A new home club
Mega-raves are no more, and the super-club scene has been battered by overpriced star DJs, a federal crackdown on rave-flavored venues and club disasters in Chicago and Rhode Island.
The party’s not over, however. It’s just moving closer to home. Several retailers and wholesalers are offering everything from surround-sound audio systems to disco balls to velvet ropes that can make partyers feel like they brought the club home, sans the bouncer, $25 cover and overpriced drinks.
Art dealer Jim Fittipaldi, 45, frequently hosts club-like parties for 200 people at his downtown Los Angeles loft, which features a disco ball, club-style lighting and a pro P.A. system along with artwork hung along its walls.
“That is my lifestyle,” he says. “It’s all about gatherings, that’s how I sell art.”
“A lot of customers throw big house parties that have themes,” says N. Aadoot, assistant manager at novelty store Aahs!! in Santa Monica. The shop offers club-style accouterments for the home raver such as the de rigueur mirrored disco ball, starting at $29.95 ($149.95 for a motorized model that spins and has a matching strobe light). There are $16.95 beaded curtains for ‘70s parties, and battery-operated ice cubes that light up in green, blue and red once they’re dropped in drinks ($1.49 each). And, of course, the store carries glow sticks and glow necklaces ($1.49 to $5) for psychedelic pop locking on the living-room floor.
At Pro Sound and Stage Lighting in Cypress, more hard-core house partyers can spend $400 for a small fog machine and four psychedelic “moonflower” lights like the kind found hanging over big-city dance floors.
Bubble-making machines go for $150, but salesman Ernesto Melendrez suggests, “You wouldn’t want one in the home -- it could get kind of messy.” A small red laser-light machine goes for $60 and, for those mindful of their neighbors, sound-dampening (and fire retardant) “studio foam” is about $200 for a 12-piece box that can cover one wall.
For those who plan to go all out with a guest list, Laurence Metal Products in Bay Shore, N.Y., peddles velvet rope at $15.75 for a 3-foot length, with “light-duty hook ends” at $12 each and “plastic portable posts” at $41 each.
Meanwhile, vinyl DJ systems -- two turntables and a mixer -- are widely available starting at about $300 at Pro Sound, Guitar Center and Sam Ash stores, while Best Buy plans to peddle Pioneer brand DJ gear online starting in June, according to a company spokeswoman.
Some systems, including a DVD player, built-in amplifier and five speakers, have dropped down to the $200 mark, with even a 600-watt Panasonic system recently advertised by Fry’s for $229.
“They have all these $200 to $300 surround-sound systems, and they’re affordable now,” says DJ Dave Aude, whose Dolby 5.1-channel DVD “Mixed Live: Dave Aude,” just came out. Aude’s album is part of a “Mixed Live” series that L.A.-based Moonshine Music is introducing to provide club fans multichannel DJ-mix albums that capture not only the music but the cheers, whoops and whistles of jocks’ live club performances.
“Once people start having more and more systems in their houses,” Aude says, “more labels are going to start recording these mix-CDs in surround.”
Moonshine’s “Mixed Live” series, which includes a stereo CD along with a DVD disc with video footage and surround sound of events where the discs were recorded, includes recent releases mixed by British DJ Tall Paul and West Coast hero Donald Glaude.
Although it’s not the first to do music in 5.1 (splitting sounds among speakers -- two front, two rear and one center-channel -- as well as a subwoofer), the label claims the series is the first using Dolby technology for a continuous DJ-mix compilation.
It captures St. Louis’ club Velvet on New Year’s Eve and is infused with Aude’s high-energy hard and progressive-house style.
Aude said microphones were placed in each corner of the dance floor to capture the dancers’ sounds while his vinyl stereo mix was also recorded. The addition of crowd ambience not only helps bring the club home, he says, but helps solve the problem of how to get a DJ mix -- which almost always begins and ends in stereo, or two channels, because vinyl still dominates the field -- into the 5.1 domain. Dolby Laboratories endorsed the concept as a way to get more independent record labels to produce surround-sound music products.Is the gear required to set up a pseudo club at home worth the expense?
Pro Sound’s Melendrez, a 26-year-old who also acts as a production manager for Hollywood’s Chemistry night at the Palace every other Friday, says it’s not a bad investment for the habitual clubber who’s used to double-digit cover charges and $10 drink prices.
“Once you buy the gear, you have it,” Melendrez says, “and the next time you’re ready for a house party, you buy drinks, have a DJ come over and there you go.”