Ovum Records celebrates 15-years with their 14th-annual Ovum Party on Wednesday, March 24th. The festivities take place at Shine nightclub in the Shelborne Beach Resort Hotel from 10 pm to 5 am. In the main room, Josh Wink vs. Steve Bug, Nic Fanciulli vs. Joris Voorn, David Squillace vs D’Julz and Luis Bacchetti. DJ Sneak, Doc Martin and Manik are in the lounge.

Josh Wink recently announced the opening of the Josh Wink store online, where you can pick up the Banana T-shirt to show your a fan of Josh’s new studio album, When A Banana Was Just A Banana.”

Follow Ovum on Facebook Page: ovumrecordings or on Twitter @ovumrecordings. Follow Josh Wink on Facebook: JoshWinkOfficial or Twitter @JoshWink1.

Take a listen to these tracks from the new album in the Beatport player below.

Josh Wink Resident Advisor Podcast

Looking for something to do on Thanksgiving Eve next week? The Bowery, Pacha NYC and Terminal 5 have teamed up to bring you and evening of hyped beats and funky sounds from everyone’s musical maestro of the moment, Deadmau5. Alongside will be U.K. funkmaster, BURNS, who’s Parisian-style funk melded with UK disco-filtered house is rocking dance floors around the world.

BURNS has been busy remixing the sounds of Ladyhawke, Jack Spalsh feat. Missy Elliot, Passion Pit, The Gossip, Kasabian, White Lies, FrankMusic, and Calvin Harris.

Take a listen to BURNS Pre Party Jamz set recently featured on NickyDigital.com.

NickyDigital_Pre_Pre_Party_Jamz_ BURNS

Now for something we didn’t know…Birmingham U.K. producer/dj, Kim Fai! He’s listed on the bill along with Sleepy & Boo. This cat is sick! We just checked out his tracks on his MySpace. What! Yo…crazy! His remix of the balearic classics Inner City Good Life and the Paul Thomas & Myke Smith remake of Atlantic Ocean Waterfall are incredible. He’s got a bunch of tracks out, including Drug Music 2009 with Mark Knight from Toolroom Knights on the vocal. We hadn’t heard his remix of Funkagenda’s “What the F*@&k.” We found the YouTube track and it’s served up in this post. Very deep, dark and certainly underground.

It is said that the music genre of Hip-Hop was born the night of August 11, 1973, when a young DJ named Kool Herc organized a party in the recreation room of a housing development at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue (New York Magazine story). 36-years have passed since that seminal moment in music history and African-American culture, and various efforts along the way have tried to capture Hip-Hop’s momentous contribution in the form of a museum. No one has gotten as far as the current organizers of the movement to create the National Museum of Hip-Hop. (Facebook | Twitter).

For the past five years, the museum’s organizers have been painstakingly planning a physical, interactive museum and cultural center to cement Hip-Hop’s rightful place in history. From meetings with Hip-Hop’s early pioneers to New York City’s office of Economic Development, the NMoH team are working through the process to make the museum a reality.

Prior efforts to create a Hip-Hop institution have been dogged by lack of funds, political issues, or the absence of a qualified team to pull it all together. Many of the pioneers of Hip-Hop had been unable or unwilling to agree to participate for one reason or another. Some of the early stars of Hip-Hop, who never enjoyed the financial success of today’s rap superstars, understandably want to make sure they are compensated for their participation. On the business side, label executives see the possible financial upside of a commercial enterprise, advocate for a Hip-Hop Hall of Fame, where they can clearly monetize Hip-Hop through a flagship restaurant, merchandise and other commercial activities.

On the political side, there’s heated discussion about where the museum should be located. In the Bronx, the birthplace of Hip-Hop? Brooklyn, where Jay-Z and Biggie emanated from? Or, Queens where Run D.M.C. were born? And, Staten Island is always a long shot, because of ease of access. All signs are pointing to Manhattan for now. Hip-Hop is a global phenomenon. Although the museum would certainly benefit any borough, the political and financial realities of a Manhattan location, with possible smaller borough-based satellites makes sense economically. Tourism will be an important driver and the museum’s success depends on being accessible to visitors from around the world.

