In the male dominated music world, female DJs are in the minority, especially when it comes to hip-hop. And when it comes to female scratch DJs, aka turntablists, the number of female artists is even smaller. Exceptions include DJ Shortee, Kuttin Kandi, and the Bay Area DJ duo of Deeandroid and Celskiii, who have been busy perfecting their game for over a decade now.

Tonight the Filipino female DJ duo, who were invited on tour by KRS-One a few years back, will be throwing their popular twice-monthly Skratchpad turntablist event (every first and third Tuesday) at The Cellar in San Francisco. The event had been on hiatus for a few years and returned just this May. I caught up with the two Vallejo natives to ask them about their party (including its "funky freestyle jam") and other aspects of the hip-hop DJ music they both so passionately love. They, like many other diehards, spell "skratch" with a K.

Amoeblog: Can you run down the history of Skratchpad -- from the first time out to the revised 2009 version?

Deeandroid: We started Skratchpad at the (old) Sublounge in May 2003. The Resident DJs were Celskiii, Wint-One, Amerriica and myself. We had a desire to organize and start up an open turntable event, since the Bay Area is like a DJ mecca. We loved to skratch and party and really missed the inspiration from when they had night events like the Beat Lounge at Deco. Celskiii and myself
were very influenced by the Beat Lounge weekly party/DJ session that was held at Deco back in 1997, where we [were] exposed to a great selection of rare & original music from DJs that were very talented, guests and rotating DJ residents/turntablists that were making some noise in the DJ scene at that time. The showcases and DJ sets were amazing, from cats like Apollo, Vin Roc, Derrick D, Shortkut, Spydamonkey, Snaykeyes, etc. So when Beat Lounge stopped...years later, Cel, Winst-One and I thought it would be dope if we created our own space for the DJs in the Bay Area to network, come together, and just jam in honor of Beat Lounge and to inspire new heads and practitioners of the DJ arts.

Ukrainian sand animation artist Ksenya Simonova, who came to fame in her country via an American Idol styled TV show, has been taking her country by storm -- even moving people to tears -- with her unique handmade sand art, which she creates live as a kind of requiem to those who died during the Great Patriotic War. As in the video clip above, her real time public performances of sand animation are typically made up of Simonova swiftly hand crafting various war images, quickly morphing from one tragic image to the next, all to the accompaniment of a somber soundtrack of classical & traditional music plus soundbites of wartime news footage.

Working with a mixture of regular sea sand and volcanic sand, all spread out on a glass pane as canvas, Simonova uses her hands to craft her engaging moving stories. At the end of each dramatic live art performance consisting of tales of death and destruction she blows out a votive candle. Usually at this point audience members are seen tearing up. Surprisingly, Simonova, who is also a part time model, only took up the unusual art form (she is only one of a handful of such artists -- the others are from an older generation) just one year ago after becoming a victim of the credit crunch. Reportedly her next project will be a Michael Jackson themed live art installation piece.

The story of Lucy (“the girl with kaleidoscope eyes") becoming the inspiration for The Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album track goes back to when a four year old Lucy, who was a classmate of young Julian Lennon's at the Heath House Nursery in Weybridge, Surrey, had another classmate at the nursery paint a picture of her surrounded by stars and colorful squiggles.The story goes that Julian took this picture home and showed it to his dad, telling him, “It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds..." And the rest is pop music history.

1) Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation/Atlantic)

2) Kid Cudi Man On The Moon: The End of Day (Motown / Pgd)

3) Drake So Far Gone (Cash Money)

4) Brother Ali Us (Rhymesayers)

5) Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Links Pt II (ICEAL)

Five of the big hip-hop releases from over the past few weeks are still selling well at Amoeba Music Hollywood this week, including Jay-Z's final installment in his Blueprint trilogy, Kanye West protege Kid Cudi's debut, and Cash Money's newest star Drake. Also doing well are Only Built 4 Cuban Links Pt II by Wu Tang member Raekwon and the new joint from the Rhymesayers' Brother Ali, which was number one at the San Francisco Amoeba last week. Other tight new hip-hop releases include the brand new The Day After Forever (Gold Dust) by Bay Area crew Crown City Rockers, which has great tracks such as "Clap Your Hands" (feat. Aima) and "That's Life" (featuring Jason Jasper). Tonight there's an album release party for the album at The Independent in San Francisco that will be hosted by Lyrics Born along with DJ D-Sharp and, of course, Crown City Rockers performing. And if that ain't enough, they will be joined by LA’s Breakestra, whose new album Dusk Til Dawn is also just out, and Spaceheater (Blast Furnace is also just out). Tickets $20. Doors 8pm. More info here. 

Speaking of undeniably great Bay Area hip-hop talent, the Souls Of Mischief just launched a big worldwide tour and have also just released a track from their forthcoming Prince Paul produced new album, Montezuma's Revenge. The corresponding "Montezuma's Revenge Tour '09" consists of 35 stops in six weeks, including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and LA, where the group played the Troubadour two nights ago. They play Slims in San Francisco on October 20th (with Ghostface) and the Avalon in San Jose the following night. Prince Paul plays on select dates with the longtime Oakland Hiero crew, comprised of emcees A-Plus, Opio, Phesto, and Tajai. So does Swollen Members. Montezuma's Revenge will arrive in Ameoba Music and other stores on November 10th on their Hiero Imperium Records.

Easily the hands down winner in the "so bad it's good" category is the above clip from the ultra cheesy late 80's "children's musical" film Creating Rem Lezar, in which Rem and friends (channeling Godspell?) sing, dance & prance their way through Central Park and other parts of New York City.

This clip and the others from Creating Rem Lezar, including the one in which a mannequin of Rem comes to life and then, donning a blue mullet, sings two kids to sleep, are so bad and so wrong on so many levels, and yet, for some strange reason, they are addictive viewing. 

Written, directed, produced and choreographed by Scott Zakarin and made in 1989, Creating Rem Lezar went straight to video but never made it as far as DVD. Recently rediscovered thanks to YouTube, this hard to find VHS is much coveted and apparently fetches $50 or more online. Meantime you can view numerous clips from it on YouTube, found under titles like "bad 80's video" or "Worse 80's video."