DJ Shadow & Jeru Tour

DJ Shadow & Jeru Tour
	Tour by DJ Shadow
Start date	March 30, 1997
End date	April 26, 1997

Prior to this tour, DJ Shadow commenced a warm up tour starting March 20 in Savannah, Georgia, USA.^[1] The warm up tour was meant to last a week, and included a show on March 22nd supporting KRS-ONE in Cleveland^[2], and supporting A Tribe Called Quest in Orlanda, Canada on the 23rd. The Orlando show was cancelled due to Shadow reportedly being sick.^[3]

During the tour DJ Shadow also played smaller in-store shows at record stores where he would play whatever records were handed to him by the crowd and try to mix them.^[4]^[5]

Dates

Date	Country	City	Venue	Notes
20 Mar 1997	USA	Savannah	-	DJ Shadow commences a week of warm up shows ahead of Jeru The Damaja tour
22 Mar 1997	USA	Cleveland	-	DJ Shadow supports KRS-ONE
23 Mar 1997	Canada	Orlando	-	DJ Shadow supports Tribe Called Quest - Shadow cancels as he is sick?
30 Mar 1997	Canada	Vancouver	Richard's On Richards	with Jeru The Damaja
31 Mar 1997	USA	Seattle	Show Box	with Jeru The Damaja
1 Apr 1997	USA	Portland	La Luna	with Jeru The Damaja
3 Apr 1997	USA	San Fransisco	Maritime Hall	with De La Soul, Jeru The Damaja and Latyrx
4 Apr 1997	USA	West Hollywood	House Of Blues	with De La Soul, and Jeru The Damaja
5 Apr 1997	USA	Santa Barbara	JC Santa Barbara	with Jeru The Damaja
6 Apr 1997	USA	San Diego	4th & B	with Jeru The Damaja
7 Apr 1997	USA	Tempe	Electric Ballroom	with Jeru The Damaja
9 Apr 1997	USA	Boulder	Fox Theatre	with Jeru The Damaja
10 Apr 1997	USA	Lawrence	Bottleneck	with Jeru The Damaja
11 Apr 1997	USA	Columbia	Blue Note	with Jeru The Damaja
12 Apr 1997	USA	Minneapolis	First Avenue	with Jeru The Damaja
13 Apr 1997	USA	Chicago	Park West	with Jeru The Damaja
15 Apr 1997	USA	New Orleans	House of Blues	with Jeru The Damaja
16 Apr 1997	USA	Atlanta	Masquerade	with Jeru The Damaja
17 Apr 1997	USA	Cincinnati	Bogart's	with Jeru The Damaja
18 Apr 1997	USA	Detroit	Majestic Theatre	with Jeru The Damaja
19 Apr 1997	Canada	Toronto	Tower Records	Instore. Bob Wood set to appear but was ill.^[6]
19 Apr 1997	Canada	Toronto	Opera House	with Jeru The Damaja
20 Apr 1997	Canada	Montreal	Dome	with Jeru The Damaja
21 Apr 1997	USA	New York City	Tower Records	Instore.
21 Apr 1997	USA	New York City	Tramps	with Jeru The Damaja
23 Apr 1997	USA	Boston	Axis	with Jeru The Damaja - Cancelled^[7]
24 Apr 1997	USA	Philadelphia	Theatre Of Living Arts	with Jeru The Damaja
25 Apr 1997	USA	Washington	Capitol Ballroom	with Jeru The Damaja
26 Apr 1997	USA	Syracuse	Syracuse University	with Jeru The Damaja

Recordings

The following have known recordings:

1 Apr 1997 - Portland - La Luna^[8]

3 Apr 1997 - San Fransisco - Maritime Hall^[9]

21 Apr 1997 - New York City - Tower Records^[10]

Review

13 Apr 1997 Chicago Review^[11]:

Regarding the show (the chicago variety featured local faves Rubberoom and Solesides' Latryx/Jeru and Shadow)... Latryx know how to rock the mic. Vocals were understandable and the beats had much bounce (courtesy of Shadow and Chief Xcel). Not many people there knew of em, but the crowd had their back.

