AS HE pushes his black bicycle along First Street in San Jose, between San Salvador and San Carlos, Lucas Rodenbush points out two old storefronts that were once Underground Records and Daleeps. The former was the record store, connected to the latter apparel store like two adjoining hotel rooms. This was where Rodenbush was introduced to the electronic music scene in the South Bay. Now, after living here for the better part of 20 years, the pioneering electronic artist—who records as E.B.E.—knows it inside and out.
To him, record stores have always been the hub of the electronic scene. “I used to work at a store called Solid Grooves,” he says. “When I was there, they hooked up the whole South Bay, and a lot of Bay Area would come to San Jose for the record stores.”
With record shops on the decline, though, the work of making the genre thrive here has been spread around. The South Bay dance-music scene, with its electronic, techno, dub-step and other subgenres, isn’t going to rival that of San Francisco or Los Angeles anytime soon. It’s a smaller but very active circuit, based mostly around club nights that feature popular local DJs and sometimes some fairly big-name visitors. Downtown San Jose’s the Cellar brings the bass every first and third Friday of the month for the Workout, for example, and Rodenbush himself has been featured at the Cardiff Lounge in Campbell—an incredibly intimate place to see an international recording artist, even a homegrown one. Now Rodenbush has taken it on himself to support the local scene, with a new South Bay–based label, Scenic Music, which will release “deep house”–style music that Rodenbush believes is bringing the most excitement and innovation to the electronic scene right now. He finds it has more substance and raw appeal than a lot of what today’s DJs are doing. “It’s a particular style of house music that is not concerned with being flashy or keeping people in pursuit of a stimulus but concerned with conveying a certain mood,” he says.
The label’s first release, by the Brunch Club, features Christian Hunt, the late Joel Starr (a San Jose native) and Rodenbush himself. A record-release party is set for April 10 in San Francisco at Remedy in the Destiny Lounge at Temple. Rodenbush is also planning three more releases before fall. The scene is also growing with the expansion of the Workout event at the Cellar at Agenda Lounge. Until recently, the Workout was held once a month, but in an effort to grow the party, it has expanded to every first and third Friday of the month. “Come have a couple drinks, and try not to dance,” challenged Perry Roush, one of the Workout’s organizers. “I know you’ll hear something that’ll make you wanna move.”
The scene’s growth here follows the emerging popularity of dance and electronic music within the last couple of years. With 2009’s It’s Blitz, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ catalog and range of sound evolved from art-punk garage rock to club-friendly dance floor fillers like “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll.”
As a whole, hip-hop is getting more electronic, what with Kanye West sampling Daft Punk on “Stronger,” and the chorus to Jay-Z’s “On to the Next One” borrowing from “D.A.N.C.E.” by Paris-based DJs Justice. E-40 and John Legend lent vocals on a couple tracks to Canada-based DJs MSTRKRFT’s recent album. A number of the Black Eyed Peas’ recent hits can be attributed in part to producer/DJ David Guetta infusing some electronic beats into their album The E.N.D.
And of course there’s the new mainstream popularity of crossover acts such as MGMT, Passion Pit and Kid Cudi. Locally, Campbell’s Limousines were the electropop Cinderella story of last year.
Rodenbush fondly remembers the early ’90s origins of the Bay Area’s dance scene: “It was a mixture of multimedia with this whole new musical sound and generation with savvy young people that were hip to technology but also community and universal love.”
