Last Concert Café used to be my regular weekly haunt, back when my normal wardrobe was usually a Phish tour t-shirt and flip flops. Even though the days of $5 pitchers of Shiner and regular irresponsible behavior on weeknights are long gone, this venue and restaurant still hold a special place in my heart. I have no clue why we’ve waited so long to go to Praia Urbana. We know Praia has been going on for a good while. We’ve wanted to a couple of times, but have waited until the last minute and either gotten sticker shock or they’ve been totally sold out. Our paths just never crossed before.
We got there just in time to catch the awesome set of Mitch Fu, who is now quite possibly one of our favorite local DJs. It was early, and the venue was just starting to have the crowd slowly trickle in, but he didn’t hold back. As soon as we got our first beverage, he hit us with a sweet remix of Strings of Life, which is one of our favorite house classics. More, please! We danced practically the entire time, even before any liquid courage, as did he. This is a DJ that danced his entire set, and it’s sweet to see someone as into the music as we all were. This was going to be a good fucking night.
After Mitch’s set, we toggled between the main stage and side stage, mostly waiting for bathrooms and drinks, snacking on tacos, and shoving jello shots into the hands of our friends. We caught part of Bart Black, Bobby Blyss, Esteban Torres, and Barbuto (who came in from Austin for the show), and they were all on point. Texas DJs brought their big guns, and we experienced none of the usual lull before the headliners. The energy was there the entire night.
Then it was time; Green Velvet! We haven’t seen him since the days when every club night was just a smear of fuzzy memories, fat pants, and empty cigarette packs. It’s been a very long time. His music is the stuff that shaped our youth, his productions managed to get on every CD we bought or mixtape we got from friends or local DJs. If you’ve listened to his production and found it a shade minimal, trust there is no comparison to seeing the man live. It was packed with bodies wall to sandy wall, although, everyone was polite, and would not throw a fit if you wanted to get up front for a bit. Green Velvet played a bit of everything, he touched on mostly electro, tribal, and straight classic house feel. When he raised his headphones to his lips to use them as a microphone for “Flash,” there was pure joyful chaos, with every body moving. With the exception of “Flash,” I couldn’t tell you what he played specifically, but what I can tell you is that my feet/legs/sides were pretty pissed at me the next day. We did miss “La La Land” if he played it, we cut out a couple minutes early to beat the exodus. There were a LOT of people crammed into a neighborhood with very little parking. We headed off into the night, in search of Chinese food and a hot shower.
Oh yes, Praia Urbana, we will be back. We will buy our tickets early this time!
Journalist/blogger since 2009 and music lover since 1980. Bex now travels the world and writes and takes photos of dance events, creates art in various media, sings quietly to her cat in the shower, and occasionally builds something that tends to involve a blowtorch. She can usually be seen hiding behind some sort of camera rig.
