It’s five minutes till 1:00pm in San Francisco and I’m about to be late for an interview with SF dance connoisseurs Jondi and Spesh. Even with an email the day before to confirm the time and location, I’m lost. The email said “next to Zeke’s Sports Bar,” yet I still can’t find the damn place. I’m getting nervous and I feel as though I’m beginning to sweat, then somehow, right in front of me I see a small door with a white sheet of paper that has in small font, “Looq Records” -- I’ve found it and I’m right on time!

As I walk upstairs in a tight corridor I find the offices of Jondi and Spesh decked out in minimal German pure white décor with hints of lush crimsons splattered here and there. Jondi introduces himself and I take a seat in a round, almost valentine shaped ottoman, yet strangely enough, Spesh is a bit late.

Jondi and I talk about music and the new Suicide Sports Club track before Spesh makes his polite entrance and profusely apologises for his tardiness. When the three of us get comfortable, we begin to talk about their past, and it’s fascinating to find out how closely their lives were parallel to one another before they even met.

The Past

The boys, well men actually, both grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area, spending their early adulthood at the University of Davis California where they each had their own radio shows. However it wasn't until they each moved to the city that things got interesting.

This city is a diverse place with a melting pot of different cultures, food, art and more importantly “music” says Spesh. “I came to San Francisco to be closer to music. How I knew I was too far away, was because I had to put tin foil on the tip of my antenna on my boombox in order to pull in the radio station on the music that I was listening to at the time.”

For Jondi, he explains it was 1990 that, “I was writing music in my bedroom and feeling really really isolated, and I wanted nothing more than just to have a community of musicians and producers, and people to relate to, and I totally found that with meeting Spesh, 111 Minna, and the people I met through that party.”

It’s that same connection that has helped draw so many individuals to San Francisco, like the DJs from all over the world that make it a point to play at some of the city’s venues - from those as small as ANU to the ones as large as Ten 15 - just to experience the aura that has been so celebrated.

“this huge infection of ‘80s remixes has been about “artistic confusion”

Jondi

When You Come to San Francisco

Yet, the city is unlike many others; the people here know the sounds, the DJs, and even the producers to a certain extent. They know what they like and what they don’t. “It’s a picky scene because the local talent is so good here and there’s so much of it, so you have to be on your toes to play the San Francisco crowd because they’re so sophisticated” says Jondi.

At the same time, it’s almost like a challenge to the DJs as this is not their usual crowd. Can they pull a crowd in where they normally don’t play at? Can they maintain the crowd’s attention? Or can they offer them music they haven’t heard yet, much less put together a set, maybe even a full night of quality music to a group of devoted listeners. If he or she can’t, “their reputation will begin to suffer and it’ll begin in SF” explains Spesh. Even afterwards, you still need to do your best in entertaining the crowd, making them move and dance.

Play Nicely Together

“Competition is a reality in any city, but I think promoters, if you’re talking about the dance community, I think they generally play nice in the city from what I’ve heard. People in general are excellent to each other here, and maybe that’s a slightly rose color glasses to look at things, but comparatively that’s true” says Jondi.

With Spesh, “I think when you’re planning an event, you’re thinking about competition, but at the end of the day, you don’t really acknowledge it.” Promoters here, especially the elders understand the “give and take” effect of nurturing a scene and knowing that there’s enough to go around. A form of respect with one another that has also helped keep the underground dance scene healthy for the past 20 odd years now.

People like “Guiv Naimi, Peter Beckers, and Spundae. They have laid the best possible foundation or all of us,” says Spesh, but “I think you have to mention Om Records as being a huge presence in representing San Francisco” explains Jondi.

Being Qool

When I get to Looq itself and the Qool happy-hour parties in the city, it’s hard for most locals not to know the brand as they carry the best happy-hour the city offers with in excess of roughly 300 people dancing and smiling.

“Yeah, I think we have the benefit of tradition and doing it for a long time so there’s been a lot of time for the word to get out. And we’ve tried to be consistent in being good to people that come and people that play, and we try to have a policy of inclusion and diversity so I think those values are compatible to what young people feel in San Francisco. And we have a great location too. And great talent, there’s so much local talent” says Jondi.

Jondi and Spesh are no newbies in the party scene, giving their Qool parties a lasting appeal that has stood for nearly a decade. The philosophy of Qool, as Jondi describes it, is “it’s your club – clubbing for the people.” More about the people than the DJs that come and play, it's a simple formula that has helped catapult them to icons in the city.

Out the corner of my right eye, I suddenly see Spesh grinning, real hard like a Cheshire cat because of how eloquently, “it’s a participate defined event”, Jondi has described the Qool parties. It’s a grin that shows how proud he is of Jondi’s calm and collected manner.

