Email
Print
Whatt's happening at St. Pete lounge
EMUOR
Brooklyn-born DJ Whatt will perform monthly at Push Ultra Lounge in St. Petersburg.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 12, 2009
Related Links
As mission statements go, this one is pretty succinct:
"If you're not dancing, I'm not doing my job."
That's the motto by which DJ Whatt lives. Tonight, he'll take up the challenge at Push Ultra Lounge in St. Petersburg. It's the first of what will be a regular monthly gig at the club for DJ Whatt, born Franklin Gomez 32 years ago in Brooklyn.
Gomez honed his turntable skills on hip-hop before undergoing a road-to-Damascus-like conversion to dance music, particularly break beats, at an all-night rave.
It sent him back to the origins of both hip-hop and electronic dance music, namely '70s records such as "The Mexican," by Babe Ruth and "Apache" by the Incredible Bongo Band. Both have instrumental portions – or "breaks" – that DJs have isolated and built new dance tracks on since the South Bronx block parties of the early '70s.
Gomez calls "The Mexican" and "Apache" "the two best songs ever made."
"Thirty years later, and I still wish I could write something like that," Gomez says. "Afrika Bambaataa talked about 'Looking for the Perfect Beat,' but every beat has been made. There are only so many places you put a kick drum and a snare. I'm looking for perfect sounds."
To that end, Gomez spends "lots of hours inside the house, jotting stuff down on notepads, coming up with beats and transferring them to the sequencer. I like to write beats that on their own, with no other instrument, can make people move their head side to side, or move their feet."
Of course, Gomez gets out a bit. He's spun at clubs across the United States and Europe, and he's very excited about performing at Push.
"I have seen some amazing clubs in lifetime in 10 years and Push is a very, very ideal dance club," Gomez says. "It has a huge bar, huge dance floor and a proper stage, plus great lighting and a great sound system."
Besides keeping the dance floor filled, Gomez hopes to "push the envelope and introduce St. Petersburg to new music that they didn't think they liked."
Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online ©2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company. | Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
