Straight-edge razors

SHOUT AT THE DEVIL Cohn, left, and Rood don’t need demon rum to have fun.

Photo: The Lovely Brenda

How is it that a couple of young whippersnappers from out of town have succeeded in an endeavor—namely, throwing a fun, successful party in NYC—that has evaded many a wizened local? In the span of two years, the Cut party’s Patrick Rood (whose nom de musique is the Captain) and Michael Cohn (a.k.a. Shark) have managed to shepherd their shindig to the top tier of the local scene. They pack club-of-the-moment Studio B with electro and techno stars along the lines of Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Booka Shade and, for the Saturday 28 edition of their get-together, Chicago jack-house honcho Green Velvet. And they have a blast doing it. Being attuned to the musical climate has certainly helped, but the pair has a secret weapon as well: In a milieu that’s largely fueled by intoxicants, they are stone-cold sober.

Straight-edge might be the better terminology, actually, as both Cohn, 27, and Rood, 25, were associated with the hardcore scene to varying degrees before being bitten by the dance-music bug. Rood’s never been a partier, but Cohn has tasted the forbidden fruit. “I never did drugs, but as far as drinking goes, up to age 18 it was party time,” he says. “It’s been pretty much nothing since then, though.” It may be their sobriety that gives them the energy to do what they do: Rood is Cut’s resident DJ, and Cohn is on the mike as the hoedown’s hype man, but they also do the booking, handle promotions and take care of all the other endless minutiae that go into throwing a flourishing affair. The duo has a purely practical outlook on their temperate ways. “It basically comes down to this,” Rood says. “At 4am, who has their head on straight? Knowing what to do, when to do it, and actually being able to do it while still having fun—that all requires a pretty clear head. And there are no postparty repercussions.”

Cut sprang to life at the small Lower East Side venue Eleven (now known as the Annex) in 2005. “We weren’t finding very much of what we wanted to hear when we were going out,” Cohn recalls. “A lot of what we liked, though, was coming from Josh [Houtkin] and Dave [Pianka] from the Fixed party. They were the only ones doing things that featured music that we like and weren’t really fashion parties, but instead were music-based events. It’s thanks to them that we got the idea of starting tossing our own parties.”

Taking Fixed’s musical theme—play anything that’s funky and fun, particularly if it has the prefix electro- attached to it—Cohn and Rood dove into the scene headfirst. One of Cut’s very first editions, a down-and-dirty ghetto-tech night headlined by booty-bass bigwig DJ Assault, helped put it on the nightlife map. “It was a blessing that someone on Assault’s level would give us a hand in making a great party,” Cohn says. “And we got a lot of that, even in the early days—a lot of old-school people seemed to be on our side and were supernice to us. Princess Superstar, Alexander Technique, Junior Sanchez, Larry Tee…they saw that we were busting our ass, and they were very supportive.” (Perhaps not coincidently, at least two of the above names—Princess Superstar and Larry Tee—are also teetotalers.)

In typical NYC fashion, Eleven abruptly shut later that year, but Cohn and Rood didn’t exactly sit back and wait for the offers to come in. Instead, they started tossing the Dirty Down bashes at Lit and teamed up with Tigerbeat6/Institubes recording artist Drop the Lime for the Mad Suspect soirees at Savalas. The work paid off this past March, when another sober friend, Studio B’s Justine D., signed them up for party-tossing duty at the red-hot club. “She’s helped us so much,” Cohn gushes. “I mean, we know what makes a party good, but she knows how to deal with big agencies, what to do with people’s quirky riders and things like that.”

But even with all the success, isn’t it tough to deal with the bevy of clubland carousers that populates Cut? “Everyone has their own thing, and as long as people come to our parties, we don’t care what they do,” Cohn says. “But we do get a little tired of people always thinking we can get them drugs!”

Cut: Put Your Hands Up 4 NY is at Studio B Saturday 28.