I can’t get to my phone right now, I’m partying on the French Riviera on a $200 million dollar yacht,” says DJ Johnny Love on his cell phone message. But while Love may be joking about the French Riviera and yacht, it wouldn’t be surprising if the partying bit were true.
Love, also known as John del Santo, seems to be on a mission to be the poster child of Chicago’s counter-culture. Out to convince the young and impressionable that electroclash and Italo disco are the only ways to go, the 22-year-old Chicagoan has become notorious over the last few years by throwing some of the most killer sleaze-fests this side of 1983.
The overindulgence takes place at Love’s Wicker Park loft, dubbed the Jerkstore, where the barely legal revelers are invited to give into sin while shaking their stuff.
“I want to pull kids into dancing,” Love says. “But it’s also like, ‘Hey, you can come here and freak out.’ It’s like, I can take my shirt off and start licking some dude’s face because everyone’s going nuts and breaking down moral barriers. If you want to find a dude and fuck him here, I’m not going to judge you.”
Joined by members of the Opaque Project (other Chicago DJs with the same stars in their eyes) and electro-touring bands, Love deejays and throws his get-togethers with decadence in mind, but lays the foundation on the music.
“The parties at my loft got the reputation of being really sleazy and people getting naked, but the plan of the parties is to play music that is relevant, not mainstream hip-hop or fucking horrible pop-punk nonsense,” Love says. “I’m trying to be like the Pied Piper and pull kids away from shitty pop-punk bands like Good Charlotte.”
Love seems to embrace his reputation of being “a shit-talker who gets girls crazy,” since his ringmaster-of-corruption persona attracts the curious and confident to his loft just as much as his subtle online and word-of-mouth publicity.
“People who know me would make fun of my MySpace and Friendster profiles,” Love says. “But I thought, ‘How do these horrible bands like Slipknot get popular?’ And I think it’s all about teenage rebellion. Kids can see that their parents don’t want them listening to that, so they do.”
Though Love’s parties seem to allow youth to seek out the world’s vices (the next one is planned for sometime in early October), they are intended to encourage and highlight a more expansive musical experience.
“I like to party, but have never done drugs,” Love says. “I’m not out to turn kids into junkies, I’m out to make kids dance at parties where you won’t be listening to hip-hop, but obscure Italo disco or minimalist German techno. And if you just keep playing it they’ll realize, ‘This is the music I’m supposed to be listening to when I party’.”
It seems like Love’s native roots are the only thing keeping him fixed in this city.
“I was planning to move to L.A. two years ago, but I saw how good DJs from Chicago who made music in Chicago moved there and ended up failing,” Love says of his reluctance to leave the Windy City. “They discovered they were not as big as they thought they were, and that they didn’t have a big enough base in Chicago to begin with. So they move back and people don’t remember them.”
But even in the midst of lusty late-night affairs and debauchery, Love never loses sight of his famous aspirations.
“My plan is to take over to the point where every kid in the whole damn city and suburbs knows who I am, so I become a hometown hero,” Love says.4
Medill sophomore Kate Puhala is the PLAY music editor. She can be reached at [email protected].