June 20, 2023 • 35 mins
Y’all, lean in and let me tell you a story about my first time going to the club! Including commentary about what I was taught in church about what “the club” would be like vs. what it was actually like, listen in for how I let go of my hangups about the club and why I still like to go today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
That time I met India Irin. That time I went
on a really bad date. That time I was directed
by Robert Townsend. That time I got Mono on Thanksgiving.
That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
That time I I.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, y'all, welcome back to another new episode of Her
with Amita Brown. We are, at the time of this recording,
really getting deep into our summer streets. I don't know
what summer is like wherever you live, but pretty much
in Atlanta, I feel that Memorial Day weekend is the
(00:57):
beginning of summer. That is the time, and I love summer.
I'm here for all the summer things, especially for the peaches, tomatoes,
and cucumbers. Here for that. Okay, okay, what are we
talking about today? Today we are talking about the club.
(01:17):
So much to talk about related to the club, and
specifically we are talking about that time I went to
the club for the first time. Even as I think
about telling y'all this story, I feel like, because I
was a late bloomer, because I was a sheltered church girl,
there are a lot of firsts that I had, Like,
(01:39):
if I did, I'm not going to do it because
that's like too much personal business out at once. I
liked telling y'all my business. I just like to sprinkle
it throughout. If I did a whole series of all
of my weird and wild firsts, nah, that's like too
much business in one set of things. So we just
gonna focus on this little sprinkle right here. But if
you are a listener to this podcast on a regular basis,
(02:02):
and you will feel the vibes of where this is headed.
If you're here for the first time, thank you, Thank
you for joining me. As I tell you about the
first time I went to the club. When you think
about it, how old were you your first time going
to the club? I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that
I was twenty five years old. Actually said that to
a friend recently as she was like, so nothing in college.
(02:25):
You did not go to the club in college, y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I did not go to the club in college. Those
of you who have joined me here in our her
living room know some of the vibes of my story.
I was a church girl growing up. I came from
a church going family, so there were a lot of
things that as I was growing up I was taught
weren't Christian and going to the club was one of them.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Honey.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
The club was considered to be this den of sin,
of lasciviousness, of debauchery that Jesus need to save you from,
Like Jesus really need to save you from the club.
So I want y'all to know that coming from a
(03:10):
family that has a lot of roots and Pentecostal Holiness
Church for those of you that are church familiar, but
if you're not, you know, the Christian Church in America
has these different denominations and facets and different like beliefs
under there, which I'm sure is true of a lot
of religions, right that there are the more orthodox there are,
(03:34):
the more conservative there are, the more liberal or lenient
as it relates to the rules of the religion. And
the part that my parents and grandparents came out of
was considered to be very conservative, very religious. You know,
like when my mom and my dad were growing up,
teenagers were not teenagers but just anybody really like you
(03:58):
weren't allowed to go to the movies that was considered
to be not Christian. You weren't supposed to be listening
to big air quotes here, secular music that was considered
to be not Christian. It was considered to be not
Christian for women to wear makeup at all. It was
considered not Christian for women to wear pants at all,
(04:18):
not just in church, but at all. Right, So that
was sort of the environment that my family came from.
So I also did not really come from you know,
a lot of family members that you know, you know,
you'd have, like certain black families may have those family
members that were like in the juke joint. That was
not the story for a good portion of my family
(04:40):
members that were ahead of me.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
And then by the time my mom and I started
going back to church when I was a teenager, the
church we went to was non denominational, but it still
had a lot of like Pentecostal holiness vibes, and a
part of one of the tenets of belief or of
what it should look like to be Christian if you
(05:05):
grew up Pentecostal holiness was this idea that the definition
of something being holy is that it's different from everything else,
that it's separated from everything else, not just different, but
separated from everything else. That that's how you know a
thing is holy. Right, So a lot of people who
grew up in this type of Christian tradition. You were
growing up in a way that said, that's how people
(05:27):
know you're Christian. They know you're Christian because you don't
do the things they do. You don't cuss, you don't
go to the club, you don't drink, you don't smoke,
you don't listen to secle of music. You know, you
don't do those things, and that's how people will know.
You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't have sex.
(05:50):
I'm just going to leave that there. You don't do
these things, and that is how people will know that
you are Christian. Right. As an aside, I would say, now,
in my relationship to my faith, it's like I want
to think about the things that I'm for more than
(06:11):
the things that I'm against as the definition of what
I believe.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And I also want to think about like.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Who I am and what I'm really about, and not
just think about how what I do appears. I think
that's also a part of it, right, even though I
don't think the adults would have articulated that to us
when we were teenagers, you know, growing up in youth group.
But I do think a part of it was how
you appeared even down to the drinking right. So to
(06:43):
give you a little bit of history as to why
I did not go to a club until I was
twenty five years old, growing up in this type of church,
and then when I moved to Atlanta to go to college,
I immediately got involved in campus ministry, got involved in
a church there in Atlanta, so kind of insulated myself again.
I feel like my church upbringing sheltered me from a
(07:05):
lot when I was in high school, and then I
came to college and sort of like insulated myself again
in sort of like church environment. And it's really interesting
because I've now been out of college long enough that
I've had let me see, I've had now four college reunions, right,
So each time we have a reunion, our class was
pretty big. So there are some women that I went
(07:27):
to college with that I'm almost either meeting for the
first time where we saw each other's faces, we really
didn't know each other's names or connect and there are
so many stories that we all had from school that
bonded us. And one of the things that was really
interesting about Atlanta in the late nineties is there were
a lot of clubs in sort of the midtown, downtown
(07:50):
Buckhead area, like a lot of these areas in the
city are very very different now than they were then.
But there were all these clubs, and they knew that
Spellman's campus you could not bring a car on campus
your first year, so they knew there were a bunch
of us first year students just getting away from home
for the first time, a lot of us. And they
(08:11):
would send these big old buses like charter buses that
would come to the front gates of Spelman and you
could get on the bus and it would take you
to the club and back these clubs that were available
for you know, eighteen and up right. And did I
get on the bus ever? I did not, But I
knew about the bus because I had other friends that
(08:33):
I went to college with that That's how they met
their best friends in school, was them getting on a
bus to go to some club together. But y'all, I
wasn't doing that because I was in campus ministry and
you can't get up for seven a m. Prayer if
you go to the club that night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You just can't do that.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So I didn't go to the club all through college.
