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Bargain hunting

Hanging with the DJ Collective as its members look back, think forward

Aaron Thompson

The bearded 30-something standing over the barbecue grill hasn’t touched a spatula in close to a year, but that doesn’t stop him from taking it when it’s offered on a breezy night behind the Downtown hot spot Beauty Bar. “I’m not sure you have to be a good DJ to be a good hamburger cook,” he says, checking the seared-red burgers to see if they’re ready. “But then again, anything’s possible.”

Tonight’s chef knows that as well as anybody. How else to explain how onetime local TV news editor and videographer Benjamin Coy has emerged as Rex Dart, one of the hottest DJs on Vegas’ underground scene and de facto leader of the Bargain DJ Collective, a loosely affiliated team of area-bred spinners threatening to seize control of more than a pair of flame-burnt tongs and a plate of burgers?

The group’s current résumé includes regular gigs at the Beatles Revolution Lounge on the Strip, and Downtown at the Beauty Bar and Griffin, and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. Especially Coy, who dodges a few crude but hilarious dick jokes from his Collective pals to poke at a sausage and explain how the rag-tag band of weirdos, stoners and vinyl fanatics has grown into one of the most prolific and interesting DJ crews in the Southwest.

***

It all started in 1998. Coy, a UNLV film student and KUNV DJ lamenting the loss of award-winning college rock show Rock Avenue, set his mind to a more ambitious project: Shift the Vegas paradigm of shitty DJs spinning crappy pop records. Or die trying. “There was a drought of cool music in the scene,” Coy remembers. “So my friends and I got together and started spinning records.”

Fast-forward to 2001, when a threesome consisting of Coy, Ryan Pardey and Dameian Zabona was asked by a friend of a friend to spin for her birthday at Champagnes, a bar on Maryland Parkway. Zabona, who had already been DJing hip-hop professionally, considers the informal event the launch of the Bargain DJ Collective, even if it wasn’t called that at the time.

“I had sold Ryan some of my shittiest turntables for a pair of Coachella tickets and was teaching him how to DJ,” recalls Zabona, now best known as DJ Standing 8. “We were just three guys who played music. We didn’t even have a name.”

The birthday party was a hit, and Champagnes asked the trio back to host a weekly night. It quickly exploded in popularity, packing the normally 70-something-occupancy bar with 300-plus people every week. The young group of DJs had hit a chord with the music scene, and people were starting to notice. “We had a vision,” Pardey says. “We were sick of going to places and hearing the same stuff being spun.”

Still, the group remained nameless, until an epiphany hit. “We were sitting and thinking about Champagnes and how we’d bring in tons of people,” Zabona says. “And they’d pay us in free drinks and maybe $40, and at first we were like, ‘Oh cool, let’s get drunk!’ But the owner was dicking us over on money, so Coy and I were like, ‘Dude, we’re a bargain for any bar owner to book.’”

And as lore would have it, the Bargain DJ Collective was born. Coy, Pardey and Zabona were now official. Their strange experiment had an identity.

***

As the years went by, the Collective’s reach expanded. Coy locked down the garage and punk scenes at the Cooler Lounge and the Double Down Saloon, starting a residency at the latter that continues to this day. Pardey handled indie-rock duties at Café Roma, which he would later go on to own. And Zabona spun hip-hop at several local bars.

The Collective’s ranks grew with its reputation, with locals and out-of-towners practically lining up to join the movement. “The mix of people joining us was brilliant,” Pardey says. “We’d have a hip-hop guy, then a funk and soul person, a reggae guy. It was awesome.”

Today, Coy estimates there are 10 “core” members of the crew, with more than 50 more musicians and DJs affiliated in some way. This gives the Bargain DJ Collective the ability not only to host multiple, diverse parties and shows at the same time, but also to grow the group’s name exponentially, with any Collective DJ capable of accurately and faithfully repping the team. “Anything one of our members does makes us look good as a group,” Coy explains. “None of us wants to fall in the same old trap,” he adds, referring to talented DJs who get stuck spinning Chingy and Soulja Boy at clubs around town.

“They think outside of the box for what you hear in Vegas,” assesses Beauty Bar General Manager Bree Blumstein. “And that’s why they have a following. They are very unique in their sound. It’s not like Top 40; it’s more underground-ish stuff, and it could be anything, from soul to punk rock. There really are no limits to them—that’s what’s great about them.”

That diversity—in a town noted for its bland copy-everything-the-other-guy-is-doing DJ ethic—continues to fuel the Bargain DJs’ success. In 2006, Zabona and electro guys DJ Aurajin and DJ 8-Bits’ Wednesday night “Fantastic Damage” party, a popular anything-goes night, was picked up from its longtime digs at the Beauty Bar for a residency at the Tao nightclub in the Venetian. While the residency lasted only six months, it marked the Collective’s first chance to break from punk-rock bars onto the Strip, which ultimate led to its current Tuesday-night run at Revolution.

These days, along with increasing popularity, the Bargain DJs face a measure of vulnerability as well. With all of the core members in or approaching their 30s, a new generation of DJs like Red Room upstart and frequent Downtown electro DJ Mike Attack and others are emerging in the local scene, putting pressure on the group to change with the times. “We’re getting older, and at some parties it shows,” Zabona concedes.

In response to the fierce competition, the Collective has shifted its resources to target an audience more in its age group, rather than going after the 20-somethings just hitting the bar circuit. Even so, Zabona doesn’t sound worried that he and his fellow Bargain DJs will become out of touch with current musical trends; they just have to proceed smartly and carefully. “I like seeing the new generation of party kids, but sometimes we play our music and the kids seem a little apprehensive of our style,” Zabona says. “But that’s okay, because a lot of this is just for fun.”

***

Back at the barbecue, the lines for food have sprawled past the door to the Beauty Bar’s backyard enclosure, and Coy is struggling to keep up with the hungry masses. He finally scores a free moment away from the tyranny of the grill. It’s around 9 p.m., and while soul-funk outfit Dopamine Flux wraps up its live set, Coy and his friends look to the future, which is, for the moment, certain: Get high in a small white sedan and go see a metal band performing up Fremont Street.

Between hits off a spliff and stoned political conversation, it’s clear that even the little group who originated as nothing more than three guys, crappy turntables and a dive bar still know how to party like rockstars. But for the real future of this rag-tag group of wax-spinning rebels, as long as they’re around to line up the needle on the record, the Bargain DJ Collective will live on. And that, in the always changing local music scene, seems to be good enough for them.

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