If you had walked in around 7, you would’ve never guessed that this was a party that’ll go on until 4AM. If you had left after the DJ put away his gear, you would’ve missed out on the acoustic/percussion jam session that followed right after. This was definitely one of those nights where you had to wait it out, until the right crowd walked in – and that happened around 10PM.

And once “everyone” arrived… party time! After all, it’s not often that you can just get a DJ to show up at your house and spin a dance party. In fact, it’s probably pretty rare unless you’re good friends with a DJ or you can afford to pay someone to haul their gear out to the suburbs and stick around for a few hours. Etta? She’s friends with a lot of them – and I totally dig that about her.

I should really be used to it by now, but the crowd kind of changes a little each time we throw a house party. Two parties back, we had tons of South Americans from all over the western coast; our last one attracted more of a European crowd coming from Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Last night? The Brazilians were in the house. We had the usual music staples: salsa, samba, reggaeton, merengue. And later on… much much later on, we pulled out the acoustic guitars for some down tempo and free-styling.

(-laughs- I love the lighting that the DJ brought with him) I should probably note that the occasion was Kimmy’s 30th birthday – a friend of Etta’s. We “technically” had a theme of Gods & Goddesses, but I think people sort of took that and figured that it’s really just a costume party. Hence, the appearance of the Pope (among others). Not that it mattered. Everyone seemed to have a great time, especially since we couldn’t run out of alcohol even if we tried; try drumming while drinking and let me know how that goes.

And a little piece of last night (I cut in at a bad time, but you get the idea)…