Honey Soundsystem to end its weekly parties

  • Share
  • Next weekend will mark the final Sunday event at The Holy Cow for the revered San Francisco crew.
  • Honey Soundsystem to end its weekly parties image
  • Honey Soundsystem will end its Sunday tenure at The Holy Cow on October 20th. The news comes just after the crew celebrated their seventh anniversary as a unit. Five years ago, Honey—which counts Jason Kendig, Josh Cheon, Robot Hustle and PeePlay among its residents—launched a weekly gay party focusing on house and techno, and it found a permanent home at The Holy Cow on Folsom two years after that. In that time period it's become one of San Francisco nightlife's most beloved entities, a cornerstone of the gay community known for its wild atmosphere and forward-thinking musical agenda. The next two Sunday events—both with an all-residents lineup—at The Holy Cow will be their last. The closing shindig on October 20th will also double as a release party for Patrick Cowley's School Daze album, a collection of the disco artist's obscure gay porn soundtracks (put out through Honey's own HNYTRX label). The collective will continue to throw parties here and there, as well as expanding their brand outside of San Francisco. The first post-closure date is a special Halloween blowout in collaboration with No Way Back that'll feature Berghain regular Rodhad. We spoke to Peeplay (AKA Jacob Sperber) over e-mail to discuss the motivation behind ending the series and what the future holds for Honey Soundsystem.
    It seems like the parties have as great a reputation now as they've ever had—why put an end to it? It's true—we are ending the weekly while we are at a peak of sorts, the party is packed every week, we continue to be graced by the most wonderful and talented guests, and we couldn't be happier with the oddball nightclub we've made home for the last three years. We really put special care into every detail of our parties (and a lot of promoters say that, but people know we really do) and we have squeezed everything there is to from this weekly format in the past five years. We have new ideas and want to challenge our fans with new venues, bigger dance floors, and even the occasional non-dance projects we have become known for. We also want to show a little class, ending a good thing while it is still good is something we have respected from the history books since we started this project. That said, we also are all seeing exponential growth with our own music projects and taking more time to gig as a crew and individually and work on music production and label management. What are you proudest of over the years that you've accomplished with the party? The proudest achievement for Honey will be what we do on the last Sunday weekly party on October 20th, 2013, when we officially drop the double-LP vinyl record of unreleased Patrick Cowley compositions called School Daze on our in-house label HNYTRX, in association with Dark Entries Records. In essence, Cowley has not only haunted us with his ghost for the past seven years, but he has become the hero and icon for what we are trying to achieve with Honey Soundsystem. The future-primitive nature of these songs, how they were previous to this release, had only lived as soundtracks to long lost gay pornos from the 80s is just so... Honey—like in a nutshell—intelligence, timelessness, and sexual freedom. Its's all poetically displayed in these two records we release to the world on our final Sunday. What was it about Honey that made it such a special party, in your eyes? Nothing is worse then someone waxing nostalgic about their [club night] when it is still alive and kicking. If you want to know why Honey is regarded so highly by so many and why we have been the San Francisco home to such respected musical purists as DJ Sprinkles, Prosumer, Kim Ann Foxman and Claude Young then you are just going to need to ask someone who knows. If you want to hear the rumours confirmed of dance music legends that have had psychedelic freak-outs on our watch, or of DJs getting head in our back room just mere moments before they hit the decks, you will just have to dig for it. What comes next? Word travels quick when something is ending, but only a quarter the speed when something new is happening. We have a healthy roster of events coming up in the coming months already announced. On Halloween night we will team up with No Way Back to present a spooky night of murderous dub techno with Rødhåd, two weeks following that we are doing a huge night (pun intended as it in conjunction with SF's first BEAR PRIDE weekend) with headliners Virginia and Hugo Sanchez. For New Years Eve we will team up with Sunset Sound System for our fourth annual NYE massive at Public Works. Honey also has tour appearances planned for Los Angeles, Chicago, SXSW, and NYC coming in the next six months, and hopefully Europe in 2014.



RA