Slaying Dancefloors at Will .Count Zer0.

It’s funny, on the way home from work tonight I was thinking how little I’ve been blogging lately, and how I didn’t even have anything to say about the recent passing of Michael Jackson. At one point Michael was for me, like for so many of us, the only entertainer that mattered AT ALL. When Thriller dropped I was what they’d probably call a tween these days, and that album was almost everything to me. I listened to PYT and Human Nature over and over and over again, they spoke to me more than the bigger hits did I guess. (I’m still a much bigger fan of Off the Wall and nearly everything else he and his brothers did before Thriller) Anyway, I’ve been having a lot of trouble reconciling how much Michael meant to me at that young age with how little I cared about him (or at least that album) anymore. That is, until I watched this video, and it all became so heart achingly clear to me why he was important.

Noticed tonight that my records are a disaster.  Trying to think of ways to reorganize got me to wondering how the readers of this blog sort and categorize their collections.

are people wondering/whispering behind my back “why does he still go by that goofy name count zero?”

Movement - DEMF 2009 - Day 2 - 40 - Osunlade

Originally uploaded by Matt Cohen Photo / 1115

In lieu of what would simply be a rehash of my live-blog/twitter feed of the DEMF this year, I’ve decided to forgo a drastically late review, and instead just list the tracks that made the festival special for me musically.

But first, the bad.  Probably the biggest track at the festival this year, and without a doubt the most atrocious piece of garbage I’ve heard in a long time, was this joker Gramaphonedzie’s tacky swing house throwback “Why Don’t You”.   At least six moron DJs dropped this schlock-fest, a sample-heavy pounder with no style and the melody/lyrics of Peggy Lee’s 1936 standard “Why Don’t You Do Right”.  It’s embarrassing that the most popular/most played track was so very bad.  A couple people also played the siren-stinker “BX3″ by the otherwise great Len Faki.

Fortunately though there was plenty of great music to balance it out.  Here’s a brief list of the cuts that really shone:

In an otherwise bland set Francois K played K. Hand’s “Electrosoul” and the surprisingly awesome acid breaks jam “Mind Dimension 2″ by Tiga of all people.

To top their brilliant bleepfest the Wiggy Beardos (aka Wighnomy Brothers) dropped an epic and perfectly timed “No Turning Back” by Gui Boratto (again, shocker!).

Osunlade’s set was by far one of the highlights of the festival and he played two especially soulful house numbers the Deetron remix of his own cut “My Reflection” (which also saw play on at least one other stage and more than one after party), and Afefe Iku’s stunning “Mirror Dance” that just sounded unbelievable on that sound system in the bowl of Hart Plaza.

Another highlight was when Karizma played his awesome percussion filled remix of  Marc Evan’s “Reach Out For Love” to end his set at a great Friday night after party that Rick Wilhite threw.

I also heard a few Detroit classics more than once, specifically “Throw” and “The Bells” but I don’t remember hearing “Good Life” this year, which frankly was fine with me.  “French Kiss” (or perhaps some recent inexplicable edit) also got several plays.

Derrick May dropped perhaps one of the most perfectly timed tracks of the weekend when he played a very interesting hands-in-the-air banger of an edit of Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”.

All in all while this wasn’t one of the best overall festivals, it was nice to walk away having heard so many things that I could identify after the fact, especially considering that if I had listened to some of these in a store (especially that Gui Boratto) I probably would have passed on them.

Image courtesy Matt Cohen