17. Corey Black and Sunshine Jones (Imperial Dub)

17. Corey Black and Sunshine Jones (Imperial Dub)

They would have made a brilliant comedy duo – tiny, curled-lip Corey and massive, wigged-out Sunshine, both possessed of a scorched-earth sarcasm that was the yang to their stoner yin. As it happened they usually played back-to-back rather than side-to-side, but they complemented each other perfectly.

Most of the music I’ve danced to in clubs – maybe 90% -- could be fairly and simply characterized as very similar, musically anonymous house records played one after the other. There’s nothing wrong with those kind of DJs – I’ve had lots of great times in that setting -- but they’re certainly not in short supply, and only a few ever really leave an impression. Corey Black was a committed practitioner of this art. He had a new box full of dubby, smoky house records every time he played, and he played the hell out of them, mixing them with panache and never failing to conjure the quintessential west coast house vibe. He worked in a little record store that sold almost only this kind of tackle, and if the sun was up, he was in there, digging, memorizing, fine tuning. There were lots of more celebrated guys playing that sound in SF – Jenö, Joshua Iz, etc – but nobody had it sharpened to quite as fine a point as Corey Black.

His sessions might open for a Dubtribe live show, or occasionally for a closing DJ set from Sunshine and Moonbeam. It was a perfect setup, 2 hours of precision San Francisconess from this little hood-eyed punk rocker … and then on comes the hype man. Behind the decks Sunshine carried himself like a motivational speaker or a revival preacher. He entered the scene with 100% enthusiasm and full certainty that the crowd was coming with him. He didn’t do anything special, technically, but he made every record an event, his big body searching through crates with exaggerated motions, hunching down low to inspect grooves and levels, all the while shaking his curly mop and working himself into a smiling sweat.

In 2001, near the height of Dubtribe’s ‘Do It Now’ popularity, this lineup played San Francisco’s Club 6, a dirty hellhole of a club in a dirty hellhole of a neighborhood. The place was such a pit and the promotion so shoddy that it never filled up, and Corey handed over a good groove but no prospects of the venue getting past half full. Disappointment is death in clubbing, and this situation was ripe for it, but Sunshine shook into action like he was marching at the front of a parade, and the energy swept through the room and pressed hard against the low ceilings. He made no big departure from Corey’s template, but he was an ecstatic ringmaster who knew that time was short and disappointment was not an option.

Suddenly the perspective shifted: this wasn’t a half-empty club, this was the best kept secret of the year. Sunshine’s vibing, seemingly so inappropriate and over the top on arrival, would not be denied. An hour in we reached fever pitch, with irony, cool, and the thought of disappointment long since departed and forgotten. Sunshine declared victory with ‘Celebration’ by Kool & the Gang, and the moment was perfected. Do It Now.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/clubs-nightlife/dj-mix-sunshine-jones