Silent Disco at the Redstone Room -- February 17.
Saturday, February 17, 8 p.m.
The Redstone Room, 129 Main Street, Davenport IA
An energetic party co-hosted by Common Chord and Quad City Arts, the February 17 Silent Disco event will find DJ Shane Brown, DJ Buddha, and Smokahauntas inviting patrons to dance the night away in the Redstone Room, the popular music mixers battling it out with a selection of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), House, Dubstep, Techno, and House Party.
When you arrive to the Silent Disco, you’ll receive a pair of special wireless headphones, and you can adjust the volume and choose between the evening's three DJs with a flip of a switch. Each headset has a color LED that shows what channel you are listening to, so you can dance along with those listening to the same DJ as you. It’s a super-social group bash, because with no loud music to talk over, you can just lower the volume or take your headphones off to talk to your friends. Guests are also invited to bring their own glow-in-the-dark accessories.
The first headphone concert taking place in front of a live audience took place March 17, 1999, at Trees in Dallas, Texas. The American psychedelic band The Flaming Lips used an FM signal generator at the venue and handed out mini FM radio receivers and headphones to each member of the audience. A normal speaker system was also used so the sound could also be felt. Another headphone concert was performed in the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff in April 2000 by Rocketgoldstar, and later headphone concerts used specially designed wireless three-channel headphones, better in-house custom made transmitters and no speakers or any live PA in the venue.
Major events hosting headphone concerts included the 2005 Glastonbury Festival, 2010 Shift Festival in Switzerland, the 2011-12 Van's Warp Tours across North America, Sensoria 2012 in Sheffield, U.K., the 2012 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee, and the Hoxeyville Music Fest in Michigan. A variant of the headphone concert involves live bands competing for the audience, who are able to choose which band's frequency to receive. In August of 2008, the first silent Battle of the Bands was held at The Barfly music venue in Cardiff. The event featured bands going directly head-to-head, with a stage at each end of the venue, allowing gig-goers to choose which group they wished to listen to.
Silent Disco gets underway in Davenport's Redstone Room on February 17, admission to the 8 p.m. event is $10, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)326-1333 and visiting CommonChordQC.org.
