Gallery: Tasty Treats @ Fluid- Gallery: Say Yes Sunday. 12.28.08
- Gallery: Pink Skull at Johnny Brenda's
- Gallery: Mad Decent Studio
- GZA's Spotless Liquid Swords
- Fun, funky Chromeo, getting down
- Notwist ramps up intensity
- Seclusiasis Laptop Battle 2008
- An Interview with Starkey
- TalkTalk on the Fringe
- Intrvw: JHN RDN + DD
- M.I.A Calls it Quits. Really?
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Intrvw: JHN RDN + DD
Live Forever, the monthly party hosted by Designer Drugs and DJ JHN RDN has risen to level the playing field in the indie-rock DJ/nightlife scene. Designer Drugs, a music project started by Dj Michael Vincent Patrick and Theo Nelson, now collaborating with Patrick’s girlfriend Elle Rex, began when Patrick and Nelson, high school pals, built a studio just outside of Philadelphia. It was at that moment their small music project that had begun out of pure ambition and appreciation of dance music kicked off the ground. They immediately began doing remixes and edits of tracks, but they were still without their own party.
That’s where John Redden, DJ JHN RDN came in. Redden, formerly the host of the infamous Hands and Knees Friday night party at the M Room with Ian St. Laurent, now co-owner of the reopened Barbary, teamed up with Designer Drugs to throw the monthly DJ party called Live Forever. Patrick was a frequent visitor of Hands and Knees, where he and Redden met, and from there a friendship formed as well as a vision for the perfect DJ night.
There was a progression of events that lead to Live Forever’s creation. The establishment of Designer Drugs and Redden’s ownership of the Barbary are obvious, but the combinations of hard work, a few lucky circumstances and planning for the long run is an untold story that is worth digging into.
Phrequency phoned Michael Vincent Patrick as he miserably transferred from airport to airport and met with John Redden to get the full story.
Phrequency: How did you begin Djing in Philly and how did that lead up to the start of Live Forever and the start of Designer Drugs?
MVP: Basically, Live Forever started because I was making music and it was the type of stuff that John Redden was into, and I told him I DJed too, so we just hung out, talked about music, and we had decided to start the party together. It was initially John’s idea, and I got in on it and then we got Club Lyfestile [dance squad] in on it as well.
JR: I started DJing, I feel like 4-5 years ago at this point. For a while, at random parties with friends of mine, random house parties and stuff like that. The first real legitimate party that I did myself, or put together, was that party called Socket at Silk City, with my twin sister, Gabrielle Redden. We actually did the last night there [Silk City], before it closed, it was kind of cool. It was a fun party.
I think there are two different types of DJ’s. There’s one that will hone their craft on their own, and then the other kind, like me, I pretty much did it at that party. The first kind, just get better before throwing their own parties and stuff. They’ll do a lot of guest spots and stuff, but they usually don’t throw their own parties until they get better.
Phrequency: So, Michael would be more like the Type A DJ, while you or say the Broadzilla DJ’s would be Type B?
JR: Yea, exactly. This is kind of when he was starting Designer Drugs, and he told me to check out some of his tracks. It’s kind of funny, we really became friends. We actually never DJed together before the first Live Forever, which is kind of funny. He’s obviously seen me, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about him. We just hit it off. A lot of times, with DJing it has a lot more to do with your relationship with that person, than DJ styles. I mean, stylistically we match pretty well, but we’re both really laid back and we’re both really comfortable with each other at this point.
Phrequency: Designer Drugs, how did you come up with the name?
MVP:[laughs] It’s a funny story. I remember when I was in high school they would have, what the hell are they called, kind of like drug education books. Like in health class, but this is something I found in the library. I was looking through one of these books, and I came across that term, and it just kind of stuck in my head for years. I thought it sounded really cool, like futuristic and classy. I don’t know, I thought it was a cool term. And then once we started the project, I was like oh, why don’t we just call it that [Designer Drugs], and we did. It was funny, because we didn’t’ really didn’t think about it, because there are a lot of awkward situations when people ask me what the name of the group is. We did it on a total whim, we didn’t expect, we didn’t really think that anything was going to come about with the project or anything like that. Now, it’s kind of like, we’re locked in with the name.
