THE BEAT GOES ON
After a near-death accident, NYC’s favorite DJ is still the life of the party
I N December 2011, New York DJ Jonathan Toubin went to sleep in a comfortable hotel bed in Portland, Ore. He woke up to find himself pinned under the front of taxi.
The cab’s driver had suffered a seizure at the wheel and crashed into the room where Toubin was staying. He was there for a local soul music night, akin to his own “New York Night Train’s Soul Clap & Dance-Off ” party, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on Friday at Brooklyn’s Warsaw.
Miraculously, Toubin escaped with his life, but sustained massive fractures in his skull, pelvis and chest. He also suffered injuries to his internal organs.
“Apparently, I was awake at the time — I was screaming,” Toubin calmly tells The Post in an East Village coffee shop. “But I don’t remember it.”
The 45-year-old Williamsburg resident is reflecting on his near-death experience and subsequent recovery ahead of an anniversary party that is already guaranteed to be one for the record books. Instead of merely playing rare soul and R&B classics by Irma Thomas and Archie Bell & the Drells (all on original 45s), he’s actually flying them in from all over the country to perform.
After starting “Soul Clap” at Enid’s in Greenpoint in 2007, Toubin and his party gradually grew into a local institution, attracting a blend of sharp-dressed hipsters, soul-music aficionados and local underground musicians, such as Kid Congo Powers, Jon Spencer and New York Doll David Johansen.
The news of his accident spurred Toubin’s people into action. Knowing that he didn’t have any health insurance, many of his most loyal followers organized benefit nights in Toubin’s honor, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who played a nowfamous show at Brooklyn Bowl just days after the accident.
The funds raised helped Toubin pay for his extensive rehabilitation work.
“I had to get my hands working again, I had to learn to walk again — it took months,” he says. His hearing was also affected, and now he has hearing aids in both ears.
“One of the aids doesn’t really work anymore. But I get vibrations in my left ear that let me know where the beat is, so I’ve kind of learned to work with it.”
Toubin also struggled to regain his sense of self.
“It got to the point where I realized my entire identity from before the accident had been replaced by the identity of someone that had something really bad happen to them,” he says.
Toubin worked as hard as he could to make his fans forget about the accident.
“I realized, no one’s gonna keep coming to see a DJ because he got run over,” he laughs. “I kept hitting record markets, played every night, tried harder every day to make it as exceptional as possible. I’m a much better DJ now than I was five years ago.”
There’s no immediate end in sight for “Soul Clap,” and Toubin admits to being taken by surprise by the night’s longevity.
“Year after year, I assume the worst and imagine the ‘Clap’ is on its last legs. But, like a good stock, with each dip it always goes back up!”