The sun is setting behind the Danger! Danger! house, and a few residents are helping bands lug guitar stacks, bass amps, and other equipment out of a white van parked outside.
"Hey Pony Pants!" yells one passerby towards the group. The band's lead singer Emily J.K. returns the call with a quick wave as she hoists heavy boxes up the back porch steps.
Located in a quaint residential area, the Danger! Danger! house seems unremarkable on the corner of 47th Street and Warrington Avenue. But behind the unassuming facade is one of the most popular venues of West Philly's burgeoning house show scene. The seven residents, whose history together stretches as far back as middle school, have become seasoned concert promoters. On February 16 and 17, after months of meticulous planning, coordination and preparation, they hosted the two-day Aquarius Fest. For the second year in a row, the festival brings over 20 bands to their living room and basement. Tonight, local favorites play alongside touring bands from New York, Baltimore and Providence.
Russell Brodie, unofficial house spokesman and member of in-house band Grandchildren, spearheaded this ambitious project. "I just started inviting bands that I had been hearing a lot about," Brodie said. "It was like trying to put together a regional showcase.
"It wasn't as difficult as one would imagine - just a lot of stress and time put in to getting everything coordinated. We've done the Aquarius Fest in the past, so we knew what to expect."
On Friday night, Danger! Danger! housemates welcome anyone wandering in with warm smiles. "All donations go to touring bands, so please give as much as you can. Take stickers, take buttons, and take some of these bagels."
By 10 p.m., a large crowd has gathered inside. Wallflowers who can't handle the crowded hallways withdraw to the back porch, warming themselves with alcohol and cigarettes. Bikers lock their fixed gear rides to the chain-link fence outside, give wary glances to those huddled in the cold, and strolled right in.
Long time regulars arrive to find a completely renovated basement. Lime green now clashes with lavender and violet on the freshly painted walls. A mosaic-like fence, painted in the same colors, protects the PVC pipes from the often raucous crowds. Stickers from local promoter Badmaster are posted alongside random graffiti tags and scribbles on vents and ceilings. It's a setting well fit for the strange and enchanting events that would transpire within these walls.
Friday night headliners Genghis Tron can't get 30 seconds into the opening song before hoards of kids flooded the stage and knocked out the guitar plugs from the floor pedals. These mishaps would be a major setback for most bands, but here such hazardous accidents are not only expected, but applauded. With the crowd so close, things are bound to get wild.
A mixed bag of locals make their rounds throughout the house. Quirky kids dressed in plaid button-downs and one-size-too-small hoodies mingled with their peers, shifting their attention between the performers in front and their small circle of friends, cracking jokes and taking pictures of themselves. An old man in the kitchen reminisced with two teenagers about his first basement shows.
The following night, Athletic Automaton of Providence, RI rocked the living room with their blend of angular drone and bombastic drumming. Drummer Patrick Crump played with the intensity of a young Michael Jordan driving for the net, tongue outstretched and eyes ablaze. You could feel the cymbals crash, the toms boom, and the snares snap with each bounding hit.
Brodie could be seen scrambling around the house making sure all was in order. The tight scheduling had him dashing from the basement to the living room and back, squeezing in time here and there to enjoy the music.
As hometown heroes Northern Liberties performed upstairs, a man known only as Omar could be seen yelling incoherently to himself, edging his way to the front of the room, gazing intently at the band and crowd with equal curiosity. Grinning with all his teeth, Omar enticed the crowd to sway back and forth to the rhythmic churning of the music. The room took on a life of its own, an organic mass swelling forward, then retreating back.
"Omar is sort of in-your-face. He really likes attention," says Jesse Christ. He helps run Haus 409, another West Philadelphia venue. "He comes here and just harasses everybody."
A grizzly and unkempt vagrant, Omar no doubt wears the same disheveled outfit for days on end. One could easily mistake him for an aging relic yearning to connect with the flocks of prepubescent teens that still bear their adolescent acne and patchy whiskers at every show with ironic pride.
