Remember couple months ago when I promised to tell you guys the story of how this track and this particular remix almost killed me and another DJ live on air?

BUCKLE UP, IT IS TIME.

To begin with, you must listen to the first one minute and maybe 20 seconds of this song to begin to understand. You must find this particular remix before we proceed; here’s a YouTube link if you don’t have Spotify and whatnot:

Many of you know that I was an on-air DJ and producer for about nine years.

Now, children, let us go back to the halcyon days of the early 90s, when genres was were furiously cross pollinating, mixing streams, and artists were collaborating with each other all over the world.

Enter me, your humble DJ, who started DJing on air in her junior year of college at UC Berkeley.

This is an absolutely true story and this all happened at @KALXradio ; it was legendary for many years.

Now, click that YouTube link and listen to that song AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE.

Now, please understand that most of American radio is a wasteland.

KALX, however, being a Bay Area radio station AND a college radio station – we had literally no program director. No preset format.

None.

We could play whatever we wanted...

... as long as we represented at least three distinct musical genres per on-air shift.

So we could play whatever the fuck we wanted.

(And KALX consistently won awards forbest radio station from SXSW for years and years!)

(Sorry, typo above.)

At that time KALX was a very prestigious radio station, but let us pause.

Children, back in 1992 and 1993, we didn’t have smartphones and we didn’t have downloads available instantly.

Labels sent music to us the OLD way.

Yes.

That meant that publicists and labels would send us new releases on CD, vinyl, and cassette.

Yes. I am talking cassettes.

That’s how old-school this shit was.

(And music labels would have their publicists call us and try to schedule interviews with the band/musicians that they were trying to get us to play for the indie college charts, etc.)

Enter The Young Gods.

The Young Gods are a trio of musicians from Switzerland who were originally classically trained, but who were extremely innovative and created music in all different genres - check out their oeuvre.

There’s literally not a genre they haven’t touched and done with it.

In the 90s, this is when the tail end of goth and punk had morphed and birthed another another genre, industrial.

(I HATE the label industrial, because it mislabeled so many musicians and bands who weren’t just that. Anyway!)

This is right around the time that Laibach, The Young Gods, Front 242, Genesis P Orridgr, Test Department, etc. were hardening up their sound.

Commonalities were extensive sampling, pounding beats, funky bass, grinding gears, experimental shit.

But The Young Gods were distinctly different breed. They sampled their own playing of actual instruments, and then combined that with actually playing the instruments live.

They were fucking awesome.

We were OBSESSED at KALX.

So roundabout 1991 or 1992, The Young Gods, being arty Europeans, decided to do an ENTIRE ALBUM covering the interwar Berlin cabaret songs of Kurt Weill, who was a contemporary of Bertolt Brecht, etc.

And each track?

Would be a different genre.

Let’s stop for a second. What musician or band would do that today?

None.

Every single track an entirely different genre, but distinctively identifiable as The Young Gods. And they were singing in French and German.

Or rather, the vocalist was, Franz Treichler, would. One of the growliest, sexiest voices ever to exist. (And a really nice guy, more about that later.)

So they released the project. But first, they advanced released a cover of Kurt Weill’s “Longue Route.”

Again, there was no streaming. We didn’t have Pandora or Spotify. We had vinyl and packages delivered the old way, by record labels and the USPS.

And then one day, this single showed up at KALX on 12-inch vinyl.

Let me briefly digress and explain to you the layout of the radio station at that time. We were a subterranean complex; there were two studios downstairs. One was the on-air studio, and the other was the audition studio, where we recorded taped interviews, edited, and...

...VERY IMPORTANTLY, we would audition new music, meaning that we would sit in the audition studio and play the new vinyl, CDs, etc. that were coming in to see if we wanted to play them during our own respective individual shows.

Enter Kurtis.

Now, keep in mind that we all socialized with each other – because we were an independent radio station, and each of us only got one on-air DJ shift a week; there were probably 150 people who worked at KALX at that time.

So it was quite common for a group of people just to be hanging out at the radio station, upstairs and downstairs, socializing, etc.

Now, downstairs, the audition studio and the on-air studio were connected by a hallway.

So, one Wednesday or Thursday night, I go to the radio station before my DJ set, to pull music from the music library for my set coming up.

And Kurtis is there, a fellow DJ, producer, friend, and comrade at KALX.

He tells me that he’s going downstairs to audition new music. So we walk downstairs together. I go into the pn-air studio to pull music for my show, and he goes into the audition studio, carrying this single, about which we are both very excited.

Now, everyone was very excited about this because we had no idea what it was going to sound like.

The audition studio had EXCELLENT studio quality monitors mounted on the walls that were perhaps 6 feet high. These were mounted right above the turntables.

Put a pin in that. That the monitors were mounted in such a way that they were angled over the turntables, diagonally wedged between where the ceiling and wall met.

