Green Velvet: holy rhythm!

There aren’t many techno DJs who’ll unabashedly advertise their religious beliefs, describing their sound on MySpace as “techno/funk/Christian”, and include sentences like “I’m a God-fearing man and I love me some Jesus” with perhaps only a smidgen of irony in their bio. In fact, the born-again beat pusher in ques­tion, tech-house legend Green Velvet, has been cleansing his filthy basslines with all kinds of lyrical SOS signals for decades. But it’s not much of a shocker that lines like La La Land’s “somethin’ ‘bout those little pills (…) they kill a million brain cells” fall on deaf ears in throbbing nightclubs.

Thankfully, when NIGHTLIFE rang the enigmatic Curtis Jones – who’s keeping busy with an upcoming al­bum and a slew of successful parties in his native Chicago called Green Velvet Friends Forever – I wasn’t sub­jected to any bible thumping. Au con­traire, Jones was so playful and alive with infectious giggles, I wondered if he’d taken any of that nitrous oxide he talks about in Flash.

You’ve always amused with those baffling monologues. Where does all the incisive cultural commentary come from?
I have no clue! (laughs) I really don’t. It’s not like I wanted to do it, it just happened. And then people liked it, so I kept going with it and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Your initially spiky, radioactive green mohawk and new wave-inspired aes­thetic allowed you to transcend the mere title of DJ. Who did you model your look after?
My role models were people like Sly Stone, David Bowie, Parliament and Grace Jones. Those people, they’re just characters. I’m into being an artist in that way, trying to make sense out of nonsense.

A lot has been said about your reli­gious epiphany. How has it changed things for you?
For me, it was life-saving at the time. I was brought up Christian, but when I got into the scene, I got involved in things that I knew at the time I shouldn’t have. But you know, I was curious and experimenting.

La La Land

Green Velvet | MySpace Video

Do you see any similarities between spiritual breakthroughs and dance­floor euphorias?
When I was intro­duced to dance music, it had a lot of spiritual overtones. It was all about love. Songs like Love is the message, I feel love – a lot of house music that came out of that time was very inspirational. But now, you know, the kids are going to some dark places! (laughs)

The 1995 hit Flash was your response to club culture’s shift in focus from the music to the drugs. What can you tell us about the “bad little kiddies doing bad little things” you were alluding to?
The main thing I found troublesome about the mid-nineties rave era was seeing these really young kids, like 13-14, doing drugs. I did the song not for the adults who can do whatever they want, but for these kids whose brains haven’t been given a chance to develop. It’s not a good thing, in my opinion. But I’m not a doctor; I’m just an artist!

Green Velvet | June 27
Piknic Électronik, with Greg Pidc**k and Fu Ancko
Parc Jean-Drapeau
piknicelectronik.com