Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

Dear listener, please leave this song alone don’t flag it. Yea I'm back been gone for 60 days taking care of my mom. Give me 3:36 minutes of your time tonight and I'll give you an intimate peek into my life behind the podcast. While credit goes to songwriters: Fredrik William Ball / Joseph Alexander Angel / Robyn Rihanna Fenty for this beautiful song “love on the brain”, I will take the full credit for singing it to you tonight like it had to come out. Now everyone leave, I’m talking to John.

I miss you John, and I am sorry how I handled my part of us at the end. You are worth everything and anything I can give you. I did the work and know how. A skill set that I’ll now carry out with me every Friday. Aren’t you curious?

You enjoyed my ways with words, and that’s how this whole podcast was born. Meeting you felt like a twin flame (literally, I’m an Aries moon) I’m so triggered to create in the liminal space where we left: a podcast , a fanfic r/ where I became the writer you saw I was day one, a shadow profile where you’ll find all my r/Unsent and thoughts, a sexy audiobook, a cover song, an opp to host a show, crumbs to riches. I am untrained at singing and took this first shot at it for you- your imprint went so deep it activated the creator in me John. If someone tore your imprint out my heart and laid them down on a track, that’d be this here and no I don’t know how to edit this. It will be flagged one day for IP rights and taken down. I hope it resonates across this liminal and empty space to your frequency before that day. Between us, what were the chances I had her birthday? And that wasn’t even the craziest karmic thing that happened between us. You are one in a million babe. After this, maybe I'm more than thatpodcastgirl - you tell me.

"There is no where left for this dialogue missing you to land, so I'll turn it into a beautiful monologue on the way out. "

xoxo *read these lyrics I don’t lie

And you got me like, oh
What you want from me?
And I tried to buy your pretty heart, but the price too high
Baby you got me like, oh
*I love when I fall apart
So you can put me together
And throw me against the wall

Baby you got me like ah, woo, ah
Don't you stop loving me
Don't quit loving me
Just start loving me

Oh, and babe I'm fist fighting with fire
Just to get close to you
Can we burn something, babe?
And I'll run for miles just to get a taste
Must be love on the brain
That's got me feeling this way
It beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good
And I can't get enough
Must be love on the brain
And it keeps cursing my name
No matter what I do, I'm no good without you
And I can't get enough
Must be love on the brain

*Can you keep loving me?
Just love me, yeah
Just love me
All you need to do is love me
Got me like ah-ah-ah-ow
I'm tired of being played like a violin
What do I gotta do to get in your motherfuckin' heart?

Baby like ah, woo, ah
Don't you stop loving me
Don't quit loving me
Just start loving me

Oh, and babe I'm fist fighting with fire
Just to get close to you
Can we burn something, babe?
And I'll *ring your *RING camera just to get a taste
Must be love on the brain
That's got me feeling this way
It beats me black and blue but *YOU *fuck *me *so *good
And I can't get enough
Must be love on the brain
And it keeps cursing my name (cursing my name)
No matta what I do
I'm no good without you
And I can't get enough
Must be love on the brain

-sang while eyes trained on that post it note that started it all.

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music, Sometimes” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

This is a podcast about house music. I'm thatpodcastgirl, C-Dub—and I want to thank all of you for helping us hit over 200 downloads in just three and a half months, across 11 episodes. JohnJohn guess what? We did it!

This episode is called: The Record Store.

Picture this: It’s the early '90s. Somewhere between grit and gold chains. Between big dreams and dirty sneakers. And on both coasts—if you wanted to find a sound, you walked into a record store.

Let’s start with Chicago.

Gramaphone Records: it wasn’t big. Tucked into a narrow space on Clark Street, its walls were crowded with bins and bins of vinyl. The floor had the signature black and white checkered tile. It smelled like plastic and cardboard and gum stuck to a sneaker. Flyers were shoved under the glass of the counter. The lighting was harsh and honest. But it was church.

DJs walked in like they had a mission. They’d flip through crates with the reverence of a surgeon in the middle of a procedure. Customers would clear out of the way if someone serious walked in. Because the booth in the back? That was sacred ground.

Behind the glass, a selector would listen to your picks. The staff could tell if you knew what you were doing by the second record you previewed. “If you played the wrong thing too loud, they’d cut the sound. You’d feel it before you even noticed.”

Gramaphone didn’t sell records. It passed on secrets. There were codes in the track listings. White labels with no names. You’d find the record someone played at 3AM that melted your brain—and it wouldn’t be there next week. You either knew when to come, or you didn’t and missed out.

Frankie Knuckles was a regular. So was Derrick Carter. But even if you weren’t a name, you could be a witness. One customer remembered watching Derrick build an entire set in the store over two hours—testing tracks, building tension, then walking out without a word.

