At an MBA party it's important to ask if you will merge with anyone during the evening, and whether your acquisition will be a long or short term investment... In any case, I wasn't on the market, I was just there to DJ.
To get to the HKUST MBA party last Saturday I had to brave some serious weather. As heavy rain, lightning and all hell fell down upon Hong Kong, I decided to askew conventional wisdom and venture out into the mayhem. Well, actually, I'd signed up for it way before and with a wince attempted to lug my seriously heavy flight cases with bag and cds out onto the street to get a cab... I had a better chance of winning the mark six, with what seemed like typhoon 20 weather, it being taxi shift change time and everyone and their mother looking for a cab.
Nobody seemed to care that a poor DJ was lugging his stuff around while trying hopelessly to get a cab and at the same time attempting to keep dry. And of course, with twenty zillion people fighting for space on the street (with everyone going for the usual umbrella and building cover) it was a bit nightmarish really...
But anyway, here are some of the more memorable tracks of the evening:
The Daktaris Eltsuhg Ibal Lasiti. Great drum breaks, nice tough afro influenced funk.
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings How do I let a good man down?. Easily one of my favourite tracks in a while. Tough and gritty soul with excellent backing from The Dap-Kings, lovely crashing symbols outro as well.
Amy Winehouse Rehab. OK, so everyone is talking about this track, but with an opening line of "They try to make me go to rehab, but I say no, no, no", what's not to like?
Cymande The message. Sweet early 1970's funk, disco, jazz from the UK with great hooks and reggae influence. Famous for their song Bra that was sampled by hip-hop group De La Soul.
Faze Action Got to find a way. When I played this, someone said really loudly "oh my God, this is disco". I thought: no it isn't, you #$#@!
Feist Sea Lion Woman. Although I consider Nina Simone to be rather untouchable, this cover of her See-Line Woman is pretty cool. Unfortunately there is something too quirky and slightly dark about Feist's tracks to play without someone thinking it is a bit "odd". But still, this went down quite well.
Micatone Yeah yeah yeah (that's the way it goes). My friend hooked me on to this jazzy downtempo dance band from Germany. Very chilled.
KC and the Sunshine Band That's the way (I like it). I played this as a feeler to see if people were up for old-skool or nu-skool stuff. When one of the oldest guys in the room came over and said "hey, this was before my time" and no one danced, I knew the answer: total mistake! Well... some people like this song...
Punjabi MC Mundian To Bach Ke. I admit this is very obvious but it still manages to get people on the move. You should have seen those Indian MBA students move!
Vanilla Ice Ice Ice Baby. Should I be ashamed? Yes, but quite frankly, who cares? I found that people really like this song still, so the original white boy rapper is still OK in my books!
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