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The Opening Blog for Wasted In Bombay – By Ankur Gosalia (aka Gos)

House music is in our souls. It’s the blood that courses through our veins. It’s the electricity that evokes our minds. No matter how far our jobs take us, how big our families get, our how stressed our finances push us, … there is one thing that keeps us grounded…. House Music.

We’ve been DJing since 1992. That’s 2 decades of spinning records! I still remember when I had to beg my mum to drive me to a shady section of Washington DC to pick up my first used 1200 turntable. I spend $175 of hard-earned lawn-mowing money that day to finally possess my first real love. Then another $60 to have the platter rebalanced, RCA cables replaced, and the tonearm fixed! I remember using WD-40 on an old numark mixer to get the crossfader to float. I remember taking the Metro (orange line from New Carrollton to Red line up to Dupont Circle) every week to visit 12-inch-dance records (which then became DJ Hut circa 1995ish). The Odessa crew gave me a huge intro to music, djing, how to rock a crowd, and how the backroom business of clubs/raves worked. From 1992-1995, I was a local DJ playing house parties, wedding, high-school formals, and the like… usually playing a mix of pop, hip-hop, 80s, rock, and dance music. I still hadn’t felt the true energy and addiction of house music… yet!

In 1994 I was introduced to FEVER and Buzz in Baltimore/DC. These were the parties that changed my life. Listening to Charles Feelgood & Scott Henry opened my ears to what house music really meant. Who would have imagined that the music from artists like Size 9, Josh Wink, Masters at Work, NightCrawlers, Chez Damier, DHS, Lil’ Mo Ying-Yang, Eric Kupper, Hybrid, Lemon 8, Frankie Knuckles, Danny Tenaglia, Reel-2-Reel, Xpress 2, Deep Dish, Barbara Tucker, and many more would have such an impact on who I am and what I play today.

From 1995-1998 I started and ran Green Soup Productions. This was during undergrad at Lehigh University. Green Soup allowed me to still find time to play the music I loved while my team of DJs would play all of the better paying “pop” events. 2 major life altering events during the Green Soup days were my time at the Freight Yard and my experiences in college radio. I still remember telling callers that requested hip-hop during my “Urban Hype” radio show on Thursday nights at WLVR 91.3 to get lost! (Don’t be misled, I grew up listening to hip-hop but my true love will always be house) My radio show was a very eclectic mosaic of breaks, jungle, techno, trance, and house.

DJing at the Freight Yard was my first true club djing experience… and I was hooked! After that, everything was a blur. The Freightyard gave me my first break into the electronic music scene. I started playing clubs and rave venues up and down the east coast spinning a mixture of trance, breaks, and house. One night we would be in Asbury park, NJ playing for a huge crown at a “Believe” event, and the next night we’d be in the Poconos playing an illegal open-air event.

In 1998, I started medical school. Yes, you read that correctly… medical school in Philadelphia. This is where I met Roq. The rave scene was under full-scale assault from law enforcement so I had to give up playing illegal events. I became a resident DJ at Shampoo and Evolution nightclubs in Philly. I ended up DJing at nearly every major night club in the Philadelphia area by the end of 2002.

Where does Roq fit into this equation? Simple, he’s my protégé. I saw his potential, his ability for uncanny track selection, and his passion for house music, and it was obvious, for the benefit of the house music collective, Roq had to be given the opportunity to shine. I remember buying him his first set of 1200s for his birthday. After getting home from a gig, we’d spend countless hours beatmatching in my apartment in East Falls. Between Djing and med school/residency we were working nearly 90-100 hours per week… but we always found the time to focus on our true passion. Plus he always knew how to get the hottest chicks to be our groupies in the booth LOL!

Well, you’re next question will be: what happened after 2002? Like everyone in the world, priorities in life changed. Starting our medical practices and starting our families became the focus. House music had to take a backseat for a little while… kinda of like when your mum tells you to “grow up.” Roq moved to NJ and then to Youngstown, Ohio, while I ended up eventually moving to Pittsburgh. This was the same time during which house music fell out of the limelight in the US. Our favorite clubs were being shut down (teardrops for Twilo and Arc), the vinyl era was ending (so long Cue, Satellite, 611), and we hadn’t truly embraced the technology that was going to revolutionize the way we DJ. In 2006, the year I moved out to Pittsburgh, I honestly feared house music was dead!

For those of you that know what kind of sheer ecstasy house music can create within you, you know the longing for that sound always eventually returns. “House is a feeling!” And you’ll search for that feeling, that sound, that sheer momentum and bliss, that essence of self-expression, that dark drum, that sensual vocal, YOUR house music - everywhere you go. That feeling never leaves you. House doesn’t care what race you are, how old you are, or how much money you make. It’s only about that rhythm and the dance that makes you want to be part of the rest of the world. No negativity, only positive joy.

To put it in the simplest terms… something had gone missing in our lives. Our wives are great, our kids are wonderful, our jobs pay the bills, but “that feeling” had been gone for too long.

Hence the reincarnation of Roq and Gos as …. WASTED IN BOMBAY!

So, What will you hear in our sets? HOUSE MUSIC, duh! It might be deep, it might be hard, it might be progressive, or techy, or dark, or electro, or dub, or acid, or classic, or breaks, or minimal… but no matter what “style” of house we play, by the end of the night you’ll just call it “great fucking house music”. Period.

The easiest way to describe the WIB sound is “genre-defying forward thinking house.”

Turntables or CDJs? NEITHER. Listen to our sets, come out to our gigs, and watch how we turn on the crowd before you make judgment. Yes, we are ABLETON DJs. The love we have for house music is unconditional. We live house, we breathe house, we sleep, drink, and eat thinking about house. House music is a rediscovering of ourselves. We want to simply bring you great fucking house music and allow ourselves to be creative, inspiring, artistic, and original. We’ve realized that Ableton allows us the ability to not just play you great songs, but also lets us remix live, add fearsome effects, and allow us to genuinely defy genre classifications. All while making you get up and shake your ass!

In the beginning, there was Jack, and Jack had a groove.
And from this groove came the groove of all grooves.
And while one day viciously throwing down on his box, Jack boldly declared,
"Let there be HOUSE!"
And house music was born.
"I am, you see, I am the creator, and this is my house!
And, in my house there is ONLY house music.
But, I am not so selfish because once you enter my house it then becomes OUR house and OUR house music!"
And, you see, no one man owns house because house music is a universal language, spoken and understood by all.
You see, house is a feeling that no one can understand really unless you're deep into the vibe of house.
House is an uncontrollable desire to jack your body.
And, as I told you before, this is our house and our house music.
And in every house, you understand, there is a keeper.
And, in this house, the keeper is Jack.
Now some of you who might wonder,
"Who is Jack, and what is it that Jack does?"
Jack is the one who gives you the power to jack your body!
Jack is the one who gives you the power to do the snake.
Jack is the one who gives you the key to the wiggly worm.
Jack is the one who learns you how to walk your body.
Jack is the one that can bring nations and nations of all Jackers together under one house.
You may be black, you may be white; you may be Jew or Gentile.
It don't make a difference in OUR House.
And this is fresh.
- Chuck Roberts – Chicago – 1987
- First appearance in ‘Our House’ by Rhythm Control (Catch a Beat rec) (1987)
- Second appearance in ‘Can You Feel It’ by Mr Fingers (Larry Heard) (1988)