Ten years ago this month, on Nov. 19 1996, DJ Shadow released “Entroducing.”

The problem with history, or rather history classes and textbooks, is that they ghettoize years. They paint eras with broad strokes, attribute one or maybe two events to a time period, and move on. Many things, often certainly worth knowing about, get overlooked and routinely ignored by subsequent generations because they weren’t the biggest news items of the time, even if at one point they were the news de jour.

It’s why the 1930s are the Great Depression; the decade is characterized by the fall of the U.S. Stock Market. Forget that BBC television premiered, that RADAR was invented, the Spanish Civil War or that World War II began in parts of Asia and Europe. The 1930s are the Depression, enough said.

It makes chronology simple:
1910s – World War I
1920s – Roaring
1930s – Depression
1940s – World War II

The U.S.’s recollection is the worst, as national history overshadows fact and conventional logic to become the only history. So the U.S. Stock Market crash becomes the Stock Market Crash. And instead of starting in 1939, the Second World War began around Dec. 7, 1941, following Pearl Harbor.

After all, what else is there beside America?

It’s this perpetuated naivety and willful ignorance that creates a historical ghetto the same way an entire neighborhood may get characterized by its predominant ethnicity – there is one event, and one event only per era. And if there are too many catastrophic and important happenings to wrap up in a short textbook chapter – like, say, the 1960s – the decade is blanketed as being “turbulent” and each monumental change loses its identity due to one nondescript adjective.

Yet music’s past is no different.

The early 1990s were the start of Nirvana’s success, and as a result also the end of hair metal. It’s when the largest genre in the world was sucker punched in a changing of the guitar guard, and a new largest genre in the world altered the musical landscape unlike any time before.

Even when the Beatles sparked the British Invasion or the Sex Pistols punk, the reigning incumbent genres weren’t entirely depleted in a few short months, the way Nirvana eliminated Poison and other spandex-clad, Aqua Netters. There had never been such a quick shift from genre “A” to genre “B.”

At least, that’s how the U.S. press and other blind patriots saw it. (Still see it?)

Except that at the exact moment grunge was changing America’s record buying habits, Brit pop was doing the same thing across the Atlantic Ocean, and just as severely.

For much of the 1980s and the first few years of the 90s, dance music ruled Europe. Club DJs built rave culture into one of the largest global movements, as beatsmiths glorified and mirrored the rise of ecstasy. Venues were built specifically for these jockeys. Clothes, drugs, trends and all aspects of life were influenced by the existence the beats. It was nothing short of cultural dominance. Everyone danced. Everyone partied. Everyone had a good time.

Except, well, those Brits who wanted guitars, not drum machines and turntables.

And then it happened. It was like a competition, anything the U.S could do Britain could do better.

We had Sub Pop Records; they had Creation Records. We had Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and L7; they had Blur, The Boo Radleys and Suede. We no longer had hair metal; they no longer had DJs.

Ultimately, those turntable jocks disappeared for several years until the late 90s resurgence behind artists like Moby and Paul van Dyk.

But something interesting happened during the middle part of the decade, a 23-year-old Californian name Josh Davis – aka DJ Shadow – who had grown up on a steady variety of rock’n’roll, rap and dance music, found his way into all three genres yet avoided the pigeonholing of changing trends.

How? He stole from them – literally. And he did it all at once.

By doing so, he created a groundbreaking debut that would become one of the most widely praised albums in history and eventually earn him entry into “The Guinness Book of World Records.”

Rarely is the first of anything also the best. Pong is a far cry from Playstation 3, “Steamboat Willy” is incomparable to “The Incredibles,” and only a fool prefers Ken Griffey over Jr.

But in the case of DJ Shadow, what came first is the best. Not just for his catalogue, but for the genre as a whole. The popular record-keeping publication marked in its 2001 edition that “Entroducing” was the “First Completely Sampled Album” – meaning that every note on the 63-minute disc had been recorded elsewhere previously.

And critics reworded Shadow’s ingenuity.

The immense acclaim poured in to the beat – pun intended – of 5/5 star reviews from All Music Guide, Alternative Press, Mojo, Q, Rolling Stone Magazine and Uncut Magazine. Entertainment Weekly graded it an “A-“, while Pitchfork Media gave it 9.1/10 and Spin Magazine a not-quite-perfect 4.5/5 stars.

For more than just the forward thinking, the praise was because of the final product. The release seamlessly blends samples from Bjork, Metallica and Louden Wainwright III with Kurtis Blow and clips from “Twin Peaks” episodes.

Shadow’s skill set was – is – one of the most unique displays of musical talent to date, and it created a new sort of double standard for plagiary. The same way we’d label an artist as lazy for lifting a riff or bass line from another musician, is the way we’d label Davis had he not swiped the clips.

The temptation must have been there. Like a band that cannot find the perfect beat and could easily sample someone’s, when Shadow couldn’t locate the perfect sample he could have just made his own.

But he didn’t. That would have been the quick way out. With a bizarre spin on authenticity, he was determined to steal 100 percent of his material.

Thank goodness it worked. Had it not, “Entroducing” would have disappeared alongside other petty thefts. Instead, we discuss it like Shadow is a criminal mastermind, a thieving genius just shy of DB Cooper.

Which is evident by the record’s 2005 “Deluxe Edition” that includes alternate tracks and one of Davis’s first live sets following the album’s original release. If the 1996 album was just another great record, the expanded album might have added something. It could have given us more great songs and previously unheard interpretations of familiar ones.

Too bad it’s not just another great album – it’s era defining. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t have the capacity to rethink how we view the past.

Even if we’d be better for.

Daily Herald BEEP, Nov. 29, 2006