![]() Then the fucking Matador every Sunday night where my job was literally driving out the homeless people who slept at the bar. I couldn’t play anything but Bobby Sherman and the Archies or they’d turn on me. They were all named Partridge, they were all satanic, and they were, like, following me. Through Kitty Diggins, I got on to the Acapulco Gold circuit, which was horrible because I had to play bubblegum for the Partridge Family Temple or whatever they were called. I started having ambitions about branching out. I don’t want to get snarky, but for most of them, just collecting records doesn’t make you a DJ. Great vinyl DJs are so few and far between that they’re actually making good money. That’s the saddest part of this narrative. The bars have finally caught on that having just any DJ kind of ruins business. “Do you have Big Star?” “I’ve heard Big Star.” “You should get Big Star!” We just wanted the Portland people (the record collectors who have this mentality or aesthetic, like Elliott Smith covering the Zombies) and it became this symbiotic dialogue. We weren’t trying to relate to the club ravers because we don’t care about them. ![]() It was such an easy thing to me, but back then, people thought DJs only played dance music. This is going to happen! How can you lose? This was already happening on the East Coast. When I went to Bar of the Gods, I wasn’t inventing anything. Oh, absolutely! I’d been to these dance nights on the East Coast where people played this eclectic music we could relate to in a pop mentality, like Joan Jett rock ’n’ roll. Seems almost cliché now (the stuff of Portlandia sketches), but in the late ’90s, DJ nights were still pretty rare, yeah? We’re having a party at a bar, so let’s sing along and dance, you know? Rex song because we all love it! Nobody’s trying to be deep or revolutionary. “Oh my God, I have this record! I can’t believe you’re playing this record!” Of course, you do. I just loaded my sound system and records in my Pinto every Wednesday night, and the people responded. They couldn’t pay me, but that was all right. Her boss was, like, “Who puts fucking Eddie Rabbitt next to Dokken?” She wanted to meet me, and I said I could DJ live. My first real live DJ gig, I’m basically loading the CD player.Īfter East Ave, I tried doing theme nights, which were cute, and I started making mixtapes again for a girl at Bar of the Gods. So, I end up just shoving them into their shitty jukebox. And, then, this Jesse guy hands me a stack of CDs. I’d invested a bunch of money in a DJ setup, trying to be legitimate, and brought all my equipment to the bar. I told her I didn’t have all the Pogues on record, and this guy-Jesse? Weren’t they all named Jesse?-says not to worry, he’ll take care of it. He cockblocked me with the Monte Carlo owners, but the East Ave Tav booker wanted me to DJ a Pogues night for St. When I lived above the Monte Carlo, hearing their goddamned DJ every night, I was, like, I can do better than this. ![]() The awesomely ’80s-fueled dance night for people who hate dance nights instantly became such a downtown-galvanizing success that, even after undisclosed disputes spurred relocation a few blocks east, the transplanted SU&D would fill the Fez’s (rather larger) dance floors for another decade. Handed the prime Friday evening slot for the Crystal Ballroom’s much-anticipated new level 20 years ago, Gregarious launched Shut Up & Dance. Where jukeboxes papered over dead air or trilled sectarian anthems, the DJ controlled his night through successive application of le note juste-a tastemaker-flattering medley of forgotten hits, out-of-left-field faves, and genre-spanning evergreens resembling a technically eclectic, weirdly coherent soundtrack to unfolding events compiled in real time. ![]() Armed with only a vast record collection and a knack for pinpointing devalued popcraft with untapped cachet, the newly christened DJ Gregarious locally introduced the notion of a benevolent song master subtly, constantly tending the mood of a shared debauch via familiar tunes expertly chosen to let the good times roll. ![]()
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