Pull up to the bumper, DVS through Europe
November 14, 2007 @ 4:40 PM
‘When a couple of guys who were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighbourhood, I got in one little fight and my Mom got scared, She said ‘you’re moving with your Auntie and Uncle in a town called Bel-Air’.
Lets go back ten years or so to when the Fresh Prince ruled post school television times with his Styled flat top, funny scenario’s and a moustache. Well A few years on and Lucien is rocking his new flat top and trimmed moustache for this Dvs road trip. Now just for the record this new hair style of Lucien’s and I emphasise the word ‘style’ isn’t an overnight idea, it is an idea that’s been talked about for a little while now and over the past couple of months Lucien has decided to go for it. Now it definitely has been a talking point because where ever he goes the phrase ‘Yes flat top’ usually gets said at some point and people have a lot of Love for the style.
So with his new flat top he was ready for this trip which took him through Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia and Austria, but instead of Carlton and Jazzy Jeff as his sidekicks he would have Paul Shier, Kristian Bomholt, Ben Wessler, Luis, Thomas Langenhuizen, Guru Khalsa and Andrew Brophy to have fun with.
After the first few minutes drive of the journey it became apparent then an awkward silence had begun among the guys in the van, almost liked to a kids disappointment at realising the Simpson’s had been cancelled because of extended Wimbledon highlights. What was this Silence about?, a few thought. Why had everyone been taken over by this sombre vibe at the start of an exciting prospect of a trip? Perhaps everyone’s quiet thoughts were explained when Shier shouted out the phrase ‘This ride needs to be tricked out, I don’t like riding on less than 20’s’. Everyone’s sighs and groans suddenly culminated in agreeing shouts of ‘yeah this whip should be on spinners too’, ‘This thing ain’t tricked’. It was at this point that it was clear that this was a cool crew, used to travelling with style and flair rather than just getting from A-B. On go the dice in the mirror and onwards we go.
‘She gave me a kissin and she gave me my ticket, I put my walkman on and said I might as well kick it’ With van journey’s there is an etiquette that comes to hand when it comes to music tastes, with an Ipod rigged up to the speakers in the van it was only fair enough to have everyone take turns. Only thing this works out fine unless every time it comes to your turn you wanna play the same Blondie track over again! As they say ‘you can please some of them some of the time but not all of them all of the time’.
‘Drinkin orange juice out of a champagne glass, is this what the people of Bel-Air livin like Hmmmmmmmmmm’ We were fortunate to have some of the locals in the crew through our stay, which makes travelling a little bit easier. Although upon arrival in our first food establishment in Germany a few of the guys were wondering what the ‘Schnitzel’ and ‘putenschnitzel’ were on the dinner menus and chose not to ask the German speaking members within our crew. Now with no real idea what these were it was easy to see this word as being intimidating in some way, the word almost doesn’t sound like it should be associated with food. What could these things be? Well it’s an easy situation to play the safety card by saying the ‘let me try one of these pizza’s’ line, but Shier displaying his leadership qualities and sense of adventure decided to go for it, he went all out with a dive into the unknown and got one of these ‘putenschnitzel’s’. Although at first he asked for it with ice cream and got a chuckle from the waitress, this gave some clue as to what was about to arrive in front of him on a plate. It’s a bit of pot luck getting something unknown from a menu, I think most people have the idea of being Indiana Jones at the table and having some one bring out a monkey brain after ordering something with no linguistic familiarity.
‘I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror’ But what could these ‘Putenschintzel’s’ be? Well at the moment of arrival of Shier’s chosen plate with sigh of finding something amazing as he realised ‘Its breaded chicken with gravy’ wow, everyone’s plain pizza’s all of a sudden tasted that little bit more plain. It was a moment that rightfully should be taken in stride by Shier, he took the risk, took that first step into the unknown and the outcome was good- really good. From this dining moment and onwards the word ‘Putenschnitzel’ became Lucien and everyone else’s chosen dish ‘just the one putenschnitzel for me there mate’.
‘If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought now forget it, yo home to Bel Air, I pulled up to a house about 7 or 8 and I yelled to the cabbie yo home smell ya later’ After ten days or so in a van, with various consumables been consumed and sweaty t shirts been discarded in any area of the van that would neatly house a folded up t shirt the Van began to hum. Maybe it’s everyone’s own human inability at not being able to smell your own smell or even worse being proud of your smell, but something was a bit wrong in there. Now this isn’t the voice of disgust, this is the voice of someone just as guilty of sweating out the area and eating the odd garlic product from time to time. Even Lucien’s Fresh aftershave didn’t do too much at disguising most of the odours. It’s just the way vans are after 10 days spent in them, this van definitely wasn’t smelling too fresh. Toward the last couple of days everyone’s reaction upon getting into the van was to laugh at how bad the smell had become. After the trip had wound down I think most people were looking forward to throwing on a clean White Tee. Thanks to the fella’s at DVS for the good times and hooking up this trip.
‘I looked at my Kingdom I was finally there to sit on my thrown as the Prince of Bel-Air’
DJ Jazzy Jeff
It sometimes happens that at the core of a commercial phenomenon there beats a heart of real brilliance. Who would have thought, for example, that the effervescent Sugarcubes would usher forth the utterly unique Bjork, a prodigious talent hiding their light for other times.
Jazzy Jeff is one of the finest DJ's ever to grace the turntables. Ever an ethereal character, his career has taken him through the edges of greatness in many many muscial genres, working as a guest on projects as varied as British house music and Cuban Jazz. In his native Philadelphia he is a producer without parallel, with a month's long waiting list of people hoping to have him work his chunky, insistent and challenging rhythms to their rhymes.
As a DJ, he possesses that rare transposable soul groove that can take two records and make them into something greater than their parts by using brave, unshowy scratches to augment and comment upon the music being played. In fact, despite his dislike for that showoff aspect of scratch Djing, he floored the DMC competition in 1986 and walked off with the Championship- and this was 1986, when hip-hop was buck wild with talent. From there he set up 'A Touch Of Jazz' production facility to nurture new music talent in Philadelphia, wrote and arranged four albums for Will Smith including the sublime orchestration for 1991's Summertime (the music is- try to punch the abomination that is Will Smith rapping from your mind). Then he did an album featuring De La Soul and an as- yet unheard of Eminem which Sony shelved. Unperturbed, he designed a new mixer for industry monliths Vestax; discovered, produced and launched not just the unique off kilter melancholy of Musiq Soulchild but also Jill Scott, a once in a generation soul talent, again from Philadelphia. Solo albums "The Magnificent" and "The Return Of-" showcase his big, brassy, enveloping sound, but his real flashes of brilliance are to be found on his collaborations with virtually every serious musician from the worlds of rap, soul, disco, funk and all that good stuff.
A genuine inheritor of the musical legacy of that exuberantly talented city and an authentic virtuoso musical gift.
