Heavy Burn at Hot Fudge Sundays

We used to do this party in the mid 90s called Hot Fudge Sundays at Bar XVI in the Lower East Side, long before that area became fratboy town. That neghborhood sucks now, but there was a time when a lot of the city's best DJs were setting up shop down there as a result of Guliani cracking down on clubland. The creatives were popping up with small little parties around the LES playing some of the dopest music you couldn't hear in the few big clubs left in the city at the time. Some of my fave Djs that would rock this little venue were people like Evil D from Black Moon, the criminally underated and little known Nick Pepe, b-boy IXL, Voodoo Afro-Frank then of Vampyros Lezbos sleaze fame, and many many more.

As far as our little "Funk Fiends" crew, between Beau, Christian Bruna, Pete and myself, we had two floors of music at Hot Fudge Sundays with a variety of deep sounds. Soul, funk, hip-hop, house, drum & bass etc filling two floors of music. I used to love doing the upstairs warm up in that place with Pete, as we would do the whole sampled breaks and soul music thing to nice up the crowd as they settled into their groove. As the night went on more soul & funk, deep house, disco, and some of my favorite hip-hop would be played upstairs, as the 50/50 boys would drop some serious bass for the packed dancers downstairs. Aaaahhhhh, I could almost smell the burning blunts in that place right now.

Everytime I hear this Gwen Mcrae classic, I can't help think of the early slot upstairs at Hot Fudge Sundays. I feel all warm inside whenever I hear this fantastic tune by Gwen, partly because this tune got heavy burn at Hot Fudge. You probably already know this classic song, but if not, listen and learn. This song has it all from heavy lyrics, to a slow bumping groove, and what an amazing vocal delivery! There is so much feeling in this song, it still floors me every time I hear it. Let's start this week off right...