Omar is now a familiar face in these West Philly homes, drawn to the vibrant scenes and energetic kids that gather in basements, living rooms, attics and kitchens. He's become an informal symbol of the fast-growing, highly original local music scene.
Here, performers wear Donnie Darko-like animal masks, matching basketball jerseys, vampire capes, and Cinderella ballroom gowns. They cater to aspiring artists, punks, hipsters, activists, and local musicians. They play music that runs the gamut from "glitch-hop" to "future shock." In West Philadelphia's house show scene, there isn't much room for the conventional.
You won't find advertisements for these shows in Philadelphia Weekly; you won't purchase tickets from Ticketmaster or Ticketweb. The best guides are the scattered leaflets posted on telephone poles and stuck on Postal Service mailboxes as far north as Filbert Street and as far south as Baltimore Avenue. Spotty addresses and vague descriptions are the only clues to what's happening every night in this generally quiet, Victorian neighborhood. Hidden streets and back alleys conceal a welcoming subculture that's gaining ground in the city's cultural scene.
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Along with posters and flyers, the West Philadelphia Do-It-Yourself (DIY) scene owes a lot of its success to online networking. MySpace has been the obvious medium, with its ease of use, bulletin board system and essential music pages. It has become an amazing tool, connecting venues to bands to fans. Quick previews of the bands that will be performing on a given night make or break attendance, and bands show little restraint in spamming comment-walls with digital advertisements for upcoming shows that link to their own page. The Internet has brought in bigger crowds, and it's also helped make a cohesive community out of a number of scattered, informal venues.
The best example may be Chris Conaway's DIY Philly MySpace page (myspace.com/diyphilly), which pools information about house shows onto a single page. At first, he saw the site as a useful way to plan his evenings. "I was tired of deciding against conflicting shows on either side of West Philly. This would help me and others know what houses would be having shows and events on a given night." This West Philly "community calendar" has allowed other houses to coordinate performances by avoiding overlap. His site is a modern day kitchen refrigerator, where bands and promoters can tack electronic post-it notes by way of MySpace comments and Photoshopped flyers.
Philly's house show scene isn't the first of its kind, but it's come to stand out among its peers. Aron Wahl of Brooklyn band Big A little a remarked on the differences he has seen between the Philadelphia DIY scene and the one in New York. "It seems to be a lot more varied than the DIY scene [in Brooklyn]. In NYC, the scene is much more consolidated. Most DIY shows happen through one promoter at a handful of spots. This is probably because cops, a shortage of space, zoning laws, and yuppie neighbors that complain about noise make it hard to operate a DIY space."
The same risk loom for Philadelphia. Danger! Danger! owes its existence to crackdowns by the Philadelphia Department of Licenscing and Inspection (PDLI). After the major venue South Philadelphia Athenaeum was shut down in September, 2005, a number of its regular acts moved to 900 W. 47th. "The Lieutenant Inspector of Licensing and Inspection was there with the South Philadelphia police," Brodie explained. "They busted down the door with their guns drawn in the middle of the night." The house, as it turned out, hadn't been zoned for residence. From that moment on, Danger! Danger! became the go-to house for rising stars in the underground music scene.
House shows have come and gone through the decades, but the current scene is indebted to the work of three young men and their now legendary West Philly venue, Stalag 13. From 1994 to 1998, Stalag 13 became the epicenter for Philadelphia punk, hardcore, metal and ska. Its residents independently organized shows in their own home. Stalag, along with neighbor Kill Time, were the hot spots for Philly DIY shows. They hosted socially conscious bands, tired of rampant consumerism and conformist ideology inundating their community, to promote their positive messages of self-reliance, compassion and good clean fun.
