Pubdate: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 Source: NOW Magazine (Canada) Copyright: 1999 NOW Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.now.com/ Forum: http://www.now.com/forum/index.html Author: Joey MacCuish BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE Chemical Heads, Clean Up Your Act Or You're Gonna Wreck The Rave Sitting inside my friend Nick's car, listening to a phat Carl Cox track while I pre-roll the last of our several joints for our Friday night at System Soundbar, I feel nothing but excitement, especially because Kenny Glasgow is just about to start tearing shit up. When Nick and I get in the lineup, I can feel the bass pounding my chest, giving me a sense of anticipation that kills me, until we open the big metal door and there it is, exactly what we waited for all week. Nick and I do the prerequisite ritual and land on the cushioned couches in the VIP room, where we light up the first of our prizewinners. I end up talking to a cute girl named Lara, who's really impressed with our once-a-week herb-consuming technique. She thought she was the only one not on a chemical cocktail and who came just for the music. As the joint gets passed around, Nick says weed is perfect for house or techno because of the way it helps plug your soul in to the invisible electric vibe. I say I've done ecstasy in the past and it made my body feel incredible but never connected me to who I really am. Lara says it's sad that most people who go to their first rave always do E or some other dirty chemical like crystal, Special K or GHB, but that these parties are already addictive because of the music. People, she says, develop the reinforcement between house and drugs and don't realize that it's really the music that's the true addiction, so they end up fucking themselves up for nothing. We all laugh and decide it's time to hit the dance floor. People at these parties think you need crazy body energy to have fun and dance hard with the house. But the best way to take it in is to close your eyes and dance in the music, letting your mind just go with the journey. House is a spiritual thing, and to get lost in it is to go on a soul ride. E can never let you get there. Neither can other chemical junk. When I open my eyes, I see one of the many muscleheads with tank tops on doing a cap of G. These guys with their many insecurities who dominate the scene now don't see the art hanging in the house and treat the scene as if it's a deli where they come to pick up meat. They don't understand that these parties are a contemporary tribal culture full of love and respect for each other that aren't generated by E but by everyone relating to the true meaning of house. Before we know it, it's 6 am, and the party ends as everyone gives Kenny a round of applause. Parties like this are rare. Things have got really ugly now, compared to how they used to be. * My nightclub life started when I was 14, nine years ago. For me and many other kids in Toronto, that was the beginning of the evolution of all-age party nights. At clubs like Super Stars, Night Loose, RPM and Factory Rave, kids between 14 and 18 came to dance all night long. I stopped going to clubs when I turned 19 because most of them stopped playing house for a couple of years. The scene was taken over by the meaningless sound of Euro and dance. Eventually, the music reappeared, and so did I. But some really ugly things that do nothing for the music but give it a bad reputation also appeared -- Special K, crystal meth and GHB. The only good part of the house resurgence is that the music came back bigger and better. It's is no longer just in the category of acid house or garage. It now consists of this plus a wicked variety of breaks, trance, tribal, progressive and its cousin techno. (I'm not going to mention anything about jungle, because personally I miss the old-school jungle with MCs who were truly from the Islands.) Total downer I don't mean to be a downer, but to me, if you're going to do E or other synthetics at a party, you might as well just walk in, spit at the DJ and boo out the house. Don't you realize that you're just a sucker in a rave market that's making tons of money off your insecurities, like a spider catches a fly? The rest of you chemical wannabes might just as well do crack in an alleyway, because drugs like E, no matter where you are, make you feel amazing and give you a fictitious temporary love for everything and everyone. But the shit is never real. House is what I need, so please don't let it be dragged down. It's my classical music. And to promoters of raves who, just to make an extra $30 a head, tolerate young kids being messed up by synthetics: learn to put morals in front of money. Everyone, clean up your fucking acts and put your heads back on. The music is the true soul vitamin. Don't let it get sucked into this mess, causing not only the DJs to be hung, but also the house. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea