Dave Pires

Spyder 30^th anniversary party, open bar in the VIP, and the burning question on everyone’s mind? How does a producer whose performing vocabulary consists of three words put on a live show?

He doesn’t.

But I will say that he does have an infectious voice. He could say something like, “DO Y’ALL WANT TO HAVE SOME BREAKFAST?” and you can’t help but scream, “YEAH!”

He was on stage on time. No rapper ever shows up on time and this gave me an imminent sense of trouble. Lil’ Jon rolled up and said, “Are y’all ready to party?” and everyone said, “YEAH!” (In the obvious spirit of things.) Since this seemed to be a satisfactory response he put on, “Yeah” by Usher via Serato and disappeared backstage for 15 minutes.

I should have remembered that Lil Jon doesn’t rap, but I was tuned and slippin. When he returned he stepped up to the turntables and acted DJ, and not a good DJ at that. Listen buddy, I have all these songs in my Itunes and I don’t even listen to them. I know you’re playing to a bunch of middle-aged ski industry has-beens but step it the fuck up.

In case you were wondering, this is a fine sampling of the tracks he spun tonight.

50 Cent – In Da Club; Journey – Don’t stop Believing; Mims – This Is Why I’m Hot; Guns and Roses – Sweet Child Of Mine; Bon Jovi – Shot Through The Heart; Beastie Boys – Fight For Your Right; Soulja Boy – Crank That.

Despite the above, I decided to give the man a chance. All he had to do to redeem himself behind the 1′s and 2′s was play one single Lil’ Wayne track. Everyone knows Weezy F. Baby is the hottest thing in the streets, but that wasn’t happening.

All I had to hear was, “Nothing makes a situation better than cheddar, and I’m cuttin’ through this cheese like a shredder.” Instead all I heard was, “If you go platinum it’s got nothing to do with luck, it just means a million people are stupid as fuck.”

Las Vegas. There is no other place on earth that tries this hard to distance itself from reality. Dubai might try a bit harder, but Vegas still executes with a style that stems from experience. Unless you embrace it, you’re pretty much stuck in a state of suspended disbelief.

I didn’t notice this on my first trip two years ago, but one thing that has struck me about this town is the terrible water. If the city that is a living testament to the belief that money can buy anything has drinking water this poor, how bad is it in the rest of the world?

I’m accustomed to some of the best drinking water on earth, and considering the fact that it is our most precious resource, it is seriously underappreciated. You would think that humans have been on this earth long enough to figure out a way to ensure that all of us have decent drinking water. Unfortunately I suspect this situation will only worsen as our population increases.

Oh shit… I almost forgot that we were too busy making sure that we could get refined crude oil anywhere on the planet to worry about a minor detail like water. I feel a raging tangent coming on so I’ll digress, but before I do I will say that you can taste every single desert mile of metal pipe the water traveled through to get here.

The tradeshow? It’s going well, thanks for asking. I’ll try and update regularly, but I’m somewhat limited by my medieval themed hotel’s medieval wireless internet infrastructure. I’m going to Lil Jon (Court Jester) tomorrow night and GZA (King) on Thursday, so I’ve inadvertently run into some interesting rap. Until next time: