About an hour before a swarm of college kids stampeded into his house with faces flushed the color of red Solo Cups, Michael Newman sat in his room relaxing, waiting for the dancing to begin.
Walking to the couch in his room is like walking through a forest of polyvinyl chloride and cardboard. Stacks and crates of records take up more floor space than his bed. Where a desk in an ordinary room would stand, turntables sit.
Newman, an English junior at UF, began hosting house parties with local disc jockeys last semester, and these parties are about as far from clubs as you can get. No bouncer. No DJ time slots. No plastic banners promoting the host. No need to wear anything other than what you wore that day.
Still, people dance. When the clock strikes drunk, the living room becomes their nightclub.
House shows have been part of Gainesville’s culture for years. With a handful of independent record labels in town and plenty of student bands, there seem to be parties every week with someone strumming a guitar in a kitchen or with a DJ spinning records by a shed. In fact, the second I began writing this story, a band next door began its set in the backyard, which party-goers soon followed with a sing-along to “Purple Rain.”
Newman got into music when he was about 12 years old. He started going to shows at Sound Idea, a since-closed punk record shop and venue in Brandon, Fla., known for spawning the kind of people in Penelope Spheeris’ “The Decline of Western Civilization.”
Newman told me about a kid he met at Sound Idea named Hans who once drank antifreeze and, when he realized it wasn’t such a sound idea, called a poison control center.
It was at this record shop where Newman was introduced to vinyl. “For a while, I really only listened to punk, metal and hardcore,” he said.
But eventually, he branched out when he began to DJ, getting into funk, hip-hop and soul.
A little after midnight, it was like a party bomb went off in Newman’s house. Like shrapnel, people spread into the backyard and into the crevices of his house.
A girl with a giant rodent-shaped backpack and a hat with antlers danced outside by the fire to the music flooding from inside the house. Inside, Newman did what he loves, what he tries to do whenever he saves up enough cash to get a keg, which on that night turned-out to be more than he expected. No worries — his friend put $60 into the pot. The party must go on.
Newman spun music in the corner of the living room. Party-goers moved furniture to the side to make way for jumping bodies, flying arms and swinging hips.
Live music is the element that gives the party something that gets lost with iPods, Newman said.
“It’s no fun just to do it with an iPod,” he explained. “It’s always better to have a flow without constant cuts every three or four songs — someone who wants to switch the song when it’s in the good part.”
Molly Ryan, a UF women’s studies major, began going to house shows this summer and found herself at Newman’s place Saturday night.
“I like the intimate feel of seeing a band or DJ in a house,” Ryan said, moments before she made her way into the living room to dance.
“It’s more spontaneous,” she said. “Who cares what you look like when you’re dancing around a bunch of drunken friends in a living room.”
