Name Johnny Love | ||
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Born February 6, 1983 (age 41) ( 1983-02-06 ) Occupation Record producer, club DJ | ||
Johnny Love (born February 6, 1983) is the creator of Healthgoth, an electronic music producer, DJ, hipster, former member of Superstars of Love and member of Guns 'n' Bombs and Deathface from Los Angeles.
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Biography
Johnny Love was born in Chicago in 1983 and moved to Los Angeles in 2006. While in Chicago he helped promote electronic music such as Chicago house, electro, disco, and Italo disco by throwing events and DJing in and around Chicago, most famously at the now defunct Jerkstore, located at the intersection of Damen and Milwaukee in the Wicker Park neighborhood on Chicago's Near West Side.
Jerkstore and Opaque Era
The Jerkstore was a collaborative effort between electronic musician Atomly and Love and was part of the vibrant alternative space scene of Chicago, along with the now defunct bUDDY Gallery and Texas Ballroom spaces. Opened in the fall of 2004, it served as the launching point for The Opaque Project, a collective of likeminded electronic musicians from around the country, its ranks included Hefty's Eliot Lipp, Warp's Jimmy Edgar, Ghostly's Jeffrey Sfire, Biobooster, Biz3's Brendan Telzrow, Flosstradamus' Curt Camerucci, Mahjongg's Hunter Husar, Hyper Viper's Joel Brown and of course Atomly and Love himself.
The Opaque Project was the first to introduce artists from various electronic music subgenres, from minimal techno to disco to french touch, including: Alexander Robotnik, Boys Noize, Misc, Jaques Renault, MSTRKRFT, Chromeo, Maurice Fulton, DJ Assault, Freeform 5, Justice and Superpitcher, to Chicago, while contemporary scenes in other major cities were still focusing on indie rock to fuel their parties.
The Opaque Project had actually come into existence 3 years prior at the University of Chicago. Co-created with Mike Kuszynski and under the tutiledge of former rave promoters and mentors Luis Aguilera and Hiroko "Biobooster" Yamamura, and first gaining notoriety with Love's 2004 loft party celebrating his 20th birthday and induction into International DeeJay Gigolo act, Superstars of Love, on Chicagos North side that was attended by 1000 people and was eventually raided by police and landed Love in jail for the first of his many encounters with the Chicago Police Department. The Jerkstore came to an unfortunate end in the winter of 2006 via a crackdown by the City of Chicago on alternative spaces, but not before gaining a reputation as a den of sin, with the Chicago Reader once saying, "Every Jerkstore event I've been to has had more half-naked people than the last."
Love, along with DJ Brendan Telzrow, musician Omar Mashal, and head of legendary art & music space Texas Ballroom, Jesse Batesole attempted to open a new space located at Milwaukee and Western adjacent to the Western Blue Line stop called "The Western Front" only to have a large undercover police operation end the grand opening party and arrest Telzrow, thereby ending the alternative space era of Chicago, and leading to Love's escape to Los Angeles.
Guns'n'Bombs
Love moved to Los Angeles at the behest of friend and fellow DJ Filip Nikolic to work on music. The group quickly produced two songs, "Nothing Is Getting Us Anywhere" and "Crossover Appeal," and were offered a record contract over MySpace by Gildas Loaec, the founder of Kitsune Records and co-manager of Daft Punk, becoming the first Americans to be accepted into the then current French Touch electro scene. GNB's debut single was released in 2007, and they quickly began receiving remix requests, and their treatments of songs by Chromeo, the Teenagers, and the Gossip became popular blog favorites and club staples. Pitchfork Media declared that GNB's debut album "should make a serious impact on the culture of U.S.-bred dance music," and the Montreal Mirror said "Unpretentious and unforgivingly badass, L.A.'s Guns 'n' Bombs (including an Ima Robot member) single-handedly put the United States outside New York back on my techno map, blow current German electro standards out of the water and give Paris’s New French Touch a run for its money."
Deathface
Citing some irreconcilable differences,Guns'n'Bombs split, with Johnny moving in a darker more dubstep driven direction with the project called Deathface and being signed by Drop the Limes label, Trouble & Bass.
Love currently lives in "The Bloghouse" located in the Elysian Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, along with Acid Girl's Jaime McNeil, Harvard Bass and DJ Paparazzi.
Healthgoth
Love is credited by dozens of publications, such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, Nylon, Vice, Paper, Buzzfeed, LAist, Chicagoist, Alternative Press, Sneaker Report, and various others, with turning Healthgoth from a tumblr meme into an actual worldwide fitness movement focused on encouraging those who do not feel comfortable in normal gym environments to get into physical fitness, along with wearing dark clothing and listening to dark music.