In the Year 2005

Like killer bees and cheap labor, this year's music and fashion trends are charging up from the South (by Southwest)

Comments (0) By Chris Baty Wednesday, Apr 6 2005

Cutting-Edge Bay Area Early Adopters:The latest CD in the Scion (as in the car) series features Raashan of Crown City Rockers. Pick it up at your local automobile showroom today!

Item:iPod DJs no longer mercilessly mocked

Coming soon to a pajama party near you, England's the Go! Team.

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Category:Cultural shift

Blame it on the ubiquity of the festival's buzzword ("Podcasting!") but Austin in 2005 witnessed the dawn of a new tolerance toward real DJs dialing in the party direct from their iPods. It was strange at first, seeing tastemakers at the dance controls, not fussing over BPMs on their white-label vinyl, but instead thumbing through pre-made playlists on white MP3 players. Yeah, it's kind of lazy, but it's also unpretentious and highly practical, like wearing pajamas out in public because, well, they're just a hell of a lot more comfortable than real clothes. (And you know if they'd only invented pajamas a couple of years ago, all the snarling cool kids would be showing up at parties in their puffy cloud jammies.) Anyway, with the trend 10 minutes old, there's already a backlash, so go catch your local party-in-a-box while you still can.

Cutting-Edge Bay Area Early Adopters:N/A. According to party-hearty S.F. DJ Jefrodisiac, "The only people who just bring iPods are celebrity DJs, which don't exist in S.F." That means one of two things: There's still time for you to be the first DJ on your block to podcast, or Danny Glover is about to start headlining Ruby Skye.