Phrequency: Designer Drugs has done remixes with bands like Mission Control, Jupiter One, and Hail Social. How did you get involved in remixing tracks by these bands, and do you find yourself contacting them or them seeking your help?
MVP: It happens both ways. Especially in the beginning, when we didn’t have a lot of exposure. When nobody knew us. Nobody was really contacting us. I remember the Hail Social track we remixed [Heaven]. I actually watched one of their music videos made at the ICA [Institute of Contemporary Arts] in Philadelphia, it was for the song Heaven, I saw it and I was listening and was like, oh my god, this is a great song. I love the chord progression and the melody, so I contacted them, and said hey, I think this is a really great song, I’d really like to remix it.
They said, well you have perfect timing, because we’re doing a remix album they were doing, so they said if you can get it done in a week in a half, we’ll put it on the record, if they like it. I did it, and I think it turned out really well. It was crazy, because I was really nervous, because I didn’t have a lot of time. The project was really fresh, and none of us had a total grasp on what exactly we were doing. I mean, the Designer Drugs project. I didn’t know what approach to take and I didn’t really have a methodology behind my songwriting yet.
Lately, people have been contacting us, so I’m pretty happy about that.
A lot of people will remix, like, Justice, or whoever’s really big just so that they’ll get more hits on the blog or something, because people are searching for it. That’s kind of something I never really wanted to do. Like an illegitimate remix like that, to get attention. At the same time, it might be better for us [laughs]. I think it’s kind of cheeky, and I wouldn’t want to do it.
Michael, could you give more details on your relationship with John?
MVP: Originally, we met purely on music. We just have very similar taste in music. Where our tastes actually vary, is where we kind of compliment each other. He plays some stuff that I want to play, and I play some stuff that he wants to play, but it’s because we have that variety in our Dj sets, when it comes to a music relationship, ours is really strong.
We’ve done some traveling together, we had a good time. We had some fun touring adventures, that I’d rather not go into more detail about [laughs]. Sometimes I only get to see him once a month, sometimes I get to see him more, if I happen to be in Philly.
Phrequency: Sounds like a real working long-distance relationship.
MVP: Yea, well that’s how all of mine are, since I’ve been traveling so much. I’m probably closer with the people at the airport than I am with the people I know. [laughs].
Phrequency: What about your partner in Designer Drugs, Theodore Nelson?
MVP: I swear, I don’t think he’s ever lived within 4 hours of me. I think the closest he’s lived has been like, Pittsburgh. He’ll like fly in and we’ll make two tracks, or he’ll start something and send it to me over the internet. It would be so awesome if we like lived together, we could just make tracks everyday, but unfortunately, that’s not the situation.
I’m living in New York now, and he’s going to school in West Virginia. He’s going to Medical school. It’s funny, since high school, we’ve never lived close to each other. It’s always been a long term working relationship, which is pretty weird, because he’s worked like in Virginia Beach, he was in the military when he, well, when he graduated, he had to go to the military [laughs]. He has been all over, and now that he’s in college he’s been all over
Phrequency: How does Djing in Philadelphia compare to other cities, such as New York and L.A. Are the music tastes and scenes similar or different?
MVP: I like DJing in Philly a lot, the crowd is different. Compared to LA, it’s a lot older in Philadelphia. Like in LA it’s mostly 16-21 year olds, people that are into the dance music scene. It’s actually really weird in New York, it’s ton and tons of kids that are really into the dance music scene. I’d say it’s more similar to New York. It’s good, it’s usually a lot of fun. I’d say the scene is a little bit smaller though, because in LA it’s really really big, and New York it’s big, but not that much bigger than Philly, scene wise.
