Hsu Yi-jay (徐裕傑), Mike Jansen and friends couldn't have picked a better time for their Saturday Night Live party. The hip-hop, funk/soul, old-school, dancehall event takes place tomorrow night at club Plan B, exactly one week after DJ Nu-Mark of hip-hop legends Jurassic 5 dropped straight-up funk and wowed crowds with his turntable skills at Luxy's free Art in Motion tour. Now, Hsu, better known as Shortee (小個) from the hip-hop group Tripoets (參劈), and Jansen, of Sound Mindset and the Stereo:Types party crew, are hoping Nu-Mark's show has created a taste for something other than just another night out at a generic club. They don't want to make the comparison, but if you were at Luxy last weekend and had a good time, you might like their party.
"This is the first party we've done in well over a year outside of big clubs," said Jansen, who's recent accomplishments included a hip-hop night at TU, a "funk/soul thing" at Bar Code, and a "mix of everything" at the Party Room. It's not easy to organize the kind of party they want to put on because "the [club owners] have good intentions at first, but at the end of the day it all boils down to business and people don't really care about music," Jansen said. "The music we really like to play is heart-felt music, funk and soul especially."
At Plan B, a smaller venue on Taipei's Anhe Road (安和路) that has been hosting the regular Thursday night Reggae Oasis with the Jamaican sound system Black Reign, formerly known as the O-Brothaz, they've found a willing partner in an owner who is interested in supporting the local scene and has agreed to keep drink prices low. The DJ lineup includes Stereo:Types, Shortee, and 2Hands, who's just returned from a trip to New York and London with a stack of new records. The DJs will spin for 45 minutes at a time, then switch, to keep the music fresh.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
Shortee, who got into hip-hop as a break-dancer, or B-boy, 10 years ago, appears regularly with the Tripoets at clubs like Underworld and The Wall. He started rapping after being a hip-hop DJ and opening an underground record store, the now-defunct Da Project Records, because he wanted his audiences to understand the lyrics to the songs they heard at parties. The Tripoets' first album, Mixtape (聽說), released by Flood Records (褔樓), was listed in the Taipei Times as one of the top 10 local albums of 2004.
"Now most of the kids are influenced by club stuff, commercial stuff," Shortee said. "But I've had a bunch of Taiwanese B-boys and stuff telling me that they're coming out."
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