To kick off fund raising for construction of the museum and drive awareness for the museum’s cultural programs and community-based initiatives, the organizers are planning a black-tie event, slated for February 9th at M2 UltraLounge on Manhattan’s West Side. Chuck D and KRS-One will host the star-studded event. Confirmed guests include Big Daddy Kane, the Cold Crush Brothers, members of the Rock Steady Crew, MC Lyte, Rakim, DJ Red Alert, Ralph McDaniels, The Roots, and Redman. The events co-chairs include, Bill Adler, Dr. Ben Chavis, Andre Harrell, Afrika Bambaataa, Terry Stewart and Jim Fricke.

“The timing is perfect for the development of a museum that will preserve the great culture of Hip-Hop, a museum that will serve as not only a beacon for Hip-Hop’s achievements but also as a hub for community enlistment,” said NMoH President Craig Wilson.

The project’s Advisory Board includes Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons; political activist Dr. Ben Chavis; Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell; Leyla Turkkan, C.E.O. and President of PR/Marketing firm The Catalyst Group; Hip-Hop curator, journalist and publicist Bill Adler; Bob Santelli, executive director of the Grammy Museum; and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s President and C.E.O. Terry Stewart.

For more information on the National Museum of Hip, please sign up on their Facebook page located at http://www.facebook.com/hiphopmuseum or follow their announcements through @NMoH on Twitter. NHoH’s proper web site is coming soon at http://www.hiphopmuseum.org.

(Disclosure: Netmix founder, Tony Zeoli, is also acting Director of Interactive for the National Museum of Hip-Hop.)

The Empire Hotel’s roof top played host to the One Night in St Tropez Tour on Thursday evening. Dane Cook rolled in with an impressive entourage after his performance at Madison Square Garden, the Sex in the City cast was in attendance as were Janeane Garofalo and Mike Epps with entourage in tow. Promoter / hosts Jewels Ferante, Jon Paul Pezzo, Poppa Pri and Eric Scucci get a boat load of credit for tastefully juggled the paparazzi, models and socialites all night. The late great DJ AM had plans to work on future One Night in St Tropez events. All but being handed the thrown, DJ Kenny Summit rocked the celebrity filled gala in a very impressive manner, spinning everything from early 90s hiphop to daft punk, rock, house and everything in between (all while wearing a RIP DJ AM pin on his shirt).

- Contributed to Netmix by Oscar for Katrina Public Relations

On the Grind…Building!

For the past six week, some of you may have noticed a bit of a slowdown in posting to the Netmix blog. It’s not for lack of trying, I’ll tell you that much. It’s simply because I’ve been insanely busy with a couple of projects, and I have been too frazzled to sit and crank out a few posting.

I know, you say, “too busy?” Yes, too busy. In face, so busy that I missed the Electric Zoo Festival, which was something I was really looking forward to. Too busy, that in the last 30 days, I think I pulled a few 12-hour days and one 19-hour day. The latter killed me, because I didn’t leave my office until 7:30 AM, which was 19-hours after I’d gotten to the office the day before. Okay, I cheated by 1.5 hours. I took a little break to share a plate of Calimari with some friends at a local eatery. Rest assured, I jumped right back into work shortly thereafter.

What’s one to do when you’re so busy you can’t post to your own blog? I tried to enlist the help of a WordPress plug-in, FeedWordPress, which enabled me to aggregate RSS feeds from other sites to post to Netmix, but I stopped using it for a couple of reasons.

First, while FeedWordPress did a great job of ingesting posts from other sites for display on Netmix, it took the entire post from Billboard.com’s RSS service, which included both text and photos, instead of just a summary. I can’t be sure, but it seems as if Billboard.com’s RSS is displaying the full text with images of articles, and not the text summary. For legal reason, I did not want to infringe on Billboard’s copyright by using their content without permission. Because it was an automated tool, I didn’t have the time to go in and credit each news service pinged. After adding multiple services, I realized there were so many posts, it would have just taken way too much time to go through each one to post an attribution, so I gave it the old heave-ho and deleted it.

A second and equally important reason, is because FeedWordPress was causing a harsh php scriptiong error affecting the Netmix home page load incorrectly. Each time the page loaded with php parsing error, it affected Netmix’s page view stats with our analytics program. Certainly a very serious issue.

