Post em if you got em...
Here goes mine!
Wednesday - Get in town around 11am check in at the Holiday Inn at 23rd & Collins. We venture out to the Ocean strip to hop around to various events going on. Go to the Movim party first to watch East Coast Boogimen (1 man) throw down a nice smooth mix with some tribal & funk in there...the crowd was warming up nicely. We head out and down further south to see Scumfrog lay down a few funky sounds, not very well mixed I might add, decent DJ. Got rained on a bit as it was off and on all day Wed. Then we went to eat at the most horrible mexican resturant of my life...wow it was poor....all 6 of us were dis-pleased with our food (and I'm not a very picky eater).
From there I headed to a venue just down on 23rd & Collins were I saw a bit of Jondi & Spesh, Thomas Penton, & Habersham...some kewl stuff coming from them (especially Habersham). Carried on a long convo with a Australia/UK edm enthusiast about the scene, society, and America vs the world.
Then it's off to Lights Out we go! We arrive and get right in with our Pre-sale tickets (State nightclub). Walk in and instantly am blown away by the amazing sound system they have there. Huge bassbins at both ends of the long rectangle of a club with the DJ at the far end and a bar along both of the long sides underneath the overlooking balcony around the whole upper area of the club. The place was daaaaaarrrk with minimal lights making for a great atmosphere for what was to come. Clive Henry of Peace Division opens up nicely with some sick twisted tech-house and tribal sounds that got the excitement brewing nicely! Lawler comes up and lays down some super slow deep flat house sounds to get everyone to step 1 again, from there he begins his creeping set that works its way to it's first peak at about 50 minutes in and the place lit up. There were to many people in the place by this time for my liking...you couldn't get a breath on the dancefloor so I had to step out of the sauna for a bit and take a little break. Around 3:00-3:30 a lot of the excess stragglers that were only a little into the whole thing left the venue and made room for the hardcore folks to let loose with a little more space to jump around. Perfect timing to as Lawler went up up and away with his set, started bringing out some serious bangers that were much anticipated as the top blew off the place. Great set from Lawler.
Thursday - The Weird Day!! We start with lunch at 1pm at a Panini place on Washington called something like Baitro (or something...not sure). Well service was way delayed as they lost some workers or something I guess. So we waited almost 45 minutes to get our food (and there wasn't even that many people waiting in line or anything. During this time we saw them give the wrong order to 5-7 different people, and the fire alarm went off twice! Our waitress said she'd buy us free ice cream for our wait so that was kewl. We are up there getting our ice cream from the owner and we turnaround to see water pouring (not dripping) from the ceiling of the resturant!!! It was quite comical...the whole experience the owner is like 'what More can go wrong today!' with a slight smile on his face.
From there we went to the Dustraxx party down the road to see Harrison Crump & Stacy Kidd throw down the soulful sounds in a plush hotel lobby/bar area. Nice chilled out time with some amusing folks miling about.
Then things got weird again as the night approaches. First effort is the Opium Garden with a lineup of funky and tech-house hitters on the bill. We walk in and are impressed with the club layout and the aesthetics are great! We make our way to the main room, and then the second room and back again. Just hanging out in the main room on the floor, track breaks down to a quite soundscape and...damnit...I can hear the 2nd rooms bass boomin in the background...annoying! Let alone the sound on the main floor was sub-par at best...not very good. The crowd was super fake and not seeming to be a very genuine EDM crowd. So we take off early from the venue regardless of the cover we just paid. We make our way up to B.E.D. for Danny Howells and run into Lee Burride in line, and we talk it up with him for a bit and toss him some demos and contact and such...great guy, laid back by all means. So we get to the front of the guestlist line of which we are supposed to be on...but the lady pulls 'the guestlist is closed' out of her ass and gives us the hand. We were a bit salty as it seemed the greed of the club was sinking in and they wanted to make anyone pay to get in...sucked. So we press on to our next option which is the Proton show at the Cafeteria. We get there only to find that there is already to many people inside and they aren't letting anyone else in!! DAMN! So we brainstorm for a bit and figure we'd back track south again to attempt at the Tsunami Relief event. So we head there pay our way and catch the tail end of D:Fuse's set which was pretty decent. Next up....um....silence for 10 minutes as these two rappers start setting up microphones....we're like WTF!!! (along with just about everyone else in the place) So after 10 minutes of no music, we get to hear instrumental hip-hop and rapping attempts over-top.. How the hell are they going to have some rap following D:Fuse, along with all other EDM headliners on the bill!?!? Luckily it was only a 15 minute set for them (supposedly it was part of the contract with the venue in order for the promoter to use it) and then onto the next headliner. Well it wasn't a headliner!! It was some big guys wife (an amatuer at best) getting a 3am headline spot as she struggles on every mix she sweats through, track selection is off the mark, yet by the theatrics she was putting on you'd think she was Killin iT!! yeah RIGHT! Next up is Jason Blum of Deepsky (a guy we've opened up for and booked into Indianapolis a few years back). Jason lays down a great set! So at 4AM OUR NIGHT HAS FINALLY STARTED!!!! Man it was hectic, but in the end, amusing.
