Activision’s DJ Hero has been out for just shy of a month now and the recent reports on the games performance on the market—or lack thereof—has sparked a quite a bit of online discussion in the past few days. Prominent research company NPD Group reported last week that DJ Hero’s sales have peaked at just 122,300. And that’s across XBox, Playstation 2 and 3, and Wii formats—far lower than projected. Why is this? There are more than few opinions out there.

Joshua Glazer, Editor for DJ culture magazine URB, feels the marketing effort did little to tap into actual DJ culture. “Sure, they paid some of the top earners, like Z-Trip and DJ Shadow, to be a part of the game,” writes Glazer on Huffington Post yesterday. “But Activision’s real media buy seemed to center around TV ads featuring Jay-Z and Eminem (two acts who have very little actual connection to DJ culture) in a cynical bid for mainstream appeal.” I can see his line of thinking here, but I disagree. Especially with his new album, Jay-Z is getting a lot of play in the clubs, and why shouldn’t gamers want to come home and recreate that experience themselves? Plus DJ culture is something that most in the mainstream don’t understand. In order to overcome this, a populist game such as DJ Hero needs to be placed in the most familiar context possible.

The real reason is that DJ Hero falls short in game play. Where Guitar Hero grew into a social phenomenon, sparking get-togethers and themed club nights with people dueling it out to their favorite Santana song, DJ Hero is pretty much a one-man-show. Its attempts to have multi-player functionality ultimately fail to create the same sort of excitement that its six-stringed counterpart does. Another reason—one that’s also being put forth on gaming blogs across the web—is that regardless of the expansive catalog of songs, the tunes are inevitably chopped up, cut into and out of while playing and this doesn’t garner the same sort of familiarity with the music that other music-based games do. This is something that actual DJs are probably used to, but for anyone else who’s getting their first introduction to turntablism, the chopped effect could be seen as a turn off.

Dani Deahl, a local DJ and one of the participants in our initial DJ Hero test drive put it best: “It’s too ‘DJ’ for the layman, and not ‘DJ’ enough for the DJs.”  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Wicker Park’s most reliable hipster get down Rehab, every Monday night at Debonair Social Club, is finally getting proper recognition on the national stage. It made the move to Deb earlier this year from its previous home at Evil Olive. The new location helped it reaffirm its street cred amongst the spandex-loving and mustachioed masses. Now, its in the running for America’s Best Party in New York-based Paper Magazine’s annual poll. Rehab’s got some stiff competition running from Seattle, Washington, to Miami, Florida, so follow the link below to cast your vote:

Paper Magazine Nightlife Awards

If the party—in and of itself—isn’t enough to win your vote. Rehab head honcho Derek Berry has informed us that they’re going to make this Monday’s edition a nomination party complete with voting booths and free cans of PBR to all who vote.

I don’t get out to the clubs as much as I used to—and it looks like I’m missing out on the latest variation on the celebrity club appearance: the unplanned, unpaid, surprise—I’m-buck-wasted, celebrity club appearance. This past Friday the 13th, reality show star and born-Hulkamaniac Brooke Hogan muscled her way into enclave and performed impromptu on stage. Sadly, I wasn’t there to take in all the ridiculousness, but enclave has graciously furnished us with some images from the night—which are plastered at every celebrity website in the universe right now. Question: How unplanned could these surprise celebrity invasions be? And is this just the beginning of the phenom in Chicago? And, remind me again, who is Brooke Hogan?

Photos: Nick Aleck with Future Nostalgia Photos

Tonight, Chicago’s Kid Sister starts to push her new album Ultraviolet—out next week, November 17th on Downtown Records/Universal Republic Records with a performance of tech-house-leaning, shuffly “Right Hand Hi” (video above) on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight with guests Flosstradamus. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon airs 11:35 pm central on NBC.

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Adult partying at River North’s Y Bar is not for the easily offended. The model-like bartenders are icy if attentive. The divide between the bar and the larger bottle service area is dramatic. The drinks are generous but priced accordingly, and the crowd has no qualms about taking its sexy into the red in terms of look and attitude. And there are the go-go dancers. But six years going, the lounge and the scene at Y are still strong—despite economic hardship all around. Wednesday nights belong to the Macey family promoters, and last night partiers turned out in droves to show their love for Y Bar, dance, drink and scope in the presence of lots of balloons, extra go-go dancers and, if they were early, some complimentary Dom. Robert Ayers has been photographing the club for years, and here are some of the highlights he captured last night.

Photos: Robert Ayers

Today I talked to my busy brother-in-law Terry Alexander about the reasons for the sale of Sonotheque—and the long and the short of it is: Dance music has exploded in popularity, leaving smaller DJ lounges like Sonotheque with the short end of the stick. He explained that the economic realities of running a small club that books different DJs every night of the week have changed, and that as far as Sonotheque and his partners were concerned, “The numbers just weren’t working out.”

