Scratch Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 11th, 2002
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If you thought hip-hop was all about the effeminate rapping of Fred Durst or the posturing gangsta bullshit of every other big rap talent that can rhyme "air" and "care," you need to haul your ass down to the Little Theatre and catch Doug Pray's Scratch, a wickedly cool, no-frills documentary that charts the popularity of DJing over the last 30 years. No, not the phony-voiced "deejays" you hear on commercial radio, but DJs - the people with the fader, two turntables, and the wicka-wicka-wicka.
Pray, who also deftly documented the rise and fall of Seattle's grunge scene in Hype!, tackles his subject here in a similar fashion. And Scratch nearly follows the same trajectory, as well. After reaching a glorious crescendo in the mid-'80s (with Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo, I think), it seemed like DJing and the other three arms of hip-hop culture (MCing, breakdancing and graffiti) would go the way of the Atari 2600 as America collectively returned to listening to Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen. Scratch shows us that the spinning and scratching never really stopped.
Pray introduces us to about a dozen DJs, ranging from the old and generally unknown (GrandWizzard Theodore, Jazzy Jay, GrandMixer DXT) to people you may have actually heard of (Qbert, DJ Shadow, Mix Master Mike). The subjects who weren't there in the beginning all point to DXT's Grammy performance with Herbie Hancock (remember "Rock It"?) as the defining event in their lives, which seem to be comprised solely of a love of music and a bizarre infatuation with outer space. We hear them all talk about how they got started and how they were influenced, and, most importantly, we get to see them in action. Be prepared to pick your jaw off the floor, because some of these scenes look like they were sped up for dramatic effect (but they weren't).
Pray also clears up a common misconception - DJing isn't all about cribbing entire songs from Sting or Buffalo Springfield. It's about finding the "break" in a song (i.e., the good part - the one that lasts for two or three seconds) and using it to create something new. There's a scene in Scratch where one of the DJs manipulates a Robert Johnson song into a very un-Robert-Johnson-sounding concoction. And when was the last time you shopped for records? In Scratch, we accompany actual DJs to actual record stores and watch as they hunt through actual stacks of dusty vinyl for that one "break" that could make their next performance at a competition.
This doc reminded me a lot of Dogtown & Z-Boys, which beat Scratch in the documentary competition at the Independent Spirit Awards. Both are among 2002's best. Each focuses on the history of a very specific section of the entertainment community about which many know very little. And both films give props to significant people who seem fairly content to sit back and watch the new generation make piles and piles of dough while they scrape by. You don't need to be a hip-hop fan to appreciate Scratch (though if you downright hate that style of music, the film might be a tad much), and that's the mark of a documentary that works.
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