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Music

A Tuesday Night Party in an OC Tapas Bar is Outshining LA's Club Game

From the night of choice, to the makeshift restaurant turned venue, to the ridiculous location, nothing about Focus should work. But it does.

Just off of the 405 Freeway, 45 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, a cultural anomaly has been brewing for over 12 years. Orange County, most notable for its portrayal of the town fictionalized in the hit Fox series The OC, as well as the birthplace of Bravo's Real Housewives series is not exactly Berlin when it comes to club culture. In fact, it is possibly one of the last places one would believe a successful underground house night exists. Yet for over 12 years, in an industrial area by John Wayne airport, on Tuesday nights no less, and inside a Tapas restaurant named Tapas, Focus has thrived.

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From the night of choice, to the makeshift restaurant turned venue, to the ridiculous location; literally nothing about this event should work, but Focus has been bringing in talent right before you heard of them for over 12 years with a number of very simple rules: great house music. Low-key vibes. All of this comes down to the promoters.

Created and curated by residents Josh Billings and Nonfiction (Jose Tobar), you would be hard pressed to find a duo that has more passion for good house music. In the days long before SoundCloud, these guys were finding talent that would one day play main stages at festivals all over the world: Fedde Le Grand, Kaskade, Claude Von Stroke, Pleasurekraft, Maya Jane Coles, Justin Martin, Tale of Us, and Green Velvet just to name a few have all resided over the decks at Focus.

More impressive than this, if getting A+ talent to come through your local suburban tapas bar is not enough for you, is the relationships that they have made with these artists. Most of the names I have mentioned above not only have played once, but have come through again for pennies on the dollar whenever they are in town.

I chatted with Josh Billings about all things Focus and my biggest takeaway was his passion for house music. In an industry full of talk and bullshit it is refreshing to chat with someone so real and righteous. It is this exact trait that inspires these artists to come back to Focus after making it big. After all, it must take a great relationship to get Kaskade to take a break from selling out arenas to stop on by and play Focus' 10th anniversary party in 2013.

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Unlike most club nights out there that exist for economic gain, Focus has always been an outlet for Billings instead of a get rich quick campaign. "I think the reason the club has survived all these years is because money has never been my motivator. We lost money for countless years when we started. I figured some people spent their money on baseball cards or their cars… I spent mine on bringing the music I love to my hometown," Billings said.

From potential five somes, to a crazy story about a local shady regular who the police found out kept his dead girlfriend on ice for over a year in a hotel nearby and, as rumors go, actually brought her in one night posthumous in a wheelchair dressed as Santa Clause, Focus has seen its fair share of ridiculous nights.

So there I was, on June 16, actually queuing in a line on a Tuesday night, with no open bar, in Orange County, to see mysterious Parisian DJ Shiba San play his take on ghetto house for the first time ever in Southern California--and it was totally worth it. The dance floor is dark, ominous, low key, and loud; the perfect combination for brooding house music. What it lacked in lasers it made up with in an exceptional sound system. I can imagine, Skream, who hit the decks there a month before, went nuts with his newly minted bass take on house music.

Like every night for the past 12 years Josh Billings and Nonfiction got the crowd going with a superb set mixing with ease tracks spanning both genres and generations alike. While OG house is their ride or die genre, they are not xenophobic when it comes to the different iterations that have come out since John Digweed perfected the genre in the late '90s. In on the joke themselves, they debuted a line of t-shirts that night that read "We've Been House Since You Called It Techno."

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Shiba San

Up next was Shiba San, and to say he destroyed the decks after is an understatement. Two hours of straight booty shaking music had the crowd packing the dancefloor for the entire set. To this day, I challenge someone to stay still when the bassline from "OKAY" comes protruding out of the speakers. And while I am still waiting for "I Like Your Booty" to truly get the amount of spins it deserves, everyone sung along to the chorus that unironically should be sweeping the nation. It also did not hurt to have a taco cart in the smoking patio for your mid-dance snack. Read this promoters: more taco carts, less pool parties!

Much like the venue itself, Billings is as unassuming as he is worthy of acclaim. Humble and genuine in a time of oversaturation and noise he encompasses everything that got me into the scene in the first place. Generating and keeping a community of hardcore house heads is difficult everywhere, but exponentially so in the suburbs. There is no VIP area at Focus for a reason. Before all the bottle service bullshit and the raver gear starter packs, there was once a community of outcasts, people that felt safe at the club being different, and this is exactly what Focus is promoting.

Focus residents and founders Billings and Tobar taking over Sound in LA

And while the guys look to keep Tapas as their home base, expansion is the plans for the duo. The first half of 2015 saw them play Electric Daisy Carnival as well as LA club staples Sound and Exchange. The second half will see the duo expand the brand outside of the West Coast. With 12 years of forward thinking, quality curated, head to the ground, ego free promotion that rivals anyone I have ever talked to in the business, I am sure they will be able to make their mark in a town near you.

As an Orange County native who has experienced the cultural black hole that exists off the 405 South of Long Beach for years, Focus is truly a diamond in the rough. With sponsored parties in Los Angeles left and right shoving the genre de joure down your throat, it is a breath of fresh air that a quality house night still exists. And with Dennis Ferrer, Mark Farina, and a surprise DirtyBird guest on the docket there, there is no reason for you not to make it out to Southern California's best kept secret.

Kevin Camps is uninterested in your Tropical House night - @kpcamps.

Follow Focus on Twitter @Focus_OC.