And then I graduated and I was done with campus
ministry at that point, so I started helping out with
our college ministry at church.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So I spent pretty much.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
All my time doing that, and then some shitty things
went down at the church. And I've talked about this
in some other episodes in the Friendship series. I did
actually brought one of my really good friends from college, Salita,
onto this podcast, and we talked a lot about what
some of those times were like for us being in church.
What were the times where we realized we were going
(09:25):
to have to get out of church pretty immediately, right,
And during this time, some shitty things went down at
the church that caused me to have to make a
decision to leave the church where I had been going.
And this was a predominantly black church, I would say
mostly young. I would say, what for us felt like
the people who were older were people who were in
their late thirties or early forties. But I would say
(09:46):
most people, they were probably in their twenties, early thirties, right,
And I left the church at twenty five, And what
a wild thing because I was spending probably four to five.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Days out of the week at church. I was there Sunday,
I had rehearsals there, Tuesday and Thursday. We had Bible
study on Wednesday. We had a prayer service on Saturday sometimes,
and then some Saturdays we would have like volunteer meetings.
Like it was a lot of my spare time.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I mean, if you think about working a job and
then doing all of that. I didn't really have any
friends that I didn't go to church with, and even
the friends I went to church with, we kind of
had to figure out when we were going to spend
time together because we.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Were all at church so much.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So those first few months of just not having church
to go to, I was like, Wow, this is.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
What people do on Sundays.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They walk their dogs, they drink coffee, they eat brunch.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Wow, it was great.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I was like, man, having grown up in church and
being very sheltered in it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I was just never for better or for worse.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I was never a rebellious kid, so I pretty much
stayed in the bubble that was built for me, you know,
and staying in that bubble, there's a lot of shit
talking about people who don't go to church. You know,
there's a lot of shit talking about them, and you know,
those people they must not have morals, you know, all
(11:21):
the things they're missing out on because they hadn't go
to church. But boy, when you yourself are so entrenched
in church and then you have a time that you
get to experience what life is like not going to church.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's great. Oh my, it's whoa, it's great, y'all. Wow,
I was having a time.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And I had always had some interest in journalism. I
had started just very early, doing some writing for a
couple of publications in Atlanta and back then in order
to try and be a music journalist or I'm an
arts and entertainment journalist. Your entry point was album reviews,
(12:03):
so I started out writing a few album reviews and
then that led to live show reviews. Some of the
editors if they liked your album reviews, then after a
while they would say, hey, you know, here's a press pass,
go to this show and cover it. And that's when
I realized that being a music journalist was going to
be my favorite thing.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Like yo, I knew I was going to love it
so much.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
So it was because of my journalism work that I
was doing on the side, because I was working as
a receptionist during the day and being a writer the
rest of the time, and it was interesting because that
sort of led me down this road of getting a
chance to meet these different bands. And I met this
band and they just became wonderful new friends of mine.
They were like brothers to me. And so I saw
(12:50):
them at a festival and they invited me to another
show they did, so I went out there and saw them.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And we just became like very cool. This was really
during a time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
That time between twenty five and twenty seven was this
like big broadening of my whole life. You know, I
was actually hanging out with people who didn't go to.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Church with me.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I was just hanging out with people that didn't go
to church, a lot of them, you know. So it
was just a whole life that I was getting to
experience and meeting different people and going to different social functions,
and some of it would get a little uncomfortable. Like
I didn't grow up being told that Christians were allowed
to drink. For example, the church I grew up in,
(13:31):
that was not a thing. We did not have gatherings
where people were drinking wine. We didn't even serve wine
during communion. Like that just wasn't a thing that happened.
And then in the church I was in when I
was in my college age and early twenties. The rule
was if you were in a leadership position in the church,
(13:52):
whether that was paid staff or volunteer, that you were
not allowed to drink publicly, or if you had other
people like your house that went to the church or
anything like that, you couldn't You couldn't drink in case
you would cause anyone to stumble on a level. On
a level, that can make sense, but on another level,
it gets a little weird as far as just being
(14:14):
it being so much, or at least it felt at
the time. I'll say it felt at the time like
it was that rule was very much concerned with how
people appear. It's like now I can look back on
it and think related to when you're in community with
people that are sober, like being thoughtful about those things, right,
But we weren't really being given those reasons for the rule.
(14:35):
The rule was pretty much for you to not appear
as if you were drinking. So I didn't even have
my first drink un while I was twenty seven. Y'all's
that's a whole other time. Maybe I'll come back and
do another episode about that. But anyhow, this is me
laying the groundwork for y'all. Of how on the one hand,
how sheltered I was, but on the other hand, how
(14:56):
much of a like broadening my horizons period I was
in at this point. So my friends were in this band.
(15:19):
I wish I could remember the name, y'all, but I
can't remember it. So my friends were in this band
and their manager. I became really good friends with them,
and they kept inviting me to this show that they
were having, and all I all I could hear them saying, was, Yeah,
We're about to do this show next week at this club.
You should come, a mina, you should come. And I
just kept hearing them say show club, and I was like, yikes.
(15:39):
And let me tell you what was in my mind
about what I thought the club was. Like, I just
I just had in my mind like the club is
a din of sin. It is a place of lasciviousness
and debauchery and lust filled actions. Nothing good could come
(16:00):
from the club as far as what I had been
taught about it. And for those of you who are
Prince fans, Prince had an era where I think it
was the same album where he released Diamonds and Pearls,
and he had a song called Get Off, and the
video to Get Off is what would really be in
my mind about what a club must be like. There
must be people there with tattoos, who are partially clothed,
(16:23):
and there's sort of like it looks like an orgy,
except people aren't having sex. They're just kind of talking
to each other in these sensual ways.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think that's what I thought the club was like.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Right, So my friends are inviting me to there, and
I'm just nervous as hell, but they genuinely want me
to come there and support them, and I genuinely loved
their music and wanted to support them. So by this time,
when I left the church that I had been going
to in college and into my early twenties, that church
(16:56):
was a predominantly black church, and then I had a
period of time I just didn't go to church at all.
Met I went awhile and kind of felt like, maybe
I do want to go back to church, and I
knew a church in the area that was a pretty
big church. I think that's honestly what drew me to it,
because I was looking for someplace where I could kind
of be a little bit more anonymous, you know, where
(17:16):
there wouldn't be a lot of expectations on me at first.
I could just kind of come there and check the vibes.
