20 Classic Breaks | Brass vs. DJ | DJ Qbert + Jazz Mafia

 20 Classic Breaks | Brass vs. DJ | DJ Qbert + Jazz Mafia

On November 14th, 2021 Jazz Mafia and DJ Qbert collaborated on what we think, will be a legendary piece of Bay Area history. The World Champion Turntablist teamed up with some of our top instrumentalists to perform and record an ambitious 20 song Mashup in one of the Bay Area's most beautiful outdoor locations... (which happened to be on top of a huge hill in the middle of winter).

As we embarked on this somewhat spontaneous endeavor to record numerous live videos on top of Bernal Hill, we knew it was ambitious as hell. These aren't the easy to produce "Lipsync" vids that permeate the internet, we're talking 100% live performance captured with valuable audio equipment, state of the art cameras and lights. There was the threat of getting shut down by cops and on top of that, we had to deal with something that was not at all in the weather forecast for that day...RAIN. Sounds like the perfect setting for an exciting day right?

Bernal Hill lives somewhat in the shadow of it's more iconic tourist attraction relative, Twin Peaks but it remains a more interwoven and important high altitude landmark to many Bay Area natives. I lived a few blocks from Bernal Hill for over 15 years and have so many fond memories of special times spent up there celebrating various occasions, or even just walking a dog. To be on top of the City filming a Jazz Mafia video was definitely a bucket list item for me and the crew. However, our deep emotional attachment to this place may have been what clouded our better judgement when deciding to tackle this quite risky task...however, we love a good challenge!

We drove up the dead end street that leads to the bottom of Bernal Hill and proceeded to load half of our recording studio, tons of camera, light gear and instruments up a bumpy path in various janky carts. The film/audio crew we assembled was a serious dream team and all helped each other out from beginning til end - "No gear left behind!" We managed to get everything up the hill and setup within 90 minutes and started filming some smaller solo videos right on schedule.

We also brought a huge generator and some speakers which created a real concerna bout getting shut down by the popo, park rangers or other authorities. We needed to be able to hear DJ Qbert, so there was no other option. At one point an official looking truck came driving towards us up the no public access road to the top and we were freaked. Fortunately, the dude smiled, waved and drove right past us up to the sorta sorta secret military communications tower thing at the top just past us. A local later told me that they do their own weird stuff up there and don't mess with anyone. Ooooooh, spooky!

The weather had been fairly cloudy all day but after we got the full Brassband setup, it started to turn bad, quickly. After we finished our first rehearsal take of the 20 song medley, some solid raindrops began falling. I looked at all the gear we had out there, completely unprotected... Easily over $50K worth of stuff not including our instruments. I suddenly saw the reality that this was possibly a REALLY bad idea.

At one point during the first full take of the medley, I spotted our over-qualified assistant for the day, Shaina, ran over to our audio engineer Chris to hold an umbrella over him and the giant digital mixing console that was sitting out there unprotected in the meadow off to the side of the band. We were all sorta freaking out and we knew this would be our one and only take because it was really starting to come down. When we finished that take, we felt pretty good that we at least got to get one in the can but we knew we could do better as we were just getting warmed up. Qbert's tables were soaked and he was having trouble scratching and not being able to get a grip. In the video, on the closeups you can clearly see water covering his expensive DJ mixer. Crazy.

After the take, somewhat miraculously, the precipitation stopped on a dime. We all looked at each other and almost at the same time all gave the "Let's do this" look and almost without saying anything we made the quickest transition into take 2 we've ever done, for sure!

By this time a gaggle of onlookers had assembled and was adding to the excitement, making our "live" video shoot REALLY feel live. You could feel a sense of wonder and magic since none of those folks had any idea they'd run across a blasting brassband, a film crew, lights and DJ Qbert rocking out on their dog walk that day!

The rain held out for take 2 and we played with a newfound sense of urgency and appreciation. No surprise, take 2 was WAY better than the first and that's what ended up being what you see here. Thankfully the rain also held out for the remainder of the clean up as well so we were able to have a bit of fellowship as we wound up cables and packed up our gear.

We're so proud of this piece of art we've created together and I can't find words to emphasize how important the specific people on the team were integral to the success of this project. We also, could not have made this happen without the support of you, our Patreon family. This thing wasn't cheap.

