It's Friday night and the Daniel Webster in you is just rearing to go. Go? "Go where," you ask? Why would a party aficionado such as yourself waste precious nighttime hours wandering in search of the hottest spot? It simply would not do. Whether your sin of choice is shaking your tailfeather all night long or simply sharpening your pong skills with some good background tunes, there is a place on Webster Avenue to indulge all of your musical desires.
If you fancy a night of dirty dancing until the wee hours, the hedonistic haven you search for is Chi Gamma Epsilon. This fraternity is campus-renowned for its dance parties, with lines of ridiculously hot guys and gals extending out to the sidewalk just waiting to make the floor shake under their gyrating bodies. Hotter than the dancers though is the music; this is courtesy of resident disc jockey David Ofer '06.
Ofer has gotten on-the-job training, spending several years bouncing clubs to his beats before coming to Dartmouth.
"Playing songs and fading the next one in is not really a DJ-ing job. Some people even use computers; I call those DJs 'DJ Winamp.' Also you've got to be able to mix all sorts of music together like 'Sweet Home Alabama' with 50 Cent and it's got to blend nicely, so the beat never changes," Ofer said.
Even though Ofer is busy working on keeping those blends nice and crisp, he still has time to do some quick surveying of the crowd. He claims to have seen enough wild and crazy things to fill an entire book, but at Dartmouth in particular he cites the "number of kids who get decked out in their polo pastel shirt with the collar up and are [dressed] really preppy and then try to rap along with hardcore rappers like DMX."
It is also not uncommon to see people so into Ofer's beats that they fall off of the speaker that they are dancing on. It's not that the dancers are inebriated, it's just that Ofer's beats are too hot to handle! Cranking out tunes such as "Hey Ya" by Outkast and Usher's "Yeah," it is understandable that one might get a little overexcited. "People know the words and like to sing along with the songs," said Ofer.
Tri Kap is also known for throwing fierce dance parties that keep the house walls shaking until the sun comes up. Tri Kap deals almost exclusively in dance parties, and boasts three DJs in the house. The tunes tend to stay within the main stream MTV-style rap category, leaving most people screaming the words (or what they think are the words) at the top of their lungs. With tunes as catchy as "Get Low" by Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys or "Tipsy" by J-Kwon, who could resist?
"Dance parties give an urban vibe to the otherwise rural Hanover and I know a lot of the people at Dartmouth enjoy that. We also have an optimal venue to have big dance parties (a big living room, big basement, good location, etc)," said Christian Wylonis '06. If you're in the mood to shake your goodies, Tri Kap is definitely the place you want to be.
If you're not in the mood to get hot and heavy, then head on down the road to Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Conveniently close to Novack's blitz terminals and the late night vending machines, SAE is most well know for the several 1980s-themed dance parties they host. These parties feature live bands with the biggest hair you've ever seen, such as the recent Mullethead.
Don't be misled; at any point during the week, one can wander down into the comfortable basement and see familiar faces jamming out to normal, non-'80s tunes. One such mix is the Javy mix, created by Franco Reyna '06. Although not entirely representative of the SAE music scene, it still gets played if Franco can beat the other brothers to the stereo after meetings, much to the dismay of the other brothers. Matt Staffier '05 said, "I feel like I've watched it grow up, much like Javy himself. I remember a time last spring when it was only ten songs long and annoyed the hell out of me. Now his mix is at least 20 songs long, and it still annoys the hell out of me. In fact, so does Javy." Franco is aware of his mix's unpopularity, but said ,"I'm a minority at SAE -- in terms of my music and my complexion."
Wandering into the basement, you might hear tunes like "One Call Away' by Chingy, if Franco was lucky, or something more along the lines of Simple Plan, Something Corporate or Dashboard Confessional, if it wasn't his night. All of which, of course, make perfect pong music.
