Busywork and its year of total harmony

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY

When Dan Sena co-founded Busywork with fellow resident DJ GMO (Guillermo Arce) his life was in limbo: He’d been floating between various dead-end temp jobs and his band, Bullet Train to Vegas, was stuck working on a doomed follow-up to 2005’s We Put Scissors Where Our Mouths Are. He took up deejaying at the behest of his friend Steve Aoki, and before long he and GMO had Busywork: a dance night just as ready to play MIA as Everything But the Girl or Dire Straits. They’re now celebrating their one-year anniversary.

In an interview earlier this year, Sena said that Busywork’s original aim was to import the CineSpace/Aoki brand of electro/rock dance club into Orange County. But Clifford Lidell, a disco/house DJ who inserted himself as a resident halfway through Busywork’s tenure (“I just said one day that I was going to be the third permanent resident of Busywork!”), says the ethos of the club has changed now.

“It’s is all about anti-promotion,” says Lidell. “We don’t push ourselves or throw up flyers all over the place. We want it to be all word of mouth. The night works because it’s a collection of everyone creative and humble in Costa Mesa and its surrounding areas just getting together.”

Lidell says that Busywork is at its best when all of the different groups that make up the club join forces. The DJs have imported LA fixtures like DJ Dan OH (CineSpace) and indie-pop band the Little Ones as well as given headlining spots to OC favorites like Pop Noir and Sparrow Love Crew.

“Everyone goes crazy. Some of my favorite times are when Brixx and Kid Wizard from Sparrow Love Crew get drunk as hell and start MCing over our tracks at the end of the night. It becomes kind of a free for all—creativity flies all over the place!”

BUSYWORK ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH RESIDENT DJS DAN SENA, GMO AND CLIFFORD LIDELL DETROIT BAR | 845 W 9TH ST | COSTA MESA 92627 | 949.642.0600 | WED JUN 25 9PM | FREE | 21+ | DETROITBAR.COM

Tags: busywork, costa mesa, dan sena, detroit bar, dj, pop noir, steve aoki