And so I went to the church and it was
a predominantly white church. I would say the music wasn't
as great as the music I was used to from
the black churches that I had been in, but the
services were an hour long and I could kind of
go in and get, you know, that inspiration or challenge
(17:39):
from the sermon. I still had a lot of church
woundedness from a lot of the things that had gone
on at the church I had been a part of
for so long. So sometimes I would just go to
church and just cry, sit in one of the back
rows and cry a while and go home. And then
they had this element in the church called small groups.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with this,
(18:00):
a church small group is basically like if a Bible
study and a support group were the same thing. That's
pretty much what it's like. It's, you know, a group
of people that either you could be assigned to based
on where you live. Sometimes they were assigned by location.
Sometimes they were assigned by what they would call affinity groups. Right,
so there could be small groups for married couples. There
(18:21):
could be small groups for single women, single men, or
men and women regardless of their relationship status. And at
the time I joined a group that was all single women.
I was the only black woman and there were probably
maybe six or seven because the small groups normally didn't
get beyond ten people, so they're probably six or seven
white women. We were all in a group together, and
(18:42):
I pretty much decided, like, I think this is going
to be church for me, you know, like I stopped
going to the Sunday service, but whenever we had our
small group meetings, I did go to those, and it
was pretty much like, yeah, you might be doing a
Bible study, or you might be you know, reading a
spiritual book together, or you might be talking through maybe
what the sermon series was about. But the other part
(19:03):
of the meeting was you actually getting a chance to
share about your life with those people. And that's the
part that I really really loved the most. You know,
you got to really not only get to know other people,
but be a support to them. You know, sometimes they
may have had a loss in their family during that time,
or they may have gone through a breakup, or they
(19:24):
may get a promotion or they may be looking for
a job, and you're you know, being able to be
supportive to them, you know, spiritually supportive and emotionally supportive
during those times and also to receive that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I loved that.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
That really was the one thing that caused me to
sort of return to church in any way. Now here's
the other thing. I told y'all that I grew up
just at least slight Pentecostal.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Right, I told y'all where I was about the drinking things.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, this group was just not as rigid, I guess,
as the religion that I had been raised with.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Remember one particular night, I was out with a couple
of girls that were in small group with me. I
think we were going to see like a play or
something together, and they were like, oh, I mean to
meet us at this restaurant. You know, we'll meet up
for happy hour and we'll eat some food before we
go over to the show. So I was like, okay,
and y'all, I'm not even sure I understood what in
(20:21):
the world happy hour was, honestly, because it's not like
I had really been to bars and things like that.
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I was that sheltered.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I was that like steeped in, like church being my
extracurricular activity for so many years, so I really didn't
pay attention to the happy hour part. I was just like, Yeah,
after work, I'll meet you all over there. We'll go
to the show. So by the time I get to
them at the restaurant, these two girls have decided to
(20:48):
buy a picture of Margarita's and they're already like halfway
through the pictures, so they are like, you know, two
sheets to the wind a little bit. They're having a
good time, very giggly. Everyone's having a lot of fun.
And I remember sitting down and feeling like like feeling
like some alarm is going off inside of me, like
this picture. I had probably never been that close to
(21:09):
a picture of Margarita's. I was just like, oh, I
don't know what to do about this. And then my
mind was kind of freaking out a little bit because
I'm like, I actually really like have grown to love
these girls. We've gotten close to each other, and you know,
we're walking through our lives together, and I know them
(21:30):
to be kind people like I know them to if
if truly the definition of someone being Christian is to
actually exhibit like the traits of Jesus, you know, to
try to walk in the way in life that Jesus walked,
you know, metaphorically. Here they exhibited those traits. I knew
(21:50):
that about them, So I think the binary that I
was raised with that was very like Christians don't do
these things, and then people who aren't Christians do these things.
And then meeting people who were Christian and did the
things that I was tall I was told and taught
that Christians don't do those things. It was sort of
(22:12):
like a weird like my brain almost was like fractured
a little bit in the conversation. But even though I
was too scared to take a drink, they were like, do.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You want someone me?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And I was like, no, no, thank you, just water
for me, that's fine. I did decide to share with
them my dilemma, and I told them about these new
friends I had met, this band that we were just
really great friends, and they, you know, had wanted me
to come and support their shows at this club, and
they had invited me several times, and I had just
dodged it, you know, always was busy or had something
(22:45):
else going.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
What the truth is, I was afraid to go to it.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Because it was in a club and one of the
women turned to me and said, okay. She said, can
you think of anything and your life are in your
past that would cause you to have more struggle in
your life by you going into this club? And I
was like no, And she was like, do you believe
(23:09):
that God is everywhere? That anywhere you are, God is
with you? And I was like, yes, I believe that.
And she was like, so you believe God is with
you here with us right now? And I was like
I do. She was like, do you believe that God
could be with you in the club? And I was
like who hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I was like hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
And then I was like, ah, she got me because
I'm like, well, if God is with me here talking
to y'all, if I think that God is with me
when I go to work, if I think God's with
me when I'm on a date, like why would God
not be with me when I go to the club.
And she was like, if you believe that God will
be with you everywhere, and nothing about this type of
(23:47):
you know, event or space is going to be a
struggle for you or bring any struggles for you that
are unhealthy for you. Then she was like, then God
will be with you. And she was like, and if
you really feel nervous, you could grab a friend and
bring a friend. But go support your friends that have
invited you to check out their music. And she was like,
(24:08):
you can try it. And she said if you get
there and you hate it and you don't ever have
to go back, she was like, but you might go
there and find out that it's not as scary like
as you think. So I took her advice. I asked
a guy friend of mine to come with me to
the club. And the club was a club in Atlanta
that I'll tell y'all more about now, but it was
called MJQ, and y'all, they invited me to a Tuesday
(24:33):
night at the club. I didn't know enough about the
club to know that Tuesday night is not gonna be
nobody in the club, that a Tuesday is different from
a Friday or a Saturday. Bless my heart, didn't know
about that. So I went and no, it was not
like the set of a Prince video. There was not
you know, these huge amounts of debauchery and lasciviousness. It
(24:55):
was just my friends and maybe there were like seven
other people plus me and my guy friend and my
friends in the band were so excited to see me.
We hugged and they were just so glad that I
had finally come out to the show. And that was
my first time in the club. Now I did get
a chance to discover MJQ and MJQ is it's a
(25:19):
historical moment to me in Atlanta's night life scene. And actually,
as of this recording in twenty twenty three, MJQ will
spend its last year in the space where it has
been for probably over twenty years. And at the time
that I was first, I guess experiencing the club, experiencing
(25:42):
going to the club for the first time, Atlanta's clubs
were more, you know, places that you would wear your
you know, you would wear your high heels, you would
wear like a skin tight, very like sexy outfit, and
they would hold the club line outside so that the
(26:02):
club could look like you know, people really wanted to
get in, and then you'd go in and you know,
get your drink and you would dance a little.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Bit, but not a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
You really went there to be seen because you know,
it was the club and it was Atlanta, and that's
what you do. But MJQ was not like that. MJQ
was a club that you would wear your dirty sneakers too.
