Ice Cream Man

Bodie and I attended the last First Friday event of the year at Natural History Museum and the crowd was bigger than ever—people aren’t just coming for the music anymore.  The guided tour and the lecture are now offered for two sessions instead of one and require time specific wristbands for entry.  Even with the added lecture the scientific and stylish-centered alike could be heard complaining about not getting in.  This last lecture wrapped up NHM’s evolution series, chosen in honor of Darwin’s 200^th birthday.  They saved the last lecture for Dr. Michael Shermer, founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, who ended the series with a discussion that has been promised from the start: Why Darwin Matters: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Battle for Science and Religion.  We bought the book of the same name and Bodie’s already started it…with just a little vocab help from me.  The director of the museum was introduced prior to the lecture and I had to thank her personally afterwards for taking such a big risk with something like First Fridays.  It really has been, and will continue to be, a great partnership between cool and smart.  We need more places like this. 

LA’s own DJs Dam-Funk and Z-Trip were the musical selections for the evening, but before they started we stopped in the African Mammal hall to eat some yummy food and listen to The Gaslamp Killer.   I think we were talking about the brownies when a jelly fish blooped by.  As he made his way through the crowd, stinging random people, another creature appeared beside the DJ.  Soon, different insects and animals came and went from the room and we all obligingly formed a half circle stage in front of the DJ and watched the wildlife interact with the crowd and each other.  A chopstick clawed scorpion faced off with a paper mohawked iguana…an oblivious leggy ostrich encountered an unexpectedly adorable cockroach…and a buzzing bee tried to steal beer and babies.  Proving all it really takes to transform into an animal is creatively placed recycled materials and face paint.  Well, that and great performance artists.

Once the performers left the African mammal hall, we found our way passed the fighting t-rex and triceratops to North America.  DJ Dam-Funk stepped on stage and delivered his own well-crafted brand of history lessons.  He dedicated his set to all the funksters—RIP Rick James—and looked every bit the fitting part as our curator of 80’s funk.  He also mixed in some smooth early 90’s west coast hip hop to break up that synthesizer beat.  Midway through his set he pulled up friends J-1 and Computer Jay, and introduced their new group: MASTER BLAZTER.  Lots of fun references with that name.  They played a nice live set with the same funk theme. I expect to hear more from them as the funk revival can only get stronger and they were a strong argument as to why.

Known to exhume genres himself, the man responsible for breathing new life into adult contemporary music, DJ Z-Trip, came out next.  Blending the seemingly incongruous is what DJ Z-trip does best, and it put him on the map in 2002 when he released Uneasy Listening.  He is often respectfully referred to as the ‘Godfather of the mash up’.  Most bands that play at the NHM pay homage to the uniqueness of the venue, and Z-Trip was no exception starting out with a ‘Land before time’ theme that he wove in and out of his set.  He kept his rapid and seamless pace up for over an hour—expanding across the stage and to the back of the hall.  Like most good dance shows, the best dancing was going on in the back where you’re free to make your own space.  Z-Trip wasn’t the only one sweating from exertion—couples were grinding, circles were forming, and people were happy.  It really doesn’t get much better.   Towards the end of the set he led the crowd in a mantra, “This is bigger than hip…HOP!”  And he’s right.  Not just in the way he mixes—which bleeds boundaries and morphs seemingly fixed genres—but also in his usage of the craft to support his political leanings (he’s a huge supporter of Obama).

In between the immediate and grand conclusions that can be drawn from that mantra, something else struck me.  The union that NHM has fostered can stand as a model for how we progress in our culture—a model that mixes science with entertainment, brains with beauty, intelligent discourse with delectable music, and—for  me—parenthood with personal interests.  This new model is a mash up that rejects the easy divisions within our culture and perspectives, and instead fosters curiosity and creativity—allowing for the emergence of new ideas and the exploration of old knowledge. 

The next First Friday series won’t start for another six months.  I can’t wait.