On Thursday, September 12, I headed down to Long Beach to play with Klub Nocturno at Alex’s Bar. It was my first time playing at the venue and it was a total vibe– super cool crowd with great energy. My set was roughly from 8:30 p.m. until around midnight and the set list is below the jump.
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To be honest, I wasn’t a huge Molchat Doma fan. I could hang with a few songs, enough to oblige the frequent requests at clubs, but their albums just didn’t really resonate with me. Then, last Friday, I gave Belaya Polosa a listen and immediately bought it on Bandcamp. Molchat Doma’s fourth album is their best so far.
But, I’ve been hesitant to write about the album because even AP has done that, on account of Molchat Doma’s now four-year-old TikTok hit, and there’s a digital stack of music that I’ve been meaning to write about, but haven’t. So, I’ll just try to squeeze as much as possible about all of it here.
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Friday, September 13, is Pulp x Underground Nite at Grand Star Jazz Club in Chinatown. Both floors of the venue will be open with Larry G., Jesse B and me (Liz O.) on the controllers. Dance to all your favorite Pulp jams before they play the Palladium and Hollywood Forever, plus, the Underground mix of post-punk, new wave, indie, darkwave, synthpop and more. Tickets are available now via Dice or Eventbrite. The Grand Star is located at 943 N. Broadway in Chinatown’s Central Plaza. Party starts at 9:30 p.m. and it’s 21+.
I played a last minute set at Underground last night from open to close. It was a fun night in spite of the hideous heat wave that struck L.A. this week. Thanks to everyone who came out and hit the dance floor. Set list is below.
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It’s Sunday morning, I’ve hardly slept. I have Sacred Skin’s song “Call It Off” running through my head and Depresion Post Mortem’s cover of “Yo Voy” fighting to overtake it. Still, I’m going to try to explain last night’s gig at Klub Nocturno in a way that people who normally don’t know what I’m rambling about will understand. It might not work, but we’ll try. (Scroll down if you just want to see the set list.)
Last night, Klub Nocturno took over Catch One, which is this massive, multi-room disco that has an amazing history going back to actual disco L.A. There were five dance floors of varying sizes going all night: Rock en Español vs. Cumbia, Indie vs. 80s, Deftones Night, Corrido Night and Sad Bunny Night. I played Indie vs. 80s in the Jewel’s Room, where the dance floor is on the ground level of the building and a staircase in the corner leads up to a mezzanine, where the DJ booth is located, before heading towards the second level of the club.
I have a view from the booth that overlooks the dance floor and stage. Usually, it’s not until right around 10 p.m. that I see the room begin to fill with people. Last night, I started playing at 9:30 on the dot and began to see signs of life on the dance floor three or four songs into the set. By the time I mixed “Rippin Kittin” into “Something to Remember Me By,” the dance floor was alive and growing.
The first time I heard people scream for a song that night was during “Love My Way,” the Psychedelic Furs classic, which was maybe at around 10:30 p.m. The energy was incredible. I’d look down and see this big mass of people under the purple and red glow of the lights. I could hear them singing along to The Strokes song “Reptilia” and Le Tigre’s big ’00s club hit “Deceptacon.”
When the intro of “Smalltown Boy,” the Bronski Beat’s jam, faded in at midnight, the screams were wild. TBH, that’s really the song of summer 2024, even though it’s literally 40 years old. I hear it everywhere from clubs to the A Line.
The room hit its peak at midnight. People chanted through “Living on Video” and sang along with “Two of Hearts.” There were dancers in the mezzanine lounge area too, so during the stretch from “Smalltown Boy” through “Goodbye Horses,” I felt like I was DJing in the middle of the dance floor.
It was one of those nights that passed all too quickly. I looked at my laptop, noticed it was after 1 a.m. and realized that I had to start dropping the big sing-a-long numbers— “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “There Is a Light,” “Just Like Heaven”— immediately and try to squeeze in as many requests as I could. (I had more than four hours of requests, which came in before the party started, loaded into Rekordbox.) Anyhow, it was an awesome night and you can see my set list below.
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Last night was the first time I DJed the Depeche Mode room at Underground’s Depeche Mode Nite. By the end of my first set, I realized that playing nothing but Depeche Mode-related songs (Yaz counts, it’s Vince Clarke) is really easy to do when you’ve been a big ol’ fan since you were 10 years old.
I got in my favorite Alan Wilder cut, “Fools (Bigger),” which is a B-side for “Love in Itself.” I have a whole story about that, which involves tracking down a sample I heard, accidentally finding it in a used record bin, playing it at a club and making a friend with whom we became the Alan Wilder Appreciation Association, but we’ll save that for another day.
Mixed in some synth pop that wasn’t made by members of Depeche Mode in the second set, plus a mini Vince Clarke tribute right after “Send Me an Angel,” and then went all DM again for my third set, which closed out the night upstairs at the Grand Star. Anyhow, the set list is below. Thanks for sticking through the sets. I hope you got to hear a Depeche Mode song that you hadn’t heard in a long time, or maybe one that’s new to you.