You would dress real comfortable because you went to MJQ
to dance. I mean, they had some of the best
(26:32):
DJs in the city that were there. A big shout
out to dress to beat Nick, who used to be
an event host over there, one of the best event
mcs you'll ever see, and he mceed an event over
there called Fantastic Fridays and it was him, DJ Lord,
DJ Fudge and DJ Majestic right. And I found out
(26:54):
about this because I was hanging out with some other
friends one Friday, I think one Friday night, and they
were like, I think we were out pretty late, and
they were like, Oh, since we're already out, why don't
we go get some food and let's go to MJQ.
And MJQ like when you walk up to it, it
looks like a shack. It looks like you walked up
to a metal shack, and you like get your ID checked,
(27:19):
pay your money, and then you walk down like underground
and you get down there and there's this like long bar,
DJ booth and people were just in there, you know,
like dancing the night away, and you would go in
there and the DJs would start spending like eleven o'clock,
and you wouldn't leave till it was like three or
four in the morning. I had so many nights like
(27:41):
that in my twenties and early thirties too, And one
of the things that I really loved about it was
I could just go there and like be me. I
remember some nights I didn't even go with my friends.
I would just go by myself. I'd wear my tank
top and my short it's my dirty sneakers and go
(28:02):
and just dance and sing and wrap the words and everything.
And it was a really beautiful moment for me because
I think when, at least I'll say for me growing
up in church and especially being very sheltered and growing
up in church, there were a lot of things I
was told about air quotes the world right, and it
(28:26):
was supposed to be like in the church or all
these good things, all these good people you know in the.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
World is where all of this like bad shit is happening,
and even just the experience of being an MJQ, and
that there were all sorts of people there, you know,
different walks of life, you know, different jobs, different occupations,
and we could all be there just having a good
(28:52):
time together and that that was a wonderful communal experience
to get to have. And it was wonderful. I mean,
was there.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Beer sloshed all over the floor by the time three
am came? Sure, that's why you wore your dirty sneakers.
You would never wear your fresh sneaks into MJQ. No, No,
but I saw DJ Spinderella there Over the years, I
saw Questlove DJ there. I think I saw quest Love
DJ there twice. Oh it was just m I mean,
(29:26):
MJQ is still going to exist, It's just going to
exist in a different space in Atlanta now, so we
all have to see what that will feel like versus
what this original location has felt like. But yeah, that
was my first time in the club Tuesday night, empty room.
But it led me to MJQ, which is still to
this day probably my favorite of all the clubs that
I've ever been to in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And what do I love about the club?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
I mean generally, generally, there might be some clubs that
are like Princes music videos.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I'm sure there are. I haven't been to those yet.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
If I do, and I feel like coming back here
to tell my business to y'all. I will let y'all
know how that is. So I don't know about that.
I'm sure there are clubs like that. But the club
overall wasn't this terrible place. You know. It was a
place where I had a lot of fun, where I
got a chance to just dance and here's some music
I love. And go there with somebody that you like
(30:28):
and dance and sing and wrap the words along. Go
there by yourself and look across the room at a
stranger and say words to this song you love. There's
just something about that that I totally fell in love with.
And so I'm glad I was able to get over
my hang ups about the club, because if you go
(30:49):
to the right one, it depends on what your purpose is,
what your reasons are. Now I know now a lot
of clubs are more of like a VIP experience, and
it's who's buy and bob and you know, it's all
those things. But I've never really cared about that as
it relates to going to the club. I never enjoyed
going to the club to dress up and be uncomfortable
(31:11):
when I go to a club. When I go to
hear a DJ. I'm going because I want to dance,
and I want to rap real loud, and I want
to sing and do all of those things that make
the club amazing. So shout out to the club, yo,
I got to give a shout out to that. I
arrived late, but I did indeed enjoy my time, and
(31:34):
I feel like the club for me really became this
extension of how much I love live music. And even
though when you're in the club, no one is there
with instruments, you know, there's typically not a band necessarily performing,
but the DJs are creating this live music experience that
you can't have anywhere else. So if you haven't been
to the club, you should go, But you should go
(31:54):
to one where there's a really dope DJ, like get
some reviews before you go. You should go to the
type of club where you could actually dance and hear
your music that you like and really enjoy yourself. You
should go to that and you should have that experience
where you get to look around the room and see
all these people singing in that same song and just
(32:15):
enjoying life. I feel like that brings me a lot
of joy. So yes, I went to the club for
the first time. And I did survive, and lasciviousness and
debauchery and lust did not indeed overtake me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I'm still here. So you should go to a club.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
If you don't want to go to a club, you
should go to at least one good dance party where
you can hear some music you love, you can dance
and just experience that moment of being free in yourself.
I think that's a part of what I can look
back on in that time I went to the club
for the first times. It was the beginning of me
(32:57):
getting free, of not feeling so entrenched with religious expectations,
but just being who I am. And this is my
last thought, and I may talk more about this on
some other episodes, but I was talking to some other
new friends about the idea of growing up in a
(33:18):
very religious environment and then when you get older and
some of the things about the.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Way you were raised or the way you were raised.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
To believe, become different, and how sometimes things happen in
life that sort of shatter those things you believed. And
sometimes for some people, you know, those things don't return.
You know, you may decide you just don't believe at all.
Like the way that you were raised to believe, or
like the way your family might believe. And for me,
(33:46):
I find that I'm in what I feel is a
mosaic period of my spirituality where I can say, you know,
I'm still very much the girl who loves gospel music
like I loved gospel music as a teenager. Love the
harmonies and the writing and how some of those hymns
carried my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother through and
(34:08):
that brings extra gravitas to that music to me. And
I'm also a girl who really loves to be on
the dance floor of a club or a party somewhere
and hear the DJ drop that, you know, that that
juvenile that you know for the nine to nine in
the two thousand and It's possible to be both things.
(34:28):
And it took me some years to learn that, you know,
because I wasn't raised to think that way. I was
raised to be like, you gotta be one or the other.
And to bring Beyonce's renaissance into the chat, like it's
possible to be that church girl who loves playing her
tambourine and loves, you know, singing John Peaquy songs and
(34:49):
to also really enjoy when the DJ plays grew up
the ground and that's me.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That's who I'm going to be. Thank y'all so much
for listening. See y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Her with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Solber Feedy Productions as a part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
That time I met India Irin. That time I went
on a really bad date. That time I was directed
by Robert Townsend. That time I got Mono on Thanksgiving.
