Everybody loves a good DJ. Luckily, Caps & Jones are good DJs. Equally as lucky is the fact that ChalkedUp got to sit down with Brian aka Pandemonium Jones aka one half of the aforementioned dynamic DJ duo. C & J got their start about 5 years ago when Brian and Will, aka The Honorable DJ Caps, met through a mutual friend at New York University and discovered their similar affections for music ranging from Of Montreal to Ol' Dirty Bastard and everything in between. They soon began DJing together and then the following summer recorded Bouillabaisse--their first CD which they made only 100 copies of-- hand painting all the CDs and making the sleeves out of old record covers. While the internet's still goin' nuts over these guys as the primo-mixtape DJs and party rockers of the year, ChalkedUp conversed with Jones in order to get the scoop on why the word 'mash-up' is bullshit, what direction C & J is headed in musically, and any interesting ramblings that occur when two stoners get together and chat about club music.

ChalkedUp: Whattup man?

Pandemonium Jones: I'm hangin out...
putting off packing my clothes.

CU: Last time you guys were here it was with Rory Them Finest and Smalltown DJs put-on by Paul Devro and My!Gay!Husband, correct?

PJ: Those dudes are THE dudes. We were gonna do theKIDS party too this time but they stopped doing it weekly and I cried myself to sleep.

CU: Let's get the ball rollin'. I'll start with a "State yo' name and rep yo city."

PJ: Will, aka The Honorable DJ Caps is originally from Bufffalo, NY
and I'm from Boston. We met in NYC, and we both just moved to Philly about 3 weeks ago.

CU: Oh you've transplanted to Philly now? You guys were in Brooklyn, correct?

PJ: Yessir, we're liberated now!

CU: Haha. What do you mean by that?

PJ: Well Will was there for 7 years and I was there for 5 and we kinda figured that if we didn't get out soon we'd never leave. I'm glad for the change of pace and scenery.

CU: Yeah, Philly's a different animal huh? Brooklyn--and I dont know alot about the nightclub scene there--seems pretty crazy. I mean you guys, The Rub, Misshapes (not really the same thing I suppose), and others all in the same radius playing to the same crowd.

PJ: Yeah, NY's got a lot of fun stuff goin on. I just could never afford to go to any of it.

CU: Didn't you guys have your own residency or what? Like a weekly shindig?

PJ: We had a weekly that we scaled back to a monthly, even before we moved
its hard to have a weekly on weekends, it ends up cramping your style.

CU: I see. So why Philly? Is it a comrade thing? I know alot of the artists you guys are associated with-- Hollertronix, Lowbudget, Spank Rock, etc. are all posted up there. Was the move motivated by wanting to be a part of that artist community and get involved in projects with those dudes?

PJ: Actually the move was motivated by Will. He just graduated law school and took a position with a non-profit down here that he'd interned with. I wanted to leave NY anyway, and was actually thinking of splitting to the west coast.

CU: Woah. Law school. That's serious.

PJ: ...but he took this job and was like "Come to Philly, so we can still chill and work on shit" and I said "Otay!" It's the biz.

CU: I see. Well, on to the music ish now... you guys have a very distinct flavor as far as mixtape DJs are concerned, which, in my opinion, is extremely rare these days. I've heard Of Montreal, The Pixies, Television, on the same mix with Ying Yang Twins, Lil\\\' Jon & Heart. I remember one of you guys gave me a copy of "Moving In Stereo" and it pretty much blew my mind.

PJ: Word? Glad you liked it.

CU: Well, you guy's "style" of genre blending has been in the spotlight these days--
namely in the form of a dude named Girl Talk, who's a fiercely debated character in the music community these days. What are your thoughts on comparisons between your music and his?

PJ: I dunno, he really pushed the ADD thing to chronic limits. I respect what he does, but I think his style puts a higher premium on the sudden shifts in songs than the songs themselves sometimes. But he's made the case several times over that he's not a DJ, which is why his mixes lack a certain DJ sensibility. But as I said I respect what he does, and I'm interested in the possibilities presented by the developments in sequencing software. I've got a copy of Ableton Live I'm trying to get nice with, but I can say--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that even if my output were ever to match his in terms of sheer quantity of song sources used, the end result would still sound different.

CU: I've read he actually just uses a basic wav editor and a calculator. But what I was getting at was, apart from the stylistic differences in terms of abrupt changes and such, he's received critical praise for matching up artists like Neutral Milk Hotel and Young Jeezy and, ultimately, making a caricature out of what he deems "top 40 pop culture." I cant help but get the feeling that it only further promulgates that whole "hipster into gangsta rap" irony bullshit, whereas you guys did the same thing, but in a much more genuine and clever way.

PJ: I think making mixes is a medium that has a lot of potential to explore musical as well as cultural ideas, and if he wants to use it as some sort of critique or think piece, that's cool and I get behind that. I wouldn't call what we do more "genuine", because I don't know the dude or his ideas, or his musical tastes and what he listens to in his spare time and until I do, I have no problem believing that he genuinely likes the rap material as much as the indie rock shit. I know I do.

CU: Yeah I suppose it's bold to make such an outright value judgment, but it's just the feeling I get when i listen to his stuff. When I first heard "Night Ripper," one of my first thoughts was like "Wait a minute... Caps and Jones did this already."

PJ: We do share certain sensibilities, but the idea of mixing different styles of music is not something that we pioneered, nor should anyone be able to lay claim to the idea as if not making an all hip-hop or an all-rock mix is in any way revolutionary.

CU: I suppose the whole mash-up argument is something that everyone is tired of hearing.

