Back in the Winter of 2005, I officially moved to Seattle.  As I was being hired for my first job here, a night auditor in a piece of shit crack hotel, I made only one request; I needed December 29th off to catch DJ Greyboy at a Macy’s department store downtown.  I scurried around the building and, when I finally found Greyboy‘s setup, the DJ was in the young mens section, spinning Steely Dan‘s “Black Cow” and he had a table full of free Dominos Pizza and cans of Pepsi.  He was down to talk and didn’t seem concerned that I was one of only 2 people who were there to see him at that point.  I asked him what a producer/DJ like himself was was doing in the tween wing of a department store like that and he explained that, since he was sponsored by Ocean Pacific, he sometimes had to make those type of appearances.  He asked me to add him on myspace, but explained that there was a fake music account for him and that his was the one without the music player,  “I don’t even fuck with the music“.  He further explained to me about a project that he was working on, which I believe he had planned to put out within the following year or so.  After that, Mr. Andreas Stevens seemed to, temporarily, disappear off of the map.  He made a slight resurfacing to work with the Greyboy Allstars on their 2007 reformation project, but his creation of acid jazz-centric solo albums like Freestylin’, had all but ceased.  He released a greatest hits style compilation in 2008 but, when he finally returned to his trademark sound on last years Era Correct, I completely missed it.  The music industry has changed dramatically in a short period of time and, whether it was due to his disinterest in forced adaptability/conformity (ie. myspace) or a misguided assumption of his own staying power, the innovator slipped off the radar in a genre that he was the major player in pioneering.

This post isn’t really about Greyboy, however, but it is about the phenomenon of our favorite artists evaporating off of the face of the Earth. It is also a heads up about the next triumphant return by one of the greatest beat-makers of the last 10 years, because it has the potential to get buried in the current musical climate.  The pseudo-resurrection, of which I’m referring, is of a one Ramble John Krohn, better known as “RJD2“. Read the rest of this entry →