Lastly, the content coming through these feeds was of relatively little interest to the DJ culture community. It’s all pop crap, right? Netmix has always been committed first and foremost to DJ culture and not general music news. There are a few competitors out there already that do a pretty good job of covering music news. You know, Billboard, MTV, Yahoo! Music, AOL Music and the like. Yeah, I could go head to head, but…er…no, thank you. I’m just kidding, of course. It’s just little’ol me plugging away on Netmix whenever the urge arises. I couldn’t be bothered covering what a “jackass” Kanye West was, who’s getting divorced, or whic faux pas some superstar artist committed. Not my bag, man. We’ll stick to DJ oriented stuff here.

What’s New

There’s a few new things I want to tell you about.

1. 20dot20

The first is an industry networking event the guys and Habitat Music and I launched four months ago. I know—not a peep here about it on Netmix. Crazy, right? That’s what happens when you’re juggling multiple Twitter feeds (@djtonyz, @netmix, @twiijdj and @eroticdisco, blogs, my Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, Tribe.com, Ping.fm, LinkedIn, Plaxo and all the other Web 2.0 sites that are keeping me crazy busy.

Fortunately, we’ve been documenting everything over at 20dot20′s web site (http://www.2odot20.com). We’re very proud of this event, which is the buzz of the advertising music industry.

The event takes place the last Thursday of the month. We were located at 20 W. 20th, however, we just gave up the space and are moving the event to 95 Morton St. in the interim. Check the 20dot20.com Web site for event details and to sign up to the event or receive email notifications of future events. Here is the invite link: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/431022199

2. National Museum of Hip Hop

For the past four months, I’ve been assisting the organizers of the National Museum of Hip Hop with their online strategy. We’re in the process of developing their Web site, which will be tentatively located at http://www.hiphopmuseum.org. The group is planning its fund raising campaign with a a gala event on November 10 at M2 UltraLounge in New York City. Stay tuned for more details and the Web site launch in just a week or so!

3. Twiij.com

In the spirit of UltraLight Startups, a New York City small business networking event focused on entrepreneurs bootstrapping their ideas with a few bucks and some wind at their backs, I threw $500 an idea at the wall and got Twiij.com to show for it. What’s Twiij? It’s a Twitter-based music promotion service, where anyone can Tweet their tracks to DJs following our Twitter account: @TwiijDJ. With hundreds of DJs following, you can simply fill out the form. Twiij shortens your URL using the Bit.ly API, and through an online form service creates all the hash (#) tags. Hit submit and watch your Tweet roll out in our feed, where DJs following can pick up on the new music. Think of it as the first Twitter record pool for DJs. Just go to http://www.twiij.com to Tweet your track.

4. EroticDisco

There’s been an explosion of talented female DJs around the world. You can find a few sites dedicated wholly to female DJs, like the popular SheJay.com. One day last year, I was putzing around the Web, thinking up ideas for new sites. I’d been listing to an old Vanessa Dauo album, inspired by the poetry of Erica Jong. That gave the idea for EroticDisco. I completely understand that some people think the word “erotic” followed by the word “disco,” means that it’s some kind of porno site, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind. However, I do want to focus on the fashion of female DJs, because I think that’s going to be a driver for young women who are interested in DJ culture.

My girlfriend, bless her heart, thinks that EroticDisco.com should cover ALL female DJs, no matter what they look like. Well, that’s what SheJay is for. We’re trying to be a little different and focus on the fashion, the style AND the music. It’s my editorial vision for the site to focus on stylish, attractive women who are also slamming DJs. Call it whatever you want. If you’re not feeling it, then may I suggest that you start your own Web site. There are thousands of ways to launch your own Web site nowadays, it shouldn’t be too hard. Just don’t hate the player, hate the game! We’re just trying to have a little fun in all the seriousness.

Wrap-Up

Yes, we’ve been GRINDING it out this summer! That’s for sure. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve been in the studio with DJ Ming working on some music. And, I’ve been helping my friends with their sites: TrendyMommies.com, 622Photography.com, and MelibeeGlobal.com.

I’ve also started developing our NetmixMedia.com corporate site, which is the parent org of this site, Netmix.com, and Twiij.com, DJGig.com (coming soon) and SoundsSocial (also coming soon).

This, and all the work I’m doing with Zaah Technologies at Lead User Experience Architect, which includes a bunch of sites that I can’t disclose, but they are all pretty big projects and we’re doing some fun stuff!

That’s a wrap. Stay tuned, because I’m going to be kicking it a bit more here on the blog in the next few weeks! Apologies for disappearing for a minute, but you can see why. It’s been mad hectic, for sure!

