Of modern luxuries, music was one of the first to become digital, and with that major benefits have been reaped. No longer must we purchase lame albums with one decent track, and everyone loves portable mp3 players. However, with the digitization of music, something has arguably been lost. Have no fear, you can find it at the Magnolia Bar the last Fridays of the month.
The Magnolia Bar is a Louisville punk institution that broadened its appeal with a wildly popular dance party on Wednesday nights started early last year. Anyone at the Mag on a given Wednesday night can attest to the excited crowds getting down to performances orchestrated on a laptop.
Now comes a monthly dance event in which the deejays only play what they can haul out of their massive record caves and select out of stuffed crates. Plastic Bomb is all vinyl, all the time. A vinyl set brings something different to the table; call it character, call it nostalgia, call it pretense, but no matter what you say it will most likely be while you’re bouncing around the bar.
Each of the three deejays playing, Matt Anthony, Duffy, and K Disco, have a long experience playing around Louisville at parties and local bars Zanzabar, Magnolia Bar, etc. Matt Anthony is the deejay behind the popular WFPK show “Friday Night Sound Clash,” and Duffy and K Disco have a cult following of their own among the groovers and shakers of Louisville, and it’s only going to grow with the introduction of Plastic Bomb.
This party, however, is not all fun and games. K Disco, Plastic Bomb’s host says that the purpose of Plastic Bomb is to get back to “the way we used to do it.” Besides relying on only their own ear, K Disco is referring to a time when a part of being a deejay was an obsession with amassing records and meticulously cultivating a coveted collection. He says that a lot of that culture has been lost.
I have personally seen each of these three deejays on stages overcrowded with full record crates so I’m excited to see what happens when their powers, and collections, combine. While the Plastic Bomb deejays don’t like to be defined by any single genre, at Plastic Bomb you will dance to real soul, funk, disco, house, techno, and much more that you won’t hear anywhere else in Louisville because they understand and embrace the rich history of dance music (yes, there is one).
Plastic Bomb will be at the Magnolia Bar 11pm to 4am the last Friday of every month starting February 25. For more information on the event and deejays, and to hear some of their work, visit the Plastic Bomb site, or the Facebook event page.