“Gramaphone was like a dojo,” one woman said. “You didn’t go there to buy. You went to train.”

Over in New York—it was different.

Downtown, you had places like Vinylmania, Dance Tracks, and Satellite. Tucked behind basements. No two stores were the same. Some were dark and sleek, others crowded and chaotic. But all of them had a pulse.

Dance Tracks, on East 3rd Street, had tall racks and endless stacks, plus a community board with handwritten ads—DJ needed. Roommate wanted. One wall had stickers from clubs that no longer existed. Another had a memorial photo of someone from the scene, framed with scribbled tributes.

This is where Joe Claussell got his start. Where François K would come through in his sunglasses. Where a new DJ might overhear a conversation that would change everything.

One regular recalled being handed a record and told, “Don’t play this unless you mean it.” Another described the joy of walking in hungover, digging through wax, and finding a beat so perfect it made you cry.

At Vinylmania, there were whispers. About a rare Japanese pressing. About a reel from a closing party. About a limited promo that came in through someone’s cousin in Detroit. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the mythology.

These stores weren’t commercial. They were coded. You had to dress the part, or dress in defiance of it. Some people came in gender-blurred—baggy pants, nail polish, stubble and gloss—because in those four walls, there was no wrong way to be. In fact, dressing ambiguously sometimes gave you more space. People didn’t know how to categorize you, so they left you alone.

One woman recalls she never got called out for being a woman in the DJ booth because she wore oversized hoodies and kept her voice low. “If I didn’t speak

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music, Sometimes” hosted by C-Dub

Send us a text if you like it and want more of it.

This is a podcast about house music. I’m thatpodcastgirl, C Dub, and I’m here to guide us through the untold stories behind the house music. This season, we’re remembering what was almost lost—what pulsed in the basslines and lived in the corners. Stories that stayed alive only because someone danced them into memory. Picture this:

It’s 2024, and you’re in Berlin. A DJ pulls out a vinyl with no label and no sleeve. Just black wax and instinct. She drops it. It’s from Shelter. A remix from decades ago. The crowd roars. But most people in the room don’t know that track was once played in protest. They don’t know about the night the beat was an act of defiance.

In the early 1980s, a virus began to spread. And for far too long, the world stayed quiet.

The clubs that gave people freedom—places like the Warehouse, the Paradise Garage, the Power Plant—became spaces of mourning. Dancers disappeared every week. DJs lost their friends. Party flyers became obituaries.

The government wasn’t naming it. So the music did.

Michael Roberson is a scholar, a father of the House of Garcón, and a Black queer activist. He’s often spoken about the ballroom floor as a sacred place during the AIDS epidemic.

“We were losing people every week. So we danced with them, for them, through them.”

For Michael and so many others, house wasn’t just escape. It was church and it was ritual. It was where you could scream into the bass and still be held.

At the Paradise Garage, DJ Larry Levan began playing extended versions of tracks with long breakdowns and pauses. Sometimes he left full seconds of silence.

Club historian Tim Lawrence says:

“People would stand still, or scream, or weep. The music gave them space to grieve.”

In 1989, ACT UP held a die-in at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. That same night, on the floor at a gay club in New York, dancers lay down in silence.

They called it dancing to remember.

There’s also a story about a track that included a voicemail. The voice said:

“I can’t go on.”

Nobody agrees on who made it, and some say it was a real message. Others say it was constructed from memory.

It was played only once. In a small club. Quiet room. Full of people who understood.

Then the beat dropped.

At the door, the ten-dollar cover might be for the DJ—or for someone’s casket. Sometimes it paid for AZT. Sometimes for rent, or a hospital bed.

At the Shelter in New York, one woman came every weekend, in the same shirt. She danced in the same corner.

“I’m here for my brother,” she told the DJ once. “He used to dance here. I still do it for him.”

At certain parties, there was a board behind the DJ booth—names were pinned, and candles lit. It wasn’t advertised because it didn’t need to be - those were friends.

Flyers used coded language: “This one’s for family,” or “bring your breath.” That meant someone had passed. That meant come ready to move through it.

These weren’t just parties. They were vigils on the dance floor.

Frankie Knuckles once said:

“You can play joy. But you can also play mourning. The floor knows the difference.”

The dancefloor didn’t ignore the crisis. It became the memorial.

And for some, it stayed that way. From the early 1980s through the late 1990s—and even into the 2000s in clubs like The Shelter and Body & Soul—these spaces continued to hold grief and memory. Candles continued

Copyright 2025. “This is a Podcast About House Music, Sometimes” hosted by C-Dub