 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2008) |
Nation (formerly The Capitol Ballroom) was a live music/club venue, located at 1015 Half Street SE, in the Navy Yard/Near Southeast neighborhood, of Washington, D.C.
It was larger than any other club in the D.C. area, with three levels indoors and a multi-level outdoor patio. The large rooms, sound, and lighting systems made it a popular destination for the rave, goth, drum & bass and gay communities.
Built in 1924, the building initially comprised the front entrance of what became Nation, serving as a carriage factory. The building later expanded as it changed hands, at one point serving as a warehouse for the military and finally as a factory for Hurley Boiler before it ceased operations. The club first opened its doors as The Capitol Ballroom in August 1995, with The Ramones, Björk and Lords of Acid being among the first acts to take the stage. The club was located near the other seminal Navy Yard club called Tracks (1111 First St, S.E.), a large gay club at the time. The Capitol Ballroom began holding "Buzz" nights on Fridays, which hosted a number of national and international talent in dance music. It eventually became one of the country's largest weekly dance party/rave hybrid. On Saturdays, the party "Industrial Revolution" hosted by D.C. DJ "Mohawk" Adam brought industrial and dark electronic acts. Nation became recognized locally for highly diverse concert events. Nation was also recognized on a national and even international level for its three weekly DJ and theme driven nightclub parties. [ citation needed ]
Due to its large size, The Capitol Ballroom did host many top-selling musical acts during its four-year tenure, but it also had a sparse schedule, as the neighborhood, located in the area of Near Southeast in D.C., was notorious for its high crime rate in the mid-1990s. In 1999, The Capitol Ballroom changed management and became known as Nation. Nation soon became very popular after another nearby dance club Tracks closed on November 6, 1999.
Nation was managed by Primacy Companies, Inc. On July 17, 2006, the club closed after longtime lot owners Potomac Investment Properties decided to move forward with a planned 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m2) office building on the site. In July 2007, Potomac Investment sold the site to Opus East for $41.5 million, and in spring 2008 construction began on the office building. [1] The area is now considered part of the "Ballpark District" due to the fact the Nationals Park stadium has been built two blocks away. [1] As of January 2010, Opus East is insolvent and construction has been halted.
Nation had been host to hundreds of bands and solo acts, from David Bowie to Rage Against the Machine. In 1996, the venue hosted the Warped Tour marking the only time the annual event was held indoors. [2] It was originally scheduled to be held at Merriweather Post Pavilion. The venue also held the "Superbowl of Hardcore" a day-long concert featuring many of the top hardcore bands and punk bands.
The final event at Nation featured Mindless Self Indulgence on July 17, 2006.
Technical design and production staff at Nation included original Lighting Designer John Niederhauser (JSN Design), Lighting Director Kevin W Clark, Production Managers Joe "Shaggy" Conroy, Dylan Overstreet, Production Assistant Jeff Nightingale, and Stagehands "Seal", "Mouse", and "Gwydo" who ran lights for concerts. The main room was equipped with a 40-foot (12 m) stage, a large mezzanine walkway, and a third level skybox was added in 2000 for VIPs. The lighting fixtures in the main room consisted of 8 Studio Spots, 12 Studio colors, 72 par-cans, 6 lekos, 5 Studio 250s, and 6 MAC 500 moving heads; all controlled by a Hog 1000 with the pars and lekos going through a leprechaun dimmer rack. The main rig included a 15+1⁄2-foot-diameter (4.7 m) Truss Ring, with a 4-foot mirror ball hung in the center. Ring was hung on 4 chain motors, and one for the raising and lowering of mirror ball, running at 32 fpm. This allowed the ring and ball to travel the 35 ft height of the space, very quickly. Once the ring was at a preset height over the dance floor, by running the downstage motors up and the upstage motors down, the ring was tilted to a 50-degree angle in 4 beats. This truss move tilted the ring at 1 foot per second (64 fpm). Video was mixed and processed through an Edirol v-4 mixer and fed to the upstage, downstage, circular, and rectangular trusses for projection.
The sound consisted of EAW cabinets and drivers, amplified by Crown, and fed by a post-processor in the DJ booth that received signal via a Pioneer 500 mixer or, if the talent on hand preferred something a little more "old-school", a Rane mixer. Front of house sound was managed by contracted third parties, usually Springfield Sound or MSI.
