Good Vibrations After Party feat. Tittsworth @ 3rd Class, Melbourne (09/02/08)
Blanket generalisations about any aspects of the worldwide music scene should, for the most part, be taken with a hefty dose of salt. British indie-alternative music bible NME tends to proclaim the “New Best Band Ever” every other week. Dance music is little different. In Melbourne, dance clubs seem to spring up for mere months at a time, with DJs and their track selections even more transient than the venues themselves. A three year lifespan is considered a remarkable achievement in the scene.
It’s little surprise then, with the scene’s ephemeral nature, that much of it has evolved into a musical puree of sorts. Unfortunately, that leads us back to the blanket generalisation. That generalisation is that mash-up – the musical anti-genre where pop music literacy is a blessing not a crime – may well be taking over the world. Of course, the electro-house scene is the one most evident in Melbourne, however. But even that has had a symbiotic relationship with mash-up; the preponderance of remixed 1980s pop cheese into danceable electro numbers over the last few years has been, if not a revolution, at least more than just a fad.
3rd Class, the club now situated in the shell of one of Melbourne’s most loved and most infamous venues, Honkytonks – and run by the same eccentric crew – has its own special take on this. Most Thursday and Friday nights you can rock in to hear anything from indie kids the Reptiles to electro DJs like Cutters or mash-up straying toward Baltimore club sounds from Tranter. The minimal techno nights of Honkytonks are, sadly it seems, gone. But this is party music, and it’s not so bad. For their Good Vibrations after party 3rd Class seemingly had an easy choice in picking the most suitable act. Tittsworth, a self-proclaimed Baltimore club aficionado hailing from Washington DC, is one of the hottest new acts in club world. And after a superb set showcasing his mash-up skills at the Music Bowl, the scene was set for a perfect late night sequel.
And… the nights are indeed late. The 3rd Class journey can sometimes be a tough one. You can almost feel defeated just walking up the stairs. The decor is “Melbourne Trash” at its best: ripped chairs, half-painted walls and – of late – more UV than you could poke a melanoma at. It is an attitude that must be embraced, lest it begin to take on a life of its own. In short, embrace the trash before it embraces you. After a long, wet day at Good Vibrations it was not surprising to find few milling around 3rd Class when I arrived at around 11pm. Inside, things were quiet – though not empty. DJs Andee Frost and Ooh Ee played loud but uninspired early sets. Of course this could have been as much humility as anything else – any 3rd Class regulars expect close to perfection from the DJs, but it’s never good form to upstage the main act. Perhaps with the long day that most had endured in mind, that main act was not long away.
Just past midnight Tittsworth laid the first vinyl down. By now the crowd had grown wall-to-wall. Despite the tired eyes and drooping limbs, the frowns were being replaced by grins. It was hard to tell what Tittsworth was playing on. Though he had his hands on the decks, he made great use of a laptop perched in front of him. Serato, perhaps? Whatever the case, the track selection was phenomenal from beginning to end. Tittsworth is not necessarily a chin-stroker’s dream. His sets are rarely obscure. It is party music, pure and simple. But beginning with an assortment of low tempo ‘80s and ‘90s hip-hop which even convinced me, the sit-down-quietly-and-train-spot-the-DJ-par-excellence-guy, to get the hell up and dance, he soon moved into some *Bambaataa*–styled “throw ya fuckin’ hands up” exhilaration.
And that’s when the real mash-ups started. For the rest of the night it’s doubtful that any track lasted longer than a minute and a half. As quickly as he’d thrown down *Smashing Pumpkins*’ Tonight Tonight, it had merged into Jump by Kriss-Kross (which, after all these years, is actually surprisingly good). This turned into *Blur*’s Song Two, which became Sweet Child O’ Mine which became Dirty Deeds. You get the picture. Though *Tittsworth*’s epileptic style of mixing doesn’t suit everyone, it’s fair to say that he had this particular audience in the palm of his hand. It is a fine balance though: play the tracks too fleetingly and the set loses its flow and direction, but leave it too long and the audience begins to wilt. In this sense, Tittsworth’s poise was superb. After a variety of alt-rock mashes from (you’d suspect) most of the audience’s 1990s youth, he began to beat us over the head with treble-heavy electro that threatened to finally rip the peeling paint from the walls. Never has the tinnitus been so pleasurable.
The obvious highlight of the set, for me, was the Harder Better Faster Stronger segue. As perhaps every DJ and his dog has done since Kanye West’s do-over, Stronger, Tittsworth started first with the full Daft Punk original, finally mixing seamlessly into the Kanye track over the glitched-out melodic electronica finish. After the breathtaking spectacular that was the Daft Punk tour just a month and a half ago, and with the vast majority of the crowd having just seen Kanye close out Good Vibrations, looking around the room at the blissed-out faces one had to think that these tracks, from this DJ, on this night, were something very very special.
