Our earlier post about the Midwest harkened back to the earliest days of Galapagos4 road life. Here, in the second installment of that series, we take a look at the crew’s maiden voyages to Iowa CIty, Champaign-Urbana, and Milwaukee.
Why is this considered a milestone? For one, we are all from the Midwest. Put simply, to perform in these nearby cities was to perform for our own kind, and hopefully to people that would understand us. And secondly, I want to stress that these were the first “out-of-town” shows that anyone had ever asked us to play, outside of Chicago, ever. I’m not going to lie - we were pretty stoked about going to these places, and why not? It was all uncharted territory as far as we were concerned. During those early days of us trying to find our first outlets for expression, in our attempt to forge an identity for ourselves and our label, these Midwestern cities were there for us.
In the past month we have seen new releases from three of Galapagos4’s own super producers - Maker, Dreas and Open i. These are not official Galapagos4 releases, but they are very worthy of picking up. Support G4’s own masters of the beat!
The Deejay OM ‘Reheated Naan & Curry‘ album came to G4 initially in 2004. Om had been working on the concept and some of the music before that point, but when I moved to the Bay Area in ’04, he presented me with the idea of putting the album out on Galapagos4.
I was intrigued by his ideas, not that using Bollywood samples in hip hop beats hadn’t been done before, but he was looking to do more than that. He was looking to make a record that would not only appeal to hip hop heads but to people such as Yoga teachers, soccer moms and fans of real Indian music also. We succeeded in exposing the album to those people, getting placement in Starbucks’ short-lived ‘Hear Music’ stores as well as being played at Yoga studios in Om’s home of San Francisco.
This album also got licensed for release in Japan on Easel Records, with a bonus track and different packaging. It was also the first Galapagos4 release to be carried by renown e-tailer TurntableLab.
Outside of this shine, and some love from G4 fans, the album itself was and is highly slept-on in my opinion. It’s a great concept executed perfectly, which is rare in music. I would urge anyone interested in innovative musical styles that culminate in 60 minutes of hard hip hopdrums, rolling psychedelic soundscapes and heart-pounding breakbeats to check it out…
On to the point of the post, after many years of constructing the album, we finally celebrated the release of Deejay OM’s ‘Reheated Naan & Curry’ in May 2007 at a time when both Qwel & I were living in the Bay Area (Richmond to be exact), which made it easy to gather some of the crew from Southern Cali to come up for a big G4 event… It was a Monday night at the Elbo Room, with Qwel, Mestizo & The M.O. opening up for Deejay OM in front of a healthy crowd in San Francisco’s Mission District… check out a photo retrospective here… Photos by Colin Hussey
In a random fluke sighting yesterday, Dreas pointed out the appearance of a Galapagos4 T-shirt in NBA Live 2010. This was found in the XBox360 version of the game and the guy appears in all home crowds. Someone at EA Sports must be a fan. A nice surprise to start off the new year. If you play NBA Live, check for it!
2009 has drawn to a close.. but we still haven’t gotten to post all of the “Milestones” entries that we wanted to post. So, as an official disclaimer, the Milestones posts will continue on.
Jeff, Qwel and I have all made our way home from the “Black Rain” Tour in Japan. It wasn’t the first time G4 artists had been to Japan - other artists had ventured before (Maker, Denizen Kane, Mestizo & Mike Gao) - but this tour was still a G4 milestone nonetheless. Pictures from the tour can be found here. Back with more posts in 2010.
Back when Galapagos4 first started going on the road, the first shows we did were all in the Midwest. The earliest I remember is hearing about Qwel and Meaty going to do a show in Louisville. And I was so jealous that they were going to Louisville! But anyway, at that time, the promoters that started getting ahold of us just happened to be in places nearby: Iowa City, Milwaukee, Champaign, and the subject of this post, Kansas City. I don’t know much about KC but I do know that the Galapagos4 fans out there have always been very supportive. Photo credits on this post go to Syke.
Last week, Jeff and Qwel recorded a podcast discussing the new Qwel and Maker “So Be It” album. We hope to do more of these in the future (and have them better-organized too). But in the meantime, peep the podcast here:
From now until the end of the year, in continuation with our 10th Anniversary, we’ll be posting up pics from shows past. So, here are some photos scavenged from two important events from 2004: The Chicago Rocks festival at the Metro, and the Typical Cats Civil Service Release Party at Logan Square Auditorium.
Photo credits and much thanks go to Jam One for the Civil Service photos and 800LbGorillas for the Chi-Rocks photos.
It’s Meaty Ogre’s birthday. And we haven’t yet had a chance to plug his latest venture, Grandiose. There is a nice blog entry about the boutique here. Happy B-day, Meats.
