All this scratchin' is makin me itch

When I went to my first CMJ Music Festival Andrew, Tripp, Linda, (along with maybe Nick and Sara?) and I saw a documentary about DJ culture. Most of my experience in that world had been with anonymous black vinyl at Greenwich Village Record shops. I'm not even sure if I'd read Generation Ecstasy at that point. It's not like MTV regularly interviews Roger Sanchez and Danny Tennaglia so I was pretty psyched to finally be able to attach some faces and stories to the music I was falling in love with.

Unfortunately the doc sucked. It provided zero historic perspective and no narrative sense of continuity. Don't think that was some clever structuring device that went over my head - like it was supposed to be emblematic of the meandering journey of a DJ. It wasn't. It was just a poorly constructed documentary. Bad enough that I don't even remember what it was called.

This forgetfulness placed me at a disadvantage when the Wiz went out of business. In vulture mode I pored over the dwindling inventory of DVD's on clearance and stumbled across a double disc set called Scratch. On the cover it bore the mark of an official selection at Sundance. Was this the movie we saw? It looked more hip-hop oriented based on the packaging, but I couldn't be sure.

I didn't want to get suckered into spending money on a movie I already new sucked, even if it was 50% off. I took a chance though, forked over my ten bucks and brought it home.

I'm glad I did. If your a record nerd (cough - Tripp, cough - Andru) this is required viewing. For everyone else I still strongly reccomend it. The director smartly kep the focus narrow, telling what is more or less an authoritative history of the the hip hop DJ culture. House, tecnno, and jungle will have to get their own damn movie. This is strictly hip hop

They start it in ground zero of the Hip Hop world. The South Bronx housing projects. They have interviews with old school Titans like Afrika Bambaata and Grand Wizard Theodore (inventor of the scratch) and give requisite props to Kool Herc. As the timeline moves forward they talk to cats like Cash Money, Jazzy Jeff, and DJ Premier before moving to the present with the Invisible Scratch Picklz, the X-Ecutioners, DJ Shadow, and DJ Craze.

The soundtrack is insane and there's wicked demonstrations, live concert, and battle footage, but the interview with DJ Shadow is my favorite part. They talk to him in the catacombs of his favorite record shop. In the foreground are seemingly endless stacks of dusty vinyl. Through a narrow gap we can make out the figure of DJ shadow sitting on the floor dwarfed by the towering piles. Transcribing his remarks would destroy the magic of the moment, but he talks about what it means to him to dig through the crates and is nearly poetic.

The DVD is called Scratch and you need to buy it.