Jeru really disapointed me. The man is a hypocrisy personified. He comes out bitching about how the crowd needs to get more into it or he will bounce. Claiming he already got paid and that he doesn't care about us. This was 3 songs into the set mind ya. The next song is called the bullshit and is about all the "bullshit" that he sees in rap. Most notably it disses those in it for the money and not the love. I guess it doesn't apply to him. Then he claims to drop a freestyle but its got the same rhymes he dropped in Chicago a year ago... it sounds freestyle (ie. sloppy, yet almost identical lyrics). He then gets the crowd to yet "da Bitches, da bitches" and called someone out for not yelling it with him. of course, he's not talking about the "queens" but the bitches. its like asking a chinese to yell, not the convienence store owners, but the chinks". his rasta get-up means nothing. the man has no sense of principle and has beat up writers for giving a less than flattering review of his show. he ain't shit without premier's beats.

anyways, shadow came on, but only had about 30 minutes because of wack time limitations (same thing happened the night before with atari teenage riot). he did some basic cutting like scratching "midnight" in and out or whatever. he did add some new elements to most of the tracks... playing original samples, and extending tracks and such. the crowd basically didn't know what to do. shadow's not exactly the showman, but i enjoyed it. i'd love to see him in more of a club setting, rather than the auditorium likeness of the park west. no real flaws and about what i expected.

4 Apr 1997 West Hollywood House Of Blues Review^[12]:

First off, this was a great show. a really great mix of hip-hop styles and my only regret was that premier wasn't manning the decks for jeru. i can't remember the last live 4.5 hour show that kicked it from start to finish that i've been to. yes 2 hours, but not more than 4!

not surprisingly the order was latyrx/shadow, shadow, jeru, and de la soul. the highlights were seeing and hearing shadow in action, and jeru's showmanship.

latyrx' performance fell a little flat partly because of the audience, and partly because they got pissed at the audience. basically, at 9pm things weren't bumping. lyrics born and lateef worked well with shadow bringing in the beats and samples pretty smoothly. its fun to watch the dj work the decks when you can see the rappers moving onto something new. nothing like a bit of pressure add adrenalin. the beats were good and the rap, while incomprehensible, had a different rhythm to most. that said, i'm not sure i'm into the simultaneous rapping. need to try the album.

shadow then had the stage to himself in which he played a selection from endtroducing and his older 12"s. as you might hope, he reworked the sound on all the tracks, mixing in pieces where you hadn't heard them before and supplementing his work with a wide spectrum of world music from various ages. since he was essentially making new tunes on the spot, with the backbone from his other work, it was interesting to see how he brought it together.

i'm no equipment expert, but i'll describe what i saw: he had 6 pieces of equipment on the stage. 2 decks, mixer, some kind of pc hardware, and two sampler style machines (the kind that make a sound when you play a button that you program). It seemed that most of his endtroducing stuff came from the "pc" which he then added to. the organ section from endtroducing (can't remember which song - its really long) came from a "sampler" which he played like a mini-keyboard. during the show he moved between the different machines pretty deftly. short of deconstructing tracks into their elements, that's as far as I can go. I especially liked the use of the "get high, look inside yourself, in back and in front of yo'self ..." vocal. totally great and insightful, no? :). one other thing, shadow is definitely a well earned moniker (sp?). he hardly addressed the crowd and at the end of his set, just left the stage in the blink of an eye.

the crowd built for jeru pretty well. he came out in a cape from the italian flag, no shirt, trademark hat and regulation sagging pants. he was a sight. i love that man's voice. it's just great. he had us chanting and shouting along, pretty funny doing the chorus to "da bichez" - sorry if that's not pc, but it was funny. besides, if you know jeru's lyrics, it's clear that he definitely uses "sophisticated" techniques to mock/criticise the scene. later on in the show he had us making "kung-fu music" which he laid raps on top of. then he had us working in some kind of harmony. lotsafun.

following was de la soul, and i have to say it was a come down from jeru. he seemed so fresh that it made de la's show look far too rehearsed. maceo didn't even need to man the decks apart from to get some (pretty sad) scratching sound effects. can't you sample that anyway? he just paused his digital recording occasionally. another complaint i need to get off my chest is the way i felt i was back in those cheesey discos in england (the world over probably) where the dj has his special mix of all those favourites in 2 minute bursts (ymca + abba + grease + thriller + ...) so the audience doesn't get bored (!) with the beats. they moved too slickly from song to song without enough pauses to enjoy the tracks. that said, they put on a good show, and you (well, I) can't fault the music. they have an impressive body of work out there.

so there you have it, three/four different faces of hip-hop in one show. well worth the loot.