Dave Lovell, aka Davey Love, is the head honcho behind Blow Up, the weekly Brit-pop and mod dance party that everybody hates, or loves, or once hated or once loved, or hates to love or loves to hate. Blow Up has been running for ten years and during that time has almost become a cliche in the indie music scene. And pretty soon it'll be no more.

"It's definitely in its last days. I've thought about giving it to other people, but it wouldn't feel right," he says.

He also says he's just "growing up." "I love DJing, I'll always love DJing, but the week-in, week-out takes a toll on your liver."

He was considering closing the doors on New Year's Eve, but the El Mocambo was already booked by Ukula, and he was hoping to end the night at the venue that gave Blow Up the most love. Still, Lovell quietly said to a few friends that, just so they know, he might make an announcement during the anniversary bash. He wanted to keep the news quiet because he's still not sure exactly when he's going to end Blow Up, and he didn't want to say that it's ending and then keep doing it for a few more months. "'Cuz that's bullshit." Lovell hasn't set a specific date yet, but it'll happen by the end of April.

"I know that people come out and they've been coming for ten years, I see the same people, and they're into it, they're really into the music, and that's why we started the club, because there was no place in Toronto that was playing a whole night of good music." Lovell says he would see some kids at the Dance Cave that would only dance to the few Brit-pop songs the DJ would throw in. "That's what gave me the idea. I was like 'What if you did a whole night of this?' And it worked."

These days, mod and indie rock dance parties are a dime a dozen. It's rare to see a weekly dance party, but there's enough monthly and bi-monthly parties going on to keep your weekly dance card filled, from Post Mod to Santa Cruz to Expensive Shit to Hot Times to Rec Room, to name a handful.

"That's one of the reasons why I'm ending it too," he says. "Everybody's a DJ. It seems like there's a monthly party every Saturday."

"It's oversaturated, it's insane."

He's also taken a lot of heat from a lot of people. "People love to hate me. I get grapes thrown at me in fucking grocery stores. I have no idea why. I had to stop going to clubs because I was always getting into fights. I was always getting someone calling me a fucking asshole or something, for nothing - like, we'd never even met before."

Some of the flak he's gotten has been because of the format of Blow Up. Some people want the music to change and evolve more, some resent any changes. "Some people complain that you aren't changing it and other people complain that you're changing it too much. That's exactly the problem."

"We stayed the course," he says. "But it's lasted because of that. With the first sound system we rented from Sunshine Sound for the first party, the sound guy - he did our sound for a year - he told me he'd been running the sound system forever and he said, 'You've got something really cool here, this could last you forever. You just gotta stay the same, don't ever change what you do. If you start playing for the people, it's fucking over.' So it's been in the back of my head all the time what that guy said, and 10 years later we're still here."

He says he might do one or two parties a year, a maximum of four under the Blow Up name, but the night will cease to exist as it is today. He did hint that he's working on opening a club in the east end that would feature bands and a more eclectic selection of music, but it's not set in stone. And he wants to run his own business. "I'm going to open up a chip shop," he says. "That's the speed of life I want right now."

Ryan McLaren