When a producer/dj of Roy Davis Jr’s stature comes to Kansas City, it’s a big deal.  At the same time, for most of the city, it’s historically been ignored.

With the backing of Scion and its team of local marketeers, though, that’s probably going to change.  I was a bit surprised to get a text from a friend around 9:15 last night letting me know Czar Bar had hit its roughly 100-person capacity already.

Any thought of having plenty of room to stretch out and get down to some Chicago house were quickly dashed.  We made our way down there, greeted by a line of about fifteen people waiting for one-in/one-out.

In all honesty, it was a little shocking.  Kansas City’s dance music scene has more or less languished in stagnant rot over the past ten years - terrible club djs pass off terrible music to terrible people, while a small, core group has continued fighting the good fight for the funk.  To show up to a bar and see it packed at 9:30, with a line to get in, for a guy with twenty years of history was actually somewhat rewarding.  We didn’t mind waiting in the cooler air outside to get in.

We queued up towards the middle of Eli Escobar’s set and were able to hear everything pretty clearly from the street.  We could see the dj booth thanks to a projection on the wall outside of Czar Bar - a nice touch.  This meant, however, that there was no place to hide for Escobar as he wrecked mix after mix.  After mix.  It gave me hope for my own dj career.  I will give him credit, I do think he was trying - his track selection was surprisingly sleek and funky for a good portion of his set - but he wasn’t allowing the tracks to fully develop before cutting them down with the rusty butterknife of his mixing style.

Cosmo Baker came on next.  His was a set heavy with edits of classic disco tracks, but again, volume control problems and abrupt transitions were an issue.  The casual crowd enjoyed the 70’s sounds that would ultimately became house music stereotypes, and were able to endure the sound and mixing issues through his set.  It was nice to actually see some vinyl being used as well.

Treasure Fingers then set up a Mac and Serato for his set.  While the time-encoded vinyl was able to reduce the wrecking, it couldn’t solve all of the technical issues that had seemingly become the theme for the night.

Possibly ten years too late, I’m going to go ahead and say it now:  please don’t abuse the phaser and delay effects on the mixers.  It might sound “cool” for a mix or two when needed, but when it’s used on every mix to get out of a messy transition, it becomes a point of contention.

Beyond that, I would dare say Treasure Fingers had the best track selection of the night.  Although he too was hamstrung at times with timing and phrasing issues, he had the crowd jumping by the end of his set.

Roy Davis Jr finally took the small stage at the Czar Bar around 12:30.  Wearing a red Chicago t-shirt and white sunglasses, he promptly went to work, shifting a big kick beat into Treasure Finger’s last track - and then the mix fell apart.  Davis’ years of experience helped him work the transition back into something salvageable - just as the power cut out on the mixer, causing the sound in the room to die.

After a minute or so of rushed wire fumbling, sound was returned, and what ensued was a rough hour or so of uptempo, heavy on kicks low on bassline Chicago house, with some nice acid stuff thrown in towards the end.  Davis had his issues mixing as well, and seemed to find his comfort zone only after the sunglasses came off.

Something I’m just realizing as I’m thinking back over the night - I don’t recall seeing any monitors for the dj’s.  That probably explains a lot of last night’s issues if that’s the case.

The crowd was enthusiastic and into it all night.  I truly hope this shows bars like Czar Bar and local promoters that there is a crowd in town that will come out for this sort of thing - even if it’s not being sponsored by a car company’s marketing department.

Detroit and Chicago are both regional to us - we should be looking to both the old-school masters and fresh talent that these cities have to offer more often.  Kansas City has ties with a lot of these men and women; blue-collar roots and the blues run deep in all three cities.  It’d be nice to see how our city reacts to the true future funk of the Motor and Windy Cities after years of being misled by so many of our own local selectors.