I don’t think it’s not necessarily about anyone’s taste being better, from area to area. With stuff that I play in California, I would almost never play in Philadelphia, because I think it’s almost too hard. It’s just aggressive, and people wouldn’t like that. In Philadelphia, we try to play more fun like happy kind of tracks, which is not what I would play in LA, but it seems to work really well here, so we’ve stuck to that. Whereas in New York, people there want something more easily accessible, more pop music. I mean, it depends on the club too.
JR: Well, in Philadelphia, there’s a lot of talented DJ’s here. There isn’t as much hype surrounding DJ’s and stuff, it just doesn’t really fly here. There’s a lot of other areas, where I feel like it’s a lot more about hype and creating this image, and a lot of these DJ’s aren’t very good at all, but they’ll be getting popular, because of hype and stuff like that. Here, it just doesn’t fly. You have to be good, talented, and be more into the work aspect of it than the image aspect of it.
Well I think the standard here is a lot higher for music in general. There’s this saying, I didn’t coin it, The worst DJ in Philly would be the best DJ in LA, something like that. Which I don’t think is necessarily the case, but I do think there is a higher level or standard here.
It’s very different too. In L.A. there’s a whole lot of stuff going on, and a lot of other areas like that too like San Francisco. There’s just a lot more of everything. Here, that doesn’t really fly either. People aren’t into going out to the same type of music every night, if there’s a specific party that pertains to a specific type of genre, that’s probably it for that week or at least a couple days. A lot of other cities, people will go out every night of the week and will listen to the same type of stuff. A lot of other areas, there are a lot more weekly parties. Here, it’s a lot more monthly.
Phrequency: John, how did you become the new owner of the revived Barbary?
JR: Well, it’s pretty simple. There are certain things that happened to me that I consider really lucky. I worked for Vitamin Water for about 6 years, I was one of the first marketing employees they hired in Philadelphia. I negotiated some stock when I got the job, so basically, the bottom line was that I had some stock in the company. Pretty much within the same week, we found out Vitamin Water would be bought by Coke [Coca-Cola], and I also found out through the grapevine that the Barbary was going up for sale. So pretty much that day, I called around and found out who the realtor was for the Barbary and set up an appointment. I can be, I guess, very whimsical [laughs], or what do you call it, impulsive [laughs]. I had only been there a couple times, but I knew layout wise, it was perfect for having parties and stuff.
It’s real funny, because everyone told us, DJ friends and stuff thought it was great, but everyone told us that we were crazy. It’s a good location, but the Barbary has always been pretty doomed to fail. It just hasn’t done that well, for quite a while.
At this point, we were doing hands and knees anymore. I didn’t have like a set party, and at this time Silk City was still closed. I just thought it was such an awesome opportunity to open a really cool venue.
So, my friend Clarence, who owns his own construction company, we’re really good friends. The partnership is essentially myself, him and his wife. It was really crazy, it’s funny, I’m pretty impulsive, and he’s probably one of the few people that’s either as impulsive or more impulsive than I am. He knows a lot more about building and structural stuff, and whether everything was structurally sound and electric and all that. We were in there for about 20 minutes, and he was like, yea, we should totally get this.
It’s real funny, because everyone told us, DJ friends and stuff thought it was great, but everyone told us that we were crazy. It’s a good location, but the Barbary has always been pretty doomed to fail. It just hasn’t done that well, for quite a while.
Phrequency: Why would you say that was that case?
JR: I think a lot it had to do with it not having a specific identity. Pretty much any sort of venue, there should be some sort of mission statement of what you’re trying to accomplish. The Barbary has an identity, but it also doesn’t. It's identity is pretty much defined by the people and the DJs and promoters that do parties there. It basically enables parties to creatively showcase what they want to showcase.
I feel like what makes the Barbary different [this time around], or myself different, I have like, I guess you would call it, like a promoter’s conscience. There’s a lot of things that I could do at the Barbary, that I could probably make more money with, I could do really well, but there’s a set vision that we’re try to stick to. Our once a month parties, we’re trying to keep them, not totally underground, but special. We don’t want it to be completely sold out every night, we want people to have a good time and have good vibes. That’ll always be our main goal and main objective, you know, money really isn’t it. It’s important to us to provide something that we feel is important for Philadelphia.
