Saturday, February 13, 2016

The House D.J. of the Bernie Sanders Campaign

6:28:00 AM By



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D.J. Mel, working the turntables at a party for Senator Bernie Sanders in Concord, N.H., also kept the beat steady at the candidate’s party in Iowa.

Standing between a wall of retracted wooden bleachers and his turntables, Mel Sandico, a.k.a. Mel Cavaricci, a.k.a. D.J. Mel, looked up to survey the crowd filing into Senator Bernie Sanders’s New Hampshire victory party last Tuesday night.
“Can you hold on one sec?” he said, putting on his headphones, inspecting his laptop and playing a Roy Ayers hit. “We’re just kind of easing in.”
Ayers, the Delfonics, Southside Movement and other soul singers who provided the samples for hip-hop classics are pretty much what you would expect in the playlist of a guy wearing a Reigning Champ black hoodie under a Patagonia vest, a pair of Naked & Famous jeans over Air Jordan 1s, and a Supreme black cap over his clear framed glasses and fashionable beard.
Less so from a presidential campaign. And yet Mr. Sandico has become the house D.J. of Mr. Sanders’s parties, playing a mix of soul, funk and disco that is in equal parts laid-back lounge bar, alternative college radio and dancey early ’90s bar mitzvah.
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Both he and his music are totally consistent with the projected image of a 74-year-old Democratic socialist from lily-white and Phish-fanatical Vermont who is to trying to capture the imagination of young people and minorities and claim the “it campaign” mantle that Barack Obama had in 2008.
Mr. Sandico, “Notoriously recognized as “Obama’s DJ,” as per his website, has helped Mr. Sanders do that. He played the ballroom of the Holiday Inn Airport hotel in Des Moines on the night Mr. Sanders barely lost the Iowa caucuses. Last Tuesday, Mr. Sandico, who says he is 40, played the Concord High School gym in New Hampshire, the state where Mr. Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton by more than 20 percentage points.
It remains to be seen whether he will take a break from his day job as a D.J. for University of Texas athletic events to man the ones and twos at Mr. Sanders’s election-night watch party on February 20 in Nevada, where he regularly plays at the Cosmopolitan hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

But Mr. Sandico is already getting noticed for the beats he is bringing to the Sanders party.
“The Internet went a little crazy last week,” Mr. Sandico said, referring to the Iowa party. “I was just like, ‘I’m going to play Rob Base,’ and everyone was like ‘Oh, my God, I’m hearing Rob Base at a political event.’”
Mr. Sandico, the son of a career soldier, grew up outside Fort Hood, Tex., and eventually moved to Austin, where, over the last 20 years, he became a staple on the club scene. In 2013 he was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame.
He is also a fixture at music festivals. Mr. Sandico helps produce and run the dance music stage at Lollapalooza, where in 2008 he met his political patron John Liipfert, who is essentially the music producer for the Democratic Party and President Obama. (On his website, Mr. Liipfert has posted pictures of himself bumping fists with the president and petting Bo, the president’s dog.)
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Mr. Sandico hit it off with Mr. Liipfert, who eventually booked his pal in 2012 to play election night at the Obama headquarters. That led to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, the 2013 presidential inauguration and multiple White House Easter Egg Rolls. (The Twitter avatar of the diminutive D.J. Mel is him between the first couple — at shoulder height.)
Until recently, Mr. Sandico said he was only slightly aware of Mr. Sanders, whom he had seen on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and was torn between the senator and Mrs. Clinton. Then, Mr. Liipfert, who had begun putting together events for Mr. Sanders, contacted him and proposed the gig. “I was like ‘Hell, yeah, I’ll do it,’” Mr. Sandico said. Since then, he said, he has read up on Mr. Sanders, adding, “I feel the Bern.”
So did the supporters in the gym, but Mr. Sandico did not want to immolate them prematurely. “I don’t want to play anything crazy, we have press here,” he said, gesturing to the risers filled with television reporters in the center of the gym. “I’m not going to play a midnight peak-hour club set at a political event.”
But Mr. Sandico still moved the crowd.
“Vibing,’” said Bobby Reilly, 25, who looked like a New Hampshire fisherman by way of Brooklyn in his wool hat and cardigan. “This place is going to be crazy.”
It soon was. At 8 p.m., when the polls closed, a jumbo screen on the side of the room projected Mr. Sanders as the overwhelming winner. A roar went up, and Mr. Sandico soon picked up the pace, playing “It Takes Two” by Rob Base.
Winnie Wong, 40, was especially delighted. “I created the hashtag ‘Feel the Bern,’” she said, adding, “‘Brooklyn is Berning.’ That was me.”
At 8:24, Mr. Sandico played some Parliament-Funkadelic to the delight of Ray Alt, 45, who had come from Pittsfield, Mass., to celebrate the senator’s victory. “Energizing,” he said as he danced a sort of funky chicken in a “Bernie” T-shirt and corduroys. “Good feelings.”
A few minutes later, Tad Devine, the Sanders campaign’s senior adviser, emerged and immediately attracted a cluster of reporters. “We are a better campaign, we are a better organized campaign” he said as Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” played behind him.
Soon after, the theme from “Rocky” played loudly over the sound system as Mr. Sanders entered the gym to make his victory speech. (“I’ve got like 40 or 50 campaign-approved songs,” Mr. Sandico said.) After the speech and Mr. Sanders’s preferred walk-off song (“Starman,” by David Bowie), the crowd began to thin.
A few minutes later, the instrumental version of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” came over the speakers. Mr. Liipfert, who ran the New Hampshire event from the back of the room in a wide studded belt, black suit jacket and gray zip-up hoodie, sneaked over and mischievously slid the volume control up.
Mr. Sandico laughed.
“It’s like we’re at a club,” he said.


 


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