Wednesday, June 9, 1999 | 6:05 a.m.
First published on Aug. 30, 1997.
In marketplaces of Marrakech, would-be entrepreneurs try to make a buck off American tourists by playing off our penchant for hometown pride. The moment they spot a likely mark they shout out the names of every American city they know, in hopes of grabbing the hapless Yank's attention. "Hey! New York! Los Angeles! Chicago! Las Vegas!"
With global brand-name recognition like that, it is little wonder that the Crystal Method titled their Outpost Records debut album Vegas. We rate in North Africa! Dig up the most avowed hermit in Senegal and start tossing out the names of America's new music meccas: Seattle, Chapel Hill, Athens...you may as well be speaking Esperanto until you say the words "Las Vegas".
That may have been the Method's reasoning. Or, they may have chosen the title Vegas for a more personal reason: They're natives. Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland met and began working together in Las Vegas, their hometown, in the mid-to-late 80s. Ken was the program director at UNLV radio station KUNV when he met fellow DJ "Scottee X." They were a large part of the genesis of club culture in Las Vegas, faces in a Mt. Rushmore arrangement that included such renowned scenesters as DJ Bubby and Romney "The World-Famous Rocket" Smith.
Jordan spun discs at KUNV events, getting the crowds jumping at nearly forgotten establishments like T-Mex and That's Entertainment, and assisted several local bands in the studio, including original punks Samson's Army. Kirkland wrote music almost nonstop, inspired by a Depeche Mode tape he had chanced across in high school. They checked out the Los Angeles rave scene every chance they could and made bonafide efforts to bring the sound to Vegas.
"I have dozens of flyers with their names all over 'em," said Paul, a longtime local club disciple and Las Vegas native. "Rocket, Bubby, Scotty X. They were at the eye of the hurricane."
When Jordan moved to Los Angeles in 1989, followed by Kirkland two short years later, club music was still an underground phenomenon in America and showed no sign of crossing over. Undaunted, the pair kept composing, producing, recording and remixing their brand of club music-hard beats, futuristic grooves, broad ambient textures. Before too much time passed, the wheel came around and groups like the Chemical Brothers, Prodigy and The Orb-DJs and engineers who realized they had as much right to call themselves "bands" as anyone out of Seattle-exploded out of the clubs and onto the charts. Now the hurricane is blowing full-force, taking two local boys along with it.
Kirkland and Jordan-now calling themselves the Crystal Method - released a series of hard-hitting singles on the City Of Angels imprint, one of which, "Keep Hope Alive," became a favorite of the Chemical Brothers. They played at Club Utopia every chance they could, bringing breakbeats to raging crowds at the Strip discotheque.
In February of 1996, they signed with Geffen Records subsidiary Outpost. Vegas was recorded soon after and released at the tail end of August.
"You get a whole bunch of people, who are completely competent, working for you," Jordan said wryly of major-label life. "And it's great. A whole team of people doing their jobs, as opposed to two guys getting drunk and not answering the office phones."
As long and convoluted as the story may seem, the upshot of it is fairly obvious: The Crystal Method is about to make Las Vegas' name a little bigger on the map. They return to their hometown as up-and-coming talents, lauded by everyone from Rolling Stone to Billboard as potential superstars.
"We were always going to make our little record that we liked, and the people that liked us before [we were signed] might like too," Jordan admitted, scratching his head at the hype surrounding two regular guys from Sin City. He speaks as an unabashed fan, someone who's just thrilled to be this close to the action. "The day that Prodigy debuted at Number One, I thought, 'Wow, America has changed.' You can't fake those numbers anymore. People are really buying those records."
COMIN' BACK
The Method is due back in Vegas on September 11 as the headlining act of the Electric Highway tour, an all-night electrofiesta at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway co-sponsored by Spin Magazine and BF Goodrich. Jordan is excited about the gig, even more so when he discovers that the LVMS is set to host a Winston Cup race ("Wow! Really?"). It's promising to be as big an event as the "Transatlantic Move" desert rave a couple years back. The Method will be at the center of a circus that includes Fluke, Arkarna and a small army of DJs including Utopia's house man, Robert Oleysyck.
Compared to Mecha-Godzillas like U2, the Method's touring version of Las Vegas is fairly light. Jordan reviewed the band's touring procedure: "When we finish a track that we know we want to perform live, we spend quite a while coming up with ways to play it. In the studio, we've got maybe 20 different boxes making different various sounds and a lot of them are fragile. We can't bring them on the road with us.
"So we condense a lot of things down to samples. We bring two samplers and a sampling drum machine"-he chuckled-"I take that back. Three samplers and a drum machine with loads of memory. We don't bring our Yahmaha CS-40, which weighs a hundred pounds, or our ARP Odyssey, which breaks every time we touch it. The price of RAM coming down-that's the most beautiful thing. When it started to drop, we went 'YES!'" The technical end under control, Jordan and Kirkland work on the human element.
