Slaves to the beat
Three Bay Area DJ-promoters – Tom Thump, Mikebee, and Hakobo – share the ups and downs of living the nightlife.

By Peter Nicholson

HI, MY name is Peter, and I'm a recovering DJ and promoter.

I hit my bottom around '96, going out six nights a week to flyer and on the seventh playing a set to a half-empty club, spending all my money on records, begging my friends to "come on down – it's gonna go off this week!" Finally, after using my rent money for flyers one last time and not even having my girlfriend show for the gig, I threw in the towel.

In San Francisco, a city with enough DJs and promoters to put on more than 200 events every week, my story is far from unusual. But for every hundred wannabes who get a foot in the door only to have it cut off at the ankle, there are a few persevering souls who manage to keep on keepin' on. Tom Thump, Mikebee, and Hakobo are three such determined – or foolhardy – types, DJs and promoters who surf the wave of club fortune (netting $300 to $1,000 on a strong weekend night) without getting soaked. Most of the time.

Still thumping

Tom "Thump" Simonian is the elder statesman of the group and seems to be the busiest. From art openings to guest spots to his monthly Budonkadonk parties with Rascue, the fortysomething selector is a nearly ubiquitous presence on the S.F. scene.

Simonian got his start in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he was a self-described "big fish in a little pond." At one point that meant five separate radio shows for two stations and eventually a night at Derrick May's legendary techno temple, the Music Institute. Only problem: it was an after-hours reggae party. On a Thursday night.

Not exactly a recipe for success, but Simonian kept plugging away, eventually moving to Los Angeles in 1990. A few years later, he discovered seminal acid jazz party Brass. "Brass was my big inspiration for the thrust I've been on for the last 14 years," Simonian says from his flat in Noe Valley, which he shares with his wife, painter Kelly Tunstall. "It really blew me away, people dancing to Roy Ayers, Gary Bartz – I mean kids dancing to it!"

After frequent trips to San Francisco as a regular guest at like-minded club Mushroom Jazz, he relocated north in 1995. Having worked at rare-record gem Groove Merchant and weathered the dot-com bubble and subsequent burst, Simonian has a cautious but sanguine outlook on the current club scene: "All of a sudden there's all these clubs. Kinda expected it four years ago, more. It's cool – it's good to have new spots to go to, but it's diluted things a bit."

To stand out from the crowd, Simonian has added something extra to the parties he throws. "I just try to create hooks – bring people in from out of town ... add things to events, like fashion shows, art." A typical example was a recent party at 111 Minna Gallery that featured a guest DJ set from New York's Osiris (Turntables on the Hudson) and a fashion show of clothing by EAT Designs.

While Simonian finds these multimedia events just as rewarding as a straight DJ night, he does find it disappointing that an S.F. DJ doing a regular night may not be enough of a draw on its own. "I understand when people say, 'Oh, I can see them anytime,' but that's ridiculous because they're quality, and they're always playing great music and new music."

Once a raver ...

One of those great S.F. DJs is Mike Battaglia, a.k.a. Mikebee. I talked with him on the 10th anniversary of his arrival in the city, where he ended up after a few years studying classical voice at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, followed by a stint as a "superstar raver." Following the rave scene out to S.F., Battaglia began DJing and quickly became introduced to the atmospheric side of the nascent drum 'n' bass scene, ending up a central figure in a community that was easily North America's most vital. He put on a series of one-off events, was a regular guest at Eklektic, and eventually got his own night, La Belle Epoque, at Lower Haight's Top.

Following several years of drama involving the promoter, Wade Hampton (who at one time was attempting to run the party from his new home of Park City, Utah), and the peaking of both the local drum 'n' bass scene and dot-com affluence, Battaglia still soldiers on, running Safe Saturday night at the Top, a venue that's seen busier times.

"The Top had a reputation as this kinda gritty, dark place where the music was really good and loud and the drinks were strong," Battaglia explains during a break from his job at Amoeba Records. "But I think a lot of those people who had [appreciated] that reputation have moved on, don't go clubbing anymore, have moved out of town. Especially since the shootings – the shootings have just killed it."

Poor choice of words, but the events he refers to – three shootings in May and another in August, all within two blocks of the Top – certainly have hurt a no-nonsense venue that's facing competition from a new generation of upscale clubs ranging from Pink to Suede. Although Battaglia participates in a new monthly at Pink, which he's enthusiastic about (and where one can purchase a $200 bottle of vodka that costs more than any of the DJs will make that night), he's wary of the other new clubs. "I just think it's bad for music, because the music is so the last thing on the list. You're selling a lifestyle, a vibe, status, whatever. And fine, they're people who are into that but ... like I said, I'm a raver! I don't need a dress code."

Unfortunately for Battaglia, he seems to be in a shrinking minority with his disregard for the luxury trappings of a night out on the town. Chalk it up to recent crime, the bad economy, or his insistence on only playing broken beat (which isn't exactly a chart-topping genre), but whatever the cause, a recent Saturday at Safe that I dropped in on was on the slow side.

