The Cool Kids Are Alright
Saturday nights at Echoplex ride a bouncing, Day-Glo beat
Moby's 'Night' Out
The Circus Stays in Town
Running the Voodoo Down
Life in the Fast Lane
Too Much Junkie Business
Something 2 dance 2
Kazell
The 1980s were widely considered a musical backwater, at least among mainstream rock critics, for whom the doctrine of pop-as-poetry seemed to die along with the Carter administration. During the Reagan years, British new wave, the rap attack, and androgynous pop stars such as Boy George were enough to make traditional music scribes roll up their Rolling Stone magazines and slap their MTV-ridden televisions in disgust. Today’s ’80s revival among American Apparel-wearing cool kids must, then, be the final affront for the Dylan-as-God disciples whose roots are planted firmly in the 1960s. The ’80s brought back a ’50s aesthetic to pop, one in which “you can dance,” as Madonna said; one in which, more than anything, the music did the talking – not someone’s pen – and bodies did the rocking.
While the era’s artists might not have been as noble or high-minded as the guitar poets of the 1960s and ’70s, they were no less influential. Today’s millennial kids might be on-point by highlighting the ’80s as an era of hip: It brought us Michael Jackson, Prince, and the advent of a word so commonplace that we could hardly imagine contemporary music and the Internet without it: Techno.
The epicenter of this Day-Glo revival is right here in L.A., at the Echoplex Saturday nights, during Franki Chan’s revered Check Yo Ponytail parties. New York has its disco-punk community and LCD Sound System. Paris has Daft Punk redux with Justice and the Ed Banger Records crew. The East Coast, from Baltimore to Florida, is experiencing an ’80s-flavored, booty-rap resurgence via acts such as Spank Rock and DJ Diplo. But Los Angeles is the capital of nu electro cool kids in neon tights and ironic T-shirts.
“There’s always been this back and forth between Los Angeles and New York about who’s cooler and who’s not,” says Chan, 29. “I would say definitely a few years back, New York had the cooler scene. But I would say, especially since the summer of 2006, L.A. has really been the one killing it. Los Angeles is still the leader of this burgeoning electronic dance scene.”
It’s a scene that exists outside the traditional super-club context of DJs spinning linear, samey, tech-flavored dance music. In the nu electro community, DJs blend a sense of future retro with punk-like irreverence and technological utility. At Check Yo Ponytail Saturday the duo called Heist bobbed behind a Powerbook as they unleashed versions of Lipps Inc.’s “Funky Town,” Madonna’s “Hung Up,” DJ Jean’s “The Launch” and Robert Miles’ “Children,” all in a viciously up-tempo mega-mix that recalled the ’80s heyday of gay, hi-NRG club music.
“The ’80s has been an obsession since I was in high school,” Chan confesses. “When I was growing up my father had MTV playing pretty much all day every day. At that time it was ZZ Top and Prince and Madonna and Michael Jackson’s Thriller all day long. And I don’t think it’s going to go away.”
More than “’80s night” happy hour parties, however, the nu electro scene in L.A. is about mixing irreverence with technology. DJing software such as Ableton Live and Serato Scratch has opened clubland to previously unimagined possibilities. The entire world of music can now be set to a 4/4 beat with the press of a button. And the new kids are doing it with abandon. Rather than looking like they’re checking their e-mail onstage, nu electro DJs are pogoing, singing over the beats, and even assembling dance-influenced bands (L.A. Riots, Guns N Bombs) that are thrashing like post-punk rockers on ecstasy.
This isn’t nu rave – that British revival of rave-influenced rock (the Klaxons, et. al.) – though. There’s much more reverence for the dance floor. And this certainly isn’t the indie dance scene that Chan helped launch with former partner Steve Aoki, who’s been known to play pop for celebrity princesses during his Dim Mak parties at Cinespace Tuesdays. The only “paps” you’ll spot at Check Yo Ponytail is DJ Paparazzi. Situated in Echo Park, Ponytail’s nu electro crowd has grown from the ground up, and Chan has launched a label, IHEARTCOMIX, to feed its growth. The Saturday night party is celebrating a two-year anniversary next month. (See iheartcomix.com for more information.)
“It’s all about energy and having fun and,” says Chan, “bringing some danger back to rock music.”
Check out Check Yo Ponytail DJ Franki Chan’s latest mix for Scion, HERE
Published: 03/26/2008
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