Pan Sonic hit Great Scott on September 7. |
Screams from the dance floor, a blinking rainbow video screen, and heavy bass fill the club. Partygoers run into one another as photos flash. The DJ pumps his fist. It’s all fine and good, another successful club night. But this is in the deadest of Boston months — August — and it’s Tuesday night.“People would rather go out and spend money on Fridays and Saturdays, so I have to deliver something to them that makes them want to hang out,” says GREG FOURNIER, founder and one of the DJs at Middlesex Lounge’s HEARTHROB, the bi-monthly event that turns Tuesdays into Saturdays. “They’ll wake up in the morning for Headthrob,” he adds with a smile. “Headthrob is the morning after-party.” Fournier has worked for the Middlesex for two years, and he’s always taken over the occasional Tuesday. “I’ve been wrestling with just trying to get people in here. This summer, I said I got to flip this into some kind of rager or it’s going to be a flop and I’ll have to walk away. There’s a lot of creative people around looking for something to do, and I wanted to link them up. I took the best three dudes I know, and it’s sparked from there.” Said dudes are local DJ hero ERIK PEARSON, Providence-based Pop! promoter MORGAN LOUIS, and the enigmatic RED FOXX, a trio who along with Fournier (a/k/a SENSITIVE HAND) span a wide variety of party music. “After I issued my ultimatum to myself, we started joking around with the most absurd names and started to home in on a certain feeling, and I hear this longing voice whisper in my ear: ‘Hearthrobbb,’ kind of like ‘Rosebud.’ It steamrolled from there.” Add to the DJ mix a projector set up to flash party pics from weeks prior and a devoted on-line crowd and you’ve got the makings of a successful bi-monthly Tuesday dance party. Fournier DJ’d for a time at the now-defunct Matrix but only recently became a promoter. “I don’t like the word promoter . . . maybe ‘Pied Piper of Fun’! My father always wanted me to play musical instruments. It never really clicked with me, and my grandfather used to say to me, ‘You’re like me, we play the radio.’ Well, it’s years later, and I kind of am still playing the radio.” The next Hearthrob is this Tuesday, September 4.
On the electronic tip: the minimal sine-wave massacre of PAN SONIC drops in on Great Scott next Thursday, September 7. Based in Finland, the duo have been producing cold, saw-bleeding electronic sound since the early ’90s. Expect real hard sound mixed with lush layers.
In case you had not seen the one of 5000 fliers around Boston, LOVE DURING WARTIME is a special DJ event this Saturday night at the Paradise on Comm Ave. Yes, it is sponsored by the Phoenix, and yes, I am DJing, but so are 15 other people. Ready for some bold ink? BETHANY, KNIFE, TERRENCE, EMARCE, SIR LOINS, CLAUDE MONEY, JOSEPH COLBOURNE, LONE WOLF, MATT (Dead Disoc), IAN (Happy Endings), RED FOXX, DJ RNDM, and CO-CO-A-GO-GO are all spinning 30-minute sets, and no one knows at what time. The cover is $10, but after the DJs and the venue are paid off, all the money will go to one single grant selected from submissions to the project. The 8 pm start ensures six hours of nonstop raging from the best dance-music DJs in the metro. Had to be mentioned, didn’t it?
On the Web
Hearthrob: http://www.myspace.com/heartsomilky
