miguel23

Nobody does house music quite like Chicago. It’s true. Most of the greatest house dj’s formed there and many other great unknown bless decks in the windy city nightly. However, not many take the cake like Cajmere, aka. Green Velvet, founder of the classic Cajual and Relief Records, and widely known for the timeless jakin’ house anthem, “The Percolator”. For those who know house music though, this is just a sliver of his work. This man has produced countless underground anthems and last Friday September 14th at Zentra Club in Chicago, Cajmere displayed how deep he can take his rhythm. Here is a horrible picture taken with my phone camera early in the night.

The night started with twisted deeper techie cuts that preserved the original Chicago house hat hit that sets the mood. It progressed smoothly into deeper bass grooves with asynchronous clack-like sounds that teetered yet maintained funk. House head bopping was inevitable. I went with my deep homie ‘Mole’ with whom I first discovered Cajual Records back in 1992. He went on to being a deep hippie in the woods of Montana with a ZZ top beard. But on this particular night ‘Mole’ was throwing down some house jakin’ dance moves in his hometown of Chicago to the sounds of Cajmere. It was great to see, we both went back to the basics.

Dajae, the original Diva of Cajual Records came out and did all the greats “U Got Me Up” and “Brighter Days” included. It felt good to hear the Windy City sing along to the lyrics. Groovy! here is another horrible picture (I’ll get a camera soon):

Anyway, it was dark, I used my phone. Please cut me some slack.. I know the picture quality sucks.

As you can expect U Got Me up made the crowd loose their shit, but even more so was when we all heard the undeniable funky beginning beats of the “The Percolator”. Wow! Chicago, thank you for representing for your own sake. It was fucking great to see the love Cajmere get out there and actually perform the percolator live with a microphone in his hand. He actually showed us what the percolator dance looks like. Feast your eyes on yet another crappy phone camera picture. Here is a glimpse of Cajmere dancing the Percolator:

The guy to his right is one of his new artists whose name I can’t recall. After this apex moment, Cajmere took back the decks and continued to dj for another 2 hours. He stayed true to himself and played some of that ultra hard techno which he produces frequently under the alias Green Velvet. Personally speaking, another large highlight for me was when he dropped Plastikman’s ‘Spastik’ and Chicago welcomed it hootin’ n’ hollerin and jakin’ to it. I personally live between Chicago, Detroit, and Berlin as my favorite music epicenters so this was a special moment for me. Here is a picture taken at the moment he was playing it:

I ran into my old friend Tim Baker, founder of Elephanthaus Records, Detroit. He ran an early techno operation that spawned the Ann Arbor to Detroit techno contingency in the early 90’s. An old school head, great to see and catch up with. Another great surprise was seeing and hanging with yet another important Detroiter, Brian Gillespie whom I had the pleasure of knowing and rubbing shoulders with back in my party throwing days in Ann Arbor/Detroit.

I was happy to go home with this great auto graphed souvenir by Cajmere. I plan on framing it.

quick prop delivery and a picture with Cajmere. Good times. Back in San Francisco now.