Phrequency: Do either of you feel any pressure from any of the other DJ’s in Philly?
MVP: Everyone is pretty friendly, I don’t feel like there’s any sort of pressure or bad blood or anything like that. Everybody’s super friendly and everybody’s super cool, not really any problems of that nature. Although, I’ve heard in other places, people have those problems, but fortunately, it’s not like that in Philadelphia.
JR: Sure, there’s always going to be competition with different parties, but we actually, we all for the most part try to work together. Truthfully with me, I know there are probably with other parties, but myself personally, there isn’t really any competition where it would be in a negative way. Usually when that happens, it’s just inevitable.
Sometimes, it has to do with booking. Sometimes, we can only get certain people for a certain night. It’s usually not competition. We all really do try to work together. Honestly, there aren’t that many parties of this genre going on, if they’re all on similar nights, everybody loses. Guaranteed, a night would be better where there’s no competition within that genre
As far as animosity as myself being the owner, I’m sure there’s some, I don’t really hear any of it. I try to maintain a level of myself as a DJ and the owner. I keep myself on a level playing field with everyone else. I don’t have ridiculous drink specials that I don’t allow anyone else, or I don’t give myself preference on certain nights. A lot pf people are wondering why I didn’t do a weekly Friday party or something like that. I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t want to have a certain party define the venue. That’s what really happens a lot of the time, if you have a weekly party that does well.
Phrequency: Like Silk City on Thursday night? It’s completely morphed from what it used to be.
JR: Sure, perfect example. With weekly parties, that’s what tends to happen. Friday nights at the M Room with Hands and Knees with Ian St. Laurent, the same thing happened. It started out this great party, but when you have something that blows up really big and lots of girls go [laughs], when it’s weekly, people catch on a lot quicker and it peaks a lot faster. It falls off faster then a monthly party, a weekly party there’s 52 of them in a year, a monthly there’s 12. I didn’t want that. It’s just necessary. I think other people see that, and they respect that. That way, everybody gets treated equally.
Phrequency: What did you guys start listening to, and what would recommend listening to now?
MVP: Man, how can I explain it. Basically, when I was young I was into punk rock music, then it was like 60’s psychedelic music, and from that I kind of got into electronic music. Like early Daft Punk, early Chemical Brothers. There used to be this show on MTV called Amped that would like come on at like five o’clock in the morning. This is like when I was in middle school, maybe at the beginnings of high school, like 1997. You know, you could stay up until five in the morning and watch this show, with all this new electronic music and drum and bass. And then, I got into drum and bass, and then I started Djing when I was 15 or 16, and I was making that for a while. Then eventually I got into sound engineering and studio stuff, and then my best friend [Theodore Nelson], maybe in like 2005, built a recording studio, just outside of Philadelphia. Then once that was done, I kind of then started the Designer Drugs project.
]
That’s the evolution up to now, and the music I’m into now, I guess I’d best describe it as Fidget House. The most renowned people would be Crookers, the type of music they make is like Fidget House, and I just like everything Crookers is doing. The new stuff that Armand Van Helden is doing for Southern Fried Records, I think is really good.
JR: [In the beginning] I still had to learn how to beat match, to mostly have songs go together.
You tend to play a lot more electronic, dancey music, because like beat matching indie rock and stuff, it can be terrible [laughs]. I think a lot of people go through that process. You can beat match stuff together, but then you wouldn’t really be playing stuff that you want. You’d be playing a lot of stuff that’s within the same range of each other. It really limits the variety of stuff that you’re able to play. So you just tend to decide, am I going to be a beat matching DJ, then you’re going to just end up playing a lot of electro and house that has a more steady beat.