That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
That time I I.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, y'all, welcome back to another new episode of Her
with Amita Brown. We are, at the time of this recording,
really getting deep into our summer streets. I don't know
what summer is like wherever you live, but pretty much
in Atlanta, I feel that Memorial Day weekend is the
(00:57):
beginning of summer. That is the time, and I love summer.
I'm here for all the summer things, especially for the peaches, tomatoes,
and cucumbers. Here for that. Okay, okay, what are we
talking about today? Today we are talking about the club.
(01:17):
So much to talk about related to the club, and
specifically we are talking about that time I went to
the club for the first time. Even as I think
about telling y'all this story, I feel like, because I
was a late bloomer, because I was a sheltered church girl,
there are a lot of firsts that I had, Like,
(01:39):
if I did, I'm not going to do it because
that's like too much personal business out at once. I
liked telling y'all my business. I just like to sprinkle
it throughout. If I did a whole series of all
of my weird and wild firsts, nah, that's like too
much business in one set of things. So we just
gonna focus on this little sprinkle right here. But if
you are a listener to this podcast on a regular basis,
(02:02):
and you will feel the vibes of where this is headed.
If you're here for the first time, thank you, Thank
you for joining me. As I tell you about the
first time I went to the club. When you think
about it, how old were you your first time going
to the club? I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that
I was twenty five years old. Actually said that to
a friend recently as she was like, so nothing in college.
(02:25):
You did not go to the club in college, y'all.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I did not go to the club in college. Those
of you who have joined me here in our her
living room know some of the vibes of my story.
I was a church girl growing up. I came from
a church going family, so there were a lot of
things that as I was growing up I was taught
weren't Christian and going to the club was one of them.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Honey.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
The club was considered to be this den of sin,
of lasciviousness, of debauchery that Jesus need to save you from,
Like Jesus really need to save you from the club.
So I want y'all to know that coming from a
(03:10):
family that has a lot of roots and Pentecostal Holiness
Church for those of you that are church familiar, but
if you're not, you know, the Christian Church in America
has these different denominations and facets and different like beliefs
under there, which I'm sure is true of a lot
of religions, right that there are the more orthodox there are,
(03:34):
the more conservative there are, the more liberal or lenient
as it relates to the rules of the religion. And
the part that my parents and grandparents came out of
was considered to be very conservative, very religious. You know,
like when my mom and my dad were growing up,
teenagers were not teenagers but just anybody really like you
(03:58):
weren't allowed to go to the movies that was considered
to be not Christian. You weren't supposed to be listening
to big air quotes here, secular music that was considered
to be not Christian. It was considered to be not
Christian for women to wear makeup at all. It was
considered not Christian for women to wear pants at all,
(04:18):
not just in church, but at all. Right, So that
was sort of the environment that my family came from.
So I also did not really come from you know,
a lot of family members that you know, you know,
you'd have, like certain black families may have those family
members that were like in the juke joint. That was
not the story for a good portion of my family
(04:40):
members that were ahead of me.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
And then by the time my mom and I started
going back to church when I was a teenager, the
church we went to was non denominational, but it still
had a lot of like Pentecostal holiness vibes, and a
part of one of the tenets of belief or of
what it should look like to be Christian if you
(05:05):
grew up Pentecostal holiness was this idea that the definition
of something being holy is that it's different from everything else,
that it's separated from everything else, not just different, but
separated from everything else. That that's how you know a
thing is holy. Right, So a lot of people who
grew up in this type of Christian tradition. You were
growing up in a way that said, that's how people
(05:27):
know you're Christian. They know you're Christian because you don't
do the things they do. You don't cuss, you don't
go to the club, you don't drink, you don't smoke,
you don't listen to secle of music. You know, you
don't do those things, and that's how people will know.
You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't have sex.
(05:50):
I'm just going to leave that there. You don't do
these things, and that is how people will know that
you are Christian. Right. As an aside, I would say, now,
in my relationship to my faith, it's like I want
to think about the things that I'm for more than
(06:11):
the things that I'm against as the definition of what
I believe.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And I also want to think about like.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Who I am and what I'm really about, and not
just think about how what I do appears. I think
that's also a part of it, right, even though I
don't think the adults would have articulated that to us
when we were teenagers, you know, growing up in youth group.
But I do think a part of it was how
you appeared even down to the drinking right. So to
(06:43):
give you a little bit of history as to why
I did not go to a club until I was
twenty five years old, growing up in this type of church,
and then when I moved to Atlanta to go to college,
I immediately got involved in campus ministry, got involved in
a church there in Atlanta, so kind of insulated myself again.
I feel like my church upbringing sheltered me from a
(07:05):
lot when I was in high school, and then I
came to college and sort of like insulated myself again
in sort of like church environment. And it's really interesting
because I've now been out of college long enough that
I've had let me see, I've had now four college reunions, right,
So each time we have a reunion, our class was
pretty big. So there are some women that I went
(07:27):
to college with that I'm almost either meeting for the
first time where we saw each other's faces, we really
didn't know each other's names or connect and there are
so many stories that we all had from school that
bonded us. And one of the things that was really
interesting about Atlanta in the late nineties is there were
a lot of clubs in sort of the midtown, downtown
(07:50):
Buckhead area, like a lot of these areas in the
city are very very different now than they were then.
But there were all these clubs, and they knew that
Spellman's campus you could not bring a car on campus
your first year, so they knew there were a bunch
of us first year students just getting away from home
for the first time, a lot of us. And they
(08:11):
would send these big old buses like charter buses that
would come to the front gates of Spelman and you
could get on the bus and it would take you
to the club and back these clubs that were available
for you know, eighteen and up right. And did I
get on the bus ever? I did not, But I
knew about the bus because I had other friends that
(08:33):
I went to college with that That's how they met
their best friends in school, was them getting on a
bus to go to some club together. But y'all, I
wasn't doing that because I was in campus ministry and
you can't get up for seven a m. Prayer if
you go to the club that night.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You just can't do that.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So I didn't go to the club all through college.
And then I graduated and I was done with campus
ministry at that point, so I started helping out with
our college ministry at church.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So I spent pretty much.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
All my time doing that, and then some shitty things
went down at the church. And I've talked about this
in some other episodes in the Friendship series. I did
actually brought one of my really good friends from college, Salita,
onto this podcast, and we talked a lot about what
some of those times were like for us being in church.