Local bands The Stickmen and Dysrhymeria rose to legendary status and helped put West Philadelphia DIY on the map, but it was by the grassroots advertising campaigns of then-novice promoters Sean Agnew, Tony Pointless and Andrew Martini that it achieved some broader visibility. They helped proliferate the DIY mentality with the help of similar houses. Sean Agnew went on to found juggernaut Philadelphia promoter, R5 Productions, now the second-largest concert promoter after Clear Channel. These pioneer houses were deemed "illegal" by the PDLI and forced to relocate to South Philadelphia. But after a short hiatus, DIY has come back to West Philly stronger and more organized than ever.
Today's house scene's ballooning visibility, though, could end up spelling its demise by attracting similar attention from city authorities. None have the legal capacity for the amount of people that attend their shows. The consequences of police raids can be as mild as the event being shut down, or as severe as having all residents fined and evicted. "I never realized how illegal these shows are - not just about underage drinking, but the sheer number of people in here. So many fire code and safety violations are being broken at this moment," remarked Jim Goldblum, a Penn senior and Aquarius Fest attendee.
International stars Bonde Do Role are scheduled to play Danger! Danger! on March 29th, but a recent crackdown by city officials has left fans worried that this show might be the house's last. Brodie, however, finds no reason to be alarmed. "We have to keep going . You face the choice of either getting shut down or becoming a legitimate venue, and what we're doing should not be seen as illegal."
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Not every DIY space, however, models itself as a recreational retreat for bike messengers and bearded art students to witness aspiring John Cages. Relatively distant from the more centralized residential area of West Philadelphia, the Lancaster Avenue Autonomous Space, better known as LAVA, has become a satellite hub for West Philly culture. Anarchists and revolutionaries are encouraged to post leaflets in this center of grassroots efforts. Groups like Food Not Bomb and Defenestrator have, more or less, set up home-base out of LAVA, and conduct their meetings there on a regular basis. On any night you can join a meeting about anything from African solidarity, to increasing political awareness, to promotion of local arts.
Even among music venues, the Danger! Danger! model is hardly definitive. Tucked between Osage and Pine on 43rd, Haus 409, for instance, boasts a more relaxed atmosphere. Its managers host live shows, but market their house as more of a late night hang-out spot. "In this house we have a professional cartographer, hot air balloon pilot, independent film maker, DJ, puppeteer, copy editor, multi-instrumentalist, and a guy who negotiates contracts between the producers of pornography and distributors of pornography," Jesse Christ explains as he prepares for another Friday night show. In a few hours, local bands The Great Unknown and Univox will play in the basement. In the meantime, Christ spins his first mix of the night on his turntables for the crowd milling about upstairs. "Creating a constant party ambiance is key."
Christ hosts shows for the sake of having fun and offering an alternative to the expensive bar scene. "If I set up a show, it will generally be free. I might come around and ask for donations, but we certainly won't throw you out." Most houses share this same sentiment, putting all donation money first towards touring bands, then to locals. Danger!Danger!'s Brodie explains, "We have started only recently keeping any money from the door. We can pay the bands well and just put the extra towards our bills and rent."
Like many others, Christ finds value in the intimate environment that lacks the "rock star bullshit" found at most other venues. "What's the point of having bands that have the pull to play in bars and clubs play at a house? You lose the nice environment. It's weird to see houses turning into venues."
As the house show scene coalesces, there's a danger it may outgrow its modest goals and even the community where it's made its home. Some see a growing group of promoters out only to make a name for themselves. Overexposure and false intentions could ultimately mean the end of the intimacy of these shows.
At this point, gaining "legitimacy" is the least of Christ's concerns.
"At the end of the day, we're in it for a good time. As long as people come, we'll keep doing it. And if we throw too many shows and nobody is coming out because the R5 model or the Danger! Danger! model is the right model and you have to bring bigger and bigger acts to maintain the draw then, whatever, we'll quit." So long as it survives the threats of legal troubles and overexposure, West Philly's DIY scene looks to become a major part of Philadelphia's cultural landscape.
