Shameless is literally the underdog of Seattle's Saturday-night club scene. Situated beneath the Pike Place Market in the basement below the Alibi Room, the weekly event hosted by DJs Recess and Misha (Michelle Furedy) has overcome its underground location to become one of the city's most refreshingly unpretentious and musically vibrant shindigs.
After the Alibi Room's former Saturday occupant, the popular electro/techno party ROBO.trash, went on hiatus, Recess dashed in to fill the void. " Those guys were inspirational and had allowed me the place to play some of that clashy, punk-funk, sometimes-over-the-top music that's hard to come by in Seattle," he says. "The Alibi management wanted to offer something different than what you'd typically find on a Saturday night. Straight-up techno/house can be boring. I'm convinced I'm not alone on this. Fortunately, Misha, Derek Fisher, and the Perfect Cyn [the last two trek up from Portland twice a month] were all down to help make this night happen."
Recess and Misha chose to call the event Shameless because " it describes both the music and the feeling we'd like to provoke," Recess says. "Whether it's electro, tech-house, disco punk, techno, electroclash, pop, old or new, we want it to be fun (occasionally tongue-in-cheek) and not necessarily something you'd hear at Club Generica. We love the edgy experimental music that's coming out right now, but we're also suckers for more accessible pop music. We don't see why there should be any shame in that." "I encourage the guest DJs to bring a wide variety of music and have a lot of fun with their sets," says Misha. "I also encourage them to play some of their more 'out there' tracks and not focus so much on any particular genre, although the techy and glitchy stuff is popular. The Alibi Room is great because we have the freedom to play the music we love without a lot of pressure to play dance-floor fillers."
The Shameless crowd on a recent Saturday consisted of bullnecked dudes and their tarted-up laydeez sidetracked on their way to Club Medusa, true electronic-music heads, curious tourists who wandered down after dining upstairs, and local DJs jonesing to hear what non-clichéd sets sound like. As the Alibi basement bunker can hold about 60 people, it doesn't take much to whip up a sweaty party atmosphere.
Early in the night, Derek Fisher and the Perfect Cyn tag-teamed with a wicked assortment of glitchy downtempo, minimal tech-house, and unexpected electro cuts, like Meat Beat Manifesto's "Helter Skelter" and a bizarrely funked-up version of the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B"; later, Recess continued the rock-tronica fun with Dirty Funker's remix of Nirvana's "Lithium," and two-time laptop-battle champ Kris Moon played a storming live set.
" I don't know what it is about the Alibi Room bunker, but it really seems to bring out an immature side of people (not necessarily a bad thing!)," says Recess, a middle-school counselor by day. "Maybe because it's so small and it feels like you're at home in your own basement. For me, [a successful night is] seeing people dry-humping walls, dancing on the chairs, getting sweaty, and playing air guitar on the dance floor. That's Shameless." DAVE SEGAL
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Segal, Dave (2004).
Beatseeking Missives: Shameless [Electronic
version]. The Stranger. Retrieved December 8, 2004. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=17570 |