As the crowd swells at Middlesex, requests for “old school hip-hop” (“You know, Biggie Smalls, Snoop Dogg?”) and directions to the bathroom are par for the course, but Kon takes it in stride. “That’s a typical night, ‘What are you playing can you play this?’ ” He laughs. “No one really appreciates what we do here, Americans don’t. I’ve done interviews before with various European publications. But I can’t read them!” And he persists in renouncing his throne. “The true Kings of Diggin’ would be the forefathers of what we now call hip-hop culture: Kool Herc, Bambaataa, Flash. They pre-date hip-hop as a music. There wasn’t a section you could go up to in a record store. You had to get some kind of rock record or something funky and make it up!”
As Kon finds his groove inside the club, the requests come less and heads nod more. Later in the night, however, he drops his dub of “Africa,” a cover from some obscure French band he will not reveal. Playfully, nimbly, he cuts between that and the original by Toto. And that girl going to Africa? Pure bliss.
The exceptional record-shop culture in Boston has spawned Kon and most of its greatest DJs, like DJ Master Millions and DJ Bruno. Still good friends, the latter two have gone on to found two of the area’s biggest nights: Master Millions has his gargantuan Axis Fridays and DJ Bruno hosts the long-running underground house night Utopia at Boston Rocks in Faneuil Hall. Together they ran the now legendary Biscuithead store at 93 Mass Avenue. Now a memory, the shop was much more than a store, it was a community, and that community remains. This Sunday is DJ Bruno’s Birthday Party at his club night, and you can expect Mills and all the old crew to show up. Biscuithead Records was the first to release a single from Boston’s own Edan, who has since also blown up, and the pair’s disciples have nights all over town. Despite numerous store closings and pessimists, record culture is still alive and well in Boston; you just might have to look a little harder for it.
Kon & Amir | July 25 | Vertigo, 126 State St, Boston | 617.422.0500