Nation hosted a variety of events, such as concerts, sporting events, trade shows, and even a six-week run of The Rocky Horror Show. It was home to events such as "Alchemy/Alias" (Thursday), "Buzz (DC)," alternately "Sting" and "Cubik" after a brief move to Redwood Trust in Baltimore (Friday), and gay night "Velvet Nation" (Saturday).
"Alchemy" was one of the country's weekly goth/industrial nights.[ citation needed ] Tony Tribby led a team that created Alchemy and used Nation's multi-room layout to combine music ranging from industrial, ebm, goth, 80s, punk, electro-clash, trance, alternative into a package with a Goth aesthetic. Alchemy had hosted VNV Nation, Icon of Coil, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Juno Reactor, Shiny Toy Guns and others at their Thursday night event, and put on annual events such as Goth Prom in the Spring and Freaks United every July 4. [3]
"Buzz (DC)," alternately "Sting" and "Cubik" hosted by Scott Henry and Lieven DeGeyndt, were named the country's top electronic dance music events numerous times by international publications such as Urb and BPM. Buzz/Sting and Cubik hosted the world's top electronic house, drum and bass, breakbeat and techno djs such as Paul Oakenfold, Tiësto, Sasha and Digweed, Dave Clarke, Dieselboy, Andy C, The Freestylers, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method and Paul Van Dyk as well as live acts such as Rabbit in the Moon and The Prodigy.[ citation needed ]
Saturdays played host to Velvet Nation, a gay dance event. The event was respected as one of the top events of its kind in the US.[ citation needed ] For many years, circuit event DJs and talents such as Junior Vasquez, Abel Aguilera, Alyson Calagna, Mike Reeze, Manny Lehman, Susan Morabito, Tony Moran, Victor Calderone, The Pet Shop Boys, k.d. lang, and The Village People. Nation was also known for lavish theme parties, such as Madonnarama, a night of all Madonna music and video, The White Party, and a variety of Pride events.
The schottische is a partnered country dance that apparently originated in Bohemia. It was popular in Victorian era ballrooms as a part of the Bohemian folk-dance craze and left its traces in folk music of countries such as Argentina, Finland, France, Italy, Norway ("reinlender"), Portugal and Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, and the United States, among other nations. The schottische is considered by The Oxford Companion to Music to be a kind of slower polka, with continental-European origin.
The 46th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 8, 2004, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California honoring the best in music for the recording of the year beginning from October 1, 2002, through September 30, 2003. It recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. The big winners were Beyoncé, who won five awards, and Outkast, who won three awards including Album of the Year. Tied for the most nominations, with six each, were Beyoncé, Outkast, and Jay-Z.
The Grand Olympic Auditorium is a former sports venue in southern Downtown Los Angeles, California. The venue was built in 1924 at 1801 South Grand Avenue, now just south of the Santa Monica Freeway. The grand opening of the Olympic Auditorium was on August 5, 1925, and was a major media event, attended by such celebrities as Jack Dempsey and Rudolph Valentino. One of the last major boxing and wrestling arenas still in existence, the venue now serves as a worship space for the Korean-American evangelical church, "Glory Church of Jesus Christ".
The Loft was the location for the first underground dance party organized by David Mancuso, on February 14, 1970, in New York City. Since then, the term "The Loft" has come to represent Mancuso's own version of a non-commercial party where no alcohol, food, nor beverages are sold. Mancuso's vision of a private party is similar to, and inspired by, the rent party and house party. Unlike conventional nightclubs or discotheques, attendance is by invitation only. In the late 1970s, Mancuso abandoned the generally accepted and expected practice of beatmatching, preferring to play songs in their entirety on his renowned audiophile-quality sound system. The Village Voice wrote that Mancuso's sound system was the best in New York and even described him as "more of a party engineer than a DJ." Mancuso required that the music played had to be soulful, rhythmic, and impart words of hope, redemption, or pride.
Manray is a nightclub in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was named for Dada artist and photographer Man Ray.
The Surf Ballroom is a Historic Rock and Roll Landmark at 460 North Shore Drive, Clear Lake, Iowa, United States. The Surf is closely associated with the event known colloquially as "The Day the Music Died" – early rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson gave their last performances at the Surf on February 2, 1959, as part of the "Winter Dance Party Tour".
ThouShaltNot were an American electronic band formed in 1998. Their core lineup consisted of Alex Reed, Aaron Fuleki, and Jeremy Long. The band's musical style blended elements of post-punk, gothic rock, industrial, and synthpop. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they were signed to Dancing Ferret Discs. The group released four studio albums before disbanding in 2013, with Reed and Fuleki continuing to record music under the name Seeming.
