Classic or Dud: 60's DJ night!

Your thoughts? Are you sick of DJ night invites on your Facebook wall?

Also - of the folks who do this on a pro level - Jonathan Toubin, Mr. Finewine, Keb Darge, Liam Large, Ian Sevonious, etc. - who do you like, what lifts what they do above others, etc.

Question inspired by this pretty bullseye-hitting takedown that's been making the rounds on FB:

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/1975261_10152331542191320_2144456805_n.jpg

not specifically 60's but also this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmazTEI_3fE

it feels like there's a lot of this going on locally, maybe just my circle of friends and musical interests. definitely seems like a way people in their 30's and 40's keep a foot in "the scene" after giving up/scaling back being in bands and stuff. I love playing records at these things, but have a lot less interest in going to other people's - which is kind of not a good sign, i think.

what nights do you like to go to?

I had a lot of fun going to Jonathan Toubin and Ian Sevonious dj-ed nights! I'd love to go to a Finewine party, don't think he's ever played in my town.

ok, i tried following the instructions correctly, hope I did this right.

http://i.imgur.com/cfN8sIF.jpg

there is one guy trying to make these happen here, he's the son of the owner of the one successful/long-running record store in town. i've been to one or two, they seem pretty popular, fun if you're into it, there was kind of a desperate vibe at the last one i went to. aging greaser/punk leftovers in red state capital a go-to crowd for these. retro/vintage is a safe concept, and "good," i like that stuff when it sounds good and is done well, but it can be kind of a snooze. idk, whatever, another bar night thing.

Many of the soul music dj nights in DC are done by youngish white male djs and marketed only to other folks in that same demographic. To some degree that's fine and they know their stuff and its good they're keeping alive an interest in the music. But its a bit odd to me that I never see these folks at other soul events around town that involve older living soul musicians who are still performing (and are not on Daptone with a younger hipster band). There's a local church in DC that sometimes has local DC soul musicians play on Monday nights, and while there's a website for it, its not specifically marketed to the soul record fanatics, and they (the DJs & their fans) don't come (but a regular crowd of older African-American DC folks do plus some white & Black members of the local Blues Society). They also don't go to see DC soul musicians at gigs at other non-hip locations. I guess they prefer the perfection of the old records ...

http://postimg.org/image/ggnqs0gqp/

http://s8.postimg.org/tktb4p8sl/gogo_scort.jpg

Facebook and social media made it easier, but there were folks doing this with home-made flyers 30 some years ago

aging greaser/punk leftoversfans of terry zwigoff's ghost world

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/30/jonathan-toubin-dj-accident-rhythm-of-recovery

Toubin is a really great DJ and seems like a very sweet guy - nice to see he's recovered so well.

So many of these where I live. If I reposted the joke poster upthread I'd probably end up losing a lot of friends over it. My locale is rife with early-middle-aged retro-enthusiasts, wannabe burlesque models and vintage clothes-stall owners, but there's something increasingly sad and formulaic about these nights. Chanced upon one in a pub room once and it just wasn't the hip, swinging event it was billed to be. Waxed moustaches, pot bellies and loud Hawaiian shirts a go-go.. I see the attraction and I like sixties music, but also I kind of want to shake people who run these things and shout THERE'S MORE TO MUSIC AND LIFE THAN JUST THIS!!

ha yeah that's pretty OTM for most of the ones around here.
also lots of pretty bad dj-ing on poorly set-up systems. often everything just sounds really shitty and disjointed.

Bit confused about how this is "a thing" people are complaining about now, as if it's a new sweeping trend. These nights have been going since I first started going out and probably way before. Also mostly fun.

Also, lol @ "boo hoo hoo you chose a name that someone else used as a thing, because it's sooooo creatively bankrupt to choose something that people might recognise as pertaining to certain aesthetic signifiers that appeal to them, in fact you should only use words that you made up, otherwise you're morally defunct and I hate you, waaaah"

oh I think it's not so bad as that - it's a joke, and seems to be pretty clearly written by someone who has done all the things they're bitching about themselves... and I don't think it's a big thing people are complaining about either, just there are lots of them now - and Facebook maybe makes them more visible to those with friends who are into this stuff. Definitely agree they are mostly fun!

Yes they are mostly fun and yes they've always existed, but the best ones are great and the rest often leave a lot to be desired.
Also it's only in recent years that I've really noticed an abundance of these things happening. Whereas before there was one night that did it, and it seemed really original and fairly eclectic, there's now several concentrated in quite a small market town.
I'm also starting to get just a tiny bit irked by the pervading stereotype that frequents these nights. I don't mind a bit of retro dress-up now and then, it's a lot of fun, but there's just this army of people where I live now. They mean no harm of course, but it's become this default aesthetic for people in their late-30s/early 40s who still want to be seen as 'hip' even though they're dressing and dancing to their own parents' music.
To me, I guess, the problem is first of all that this retro-fetishism has gone from being a personalised, original style you'd only see about the place occasionally, to this almost standard-issue pursuit for people of a certain age and sensibility. More importantly, it's the rejection of almost anything modern, the idea that anything made after 1974 is somehow automatically inferior. I hear moaning about modern hip hop and dance music (although some will allow these styles so long as they came out before 1992); there are complaints about new technology (we only play vinyl!); and it's this feeling that for a lot of people, they'd rather live in a fantasy-vision of what the past was like while automatically bemoaning anything that is in any way current or recent.

I agree with lots of that in a general sense, but the flaming dice bowling shirt dice aesthetics and golden age-ism hopefully doesn't obscure that there is some good stuff going on. I like that these sounds are still alive, and around here anyway I see a lot of people in their 20's enthusiastically discovering it now, lots of women DJing now too. I also think some of the really formulaic iterations of this stuff is pushing people to dig deeper and get more creative. It's interesting that someone like Keb Darge who was a huge influence on people discovering deep funk stuff and influencing the whole acid jazz thing in the 90's is now playing and compiling raw r&b, jump blues, and rockabilly.

Also I like that, at their best, nights like this aren't at all about fussy retro dress-up time. When Toubin plays it seems like it's really just great loud fun party rock and people getting goofy and having some laughs.

Toubin tonight in my town — my first time seeing him play (altho I’ve met him, weirdly). I mean, I love this music, and I play it when I dj, and I listen to it at home. I felt like the local opener’s set was considerably groovier and more — “original” would be a weird word to use for folks spinning forgotten 60-yr-old records, but that’s the vibe: less slavish to a specific concept and more an expression of what moves the selecter.

It was … weird … seeing a room full of people getting down to this stuff here. It’s like, where the fuck are you every week, when there’s not a celebrity DJ in town? Also, I get it, it’s an Event, I’m not hating.

Much.