Ahead of his upcoming appearance alongside Sammy Slice at Bliss this Saturday, we had the pleasure of talking to Dave P, one of the main personalities behind the legendary Making Time and FIXED parties, globetrotting DJ, producer, radio jock, and all around rad dude.
Click here for a recording of Dave’s most recent Making Time RADio show, mixed live on 88.5 XPN in Philadelphia (his next show is July 1). And here for a mix Dave and Sammy Slice did for Urban Outfitters.
AND most importantly, get rad with Dave and Sammy at BLISS this Saturday at U Street Music Hall.
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So Dave, you’ve been doing Making Time in Philly and FIXED in New York for quite some time. When did you actually start DJ’ing and what was it that made you want to start? What kind of music were you spinning at the time?
It has been quite some time. We just had the 11 year anniversary of Making Time a few weeks ago. It’s pretty wild.
I honestly don’t even remember what year I started DJ’ing. I remember the first time I ever played records for people. It was at a friend’s Halloween Party at his apartment. I think I played on some terrible Numark turntables and a pretty gnarly mixer and ran it through his home stereo.
When I started Making Time in May 2000 I wasn’t actually DJ’ing the party. I was promoting and organizing it and I booked the DJs and bands. I had been buying records since I was in college but didn’t really start considering DJ’ing until I started the party. I was always interested in DJ’ing…even in high school during the days of alternative dance parties at this abandoned mattress factory in the suburbs of Philly called Pandemonium and at City Gardens in Trenton but DJ’ing always seemed very unobtainable then.
After I started Making Time, I realized it was something I could do and something that I wanted to do. I’m not 100% sure but I think I started DJ’ing in 2002. I started at a bar called Lucy’s in Philadelphia. I DJ’d there every Tuesday…the worst night of the week to do a party….with my friend Julian, aka Pink Skull. I played mostly new and old indie rock records and new wave. I definitely couldn’t mix and wasn’t playing much dance music at the time other than maybe a Daft Punk or Chemical Brothers track. We got fired from that gig after a few months. The bar accused Julian of pulling up outside the bar at the end of the night one night and stealing their outdoor furniture. To this day I’m not sure if he did it or not.
Anyway, soon after that I started to get into dance music. I was asked to DJ an indie dance night in Boston called Start. That was my first proper DJ night at a club. I would drive up there once a month with one of the other Making Time DJs, Mike Z., and usually a few friends. I would DJ the party at Bill’s Bar and then the next day I’d go to Other Music in Harvard Square (when there was an Other Music up there) and buy almost every record in the electro section. During that time Julian and I started an electro night in Philadelphia called [click.] (yes…spelled exactly that way….haha) at a club called Fluid. A year later I started DJ’ing Making Time. I wanted to hear more dance music, especially electro, on the main floor and I had the records so….
It’s funny. I definitely started DJ’ing late in life. I think I was about 25 or 26 whereas Sammy started DJ’ing when he was around 13 or 14 years old. We both come from very different backgrounds in a lot of ways, including when we started DJ’ing, but our difference definitely compliments one another.
Both Making Time and FIXED have great reputations which have been built over many years. Considering most parties don’t have a shelf life of longer than a year, what were the priorities for you when throwing these parties and building the brands? The variety of talent you have been able to book I think speaks wonders. But what else?
The number one priority for Making Time and FIXED is the music. Basically I want to expose as many people as possible to the music that I love and have them experience it in a setting where they can freak out like crazy people to it. I guess that’s why I started DJ’ing…it’s a great feeling to see people dancing to music that you love. That’s all I want at Making Time and FIXED is for people to have a rad time and for people to experience new music in a setting that enables people to be a part of the music and have the raddest experience possible. It’s a pretty simple idea.
It’s funny, a lot of people ask about building the brand of Making Time and FIXED but to be honest I never looked at them as brands. I’ve never really taken them that seriously or thought of them on that level. I really just look at both parties as really rad musical experiences for people. It may sound cliché but the parties are really all about the music and all about the people that are experiencing the music. That’s what makes the party…the music, the people and then how people react to and experience the music.
How have you seen the nature of the parties you throw change over the years (music/crowd/venue/vibe)? How have they evolved? Are there any constants – what has stayed the same?
The general premise of the parties has stayed the same but yeah, of course, over time things change. First off and most importantly, the music is constantly changing. It continuously changes with all the DJs’ tastes at the time. What I’m listening to and also what the other DJs are listening to shapes the musical direction of Making Time and FIXED and thus the parties themselves. The music is always evolving and I think that musical evolution is, along with the priorities mentioned above, what has contributed to the parties’ success.