The Roseland Ballroom was a multipurpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's theater district, on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
Webster Hall is a nightclub and concert venue located at 125 East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, near Astor Place, in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. It is one of New York City's most historically significant theater and event halls, having hosted social events of all types since the club's construction in 1886 as a "hall for hire". Its current incarnation was opened in 1992 by the Ballinger brothers, with a capacity of 1,400, providing its traditional role as well as for corporate events, and for a recording studio. A scholarly account of Webster Hall and its place in the wider history of rock music in Lower Manhattan was published in 2020.
The Avalon Ballroom was a music venue in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco, California, at 1244 Sutter Street. The space is known as the location of many concerts of the counterculture movement, from around 1966 to 1969. It also had a reopening 34 years later, from 2003 to 2005.
Velvet Nation was a gay dance event that took place at the Nation nightclub, formerly known as The Capitol Ballroom, located at 1015 Half Street, SE in Washington, D.C. The party name was derived from the venue name and "Velvet", an ode to the gay community. This event was hosted weekly on Saturday nights, 388 times over seven years, serving more than 741,000 patrons. The event ended when Nation closed on July 16, 2006. The club was forced to close because of eminent domain, and the land is now part of the redevelopment program being spurred by the new Nationals Park baseball stadium in the Navy Yard/Near Southeast neighborhood.
The Ballroom scene is an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subculture. Its origins can be found in drag balls of the mid-19th century United States, such as those hosted by William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved Black man in Washington D.C.. By the early 20th century, integrated drag balls were popular in cities such as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In the mid-20th century, as a response to racism in integrated drag spaces, the balls evolved into house ballroom, where Black and Latino attendees could "walk" in a variety of categories for trophies and cash prizes. Most participants in ballroom belong to groups known as "houses", where chosen families of friends form relationships and communities separate from their families of origin, from which they may be estranged. The influence of ballroom culture can be seen in dance, language, music, and popular culture, and the community still exists today.
Buzz – once called "Washington's best electronic dance night" by The Washington Post - was one of Washington, D.C.'s longest running dance parties. It was co-founded by DJ/promoter Scott Henry and DJ/promoter and DC music store owner Lieven DeGeyndt at the East Side Club and then relaunched in October 1995 at the now demolished Nation, formerly the Capital Ballroom. At its peak it was one of the largest dance parties on the East Coast and voted "Best Party" four years in a row by then electronic dance music culture magazine URB (magazine). Buzz attracted the world's top electronic dance music artists to Washington, DC.
Klub Foot was a London nightclub in the psychobilly scene of the early and mid-1980s. It started in the heyday of the psychobilly scene in 1982.
Phase 1, also known as The Phase, was a lesbian bar and nightclub at 525 8th Street, Southeast in Washington, D.C. Located one block south of Pennsylvania Avenue, SE near Eastern Market in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, Phase 1 was the oldest continually operating lesbian bar in the United States and the oldest operating LGBTQ bar in Washington, D.C. until its closure in February, 2016.
Clint Crisher is an American pop singer and songwriter. He is believed to be the first American R&B or pop singer to be openly gay from the beginning of his career.
The DeploraBall was an unofficial inaugural ball event organized by GOTV group MAGA3X and held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 19, 2017, to celebrate the victory and inauguration of Donald Trump. The event fomented controversy due to its alleged association with members of the alt-right, and triggered violent protests outside the venue while the event went on as scheduled inside. In addition to the MAGA3X event, the "DeploraBall" name has also been used to refer to additional events for Trump supporters in Washington, D.C., and other locations. The name is a play on Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment made during her 2016 presidential election campaign.
Gays for Trump is an American LGBTQ organization that supports the former U.S. president Donald Trump and his administration. Peter Boykin is the founder and serves as president of the organization.
Mother Juan Aviance is an American secretary, voguer / dancer, music artist, nightclub host / promoter, record label owner, and CEO / A&R. He is the founder and "Mother" of the House of Aviance, one of the legendary houses that emerged from the U.S. ball culture in the 1980s, a House which is still active in New York City." He is also founder, CEO and A&R of Aviance Records, LLC, a multi-genre record label that promotes new and upcoming artists. He is regarded within the ballroom scene and is "House Mother" to the nightlife personalities and recording artists Kevin Aviance, and Erickatoure Aviance.