Disco, New Mexico
Over the course of your life as a raver there will come to be certain names or phrases that will give you the power to time travel. I know this sounds a little outrageous, but before you call me loco I can assure you it is a real occurrence.
Granted it will all be in your mind and you’ll have no actual way of proving it, but make no doubt about the fact that it is real, and I can show that by saying this one name: Derrick Carter. Here are the places I go when I think of Derrick Carter.
The first memory I have of Derrick Carter is when I must have been around sixteen years old, and the year was 2000, just before Halloween. It was for a rave called the Freaks Come Out, and it took place at the old NY Stock Exchange building over on 3rd and Central here in the 505.
It’s been a long time since that corner of the city was named just that, yet it will always represent that moment house music took over my life. At the time I had little context to understand Derrick’s contribution to house music, as I only knew he was playing at the rave, and the rave was bumping, but that was enough for me, I suppose.
I can still remember the music and the people so well, all dressed in their own version of what the rave was meant to be, spilling out of the warehouse into the city that night and onto the street. You could feel the electricity.
From there my love for the music just grew. I learned about Chicago, and Frankie Knuckles, the DJ who helped create house music in a club known as the Warehouse. It all felt so connected, and I was just one small part. Somebody lost on the dancefloor.
I saw Derrick again late in my twenties when I moved back to the 505 after finishing college. He was playing at this club downtown called Effex, and if I’m remembering it right, this would be my first time going to this specific club.
It’s so wild saying that now since I’ve spent so many nights listening to music I love so much at that place, and yet all of it started for me with going to see Derrick Carter.
That was also right around the time I learned about the Paradise Garage, which was in New York City in the 70s and was the home of Larry Laven.
I read around that time that the founder of the warehouse originally asked Larry to be the DJ in Chicago, but Larry didn’t want to leave NY, so he recommended Frankie Knuckles, and from there it was always music history.
All of it is so connected. The line appeared to be longer and deeper than I ever could have imagined as a teenage raver but was barely starting to understand in my twenties as a clubber.
After that, I didn’t see Derrick again until in my thirties at Meow Wolf. What a place that is, and yet although I know there are Meow Wolfs just about everywhere now, they’ll never compare to that one up in Santa Fe for me.
We were at this one for a friend’s birthday, and I can remember this night so clearly as one of the last I’d spend at Meow Wolf and with this specific group of friends. Shortly after this one, the quarantine would start and I guess we just lost each other in the pandemic.
They’re still out there I’m sure, but doing it separate from us, and yet that’s always been the idea with both friendship and music, hasn’t it? We just keep going. We keep dancing and learning, and following the sounds and the vibe we love so much, and then suddenly, there we are again, at the moment we thought would never happen.
That’s exactly how I felt just a little over a year ago when I finally went to see Derrick Carter play in Chicago at his home club known to all the world as Smart Bar.
It was a magical feeling taking that taxi to the club that night with the city just outside my window. It’s a feeling I relieve as often as possible. I suppose Smart Bar was always the dream, even before I knew it was there.
For over 30 years Derrick’s club night, Queen has hosted the sounds of House that have inspired the world and have helped make Chicago an epicenter of this culture we have all grown to love so much.
Many of us discovered house music as teenage fools wandering the night, and now we are adults aware of how much it has saved us over all these years. Having the chance to go see Derrick at Smart Bar was an opportunity to go directly to the source.
It’s very hard to convey exactly how it went as it happened in such a whirlwind that all I can remember are snapshots of how it felt, and sounded, and looked.
The event was all building since it was Labor Day with the main room Metro, Smart Bar being in the basement, and just about everybody in town to party in Chicago.
I would get into Metro to see concert posters of the past from artists like LCD Soundsystem all the way to Bob Dylan. The entire building was steeped in music history and with every stair I climbed I could feel how vibrant the place was.
Designed like an old theater there were multiple stories to explore and hear, but we were lucky enough to find the middle stairwell, which took us directly to the center of Metro and the perfect spot to hear Derrick playing to a packed crowd.
There are many things I can say about the instant I heard Derrick playing that night, yet all I could think of both then and now, is always the same fact. For all the years I loved house music, and studied it, and followed it, it seemed I knew nothing before that moment.
I could list facts I had read in a book or second-hand accounts from other people, and sure I could collect all the memories that led me there, but none of it would educate me any more than that moment right there on the dancefloor.
It was magic. Pure, funky, beautiful magic, and in that joy I’ll admit to you now, I couldn’t help but feel grateful. Grateful for that moment, grateful for the music, grateful to the DJ, and grateful to the person I became getting to that dancefloor.
We have very few moments where we can say, I made it, and for me, that will always be one of them. We danced for hours, wandered the hallways, discovering anything new we could about such a place.
I can even remember those stairs that lead to smart bar, and exactly what the security said to me as people were rushing up and we wanted to go down, ‘If you’re gonna go, you better go now,” he smiled, and I couldn’t help but laugh a bit too. How epic to say that at just that moment to me.
We finally made it down and danced just a little bit more. I’ll never forget how hot it was down there. We couldn’t find anywhere except right there in front of that fan, but the music was so good, we couldn’t help but stay. We were still so high from the moment. And man, the music. I can’t believe the music.
For at least twenty years I had been a house music lover, and never did I hear it quite like that. It felt like that first time, but better, because I knew how long it took to get there. The image stays in my mind as if it was always meant to be; people dancing everywhere; wonderful music everywhere. I’ll always want to get back to that one.
We stayed dancing until they kicked us out onto the street and into the Chicago night which was hotter than we expected, but still cooler than the club. Wrigley Field stood over us, and we slowly strolled under the street lights until we found the subway that took us home; with the Chicago skyline still right there outside my window.
Maybe I was a little too high, and a bit drunk from the weekend, but then again, I suppose that’s what it’s all about. That’s disco for you. A disco that’s about to happen again on January 26th, at Sister Bar here in the 505. Derrick does disco is coming to New Mexico.
Hosting Derrick for the night will be the four-headed disco Voltron called Adobe Disco as they are celebrating five years of keeping that disco vibe alive and strong out here in the desert, and I can’t think of anybody better to help make this night go off for all of us.
A Huge congratulations should be said to all four DJs involved and I wish to say thank you in advance from someone on the dancefloor. I never thought this moment would happen, and yet just like the rest, I know it’s just a part of this big giant traveling disco we all belong to now.
So please, go early, stay late, and enjoy the journey you took getting to this one. I know I did.
See you at the disco, New Mexico.
Ourdancefloor.net 