What were the times where we realized we were going
(09:25):
to have to get out of church pretty immediately, right,
And during this time, some shitty things went down at
the church that caused me to have to make a
decision to leave the church where I had been going.
And this was a predominantly black church, I would say
mostly young. I would say, what for us felt like
the people who were older were people who were in
their late thirties or early forties. But I would say
(09:46):
most people, they were probably in their twenties, early thirties, right,
And I left the church at twenty five, And what
a wild thing because I was spending probably four to five.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Days out of the week at church. I was there Sunday,
I had rehearsals there, Tuesday and Thursday. We had Bible
study on Wednesday. We had a prayer service on Saturday sometimes,
and then some Saturdays we would have like volunteer meetings.
Like it was a lot of my spare time.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I mean, if you think about working a job and
then doing all of that. I didn't really have any
friends that I didn't go to church with, and even
the friends I went to church with, we kind of
had to figure out when we were going to spend
time together because we.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Were all at church so much.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
So those first few months of just not having church
to go to, I was like, Wow, this is.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
What people do on Sundays.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They walk their dogs, they drink coffee, they eat brunch.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Wow, it was great.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
I was like, man, having grown up in church and
being very sheltered in it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I was just never for better or for worse.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I was never a rebellious kid, so I pretty much
stayed in the bubble that was built for me, you know,
and staying in that bubble, there's a lot of shit
talking about people who don't go to church. You know,
there's a lot of shit talking about them, and you know,
those people they must not have morals, you know, all
(11:21):
the things they're missing out on because they hadn't go
to church. But boy, when you yourself are so entrenched
in church and then you have a time that you
get to experience what life is like not going to church.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's great. Oh my, it's whoa, it's great, y'all. Wow,
I was having a time.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And I had always had some interest in journalism. I
had started just very early, doing some writing for a
couple of publications in Atlanta and back then in order
to try and be a music journalist or I'm an
arts and entertainment journalist. Your entry point was album reviews,
(12:03):
so I started out writing a few album reviews and
then that led to live show reviews. Some of the
editors if they liked your album reviews, then after a
while they would say, hey, you know, here's a press pass,
go to this show and cover it. And that's when
I realized that being a music journalist was going to
be my favorite thing.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Like yo, I knew I was going to love it
so much.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
So it was because of my journalism work that I
was doing on the side, because I was working as
a receptionist during the day and being a writer the
rest of the time, and it was interesting because that
sort of led me down this road of getting a
chance to meet these different bands. And I met this
band and they just became wonderful new friends of mine.
They were like brothers to me. And so I saw
(12:50):
them at a festival and they invited me to another
show they did, so I went out there and saw them.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And we just became like very cool. This was really
during a time.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
That time between twenty five and twenty seven was this
like big broadening of my whole life. You know, I
was actually hanging out with people who didn't go to.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Church with me.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I was just hanging out with people that didn't go
to church, a lot of them, you know. So it
was just a whole life that I was getting to
experience and meeting different people and going to different social functions,
and some of it would get a little uncomfortable. Like
I didn't grow up being told that Christians were allowed
to drink. For example, the church I grew up in,
(13:31):
that was not a thing. We did not have gatherings
where people were drinking wine. We didn't even serve wine
during communion. Like that just wasn't a thing that happened.
And then in the church I was in when I
was in my college age and early twenties. The rule
was if you were in a leadership position in the church,
(13:52):
whether that was paid staff or volunteer, that you were
not allowed to drink publicly, or if you had other
people like your house that went to the church or
anything like that, you couldn't You couldn't drink in case
you would cause anyone to stumble on a level. On
a level, that can make sense, but on another level,
it gets a little weird as far as just being
(14:14):
it being so much, or at least it felt at
the time. I'll say it felt at the time like
it was that rule was very much concerned with how
people appear. It's like now I can look back on
it and think related to when you're in community with
people that are sober, like being thoughtful about those things, right,
But we weren't really being given those reasons for the rule.
(14:35):
The rule was pretty much for you to not appear
as if you were drinking. So I didn't even have
my first drink un while I was twenty seven. Y'all's
that's a whole other time. Maybe I'll come back and
do another episode about that. But anyhow, this is me
laying the groundwork for y'all. Of how on the one hand,
how sheltered I was, but on the other hand, how
(14:56):
much of a like broadening my horizons period I was
in at this point. So my friends were in this band.
(15:19):
I wish I could remember the name, y'all, but I
can't remember it. So my friends were in this band
and their manager. I became really good friends with them,
and they kept inviting me to this show that they
were having, and all I all I could hear them saying, was, Yeah,
We're about to do this show next week at this club.
You should come, a mina, you should come. And I
just kept hearing them say show club, and I was like, yikes.
(15:39):
And let me tell you what was in my mind
about what I thought the club was. Like, I just
I just had in my mind like the club is
a din of sin. It is a place of lasciviousness
and debauchery and lust filled actions. Nothing good could come
(16:00):
from the club as far as what I had been
taught about it. And for those of you who are
Prince fans, Prince had an era where I think it
was the same album where he released Diamonds and Pearls,
and he had a song called Get Off, and the
video to Get Off is what would really be in
my mind about what a club must be like. There
must be people there with tattoos, who are partially clothed,
(16:23):
and there's sort of like it looks like an orgy,
except people aren't having sex. They're just kind of talking
to each other in these sensual ways.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think that's what I thought the club was like.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Right, So my friends are inviting me to there, and
I'm just nervous as hell, but they genuinely want me
to come there and support them, and I genuinely loved
their music and wanted to support them. So by this time,
when I left the church that I had been going
to in college and into my early twenties, that church
(16:56):
was a predominantly black church, and then I had a
period of time I just didn't go to church at all.
Met I went awhile and kind of felt like, maybe
I do want to go back to church, and I
knew a church in the area that was a pretty
big church. I think that's honestly what drew me to it,
because I was looking for someplace where I could kind
of be a little bit more anonymous, you know, where
(17:16):
there wouldn't be a lot of expectations on me at first.
I could just kind of come there and check the vibes.
And so I went to the church and it was
a predominantly white church. I would say the music wasn't
as great as the music I was used to from
the black churches that I had been in, but the
services were an hour long and I could kind of
go in and get, you know, that inspiration or challenge
(17:39):
from the sermon. I still had a lot of church
woundedness from a lot of the things that had gone
on at the church I had been a part of
for so long. So sometimes I would just go to
church and just cry, sit in one of the back
rows and cry a while and go home. And then
they had this element in the church called small groups.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with this,
(18:00):
a church small group is basically like if a Bible
study and a support group were the same thing. That's
pretty much what it's like. It's, you know, a group
of people that either you could be assigned to based
on where you live. Sometimes they were assigned by location.