- Adam Theis

Songs Performed: Spottie Ottie Dopalicious, No Diggity, Flavor of the Month (Fever for The Flavor), Sex, Love & Money, Rebirth of the Slick (Cool Like That), Hollywood Swingin', Its Your Thing, Into My Own Thang, Express Yourself, Soulful Strut, Love The One Your With, Can I Kick It?, Back 2 The Hotel, The Choice Is Yours (This or That), Patti Dooke, Don't Sweat The Technique, You Should Be Dancin, Workin Day & Night, Planet Rock, It's Just Begun

Personell:

DJ QBert- turntables Adam Theis - bandleader, trombone Ross Eustis - trumpet Richard Benitez III - trumpet Thomas Occhiuto - sax Jonathan Seiberlich - sousaphone Darian Gray - drums

Cinematographer: Mogli Maureal 1st AC: Mitchell Tong 2nd AC: Ime Umoh

Grip: Steve Reddell

Assistant: Shaina K. Evoniuk

Audio Recorded by: Chris Nishimoto/ Moto Audio Audio

Mixed/Mastered by: Ethan Headnodic Parsonage

To Purchase The track: www.bandcamp.com/jazzmafia

The making of "The Power of Rumor" by LATYRX by Adam Theis

The Making of "the Power of Rumor (Leonard is Lost) by LATYRX
produced by Lyrics Born, Lateef & Adam Theis

Lyrics Born & Lateef - lead vocals
DJ Aspect McCarthy - drum programming/synths/vocoder
Max MacVeety - drums
Joe Bagale - drums and drum programming
Pat Korte - drums
Joyo Velarde - vox
Tim Brown, Trance Thompson, Zhari Malig, Headnodic - b.g. vox
Shaina Evoniuk - violins
Adam Theis - trumpet, trombone, tuba, keyboards

{phone rings}
Lyrics Born (LB) "Yo, Adam how's it goin man?"

Adam Theis (AT) "Good, whats da haps?"

LB: "After 20 years we're finally finishing a follow up Album to the first LATYRX album! We've got a lot of the songs laid out in various forms, we need some simple horns on a few...but what we really need is one super EPIC song, some Game of Thrones type shit! (laughter). We need a track that is for the HEADS, something that really goes deep and pushes boundaries, lots of orchestration, a song that really takes the listener on a journey. Me and Lateef want you to do YOUR thing!"

AT: "Wow, that sounds like it could be right up my alley. I've got my studio rolling so I could possibly take some weight off you and do a lot of the orchestral stuff here..."

LB: "Yeah man, we want you to co-produce/co-write this with us. Get the whole crew on it if it makes sense.

 >>>>>>>>>>

I've been a huge fan of LATYRX and the whole Quannum crew since way back and usually when they call it's for something wild and crazy... I've assembled numerous large groups and orchestras to back these guys up live. Checkout the footage from us performing my arrangement of their tune "Last Trumpet" with a 20 piece band at the Jazz Mafia 11 year anniversary HERE . We also backed them up at Outside Lands in 2011, checkout oneo f my faves of theirs that I arranged "Storm Warning" HERE

After the usual managers talking about publishing and money, which is never fun for me, I embarked on one of the most ambitious tracks I've ever worked on. I started putting demos together in Ableton, based on the direction they'd given me.

After getting the basic direction and form of the track down, my first stop was one of me main accomplices on breaking beats, Joe Bagale. Joe is THE MAN when it comes to laying down a live drumbeat, chopping it, beefing it up and adding layers of samples to it. An hour later I left Joe's house with a completely finished live version of my programmed anchor rhythm for the tune. This really helped to inspire me and others as we listened to the track over and over by adding a human element to the foundation...thanks Joe!

Next step was actually many steps at once - I had a virtual factory of musicians working on their individual parts all at once. Trance Thompson, whom I started a live music camp at Burning Man with in 2010, has become one of my fave vocalists to collab with. trance works at a speed and accuracy seldom seen in the music business. I asked Trance to turn Lateef's vocal idea for the hook into a full blown choir and that he did. Later, Joyo's vocal was added on top of the choir that features Trance and Tim Brown for maximum "epicness" - I still have the version Trance did with him singing lead stuck in my head, something about demos, they just have a special place in my heart!

