Logic at the Fox

To a traditionalist, straying from an ordained topic would seem comparable to a horrible act of treachery. Extolling the virtues of a turntable during a jam-band review would seem to qualify at first glance. Yet with my Psychology background, I find importance in not being limited by rigid grammatical structures like title (In psychology they are called schemas). Thus I have little shame gushing over the recent performance by DJ Logic’s group (Project Logic) at the Fox Theatre in Boulder on June 7th. I was so impressed that deeming it one of the top performances I had ever seen is not an exaggeration. That night I took in a unique moment of musical innovation. It was one so subtle in nature that not many people experience it, and fewer even notice. I was exposed to a new form of music that I had never thought could exist. I felt a sudden kinship to cats that frequented Harlem nightclubs in the 1920’s, or bohemian San Fransisco acid ravers of the “Flower Child Era.” Their performance represented to me the next step in the evolution of Jazz. I later learned that Lee Jackson Kibler (aka DJ Logic) learned the art of scratching records during high-school in the Bronx, New York. At six-teen he began spinning records at friend’s parties. Later it was Logic’s involvement in the Black-Rock Coalition, which would begin to forge the path of his later musical escapades. After gaining experience learning to spin along side a heavy metal band, Kibler hooked up with drummer Billy Martin from Medeski, Martin, and Wood. After several performances and a guest appearance on the MMW album Combustification, many still consider him the fourth member of the band. In recent years, Logic has toured with such other funk, rock, and bluegrass acts as The String Cheese Incident, Karl Denzon’s Tiny Universe, and Bela Fleck. I had known of Logic’s contributions to MMW before hearing his solo endeavor Project Logic. I was quickly impressed with the trance inducing rhythms and pleasantly strange sounds he was able to generate from his tables (the show I downloaded came from www.hearlive.com). His beats were much more organic and graceful than the quick house styles of techno I had been exposed to at school. I marveled at the talent and ingenuity of his style, by his ability to play with a full band. It took me seeing him in person before I realized that comparing Project Logic to any form of Techno was a mistake. Perhaps Coltrane, Mingus, or Davis would seem more accurate.

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