Friday - We get out as quick as we can to Radio One @ Nikki Beach party (which turns out to be 2pm). We get through the semi-lengthy line and there's already about 2000 heads running around the venue...Pete Tong is doing his tracks show and the place is groovin. We find a good spot and set down our stuff and hangout for the day til about 9pm. I get a call from a friend waiting in line at about 4:30pm and he says there's about 3500 people inside the venue...and there is 2500 waiting to get in!! It was nuts as people were surrounding the fence line of the venue trying to get in. Had a great time listening to James Zabiela, Behrouz, Nic Fanciuli, and others.
From there that night we headed to Spin as the M3 media list book said that James Zabiela, Luke Fair, Nic Fanciuli, and one other name were supposed to play there. So we get in, go upstairs and find the massive sound system and empty dancefloor and an un-recognizable face behind the decks. We hang out for a bit as the DJ is 'decent' at best we approach the owner of the club to find out what's going on and our stories don't match at all! He writes down the lineup for the night and we were shocked. M3 mis-printed the info for the party. By this time a decent little crowd had made their way into the venue, we talked to some of them and they were there for what we were there for and were shocked as well to find that there was a mistake in the M3 list book. SUCKS!
A bit purturbed we head to our closest option which was Porter House @ State. A free event at that! We get in...get settled. Took me a while to get groovin again after the mishap at Spin....but once Porter took the decks following Eli Wilke (he was decent) it was all over.
Porter comes out with some slammin funky tech-house jams and sets the place on fire. He works magically from there down into the gritty dark rumbling tech-progressive that I favor above most other forms. It was nasty! Dark penetrating beats. He played a top notch set by my standards, but I guess it was not as good as the night previous according to Lunar Magazine's Eddie Ku (
www.lunarmagazine.com). Eddie commented this to me during his set and I was suprised. I did hear a few slippery mixes here and there from Steve, but overall I thought it was a fantastic set. And Steve was so into it. It was also neat to notice how many people there were from Boston...out in Miami on a Friday night to see their hometown hero throw it down. Very nice.
Saturday - We begin our day at the Spleen records party and hang out there for almost the whole time. This was a great event with loads of great talent and loads of great industry folk mingling and conversing around the place. Got to hear Barish Tucker (Red Flag Collective), Bill Patrick (old Twilo), Jay Tripwire, Dr Kucho, Desyn Masielo, and a few others.
That night we got comped into Crobar VIP for Carl Cox thanks to our friend Donald Glaude. Crobar got the biggest bass award from me :O Massive club with that popular balcony ovaled around the whole upper deck of the club. Yousef did a good job warming things up, got real busy a few times having 3 tracks layered at a time a couple of times. The booth at that club is amazing with that rotary Allen&Heath at the heart of it all. Carl stepped up and laid down one of the most un-relenting techno sets I've ever heard...it was so damn hard I was suprised how many people didn't get scared away by it. He was slamming it. One of the best sets I've heard from him (3rd time seeing him play).
overall...WMC 2005 was a great experience...my first time, and most definatley not my last!
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
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