PJ: Cosmo Baker (of The Rub) made a real good point that this whole term "mash up" is just a phrase adopted by the primarily white music media because they were late to the dance and wanted to stake a claim to something that had been going on for a long time. Ever since the rise of DJing, before even mixing, bringing your personal tastes to a set was imperative and a lot of peoples' tastes encompass a lot of genres, even if they're only associated with one.

CU: That echoes what Grandmaster Flash said actually. I remember reading an interview when the whole craze started and this journalist was like "So what do you think about mash-ups?" and he was like "What do I think? I think they're great. They're so great I've been doing them for 20 years."

PJ: Before "Disco" was coined as a style of music in and of itself, actual Disco DJs played music that spanned a lot of genres, and early hip-hop DJs carried on that tradition. I think one of the key factors in why it's been getting special attention as of late is that there's more musical styles and subgenres now than ever before, so it's possible to cast what's perceived as a wider net if you're eclectic because you can encompass all the stuff they were playing 20 years ago, plus all the stuff that's been made since then.

CU: Basically everything comes full circle and I guess DJing has been riding that wave for a couple of years now. What do you see as being the next step?

PJ: I don't know, since I see the whole thing as a ramp rather than a flight of steps.
Personally, I just want to keep listening to more and more music and be able to constantly expand my repertoire since, as i said, I don't think of "playing all different kinds of music" as a style in and of itself and I can't say that playing MORE stuff would be a change in style. I'm curious to hear how recorded output develops in the coming years since a decade ago DJing was so heavily focused on technical proficiency.

CU: You mean like turntablism? Scratching and the like?

PJ: Turntablism, as well as the high technical standards for mix and blend DJs, especially in the fields of so-called "dance music." Obviously they're still commodities in high demand, but I think they're also appreciated most by discerning crowds of the scenes with which they're associated, ie. turntablism and electronic music, whereas if you're playing parties in a more genre-jumping format, one can set oneself apart largely through their selections and the sequencing of a set. A lot of popular DJs now, especially in NY and LA it seems, don't even really mix, they're just known as being tastemakers, or taste-finders.

CU: Like Misshapes? Don't they have like a "no mixing" policy or something.

PJ: I've never been to one of they're parties, but if they don't in fact mix a lot, then that's a good example. Different DJs and different crowds value different things.

CU: Well on a related note--as far as "evolution" of club music these days goes-- is what some have deemed to be the "race to find what's the next hot shit", which ties into regional, niche genres of club music like Baltimore, Baile Funk, New Paris, etc. which I believe has positive and negative consequences. Positive being the proliferation of new music from all over the world, negative being "flavor of the month" exploitation. Thoughts?

PJ: I'm not going to say that there's a right or a wrong reason to listen to certain music. I listen to and play stuff that appeals to me aesthetically and personally, regardless of what its cool cache might be, and a lot of the so-called trendier output is lost on me, but a lot of it is also fuckin awesome. I don't think it does any genre justice to accept or reject it wholesale because of how its perceived by others. While i respect peoples' right to listen to music largely because its cool, I don't think it reflects a genuine love of the music for the music's sake, on their part, but that's fine. There's no rules. I'm not going to speak out against any one getting their shine, even if it's not something that personally appeals to me or even if i think the shiners are shining the shinees for their own sake.

CU: I speak in terms of it being positive because it's like this crazy game of "one thing leads to another". Like being exposed to one thing-- say Spank Rock, and appreciating the unique production that borrows from Baltimore House, Electro, etc. then you slowly start to explore those other influences.

PJ: Well if people didn't talk about it and play it outside of the scenes in which it originated, then it would just be these little pockets of sound but now they're like flowers in a field and everyone's flying around from flower to flower, so they get cross-pollinated.

CU: So what's next for you guys? Your mixtapes got alot of critical praise. Are you guys gonna continue with that? Are you guys looking into anything else as far as music is concerned?

PJ: Oh there's more in the works, but we don't know what yet. We've been talking about our next tape for ages, and we haven't begun recording and until we do, there's no way to really predict what it will sound like. Our past two tapes developed very organically--just laying down one thing and building from there. Lots of trial and error.

CU: Is that the case with the way you guys play live as well? Or is there a calculated dichotomy? What works on mixtapes don't always work in the club.

PJ: We're very spontaneous live, too, We're just spontaneous with different material. Club DJing is very much about being in the moment, about hitting people with a bang and making sure that they're having fun. With mixtapes we try to make them something that grows on you over time, that you can go back to and listen to again and again. When you're live, everything is irrevocable; it's there. People dance, and then its the next song. Even if people remember certain highlights, they'll never hear it again. But on mixes we respect that every moment is frozen in time and actually stands outside of linear time, and can be rewound and replayed and fast forwarded. So we try to make every minute distinct and interesting and important related to the moments that are around it on the CD, not the surrounding moments in real time when its recorded.

CU: Pretty profound way of looking at it.

PJ: Not every song is a classic and not every song is the hot new shit, but they mesh together.

CU: Any shout outs before you dip out?

PJ: I'd better not. I'm kinda stoned and I'm almost certain to leave some folks out, and then I'll feel bad. If I leave everyone out, then at least it's fair.

<p>Matthew Owchar, 26 September 2006<br /><br /> Check out Caps &amp; Jones at their <a href="http://www.myspace.com/capsyjones">myspace</a> to hear some choons and make sure to stop in at Shine <a href="http://www.chalkedup.com/view_public_event.php?event_id=192"> this Saturday</a> to catch these doods riding your skulls into the next century.</p>