“When we opened that place and we were flying in DJs, you could get them for a certain amount of money and keep the door low. Guys you could get for $1,000 are now $3,500 plus expenses. Now, with the economy being as it is, kids can’t pay more than 10 dollars to get in the show. It wasn’t working out numberswise. That’s basically what happened.”

DJ crews such as Dark Wave Disco and Flosstradamus, nurtured with residencies at the 300-capacity Sonotheque, have now moved out of Sono’s range. They can play bigger clubs such as Smart Bar or crobar for more money. Same goes for Scion-sponsored DJ events. Sponsored DJ nights can bring in bigger crowds than they could four years ago, so they are being booked at much larger venues.

When new partners in Sonotheque, the Empty Bottle, introduced Terry and his partners to the Beauty Bar people, things came together nicely. “I didn’t want to put a For Sale,” says Alexander. “It was perfect; we sold it to those guys.  They’re doing a Beauty Bar. We’re gonna support it. We’re excited about it. The timing was exactly right for everybody. Some of the staff is staying there. Some went over to Big Star. Rarely does a place a close and you pick everybody and move them around and everything is going well.”

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There’s been a lot of talk in the music corner here at Time Out, on the CTA and around town at gigs about what’s happening with Sonotheque. Despite the fact that I did some pre-construction work on the club way back when, worked and deejayed there early on in its history, and have friends and family on the ownership/management side at the club, I have had trouble getting all the details as to what is going on with Sonotheque. I knew that Joe Bryl, music programmer, had moved his Brazilian night to the Charleston, a bar/venue that will be going through its own changes. I knew that Sonotheque was up for sale within the past few weeks and interested parties from New York and Chicago were rumored to be buying the club and completely redoing it and renaming it. I finally just got confirmation from Pete Toalson of the Empty Bottle—big shout out to Pete for his help. Did I just get a scoop? Tell me I did.

“We can confirm that the current ownership group—one that includes Terry Alexander, Joe Bryl, Bruce Finkelman, Donnie Madia and Peter Toalson—have sold Sonotheque and it will close the week ending November 15th.  The new ownership group continues to include both Finkelman and Toalson, and now adds Paul Devitt,” writes Toalson in an email.

Paul Devitt is owner of the Beauty Bar franchises—which have a vintage beauty parlor theme—there are outposts in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Vegas.

I’d expect a rehab and a big change in the look and feel. We’ll have to wait and see about the music programming.

Double A, the much-anticipated lounge beneath Mercadito, is set to open November 12 at 8pm. Last week, I spoke with the club’s cocktail consultants, Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay—a.k.a. the Tippling Bros—to find out everything I could about the bar. Read the excerpts from the interview to find out what’s in store.

How the Tippling Bros assembled an all-star bartending staff—and why those mixologists aren’t (yet) designing their own drinks

JK: We have a pretty small cocktail community in Chicago. When you went about assembling the team of bartenders at Mercadito, you definitely took some of the best bartenders in the city.
Tad Carducci: Yes, we did.
Paul Tanguay: Absolutely.

JK: What was your thinking behind that?
TC: First and foremost, it wasn’t to try to poach anybody from anywhere. I had personal relationships with basically everybody on the team, and months and months and months ago, we started planting the seed, saying, we’d love for you to come and help us out. And when we let people know that we were finally ready and looking, everybody that we opened with came to us and said, “Yeah, we absolutely want to come and work with you.”

JK: Did the two of you come up with all of the cocktails at Mercadito, or was it a collaboration?
TC: We came up with the opening cocktails—that was all us. Part of the reason we hired the team that we did was so that we develop the opening list, kind of to establish the Mercadito culture on the drinks side, and then the idea being to slowly give ownership to the team, utilizing their creativity. Our next menu changes will have more contributions from the bartenders. We’ll always maintain probably at least half of the cocktails on the list, but then leaving probably the other half for the bartenders to play around with and really get creative.
PT: In terms of building a team, if bartenders contribute to the menu, they feel like they’re part of it—they take ownership of it a little bit more.

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The ace shutterbugs from Darkroom Demons consistently capture some of the more amazing images of Chicago nightlife out there. It’s been a while since we featured their visual work on the blog—but when we got a look at their Halloween pics—vibrant, grimy, glam and just plain freaky—we just had to have ‘em. Here’s a compilation of Darkroom Demons Halloween 2009 photos from Angels & Kings, the Loft, Debonair Social Club’s anniversary party, and RiNo.

All photos: Darkroom Demons

With rumors swirling about Sonotheque’s future, partiers hit the dance floor extra hard Saturday night for the monthly Spandexxx party’s Halloween edition featuring a live set from Canadian act Dragonette. Everyoneisfamous photographer Clayton Hauck was there to capture the looks and the vibe—free and freaky, from the looks of it.

Photos: Clayton Hauck