San Francisco – Friday @ Mezzanine
SF track of the night -
It’s hard to pick a track of the night when the crowd was so incredibly up for it on almost every track. But this one had that extra little inch of airtime of feet off the floor. When the break hit ALL hands were in the air. It’s one from our Dirtybird 5 year birthday compilation out this March.
SF track of the night
Silky King, Tala & Zoi – dirtybird (mp3 clip, direct link)
San Francisco Overview -
I only played one gig this weekend because it was a special weekend where I debuted the album at home in San Francisco. This is where i live. The city that influenced the music. I adore San Francisco with all my heart. So needless to say I was a bundle of nerves going into this party. Not because of what i would play but because i wanted to see if my home town would come out and support. And of course they did. Everyone came together. Big creds to Boz, our label manager who really turned the screws on this event – and Luke, our office assistant who hammered the internet as well. Thanks as well to Dax, Emma, Andrew, Mareissa, etc. So many people helped I can’t possibly list them all but when i saw over 500 people dancing before it was even 11pm I knew we were golden!
Let’s begin with the tequila. My wife’s friend Jen called me up the week before and told me she was working on marketing a new brand of Tequila. She asked me, “Do you need tequila for anything??” Ummm, yes please? So she sent us 3 huge cases for free and we staged a free tequila bar for an hour from 9-10! Tequila is a particularly frisky, sexual liquor. Perfect for dirtybird. A nice wild liquor to prep a huge wild crowd.
Christian Martin went on and had 500 dancing by 11pm. A new Dirtybird attendance record for sure. He played a crazy mix of dubstep and house, featuring some new tracks he did and also some by his brother Justin. I was going to play a clip of his new track Polar Bear but he wanted me to play his new remix of Monster Island which in my opinion sounds like Matthew Dear and Ectomorph met up with a Cali breaks crew. Sweet. Thanks to Chris for opening up. That’s one cool thing about the db crew. Everyone takes turns and has no problem supporting their friends. On rotation I open the party two or three times a year as well. It’s all in the family here in SF.
Monster Island (Christian Martin Remix) – Claude VonStroke – dirtybird (mp3 clip, direct link)
By 11, everyone was ready for Solar. We don’t usually have guys from outside dirtybird play our events but Solar is probably my favorite DJ in the city and i wanted someone who could build the room and not play every dirtybird track in my bag. Solar is from a crew called Sunset who were doing parties before we even had a label. Their crew still puts our park parties to shame and is the reason we even do park parties. Solar and Galen and J Bird and all those guys are the real SF party visionaries we looked up to when we were starting dirtybird. Anyway, Solar came on and really smashed it for 2 hours straight. He showed us why he has been one of the best DJs in San Francisco and the USA for many many years. He played the perfect lead in set of weird trippy tech house. Not too big, not to small, just solid solid oddball party music. It was a real treat to have him on the line-up. I wish i could post a clip but thanks to Solar’s genius I have no idea what any of the tracks he played were called!
By the time i went on the room was mayhem. There were 1000 people heaving inside Mezzanine. I was loving it. Half way through my set I dropped this gem from Heinrichs and Hirtenfeller which really made an impression.
Heinrichs & Hirtenfeller – Down – Dekadent Schallplatten (mp3 clip, direct link)
There was a dood so fucked up in the front that he was crashing into the Dj setup. His girlfriend kept dragging him back out on to the dance-floor. I watched him flop about all over the place. The best part was that even though he was way past being able to function he was still trying to dance. It was kind of like watching the guy in Monty Python who gets all his limbs chopped off and keeps trying to fight saying “it’s merely a flesh wound!.” Funny.
