29: Vivian Host has caught every beat

Vivian Host’s rave credentials go deep. Much deeper than
we realised in fact, and we’ve been friends with her for over a
decade.


There are several entry-points through which you could have
discovered Vivian. Maybe it’s her podcast, Rave to the Grave,
where she interviews DJs, dancers and ‘freaks of all ages’, from
legendary house vocalist Barbara Tucker to performance art
pervert Kevin Carpet. In Vivian’s words, RTTG exists to document
‘a vital and resonant global (sub)culture that has often been
ignored, dismissed, trivialised and poorly documented.’ Amen!


Or maybe you know Vivian through her journalism? A former
editor-in-chief of both Thump and XLR8R, she also hosted Red Bull
Radio’s Peak Time show, once the internet’s best resource for
audio interviews with unsung heroes from countercultural scenes
across the world.


Or maybe it’s simply through throwing parties and DJing under the
name Star Eyes. After breaking through as a teenager Vivian spent
the late ‘90s and early 2000s becoming one of the most prominent
jungle DJs on the West Coast (she may have both been the first
woman from LA regularly playing jungle at parties, and one of the
first people full-stop to play UK garage in the States). After
relocating to New York in 2004 she co-founded Trouble & Bass,
a party and record label with an anything-goes approach to genres
– far from common 20 years ago. T&B were also the first
crew to book grime artists in New York. There are a lot of firsts
in Vivian’s catalogue.


In this episode we naturally talk about the current state of play
in LA, but we also go back to Vivian’s formative years exploring
the city’s nitrous-fuelled punk and rave scenes, how she
navigated the world of jungle as a teenager, San Francisco’s ‘90s
free parties, and being held up at gunpoint by dodgy club owners
in New York’s wild mid-2000s. It’s Vivian’s story, but it also
doubles as an education on how raving evolved in the US
throughout the 1990s and ‘00s. By the end of the interview we
were equal parts inspired, envious and exhausted.


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