Embassy at Avalon was the scene last Friday night of a significant revisit, that of Grandmaster Flash. The DJ who’s credited with inventing the scratch mix more than 20 years ago is touring again, on the strength of his new Essential Mix: Classic Edition (ffrr), and at Embassy he took a full house of young, slender partygoers on a journey back in time, to the days when "old school" hip-hop ruled — the era of the Sugarhill Gang’s "Rapper’s Delight" and an entire string of inspired raps by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
With four full boxes of 12-inch singles in tow, some from his glory years and some from today, and using a microphone to announce himself and pep-talk the dancers, Flash got into a funk groove leading to hip-hop and new jack. It was a slow groove, much more easy-going than the revved-up deep emotionalism of house music, and well attuned to the playtime mood and hands-in-the-air small talk of the dancers. In fact, the interaction between Flash and the Embassy patrons recalled the disco-decade house-party tradition that spawned him. House-party DJing was a do-it-yourself thing completely unlike the polished and highly programmed grand manner of the DJs in the big downtown discos. In Flash’s house-party world, DJs played anything they felt like playing, and they used trick techniques, interrupting the flow of the music, perhaps, but amusing the dancers.
Twenty years after the fact, Flash is still that kind of DJ. He used scratch to blend one song into another, he used it as a percussion break, and — most spectacularly — he used it as a drop-in. Programming two copies of one song, he played one while scratching the other; even more amazing, he occasionally scratched a single copy of a song at the same time that he was playing it. And every one of his scratch moves was smooth and seamless.
Flash was less good at quick-cuts. He did many, and almost all were weak. Sometimes the two songs he was linking were too dissimilar to link up; once or twice he missed the beat. Neither were his song selections inspired. A DJ gives up half his hold on sonic truth when he plays only known hits. As a showcase for Flash’s scratching magic, however, the insistence on sonic familiarity worked.