“I get a perverse kick knowing what we’ve always known as rednecks are actually opening up to black culture more than we know. “I’ve done cowboy weddings where all they want to hear is country music and hip-hop,” he says. DJing at KDVS, hosting dance nights and even doing wedding gigs. He’s been stoking Sacramento’s flame ever since. Afterward, Marla Kanelos who booked Old Ironsides asked if I wanted to do a weekly dance starting the following Sunday. The rest of the night was great even with just one turntable and a rickety stereo unit. So I show up, throw on In the Jungle Groove by James Brown, and the joint was jumping. “He told me to bring my funk and soul records because they were dancing to Billy Idol and Duran Duran singles. “On New Year’s Eve of 1996, I was chilling in my attic, having a puff and listening to some sides when Mike calls from a party that some kids from The Loft were having,” Rodriguez recalls. He gained notoriety and rose through the ranks, DJing at Jerry Perry’s legendary clubs Vortex and Cattle Club, but it wasn’t until he saved the night at a real dance party that Dance Party started to take form. “I was that dude in high school who was always concealing a boombox in his book bag in case there were any breakdance battles at lunch,” Rodriguez says.Īs a 16-year-old, he landed a show he called Soul Sauce on a community radio station, where he played records people twice his age didn’t know anything about-jazz, funk, latin grooves, reggae and international jams from Africa and Brazil. Maybe the most impressive part is that he’s been at it for most of his life, like the cool kid in John Hughes movies. Every time he’s in control of the decks, I go home with a list of music to look up. Not only has he been making Sacramentans sweat for 20 years with his wildly popular Dance Party at the Press Club on Sundays (affectionately called “Church” by people in the know), but he’s provided the soundtrack to what most of us have been doing for the past two decades with his insane record library and encyclopedic music vocabulary. For someone with even a passive love for music, Larry Rodriguez (aka DJ Larry or The Flower Vato) can be a pretty intimidating figure.
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