To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, KCPR’s Club 91 showed that the best way to spread holiday cheer is by playing loud house music for all to hear at their Christmas party and toy drive on Dec. 7.
Club 91 is a sector of Cal Poly’s radio station KCPR that broadcasts house, techno and disco every day of the week from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. The “91” is short for KCPR’s channel, 91.3, and the club includes DJs who regularly perform at local venues. It began in 2004 when alumnus Velanche Stewart hosted a live-mixing radio show called “Urban Landscapes” and met a student named Ryan Rosario, who was interested in DJing for KCPR. The two shared a mutual passion for music and eventually decided to start a new branch of the radio station that was focused on on-air live mixing. The rest is history.
DJs Alex McCracken, Gabe Pepper and Sam Stahl took to the turntables at Bang the Drum Brewery from 8:30 p.m. to midnight to celebrate the end of Fall 2018 and the beginning of the holiday season. The theme was Nightmare Before Christmas, so party-goers were expected to sport their spookiest holiday outfits.
Guests could get free entry at the door by donating a toy to Shadow’s Fund, a local non-profit organization that cares for sheltered dogs. After 9:30 p.m., the price for admission without a toy was $5.
McCracken, the director for Club 91, explained the precision that goes into arranging music events.
“It is a show, and there’s a lot of production behind it between tuning speakers, sound engineering on the floor and making sure they sound good,” McCracken said. “We even at one point got Wi-Fi outlets so we could control every single pin light in our disco balls.”
Thankfully, McCracken and the rest of Club 91 do not have to do it all alone.
“The great thing about KCPR is everyone plays their part, whether it’s a marketing role, promotion role, event production, audio production [or] sales,” McCracken said. “You kinda get put in this little bubble, and then you can do all these different things with it. For us, luckily, it’s been Club 91.”
Students do not need to be veteran DJs to start spinning records with Club 91. Wine and Viticulture sophomore and DJ Gabe Pepper remembers his entry into a fresh, new world of disc-jockeying.
“I just thought it was really cool how I came in knowing nothing about DJing at all,” Pepper said. “Along with Alex, a bunch of guys in his grade … were able to help me learn how to do everything and choose songs and read a crowd and beat match and all the little technical things.”
Club 91 will continue to host events throughout the year.