DJ Jazzy Jeff's show last Saturday night at Luxy was one of those rare parties when Vinyl Word started the set tipsy and finished it sober as a judge. You couldn't reach the bar if you wanted to, but who was trying? The entire place was so amped that leaving the dance floor just seemed a damn shame.
There was a lot of hype surrounding this show, a dangerous thing as we've learned from so many parachuting big-name DJs. Remember Q-bert? So when Jazzy Jeff got on the decks after resident Noodle had spun a great warm-up set, there must have been some wondering whether they'd just heard the best tracks of the night. Was Jazzy Jeff the hit producer going to represent as a DJ? The answer was a resounding: Hell yeah!
PHOTO COURTESY OF MINISTRY OF SOUND
Jazzy Jeff dropped all the old-school hits that Luxy's residents don't dare play, rocked it East Coast and West Coast, from the '70s to this year and even had the crowd screaming to underground tracks that would clear a dance floor under less deft hands. That Michael Jackson medley -- normally so cheesy -- was jaw-dropping. The only lame part of the night, aside from Usher's Yeah, was the sound, pumped full blast through the main room's speakers that sounded as though they'd been stuffed full of wet cotton swabs. If we can overlook this rather major detail, it had to be the illest hip hop show in Taipei, ever, hands down.
Now with December upon us, the parties should be coming fast and furious, starting tonight with Paul Van Dyk. The trance-heads will be coming out in force for this one, again at Luxy.
If trance isn't your bag of treats or if you don't have enough treats in your bag for trance, then a solid choice for the evening would be Over the Rainbow, a night that rests on the other end of the frantic scale and the other side of town up in Shihlin. This free weekly house music party was started by DJ Edmund with a raft of other local DJs and has a killer venue to recommend it in Boven, a milky white space-age bachelor pad that's so funky you'll hesitate at first to touch the furniture. Boven is at 437, Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 5, Taipei (台北市中山北路5段437號).
Another great free night this week will be at Eden, where SL and Saucey ring in the seventh installment of their Deep Inside house night. There's always a good crowd and the music, well, it's good, clean, fun house literally all night. Be advised, once Eden is at capacity, no more people will be allowed inside. Good call on this one, we've practically had to grease up our bodies to squeeze from the dance floor to the toilets at the last few parties.
Ministry of Sound is back to residents this weekend after hosting Timo Maas on Wednesday and the club is offering free admission to citizens of the 15 countries participating in the Futsal World Championships (check www.mos-taipei.com http://www.mos-taipei.com to see if that means you.).
The Vinyl Word: We're opening up the column to the choice cuts of readers' letters. So, if you have opinions, listings or just wanna chat, hit vinylword@taipeitimes.com.
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