From promoter to music blogger, international DJ Dave Vega has done it all.
It started pretty innocently for Vega in southern Germany, where he grew up. Organizing illegal techno parties and pumping bass so loud nearby villages could hear, would eventually lead to a long-standing career as a DJ and producer. Vega’s played some cool gigs, from Barcelona to Space in Ibiza, but since 2007 he calls Berlin his clubland and home.
Now, Vega is coming to Bangkok. On Friday, he’ll be headlining at Glow Nightclub supported by the sweet and sultry With Love, including Pepe, Panda and the lot. For Vega, this is his second “business trip” to Thailand and less impromptu than the first. We took some time to catch up on just how Berlin is treating him.
Tell us about how you got started into the club scene.
I started as a teenager who went out to a lot to techno parties with friends. When my friends started to DJ we organized our own venues. We were a big group and our outdoor parties got really successful. We had no clue sometimes where all these people came from, I didn’t live in a big city and getting over 1,000 people somewhere out to No Man’s Land is not easy. On top, that was before Facebook, smartphones and mobile navigation. So sometimes these people were driving around for hours, all excited to find the crazy party!
We put a lot of effort into decorating with weird lights and other stuff. The parties took place in the woods, on rocks or on the beaches and after we installed everything the places looked totally different than before, like an artificial world. From my perspective, today it was maybe a little bit too hippy but people loved it and stayed forever.
How did first being a promoter help you as a DJ?
Organizing parties helped me to get my first gigs, for sure. That’s also how I got finally in contact Playhouse, the label I worked for for over five years. The label hosted its own nights in some of the best clubs in Germany, the Robert Johnson, the famous Panorama Bar and the Harry Klein in Munich, so I had the chance to play in these places for the first time. And because they liked it, I am still playing there even when I stopped working for the label. So yes, it definitely opened the door.
So you’ve done everything from making parties, making music and even writing about it. What do you like the best?
I prefer to be connected to a crowd, feel the energy of the night and the people, and tell them a story with my music and not with my writing. Organizing parties is also not so much fun, especially our outdoor events were always risky. How is the weather going to be, are the cops going to come? Can we sell enough drinks to cover the costs?
Today the life of a promoter is not easy as well, so much competition out there. The fees for bigger artists are getting ridiculously high and you still don’t know if you book that artist that enough people will come in the end.
As for writing, I was working for different music blogs and smaller magazines back in the day, but I have to admit that writing about music was not so easy for me. I did some nice interviews with interesting people like Ricardo Villalobos, for example. But I am more happy as an active DJ and producer now. I would rather make things happen by myself than talk about them.
Berlin’s got a famous club scene. Describe what’s so great about it for us.
Berlin has a lof of tourists that are only coming because the famous club scene. That’s good, because we have full clubs all year, and not only seasonally. The party crowd is also very international in Berlin, a lot of people from Spain, Italy, the UK, USA, and other countries visiting just to get trashed.
The other big difference is the opening times of the bigger clubs are pretty unique here. The Berghain and Panorama Bar, for example, open Friday night at midnight, and close the next days around midday. Then, they open again Saturday at midnight and stay open until Monday morning sometimes until midday. That’s a long time you can stay in a club, and you can’t find that anywhere else in the world.
The Panorama Bar has a dark room where you can have sex with people, on the bar they give out condoms and plastic gloves, if you want. Sounds pretty nasty but it has its charm … the vibe is really sexual, hard techno downstairs and more house music upstairs, beautiful and stylish people everywhere… For me, for sure, it’s the best club in the world. Everyone is the same, no table service, no VIP area… If you are unemployed or a millionaire, you get the same treatment. My residency is at the Weekend Club at Alexander Platz, they have two floors and an amazing rooftop where you can see the whole city.
If you live and go out in Berlin, it’s hard to have fun somewhere else, because the level of going out is so high. Completely different than in most of the other German cities where the audience is sometimes really young and not so good dressed, let’s keep it at that… !
So Mr. Vega, why come to Bangkok?
Because I played here before in June for the guys from With Love and they invited me again. I love Thailand, spent some time here already and Bangkok is one of the best cities in the world. I would love to play here even more often, a pity it’s such a ride from Berlin…
What are you up to right now?
I’m working on a double mix CD for MINISTRY OF SOUND right now. The CD is called SOUNDS OF BERLIN and i am collecting tracks at the moment. One CD will show a night like i would play here, something from deep house to techno. And the other CD will be more an after-hours vibe, trippy and weird. Music you can listen on a Monday morning in one of the famous after-hours parties here in Berlin.
What are you listening to right now?
Right now, I’m listening again to more techno than house. I like old school tough sounds, thats why I also play a lot of old music in my sets. I like to play a range somehow between deep house and techno. it depends on the night and the situation, of course. How I feel that night or what I think the people want. Sometimes I play really deep and trippy, sometimes I am in the mood for pumping it up … Overall, I like energetic mixes.
