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HAPPY ENDINGS The Fever team (Mister Jason, Amphibious, Bogart, Frank White) may be honorably elitist, but their parties are extraordinarily inclusive. |
You have a better chance of hearing Taylor Swift songs banging out of Kanye’s tinted windows than you do of hearing either of their pop asses on the Good Life speakers during Fever. The monthly two-room turntable team of Frank White, Mister Jason, and the Flavorheard gang may be Boston’s most simultaneously eclectic and dance-friendly party. So why should this highly decorated five-man crew pay attention when a drunken dink requests Rihanna?
“All these girls are always like, ‘Play Gaga, play Ke$ha,’ and we’re like, ‘Nah — we’re not playing that. Fuck you!’ ” says Flavorheard DJ Bogart. “They’re not used to that at a downtown club. If I’m at Middlesex and someone asks for some stupid shit like that, I’ll tell them that they’re at the wrong party; I’ll tell them to go downtown. But here we’re already downtown, so it can get a bit confusing, and girls just get pissed.”
Adds Mister Jason: “One night we brought [New York–Chicago DJ] Rude1 here, and some girl wanted us to play techno or house, or something like that. She didn’t know what she was talking about, and when he told her he wouldn’t play it, she threw her drink at him. I guess she showed him who the rude one really was.”
Although their loathing for MTV fare is honorably elitist, the Fever posse have thrown extraordinarily inclusive parties since linking up in late 2008. Frank White is a crowd technician with a hard drive full of Golden Era hip-hop, and he picks from every which boom-bap tangent imaginable. The Flavorheard animals favor reggae, funk, and disco. (Expect the Meters to drop in to any mix, any time.) As for Mister Jason, the former Porn Theatre Usher producer’s taste is so alternative, he won’t even shop for appliances at Best Buy.
“As always, I’m all over the place, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Turkish music that I get from a buyer in Istanbul who hooks me up,” says Jason, who still spins vinyl, partly because it’s an easy way to shoo off requests for Drake and Britney. “I try and put some of that stuff in the mix, but I still need to respect the Good Life crowd, which I love. Someone a few months ago walked up and asked for ‘Black Elvis Lost in Space’ by Kool Keith, and I thought to myself: ‘Where else in Boston — or even in the world — would someone have the balls to walk up and request something like that?’”
Fever’s success — easily measured by the block-long lines that begin to form at 10 pm — was easy to predict for Good Life owner Peter Flumara. Both Frank White and Mister Jason had their own popular nights there, as did Flavorheard at Middlesex. By combining three established forces to rotate through two lounges (a smaller, less populist version of mega-clubs with separate rooms), everyone involved had an inkling that they might be onto something unique — at least for Boston.
