Sounds of the City

Looking back on an era of acid jazz and the posters that set the scene.

Things have been rather hectic around the OW headquarters and I haven't had much time to sit back and contemplate or even muster enough energy to write about something. So the blog has suffered as you can see...sorry. It has been a busy year. I thought I would spend some time looking back (while cleaning the flat files looking for something) and post some old graphic design work, some rock posters, some DJ flyers and some of the fun things I have completed over the years.

Going back to 1997, when the DJ scene in Buffalo had worn out it's post-rave vibe, all seemed lost on the club scene. Rock & hip-hop ruled the bars and DJs were regulated to the typical Friday and Saturday night slots. A friend of mine opened the Kingsnake Lounge at 112 Chippewa street and a new groove was born for the end of the '90s. DJ Scotty and I took our love of electronic music, early drum and bass, abstrakt hip hop, and a new groove called acid jazz, and created what we called 'deja blu.' We spun records (yes kids, vinyl records...) at the end of the bar on a Tuesday night and created a scene for the chilled out, imported beer and martini drinking set.

The posters and flyers I did for our nights were always changing in order to keep it fresh. Born of the distressed, grunge of the era (late '90s), the posters were often built directly in Photoshop to take advantage of the layers, filters and accidents that made cool & unplanned things happen. A signature look was born to promote a signature DJ night than moved from the weekday stint to the monthly, full house Saturday nights. Often with images of sax players and manipulated jazz icons, I borrowed strongly from the Blue Note graphics of the 1950s and turned it on it's head. Printed after hours at my job at the time, I was limited to one-color on white stock. When my day job bought a color printer, I still worked in a limited color range to keep it simple and stark.

The official deja blu logo is probably the only logo that I have ever designed that doesn't exist in vector format. A layered Photoshop file, the DB logo was a misaligned ghost of an identity, a vibrating, floating logomark that represents the music, the scene and the blurry consumption of too much alcohol. With unnecessary accent marks on the logo, I always wanted us to appear strange and foreign.

Here we have three examples of deja blu flyers, typical of the era. The first one was a 1/2 page, black and white and may have been one of the 1st flyer to promote the deja blu Tuesdays. The official 'deja blu' logo had not been created yet, but the visual aesthetics can be seen in it's infancy.

The other two are from specific Saturday nights at the Kingsnake Lounge and represent the deja blu look at it's top form. The first one from November 28, 1998 includes fuzzy typefaces, fake halftone dots, and a limited color palette (always in blue). The second poster is from a night in 1998 (2-days before x-mas), and it broke away from the norm with a much more balanced, less grunge look. Printed again in a limited palette but on blue paper stock, the yellow glowing deja blu logo hangs on the half-toned, manipulated clip art building like a flag. Other deja blu posters often included Europeans enjoying cigarettes and cocktails or urban landscapes, as with this one. This was a memorable night on the Buffalo club scene with duel slide shows, flashing lights, over-capacity crowds (screw the fire marshall) and people dancing their asses off and flipping up the walls, drinking like it was the end of the world, all over a pumping, jazzy groove that was acid jazz in it's prime. Great flyer, great night!

There will be more to follow, including some early '90s rave/party flyers and some ICON concert posters (where I was the official poster designer in it's heyday). I have to organize them and scan them, so pencil that in as 'coming soon.'

CREDITS: (1) original deja blu logo, (2) deja blu 'The Original" flyer from 1997, (3) "November Twenty Eight Saturday" poster for Kingsnake gig 11/98, and (4) "Sound of the City" poster for Kingsnake gig on Dec. 26th 1998. All designed by Mark Wisz, Wizard Graphics.

The Mirror Conspiracy

Today's Buffalo Snooze essentially re-wrote an ArtVoice story about Buffalo's electronic DJs in the 1990s. See the AV story linked here. Again Scott & I, as "dejablu" were named-checked. It seems a history of this Buffalo DJ scene cannot be written without our influence mentioned. This is very cool and it makes me feel great to not be forgotten! An honor to be remembered, to say the least.

To add to this story: both the Kingsnake, the 658 and the Blu (Osaka) were weekly DJ gigs begun by Scott and I. We were the first DJs at the Kingsnake on Chippewa, the first ones to move to 658 after the original 'Snake closed and we were the opening night DJs at Blu on Main Street. My DJ parner Scott hosted the weekly 'open DJ nights' at Blu that began the careers of a lot of local DJs.

As written in the Buffalo Snooze article:

"Concurrent with these warehouse and loft-space parties, a small but vibrant club scene began to grow in Buffalo — centered around the Chippewa area, but certainly not limited to it. The likes of the Rendezvous, Asbury Alley, the Kingsnake, the Atomic, the Icon (later to be known as Club E), the Opium Lounge, and Osaka's Blu, among others, all featured at least one night of DJ-based music per week....

.... In addition to the Knowmatic Tribe guys, Deja Blu, DJ Zuk, Mike Parker, and the collective responsible for the weekly Baby Steps shows at Broadway Joe's conspired to lay the template for 21st century Buffalo electronic dance music."

This makes me think 2010 is ripe for some dejablu reunion gigs?!?!? Someone call DJ Scotty!!

Buffalo News article: They spin, we dance: DJs draw crowds downtown

Beat Dis

dejablu, Scotty and I, are named-checked in Craig Reynolds piece about Buffalo, NY's DJ history, post 1990. It was very cool to get the little plug as our place in Buffalo DJ-history is noted.

When Scotty and I abandoned our rock-n-roll bar DJ gigs to started spinning records in Oct. 1997 on the corner of the bar at the Kingsnake on Chippewa, we would have never thought a whole scene was going to blow up around us. Delving into, what was later to be known as acid jazz, we played records on a Tuesday night. In our primetime we played such cool spots as the Kingsnake Lounge, 658, Osaka's Blu, O, Off The Wall, old Pink, Rendevous, Calumet Arts Cafe, the Tralf, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Mohawk Place, Daemen College Gallery, WNYBAC, CEPA Gallery, Allen St. Hardware, Third Room, Central Train Terminal, old Burchfield Penny Art Center, many more that I have long forgotten, and had a drink named after us, the dejablu martini!

The older I get, the more I wanna rock! Excerpt from the AV article:

"Atomic Cafe and the Kingsnake Lounge in the early years of the Chippewa Street resurgence were ground zero, attracting fashionistas and Elmwood’s denizens of cool, and later, Club e (formerly the Icon), 658 on Main Street, where the Knowmatic Tribe held residence once the Kingsnake closed, and the Opium Lounge, all opened their doors to electronic music. By now, there was a healthy community of experienced DJs, all pursuing their own personal styles—like DJ Zuk of Deep Soul Plug, who started playing cosmic lounge, and Dr. Wisz and Scotty, who as Deja Blu spun acid jazz."

> Read extensive AV article here.

> Click here for dejablu discography.