Outside of the music, the crowd is ever-changing as well. Over time some people stop going out for whatever reason and then other people start going out. As certain musical genres gain popularity, different people start coming to the party. As far as venues, we started Making Time at a club called Transit. We rotated between there and a club called the 2-4 Club which is now called Voyeur, the current “home†of Making Time. We did one party at a club called Shampoo when Franz Ferdinand played. That one almost got shut down by the fire department. Haha. We also do what we call the Making Time Warehouse Project. We do that a warehouse in Philly a few blocks from my house. That’s one of our newest projects and it’s one of mine and Sammy’s favorite places to play.
As for FIXED, we started it in the basement of Tribeca Grand and from there it has always moved around. That’s just the nature of clubs in New York. For a long period of time we were doing FIXED at Studio B…which to this day I would say was the best club in New York. Now the party moves around to various venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn depending on the guest and what’s available at the time. Wherever we do the party we make it our own. We don’t shape our parties according to the venue. We shape the venues according to the party and because of that the vibe has always stayed the same…which is a great thing.
There are always constraints. Clubs are often really difficult to deal with. You’re doing something for the music whereas a club is always concerned about the bottom line (other than U Hall, of course!). But regardless of the constraints we’ve always seemed to be able to work things out and do what we wanted to do. Like I mentioned above, we don’t shape our parties according to the venue…we shape the venues according to the party. Honestly though, my favorite places to do parties are raw spaces. There are no constraints. You can basically do anything you want…anything goes.
Tell us about your recent hookup with Sammy Slice. How did that all come about?
This past Halloween, Sammy invited me to play with him at his Sunday night party, “10,†in the basement of Voyeur nightclub. Ian St. Laurent, who he does the party with, was away and he asked me to fill in for him. I accepted the invitation. It was a very mellow Sunday night like any other Sunday would be. We started the night playing a few songs each and around midnight a small dance floor started. As the night progressed, we started playing together more and the night got more and more wild until about the last hour when we realized we were playing 3 tracks at a time for the duration of the night and the entire dance floor was freaking out like crazy people. It truly felt like something unique and special was happening, and at the end of the night it was obvious that everyone who was there felt it too. It was then that we realized that this was something that should happen more often.
We both knew we have very similar tastes in dance music but it wasn’t until we played together that night that we actually thought we should start working together. Well…and we both share a common interest in fancy button down shirts so that may have helped us make the decision as well.
Is there anything about spinning alongside Sammy makes your sets better than if you were to play alone?
Absolutely. As I mentioned before, we both come from different backgrounds in a lot of ways. Sammy, although originally from a house music background, is very rooted in hip-hop. As we all know…hip-hop DJ’ing is a completely different style of DJ’ing than dance music. Our different styles complement each other and make our sets more diverse. The way Sammy plays dance music is different than the way I play dance music. Those differences make our sets very diverse…not just musically buy stylistically.
When Sammy and I DJ together we are truly playing “together.†It’s a true collaboration. Because of that it allows us a lot of freedom to do different things both musically and stylistically that we would not be able to do on our own. That freedom allows us to have a lot of fun with our sets and try different things, and I think the crowd has more fun because of it.
Is there any particular sound you guys are going for when you play or does it really vary from gig to gig?
I don’t think we have a “sound†necessarily but rather a style. Because of the way we play and the freedom that it allows us, we are able to truly play for the crowd but in an intelligent way. We are both always striving to play the newest and most futuristic music possible while also playing to the crowd because in the end that’s really why we’re there…to play for the crowd.
But yeah, I wouldn’t say we have a sound, but we definitely have a style because of the true collaborative nature of the way we play. Our sound is really diverse because of it and that’s one of the reasons we play so well together.
Have you guys done and production together yet? Any plans to do so?
Sammy and I both have done production separate of one another. I’ve done remixes and original tracks with Adam Sparkles. We did remixes for Bloc Party, Of Montreal, Acid Girls and a few others. We also had two very heavy original tracks called “Sunday Nite in Glasgow†and “Delaze†come out on a label from Berlin called Satellite of Love.
Sammy and a Si Young, another producer from Philadelphia, have done edits of Cults and a few other bands and just did an amazing remix of Sun Airway that we play in almost all of our sets.
We haven’t done any production work together outside of a few mixes but we’re hoping to get into a studio this summer to make some futuristic sounds. We’re both really excited about it. I really miss producing music and am super stoked to get back to it.
Are there any upcoming releases, tours, parties, etc. that you want to let us in on? What will you be up to in the next few months other than getting back into the studio?
Sammy and I just got back from playing in Australia last month which was amazing. Of course we’re playing this Saturday at U Hall and then we have a string of really rad parties coming up in Philadelphia at Making Time including one next weekend at one of our favorite places to play, Bamboo Bar, on July 3rd. The parties at Bamboo are always amazing. They might even be worth a trip from DC. We also have a really big fall planned for Making Time which I personally am super stoked for. I also have my monthly Making Time RADio show on 88.5 XPN which is one of my favorite new projects right now. But yeah, most of all we’re really looking forward to getting into a studio.