Chris Cox, the evening's DJ, flew in from Los Angeles earlier that day and was battling a nasty head cold. His ears were ringing, and even though the club was steamy, a wool cap hugged his skull tightly.
Ten seconds before midnight, a computerized voice chanted "Ten, nine, eight" until the big moment arrived. Flashes of light erupted, confetti rained down, and Johnny Vicious' pulsating remix of "Auld Lang Syne" brought the room to a fever pitch. Cox smiled and toasted. Illness be damned; he was hard at work and had six hours to go.
The party at VelvetNation also began what has been a year of change for a man who had become accustomed to living the high life, but who has demonstrated resiliency and growth amid great personal and professional changes.
If you haven't kept up with dance music this millennium, Chris Cox became one of the biggest remix stars on the planet in 1999 as half of Thunderpuss. Their version of Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" was named one of the top remixes ever by Vibe magazine, and it's among the few house remixes to ever achieve massive U.S. pop success. Cox and Barry Harris navigated stylistic trends and a shaky music industry to stay at the top of the game for nearly half a decade. Records like Madonna's "Don't Tell Me" and Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama" dismissed clichés, earning frequent play outside the gay clubs and radio mixshows to which diva anthems are normally limited.
Several original productions also hit the mark, including "Head," the unsigned 2002 smash that became Thunderpuss' global calling card. DJs as diverse as BBC radio legend Pete Tong and gay icon Junior Vasquez instantly embraced Cox's electro-inspired remix of the track. A few months later, "Head" reached the top of Billboard's club play chart. It was the first record not signed by any record label to accomplish that feat on any chart in the magazine's history. By summer 2003, the track was in the hands of DJs like Paul Oakenfold and Sandra Collins-people who had never touched any of the dozens of previous Thunderpuss hits-and "Head" became one of the season's Ibiza anthems.
However, just as Thunderpuss was primed to reach new heights, the tide began to turn. Simmering tensions between Cox and Harris were coming to a boil, and though each had already created successful outside projects during Thunderpuss, Cox began spending more time solo. "I Believe," an update of the piano-fueled Happy Clappers club classic, became Cox's first Billboard chart-topper under his own name. He was offered a solo remix of Boomkat's "What U Do 2 Me" in the wake of its success, even though Thunderpuss versions were already completed. After a few tag-team DJ sessions in summer 2003, Harris told Cox he wanted to dissolve the partnership, and suddenly, Thunderpuss was finished, even though the duo was still creatively and commercially red-hot.
Suddenly being forced to go back to basics does not come without increased perspective, Cox noted during a recent conversation that took place late one Sunday night after a weekend of DJ dates in Chicago and Charlotte, NC.
"A lot of it was a blur," he said of the Thunderpuss days. "I didn't really get to enjoy much of it because I was always working. The biggest enjoyment was that I got to work consistently." Cox was not oblivious to the highs of that period, though. "Getting to do a project for Madonna, which had been a career aspiration for 15 years, [was huge]," he said.