"When we first planned to do a live show, we started checking out all the other [electronica] bands," Jordan said. "They were all hiding behind their gear, not looking at the crowd, not really doing anything. It didn't seem like a performance to us. So we went the other direction. We set up on the very edge of the stage. There's a clear shot of us and we're looking right out at the crowd." He chuckles a bit. "I'm still not really good at looking at the crowd, 'cause I'm still kind embarrassed to be up there."
OFF THE RECORD
I was given a copy of Vegas back in May by Olivia Cottrell, a former Outpost staffer. We checked out the Orb/Chemical Brothers gig at the Hard Rock together. She introduced me to Q of the group Uberzone, another City of Angels artist. I told him that his single, "The Brain," was a personal favorite.
He thanked me, and made an aside: "You gotta hear what the Method's doing."
Twenty-four hours later, Cottrell sent me an unmastered copy of Vegas. Even in its technically raw state ("Please don't review it yet," begged Cottrell), it was an impressive piece of work, easily on a par with the best of what was happening in Europe. The obvious single "Trip Like I Do" jumped out at me, followed by the outer-space hijinx of "High Roller" and the hard funk of "Busy Child." No two tracks were cut from the same mold - the mark of true craftsmen.
It is a formula that works for and against them: The Method's understanding of this European breakbeat style is so strong that the band is repeatedly compared to Europe's most prominent breakbeat duo, the ubiquitous Chemical Brothers. The comparison is even made in the biography Outpost provides.
"That bio's getting fixed," Jordan laughs. "I think it's because, for a while anyway, there weren't too many acts like [ours]. They're two guys, we're two guys..."
The Method and the Brothers have a good relationship-in fact, the Brothers were partially responsible for breaking the band in Europe-but the symbiosis ends there. Where the Brothers try to send the beat straight through your skull, bypassing your nervous system, the Method seems content to let the sound make its steady way upward. Vegas work its way up to a low, rolling boil, blows the whistle, lowers the heat and starts anew from one track to the next. The band's moniker is apt; there is a Method to this madness.
CRYSTAL PERSUASION
Ken Jordan remembers the day The Crystal Method turned into a band.
"One day, we just decided we were a band," he said. "A lot of the early criticism this genre received was justified. A lot of it was faceless; [fans] couldn't express their interest in the artist in any way other than buying the record. They couldn't find out anything about the artist who made the record.
"Early on, no one knew anything about the people making the music. And a lot of times, the artists would release every other record under a different name. It was sort of self-defeating. We wanted to continue to make records and we don't think we have anything to hide, really. We're not mega-publicity guys; we don't even have our pictures on the cover or the back cover and just a couple of blurry shots inside. On the other hand, we're not wearing masks, like Daft Punk.
"One of the things [those early artists] were trying to say was that it was all about the music, the music should stand on its own. That's good, but let's get past that, now. What if somebody really likes your music, totally understands everything you think and say and record? What if they want to know something about you?" Jordan laughs. "Do you still have to punish them?"
Not any more. As America's love of club beats grows and flourishes, major labels are not only accepting of groups without drummers and guitarists, they are somewhat rabid to sign them.
"Outpost was interested in us, but our biggest fear was Geffen," said Jordan. "I knew that in early '90, they had gotten rid of their dance department. They didn't really have many black acts or anything. Why would we go to Geffen?"
It took a guided tour to convince the duo that Outpost could do the job.
"To our amazement, everyone there was into [techno]," he smiled. "It was mind-blowing! They were all sick of guitar bands. It's really cool to be one of the only acts of this kind at that label." Outpost even allows the Method to release singles on City Of Angels, the label that gave them their first deal.
NEW CITY, NEW DREAMS
The Vegas that will embrace Vegas is much different from the city Jordan left in 1989. Things are happening above board. The Method may be just the first in a wave of Vegas signings, as the major labels discover more of the flowers blooming here in Hell.
Jordan is just happy to have been here to watch the first seeds being planted.
"KUNV tried to make inroads, which they definitely did," said Jordan. "Gigli from Constant Moving Party, Samson's Army, the guys who did all those punk gigs...they paved the way for a decent music scene [in Vegas]. Utopia, when there's good acts playing there, is the biggest and best over-21 turnout we've seen anywhere. For how big the city is, that's amazing." He admitted that he hasn't gotten back here as much as he would like. "There's just no time anymore," he sighed.
That's all right. The last performers to really wear this town's glowing reputation didn't spend every waking moment here, unless there was a show to get on. Better to spread the gospel all over the States, the continent, the world. Even in North Africa, the progression will be clear: Sinatra, Sammy, Dino, Elvis, The Crystal Method.
Well, maybe not. But there's no denying that Vegas has another emissary -blasting loud and proud from car stereos in Chicago, all-night raves in England, movie soundtracks in Hollywood. That's our Method.
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