Long Beach’s Good Luck Vinyl Club—the third-Tuesday-of-every-month vinyl listening event that focuses on a specific album of an artist and then the surrounding sounds of that very album—has been a wild success since its launch in September, with each event sold out: Marvin Gaye highlighted in September, MF Doom in October, Cocteau Twins in November, The Cure in December, and now…
…Snoop Dogg to kick off 2024. Tickets go on sale at 7AM Jan. 5 via the link in the Club’s Instagram account—and are likely to quickly sell out.
Oh yes: a hand-selected DJ—in this case, the famed Tupac producer DJ Battlecat—will take over the hi-fi vinyl booth inside The Social List on Retro Row and play “Doggystyle,” Snoop’s debut album, front to back. That will then followed by a sample of the DJ’s own collection, where the amount of mixing skills isn’t as important as the intensity of their own collection of vinyl that can be played as an ode to the album everyone listened to.
The importance of Snoop Dogg and Battlecat
Snoop has obviously become synonymous with Long Beach, each mutually accepting one another as a key part of the culture, music in Long Beach, and a general love—which is why it makes sense that the Club is opting for a Snoop record to kick off 2024: It is the 30th anniversary of “Doggystyle,” the album that put Snoop’s name on the music and rap map while also lifting what Long Beach represents musically to new heights.
“It’s really about asking why we don’t start the year off by embracing this beautiful city we call Long Beach and celebrate our home grown hip hop culture,” said Issak Navarro, founder of the Club. “It’s been 30 years of ‘Doggystyle’ blaring through house speakers, car speakers, headphones—so we reached out to Kelvin [Anderson Sr., founder of VIP Records] and his team over at VIP to see if they wanted to join forces for one night and make history.”
Of course, Good Luck Vinyl Club is more about the DJ’s record collection than it is about spinning talent—but in this month’s case, it is getting both: DJ Battlecat, the longtime hip-hop producer and SoCal legend, returns to Long Beach to not only play Snoop’s record but complete the night with a post-“Doggystyle” set.
Why Good Luck Vinyl Club is essential for the music scene
“The general consensus is that the Good Luck Vinyl Club was created for Long Beach—and in the post-pandemic world where socializing has become difficult, we wanted to create a space filled with music and art. The Club is that for our LBC community.”
These are the words of Navarro, the project that harkens to Japan’s rich history of vinyl clubs.
For audiophiles, Japan’s hi-fi listening bar scene is unparalled, having been birthed by jazz-kissas, spaces in the 1960s and 1970s that allowed locals to hear jazz albums they otherwise couldn’t hear for the price of a cup of tea or a beer.
And Good Luck Vinyl Club wants to reflect this ideal. Well, this and the proud proclamation that albums are not dead—and the return to discovering the entirety of an album surrounded by music lovers and through an incredibly detailed audio system is an experience each generation deserves despite advances in technology.
There is no doubt: The fact that each of us have the entirety of the world’s music library in our pocket is awesome. That experience removed from the people who both create it and love it, however, is not—and Good Luck Vinyl Club proudly advertises the importance of standing against a purely digitized, isolated experience of music.
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