GogoBeat is a directory for Go-Go music in Washington DC, MD, & VA hosting free schedules, contacts, links, & other resources for bands, fans, promoters, producers, clubs, and others into gogo; really mostly it exists to keep track of upcoming shows.
GogoBeat was created because the existing calendars of shows and ways of finding out about shows either only included certain types of Go-Gos, or only included shows who paid to be listed, or you had to wade through hundreds of bulletin board messages, or you had to subscribe to text messages to your cell phone from every band, or you just had to hope the right flyers showed up on your wind-shield, or you had to know the right people or be on the right mailing lists. The idea is to maintain a simple, free, inclusive list of information to help us figure out where to party!
GogoBeat aims to do right for all of Go-Go: the Bounce and the Pocket, the Grown and Sexy and the Up and Coming, the Slumming and the Cranking, supporting all of it, without regard to feuds, rivalries, competitions, beefs, dislikes, or competing interests.
GogoBeat is non-commercial and doesn't pay for (or host) advertising. We welcome ideas, contributions, mentions, shout-outs and notices, references to us, etc... feel free to mention us in between sets, on flyers, on air, in print, or wherever! AND PLEASE LINK TO US! Gogobeat is not affiliated with any particular band, promoter, or club, etc.
GogoBeat supports all of the other online resources, we're not out to compete with the bulletin boards, online stores, band sites, and cetera; rather we are trying to pull together as a central hub, a home page, enabling those who don't know about the resources to find what is available. We have links across the top to common resources such as tmottgogo, gogocentral, papalace, sgg, and gogoradio- if you have others that should be here, let us know.
GogoBeat was initially created as a single point of reference for shows, rather than having to fish around on several BBSs, dig through flyers, listen to the radio, and join mailing lists. The UpcomingShows and WeeklyGigs were the first core functionality. The Bands list and the Clubs list and the various links and resources were afterthoughts. If anyone wants to work on the band pages or the club pages, more information would be great.
GogoBeat is intended as a scratch pad for the community, if anyone wants to make what they know available here for the community, it is easy to edit it yourself! Just create an ID and ask for edit rights. If it isn't useful enough for a variety to want to use as a wiki, it will still get updated with the basics of upcoming shows.
If you have content or corrections regarding Go-Go music, Go-Go clubs, upcoming or regular Go-Gos, the Go-Go scene in Washington DC, MD, or VA, down-loadable or streaming Go-Go, links that would be useful, flyers for shows, or anything else you would like to contribute, please email us what you have. Usually the site will be updated in only an hour or two.
Ideas for new content areas are welcome, too- perhaps lists and contact information for sound or security companies, or printing services for flyers, or a table listing promoters? Articles about Go-Go history? A genealogy of Go-Go bands tracing out the careers of the members from band to band? Lyrics to original songs would be great.
Don't forget to check out our MySpace page on the link bar at the top, we're actively trying to gather MySpace pages related to Go-Go, we also have their links listed on the SomeFolks page.
If you're interested in maintaining information about Go-Go music or culture in Washington DC, we can also set up access to areas of the site, or give you your own section- gogobeat exists to support the community, please take advantage of it! You can make it what you want if you have the motivation and have ideas.
Right now what we need most is more eyes on the UpcomingShows and WeeklyGigs pages, without input on changes when a gogo is no longer being held or a new gogo starts up, things get old, and the listings become stale.
We are for DC GO GO and if there is anything topical you have to request or to contribute, contact us at info@gogobeat.com.
Also, we are looking for any LINKS we may be missing- we may not HAVE all the best in Washington GoGo, but we want be one click away from all the best...
GogoBeat is a wikiwiki, which means it is trivially easy to edit it from any browser. If members of the Go-Go scene would like to have their own pages or areas, we're glad to host them for free- Gogobeat has been created to gather community resources, and would like to see more involvement and contribution. You get out of it what you put into it!
Note, GogoBeat is tested more with Firefox than with IE, we've fixed several bugs which only effect IE, let us know if you find more.
If you don't even know what Go-Go is, it is a genre of music which evolved in the Washington DC area since the 70's. The 'Godfather of Go-Go' is considered to be Chuck Brown. Other bands early on were Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, and Experience Unlimited (EU). The Junkyard band (JYB), the Backyard Band (BYB), and the Uncalled 4 Experience (UCB or UCE) came somewhat later and refined the core of music with CRANK.
TO HEAR GO-GO OR LEARN ABOUT IT IF YOU AREN'T AT ALL FAMILIAR WITH IT: http://www.whatsgogo.com/the_beat.html (hover over the CD covers to hear the beats!), http://dcgogoparadise.com/ has listenable previews of a lot of bands, this is a good place to listen to some Go-Go if you don't know what it is! (Look for "Sample Tracks").
Relatively recently, gogo evolved a faster younger sound in the 'bounce beat', pioneered by TCB, now played by bands like CCB, TOB, ABM, MOB, Reaction, and New Vision.
Some bands have started trying to appeal to an older audience, calling their style "Grown and Sexy". This includes the Familiar Faces, Suttle, and Lissen (L!ssen), which has now split into "Da Grewp" and "The Band iHD". (Da Grewp seems to be history as of November 2007...)
Current bands include the WHAT! band (Washington's Hottest And Talented), Mambo Sauce, I&I band, Publicity band, and the After Hours Band.
Clubs which support Go-Go mostly for the drinking crowd include the Classics, Mirrors, the Tradewinds, Zanzibar, Buds, the Market Lounge, X4B, and the DC Tunnel (Club Envy).
Clubs which are more younger (<21) bounce are the CFE, the Thai Seafood, the Love TV, etc. (And the Market Lounge until they get their Liquor license back...).
The idea here is to provide server space that can be built over the years into something useful, ideally with contributions and support from interested fans. So, instead of pointing out that we're just a bunch of lame bamas, which we probably already know, provide some useful suggestions on what you would like changed, or better yet offer to contribute some content or editing.
GogoBeat was not started by promoters or advertisers or bands, it is a fan site, we listen to gogo music, we love DC Go-Go music, our iPods are full of Go-Go, and we're trying to keep up with which clubs have which bands, where sites are to download gogo from, which myspace pages have good cranking Go-Go songs to listen to, and what other sites exist on the net.
This particular blather is partly just to help relevant stuff be found by those using indexes to peruse the web, it isn't really that useful, except that keeping it all here on the front page menu is good to help it show up when people are searching for information about gogo.
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