Josh Davis on vinyl prospecting, surviving bad reviews and seeing the light that turned him into DJ Shadow
Article by Dan Eldridge, photos by Nancy Froehlich
Resonance, July 2002
The year is 1990; the scene is a Halloween kegger at the UC Davis campus. Everyone is holding a plastic cup of flat beer in one hand and a Camel Light in the other. A few girls have decent costumes, but everyone else looks like they threw theirs together five minutes before leaving the dorm. The evening's main goal, after all, aside from getting laid, is to get as drunk as humanly possible. Boo!
"I was drunk like everyone else," says Josh Davis (who, by the way, never ever refers to himself as DJ Shadow). "I had set aside some time to work on music that night. I mean, obviously this was before I had a career to speak of, but I was doing things for a radio station. And I found myself drunk again and looking around the room; people were sick all over the place and I remember thinking, 'Nah, this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing.' I felt really guilty that night.'"
"You had an anxiety attack?"
"Yeah, I just had an epiphany. More than anything, it was just a realization. It was me going, 'OK, I think I know what I want to do with the rest of my life.'"
Davis is talking to me from a hotel room somewhere in Los Angeles--it's probably his billionth stop on the latest in a never-ending series of promo tours. Immediately following our conversation, there will be a photo shoot, and then a radio spot, and probably a few more interviews before the end of the day.
The background story: In the '80s, Davis' mom bought him a Sears all-in-one stereo. While fiddling around with the knobs, he realized that the radio and the turntable would play at the same time if the dial was held exactly in the middle. He used the stereo's cassette deck to record the new music he was creating by playing records on top of pop songs, and started trading the tapes with friends. In 1996, his debut LP, Endtroducing DJ Shadow, was released on Mo' Wax.
It went on to sell nearly a million copies worldwide and managed to forever broaden the boundaries of hip-hop. An abstract sort of b-boy history, in other words, was being written with every sample.
Probably the largest contribution to Davis' overnight success, however, was his cliche-free crossover appeal. It was certainly true that the cut-and-paste tracks on Endtroducing... were directly descended from hip-hop founding fathers like Grandmaster Flash, Double Dee and Steinski and the Sugarhill Gang, but it didn't take much prodding for fans of electronic music to happily identify with Davis' moody atmospherics and ambient rhythms.
Pure passion, however, separated Davis from the b-boys who'd given birth to his obsession and the more electronically inclined DJs who were attempting to move the genre forward. A lifelong collector who has spent thousands of hours searching bins for long out-of-print LPs and 45s by minor artists, Davis' amassment of samples on Endtroducing... were so obscure that only ten out of 1,000 were legally cleared for reproduction. He put enormous thought into every detail of the process, digging deeper than those before him, tracking down records no one had heard of, and making it all sound, well, dope.
But that was then. Today, there's business to attend to. Twenty-seven minutes into our 30-minute interview, Davis' publicist interrupts on the phone line to hurry him to a photo shoot. Davis is busy with the media for a reason: his fans have been waiting for his sopohmore album for a long, long time.
Six years in the making, The Private Press should both challenge and satisfy--the album bursts with compelling contrasts and textures, proving that Davis' penchant for experimentation is as untamed as ever. The Private Press manages to distance itself from Endtroducing... (not to mention the generous DJ Shadow back catalog of singles and 12-inch EPs) by employing a new level of self-revelation. "The Six Day War," for instance, roller-coasters through a shattered Shadow psyche, where a nightmare rhythm supports the song's repeating chorus: "Tomorrow never comes until it's too late." And then in the final seconds of the song: "I think tomorrow's come, I think it's too late." Could it be that after having scores of his once innovative techniques co-opted by some of the best-known DJs and producers in the business, DJ Shadow has become something of an anxious cynic himself? Four tracks later, though, on the radio-ready "Monosylabik," his mood changes. "What you gonna done now?" A sassy voice posits. Davis is throwing us all a gang sign--or possibly the bird--and he sounds damn good doing it.
To make good on the hype of The Private Press, David will embark on an extended summer tour throughout the United States and Europe. "Performing can be really rewarding when it goes right, but the travel gets old," he says when asked if he enjoys the touring process. "I mean, the time in the hotels and airports and on the plane and in the bus... "
"It all becomes one big blur after awhile?"
"I wish I could say it's glamorous. And it's what I always wanted to do, but... "
"Was it glamorous the first time?"
"Actually, no. It was hell."
CONTINUED...
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