So I am happily in the on-air studio, with the current DJ on air, quietly pulling music from the shelves.

Kurtis walks into the audition studio and closes the door.

I remind you to listen to the first 1:25 of this track:

You hear that GIGANTIC, rolling, rasping feedback loop that starts at the very beginning of that track?

Remember how exquisitely powerful the studio monitors are ?

Kurtis starts playing the track on one of the turntables in the audition studio.

As loudly as possible.

He’s got the door closed, and the audition studio was pretty much soundproof.

In fact, I think it was soundproof at that point in time.

Suddenly, the whole fucking hallway and the audition studio start to shake and we hear those intro beats ALL THE WAY DOWN THE HALLWAY.

IT BROKE THE SOUNDPROOFING.

Then the bass started.

The on-air DJ and I, both in the on-air studio, are looking each other and whispering “earthquake...? What the fuck?!”

WE LITERALLY THOUGHT IT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE.

About two seconds later, there is a HUGE, floor-shaking crashing sound coming from the audition studio.

DJ and I look at each other.

We know instantly what’s happened.

Second later, there’s muffled yelling and screaming from the audition studio.

We run down the hallway, and as we get closer, we can hear Kurtis literally bellowing for help.

I grab the door, I fling it open, AND TWO MONITORS HAD FLOWN OFF THE WALL.

YES.

That song was SO fucking powerful, it toppled TWO SIX FOOT TALL MONITORS ONTO MY FRIEND KURTIS, who was literally sprawled out on the floor with one of the monitors on top of him, yelling for help.

But here’s the thing.

Somehow, when the two monitors had fallen off the wall, they had missed the one turntable where Kurtis was playing the track.

So the song is still booming from gigantic monitors all over the room. Vibrating the monitor on top of Kurtis, who is yelling.

Because he is taking the full brunt of those massive guitars, that maximum heavyosity , all of that bass, all of that sampling, that WALL OF SOUND, directly into his torso POINT BLANK.

DJ and I are yelling for help for the people upstairs.

The layout of the studio is such that the turntables are flush against the opposite wall.

The monitors have fallen on top of Kurtis, and we can’t get to the turntables, because Kurtis is blocking it while being murderated by The Young Gods.

So I try to wedge myself between the editing bank, Kurtis, and one of the fallen monitors so I can reach the still turning turntable.

As I do this, another monitor SPRINGS from the wall quite abruptly and slams on top of me, crumpling me.

THE SONG IS STILL PLAYING.

PLAYING LOUDLY.

It was SO intense, and SO loud, we could barely hear each other as we were yelling for help.

An entire minute went by.

People finally come running downstairs, alarmed.

So there’s DJ, me, and Kurtis, all scrambling to free ourselves in the monitors, which was a rather small space, did I mention that?

At this point, people finally do come running into the hallway from upstairs.

The looks on their faces were indescribable.

it took about 20 minutes for them to extricate me and Kurtis from the monitors, and about another hour and a half to try and put everything back.

And in all of my years of listening to music and being at furiously loud gigs and enduring powerful, powerfully loud music – I have NEVER encountered a sonic force like this track.

Naturally, I played it every week on my show for months.

It became a running joke. That The Young Gods tried to murder DJs with their sonic assault.

A couple of months later, I saw them live for their tour for this album.

Normally, I am right up front at the stage for gigs.

But when I heard the intro for that track, I grabbed my friends and started telling people, everyone, to move back. I pressed myself against the back wall of the club – a now defunct club in the lower Haight - and experienced it live.

It vibrated by skull, and I think it broke a few ribs, but it was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life.

Again, each song they played was a completely different genre.

(My skull, not “by skull.”)

About a year later, they toured the world for another new album, and I got to interview them for KALX.

I am not easily intimidated, but these guys intimidated the fuck out of me because I admired them SO much.

And so when I showed up at the club early, with my setup to record an interview, they surprised me and asked me to do the interview at a nearby Indian restaurant.

And so that’s where I did the interview.

This is another thing that I will NEVER forget: we were literally recording the interview while sitting at the table, eating appetizers and waiting for our food.

I told the story of what had happened at the radio station.

And they gently laughed, telling me that they weren’t surprised. Right about then, a plate of samosas arrived at the table. Franz Treichler turned to me, since I was sitting next to him, and said in his beautiful deep sexy French accent : “Your samosas, my dear.”

I almost passed out.

I somehow did manage to do the interview.

They were lovely, erudite, charming, extremely pleasant company.

Later that night, at the gig, Franz Treichler stood on stage, looked at me since I was right up front, nodded, and said “move back, mademoiselle.”

And that, my friends, is how I was almost murdered by The Young Gods but later had samosas with them so everything was OK.

ADDENDUM:

METAL SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER SUNG IN FRENCH.

THIS IS NOW THE LAW. LISTEN AGAIN.