Shelter – Mister Saturday Night

We caught this nice pair stretching out and getting down in a more spacious area of the House Of Yes two Saturdays ago. Meet Avi and Miss Vanilla, equally dressed to impress in their own clothing lines!

MSN: What brought you here?
Avi: Actually, my friend, Vanilla, she invited me. I was going to her house tonight and she was was like, “Yo, you wanna go to a house party?” and I said, “Why not!”
MSN: So you’ve never been to one of these parties before?
Avi: I’ve been to house music parties before but not this particular one.
MSN: Any one or two that you remember particularly?
Avi: Name-wise, no! It’s always been random for me.
MSN: What do you like about the parties you go to, or what do you like about house music?
Avi: The beat, and the groove! It just continues on and on and on. Like, “house music all night long.” It’s literally that!
MSN: Do you listen to dance music at home?
Avi: Yes, I definitely do.
MSN: Do you download mixes, or just listen to whatever you find?
Avi: Mostly whatever I find, because I find that music is so deep, and there’s so many artists out there, that it’s so hard to keep up, you know what I mean? So I just try to download whatever I find here and there.
MSN: What are your interests, passions?
Avi: I just graduated, I’m a graphic designer. I have a little clothing brand, it’s called Contemporary Negro. But that name might change in the future though.
Continue reading “Mr. And Ms. Saturday Night: April 14th”

The year has ended, and my existence as a DJ requires me to supply my Top Ten list. This is it in no particular order.

The Blues – I took a trip through the south this year. In Mississippi, I stopped in Clarksdale (where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, an occasion now marked by a sad, easy-to-miss sculpture and a Church’s Chicken), and I joined the generation of middle-aged white men before me in getting into the blues.

Lucky for me, that generation has started to sell their records, and I came upon a store where someone had just dumped their entire collection, allowing me to grow my fairly paltry stock of blues records back at home into something more substantial. I’ve particularly fallen in love with Son House, whose “Grinnin’ In Your Face” I posted on the blog in October.

Gospel and Diva House – The first parties that I ever went to in New York were Body and Soul and Shelter. I also grew up in church mesmerized by a gospel singer named Eunice Mayfield. That means, of course, that I am into gospel and diva house, which I have been more than pleased to see in resurgence over the past year, starting with Omar S’s set with us back in January. It was pretty much all he played.

Continue reading “Looking Back on 2011: Justin Carter”