I’m a-burstin’ with pride. They look so good. They feel good! They’re printed on American Apparel and are real soft and stretchy. What’s more, one two or even ten could be yours, using the handy PayPal link below. Prices have been adjusted to reflect the 2009 economy, and you go-getters who pre-ordered at last year’s slightly exorbitant rate will be refunded the difference. This is probably the closest C&J will come to generating an heirloom, so think about the future and act accordingly.

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It’s been a while since the last deeds of the C&J Music Factory, but when it rains it pours. To wit: December sees the first Caps & Jones party in 6 months, the longest we’ve ever gone without DJing together. The flyer is of course, above, for hype purposes and detailed info is in the next post down.

These nights are quickly becoming a tradition unto themselves. Cheap and easy and fun for all involved. To commemorate the momentous occasion and anticipate the imminent arrival of our long-promised mixtape That Real Long Cat, we are proud to present the first-ever Caps & Jones t-shirt, designed by my talented and generous friend Justin Morris:

Will and I agree that the design could not be awesomer. The shirts will be available at the party, but you can also reserve one with Will or I via email. They’re 100% cotton, light blue ink on navy shirts, available (I believe) in sizes S-XL, quantities of each unknown, 100 shirts total so act fast! They cost $20 in the flesh or $25 via paypal or snailmailed cash, mailed anywhere in the known universe.

OK, advertising complete! Now to the free stuff:

My friend Khris asked me to contribute a mix of some of my favorite songs for the year to be shared via his blog, Rock The Dub, “the least jiggy and the most no frills” digital thought outpost on the internetto, and I was only too happy to oblige as he is an old and dear chum and he rocks a fine dub. The mix is called “Splendid Moments” and I think it lives up to the title. Many artists and genres of music are conspicuously absent, so it does not reflect my Overall Favorite Songs Hands Down, but it contains a lot of songs that dropped my jaw this year. I’m very pleased with the results and I hope you like it, too:

Pandemonium Jones: Splendid Moments 2008

1. Soy Un Caballo - Robin
2. SALEM - Streets Of Philadelphia
3. Kanye West - Say You Will
4. Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains
5. Black Mountain - Wucan
6. Portishead - Magic Doors
7. No Age - Eraser
8. Atlas Sound - On Guard
9. Animal Collective - Cobwebs
10. Hot Chip - We’re Looking For A Lot Of Love
11. Nico - I’ll Keep It With Mine (Pocketknife’s Odd Beauty Remix)
12. Cut Copy - Strangers In The Wind
13. Hercules & Love Affair - Blind (Frankie Knuckles Remix)
14. Amadou & Miriam - Sabali
15. Bon Iver - Lump Sum
16. Benoit Pioulard - Idyll
17. Wolf Parade - Language City
18. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
19. M83 - Graveyard Girl
20. Beach House - Gila
21. Fennesz - Grey Scale
22. Grouper - Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping
23. Mount Eerie With Julie Doiron - Voice In Headphones

Will and I are reprising last year’s Savalas blow out. RSVP to CNJNYE2009@GMAIL.COM to get in free all night long. Even if you don’t, it’s cheap cheap cheap! And we’re going til 6AM. AND we’re gonna have T-shirts! More on that to come.
Wednesday, December 31st
New Year’s Eve
Caps & Jones 8 Hour Freakout
Savalas
285 Bedford Ave (Between S1st and Grand)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn 21+ 10pm-6am $10

In two weeks, Caps and I are celebrating three years of DJing, dancing, drinking, toilet breaking, crowd surfing, beer spraying, strip teases, snowball fights and Fast Times at Savalas in Brooklyn. If you enjoy any of the above, you would do well to attend. No excuses! I’m flying across the country for this.

Meanwhile, I’m a week into a five-month stint interning at an organic farm in the Sierrar Nevada in California. There will be a big, hearty post on that when I get my camera, because my words will not do it justice. It’s really beautiful and I’m having a grand ol’ time. Spent this morning down by the river panning for gold. Nuf said.

