Johnny Love

Infobox actor

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imagesize =
caption = Johnny Love and Alexandra Kammen at Anthem Coachella Pool Party 2008
birthdate = Birth date and age|1983|2|6
occupation = Record producer, club DJ

Johnny Love, real name John Dal Santo, is an electronic music producer, DJ, hipster and member of Guns 'n' Bombs from Los Angeles.

Biography

John Dal Santo 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, 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 noteriety with Love's 20th birthday loft party 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. [http://www.chicagoreader.com/hitsville/030425.html]

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." [http://www.chicagoreader.com/pdf/051202/051202_antisocial.pdf]

Love, along with Brendan Telzrow, Omar Mashal, and former member of the Texas Ballroom space's Jesse Batesole attempted to open a new space located at Milwaukee and Western adjacent to the Western Blueline stop called "The Western Front" only to have a large undercover police operation end the grand opening party and arrest Telzrow, [http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/5547.html] thereby ending the alternative space era of Chicago, and leading to Love's escape to Los Angeles to avoid prosecution.

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. 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," [http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/45898-guns-n-bombs-remixes-the-gossip-yr-mangled-heart-stream-junior-senior-can-i-get-get-get-mp3stream] 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." [http://www.montrealmirror.com/2006/121406/volante.html]

Love currently lives in "The Bloghouse" located in the Elysian Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, along with Acid Girl's Jaime McNeil, and DJ Paparazzi.

Discography

* "Nothing Is Getting Us Anywhere" (2006)

External links

* [http://www.myspace.com/johnnylovemachine Johnny Love Myspace]
* [http://www.discogs.com/artist/John+Dal+Santo Johnny Love Discography]

Notes and references