Louie DeVito, who came to Avalon last Friday night, is the Rodney Dangerfield of DJs. He gets no respect. Barely recognized by the dance-music press and ignored by the techno cognoscenti, his name registers blank stares from the most committed clubbers. Yet the 31-year-old New Jersey DJ is behind the bestselling DJ-mix CD of all time — his 2000 disc N.Y.C. Underground Party Vol. 3 has sold more than 380,000 copies, nearly doubling the achievement of the previous recordholder, Paul Oakenfold. DeVito’s newest release, 2001’s N.Y.C. Underground Party Vol. 4 (both E-Lastik) has already racked up 120,000 in sales since its fall 2001 release, when it debuted at #63 on Billboard’s Top 200.
All the sales records in the world, however, won’t ease his acceptance into the dance-music community, which regards him with an air of haughty bemusement. DeVito, as the Village Voice remarked, plays "techno for the bridge-and-tunnel set." Programmed with about as much subtlety as a Ron Jeremy skin flick, his CDs are pure dance-floor functionalism; there’s no artsy conceptualizing, just throttling, hands-in-the-air, ecstatic dance anthems that make crowds go apeshit. They appeal, for the most part, to weekend warriors — the suburban kids who dig the Dionysian abandon and tingly cyber-thrills that DeVito’s mixes offer in spades.
The resulting scenario is almost unheard of in the world of electronic dance music — DeVito is a Soundscan success but an unknown live quantity. The need to change that is what brought the stocky Jersey resident to Avalon. It was his first Boston appearance, and an informal audience survey found plenty of hardcore DeVito fans in the fever-pitch crowd, which was (surprise!) mostly from the ’burbs. Avalon’s regular crew of slick Euros and glowstick-waving college kids were in full evidence, but there was, to put it politely, a bit more hairspray and chest-hair baring than usual.
Those expecting DeVito’s patented barrage of trance pop, however, might have been surprised. Manning the decks around midnight, he ripped through a two-hour set that was dominated by the stark and aggressive style of instrumental house, all skyscraping synth stabs, acid-burn dive bombs, and machine-gun snare volleys. Compared with the more restrained style of "progressive" house spun by Oakenfold and his kind, it was an indulgent pleasure, full of hedonist peaks and rock-and-roll thrills. Somewhere into the second hour, DeVito softened up, laying down some questionable R&B-tinged cuts, including a cringe-worthy Whitney Houston remix ("I Wanna Dance with Somebody") and that bar-mitzvah classic, Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive." The crowd left smiling.