Finally, be sure to check out the C&J summer barbeque mix for Krudmart. It went live last Friday and has already been downloaded over 10,000 times. Holy smokes! Tracklisting:
rush - spirit of radio
the fixx - one thing leads to another
cyndi lauper - she-bop
flock of seagulls - space age love song
head east - never been any reason
thin lizzy - jailbreak
kansas - carry on my wayward son
black sabbath - behind the wall of sleep
joe walsh - life’s been good to me so far
blue oyster cult - godzilla
weezer - the world has turned
sonic youth - teenage riot
dinosaur jr - freak scene
blondie - hangin on the telephone
the clash - remote control
tom petty - yer so bad
the cyrkle - red rubber ball
joe walsh - in the city

As an added bonus, it fits snugly onto an 80 minute CD with our XMU mix from last summer. Bring the heat to your next barbeque, bonfire, beach party, or bake sale.

The trip to Toronto was epic! Friday was a huge bro-down in Buffalo during which I violated my vegetarianism twice, hump-danced an entire dance floor to life, fell several times, and pressed my bare ass to the window of Krudmart. Saturday I was remarkably un-hungover and free to fully enjoy a tasty pre-party dinner in my friend Naeel’s penthouse, a gnarly event both in name and in action, and an afterparty that stretched until 7:30 AM. Even the ride back was action packed: a flat tire that saved us from getting a speeding ticket (or enough sleep) and an impossibly bright, HUGE double rainbow - at the same time! It was so surreal, maybe the second full rainbow I’ve seen in my life. And I guess the third, too! Too bad I left my digital camera in Toronto…

And now I’m back “home” in New Jersey. Why the quotation marks? Well, what with the road trip and all I haven’t felt like I’ve had a proper home in a while, and I still don’t know where I’ll be settling when all’s said and done. Furthermore, my mom just took a new job in Chicago (congratulations, ma!) and the house is going up on the market ASAP. My two-week trip back east, which was supposed to be spent lazing about and visiting flea markets, has turned into a madcap journey through the spacetime of my amassed possessions from the first 24 years of my life as I pack for the imminent relocation.

I’ve spent the last couple days trying to isolate the truly indispensable items in my library, music collection, and wardrobe: the special somethings that tug at my scrap of a sentimental side, the future heirlooms, the rarities that I’m too selfish to cast into the hands of strangers, and most frequently the scattered but truly awesome cultural artifacts that I intend to revisit frequently throughout the foreseeable future.

Most of my CDs already got the axe before my road trip. They’re by and large impersonal and soulless objects that serve, to me at least, merely as unworthy vessels for the sweet sounds stored on their shiny surfaces. Records I’m a bit more fond of, but most of my acquisitions were made in the mindset of a DJ, not a listener, and in the Serato era most of my collection is completely obsolete: 12″ singles of songs I’ve long since ripped or downloaded, mediocre LPs purchased for a single dancefloor-worthy song, classic albums scarred from years of poor treatment. The product of 10-odd years and countless - probably thousands - of hours acquiring and accumulating reduced to so much dead weight.

As I mentioned previously, I don’t consider myself especially sentimental, particularly regarding objects. The hours of searching, and the brief moments of glee upon finding the sought-after, are far more valuable than the paper and plastic itself, and they are in unlimited supply for the rest of my life. The time spent amassing the collection can’t be sold off, nor can it be preserved by retaining the records. The music itself sounds just as good, at least to my non-audiophile ears, emanating from a far more portable and convenient digital device. Hell I’m even selling one of my turntables. I’m retaining what looks to be about ten percent: The upper echelon, the grade A material. Once you start getting A’s on tests, you take the B’s off the fridge, nahmean? These are the albums I love to listen to all the way through and are too rare or too cool or too beautiful to isolate from their vinyl into strings of ones and zeroes.

