Tomorrow night’s edition of Club Jump’s monthly Follow Me bash will revive some of the best tech house of the past decade.
Fresh from parties in Kaohsiung and Taichung over the Lunar New Year, DJ Jimmy Chen (陳怡成) says he’ll play underground tunes, despite the mostly gay crowd’s penchant for the vocal prowess of mainstream artists.
“Gay people are not into underground,” Chen said. “They prefer vocal divas. I don’t mind playing pop, but I’m careful in what I choose. It has to be a good remix.”
Chen says he longs for the days when members of the gay community exhibited a more nuanced and discriminating taste in music.
“Follow Me in the beginning played underground, progressive house. But the gay scene has changed over the past two years,” Chen said.
In the early noughties, TeXound, one of Taipei’s more notorious underground clubs, drew a mixed crowd to the tune of progressive and tech house.
Cowed by routine police raids (Hong Kong actor and singer William So (蘇永康) was busted at the club in 2002 for taking Ecstasy, unleashing a torrent of moral outrage in the vernacular press), the venue closed in 2004, and then reopened at a different location in the form of AXD. When AXD shut up shop in 2007, a new management team renamed the venue Club Jump and promoted it exclusively as a gay club.
Follow Me is six years old and attracts an international crowd. Promoted on Fridae.com, Asia’s leading gay social networking Web site, partygoers from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore regularly attend the night.
“I like that people come from all over to Jump, making it a more international crowd,” says Chen. “No one wants to be just local.”
Joining Chen tomorrow night are DJs Tiger, Eric Chang and Stone.
Follow Me takes place the last Saturday of each month. Tomorrow from 11pm to 6am at Club Jump, B1, 8, Keelung Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市基隆路一段8號B1). Advance tickets are available online at ticket.topfong.com for NT$500, or NT$350 for students. Entry at the door is NT$700. Tel: (02) 2756-0055, 0939-458-333. On the Net: www.club-jump.com
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