– by Tony Z.

We’ve posted about this a few times already this summer. Sorry for the repetitive info, but Made Events keep announcing new acts for its huge, Electric Zoo Festival, an open air music festival taking place on Randall’s Island Park over Labor Day weekend: Saturday, September 5th and Sunday, September 6th, 2009 – 12 noon to 11 pm both days!

What else can we say about this festival that the press release doesn’t say already:

“The world’s No.1 DJ ARMIN VAN BUUREN and French superstar house music sensation DAVID GUETTA will helm an unprecedented line-up of over 50+ artists across multiple stages, covering all genres; House, Techno, Trance, Electro, and Indie, including DJs and live acts.

The latest notable additions to the massive line-up. On Saturday, the festival kicks off with Buzzin’ Fly label head and Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt, Deep Space dub master Francois K, pioneering Rhythm & Sound’s Mark Ernestus featuring Milton Henry, Berlin’s first lady of techno, Cassy, and rising Detroit/Berlin transplant Seth Troxler. On Sunday, the newest additions include; a DJ set from British electropop band Hot Chip’s Felix Martin & Al Doyle, Norway’s space-disco kings Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, and NYC’s own burgeoning star Jason Jollins.

Tickets for ELECTRIC ZOO are currently available as single-day passes at $55 and double-pak two-day passes at $100 for General Admission. VIP single-day passes are available at $120 and VIP double-pak two-day passes at $225. VIP passes include a separate VIP entrance, access to VIP lounge with private cash bar, exclusive viewing area at main stage and access to VIP-only deluxe bathrooms. Tickets are available at www.electriczoofestival.com.

Randall’s Island is accessible by car, bus, pedestrian and ferry. Follow Electric Zoo on Twitter: twitter.com/ElectricZooNY.

Daryl Marcus presents GROOVY at Bar 13. Tonight’s event is a fundraiser to benefit the familes of Octavia Saint Laurent a fixture in the house music scene for over 20 years. Octavia passed away on May 17, 2009. As far as we’re aware, no details have surfaced as to the cause of death.

The event showcases 20 different Guest DJs on 3 floors of music from house to hip hop. There will be surprise vocal performances all night on the Bar 13 rooftop (moved inside if it rains). DJs Jellybean Benitez and Hex Hector wlil be spinning with Andre Collins of The Warehouse and Better Days. More surprise DJs are in the works, but no news yet from the Daryl on who those will be. I guess you should show up to find out. Work!

Octavia St. Laurent is a transgendered fashion model, nightlife maven and activist featured in the 1990 film, Paris is Burning, by Jenne Livingston.

Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the poor, African American and Latino gay and transgendered community involved in it. Many consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the “Golden Age” of New York City drag balls, as well as a thoughtful exploration of race, class, and gender in America. – (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Is_Burning_(film))

St. Laurent was a fixture in the transgender, gay, lesbian and bi-sexual “ballroom” community also known as “ball culture.”

Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground LGBT subculture in the United States in which people “walk” (i.e. compete) for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while in various genres of drag often trying to pass as a specific gender and social class. Most people involved with ball culture belong to “houses” led by a single leader. – (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_culture).

Why is “ball culture” important? From the early 70′s to the today, the LGBT community has driven dance music and DJ culture in the United States and around the world. Growing out of the Disco movement of the 70′s, House Music and the nightclubs, bars and other indoor and outdoor events and venues that feature the music have been part of the social fabric of this specific community, which influences the larger electronic music movement world wide. As mainstream Ameria has turned to Hip Hop and Rap as it’s primary form of popular music, the LGBT community has never wavered from its support of Dance and Eectronic music. It’s important to understand how this group’s embrace of DJ culture fueled and continues to support the music and the lifestyle. Individuals like Octavia St. Laurent are notable for their celebrity status within house music sub-culture, as they are the drivers of the fasion, dance (Vogue) and attitude that supports nightlife as part of the entertainment arts that we continue to enjoy today.

Here are some links for you to check out:

• Michael Musto / Village Voice
• The Vine
• Octavia Saint Laurent – Wikipedia
• IMDB – Octavia Saint Laurent
• Brooklyn Blues Blog
• TransGRiot Video Clips Collection

Watch the YouTube video from Paris Is Burning:

– by Tony Z.

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