[As for now] Soul wax is definitely my favorite, and pretty much have been for quite a while. IF you needed a perfect example of the type of music I like to play, they would probably be my favorite. There’s this artist Side Chains. They’re really popular on blogs and stuff, and usually a lot of stuff coming out on blogs is pretty much garbage, not totally garbage, but there’s so much going around the blogs, that it’s not very good. It’s like all bedroom producers and stuff that haven’t really honed their craft and stuff that are getting their stuff posted on blogs that they’ve only been doing production for like 3 months or something like that. They [Side Chains] sound kind of like Daft Punk, Discoey and they’re also pretty heavy too.
That’s where John Redden, DJ JHN RDN came in. Redden, formerly the host of the infamous Hands and Knees Friday night party at the M Room with Ian St. Laurent, now co-owner of the reopened Barbary, teamed up with Designer Drugs to throw the monthly DJ party called Live Forever. Patrick was a frequent visitor of Hands and Knees, where he and Redden met, and from there a friendship formed as well as a vision for the perfect DJ night.
There was a progression of events that lead to Live Forever’s creation. The establishment of Designer Drugs and Redden’s ownership of the Barbary are obvious, but the combinations of hard work, a few lucky circumstances and planning for the long run is an untold story that is worth digging into.
Phrequency phoned Michael Vincent Patrick as he miserably transferred from airport to airport and met with John Redden to get the full story.
Phrequency: How did you begin Djing in Philly and how did that lead up to the start of Live Forever and the start of Designer Drugs?
MVP: Basically, Live Forever started because I was making music and it was the type of stuff that John Redden was into, and I told him I DJed too, so we just hung out, talked about music, and we had decided to start the party together. It was initially John’s idea, and I got in on it and then we got Club Lyfestile [dance squad] in on it as well.
JR: I started DJing, I feel like 4-5 years ago at this point. For a while, at random parties with friends of mine, random house parties and stuff like that. The first real legitimate party that I did myself, or put together, was that party called Socket at Silk City, with my twin sister, Gabrielle Redden. We actually did the last night there [Silk City], before it closed, it was kind of cool. It was a fun party.
I think there are two different types of DJ’s. There’s one that will hone their craft on their own, and then the other kind, like me, I pretty much did it at that party. The first kind, just get better before throwing their own parties and stuff. They’ll do a lot of guest spots and stuff, but they usually don’t throw their own parties until they get better.
Phrequency: So, Michael would be more like the Type A DJ, while you or say the Broadzilla DJ’s would be Type B?
JR: Yea, exactly. This is kind of when he was starting Designer Drugs, and he told me to check out some of his tracks. It’s kind of funny, we really became friends. We actually never DJed together before the first Live Forever, which is kind of funny. He’s obviously seen me, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about him. We just hit it off. A lot of times, with DJing it has a lot more to do with your relationship with that person, than DJ styles. I mean, stylistically we match pretty well, but we’re both really laid back and we’re both really comfortable with each other at this point.
Phrequency: Designer Drugs, how did you come up with the name?
MVP:[laughs] It’s a funny story. I remember when I was in high school they would have, what the hell are they called, kind of like drug education books. Like in health class, but this is something I found in the library. I was looking through one of these books, and I came across that term, and it just kind of stuck in my head for years. I thought it sounded really cool, like futuristic and classy. I don’t know, I thought it was a cool term. And then once we started the project, I was like oh, why don’t we just call it that [Designer Drugs], and we did. It was funny, because we didn’t’ really didn’t think about it, because there are a lot of awkward situations when people ask me what the name of the group is. We did it on a total whim, we didn’t expect, we didn’t really think that anything was going to come about with the project or anything like that. Now, it’s kind of like, we’re locked in with the name.
Phrequency: Designer Drugs has done remixes with bands like Mission Control, Jupiter One, and Hail Social. How did you get involved in remixing tracks by these bands, and do you find yourself contacting them or them seeking your help?
