Short Attention Span Audio Theater a.k.a. One Small Step for a Koala, One Giant Leap Away from the Dance Floor

One small step for a koala, one giant leap away from the dance floor. This was the second tour we designed that wasn't for a dance floor or club venue.  Although many of the rooms we were booked in were indeed clubs, we asked the promoters to rent in cabaret tables for 2 to 4 people for the audience. The idea was to create a type of seated event that was a fun combination of storytelling, visuals and 8 turntable mayhem.

Knowing that the audience may have been expecting a club event, we decided to start the night by giving everyone a printed program. Like receiving a playbill at the theatre that would introduce you to the cast/crew of the production. You could leaf through it and get some background info while you were waiting for the show to begin.

This was back in 2003, but luckily, my friend and Ninja Tune mentor DJ Food had saved some from the London performance. He shared these pictures of the program and bingo cards with me. Thanks Kev!

This was the front of the program, including the characters from the Some of My Best Friends Are DJs comic book. They're seated at an imaginary film festival watching a clip from Monkmus' animated video for the turntable rendition of Basin Street Blues which was the first track on the album. Seated from left to right are some of my comic book characters: Skid, Grandmaphone, Tania, The Nufonia Robot, and Negatron. Tania was my girlfriend at the time and her cartoon image makes appearances on many of the releases around that era.

There she is on the cover of the album second floor apartment on the right above the Nufonia robot.

Back to the tour, when you arrived at the show, you were given a copy of this program, a bingo card, and a pencil at which point you could find a table for you and your party.  

The show looked like this from the stage... It had a cozy, jazz club kind of feel. This was a DVD we made from the show in London at Lock 17. 

For context, the Some of My Best Friends Are DJs album was made by recording many layers of scratches on a multitrack recorder.  But in order to perform these tracks live, I would have needed more than 3 turntables and several more arms.  I enlisted my pals DJ P-Love (NYC) and DJ Jester (Austin TX) to accompany me on this tour and we divided the turntable duties for each track amongst the three of us. 

The stage had 8 turntables on it and looked like this...

Hey look, there's Tania again next to the bar code.

Some friends who came to watch us during rehearsals told us that they had trouble understanding who was scratching which sound. I guess because they weren't DJs, it was difficult for them to decipher who was cue-ing a record and who was scratching. And on top of that, if we were all scratching simultaneously, which sound/layer was coming from which turntable. To be fair, it is pretty darn confusing.

We decided to set up the turntables in a traditional "rock band" style.  We had a pair of turntables for "drums" near the back of the stage where the drum kit would usually be set up... There were a pair of turntables on the sides of the stage for "bass", "keyboard" and "back up vocal" layers. Finally, we had single turntable/single mixer stations in the front for "lead vocal scratches" and "solos" where usually the singer or lead guitarist would shred. As best we could, we would only scratch those musical parts/instruments at their specific turntable stations. I don't know if it helped the audiences' comprehension of what was going on but it sure was fun running around from station to station in time to do your solo or back up vocal scratch. It was a little bit of a relay race with records.

Here's page 1 from the program...

Here's the second page of the program. The opener for the show was my friend Lederhosen Lucil. Odd choice for a warm up act, you say? Well, if you were there when she did her first Montreal show at Jailhouse Rock you'll agree she tore the roof off the place. I invited her to join us on the road. She did indeed confuse the DJ audience when she first jumped on stage, but within the first 2 songs she would have everyone laughing and singing along to her wild tracks. She even got 3 marriage proposals from various audience members in different cities on that tour. What?! 

Monkmus is my cousin and he animated both the Basin Street Blues video from Some of My Best Friends Are DJs as well as the Fender Bender video from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. He made some 1-2 minute animated shorts specifically for this show (just enough time for us to reload all the turntables for the next song performance).

Louisa Schabas, one of my favorite artists in the world, did all the greyscales on the Some of my Best Friends Are DJs and Nufonia Must Fall graphic novel. So far, I have several (3) of her paintings in my private collection. And someday I'm going to open a gallery and fill it with her incredible paintings. 

The third panel of the program was a detachable postcard... where I was obligated to warn the audience that "This tour happened once"  which was true. 

On the front of the postcard was an image of some of my characters vs. some of Monkmus' characters in an Infinity War kind of show down. I forfeit because he has that dude from the Fender Bender video with the fire on his head.

Here's an example of one of the bingo cards from that tour. Each card had a combination of Monkmus' and my own drawings featured in the squares. Usually, they were different plot devices and characters from various videos and comic books each of us had made around that time. I used the bingo game as a fun way to introduce those themes/characters incase some audience members had not yet bought the album or read the comic book. The "thingy" in row 2, column 3 was mislabelled. I would later learn the correct terminology for that object is "air vent" and it's found in all of our rental vans from tour at that time. 

Here's another bingo card. FYI the object in row 1, column 4 is a sideburn. Row 1, column 5 is a drawing of "4 upset dudes" the villains from the Some of My Best Friends Are DJs comic book... who at this point were thinking "what the hell kind of show is this we just bought tickets to?"

On the back of the program there was a "scratch off" sticker. A small crew of us placed each sticker and hand folded each program over the course of 2 days before the first show.  When we finished making enough programs for each member of the audience for the whole tour, we celebrated by getting apple crumb pie from Rockaberry.  

When you scratched off the sticker you would win! As promised.

For those of you who got a ticket to Short Attention Span Audio Theater, thanks for taking a chance on a new show format idea!

Strolling down memory lane today, I can see the early seeds for the touring productions that followed including Space Cadet Headphone Concert, Satellite Turntable Orchestra and even Nufonia Must Fall Live.

For a bit of an awkward DJ, who never made much music you could dance to, the experience of doing this tour was like opening a door to new live adventures. I began to see a more personal, playful and contextual way to present the (sometimes oddball) stories and music I was making. 

BIG SHOUT OUT to the incredible crew for making this little dream tour happen!

Thank you for reading and thank you for listening all this time! And thank you to all the patrons for your continued support! We look forward to seeing you all someday soon on The Storyville Mosquito tour! 

E