I Love Optimo. Is It All Over My Face?

Optimo
The Paradise @ Key West
10/19/06

First things first, sorry for some misinfo-- there was a change in venue that we only found out about a couple of nights before the show. But Paradise @ Key West was definitely the right place for Optimo. The walls of the dance floor are covered in mirrors. They used a lot of strobe light. You get the idea, if not, it was like a funhouse. And props to the club, which is usually 100% gay, welcoming straight people in its doors. And props to the straight people for going.

As for Optimo, I think they put forth the best DJ sets for a couple of reasons:
1. They simply have the most diverse, most obscure, consequently the best, taste in dance music.
2. They structure their sets better than any other DJs.

1. The mixing was pretty heavy, so it was hard to discern what exactly they were playing, but there was definitely some Tropicalia. Wilkes included in his set, get ready, what sounded like an Aaliyah cut, again apologies, I being too fucked to recognize which, but at the very least it was an old, dirty Timbo beat with female vocals (so not "Promiscuous Girl"). He then played Loose Joints' "Is It All Over My Face?". Nobody in Philly plays that song. I love that song. Twitch held his own playing the Lindstrom remix of "Tribulations", which I still think is Lindie's best remix-- it always seemed to me to rock (Good) a little more than it rolled (Not so good), due to its in-your-face bass line. Twitch also dropped the new Soulwax "Ravelight" dub mix of Robbie Williams' "Lovelight", one of the few tracks that "Nuts!" accurately describes.

2. Optimo knew that they had a tough task at the Paradise-- a Thursday night crowd, some of whom needed to wake up at 8 in the morning and go to work. People couldn't be swinging from speakers like they were when Optimo played the Khyber on a Saturday night in Feb. The first half hour of the set went from upbeat to downtempo, i.e. the Timbo beat. Optimo were forcing us to take a breather. Then Loose Joints came on and the crowd started perking up again, and they perked for a long time, until about 20 minutes before closing, when Twitch put "Lovelight" on and Al Qaeda-ed the place. But they left time for a cool down, some crate-dug rock and The Cure. They satisfied the crowd's need to rave, then restored them to balance and the realization that it might be to their (OK my) benefit to stop the reveling sometime and go to work. Summed up: Thursday night moderatio, the graph of sine.