For months now, we’ve been meaning to visit Blowoff, the monthly D.C. club night purveyed by Bob Mould, formerly of Hüsker Dü and Sugar, and electronic producer/performer Richard Morel. Our chance finally arrived this past weekend during Capital Pride, an annual event tailored to the city’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered communities; Blowoff took part in the festivities with their alterna-dance party at Washington D.C.’s 9:30 Club Saturday evening (June 9). Drawing an audience that included students from a nearby school for the deaf, Mould and Morel tag-teamed the DJ booth, spinning an eclectic range of indie rock, techno and progressive house as vignettes of Superman, sailors, and erect penises choked with leather thongs flashed on projection screens.
Choice club numbers by Underworld, Matthew Dear, and Junkie XL spooled around various dance floor remixes featuring likes of Wolfmother, Kelly Clarkson, and Amanda Lepore, hypnotizing an excitable crowd, one with about as many women as a boy’s locker room, maybe fewer. As the evening wore on into the early morning, pockets of the crowd took a cue from Mould and Morel and tossed their shirts aside, forming a gyrating, mass of bald heads and hairy chests, all bouncing to throaty bass lines.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be doing this,” Mould said about Blowoff’s monthy jaunt. “It has really grown into something incredible.” JOSHUA STEWART / PHOTOS BY KEVIN MADSEN
We asked: In honor of Blowoff’s name, what are you blowing off?