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I’ve been hooked on Triple Fire, the latest album from Geneva Jacuzzi, since a promo turned up in my email a while back. As the August 23 release date approached, I listened to the album more often, trying to dig deeper into the stories within songs like “Laps of Luxury,” “Art Is Dangerous” and “Scene Ballerina” that are so vivid, yet so open to interpretation. The music, the lyrics, it all felt like it was already a part of Los Angeles.
Jacuzzi has been making music in L.A. since the ‘00s and first came to underground attention with the band Bubonic Plague, who were amazing live, btw. Triple Fire is her third solo album since 2010 and her first full-length for Dais Records.
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Just wanted to update quickly with my set lists from Disco Matinee on Sunday, August 18. Thanks to those of you who made it out to Grand Star Jazz Club for the little day party that Jus’ B and I throw, now on the third Sunday of the month.
My next two gigs are coming up at the end of the month. I’ll be at Underground on Friday, August 30, more details are forthcoming. On Saturday, August 31, I’ll be playing in the Indie vs. ‘80s room at Nocturno and tickets for those are available now.
Set 1:
Patrice Rushen – Forget Me Nots
Donna Summer – Bad Girls
Prince – Sexy Dancer
Paul Parker – Right on Target
Alexander Robotnik – Problemes D’Amour
C-Bank – One More Shot
The Flirts – Passion
Human League – Hard Times
Laid Back – White Horse
Evelyn “Champagne” King – Shame
Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing
Patrick Cowley feat. Sylvester – Menergy
La Bionda – I Wanna Be Your Lover
Yaz – Situation
Madonna – Holiday
Talking Heads- Girlfriend Is Better
The Clash – The Magnificent Seven
Set 2:
Bronski Beat- Smalltown Boy
New Order – Blue Monday
Kano- It’s a War
Musique – Keep on Jumpin’
Ken Laszlo – Hey Hey Guy
Righeira – Vamos a la Playa
Silent Circle – Touch in the Night
Vicious Pink – Cccan’t You See
Michael Zager Band – Let’s All Chaint
Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way
Candi Staton – Me and My Music
Bumblebee Unlimited – Lady Bug
Tavares – Heaven Music Be Missing an Angel
Donna Summer – Last Dance
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs.
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It was hot and the record store was small and bright. Jazz filled the room as I flipped through bins, side-eyeing price tags on ‘80s records. That’s what they want for the Go-Gos? I thought. That’s the kind of record you get from your relatives who went digital ages ago. In fact, at least one of my Go-Gos records came to me in exactly that way. I don’t even want to see the Fleetwood Mac prices here.
I headed over to the dance bin, just in case there was something that looked interesting. And there was. It was a copy of “Vamos a la Playa” with a $4.99 price tag on it. That’s weird, I thought. I can’t tell you how long “Vamos a la Playa” has been in the L.A. ether, but it’s one of the Italo disco jams that everyone seems to know. If you play it a club— and I think most of us DJs have done so many, many times— you can hear the crowd singing out on the floor. At least, they sing along with the chorus, “Vamos a la playa, oh-oh-oh-oh.” They usually don’t get all into the verse about radioactive winds blowing through your hair. It’s a strange song by today’s standards, but deceptively cheerful ditties about nuclear annihilation were totally a thing in the 1980s. Don’t believe me? This is probably the only time in my life that I will ever recommend listening to “99 Luftballoons” in English.
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I had just returned home after a meeting and noticed a text asking if I could fill in for the opening DJ set at Splash!, which was set to start in a little over an hour. I said I could get there at 7:45, then ran out, got dinner, ate half a banh mi, wrapped up the other half for later that night, grabbed my laptop and the controller that I had yet to unpack from Nocturno on Saturday night, scheduled a ride and showed up at 7:43 p.m., which was more than enough time to set up and get started at 8 p.m.
Since I still had my Nocturno folder loaded into Rekordbox, I played more of an alt. ‘80s set, with a few other random songs that I either happened to have on my laptop or was able to download quickly. It ended up being a great night. I met some super cool people, dropped some tunes I hadn’t played out in a while (“Get the Balance Right,” “Our Darkness,” “No More Words) and finished with Pia Zadora and Jermaine Jackson’s duet “When the Rain Begins to Fall,” from the sci-fi epic Voyage of the Rock Aliens, because why not?
Here’s the set list. I’m still scheduling August gigs, so I don’t know when I’m playing next, so follow on Instagram and I’ll the next date when I have it.
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I almost regretted leaving my igloo on the last Sunday in July. It was hot af and I was still a little tired from the previous night’s DJ gig at Nocturno, but the In Sheep’s Clothing x Japonesia Summer Market was happening and that’s the one record swap that I try not to miss. So, I twisted my hair up and butterfly-clipped it, like at least 75% of longhaired L.A. this summer, and headed out to the brewery for a dig.
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