BC026: Jobot and Andy Fargo, an attic in south Minneapolis, April 2, 2023
Carpet is hard to dance on sometimes.
R.I.P.
I exited First Avenue’s Danceteria Through the Decades to hit another event in another south Minneapolis building with specific as well as personal DJ-cultural resonance. I won’t ID the house or the owner, but it’s a legendary party house that typically hosted one big blowout per annum—if you got an invite, you made sure to go, and you made sure to go as early as you could, to plan on staying as long and late as possible. These began at a certain time and ended whenever the hell they ended. Let’s call it the Dark House.
I went to Dark House events a small handful of times, every one of them memorable. I’d met the owners at another friend’s place—itself legendary in local techno circles—during a brunch event. He was quiet and charming, she vivid and amused as he let people tease him on her behalf. The Dark House events were his, but her presence lifted things. Everyone respected the rooms that were cordoned off; she went to bed at a relatively reasonable time.
Usually the DJs were set up in the dining room and the attic. My second visit there was a good long one. I went to my friend G’s place to load up on supplies and then walked over to the DH. It was daytime; a very learned disco set was billowing into the living area. The kitchen was swarming nonstop; bottles, cups, chips, pans of Rice Krispie treats. Out in the yard, a person I detest solidified my opinion of him by talking loud invasive misogynist trash about his ex. Night fell, and a friend asked if I wanted to see Ron Trent play in the Entry: it was Prince’s birthday. I hadn’t intended to hit that one because of costs; he paid my way in, just in time to see Trent come on and murder it dead. (He played Kevin Cole’s edit of “I Wanna Be Your Lover” live 2016/studio 1979; Cole had been the instigator of the Entry’s House Nation Under a Groove parties.) When we got back, things really got lit. I took the 21 to St. Paul and arrived home about 9 a.m. Good times.
This time around was the last, advertised as such: they’re about to sell the house, haven’t decided what or where the next move is yet. The invites tended to be loose other times—I met a lot of people there I wouldn’t have otherwise. (I hope to someday again run into the Black couple I spent a long spell in the kitchen with two Novembers ago—their interactions were amazingly funny and dialed in.) But this time around we were asked to only bring one guest, if any. They were keeping this one tight; only the attic would have DJs.
I showed up around 12:30. I was among friends as well as lots of folks I recognize but don’t know, a couple of whom I did meet over the night’s course. I interacted warmly with people I’d been (wrongly) frosty with. A couple friend, both serious techno lifers, regaled me with stories about traveling to festivals and clubs, not to mention a cap whose dimensions brought to mind old illustrations of bicycles with the front wheel several times the size of the other. I drank cranberry juice and water. At one point I laid down for an hour or so, then got up and saw rainbows pouring from the corners of every visible object. Thank god for the low ceilings because I nearly lost my footing a few times; everybody did. Carpet is hard to dance on sometimes.
Even for me it’s been an angsty winter; when the snow hit the day before the party, I posted a photo on IG captioned “Fuck you, universe.” I’ve been way too combative for my own good; I’ve found myself blaming the wrong people for the wrong things, usually in my head, a couple of embarrassing times out loud. So this was not only a tonic but a rejuvenation, desperately needed. And like most parties of this intimate but teeming sort, the music was key, but not my focus—the party itself was, as it should be.
That changed around 5 a.m. Jobot and Andy Fargo are two of the local scene’s stalwarts, always reliable, always playing shit you don’t know or don’t expect or maybe do know and expect but at the right moments. It’s easy to take them for granted. Maybe midway into their epic closer, I turned to a couple of people and proposed that these two play all the afterparties.
What I recall most vividly are the last couple of hours, which were like watching the world’s longest ellipse unspool. Things began to get more and more minimal and liny, tracks with acid lines like puffs of smoke, digital entrails leading in hypnotic circles. It wasn’t especially Clicks + Cuts-y, interestingly enough; there was less digital crispiness than analog smear. Every single track felt like it had to be the last one; how far down can you winnow things, anyway? Way down, it turns out; way, way down. It was like a dare—who would surrender to the void?
It didn’t feel like a void, though—it felt like home, even though it will no longer be my friends’ for very long. Andy Fargo put on a piece of vinyl around 8:30, the aural dots evaporated into ether, and the fifteen or so of us who remained made our way back to terra firma. Thanks for everything.