Episode 143: As We Are » Strictly House Music

house music by dattrax

dattrax: Welcome Fellow House Fiends!! Been dancing lately? It's soooooo therapeutic. For me, at least once a month to let out all my work and life stress. Sweat it out with great music and friendly faces. There's nothing quite like it. Or dance while walking your doggie as I've done almost daily. Listening to house, hunting for the goose bump making tracks, mixing it, hearing it loud, and dancing to it. Takes the blues away.
Wherever you are. Be who you are. It's good and you'll feel better. Those that don't connect with you, no worries. Move along. Like recognises like.
I recently DJ'ed a party at a veteran's club called, The Owl's Club [847 Dovercourt Rd, Toronto, ON M6H 2X4 (North of the Bloor St W Subway Station] in the west end of Toronto on Sat, Feb24th, 2023. It was my first live DJ gig since before the crazy virus lockdowns in Toronto, so first event in over 3yrs. The pent-up and chained house music animal was released!! LMAO!!
The Owl's Club is a wonderful place filled with friendly people and staff. I've been there 4-5 times before (they had a fun Karaoke night that was jammed packed and had lots of one-off events), and was introduced to it by my pal, Stephen. I became friends with the vocal and guitar lead of a talented and diverse rock fusion band called Zombie Karaoke Santa. Here's a sample of Gary's band's great music.
The final 15mins of three single-track encores were not recorded. The first hour wasn't added to the beginning of this mix because it was too similar to this test mix that became, "Fallin' into Focus". I made that a few days prior to this party when I was trying out all the new 54 tracks that I bought a few weeks ago from Traxsource. For this party, I only played a handful of those new tracks.
This mix, "As We Are" is the 2nd half and the last two hours of the party after ZKS' great performance of about 10 original tracks and 2 cover versions (1.5hrs). See their IG.
My pal, Paul was turning 51, so he invited a dozen of his friends. Guess what??!! They were all old house heads, so they went wild over the 80's pop and classic house Re-Rubs [circa 1985-1995 is "classic house" to Jim and me. It's a different period depending on when people first got hooked on house music].
We had over a dozen more people who showed up for ZKS and to dance to house music. Even my cousin, Jenny came and had fun. It was the first time we ever hung out at a house music event. It was such a wonderful time creating new memories!!
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Image Credit: My pal, Stephen took this cool pic and I just used this free phone app called, "Prisma" to add a bunch of filters. Then just chose the version that I liked the most for this cover art.
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Definition of a dattrax "Re-Rub" » Taking a favourite track, either a classic house track or an 80's pop track or any... Then mixing it on top of a recent/newer house music instrumental in order to freshen it up and give the original track a more modern feel. Good for people like me who don't know how to read music, play any instruments + do not produce any original house tracks.
Jim and I used to make these at live events. Then I started to make them separately and then play them at live events. People love them because it's familiar and yet different. I've made over in the early years and over 60 new Re-Rubs over the last few years.