Sweets Gallo (photo from St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Get to know one of SEX+STL’s resident DJs, Sweets, and then see him in action at the next big Glow event, which will be January Friday the 13th. Here are pics from a previous party – you can get more details and buy tickets here.
Q: Who are you?
A: I’m Tony Gallo aka Sweets, a producer/DJ/promoter here in St. Louis. I also run a netlabel, which is a digital record label that provides all its releases for free via the creative commons license. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for over ten years.
Q: What tools/equipment do you use?
A: I’ve been known to use a variety of equipment live on stage, from turntables to modified Nintendos, but lately for the DJ gigs I’ve been using Traktor or Serato Laptop based setups with either turntables or a midi controller depending on space limitations of the venue or the mood I’m in.
Q: Do you play the same kind of music, or mix it up?
A: I mix it up quite a bit. I like to feel the vibe of the crowd and go from there.
Q: Do you have to buy all the music?
A: The great thing about the latest technology in digital DJ gear is the free and low cost, high quality music. There are many artists these days sharing their music for free, whether it be on a netlabel like mine, or through websites like SoundCloud. Also, buying music has never been cheaper for DJ’s. Most new singles cost only $1 in digital format, that sure beats the $10+ dollars we used to spend on 12″ vinyls. It’s not as cool, of course, but hey, the economy is bad.
Q: Do you have other jobs as well, or is this your full-time gig?
A: In addition to DJing, I work for Guerilla Street Food, the most awesome food truck in the city!
Q: What is your passion?
A: Music. I’ve dreamt of owning a record label since I was 14. Once I realized I didn’t need to have a lot of money to run a label, my dream became a reality.
Q: How did you get involved in the sex-positive movement?
A: I somehow managed to get an invitation to Kendra’s Wild Love Party early last year. After watching several intense acts, including a good friend of mine getting flogged, I had a vision of combining electronic music with live fetish acts. After talking with Kendra about this, I was put in touch with Drew Digital and was soon DJing all the Sex+STL happy hours. I’ve met a lot of great people through SEX+STL, and they continue to be a positive force in my life.
Q: What’s your favorite sex-positive music?
A: I think nothing beats dance music for being sex-positve. The electronic music scene has always been one of personal and sexual freedom combined with a mutual respect for others. The dance floor should be a safe place where one can express themselves and often times show their sexual side. Many, many hookups start on the dance floor!
Q: Seduction music?
A: Recently I’ve enjoyed the album “Impressions” by Mayer Hawthorne.
Scene from a Glow party
Q: What are all these Glow Events all about?
A: Glow is what happens when Drew Digital and I combine forces! Seriously, when I approached Drew about the idea of combining live fetish acts with dance music, he told me he wanted to do some glow-in-the-dark body painting. So we combined the body painting with the dance music, got some black lights and sexy models and Glow was born!
Lately we’ve also been doing some body painting at Smoove! which is my monthly party down in the Grove.
Q: What is your favorite part of these events?
A: There is something that happens to regular people when you get them painted up and glowing. Their inhibitions fade and they become care free and joyous. this creates quite a nice vibe on the dance floor, that’s my favorite part of any event.
Q: Why is nudity such a big deal?
A: Personally I don’t think it is. I’ve gotten a little trouble from one venue but overall people have been very accepting of it. I think certain people get uncomfortable around the nude models. I hope that, through that experience, they are able to start to work through whatever insecurities are holding them back and making them feel bad. I had a club manager scoff at the body type of one model before and that made me pretty angry. I told him that we are all about being comfortable with who you are and the beauty in every body type.
Q: As a DJ, you have to work late nights – when do you have time to have sex?
A: There’s always time for sex! Who says you even have to leave the venue, that’s what the VIP area is for! 😉 Seriously, if your lifestyle leaves no time for sex then you have a problem or maybe you’re not creative enough.
Q: What would be your dream DJ gig?
A: To play Ub40’s “Red Wine” continuously for several hours to a large room of people I don’t care for.
I think it was at the first party Sweets DJ’d for us, he played “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean, and I’ve been a believer ever since.