Sometimes they were assigned by what they would call affinity groups. Right,
so there could be small groups for married couples. There
(18:21):
could be small groups for single women, single men, or
men and women regardless of their relationship status. And at
the time I joined a group that was all single women.
I was the only black woman and there were probably
maybe six or seven because the small groups normally didn't
get beyond ten people, so they're probably six or seven
white women. We were all in a group together, and
(18:42):
I pretty much decided, like, I think this is going
to be church for me, you know, like I stopped
going to the Sunday service, but whenever we had our
small group meetings, I did go to those, and it
was pretty much like, yeah, you might be doing a
Bible study, or you might be you know, reading a
spiritual book together, or you might be talking through maybe
what the sermon series was about. But the other part
(19:03):
of the meeting was you actually getting a chance to
share about your life with those people. And that's the
part that I really really loved the most. You know,
you got to really not only get to know other people,
but be a support to them. You know, sometimes they
may have had a loss in their family during that time,
or they may have gone through a breakup, or they
(19:24):
may get a promotion or they may be looking for
a job, and you're you know, being able to be
supportive to them, you know, spiritually supportive and emotionally supportive
during those times and also to receive that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I loved that.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
That really was the one thing that caused me to
sort of return to church in any way. Now here's
the other thing. I told y'all that I grew up
just at least slight Pentecostal.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Right, I told y'all where I was about the drinking things.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well, this group was just not as rigid, I guess,
as the religion that I had been raised with.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Remember one particular night, I was out with a couple
of girls that were in small group with me. I
think we were going to see like a play or
something together, and they were like, oh, I mean to
meet us at this restaurant. You know, we'll meet up
for happy hour and we'll eat some food before we
go over to the show. So I was like, okay,
and y'all, I'm not even sure I understood what in
(20:21):
the world happy hour was, honestly, because it's not like
I had really been to bars and things like that.
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I was that sheltered.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I was that like steeped in, like church being my
extracurricular activity for so many years, so I really didn't
pay attention to the happy hour part. I was just like, Yeah,
after work, I'll meet you all over there. We'll go
to the show. So by the time I get to
them at the restaurant, these two girls have decided to
(20:48):
buy a picture of Margarita's and they're already like halfway
through the pictures, so they are like, you know, two
sheets to the wind a little bit. They're having a
good time, very giggly. Everyone's having a lot of fun.
And I remember sitting down and feeling like like feeling
like some alarm is going off inside of me, like
this picture. I had probably never been that close to
(21:09):
a picture of Margarita's. I was just like, oh, I
don't know what to do about this. And then my
mind was kind of freaking out a little bit because
I'm like, I actually really like have grown to love
these girls. We've gotten close to each other, and you know,
we're walking through our lives together, and I know them
(21:30):
to be kind people like I know them to if
if truly the definition of someone being Christian is to
actually exhibit like the traits of Jesus, you know, to
try to walk in the way in life that Jesus walked,
you know, metaphorically. Here they exhibited those traits. I knew
(21:50):
that about them, So I think the binary that I
was raised with that was very like Christians don't do
these things, and then people who aren't Christians do these things.
And then meeting people who were Christian and did the
things that I was tall I was told and taught
that Christians don't do those things. It was sort of
(22:12):
like a weird like my brain almost was like fractured
a little bit in the conversation. But even though I
was too scared to take a drink, they were like, do.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You want someone me?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
And I was like, no, no, thank you, just water
for me, that's fine. I did decide to share with
them my dilemma, and I told them about these new
friends I had met, this band that we were just
really great friends, and they, you know, had wanted me
to come and support their shows at this club, and
they had invited me several times, and I had just
dodged it, you know, always was busy or had something
(22:45):
else going.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
What the truth is, I was afraid to go to it.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Because it was in a club and one of the
women turned to me and said, okay. She said, can
you think of anything and your life are in your
past that would cause you to have more struggle in
your life by you going into this club? And I
was like no, And she was like, do you believe
(23:09):
that God is everywhere? That anywhere you are, God is
with you? And I was like, yes, I believe that.
And she was like, so you believe God is with
you here with us right now? And I was like
I do. She was like, do you believe that God
could be with you in the club? And I was
like who hmm.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I was like hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
And then I was like, ah, she got me because
I'm like, well, if God is with me here talking
to y'all, if I think that God is with me
when I go to work, if I think God's with
me when I'm on a date, like why would God
not be with me when I go to the club.
And she was like, if you believe that God will
be with you everywhere, and nothing about this type of
(23:47):
you know, event or space is going to be a
struggle for you or bring any struggles for you that
are unhealthy for you. Then she was like, then God
will be with you. And she was like, and if
you really feel nervous, you could grab a friend and
bring a friend. But go support your friends that have
invited you to check out their music. And she was like,
(24:08):
you can try it. And she said if you get
there and you hate it and you don't ever have
to go back, she was like, but you might go
there and find out that it's not as scary like
as you think. So I took her advice. I asked
a guy friend of mine to come with me to
the club. And the club was a club in Atlanta
that I'll tell y'all more about now, but it was
called MJQ, and y'all, they invited me to a Tuesday
(24:33):
night at the club. I didn't know enough about the
club to know that Tuesday night is not gonna be
nobody in the club, that a Tuesday is different from
a Friday or a Saturday. Bless my heart, didn't know
about that. So I went and no, it was not
like the set of a Prince video. There was not
you know, these huge amounts of debauchery and lasciviousness. It
(24:55):
was just my friends and maybe there were like seven
other people plus me and my guy friend and my
friends in the band were so excited to see me.
We hugged and they were just so glad that I
had finally come out to the show. And that was
my first time in the club. Now I did get
a chance to discover MJQ and MJQ is it's a
(25:19):
historical moment to me in Atlanta's night life scene. And actually,
as of this recording in twenty twenty three, MJQ will
spend its last year in the space where it has
been for probably over twenty years. And at the time
that I was first, I guess experiencing the club, experiencing
(25:42):
going to the club for the first time, Atlanta's clubs
were more, you know, places that you would wear your
you know, you would wear your high heels, you would
wear like a skin tight, very like sexy outfit, and
they would hold the club line outside so that the
(26:02):
club could look like you know, people really wanted to
get in, and then you'd go in and you know,
get your drink and you would dance a little.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Bit, but not a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
You really went there to be seen because you know,
it was the club and it was Atlanta, and that's
what you do. But MJQ was not like that. MJQ
was a club that you would wear your dirty sneakers too.
