Irish drum & bass jock Darragh Guilfoyle, known professionally as DJ Dara, emigrated to the New York in 1994, right as the first American rave scene was lifting off. He quickly befriended fellow ex-pat DJ DB (from London); two years later, the pair would open Breakbeat Science, America's first (and only) all-drum & bass store, which hung on for nine years—amazing, considering the U.S. dance industry's slump during the mid-2000s. Dara also mixed a quartet of CDs for the L.A.-based indie dance label Moonshine between 1998 and 2002.

Tonight Dara and DB, along with San Francisco's Gridlok, headline Step in the Arena, a party in the new Elmhurst, Queens venue Arena, featuring the sound and light system from the now-shuttered Don Hill's in Soho. SOTC spoke with the animated, highly articulate Dara on the phone.

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Curtis A. Jones would be one of Chicago house music's most important figures even if all he'd done was start a couple of record labels. Twin pillars of the city's mid-'90s second major house wave, Cajual and Relief were matched opposites—the former oriented toward club DJs for whom classicist, soul- and gospel-rooted house held sway, the latter focusing more on tougher, "trackier" music that played to younger rave crowds.

Between them, Cajual and Relief issued 12-inches and the occasional album by a Who's Who of the era's Chi-town luminaries: Spencer Kincy, DJ Sneak, Glenn Underground, Paul Johnson, Boo Williams, Roy Davis Jr., Mark Grant, Gene Farris, Johnny Fiasco, and Jones's longtime friend Karen Gordon, née vocalist Dajaé.

Accordingly, Jones also recorded for both imprints, under different names—for Cajual as Cajmere (both names take off from Jones's initials), and for Relief as Green Velvet, a nickname given by an ex's father-in-law who liked to mock Jones's first alias. Two Cajmere tracks from 1992 kicked Cajual into gear: "Brighter Days," a house anthem sung by Dajaé, and the infectiously raw "The Percolator." But Green Velvet was the wilder, more memorable persona; it was under that pseudonym that Jones made his greatest record, "Flash" (1995), which mocked the excesses of the rave scene by treating it like a tour guide from (and through) hell. Jones had a brief moment in the major-label sphere when short-lived Warner Bros. dance subsidiary F-111 issued a self-titled Green Velvet collection in 2000.

This year is Cajual Records' 20th anniversary, and the label has been more active in recent years than it has in a while. SOTC spoke with the sweet-tempered Jones in March.

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Miguel
Joe's Pub
Tuesday, July 31

Better than: Watching at home (which was not too bad, either).

The dry-ice machine began covering the Joe's Pub stage floor at 11:22 p.m. By the time Miguel actually arrived onstage, the smoke had made it to the walking floor as well. It wasn't all that would seat itself there, either: After six songs, the Los Angeles R&B singer made a demand of an audience that would probably have done military-drill jumping jacks if he'd asked. "I need more women in the front. Sorry, fellas." He paused. "I'm not sorry."

He needn't have been, though maybe I'd feel differently if I'd been one of those displaced dudes, two of whom kept watching while seated on the floor—damn right they were going to see as much of show they'd shown up an hour early to see. Coming out in a black leather jacket and stud-heavy brothel creepers (his pompadour fit the ensemble perfectly), Miguel kicked things off with a blazing "Strawberry Amazing" and kept looking forward from there, switching to a pants-matching dark-olive slim-cut dress jacket for the next one, "Gravity." Not all the material was up to the level of performance, but a lot of it was, and the performance (sent out live via LiveStream and Spin; you can watch it here) was damn impressive.

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A selection of VP Records releases.

VP Records is the Jamaica, Queens-based powerhouse of the international reggae scene. It owns and distributes a score of other labels including its longtime rival, Greensleeves. Founded by Vincent "Randy" Chin (who died in 2003) and his wife, Patricia—children of Chinese immigrants to Jamaica who met and married in Kingston in the early '50s—VP began after the couple moved to New York in 1979, and has just issued a three-CD box, Out of Many: 50 Years of Reggae Music, featuring one track per year from 1962 (the year of Jamaican independence) to the present.

For this week's Voice's profile, I went to the VP office complex and spoke with label co-founder Patricia Chin; head of marketing Olivier Chastan; and A&R man Neil "Diamond" Edwards." Below are extended outtakes with each.

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IDentity Festival
Jones Beach Theater
Saturday, July 28

Better than: A rainout.

3:47 p.m., Babylon-bound LIRR train
Seated across from me are two college girls, a blonde and a brunette, and one college boy. They're wearing neon and denim, a combination I will be seeing a lot of today. His shorts are shock-salmon; the blonde is carrying a leather-studded purse with matching belt. I overhear him complain that his Orlando fraternity recently cancelled a party—the implication is that it's one fairly like IDentity, the traveling EDM festival they're heading toward—because a brother "made a racist joke about Mexicans."

Brunette: "What?! God, get a life!"

