A few years ago, hip-hop artist Kool Keith was booked to play the Vans Warped Tour, a mostly punk event.
The hallmark of Kool Keith Matthew Thornton's career has been his sense of oddball daring, but his Warped Tour showing left many punk fans bent out of shape. The boos he was met with proved that some experiments do indeed blow up in your face.
"They were bugging out," he recalls. "I was playing against a whole punk audience who just didn't know any better. They'd been listening to 17 punk-rock bands who all sounded the same. It was an experience."
The Kool Keith experience hits the Starlite Room tomorrow night, with support from Kutmasta Kurt, Deft Sample, Tomfoolery, DJ Dice and Lucky-B. Tickets ($15) are available at Foosh, Soular, Listen, Blackbyrd, Megatunes, Method and Homegrown.
For the punks who happened to catch Keith's show and didn't get it, not to worry; many hip-hop enthusiasts don't quite get his stream-of-consciousness brand of non-sequitur hip hop, either.
Keith's name first broke during the '80s as a member of New York City's Ultramagnetic MCs, along with Ced Gee, TR Love and Moe Love. The group's work was punctuated by esoteric rhymes and samples, which precluded it from achieving wide commercial appeal.
It never prevented Keith from finding an underground audience, however.
Over the years, he's produced under a multitude of aliases, with Elvin Presley, Keith Turbo and Willie Natural being but three of too many names to list here. But one handle he's famous for is Dr. Octagon, hatched with San Francisco producer Dan the Automator.
Or maybe infamous; Keith actually killed off the persona at the beginning of 1999's First Come, First Served album, which he produced under his Dr. Dooom guise. The good physician has, however, returned with a new album, The Return of Dr. Octagon, produced with the One Watt Sun collective.
Why the resurrection? Easy, says Keith.
"It's 90% based on marketing," he reveals, saying it was a concession he made for the label.
"I really haven't revisited the character. I made the album and it just had a Dr. Octagon feel. I could have called it anything, really. I have that problem all the time. I tell people I'd like to do a project and just call it X, but they feel like you've got to put 'Keith' on it. I tell them to do A,B and they go ahead and do C, D."
The new album is very Keith-like: weird - commenting on things farcical (alien abductions) to factual (the importance of recycling) - but also a breath of fresh air. He doesn't view the album as distinct, but instead as a sequel, a mere extension to his body of work.
And if there is a deeper meaning on Return, Keith isn't letting on.
"Maybe you can tell me what's going on," he says, laughing. "I write songs as an operator and I don't get regional reports.
"There are all kinds of people who say I have no right to make records, which is wrong. I really don't have anything to prove to rapping in general or the universe.
"To me, what I do is very easy; it's not a hard job."