MVP: It happens both ways. Especially in the beginning, when we didn’t have a lot of exposure. When nobody knew us. Nobody was really contacting us. I remember the Hail Social track we remixed [Heaven]. I actually watched one of their music videos made at the ICA [Institute of Contemporary Arts] in Philadelphia, it was for the song Heaven, I saw it and I was listening and was like, oh my god, this is a great song. I love the chord progression and the melody, so I contacted them, and said hey, I think this is a really great song, I’d really like to remix it.
They said, well you have perfect timing, because we’re doing a remix album they were doing, so they said if you can get it done in a week in a half, we’ll put it on the record, if they like it. I did it, and I think it turned out really well. It was crazy, because I was really nervous, because I didn’t have a lot of time. The project was really fresh, and none of us had a total grasp on what exactly we were doing. I mean, the Designer Drugs project. I didn’t know what approach to take and I didn’t really have a methodology behind my songwriting yet.
Lately, people have been contacting us, so I’m pretty happy about that.
A lot of people will remix, like, Justice, or whoever’s really big just so that they’ll get more hits on the blog or something, because people are searching for it. That’s kind of something I never really wanted to do. Like an illegitimate remix like that, to get attention. At the same time, it might be better for us [laughs]. I think it’s kind of cheeky, and I wouldn’t want to do it.
Michael, could you give more details on your relationship with John?
MVP: Originally, we met purely on music. We just have very similar taste in music. Where our tastes actually vary, is where we kind of compliment each other. He plays some stuff that I want to play, and I play some stuff that he wants to play, but it’s because we have that variety in our Dj sets, when it comes to a music relationship, ours is really strong.
We’ve done some traveling together, we had a good time. We had some fun touring adventures, that I’d rather not go into more detail about [laughs]. Sometimes I only get to see him once a month, sometimes I get to see him more, if I happen to be in Philly.
Phrequency: Sounds like a real working long-distance relationship.
MVP: Yea, well that’s how all of mine are, since I’ve been traveling so much. I’m probably closer with the people at the airport than I am with the people I know. [laughs].
Phrequency: What about your partner in Designer Drugs, Theodore Nelson?
MVP: I swear, I don’t think he’s ever lived within 4 hours of me. I think the closest he’s lived has been like, Pittsburgh. He’ll like fly in and we’ll make two tracks, or he’ll start something and send it to me over the internet. It would be so awesome if we like lived together, we could just make tracks everyday, but unfortunately, that’s not the situation.
I’m living in New York now, and he’s going to school in West Virginia. He’s going to Medical school. It’s funny, since high school, we’ve never lived close to each other. It’s always been a long term working relationship, which is pretty weird, because he’s worked like in Virginia Beach, he was in the military when he, well, when he graduated, he had to go to the military [laughs]. He has been all over, and now that he’s in college he’s been all over
Phrequency: How does Djing in Philadelphia compare to other cities, such as New York and L.A. Are the music tastes and scenes similar or different?
MVP: I like DJing in Philly a lot, the crowd is different. Compared to LA, it’s a lot older in Philadelphia. Like in LA it’s mostly 16-21 year olds, people that are into the dance music scene. It’s actually really weird in New York, it’s ton and tons of kids that are really into the dance music scene. I’d say it’s more similar to New York. It’s good, it’s usually a lot of fun. I’d say the scene is a little bit smaller though, because in LA it’s really really big, and New York it’s big, but not that much bigger than Philly, scene wise.
I don’t think it’s not necessarily about anyone’s taste being better, from area to area. With stuff that I play in California, I would almost never play in Philadelphia, because I think it’s almost too hard. It’s just aggressive, and people wouldn’t like that. In Philadelphia, we try to play more fun like happy kind of tracks, which is not what I would play in LA, but it seems to work really well here, so we’ve stuck to that. Whereas in New York, people there want something more easily accessible, more pop music. I mean, it depends on the club too.
