House Music is like high school, although don’t bother trying to get those who love it to admit that. There’s drama, and commotion, and of course, traditions. More than anything house music has traditions, ones we hold close to our hearts. That’s how I feel when I say the next few words to you.
‘It’s Mark Farina week.’
Maybe in other states or other cites those words don’t mean as much since maybe Mark plays there all the time, or maybe house just isn’t big in that city, although I don’t believe that’s true at all.
Mark Farina is one of those acts that no matter how many times you see him, and no matter how many environments you see him in, you still get that feeling when you know you’re seeing him again.
It’s sort of like the prom or maybe homecoming.
All the cliques and groups of New Mexico, all seem to gather and celebrate once a year in the same way we’ve always done, and we do it for Mark Farina. He’s the reason we always all come together again. And he’s coming back. Playing the Electric Playhouse on April 2nd with The Rev and Eldon doing a b2b to start the night.
The first time I saw Mark Farina was at the Soundstage on Cutler. At least, that’s what I think it was called, since it never actually had an official name at the time.
I was maybe about 18 years old, still young, and naïve, but not as much as I was when I was fifteen and at my first rave. The three years since I had discovered raves had given me a lot, but up until that night, it had never given me as pure an evening of house music as I was about to have.
I had known what house music was, and I had heard it many times, but never like this. Never in a way that would change me so completely forever. That’s what Farina did that night. He changed me forever.
Over six hours of pure and uncut house music at its absolute best. I suppose it would be like doing cocaine in Columbia, or maybe smoking some weed from the Emerald Triangle.
The most natural of the most natural just for us. I wonder sometimes if I was the only one, he altered that night, and then I realize that isn’t the point.
On that night, for me, it was wonderful, and funky, and groovy, and magical, but maybe he had already done that to other people before. Maybe he still is. Maybe that’s just his job. Especially because when I actually start to think about, every time I’ve seen him has been memorable.
There was that time in El Paso when we saw him at Club 101, and everybody else was playing hard house and scratching and just going crazy, until Mark went on.
Completely out of place and yet still completely in control of the crowd and the sounds.
There was also that other time at Sister Bar when somebody pepper sprayed the dancefloor and everybody cleared the building, with Mark hardly even noticing.
As we stood outside waiting for the room to clear of the poison, Mark just stayed there playing straight through. So locked into the music that he didn’t even notice anything had changed.
Then there was my very first time at Meow Wolf, where from the dancefloor I could hear him slowly bring in the disco song ‘Ring My Bell’, and yet never let us hear the hook and vocals. Just the buildup. Just the expectation.
Just the feeling that we knew what was coming, and yet always changing it before we could ever fully feel the song we knew so well.
Sometimes the Dj’s job is not to play the song you love, but rather to keep your attention long enough just to flirt with your expectations. And when you are ready to hear that song, they simply move on, allowing you a chance to love something new.
I honestly can’t remember how many times I’ve seen Mark Farina live, and frankly I don’t want to. As time goes on, I know deep down it just doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have this moment, and we have it together, and every so often we’re allowed to have it again. Just like the first time.
I think of that first time a lot, and I am grateful to have had that moment. A stretch at the soundstage I don’t think I’ll ever forget. At that one place I saw DJ Rap and Dieselboy, and Kimball Collins, and of course, the previously mentioned Mark Farina.
There were these little periods during our rave days when the scene would continue to have Raves at the same place, but it would be different every time. The DJ would be in a different corner, the decorations would be different, and so would the Soundsystem.
We must’ve gone to at least ten raves at that same place, spaced out over about a year or so, and I don’t even think Mark Farina’s long set was my favorite night. Coming second to the night I saw DJ Rap and Dieselboy in the darkness.
For Farina they had a wall of speakers and Farina was on the floor in front of us. Playing a combination of records and CD’s. Which were still a new form used in Dj’ing, with us still years away from the CDJ culture we are in now.
He was still a pioneer then. Still a maverick. Still just making stuff up. But not much has changed, has it? He’s still a traveling DJ, we’re still a city in love with House Music, and it’s still that time of year again. That time for us to gather, and dance, and celebrate the one’s still here, while remembering the ones who aren’t.
We have lost many of the people we used to share the dancefloor with when Mark Farina first started coming to New Mexico, and yet, the one thing I can assure you is that if the tradition lives on so will they. House Music is what will keep them alive.
So please, go and dance, and celebrate love, life, house, and the memories we will never have back. Celebrate the Soundstage, and Meow Wolf, and the One-up lounge on 3RD and central. Where the stock exchange used to be. Or that time he played one of the Galactic Portals for the Cosmic Kidz. Or maybe the Sunshine Theatre, or Sister Bar, or the Blue Rooster, or finally the Electric Playhouse. All the places we’ve been together. All the places we saw Mark Farina.
‘It’s Mark Farina week,’ isn’t just my way of telling you to go to the fuckin show. It’s also my way of asking you to join our tradition. Come help us keep this feeling alive. Not just for each other, but also for the ones who can’t dance anymore.
I’ll see you on the dancefloor.
Or not.
Ourdancefloor.net 