The books are getting the same treatment: unless the content is profound or beautiful or personal enough to justify it constantly being within arm’s reach, it’s getting shipped. Towns build libraries so that I don’t have to.

What does all this mean? Nothing really. Just trying to get in the habit of writing here more. I wish I had that damn camera, because this is a lot of text to slog through with no breaks. If you made it this far, I thank you for your vigilance.

Well, this has been a long time comin’ and it’ll be a short time here. I’ve spent the last 6 weeks or so in California, DJing, uhhh… you know, just doing California stuff, dig? That’s the short answer. The long answer’s too darn long. The past is a grotesque animal, not unlike our gun toting rabbit friend up there. Let us move forward!

Tomorrow I’m flying “home” to New Jersey for a couple weeks. I’ll be in and around NJ, NY, and PA so let’s hang out!
The Honorable DJ Caps and I are going to be reunited for the first time in four months, working on new mixes and playing drug-themed songs with Cousin Cole and Dougie Boom in Toronto:

Sneaky Dee’s is at 431 College Street and at past events have been quite buck.

OTHER C+J MUSIC FACTORY NEWS:
Caps recently wrapped up an 80-minute Aaliyah tribute mix for The Fader Magazine to compliment their special issue commemorating the tenth anniversary of Baby Girl’s untimely passing. The issue’s on stands now, and the mix should be available any day now on the Fader site. It is an outstanding mix, epic and understated, that you will listen to loud and often this summer.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Modular has uploaded the podcast (or, “Modcast”) I made for them last year. I consider the delay my procrastinatorial comeuppance. Check it out if you haven’t already, or if you want to see how the file sounds upside down.

DJ Tom Hanks, bka Red Matt, has been one of my best friends for 8 years now. We met in high school at some weird overachievers conference our schools sent us to. I saw him one day and asked, “You bought the new Radiohead album (Kid A) the day it came out, didn’t you?” His response was “I skipped the first three periods so i could get it and listen to it the whole way through.” Done deal. The man has good taste!

However, he doesn’t have much software savvy, so while staying with him in LA (I’m in San Francisco now, you didn’t know?) I helped him record this demo mix. The ideas are all his, I just acted as engineer to piece things together. As in high school, he’s on top of his new music game. I hadn’t heard the majority of these songs before, and I think they’re swell. LA partygoers should definitely watch for him on bills around town, especially if, like myself, you’re sick of nights of relentless electronoise, and LA promoters should put him on!

DJ Tom Hanks The Pigeonkiller

Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
Foreign Born - Union Hall
Panthers - Goblin City (Holy Ghost Disco Dub)
Black Mountain - Bright Lights
Crystal Castles - Crimewave
Glass Candy - Beatific
Hail Social - Cherry Cola Funk (STA Mix)
MGMT - Kids
Holy Fuck - Royal Gregory
Dan Deacon - Wham City
Blaqstarr - Smack
Santo Gold - Creator (Scottie B Mix)
The Tough Alliance - Neo Violence
The Shocking Pinks - How Am I Not Myself
Clipse - Wamp Wamp (Co.Fee Remix)
Ninjasonik vs. The Death Set - Negative Thinking About Tight Pants
Jay Reatard - It’s So Useless
The Exploding Hearts - Your Shadow
Shellac - Copper

More music on the way! Working on a mix with Bay Slayer Vin Sol, one for Black Sheep Skate Shop in Charlotte, one for the International Real Estate team, an all 45s tape, and the long long long awaited Caps and Jones full length, which just might get finished this year. We’ll see. Did I mention I’m in San Francisco? Only til tomorrow though…

It’s me! Kickin’ ass and taking names! Speaking of taking names, be sure to RSVP to danceright@gmail.net to ensure admission. Thanks to Matt, Devin, and Pube$ with a dollar sign.

Really just an excuse to show off the new headphones I crafted in the wake of the Atlanta Technics Explosion, and to share this amazing track with an Easter Bunny reference:

Two posts in two days! I’m on a roll!