JR: Well, in Philadelphia, there’s a lot of talented DJ’s here. There isn’t as much hype surrounding DJ’s and stuff, it just doesn’t really fly here. There’s a lot of other areas, where I feel like it’s a lot more about hype and creating this image, and a lot of these DJ’s aren’t very good at all, but they’ll be getting popular, because of hype and stuff like that. Here, it just doesn’t fly. You have to be good, talented, and be more into the work aspect of it than the image aspect of it.
Well I think the standard here is a lot higher for music in general. There’s this saying, I didn’t coin it, The worst DJ in Philly would be the best DJ in LA, something like that. Which I don’t think is necessarily the case, but I do think there is a higher level or standard here.
It’s very different too. In L.A. there’s a whole lot of stuff going on, and a lot of other areas like that too like San Francisco. There’s just a lot more of everything. Here, that doesn’t really fly either. People aren’t into going out to the same type of music every night, if there’s a specific party that pertains to a specific type of genre, that’s probably it for that week or at least a couple days. A lot of other cities, people will go out every night of the week and will listen to the same type of stuff. A lot of other areas, there are a lot more weekly parties. Here, it’s a lot more monthly.
Phrequency: John, how did you become the new owner of the revived Barbary?
JR: Well, it’s pretty simple. There are certain things that happened to me that I consider really lucky. I worked for Vitamin Water for about 6 years, I was one of the first marketing employees they hired in Philadelphia. I negotiated some stock when I got the job, so basically, the bottom line was that I had some stock in the company. Pretty much within the same week, we found out Vitamin Water would be bought by Coke [Coca-Cola], and I also found out through the grapevine that the Barbary was going up for sale. So pretty much that day, I called around and found out who the realtor was for the Barbary and set up an appointment. I can be, I guess, very whimsical [laughs], or what do you call it, impulsive [laughs]. I had only been there a couple times, but I knew layout wise, it was perfect for having parties and stuff.
It’s real funny, because everyone told us, DJ friends and stuff thought it was great, but everyone told us that we were crazy. It’s a good location, but the Barbary has always been pretty doomed to fail. It just hasn’t done that well, for quite a while.
At this point, we were doing hands and knees anymore. I didn’t have like a set party, and at this time Silk City was still closed. I just thought it was such an awesome opportunity to open a really cool venue.
So, my friend Clarence, who owns his own construction company, we’re really good friends. The partnership is essentially myself, him and his wife. It was really crazy, it’s funny, I’m pretty impulsive, and he’s probably one of the few people that’s either as impulsive or more impulsive than I am. He knows a lot more about building and structural stuff, and whether everything was structurally sound and electric and all that. We were in there for about 20 minutes, and he was like, yea, we should totally get this.
It’s real funny, because everyone told us, DJ friends and stuff thought it was great, but everyone told us that we were crazy. It’s a good location, but the Barbary has always been pretty doomed to fail. It just hasn’t done that well, for quite a while.
Phrequency: Why would you say that was that case?
JR: I think a lot it had to do with it not having a specific identity. Pretty much any sort of venue, there should be some sort of mission statement of what you’re trying to accomplish. The Barbary has an identity, but it also doesn’t. It's identity is pretty much defined by the people and the DJs and promoters that do parties there. It basically enables parties to creatively showcase what they want to showcase.
I feel like what makes the Barbary different [this time around], or myself different, I have like, I guess you would call it, like a promoter’s conscience. There’s a lot of things that I could do at the Barbary, that I could probably make more money with, I could do really well, but there’s a set vision that we’re try to stick to. Our once a month parties, we’re trying to keep them, not totally underground, but special. We don’t want it to be completely sold out every night, we want people to have a good time and have good vibes. That’ll always be our main goal and main objective, you know, money really isn’t it. It’s important to us to provide something that we feel is important for Philadelphia.
Phrequency: Do either of you feel any pressure from any of the other DJ’s in Philly?
MVP: Everyone is pretty friendly, I don’t feel like there’s any sort of pressure or bad blood or anything like that. Everybody’s super friendly and everybody’s super cool, not really any problems of that nature. Although, I’ve heard in other places, people have those problems, but fortunately, it’s not like that in Philadelphia.
