For Mirth Only

Pete Rock at Hudson Last Night

Instead of immediately writing about the party with Pete Rock last night, I wrote about stupid jewelry - but that was because it was late and I needed my Dynasty fix.

Every other Monday the company I work for throws a party at the Hudson Hotel, a swank, midtown boutique hotel with a bar.  No matter how hard I try I can never get any of…well not any, but most of them don’t even reply to me when I ask…anyways, like I said it’s in midtown, the uncoolest place in NYC, so they avoid it like the dickens.  Their loss.  (How you can turn down a free event with DJs like Danny Krivit, Bobbito, Louie Vega, Spinna, The Rub…etc. whatever).

To the point, a month or two ago I submitted a list of DJs I thought might work at Hudson.  It went something like this:

Theo Parrish
Harvey
David Holmes
Pete Rock
J-Rocc
In Flagranti (Codek)
*Mike Simonetti (Italians Do It Better, Troubleman Unlimited)
**The Martin Brothers (Christian Martin & Justin Martin of dirtybird records in SF) doing a half hyphy, half hyphy-inspired nu-techno set.

*My personal fav at the moment, best 1 hr set I’ve gone nuts to in nyc.
**Not serious, but thought the idea was fun.

Admittedly, the reason I did the list was because Mike Simonetti had completely killed it at Love a few weeks prior.  But the only filler on it was In Flagranti - and I only say that because I’ve never really seen them play out.  A couple weeks later my boss announced Pete Rock - yus!

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My first few months in NYC 2 years ago (wow), my buddy luis and I went to a lot of hip hop nights: Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Premier, Pete Rock, Babu, J. Rocc, Kool Herc, Rob Swift, Prince Paul, Bobbito, Skratch Mekaniks at clubs like Southpaw, Triple Crown (R.I.P.) and APT - pretty tough to beat a Monday at APT with the funktion 1 sound system.  Anyways, as I recall Pete didn’t actually play ANY hip hop and I remember him dropping in particular Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs at Triple Crown (shit system btw).

So fastforward to the party at Hudson.  It’s like moderately packed at 915 when I get there.  Pete’s playing kind of…I don’t know.  Not a lot of dancing going on,  just a lot of staring, which got me a little nervous and I started looking for a drink ticket.  Met some people and some friends, chatted, stood around.  So, I’m holding my free $18 glass of wine and Pete drops BBD’s Poison full volume - hands immediately go up in the air, the place lit up.  Totally reminded me of this one time I was in the middle hating on a DJ when all of a sudden he dropped a Mr. Oizo track, and I ran off to dance floor while my friend luis - ah we used to be inseparable - was still talking mid-sentence.  Instantaneous reaction.

From then on it was like APT on a Monday with 5x the energy, 5x the floorspace, -1 for the sound.  Jam after jam, stuff I didn’t know (of course, everyone else was spitting it right back), stuff that’s normally cliche, stuff that’s always a party bomb.  It made me so happy - most of all to live in New York, where it’s possible to oh-i-don’t-know go see a rap revolutionary like Pete Rock throw down on a Monday night to an incredible crowd.  He was just feeding the fire and it was just straight up murder - so many people going silly to music. Pics here (yeah, i know it takes forever to load).

Word on the street/in the office is that we might get one of my favorite DJs to play at the end of the year.  Thank god I didn’t booked my flight for the holidays yet.