of his records from the secret stash in the basement of a vintage record store in Davis, California.  He refers to the basement as, “a pile of broken dreams”, and he went on to allude to that fact that, sooner or later, he will be in that pile too. 

 

For them to dig up all of these 45s must have taken a lot of time and persistence.  That being said, I was curiously surprised by the splice of “Stairway to Heaven” with the Gilligan’s Island theme song.  In addition, the most notable song samples not previously mentioned were Foo Fighters’ “Everlong”, Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”, The Doors “Break on Through”, and Metallica’s “One”. 

 

After Blue Orchid saw the show in Austin, she emailed me her thoughts along with a slew of grammatical and spelling errors, which conveyed her ecstatic awe of the totality of the performance from Kid Koala on to the Hard Sell.  When I finally got to see the show a week later, all I could say to her in reply, with similar bland, hyper-emotion was, “I’m speechless.  Visually and musically, that was an incredible show to say the least.”

 

Do us all a favor at Crunkbox and support both DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist by purchasing their recording of "The Hard Sell".  You can’t find this in stores and it’s limited edition, so snag it up before it’s too late.

 

To quote DJ Shadow, “the people who dig don’t stop digging because it’s a part of who they are,” so don’t think this is last you’ve seen of this duo.