JR: Sure, there’s always going to be competition with different parties, but we actually, we all for the most part try to work together. Truthfully with me, I know there are probably with other parties, but myself personally, there isn’t really any competition where it would be in a negative way. Usually when that happens, it’s just inevitable.
Sometimes, it has to do with booking. Sometimes, we can only get certain people for a certain night. It’s usually not competition. We all really do try to work together. Honestly, there aren’t that many parties of this genre going on, if they’re all on similar nights, everybody loses. Guaranteed, a night would be better where there’s no competition within that genre
As far as animosity as myself being the owner, I’m sure there’s some, I don’t really hear any of it. I try to maintain a level of myself as a DJ and the owner. I keep myself on a level playing field with everyone else. I don’t have ridiculous drink specials that I don’t allow anyone else, or I don’t give myself preference on certain nights. A lot pf people are wondering why I didn’t do a weekly Friday party or something like that. I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t want to have a certain party define the venue. That’s what really happens a lot of the time, if you have a weekly party that does well.
Phrequency: Like Silk City on Thursday night? It’s completely morphed from what it used to be.
JR: Sure, perfect example. With weekly parties, that’s what tends to happen. Friday nights at the M Room with Hands and Knees with Ian St. Laurent, the same thing happened. It started out this great party, but when you have something that blows up really big and lots of girls go [laughs], when it’s weekly, people catch on a lot quicker and it peaks a lot faster. It falls off faster then a monthly party, a weekly party there’s 52 of them in a year, a monthly there’s 12. I didn’t want that. It’s just necessary. I think other people see that, and they respect that. That way, everybody gets treated equally.
Phrequency: What did you guys start listening to, and what would recommend listening to now?
MVP: Man, how can I explain it. Basically, when I was young I was into punk rock music, then it was like 60’s psychedelic music, and from that I kind of got into electronic music. Like early Daft Punk, early Chemical Brothers. There used to be this show on MTV called Amped that would like come on at like five o’clock in the morning. This is like when I was in middle school, maybe at the beginnings of high school, like 1997. You know, you could stay up until five in the morning and watch this show, with all this new electronic music and drum and bass. And then, I got into drum and bass, and then I started Djing when I was 15 or 16, and I was making that for a while. Then eventually I got into sound engineering and studio stuff, and then my best friend [Theodore Nelson], maybe in like 2005, built a recording studio, just outside of Philadelphia. Then once that was done, I kind of then started the Designer Drugs project.
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That’s the evolution up to now, and the music I’m into now, I guess I’d best describe it as Fidget House. The most renowned people would be Crookers, the type of music they make is like Fidget House, and I just like everything Crookers is doing. The new stuff that Armand Van Helden is doing for Southern Fried Records, I think is really good.
JR: [In the beginning] I still had to learn how to beat match, to mostly have songs go together.
You tend to play a lot more electronic, dancey music, because like beat matching indie rock and stuff, it can be terrible [laughs]. I think a lot of people go through that process. You can beat match stuff together, but then you wouldn’t really be playing stuff that you want. You’d be playing a lot of stuff that’s within the same range of each other. It really limits the variety of stuff that you’re able to play. So you just tend to decide, am I going to be a beat matching DJ, then you’re going to just end up playing a lot of electro and house that has a more steady beat.
[As for now] Soul wax is definitely my favorite, and pretty much have been for quite a while. IF you needed a perfect example of the type of music I like to play, they would probably be my favorite. There’s this artist Side Chains. They’re really popular on blogs and stuff, and usually a lot of stuff coming out on blogs is pretty much garbage, not totally garbage, but there’s so much going around the blogs, that it’s not very good. It’s like all bedroom producers and stuff that haven’t really honed their craft and stuff that are getting their stuff posted on blogs that they’ve only been doing production for like 3 months or something like that. They [Side Chains] sound kind of like Daft Punk, Discoey and they’re also pretty heavy too.
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