The Sunday night parties at Red Lounge in DC in the middle of the last decade were legendary affairs. We can all agree on this as fact, and literally every house music selector in the city has a great story of being in that sweaty cauldron of deep, volcanic sounds and likely having Sam “The Man” Burns show them that religious salvation was possible on a dance floor.
Lets’s skip ahead to today. 2010. U Street Music Hall is far outdistancing expectations and has literally kicked open the door for DC’s underground party culture, becoming the “it” place for people who love music, and want to hear it in optimal conditions. Red Fridays’ deep house, minimal tech and disco, outside of the comically absurd and ridiculously awesome basslines of dubstep are the best sounds on the Temple of Boom’s soundsystem. The mix of that and a lineup of DJs that can appreciate and use the range of levels the system provides to their fullest extent makes the party the best the city has likely had in years on a weekly basis.
Last night, I heard NYC’s Louie Vega mentored Mr. V drop this 1993, Janis Joplin sampled classic in the midst of a set that was perfect in how he built ebbs and flows, like watching a wave crest, then fall repeatedly as it breaks on a shoreline:
Beautiful, right? Add that to hearing Jesse Saunders drop Zhane’s “Hey Mr. DJ,” two of the most technically superior and massive dance sets from Sam Burns, and getting to hear every favorite early house remixes including Frankie Knuckles’ take on First Choice’s “Let No Man Put Asunder,” and this is, in my mind, a party supreme, where you get to hear simply some of the best dance music ever created, and the building blocks for literally every other genre of music since.
There’s an underground hipster-based culture in the city that on some levels looks at a dance party as a communal hang out rather than party scene, and the U Hall has become a curious location, as, well, having a party in an actual dance hall, well, requires DANCING, as opposed to a party at a bar, which has made many a party turn many a bar into the most hardcore speakeasy scene since Al Capone and his crew ran roughshod during Prohibition. For them it’s just as much about the music as it is about the creation of scene. Red Fridays in many ways has proven that this culture isn’t about dance, as, well, some of the world’s best purveyors of dance music are spinning for free before 11 PM, and these kids are largely elsewhere. Most parties in the city suffer from a lack of attendance from this contingent, but Red Fridays succeeds in the face of it.
If you want a REAL dance party that’s not hip, cool, a scene or the “in thing” for the “in crowd,” join along with people devoted to the artistry of music. If you feel weird at parties where you have to dress to the nines and drink Nuvo behind velvet ropes, come here. If you feel weird at parties where people appear to have been dressed by Molly Ringwald and Mark Paul Gosselaar and someone may unironically shove a camera in your face, come here. This is real, this is house, this is love. Red Fridays.
I personally go every Friday, but feel that the lineup the next three Fridays is worthy of discussion…
5/7 – Mike Simonetti (Italians Do It Better Records) / Chris Burns – Amazing lineup. Chris is likely to deliver one of the best opening sets in the party’s history so far. Likely DC’s most self-confident DJ, watch for his remix of Steve Starks’ “Lydia.” With his deep house and disco background, he’s gonna take that track to somewhere fantastic. Mike Simonetti is a trendsetting classic of underground house, and do check the Myspace for his label Italians Do It Better. Loving Farah’s news track “Gay Boy.”
5/14 – Andy Butler (Hercules and Love Affair) – Man. Color me gobsmacked. This is HUGE. I once referred to Hercules and Love Affair as the resurrection of disco dynamite. I interviewed Andy at Electric Zoo last year where he did a tag team set with Frankie Knuckles that was beyond fantastic. Not aware of Hercules and Love Affair? For shame. But try “Hercules’ Theme.” Stuck in your head yet? Exactly
5/21 – The 88DC crew who do a superb job of infusing life into DC’s electronic dance music scene bring Derrick Carter to Red Fridays. Carter’s a Chicago DJ who goes deep, funky and is the definition of excellence.
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