Collegiate Times

On some weekend nights in downtown Blacksburg, Champs Sports Bar & Cafe is a mash up of regulars and extra irregulars -- of neat, button-down dress shirts and blouses interspersed with wrinkled, vibrant outfits that sometimes contain the brightest colors the human eye can perceive.

Occasionally glow sticks orbit these outfits, and patrons dance with them as though they were alternative puppeteers. These are the nights when the atmosphere on the first floor of the club seems outside of its Appalachian setting. Signified by the machine gun bass and scandalous rhymes of Jeremy "MC Ohm" Owens, another electronic music show has seen its moment.

Such a scenario is familiar about twice a month in Blacksburg.

"To do more than two, it gets a little bit like a burden," said Alex Miller, who is responsible for finding and booking acts, plus visuals for the shows. "And to do less than two, it's just no fun."

The next event will start at 10 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 20, at Champs and will last until 2 a.m. The inscription on their flier above a figure wearing a bright green gas mask and resting in the middle of the crosshairs reads "D.C. Takeover." The reason for such a declaration of partydom on Blacksburg is because three of the bands and four DJs are venturing from the Washington D.C. area.

The show will consist of the DJs Class-A, Dave J, Encryption and Resonance and will feature MC Ohm on the microphone.

DJ Encryption, whose real name is Jason Mathis, is a familiar face in the D.C. electronic scene and has been spinning for years. Joana Wall, who goes by the name Resonance while performing, hails from Roanoke and has opened for artists such as DJ Monk.  

Class-A (whose real name is Steve Morris), Alex Miller, MC Ohm and David J are all members of a local drum-n-bass crew known as Massive Sound. They have become the cornerstone of the electronic scene in Blacksburg and have been a main source of electronic music in the area. Internally, the group does more than play live music. For example, Miller and another member of the group constructed the large sound system that plays to the faithful on weekends.

The type of music to be featured at the event is called "drum-n-bass," a fast paced, battering-ram type of electronic music. Heavy, distorted bass lines over digitized waves of electronic instruments all playing to a speedy tempo are characteristic of the genre.

"Drum-n-bass is not techno," said Christyne Fitzgerald, a senior who is graduating this May with degrees in biology and psychology.

"I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was drum-n-bass. I remember telling them it sounds like how a dinosaur dies," said Dave Jarmuth (Dave J) over the phone, about the first time he heard the music in a field or house party in Blacksburg.

Jarmuth, who graduated with a degree in food science and technology from Virginia Tech last year and now lives with Encryption and Resonance, picked up spinning drum-n-bass two years ago. He did so after moving back to Blacksburg to graduate; a devoted fan of the genre, he was encouraged to start practicing at Class-A's house. For Jarmuth, it was the next logical step in his drum-n-bass evolution.

"If you like dancing to it and you like it that much, you might as well learn how to play it and kind of turn other people on to it," Jarmuth said. He has played all over Blacksburg from the former Nerve to the classic house party and enjoys the opportunity to give back to a scene that, although it is rarely known, thrives all the same and has nurtured his appreciation for the music.

"You start to see the same faces out and that's really cool," Fitzgerald said. "You just start to meet people you might not have met before and everybody's really friendly. They're good fun people -- I like the scene."

Unfortunately, because of its collegiate setting, the electronic scene in Blacksburg ebbs and flows.

"The problem to keep a scene and grow it here is that it's a college town so there's a four-year cycle," Miller said. "So it doesn't have the scene that, like, a lot of big cities have."

Still, the scene has seen more life in recent years, and its notoriety has been growing quickly as more electronic musicians come down to play Blacksburg, such as D.C.-based group Headhunterz who came down last year. This is largely because of the effort put forth by Massive Sound.

"It's really cool because, even today," Jarmuth said, "they (Headhunterz) are still like, 'Any time you want us to come to Blacksburg, we're down.'"

Many find a Saturday night electronic show in Blacksburg a perfect way to take the edge off of a long week.

"It's a great release," Fitzgerald said, who holds a job bartending at the Inn at Virginia Tech while taking class at the university and attending Blue Ridge School of Massage and Yoga. A frequent attendee of Champs shows, Fitzgerald has grown to love the scene and its constituents.

 "Drum-n-bass people just love to get down and love to have a good time," she said.

For Fitzgerald, she enjoys the respite found in the Massive Sound shows and relishes a certain particular moment.

"The moment that when you get there," she said. "And you kind of start to get into the music, and you're just dancing and you're getting down, and you stop and you look around and you see everybody smiling and everyone having a great time."