You would dress real comfortable because you went to MJQ
to dance. I mean, they had some of the best
(26:32):
DJs in the city that were there. A big shout
out to dress to beat Nick, who used to be
an event host over there, one of the best event
mcs you'll ever see, and he mceed an event over
there called Fantastic Fridays and it was him, DJ Lord,
DJ Fudge and DJ Majestic right. And I found out
(26:54):
about this because I was hanging out with some other
friends one Friday, I think one Friday night, and they
were like, I think we were out pretty late, and
they were like, Oh, since we're already out, why don't
we go get some food and let's go to MJQ.
And MJQ like when you walk up to it, it
looks like a shack. It looks like you walked up
to a metal shack, and you like get your ID checked,
(27:19):
pay your money, and then you walk down like underground
and you get down there and there's this like long bar,
DJ booth and people were just in there, you know,
like dancing the night away, and you would go in
there and the DJs would start spending like eleven o'clock,
and you wouldn't leave till it was like three or
four in the morning. I had so many nights like
(27:41):
that in my twenties and early thirties too, And one
of the things that I really loved about it was
I could just go there and like be me. I
remember some nights I didn't even go with my friends.
I would just go by myself. I'd wear my tank
top and my short it's my dirty sneakers and go
(28:02):
and just dance and sing and wrap the words and everything.
And it was a really beautiful moment for me because
I think when, at least I'll say for me growing
up in church and especially being very sheltered and growing
up in church, there were a lot of things I
was told about air quotes the world right, and it
(28:26):
was supposed to be like in the church or all
these good things, all these good people you know in the.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
World is where all of this like bad shit is happening,
and even just the experience of being an MJQ, and
that there were all sorts of people there, you know,
different walks of life, you know, different jobs, different occupations,
and we could all be there just having a good
(28:52):
time together and that that was a wonderful communal experience
to get to have. And it was wonderful. I mean,
was there.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Beer sloshed all over the floor by the time three
am came? Sure, that's why you wore your dirty sneakers.
You would never wear your fresh sneaks into MJQ. No, No,
but I saw DJ Spinderella there Over the years, I
saw Questlove DJ there. I think I saw quest Love
DJ there twice. Oh it was just m I mean,
(29:26):
MJQ is still going to exist, It's just going to
exist in a different space in Atlanta now, so we
all have to see what that will feel like versus
what this original location has felt like. But yeah, that
was my first time in the club Tuesday night, empty room.
But it led me to MJQ, which is still to
this day probably my favorite of all the clubs that
I've ever been to in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And what do I love about the club?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
I mean generally, generally, there might be some clubs that
are like Princes music videos.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I'm sure there are. I haven't been to those yet.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
If I do, and I feel like coming back here
to tell my business to y'all. I will let y'all
know how that is. So I don't know about that.
I'm sure there are clubs like that. But the club
overall wasn't this terrible place. You know. It was a
place where I had a lot of fun, where I
got a chance to just dance and here's some music
I love. And go there with somebody that you like
(30:28):
and dance and sing and wrap the words along. Go
there by yourself and look across the room at a
stranger and say words to this song you love. There's
just something about that that I totally fell in love with.
And so I'm glad I was able to get over
my hang ups about the club, because if you go
(30:49):
to the right one, it depends on what your purpose is,
what your reasons are. Now I know now a lot
of clubs are more of like a VIP experience, and
it's who's buy and bob and you know, it's all
those things. But I've never really cared about that as
it relates to going to the club. I never enjoyed
going to the club to dress up and be uncomfortable
(31:11):
when I go to a club. When I go to
hear a DJ. I'm going because I want to dance,
and I want to rap real loud, and I want
to sing and do all of those things that make
the club amazing. So shout out to the club, yo,
I got to give a shout out to that. I
arrived late, but I did indeed enjoy my time, and
(31:34):
I feel like the club for me really became this
extension of how much I love live music. And even
though when you're in the club, no one is there
with instruments, you know, there's typically not a band necessarily performing,
but the DJs are creating this live music experience that
you can't have anywhere else. So if you haven't been
to the club, you should go, But you should go
(31:54):
to one where there's a really dope DJ, like get
some reviews before you go. You should go to the
type of club where you could actually dance and hear
your music that you like and really enjoy yourself. You
should go to that and you should have that experience
where you get to look around the room and see
all these people singing in that same song and just
(32:15):
enjoying life. I feel like that brings me a lot
of joy. So yes, I went to the club for
the first time. And I did survive, and lasciviousness and
debauchery and lust did not indeed overtake me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
I'm still here. So you should go to a club.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
If you don't want to go to a club, you
should go to at least one good dance party where
you can hear some music you love, you can dance
and just experience that moment of being free in yourself.
I think that's a part of what I can look
back on in that time I went to the club
for the first times. It was the beginning of me
(32:57):
getting free, of not feeling so entrenched with religious expectations,
but just being who I am. And this is my
last thought, and I may talk more about this on
some other episodes, but I was talking to some other
new friends about the idea of growing up in a
(33:18):
very religious environment and then when you get older and
some of the things about the.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Way you were raised or the way you were raised.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
To believe, become different, and how sometimes things happen in
life that sort of shatter those things you believed. And
sometimes for some people, you know, those things don't return.
You know, you may decide you just don't believe at all.
Like the way that you were raised to believe, or
like the way your family might believe. And for me,
(33:46):
I find that I'm in what I feel is a
mosaic period of my spirituality where I can say, you know,
I'm still very much the girl who loves gospel music
like I loved gospel music as a teenager. Love the
harmonies and the writing and how some of those hymns
carried my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother through and
(34:08):
that brings extra gravitas to that music to me. And
I'm also a girl who really loves to be on
the dance floor of a club or a party somewhere
and hear the DJ drop that, you know, that that
juvenile that you know for the nine to nine in
the two thousand and It's possible to be both things.
(34:28):
And it took me some years to learn that, you know,
because I wasn't raised to think that way. I was
raised to be like, you gotta be one or the other.
And to bring Beyonce's renaissance into the chat, like it's
possible to be that church girl who loves playing her
tambourine and loves, you know, singing John Peaquy songs and
(34:49):
to also really enjoy when the DJ plays grew up
the ground and that's me.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
That's who I'm going to be. Thank y'all so much
for listening. See y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Her with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
Solber Feedy Productions as a part of the Seneca Women
Podcast Network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
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