The Night I Fell in Love With Dance Music: Franki Chan
In this ongoing series, dance music industry veterans talk about the night they became slaves to the beat.
As the founder of Los Angeles-based indie party promotion firm IHEARTCOMIX, Franki Chan has been the first in town to book many electronic artists who have gone on dominate worldwide festival lineups. Arriving in L.A. in 2003 by way of his native Indiana and then Seattle, Chan was initially invested in the Los Angeles rock/punk scene and its bands, including Har Mar Superstar and !!!. He linked up with fellow man-about-town Steve Aoki, and the duo began DJing out together, forging parties that are now part of the local nightlife mythology. The two parted ways in 2006 under, by most accounts, less than friendly terms. Post-split, Chan created the influential and ongoing Check Yo’ Ponytail, an event that married the indie rock world with the punk-minded electronic groundswell of the mid-aughts. Eight years later, Chan still hand-draws the comic on the poster for each CYP fiesta.
“The energy at that show was something I hadn’t really experienced up until then. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience it again, because it felt like a tidal wave of change.”
Here, Chan talks about one sweaty night in 2006 when electronic music won him over.
How did you get into the electronic world, coming from more of a punk-rock background?
It wasn’t really until around 2005 that I began to understand and be excited about the [electronic music] world. At that time, I was doing a bunch of events around L.A. with Aoki, and he and I were throwing these parties and playing basically hip-hop and ‘80s and stuff. If someone came to our parties and played electronic music, we would actually make them stop—which, given the context of the current filters, is pretty funny.
Then what happened?
Our clubs kind of came to an end in early 2006, and I began doing this new party in L.A. called Check Yo’ Ponytail. There was a shift in music around late 2005/early 2006, with the emergence of Simian Mobile Disco and MSTRKRFT and Diplo—the early seeds of that scene. It was in that era that, for me, dance music really began to make sense. Those early shows from 2006 and 2007 with Justice and Boys Noize really felt like punk rock shows; they were so crazy.
What night sticks out in your memory?
I think the one moment where everything kind of switched and clicked was Halloween of 2006, where we had Justice play their first show in L.A., at Check Yo’ Ponytail. That night was also MSTRKRFT’s second show in town. There was something very magical about it, because when we booked Justice, we booked them four months earlier for really cheap—like $1,500 or $2,000—and it felt like a really risky show to book.
Why?
It was not quite the kind of music we were always playing. There was definitely some local blogs that were into them, because at the time the only people writing about that kind of music was just blogs. Just because they’re getting written up everywhere doesn’t mean people are buying tickets, though. Honestly, the first two or three months the show was on sale, it was totally bombing; it wasn’t moving tickets.
What shifted?
There was some sort of moment where all the sudden, everyone was like, “Oh my god, Justice is playing?!” It was post-“We Are Your Friends,” or maybe “Waters of Nazareth.” Something dropped around then, where everything changed. It became the show to be at, and it sold out instantly… The energy at that show was something I hadn’t really experienced up until then. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience it again, because it felt like a tidal wave of change.
Where was the show?
It was at a [Hollywood] venue called Safari Sam’s. The capacity was 400, but I think we ended up with… 800 to 1,000 people. It was a mess inside, and one of the sweatiest shows I’ve been to. I definitely had a lot of friends there.
In a video documenting the show, it seems like the guest list was a major headache, with people calling you the day of and asking to put 20 people on the list.
The guest list was definitely the biggest pain of the evening. Either that or dealing with all the Dim Mak/IHC drama that was in full effect at that time.
This was the first time Justice played in the US. What were your impressions of the guys?
They were super cool and nice. Neither spoke English at all yet. The one thing they really wanted to do was find a red, leather Michael Jackson jacket. They just wore simple masks as costumes.
Chan, (center) with Justice
Was there a moment when they were playing where you felt like, “Nothing is ever going to be the same again”?
Either “We Are Your Friends” or “Waters of Nazareth”—both of which they were playing to L.A. audiences for the first time. Everyone that was there, like, almost saw the face of God. It was like the entire population of L.A. from that moment forward was all about dance music, you know? Hollywood clubs went from playing top-40 rap to playing EDM; all of a sudden those were the types of artists everyone was trying to book, and everyone started playing that kind of music as a DJ. It was like a sudden shift, and it was cool. That opened the floodgates for so much.
This is your show, and people are there seeing the face of God. What does that mean to you personally?
It was really a rad feeling. There was some local drama that kind of happened the few weeks leading up to the show, and that made it feel even more special—that it did well and had such an impact. Just coming from the point of view of someone who has done live events for years, that’s just the primary way that I interact with music. I don’t really get the opportunity necessarily to go to shows all that much or even really feel like I get a full experience out of a record. If I find an artist I really like, I have to find a way to work with them in a live setting, because that’s the only way to kind of make it feel real, you know? And feeling that energy in that moment was incredible.
Did that night then have an effect on the way you did business going forward?
Yeah, totally. At the time we had a record label, so we really embraced that kind of music. We ended up doing a bunch more shows with the kind of artists that came after them in that era of Check Yo’ Ponytail. It was where all those artists, like Boys Noize and Para One and Diplo and Switch and Flosstradamus, played first—just this crazy list. And every week it was somebody new. They were all making their way over to the US for the first time. We wouldn’t have been able to do that, had it not been for that Justice show.
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