As the b.g. vox were being written and recorded I was working back and forth a lot with Lyrics Born and Lateef - Lots of revisions, shaping each verse to ramp up and escalate this crazy story of mis-information that the song is based on to spin out of control. The biggest challenge for me was to make each of the 4 verses different, build and yet be cohesive with the song. I used various recurring instrumental themes, kept a similar phrasing with the bass and lower instruments and utilized a sort of "strings vs. brass" thing to provide contrast and tension building.

I came up with all the brass parts in the studio, just playing things, layering, layering more, taking things out, adding more, whatever worked. It's a much more fun way for me to "write" than sitting in front of a computer staring at an orchestral score, like I often do for large ensemble writing. Getting my limited trumpet chops up into the high range of the horn, which was necessary for this song was one of the biggest challenges for me. Fortunately the studio is more forgiving and I was able to make many takes of some of those super high notes and git er done with minimal pain to my lips.

Next up was the strings. From square one we all knew that there were going to have to be HUGE live strings on this one (remember the Game of Thrones joke?) So...I came up with some basic ideas, got my lady Shaina Evoniuk lined up and began work on a multi-session process of laying down approx 60 different string tracks to create a large orchestral sound. We used a Royer 121 Ribbon mic and an SM7 and for each take, had Shaina move to a slightly different location in the room to simulate the sounds of different players playing the same parts. All of those string parts were recorded at the old Jazz Mafia H.Q. and at our temporary H.Q. in the summer of 2013 at our friend Craig's house, which was the PERFECT spot for live strings. We got lucky!

As each verse began to take shape, LATYRX had most of the lyrics written and were recording demos and ultimately finished takes over at Headnodic's place.  I began to add little details, drop outs, breaks, builds and orchestral stabs around their vocals, which is one of my favorite parts of music. I love it when the "music" interacts with the vocals in interesting ways. If you listen to this track, you will find all sorts of these devices, it's like a treasure hunt! See if you can find them all!

Since I was beginning to see the end in sight, I knew what the track now needed to be finished. It needed some additional live drums on the bridges as well as in the verses to make them different. I called on two of my longest running beat head homies, DJ Aspect McCarthy (one of the founders of Jazz Mafia and Shotgun Wedding Quintet who even came up with the names) and Pat "Pdubl" Korte from Shotgun Wedding Quintet. Both of these guys delivered to me EXACTLY what I needed - Pat gave me some beautifully washy live drums with lots of cymbals which I ran through an automated filter to give the bridge/pre-choruses to give a trippy unstable feeling. Aspect's contributions were way more electro and gave the track a colder more ominous accent that I was looking for. Aspect also surprised me by sending some bonus vocoder and synth stuff which all got snuck into the track as well. Aspect is the guy that first turned me onto Quannum so it really felt good to have hi on the track.

The last verse and the ending were really the only things left to be figured out at this point. The lyrics in the 4th verse talk about nations going to war and presidents calling for troops etc...so it was an obvious one to go in a somewhat military style drumming direction which I was able to get out of one of my favorite drummers, Max MacVeety form Crown City Rockers & Karl Denson. Once I had Max's interpretation of this, it laid the foundation for the orchestration I'd been hearing in my head but still needed to record. So, once more, I got out the horns, laid down a bunch more parts (about 20 tracks) then had Shaina do a bunch more string parts as well. Something interesting about the last verse is the absence of any actual BASS line - I found that by taking the bass part out and focusing on the drums and all the intense horn/string rhythmic stuff, it actually elevated the tension more by creating a feeling of uncertainty. I think this was LB's idea but I'm not sure but it was a great lesson to learn because as a bass player I rarely think of taking the bass OUT....but hey, if it can work for Prince (When Doves Cry, KISS) then it can work for me!

LB and Lateef figured out a "non ending" way to end this whole track...I felt like they knew all along but they didn't tell me til the very last stages...anyway, as the whole thing culminates hysterically in the the 4th verse all the sound unexpectedly stops and the listener is taken back to somewhere much more calm and peaceful to discover the songs irony. I love that it's almost like Latyrx making fun of themselves for getting so wrapped up in something but it's also a commentary on society and how easily things can spin out of control - maybe think Cuban Missile Crisis, Elian Gonzalez...it happens a lot.

I sub mixed all of the strings, brass, synths, drums into stems for LB to mix with the amazing Mike Creswell. A lot of the effects and automation I did went to the final version and not much was added on their end. I spent more time working on The Power of Rumor than any other recording in my career and it felt really good to see this bad boy be finished.

Visual Discography - Adam Theis