BBQs Be Damned…

We’re dancing despite the holiday weekend!  DDPP is ON this Sunday, so bring your friends from out of town, your relatives, your hangover, your sunburn, and get DOWN.

DJ Sex Frosting Spread It Up and Down and All Around

With an alias like DJ Sex Frosting, the master MC of Sunday afternoon’s DDPP session stayed true to her sweet and sultry namesake.  We were bouncin’, we were gyratin’, we were spankin’ it and the only thing left was a room dripping with sweat and good vibes.  It doesn’t get much better than 17 grown women steaming up the mirrors on the hottest day of the year thus far!  Better than sex?  Maybe.  Better than a cake decorated with sexy frosting cartoon characters?  HELL YEAH!

As a regular DDPP attendee for almost four years, I can only think of two other times that the studio has steamed up with enough passion and girth to fog up the windows (one of them being LAST Sunday)!  We could even see the “DDPP” we wrote in the mirror from last week!  If we were on a giant barge in the middle of the Atlantic we’d FO SHO be pulling a Kate Winslet-in-ecstasy style move all over the place!

Call it the best workout you’ve ever had, light a cigarette and enjoy what’s left of your weekend, ladies because we were poundin’ it hard and sweet…Just as DJ Sex Frosting intended.  Amen!

Mix Numero Uno

Tonight was a big one – our FIRST EVER music label mix at DDPP! So before we dive in, let’s just take 1 minute and 54 seconds out of our day to revel in a few of the talents from the eclectic roster of the archival label Numero Group:

Woah, right? Who are these incredible elders bouncing around on stage singing songs that seem so familiar, yet you may have actually never heard? Well, knowing a bit more about the label Numero Group can answer that question far better than I can:

Numero has evolved into a multi-format media company, devoted to dragging brilliant recordings, films, and photography out of unwarranted obscurity.We’re on a dirty, labor-intensive mission… and it’s urgent as all hell. Time kills off precious bits of passed-over sound, story, and ephemera every day, just as fast as we can haul this sprawling archive of under-heard recordings—along with the musicians, writers, and entrepreneurs who created them—out of exile.

That’s right. These were musicians in exile… musicians who only pressed 10 LPs and 9 of them were ruined in the great flood of ’88, or musicians who couldn’t afford to tour upon releasing a record that got critical acclaim – but no label signing, or musicians who recorded a few songs for fun and then disappeared into family life or another line of work before they could ever hustle hard enough to make the big time. These musicians were the very folks who comprised last night’s disco/funk/soul/rock magic mix that left us all soaked, breathless and smiling.

I know for the throng of women who were there to shake limbs in every direction, you’re gonna want to know exactly who sang what and where to find this action. So here:

I was lucky enough to see the label’s Eccentric Soul Revue show this past year and let me tell you – the man who brought us track #16, Syl Johnson, who was born in 1936, is still capable of impregnating an entire audience with his dance moves. (Revisit minute 1:30 of that video up top if you need further proof)

DDPP would like to send a huge thank you to Michael Slaboch for compiling this list of bona fide gems for us to jam all over. WE WANT MORE! (If you like what you heard – do yourself a favor and dig into Numero’s fantastic archive of songs, photos, even short films!)

But as a treat in the meantime, enjoy this odd video to song #14 on the mix… yep – Soft Cell did sing the original Tainted Love – it was dear Gloria Jones. And damn, after hearing this, you wonder why Soft Cell even bothered?

Let Me Clear My–WHAT??

DDPP veterans know, we’ve had our share of technical difficulties: ipod covers that can’t be pried off, burning speaker wire, and (of course) the ever lovely smoke alarm.  But I think we can safely blame yesterday on Steve Jobs.  There we were, poppin’ our booties like crazy when all of a sudden–

Frozen ipod!!!  Ladies, I am not tech savvy, so after “try turning it off and on again” I was stumped, terrified that we were going to have to evacuate the dancefloor.  Thankfully a whole mess of you are better informed!  The anxiety was all in my head, and before I knew it we were golden.  With a little finagling DJ KK’s mix was back on track, minus a little DJ Kool.  Crisis averted!

Come to think of it, it may not have been the ipod’s fault…it could very well have been the collective subconscious of the entire room screaming out “THIS MIX IS TOO DAMN GOOD!  I NEED A BREATHER!”  True enough, once we got the tunes fired up again, I found that I was muy grateful for the second to catch my breath, grab some water, and mop a little sweat from  my brow!  DJ KK dropped it on us. From the soulful cruise of a warm up to the freaky, flathead, run around, to the final fast song (and tear-jerking, in a good way, cool down) DJ KK’s mix offered up some sage life advice: if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life…DANCE.

Thank you DJ KK!  Bring that joyful smorgasbord again!

And thanks to DJ Slap!Chop! for hunting up this video featuring one of this week’s songs.  I think that dog stole some of my moves…

FANTAAAAAAAAAhhhhh

Up for a little quiz?

