Founder · resident since 1998
Dennis Owens
Dennis Owens started The Good Foot! on 11 September 1998 at Que Sera, after a night at a Santa Monica club called Science showed him what was missing at home. He wanted to spin soul, and “there wasn’t really a scene for that”. About eighty people came to the first one.
The intention was never only the records. It was, in his words, to “create a safe haven, a place where you got no attitude” — which is most of why it is still running 28 years later.
He came to it from the other side of the stage. Through the nineties he toured, sang and played guitar and bass in Long Beach bands — Suburban Rhythm, Action League, Blow Up Blow! and Free Moral Agents, whose bass chair he took in 2004. The night takes its name from the James Brown song.
I still enjoy doing it. And as long as I continue to enjoy doing it, why stop? Random Lengths News, September 2023
There is a long 2008 Q&A in LA Record about his gear and his digging habits, and the Long Beach Post 25th anniversary feature covers the whole arc.