Battaglia feels San Francisco doesn't boast the same kind of musical diversity it once did, when drum 'n' bass fiends could go out and hear what was essentially a marginal genre seven nights a week. "I think the tastes have homogenized a bit – I don't really see room for the fringe anymore," he says. "It seems to me all people ever want to hear is just house and hip-hop. I see less and less support for something that is in between, and that's all over the place, just judging from the amount of Jay-Z requests I get when I've been playing broken beat for an hour and a half." With more than a little exasperation, Battaglia asks, "Where are all the people who want to hear progressive, interesting, new music that they haven't heard before in a club setting?"

Fresh Milk

Some of them can be found at the other end of Haight, at Milk, where Jacobo "Hakobo" Juarez helps put on Fresco the first Friday of each month. A relative newcomer – he's "only" been playing out and promoting for four years – Juarez was born in Acapulco, Mexico, and came to the Bay in 1994 to study ethnomusicology at UC Berkeley. It took him more than five years to graduate, undoubtedly due to the distracting presence of what he calls "the best record store in the world, Amoeba," less than four blocks away from his apartment.

Inspired by DJs like Funklore (Spearhead) and J-Boogie (Om) who played everything from soul to hip-hop to drum 'n' bass, Juarez began to put on events at Amnesia and Hush Hush Lounge with DJ Chango and DJ Simas. The parties weren't successful. "Basically, we were playing a little bit of broken beat and a little bit of hip-hop, and there would be maybe like two people in there. It almost made me quit and think, 'I really can't do this,' " Juarez confesses from his Oakland apartment.

Juarez kept at it, catching a break from DJ Soulsalaam, who asked him to put on what became the successful Divination party, which has recently upgraded from a monthly to a weekly. A few years ago Juarez heard about Eric Ross's plans to open Milk on the site of the former Galaxy Club and seized the opportunity to start his own night, enlisting friends Yoshito and Kento, who had been throwing hip-hop night Orange. Fresco is very successful but a bit of an odd bird – a broken beat night with a strong Asian American hip-hopper following that regularly hosts live acts from overseas. "Some people were bringing out artists that I really liked, but I didn't think anyone was doing a really good job at it, so I started bringing out the artists myself," Juarez recalls.

Juarez's passion for the craft of DJing is obvious as he describes the rush of watching a crowd build, start to dance, and finally lose it to new music he's handpicked, a high that's underscored by the ever present danger of clearing the floor with a bad mix or a poor choice of songs. "It's definitely really cool to be playing really crazy tracks and have people bug out to them. I remember when I first got Moonstarr's remix of his own track 'Greed.' I thought it was really dark and nobody was going to like it. But people just went crazy over it!" Juarez goes on to characterize developing friendships with guests like Quantic, artists he once saw as distant idols, as one of the highlights of being a promoter.

The lowlights? In addition to booking agents who cancel gigs the week of the show (as recently happened with U.K. rapper Ty), Juarez bemoans the lack of support from labels that directly benefit from their artists appearing at Fresco.

"These are really underground artists that we literally work our asses off for. When we first started, we were going out at one in the morning and wheat pasting, taping up flyers – whatever it took to get the word out. We really are doing true promotion – flyers, word of mouth, passing out CDs. I think a lot of people at labels think we're making a killing, like I'm making a thousand dollars a gig or something.... But after I've done a couple of shows and walked away with, like, $40 after having put in excess of 20 hours of work, it's kinda depressing to think, 'I could be making more money flipping burgers at McDonald's.' "

Yet when I press Juarez on what label support could accomplish, he doesn't talk of bigger paychecks for Fresco and quitting his restaurant job, just the opportunity to bring out entire bands like DKD.

Maybe 500 San Franciscans have even heard of that U.K. underground act, but Juarez is convinced, given a bit of underwriting, he could get a crowd out and they'd have a great time. Like Battaglia and Simonian, Juarez isn't getting rich or famous playing and promoting the music he loves. They all have the same disease: the addiction to discovering new tunes and sharing them with people, hopefully with a crowd of dancers, ideally with the club making the venue plenty of money at the bar. Luckily for San Francisco, they haven't found an appropriate 12-step program and are still out there in the throes of their addiction, making sure we get the dopest parties.

Tom Thump DJs Oct. 2, Budonkadonk, Milk, 1840 Haight, S.F. Call for time and price. (415) 387-6455. MikeBee DJs Saturdays, Safe, the Top, 424 Haight, S.F. (415) 864-7386; and Goin' Global, Oct. 6, Pink, 2925 16th St., S.F. (415) 431-8889. Call for times and prices. Hakobo DJs Thurs/23, Rx Gallery, 132 Eddy, S.F. (415) 474-RXSF; and, with guest Mitsu the Beats, Fresco, Oct. 1, Milk, 1840 Haight, S.F. (415) 387-6455; and Fridays, Divination, Hush Hush Lounge, 496 14th St., S.F. (415) 241-9944. Call for times and prices.