It all started because he wanted to throw a party. Wait, no, back up: It started because we’re all stuck inside and because boredom is a powerful tool that can cold-press anyone’s creative juices, much less an actual “creative.”
Last week, Jones woke up at 4 a.m. and, instead of being crippled by the anxiety of the times, decided to throw a party online for his famous pals. With his laptop, signature wide-brim hat and view of Los Angeles ready to go, Jones played music he loved for an Instagram party of about 200 music-industry heavyweights. The next day, 2,000 people joined. Then 12,000. Then 25,000. By Saturday night, more than 100,000 people — including former first lady Michelle Obama and a host of A-listers — were jamming together in “Club Quarantine,” the tongue-in-cheek shorthand for the hours-long broadcasts streamed live from Jones’s kitchen on his smartphone.
The online party is all anyone is talking about (well, besides the very reason for them). On Monday morning (does the man sleep?), Jones was on “CBS This Morning” talking to Gayle King (yep, she was “at” the party, too), and later that night, he appeared on “The Tonight Show: At Home Edition” with Jimmy Fallon.
“I just wanted to do something good for people, and it turned into something really good. It was so unexpected,” Jones told Fallon.
“What you’re doing is exactly what we need,” the late-night host said.
As noteworthy as the jam sessions are, the public’s zealous response is just as interesting. Diplo, Biz Markie, Questlove and a host of folks you have probably never heard of are mixing songs for the self-isolating masses. But DJing live online is nothing new: For nearly a decade, websites such as Boiler Room have been broadcasting musical mixes from across the globe.
“You can’t talk about D-Nice without looking at it in the context of what already exists,” said Adrian Loving, a Washington-based DJ and artist. “It’s not a singular phenomenon.”
But these are strange times. New or not, what Jones is doing (and will keep doing, he says) has sparked something severely lacking in these past few weeks: joy. While no online stream can replace the feeling of being in the actual club, sweating and laughing with your friends, that is precisely the point. Those days might be gone for the foreseeable future, and society will have to find new ways to connect that don’t include grinding on each other.
Just as we are putting those physical walls up, though, D-Nice and his social distancing parties are breaking metaphorical ones down. The club is so often associated with velvet ropes, VIPs and the dreaded “list.” Club Quarantine eliminates all that. Where else can your auntie jam to Beyoncé “alongside” Mrs. Obama? Where else can Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg walk into the room (or chat, as it were) and keep the party going by making sure the technology doesn’t shut the whole thing down? In that way, the Instagram live parties are underscoring a fact that could be easy to forget while home alone — we’re all in this together.
“I don’t have a playlist,” Jones told King on Monday. “I literally just play what feels good. I wanted people to feel good. I want their spirits to be lifted through music, just one song at a time.”
After taking a much-needed break, D-Nice will be back at it Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time.