bun-u

Dirty Canvas (17th Feb): review and therapy

Dirty Canvas on Friday went pretty well. I'm still getting to grips with some aspects of putting on this kind of show, some of it down to experience but other bits are down to the fact that this is a pretty unusual sort of event. Preparation for the night is obviously important and takes up a shitload of time, and where a crew or act lacks a manager, you become their manager by default. For this one, I spent plenty of time coaxing the Essentials crew in one form or another. I've known the crew from my community work in New Cross - they've performed at community events and got involved in music mentoring schemes that my work has run. They seemed like a fairly safe bet for the second Dirty Canvas night and the fact that I'd nabbed Davinchie's EP name for the night made it even more relevant to choose them.

Back in December I spoke to the two members I knew most and, after raising it at their meeting, they gave their booking the all clear. In the two months since this, making contact became difficult and when I did (as mentioned below) it seemed things between crew members had become a little strained. The bottom line was that Jendor and Nu Era were going to rep for the Essentials on the night, so some patching up the line-up was needed in the form of getting Purple & the Renegade boys and DJ Logan Sama along. In my tribulations I’ve managed to collect a partner – Peter Todd (aka DJ Magic) who has shared the workload, and chucked in a lot of good ideas, contacts and is a fine deejay to boot.

The other time-consuming bit of prep is the marketing. The first (Ruff Sqwad) night received a bit of flak about only seemingly targeting a white middle class audience. Although not strictly true, what I took on board was that the venue (an art gallery) was only really attracting the kind of people who normally go there and so extra effort was needed to get some of grime’s core audience through the door. More work was therefore spent on flyering shops and other grime nights and setting up the myspace malarkey and trying to turn some heads over at the RWD web forums.

Back to the night itself, which as with the last one, got off to a slow start - the early start and pre-performance section of the night needs to be looked at. When the performances did get underway – the night came together well.
Logan arrived (and despite some dodgy DJ equipment) got on with spinning a finely mixed set, airing plenty of new unreleased dubs. The came Jendor and Nu Era, repping for the Essentials and gave a show which they clearly enjoyed, as did the crowd. I mentioned to Jendor that some of the audience may be new to grime and he took it quite literally patiently explaining audience-artist feedback tips.

DJ Magic took over from Logan (as he headed to his next gig), Ruff Sqwad checked-into the audience and then West London’s Purple and G Double took to the stage. Purple, with his sculpted poodle hair and beard combo, was wearing his Arsenal top inside out (perhaps embarrassed by the name on the back….Viera?) and with G Double spat some of the scene’s more “conscious bars”, reminding us how George Bush is a baddie etc. They are obviously coming to the scene differently, but there is a worry from some (see RWD forums) that it's another case of UK hip hop-heads attempting to somehow gentrify the scene...particularly as Purple is fairly new to the scene, but are semmingly getting plenty of exposure (after the Urban Classics, this was the second night on the trot that he was reppin for grime to ‘the wider audience’). On the night though, he and G Double put in an excellent show (part of it can be heard at the myspace site).

Overall then, good…some stuff to work on. The night missed the intensity of having a whole crew feature to sustain the main performances - as with Ruff Sqwad. Perhaps I saw the full distance to travel when after the gig, I went across the road to the Heatwave at the Rhythm Factory. This is a night that has really come together. A great crowd, a brilliant atmosphere and some corking sets and performances, which in a strange sort of way composite grime’s heritage – dancehall, rap, jungle etc. Big up Gabriel and co for putting on a big regular night, with an atmosphere so chilled it reminded me of the sweeter rave years.

Also big up everyone who came down to Dirty Canvas….to all my Dissensus crew, my Leeds crew, my Wolverhampton crew and my Coventry crew….you’re large (...really fat most of you, go on a diet).

Any ideas for crews to feature at our next night in May (pref ones with managers of some sort, please)?

posted by David M @ 5:43 pm