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Performance Artist - Actor - Maker of Stuff

52 Weeks of No TV

I gave up TV for one year in 2012.  Instead of TV, I made some THING every week.  In hindsight, it was a fecund year. (oh yeah, I used the word fecund)  It was the basis for many projects including my full production of Plasticland:  A Better Place.  It spawned unlikely artistic collaborations, built creative confidence and I got to smash a TV with a golden sledgehammer.  I haven't combed through this blog in awhile but I wanted to peruse it for inspiration.

Week 7's Thing - The Inaugural Set Of DJ Kill-A-Bee

I love music.  I love it so much.  And I love lots of different types of music.  I wish I had the ability to retain heaps of information about the music that I love but I simply don't retain all those facts: years, names, and titles.  But I have a very deep, visceral reaction to music and that's all I need to get by.  I've always wanted to DJ because I also like parties.  If a party were a bus, DJs are the bus drivers.  I suppose that would make the bartender the gas pumper. 

Always the gas pumper, never the bus driver.  

Thanks to the ageless power of nepotism, I, the humble Kym Bernazky, slipped quietly into her DJ alter ego - DJ Kill-A-Bee.  

Realize: 

DJ Kill-A-Bee doesn't do mash-ups and doesn't wear headphones.  She hasn't learned any fancy fingerwork...yet.  She relies on the power of surprise: those magical moments when a DJ plays a track and, all of a sudden, you are up and you have become a dancing fool.  It's the "Damn, that's my Jam" effect.

Right now, she is plumbing her memories of her early years of pop music.  When she dreamt of being a roller-skating dancing queen and slow-danced in darkened gyms in Dover, DE.  Those were formative years and occasionally nostalgia stirs up more than just regret or wistfulness.  Her favorite songs instantly transport her to back to innocence and guilelessness.  When she dipped her toes into those first shy tastes of freedom at the All Nite Skate.  These songs smell just like Love's Baby Soft and skating rinks.    

Enough philosophy, Bee.  Drop the damn tunes, already.

DJ Kill-A-Bee's Ode to the Seventh Grade (real, imagined and otherwise)

Sometimes I rhyme slow by Nice & Smooth

Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang

It's Tricky by Run DMC

Don't Go by Yaz

Feel Me Flow by Naughty By Nature

Flava In Ya Ear by Craig Mack

Glamorous Life by Shelia E

Kiss You Back by Digital Underground

Back to Life by Soul II Soul

Hypnotize by The Notorious BIG

Show Me by The Cover Girls

(We Like The) Cars That Go Boom by Old School Players

Supersonic by JJ Fad

I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Bad

Nuthin But A G Thang by Dr. Dre

Children's Story by Slick Rick

Chief Rocka by Lords of the Underground

Funky Cold Medina by Tone-Loc

Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest

Set Adrift On Memory Bliss by PM Dawn

Going Back to Cali by LL Cool J

Now That We Found Love by Heavy D & The Boys (RIP)

Silent Morning by Noel

Rebirth Of Slick (CoolLikeDat) by Digable Planets

Poison by Bell Biv DeVoe

I Want To Know (Pure Energy) by Information Society

Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan

Treat 'Em Right by Chubb Rock

I Know You Got Soul by Eric B & Rakim

Let Me Clear My Throat by DJ Kool

Catch Me I'm Falling by Pretty Poison

Rumors by Club Nouveau

No Diggity By Blackstreet & Dr.Dre

Rock Dis Funky Joint by Poor Righteous Teachers

Situation by Yaz

The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground

When I Hear Music by Debbie Deb

Paid In Full by Eric B & Rakim

I Feel For You by Chaka Khan

The Breaks by Kurtis Blow

That's the Joint  by Funky Four Plus One              

.....And, of course, you have to play Summertime by (HRM) The Fresh Prince Will Smith

Quietly, DJ Kill-A-Bee slipped into the night jauntily whistling "When I Hear Music" happily to herself.  


 

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