Veteran DJ Danny Tenaglia will go the distance in a rare set
As Danny Tenaglia drives around the Big Apple, the sounds of taxicabs, traffic cops, and tooting horns fill the spring air. Even on a mobile phone, 2,500 miles from Los Angeles, the world's greatest living club DJ is spinning a yarn and taking us on a telephonic journey. He's headed to the pharmacy to pick up an antibiotic prescription from his dentist, "a bedroom DJ who plays house music while he's doing my teeth."
"I'm all for the music," Tenaglia says.
Like his dentist, Tenaglia uses sound as transport - taking disparate listeners away to Ibizan sunrises, Gotham after hours, or Miami sunset soirées by the sea. At 45, and three decades into his career, he's become the ultimate DJ's DJ, the benchmark of stamina and soul, sizzle and sleaze. Indoctrinated in the cradle of club-DJ culture, New York's '80s-era Paradise Garage, Tenaglia came into his own in the '90s with residencies in Miami and Manhattan, top-charted remixes, and legendary sets during South Beach's annual DJ retreat, the Winter Music Conference. He took home the DanceStar Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, the same year he was nominated in the Grammy Awards' Best Remixed Recording category. Wary of millennial trance and cheese, clubgoers around the world have warmed up to Tenaglia's deep-crate style, digging the shape-shifting grooves that accelerate from the most spiritual vocal house to the dirtiest tribal and bubbliest techno. On Friday, it's L.A.'s turn to buckle up, as he pilots Avalon Hollywood for the first time. It will be a rare Southern California appearance.
"As a New Yorker, born and raised, I had residencies in my own city that lasted every week for nine years," he says. "I had been to L.A. maybe three times. I remember the earlier years being much more fun before it got all 'global' for me - playing with Marques Wyatt at Does Your Mama Know before all the cameras and people in your face."
These days, he has a Miami condo and a Long Island city loft with Manhattan views and a 30,000-watt sound system that used to fuel a super-club. It's no wonder he doesn't want to get out of the house. The last time he was in L.A. - gigging at the Mayan while hoping to collect that 2002 Grammy - was a disaster.
"I remember it like it was yesterday," he says of the show. "We were told we'd have a 5 a.m. stop. At 4, all the house lights went on and the music stopped, and they just pulled the plug on me. I was like, 'What the hell happened?' I'm very respectful to venues. If they want to stop at 4, at 10 minutes to 4 I'll bring it down and let them know I have one more track to play. The security guards were acting like beasts, shoving my personal friends, people who came to assist me. I was there with egg on my face. I'm like, 'Fuck this, I will never, ever return to the Mayan again.'
Still, Tenaglia's no diva. While his music is indeed "global" - his Global Underground: London, with its aeronautic sense of blast-off, is one of the greatest club mixes of all time - his message is human: "Be yourself" and let loose on the dance floor, no matter if you're gay or straight, rich or poor. He's renowned for defining the 12-hour "marathon set"; helping to create the dark, drum-heavy tribal sound of New York (for the labels Twisted and Tribal America); mashing up tracks before it was trendy (One Phat Deeva's "In and Out of My Life" vs. Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now"); and the less-is-more remix (his rare take on Ananda Project's "Cascades of Colour"). But Tenaglia's perhaps best known for being a down-to-earth, true-blue music fanatic. He's an avid vinyl collector, plays CDs for convenience, and is considering a move to laptop DJing because it allows for on-the-fly remixing. He's thoroughly hyped about the techno resurgence (as in the Kompakt label). And, while some top dance acts are pimping film scores, Tenaglia is most excited about a 12-inch single, "Dibiza," he recently released via Spanish label Stereo.
"I have more energy and enthusiasm than ever," Tenaglia says. "I embrace change and technology. I love the dance music that's around today. I feel like I'm 45 going on 26. There's no way you can't say it's better than 10 years ago. It's life."
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