blog roll
Interview: Maud Deitch
Jonah Berry started Gotta Dance Dirty as a way to share music with his friends, but it has rapidly grown into one of the premier destinations for dance music on the internet. The GDD brand has also expanded to include party promotions and will soon take on a micro-label project in collaboration with Nitrus records. We spoke with Berry about the past, present and future of the site. What was the initial inspiration to start a dance music site? The blog started as a hobby. I was working in a retail store and decided to start a music blog, and then I decided to bring on more writers and friends, and then it progressed into a collective of DJs and event promoters. It’s blossomed into a whole lifestyle brand now. How did you get involved in the nightlife scene in Los Angeles? A year after we started the blog, we would drive down to L.A. from Santa Barbara a lot and go to one of the best club nights in the city, which is called Control at the Avalon. They ended up bringing us on to help promote the night, and that was our first experience promoting a weekly. From that we decided to start a party on the west side of L.A. called Versus, and we do that every Thursday now at a great little hole in the wall called the Central in Santa Monica.
How do you keep on top of what’s happening in the vast world of dance music? A mix of everything. I get 300 to 400 emails a day from artists and labels and publicists, but it’s also word of mouth from friends. I’m not a DJ, but we have a bunch of DJs working on the site and they’re always talking to artists and visiting different sites. We also just look at artists that we like and look through their mixes. We have a very curious mindset towards this music and if we like it, we’re going to delve into it more. What’s next for Gotta Dance Dirty? We’re really concentrating on continuing to build our traffic on the website and starting a forum, emulating what the Erol Alkan forum is doing— just a place for music fans to come and chat about new sounds and production techniques, really whatever interests them. gottadancedirty.com