Spencer Patterson

Fri, Jun 10, 2005 (8:18 a.m.)

"When I was growing up there, Vegas was really geared toward old people," said Jordan, one half of electronic music duo the Crystal Method.

"It wasn't until the Hard Rock (Hotel) opened up that it slowly started becoming a young people's paradise. But when we were growing up, it was really geared toward 55-year-olds."

So in 1989, Jordan, who wanted to make dance music for a young demographic, headed to Los Angeles. His friend and fellow Las Vegan, Scott Kirkland, followed in 1990, and three years later the pair formed one of the world's most popular electronic acts.

"We had to get out," Jordan said. "There were no clubs in Vegas at the time that played original music or anything. There were no local bands, no nothing. We had to go."

Though he has lived in Southern California for more than 15 years, Jordan said he still considers Las Vegas his hometown, so much so that he groups the Crystal Method in with a pair of local bands that stayed put to make it big.

"There are only been three bands to ever come out of Vegas: Slaughter, us and the Killers," Jordan, 41, said proudly.

Saturday night Jordan and Kirkland return "home" to perform a DJ set at club Ice (200 E. Harmon Ave.). Resident Ice DJ Faarsheed is slated to open the show at 10:30 p.m., with the Crystal Method scheduled to begin around 1 a.m.

For Jordan, Vegas appearances still hold special significance.

"We always have family at our shows there," he said. "I've got brothers, nieces and nephews in Vegas, and Scott has his mom, brother, cousins and uncles there."

The Crystal Method are in the midst of a tour promoting their latest album, "Community Service II," the group's second mix CD.

The disc features new Crystal Method tracks, the duo's remixes of such familiar tunes as the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" and New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and contributions from other electronic acts including Elite Force, Hyper and Evil Nine.

The 16-song "Community Service II" concludes with a Crystal Method remix of the Smashing Pumpkins' hit "1979."

"That track was (originally) a bootleg. There were only maybe like 200 copies out," Jordan said. "We liked it so much we got to (ex-Smashing Pumpkins frontman) Billy Corgan and legally licensed the bootleg for the album."

Jordan said cuts from "Community Service II" will be featured prominently in an Ice set that should be heavy on original Crystal Method material, a contrast to many DJs who primarily spin other artists' music.

"We play a lot of stuff from the new mix CD; we'll play a lot of our own stuff, remixes that people have done of our stuff, remixes that we've done of other people's music ...," he said. "So there's a lot of us in there."

Jordan said that after capping the tour at the Electric Daisy Carnival festival in San Bernardino, Calif., on June 25, he and Kirkland will begin work on their fourth studio album.

The Crystal Method's third studio CD, last year's "Legion of Boom," earned a Grammy nomination for Best Electronic/Dance Album, a category recognized for the first time in 2005 (Basement Jaxx's "Kish Kash" won the award).

"The nomination was great," Jordan said. "We would have loved to win, but we got to get dressed up and go to the awards show, which was cool."

Grammy nominations were hardly what Jordan, a Rancho High School graduate, and Kirkland, a graduate of the old Las Vegas High School, had in mind when they began working together during the late-1980s.

Jordan worked as the program director for KUNV 91.5-FM in the days before the college station featured a jazz-only format. It wasn't long before he knew he wanted music to be his career.

"The first time a band asked me to go into the studio with me, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to produce music," Jordan said. "So I took some production and engineering courses at UNLV and started buying gear. And then I met up with Scott and we put our heads together and started working on stuff."

Still, Jordan concedes, he never expected or wanted to be a performer, playing instruments onstage during the Crystal Method's live sets or spinning records under a spotlight during DJ sets.

"All of a sudden we just went from being a production team to being artists," he said. "It was just sort of a natural, necessary thing that we became the artists. But I never really wanted to perform onstage. And even now I'm still kind of uncomfortable with it."

But Jordan said he isn't worried about becoming too famous. After the electronic/dance craze of the late 1990s, the genre has settled into a niche, one the Las Vegas native seems quite satisfied with.

"Dance music in this country will always be a little underground and a little cutting edge," Jordan said. "Everywhere else dance music is at the same level as rap, pop, rock ... but in the states, we'll always be underground.

"But it works out good. This way, it stays cool."