So our DJ tonight was the wonderful, the melodical, the one and only DJ Fanta. Which of the following is true of her name?

1) She loves her this fizzy drink so much that  she wanted to DJ its namesake

2) It’s short for Fantastic

3) It’s short for Fantasy

4) She could not pronounce the letter “S” as a child and every December 25th kept asking “where’s Fanta Claus?”

E) It’s short for Fantazerova – which is Russian for “a person who likes to make things and lives in a world of fantasy.”

Give up? Here’s a clue.

Yes – that is the incredible South Russian Owtcharka dog, which should clue you in that E is in fact the lucky answer! Our DJ Fanta hails from Russia, by way of Latvia, and exported to our American crew a whole slew of international hits. Lucky for us, she smuggled them smartly, stacking them in the perfect order and delivering them with a handshake.

Oh wait – what’s that? You’re not sure where Latvia is? S’Ok. Uncle google is here to help you out, you ‘Merican.

And yes those are the real colors of the country. The big white stripe is a highway of sorts, not unlike the autobahn, stretching the length of the country. There they race home-made boats on wheels manned by small, nocturnal forest creatures.

If that’s not too exotic for you, then check out this mix already. DJ Fanta took us to her fantasy world – a world in which you can circumnavigate the globe in an hour’s time, without any jet lag or deep vein thrombosis.

BEHOLD!

Word to yer Moms, We came to dance!

What a better way to celebrate mom than the MOTHER of all human/cyborg DJs blasting us with beat after beat from her light saber of a mix?!  DJ MC3Po took us to an alternate galaxy and back on Sunday that had us gasping for air and stretching our legs.  Pill poppin’ Paula Abdul transported from 1988 to get us Straight Up jivin’!  A sure fire electric afternoon was had by all!  HAPPY MOTHERS DAY, LADIES!!

DJ Michelle Leslie Brown in the house

Wednesday’s dancing was fanny-pack-tastic! DJMLB had us dancing with a consistent heartbeat just below the danger zone. And her tunes? Not a weak link in the mix! She never disappoints. It was soulful and body moving in that earthy kind of way. It made us want to dig down deep into the soil and plant every limb we were given, only to give birth to tree babies some months later. After all, tis the week of mother’s day.

Like all good mamma’s, we took our time and did it right…cooking that tree baby to perfection. I mean, look at it’s shiny shiny limbs! I have to say DJMLB, this was my favorite mix you have ever given us and I couldn’t keep up towards the end. My body was approaching the core of the molten Earth and hot damn, it felt like a lava lamp in a microwave. Cue redonkulous video, followed by ze playlist:

One Ssssteamy Ssssunday

You’ve heard the term “it’s a jungle out there.”  Well this week, it was a jungle in there–in the studio that is.  Ladies, it got so steamy this week that something happened I have never seen before: the mirrors FOGGED OVER.

Yes, we could still see each other.  And thank goddess for that!  Because I tell you, there were some sweet moves busted, some very sweet moves, including unparalleled partner work that ended in a little floor humping.  Womens, you make my heart swell with pride!  Alas, no photog this week to capture the magic, but the Columbia article is on the web!  Check it out!  Show all your friends!

But back to the matter at hand: the cleansing sauna mix of DJ Ssssnake!  And though it was undoubtedly a session of bikram DDPP, DJ Ssssnake’s tunes were so slammin’ we couldn’t help but continue to bust our booties despite the torrential downpour of sweat!  Between the snakes and crashing earthquakes, it was positively pre-historic (mostly because we walked some dinosaurs).

You may notice that DJ Ssssnake kicked off her mix with a warm up worthy of her moniker–but you might not know it was suggested by her dad!  A BIG shout out to Richard Carrigan, and love to all the other menfolk who support our cause, read our blog, suggest tunes for us and/or listen to our mixes to dispel our pre-DJ jitters.

But an even bigger shout out to you, DJ Ssssnake!  Be there wind, rain, sleet, dark of night or Amazonian heat blast, your mixes remain dangeroussssly sssstriking!  Time to start in on the second bottle of gatorade, eh?

DJ Sassybrass

Hey there beautiful lady. I just wanted to publicly apologize for not posting your mix which was killer that night. When I would have uploaded it the following morning, Com Ed actually cut the power to my house “accidentally” thinking my name was a MS. Kelly Ellsworth. Let me tell you, I don’t know who the **** she is but she is a figment of ComEd’s imagination. Nonetheless, I had no power in my house including no computer access for two days. I was literally walking around my house in the dark for two nights. My deepest apologies. I saw the light in your mix I guess…and then the whole world went dark. Who knew it could have that much power on me. So please know that you rocked our world that night. Just thought I should tell you in the chaos of the moment, I simply forgot to post. You will forever be sassy. After all, they named a teen magazine after you.