New Year's Eve '07

By Nico Lustgarten (har har)

I spent nearly an hour on a flyer for Angels and Kings. It’s a piece I expect to be taped to the walls of the bar and then torn down by stoned and overzealous revelers. The font looked right. Background was provocative but not too revealing. Pertinent information was white. The party’s title in some fusia/hot pink color, but the name, the one that is supposed to indicate the DJ, was perplexing: Nico Lustgarten.

I’ve been using his name, Nico Lustgarten, for years but not without conflict. It’s a strange thing to introduce yourself by a name that wasn’t given by my parents. It’s like giving birth to myself and changing the name on the birth certificate. How can I seriously reply to an introduction with someone else’s name? A sexually ambiguous Nico with a German surname?

For starters, it was the name of a feisty crab I kept in an undersized aquarium with a few fellow fiddler crabs. One of the other crabs was called Zack Chumpy. His fighting claw was even larger than normal, which in the crustacean world would have made him a John Holmes among his peers. He would wrestle his mates, who would cower against the glass, snapping their feeble claws at their assailant. Zack Chumpy was a sonofabitch. One morning, after one of our house parties, I found his claw, flat under my foot. Nico survived while the others around him died one by one but then he disappeared one day. He still hasn’t been found. It’s a goddam four and a half year old mystery.

I used Tantrik back then for my DJing alias. It was cute for a little while until my sets began to evolve from bassy, transcendental house music to electro-house and breakbeats. Tantrik was the name I used during my breakthrough surge in the underground party scene, playing at nearly every Complacent party (now Danger) that aroused the sensibility of hard boozin’, druggin, dancing fiends.

Pussycat Lounge

My set became dirtier, sexier. The gnarly bass lines ripped through the cavernous halls of the Pussycat Lounge and 3rd Ward. It wasn’t sensual anymore. The music was gritty, sleezy, primal even. Raw sex like the ridged insides of a woman’s genitalia — pink and salacious. Nico Lustgarten couldn’t be wasted on a nomadic, magical crab so I took it as my own.

But then I didn’t.

It was difficult to make the switch. I would continue to say Carlos when a happy dancer would ask who I was. I only blamed things on Nico, like, I didn’t kiss the girl. Nico did. But it didn’t inform my audience who the man was on the turntables with the identity troubles.

I looked at that flyer on the computer screen; pink, black, white. I deleted my alias and inserted my own name but it didn’t look right. It took the zing out of the style of the music I play. It didn’t indicate my dedication to rock and roll or house or even hip hop and indie. It didn’t reveal passion. Changing my name shouldn’t be any different from a porn star who understands her place among a million pussies. It’s her name that gives the first impression of her technique.

So, after a fruitful conversation with my dear friend, Zito (thanks), I hit the backspace again and typed in the only name I could ever use for my career as a DJ. It’s time to blame Nico again for all of the things I love about DJing and share my passion and love with the sacred underline a hundred shiny smiles can understand — music.