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Timo Stammberger

Born Adam Mitchell in Coney Island, Brooklyn, techno and industrial producer Adam X was one of the key architects of the early '90s New York rave scene. With his older brother, Frankie Bones—who famously brought the British rave template to Brooklyn, throwing parties in old warehouses and other out-of-the-way venues—Adam X was part of the Storm Rave crew, and the day-to-day manager of Groove Records in Brooklyn, the first all-techno record store in the U.S. (It was later renamed Sonic Groove after moving to Manhattan.) By the end of the '90s, Adam was an established rave headliner and, thanks to his hard acid and furious techno track making (see 1992's "Lost in Hell") and DJing (the 1999 mix Wax Trax MasterMix Volume 2).

By the early 2000s, though, Adam grew disenchanted with the scene—just as party crackdowns began around the U.S. in earnest. Creatively, he made a lateral drift over to industrial, or EBM (electronic body music), where his rough style fit right in. But he began to get the techno itch again a few years ago, not long after leaving Brooklyn (where he still owns, and rents out, an apartment) for Berlin, like so many other dance-music pros. There, Adam began a sneak return to techno's front lines by issuing a series of acclaimed 12-inches under the pseudonym Traversable Wormhole, telling almost no one for a year. Once the dots were connected, it was only somewhat of a surprise—no-nonsense techno was always Adam X's highest calling.

This weekend, Adam and Frankie play together for the first time in two years at National Underground. Adam spoke with SOTC at a diner in Kensington, Brooklyn, where he enjoyed a strawberry milkshake.

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Some DJs are quiet, let-the-music-do-the-talking types, but not Jonathan Toubin. Interviewed for this week's Voice profile, the 4Knots Music Festival Afterparty host was enthusiastic and opinionated, generating a novella's worth of transcript. More highlights from our conversation are below, as Toubin recalls his days freeloading from major labels, how to nicely kick drunks out of Arlene's Grocery, New York's Bohemian tradition, and just exactly which rare records he DJs with.

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Rebecca & Fiona
Lavo
Thursday, June 21

Better than: The Avicii show at Lavo in January.

I'd been watching Swedish DJ duo Rebecca & Fiona play their wrung-out superclub gruel for about an hour and a half at the upscale midtown joint Lavo when a woman tapped my shoulder. I recognized her. She worked there. She eyed me accusingly. "How did you get in here wearing shorts?" she demanded.

Well, since the weather had reached 93 degrees that day, I'd cut the legs off my jeans before leaving the house earlier, not realizing I'd be at Lavo later—I'd been asked to go late in the day. But I didn't think she wanted to hear all that, so I told her I was covering the show, and for whom. When I asked the same woman if there if the club had a no-shorts policy, I was told that no, there wasn't. What a highly unusual question, then!

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This month, to celebrate the Internet's unbridled love for wallowing in nostalgia and even greater relishing of talking about why certain cultural artifacts are horrible, Sound of the City presents First Worsts, a series in which our writers remember the first time... they ever hated a song enough to call it The Worst. (And to be fair, we're also going to see how these songs have stood the test of time.)

THE SONG: Barry Manilow, "Mandy."
THE YEAR: 1978.
THE REASONS: Sounding like unflavored syrup; first-crush memories.

I was always an opinionated little fucker. In 1978, my mother took me to see Carbon Copy, one of the many comedies starring (mis)matched black and white male leads—in this case George Segal and, in his first starring role, Denzel Washington—to come along in the wake of Silver Streak. I have no recollection whatsoever of seeing Carbon Copy, and I haven't seen it since. All I know is that my mother told me when we left the theater I said, in no uncertain terms, that I hated it. I was three.

The same thing applied to the MOR radio my mother doted on. Soft pop was her music of choice—endless Dr. Hook and Barbra Streisand and Air Supply and the Carpenters. Even as a pre-kindergartner, the stuff nauseated me. When Karen Carpenter died, I was in second grade, and a teacher who was a fan made sure to tell us about the dangers of anorexia and bulimia—important information for sure. But mostly I just rolled my eyes, because I was a seven-year-old with a bad attitude, and the Carpenters fucking sucked.

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The Crystal Ark w/Avan Lava
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Wednesday, May 30

Better than: The record, in one case.

Last summer, Jonathan Galkin described his work as DFA Records' head of A&R for me in an interview. "I literally have a stack at home of 40 CDs I picked out that's, like, '88 to '92," he said. "I got them out for Gavin [Russom]. He's working on a Crystal Ark album. We had this whole discussion of that whole era of major labels putting out dance albums. I did a similar thing with Hercules [and Love Affair]. I almost get into character, A&R'ing this record, I have a very good dialogue with a lot of the artists. Like Andy Butler or with Gavin, we'll start talking about, "Have you ever listened to To the Batmobile, Let's Go, the Todd Terry album? Or Masters at Work: The Album?" Both of which came out in '91."

So when the opportunity to see the Crystal Ark presented itself I figured I'd see how much fruit that statement bore. It turns out a good amount, though that was hardly due to the Crystal Ark alone. The crowd, heavily gay, was there to party, and the night's DJ, Sean B, served up lots of records that split the difference between the '90s-cusp house (lots of big piano grooves) and more modern bass-molt. And the dress did largely call to mind the days when Mossimo and Stussy and Cross Colours ran things.

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