the hum / By Mark Shikuma

Dust on Vinyl

DJ Jonathan Toubin brings his record crate to the ATL

(July 23, 2009)  You won’t see NY-based DJ Jonathan Toubin carrying around crates of 12” singles or LPs to a gig. You won’t even see him scratch the needle back and forth. Toubin carries around 45s, 7” singles, nearly 150 of them to each gig. And for the past several years, Toubin has averaged over 25 DJ gigs per month, playing everywhere from dive bars to underground live music venues (accompanying live sets by bands such as King Khan and the BBQ/Shrines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Melvins, Crystal Stilts and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, to name a few) to art spaces to music festivals (such as South By Southwest and Pop Montreal).

“I’ve always loved the sound, feel and look of 7” records,” says Toubin, “but I didn’t really become an exclusively 45 DJ until the last year. As I moved from bar DJ to professional dance party/club DJ, I couldn’t help but notice that no matter how I EQ-ed it, the 33 RPM tracks rarely packed the same punch as the 45 RPM and made for uneven sonic transitioning. I also liked that 45s were easier to transport, quicker to cue and, eventually, I learned that it gave me a bit of a niche to boot!”

Jonathan Toubin.

GALLERY >

Even though Toubin isn’t entirely unique in using only 45s (The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt, for example, also occasionally DJ’s bars in Lower Manhattan using the 7”/45 format), his skill at transitioning one song into another (“segueways”) is seamless, and his depth and range of choice of songs, primarily from the mid-1960s, are far from the mainstream yet extremely danceable.

“[These] records are mastered loud, the beats are wild, the riffs are catchy,” Toubin enthuses. “So much of it is out there to discover — American soul and garage, European and Asian freakbeat, Latin American stuff, and a bit of punk, glam, psych, funk, R&B and rockabilly.”

“I’ve been in general trying to start a revolution against the infinite beat on the dancefloor, preferring to change the beat and tempo every couple of minutes, often before the end of the song, for our shared short attention span and love of variety.”

Toubin is bringing his 45s and his current touring show, “NY Night Train Soul Clap,” to Humboldt County at the Arcata Theater Lounge on Tuesday, July 28, starting at 8 p.m. The evening includes a “Dance Off” at 11 p.m., with local music luminaries as judges, including Melissa Medina (The Ravens), drumming madman Steve Bohner, The Monster Women (Courtney, Aimee and Gary) and musician Matt Jackson (co-proprietor of Missing Link Records), among other Humboldt hep cats.

This will be a special night for Toubin’s booking agent (NY’s Panache Booking) and Humboldt native Michelle Cable, who will be returning to her old stomping grounds for the first time since her move to Brooklyn two years ago; she was previously based in SF. Ms. Cable started a fanzine, *Panache, while in her formative years, and it has now evolved into an international booking agency for a score of bands, including The Intelligence, The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, Green Milk From the Planet Orange, Shonen Knife and local experimentalists Starving Weirdos. You don’t wanna be an “L7” and miss this evening of infectious soul/garage/exotica grooves. (For a full-length q & a with Jonathan Toubin, consult our Web site, northcoastjournal.com*)

Perhaps you might want to ponder something more heady — such as “What is the quintessence of dust?” — while listening to loud, crunching guitars. If so, you’re in good fortune — The Metal Shakespeare Co. will be making another pilgrimage on Thursday at the Alibi.

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