Travis’ Two Cents (In Five Parts)

Hi, I’mTravis Holcombe. I’m a new DJ here at KCRW. You can hear me on the radio on Tuesday nights at midnight — which is technically Wednesday morning (even though no one thinks of it as Wednesday, really).

This is my weekly column of musings and ramblings about music or whatever else I feel like writing about at the moment I sit down to write this column. But mostly music. This is the KCRW Music Blog, after all.

I’m sure I’ll say a lot of stupid stuff that I’ll regret after I see it published on the blog, so take everything I write here with a grain of salt.

Also, not to turn this into a running gag, but if you have any suggestions for a better name for the post, I’m completely open to a change. There haven’t been any suggestions yet, so I guess you guys either (a) like the name, or (b) are apathetic, or (c) can’t think of anything better. If there are no suggestions this week, you can forever rage in silence if you don’t like the title because it’ll just be called what it’s called.

Enough with my preface! Let’s go:

1) A snippet of a newly unearthed Daft Punk track was released last week by Soma Records. Hear it here:Daft Punk – Drive Unreleased 1994 (Preview) by soma

The track will be released on a compilation celebrating Soma Records‘ 20th Anniversary.

That’s cool, but even cooler is the Daft Punk news that snuck under the radar — that the robotic duo are collaborating with legendary 1970’s songwriter, Paul Williams on their next album. Williams, who penned such AOR classics as “An Old Fashioned Love Song“ and “We’ve Only Just Begun“ should bring an interesting, humanistic wrinkle into the Daft Punk sound.

2) Juice Crew member, Masta Ace recently tweeted that the long-rumored collaborative album between he and the one and only metal-faced supervillain, MF DOOM is complete. The album, entitled MA DOOM: Son of Yvonne will feature Masta Ace rhyming over DOOM’s beats. Look for it to be released sometime in November.

3) There’s about 25 things that are totally incredible about this Wayne Cochran video (skip to 0:38 if you don’t care about Jackie Gleason’s intro):

…that is all…if you want more, part two is here and is equally amazing.

4) Outkast will be releasing a new album(s?) sometime next year. There hasn’t been concrete word on whether it will be as a duo or if we’re looking at another Speakerboxxx/The Love Below type situation, but fingers crossed that my hometown heroes can get it together to record an album together again. As individual acts they’re both great, but together as Outkast they’re unstoppable.

5) Last week we received the sad news that DJ Mehdi died in a tragic accident at the age of 34. Although I never met Mehdi personally, I was lucky enough to see him play a couple of times when he came through LA and I can tell you that I’ve rarely seen anybody have as much fun DJing and feeding off of the crowd’s energy as him.

My favorite DJ Mehdi memory was in a packed warehouse downtown a few years ago at an Ed Banger party; Mehdi was DJing and with every new track, the crowd would get more and more nuts. In between songs, Mehdi would come out from behind the decks and jump around with the audience and give everyone fives before running back on stage, drenched in sweat to cue up his next banger. It was beautiful. DJ Mehdi’s spirit and exuberance will be sorely missed…R.I.P. Mehdi…

— Travis Holcombe