Friday, December 22, 2006
THE NIGHT STUFF
In a year of enjoyable pub crawls, these were tops.
By Derek Paiva
Honolulu Advertiser
Entertainment Writer
#1 ACID WASH
NextDoor, 43 N. Hotel St.
9 p.m.-2 a.m. Wednesdays
What we said then: "Refreshingly irony-free (and) music-focused ... late night love-in for '80s music fans ... who don't need a theme-party atmosphere of Greed Decade fashions, accessories or John Hughes flicks silently screening as context."
And now: It's awesome, totally awesome to see the casual, come-as-you-are weekly garnering a loyal following and even larger crowd of '80s-conceived club kids grooving to New Romantic, Second British Invasion, goth/industrial, pop, rock and hip-hop sets.
August 11, 2006
THE NIGHT STUFF
People are people loving '80s tunes at Acid Wash
By Derek Paiva
Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer
((The ’80s are back as dancers groove to all kinds of Greed Decade tunes — from pop to new-wave to industrial — spun at NextDoor’s Wednesday night Acid Wash weekly.))
I'll start this week's Night Stuff near the end of my 2 1/2 hours at Acid Wash, NextDoor's refreshingly irony-free, music-focused weekly Wednesday late-night love-in for '80s music fans.
Chelsea Mizuno was born in 1983. She loves The Smiths, Gene Loves Jezebel and Ultravox. And she knows what decade gave the world the best music ever.
"Eighties music was so varied. Everything sounded so different," she said. "You never heard songs on the radio that sounded the same, like you do now. ... I relate to this music more."
Wait a minute, girlfriend. Weren't you, like, 4 when Johnny Marr all but ended the decade, musically speaking, by leaving The Smiths?"VH1 Classic is what digital cable is for," she replied.My cold nightclubbing heart oh-so-briefly turned warm.
Scanning a room populated by club kids who, like Mizuno, were mostly conceived in the '80s — many of them giving props, singing along and dancing freely to stuff like Trans-X's "Living In Video" and Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun" — made me happy. So happy, in fact, that I didn't even spit out my beer when Foreigner's "Urgent" shot up and over the crowd.
Acid Wash is for lovers of '80s music who don't need a theme-party atmosphere of Greed Decade fashions, accessories or John Hughes flicks silently screening behind the DJ as context. On this night, the music of the decade is all that matters.
Show up and you get DJs Nocturna, G-Spot, Quiksilva and Acid Wash founder Mike "Vegas Mike" Licata spinning sets of goth/industrial, pop and hip-hop, New Romantic and Second British Invasion, and little else.
The focus on the tunes is aided and abetted by a crowd of relaxed, fun-loving twenty- and thirtysomethings for whom those tunes may or may not have been the soundtrack of their lives.
Acid Wash is the kind of party where Depeche Mode's "People Are People" and Ministry's "Everyday is Halloween" are greeted with cheers of recognition and a dash to the dance floor instead of cool indifference. The kind of night where strangers allow you to plop down in their pod of loungers to nod along to Book of Love's "I Touch Roses" without getting all freaky-bitchy about it.
On the night I stopped by, The Crystal Method's Ken Jordan chilled on the loungers in back, while rumors swirled that he'd do a set. He didn't. Not that it mattered much to me or any of the 200 or so '80s geeks gathered.
Vegas Mike held down a crisp, history-of-MTV-era-synth set featuring New Order, Missing Persons, Gary Numan, Tones On Tail, The Cure and A Flock of Seagulls from midnight to closing. And I can't remember the synth-bass line of Berlin's "Sex (I'm A ...)" ever sounding so 1983 alien wonderful as it did getting pumped high and loud through NextDoor's post-millennial sound system.
By the way, happy first birthday, NextDoor.
Reach Derek Paiva at
[email protected].
JOAQUIN SIOPACK | The Honolulu Advertiser
The soundtrack: See the text, and add "Genius of Love" — Tom Tom Club; "Give It To Me Baby" — Rick James; "Just Like Heaven" — The Cure; "Planet Rock" —Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force; "How Soon Is Now" — The Smiths
Panic on the streets of Chinatown: Andy Rourke of The Smiths guest-DJ'd Acid Wash in April.