I later find that the word Looq originated from Jondi watching a Norwegian ski jumping competition. How utterly strange and bizarre I thought, and Jondi’s giggles confirm the oddity that infects the Looq offices. In their early thirties, Jondi and Spesh are still young boys at heart who get to create and play the music that they love.

This then brings me to ask about their latest artist album “Answer”, which is much different than their previous two. “Well we made an effort to make a listening album. Umm, you know, with that weird taste, and I dunno if it’ll ever really be commercial because we’re just left-of-center” says Jondi, but “seriously, if we aimed for the center, we’d probably hit someone behind us” cracks Spesh.

“Yeah, but we’re making an effort in a listening album for the home or the car and its not a dance album, unlike “We Are Connected”, which was. That was basically taking dance singles and putting it into an album, so this was going into the studio with the idea of having a listening experience. Even though there are some dance tracks, that wasn’t the focus so much.”

America’s Not-So-Love-Affair with Dance Music

“Has it ever been mainstream?” proclaims Jondi and I say “Yes, to a certain extent in the late ‘90s.” Well, at least in America. It’s still odd that this country is always behind the world with what’s going on and dance music is no exception.

For Jondi he’s not too sure if dance music can ever reach its potential as seen overseas because America’s taste in music must have “personality with a voice in their pop music.” They’re more demanding than their European cousins in his ears. Yet, Spesh sees America as “a slow moving beast and it’s heading towards that (positive) direction, but it will take some time.”

“I remember skateboarding in the ‘70s and it was hugely popular and it was a fad and then it died, and then it came back and became mainstream, and I think there may be parallels there about dance music where it is yet to hit that “mainstream,” but there have been periods where we thought it was heading in that direction, but I kind of think operative words – “not yet.”

Though adding vocals have always helped get dance music some attention towards the commercial end of the spectrum, I asked the two if that might be the way to go about bringing resurgence to the masses.

“Well, I don’t think adding vocals automatically adds appeal to your music. It could make it a lot worse; it all depends on the quality, the song, the vocalist, and the writer. I think there’s some great dance records with vocals in it, and it doesn’t take away any integrity” says Jondi.

For Spesh, he appreciates that this has been a period of experimentation and vocals may be apart of it as it has been with Indie-Rock and Punk aesthetics, but the explosion of creativity has been both a positive and negative thing to him. In that case, what about the Electro bandwagon, or even the second coming of the ‘80s as it strikes backs in full force?

Jondi explains “when people don’t know how to go forward they go back. They revisit old forms and sometimes they take elements of those forms and you push them forward, but this huge infection of ‘80s remixes has been about “artistic confusion” and producers are like “well, the ‘80s were good”. But I think there’s been crappy and lazy remixes where they’re recycling those songs directly, and frankly, I’m sick of it, but what I think it’s about is “well, we're not going forward, so lets go back to these great songs then lets move forward.””

“I came to San Francisco to be closer to music. How I knew I was too far away was because I had to put tin foil on the tip of my antenna on my boombox in order to pull in the radio station on the music that I was listening to at the time”

Spesh

“Really it doesn’t matter what the 200,068 producers are doing that are making music that you don’t respond to and you can’t make your audience respond to, but it’s about the 100 producers that do make the music that is working for you and that’s what the DJ’s job is…. for producers, I say “Go for it, do what you think you’re meant to do on this planet, rock on with your bad self”” says Spesh.

With a current trend towards producers turned disc jockey’s, San Francisco has shifted gears with whom it brings in. Experimenting with different entertainers, the results have been hazy at best, but Jondi, a producer who has turned to DJing as well explains his take on it. “I think producers can bring things in DJing that may be a little different than those who started as a DJ, maybe they’ll bring a different perspective and more musical experience.”

Life After Sasha

What would an interview with two of San Francisco's most pivotal dance music pioneers be without a question about the compilation that put the city on the map to a new generation of dance music lovers - Global Underground San Francisco mixed by Sasha.

Many still seem to associate that sound with San Francisco but based on the current evolution of the city's scene, it would be short-sighted to think there isn't much more to the city.

A city known for its finger-lickin’ deep house and happy-go-lucky trance, Spesh believes, “it said to the international community that San Francisco wasn’t a boogie house ghetto. That San Franciscans were very accepting to a global sound”; a fact still very much true today as evidenced by the huge wave of interest in the Breaks scene.

With some of the biggest breaks DJs now showcasing the genre alongside the city’s signature deep house, for the boys of Qool, the diversity is a welcome addition to the club scene. Still, regardless of how the scene in San Francisco continues to evolve it seems we can be assured that Jondi and Spesh will definitely be there to lead the way.