DJ Shadow at the Richy: Super Cool DJ, Super Shitty Club

DJ Shadow in Shanghai
Originally uploaded by photog37

DJ Shadow played Shanghai last night. The title above sums it up: great musicsmith, lame-ass venue. Yo Shadow, next time play the Shelter!

DJ Shadow came out of the influential Solesides/Quannum crew at UC-Davis in the mid-90's and has been laying down killer tracks ever since, sampling from his voluminous record collection and collaborating with other like-minded hip-hop and electronica artists like Lateef, Lyrics Born, Blackalicious, Cut Chemist, etc. His first set in China started off with about two hours of hip-hop and concluded with an hour of techno. The club briefly got rocking around 2 a.m. as Shadow threw down tracks from Bloc Party and UNKLE (of which Shadow was once a member).

But in the cool DJ versus cool club department, it's hard not to emphasize the importance of a cool club. I'd take a house DJ any night of the week at the Shelter over a name DJ playing a place like Richy on a Friday night. The name says it all: Pretentious, asinine, playing to every stereotype of the more corny Chinese clubs (no surprise, this club was brought by the makers of Babyface). The listed cover price of 100 RMB shot up to 180 RMB while Shadow was playing his set... $26 just to get in the door. The dance floor in the center of the room was so full of cocktail tables that it was difficult to even walk in between the bar stools, let alone dance. Morose-looking guards in black were everywhere advising people on everything from which way to walk across the room to diving in to descend on anyone who took a photo without a permit. They were pretty polite but their sheer numbers brought back flashbacks of being at the Beijing Olympics.

Air quality in the room also left something to be desired. Richy had the fog machine blowing continually: fog might have a nice effect once in awhile, maybe as an opening for the night, but when it's blowing through every two minutes it's incredibly annoying, kind of like having a light version of mace sprayed in your face. Coupled with the cigarette smoke, it was almost impossible to breathe in there. For all its pretension, the club is not particularly large. The single room has a plain squarish layout, black walls and silver disco balls.

Shadow gamely played through his set, starting off with an explanation for why it took him so long to play China: clubs (according to his explanation) just wanted him to do straight DJ stuff, not his own music. So tonight he said he would be playing a mixture of DJ stuff and his own original tracks. He seemed unsure what do with the crowd at hand, although some of them certainly were diehard fans. Typical banter: holding up a 45 record and saying, "Do you know what this is?" Uh, yeah. The slight saving grace for the evening was that the music was pretty good and it was nice to see Shadow at work. Next time he arrives in Shanghai, here's hoping we can go see him at a real club.