Entry One Hundred Nine.
Saturday, 2009.10.17, 5:21 PM CST.
Gomez + Dodger, Mixtape setlist, DMA magazine, and Gary Shore.  (Gary Shore?)
Current Mood:  Kinda numb.  Current Scent:  Minotaure by Paloma Picasso.

Well, I've been going through a lot over the last couple of weeks, and I've been intending on posting a new Entry... but every time I've gotten the chance, I didn't have the volition to do so, or something came up.

I've got a lot of stuff to post, so I'm going to try to do so in a series of "shorter" updates instead of just pouring everything out at once.  It'll be easier for me, and it'll be easier for you.

I can't go into a lot of detail, but lately my life has been running in a little bit of a "crisis mode."  I haven't gone out as often as I used to, and I really haven't done a lot of stuff.  But, there have been a few nice things here and there.

GOMEZ + DODGER.
Today, I called a couple of old friends, Gomez and Dodger.  They are old friends from back in the 1990s; we used to hang out playing role-playing games and watching movies.  Then, in the late 1990s, as people sometimes do, I started hanging out with other people and we drifted apart.  I had thought about G+D quite often lately, even attempting to call a couple of times in the last couple of years.  I finally successfully caught them at home today, and it was good to reconnect with old friends.

MIXTAPE SETLIST.
As stated in the last Journal Entry, I performed at Mixtape Wednesday on October 7th for their big one-year anniversary thing.  As per the stipulations of the event, I played two songs.

The first was the DJ-only Ultimix of the long-standing classic "Back To Life" by Soul II Soul.  I wanted one of the tracks to be something that had a great deal of commercial success so that people would recognize and dance to it.  Unfortunately, largely due to the song selections of the two individuals DJing before me, the music room at the Crystal Pistol was almost cleared out by the time I started performing (around 12:40 AM!).

The second was the unreleased DJ Badger Aggressive Edit (Early Version) of Depeche Mode's "Stripped."  It's not my best remix work at all (a decent combination of the classic Highland Mix and a wicked electric-guitar-driven dub I got a few years back), but I felt the urge to play it, so I did.

If you really want to see the official "setlist page" in its pretty, formatted glory, just click here.

DMA MAGAZINE.
So, a while back, I was feeling nostalgic (gasp!) and I broke out a stack of old Dance Music Authority magazines and Spinning Sounds catalogues that I'd picked up at my dad's house.  These were basically publications back in the early 1990s that I would use to determine which remix issues to buy... and I bought a lot of them!

It was a lot of fun going through them... and more than a little sentimental.  These were from back in the good old days, when over a dozen different companies were still releasing exclusive, DJ-only remixes on vinyl.  When I would make remix orders, I would sometimes get three or four different remix companys' versions of the same song so that I could see what I liked and disliked about each one.

The DMA mags and Spinning Sound catalogues were a testament to that time.  They contained detailed reviews of a multitude of different remixes of the hot dance music way back then.  It made me desire even more to acquire as many of the old DJ remixes as I could.  More on that endeavour later.

GARY SHORE.
Most of you reading this are probably going to wonder, "Who the hell is Gary Shore?"

Well, Gary Shore was one of the best weathermen that we ever had in northeast Oklahoma.  He joined KTEW (VHF channel 2, now KJRH) way back in 1978, and he earned a reputation as one of the best forecasters in the industry.  He was their chief meteorologist until 1995.  When I was a kid, if we wanted to know what the weather was going to be like - especially in severe weather situations - Gary Shore was the one we trusted most.  If he said there was a tornado on the way, we were on our way to the storm cellar.  If he said the storm had passed, we knew it was safe to come back up.

Eventually, Gary Shore moved away, and I didn't hear anything about him for a long, long time.

Well... a couple of weeks back, I was surfing around at Tulsa TV Memories (awesome site, by the way) and I found some really sad news:  Gary Shore passed away... way back on February 25, 2008.

The way I understand it, he died of a heart attack at the young age of 55.  I never heard about it at the time.  If I had, I probably would have posted about it here right away.

Here's hoping Gary's resting in peace.  My very belated condolences to his loved ones. 

(For a really great article about Gary Shore and his passing, please click here.)

More soon.

Badger