Howdy ya'll! back from my visit to tha D and boy did I have fun. It was a great vaca for all of us. my wife michelle & I along with Gerard (convextion) and jesse rolled up to Detroit in a rental car from our home in Dallas. The drive was long and exhausting (20 hours!!! do I qualify as a techno tourist now? ;) ) listened to a good amount of CDs like the FBA album, Dimension 5 and tons of other chit...even rolled into Detroit listening to Matt MacQueen's C2 retrospective mix (Matt you know you are in deep doo doo for not coming this year! :P) we made it safely to the Detroit Metro Airport where we stayed at a Best Western off Merriman Rd. After some chillin out and relaxing we all rolled out to the Cabaret around midnight to hear some tunes. It was worth it to talk to Mike again after so many years and see him all done up in a full suit! hehhe Met up with Otto, KJ and Marie there...(sorry we couldn't chat longer...it was so loud in there and we didn't bring our ear plugs ...hope you dig the dmay '88 mix Otto :) nice to hear classics towards the end of the night like alleys of your mind and numbers. We left after getting an invite for staurday night from Mike.
Sat...the first day...didn't hang out long at the festival...we caught Deep Chord and Mad Professor and really enjoyed those...also saw John Tejada's LIVE set and really enjoyed it...the second or third track he played was deeeeeep and pretty! went home after meeting up with Dan Kurzius and Damon (Baby Pop, who hooked us up with the new Tetrode release! watch out for the new stuff coming out by this Kzoo native now who's been in Chi for a while now) It was funny seeing 50 or so dudes who looked like John Acquaviva and Richie haha saturday night was out to the UR show...got there kinda of late to hear the end of rolondo's set and then james came on and played some classics!!! heard everything I could have possibly wanted to hear...my favorites though were Kaos, blow your house down by gerald, and tour de france. Rolondo came on again and played after James was done for the night. Mike was out there handing out free copies of the new releases...got us all copies of the new UR and Los Hermanos which are both extremely good records...deep and soulful. Sunday, woke up real late like around 2pm and decided we'd head out to Record Time in Roseville. Picked up some great records like the new Keith Tucker on End to End and the one he did on Twilight 76 tribute to Juan. Also picked up the 2 new 7th city releases by Shake and the Fym/S-max which is really dope stuff from this duo from Wiesbaden, Germany. All nice jams and highly recommended. Also ran into Sean Deason at RT and he gave us copies of his new release on Matrix...nice stuff Sean...good luck with the resurrection of Matrix. Glad to see you are back man! After RT we roll out to the festival kinda late to hit the crowd of people there to see george clinton. It was so crazy crowded we ended up just chillin over at the MGD tower listening to bryan zentz...after a while we decided to blaze and that's when we went down the street to visit JT who was sick as a dog in the hotel at the Ren Cen. Wish we could have hung out more but there is always next year? We all got separated for a while but met up later after we walked towards our car parked near cobo. Next, we were off to planet e. What a nice venue it was and while standing in line I ran into old 313 geezer Ed Luna and also Charles Noel who was givin me chit for not going to the Eyes Only party to see him play...felt real bad about missing that one...anyone with a good review of that? I missed out on meeting up with Koert Notario too! :( Koert, if you read this I hope you got JT's hotel number from Charles so you could call him up. We'll meet up when dL comes to NL one day ;) Once we got in to planet e, we made our way to the lounge area for drinks and to listen to Shake's set...the man is so good it makes you want to give up djing. He is a dj for tha headz...plays everything you want to hear and nothing less. I hope when the history book is written years from now, Shake's name will be up there with all the rest. We made our way downstairs to catch some of mike's set and then stuck around for Todd...he was really good. I really dug his set and todd had fun despite all the problems he was having at the beginning of his set. I don't know what was going on but it sounded like feedback or something from the mic being too close to the speaker or something...nonetheless looking forward to his upcoming ep and album on PE. The favorite seemed to be Herbert as radio boy...it was very entertaining and funny. I was laughing more than seriously listening. very comical stuff. :P Carl came on after herbert was passing free CDs out and played the jams...lots of classics ...hearing some k alexi was dope as well as orlando voorn's flash. the power cut out numerous times we decided to make it upstairs again to the lounge. Now it was Mark Ernestus playing some incredible dub, dancehall and reggae. I was loving it! super chill and head boppin' stuff that mark was playing. A rare treat! Ran into lots of 313 familiar faces...nice talkin to Dan Sicko, Dave Siska, Jwan Allen, and Ani Ghariban. you all will be getting some vinyl/CDs from me soon! so send me your snail mail addy's when you can. cruised back to the hotel for some z's around 5am and then decided to hit up the complimentary breaky yeah! man the oatmeal and tarts were where it's at! haha also was fun abusing the mattresses. You haven't lived until you've seen Gerard doing back flips and somersalts on the bed and bashin his brains on the ceiling. hahaha :P Monday...woke up really late missed a ton of chit at the festival but we didn't care...we were havin a blast. Rolled out to 3000 Grand to see the new Submerge and we were greeted by Mike and Mark Ernestus at the door. We went downstairs to SID and picked up some recs. One amazing find for me was the shake waiting for russel ep...I missed out on it when it was released a few years ago. also picked up the new model 600 update wht. sounds a lot like electronic warfare...did mike have a hand in this? missed all the SIDs...they were gone by saturday when the rush came in. We talked a lot to the new UR memeber Santiago...he played keys with gerald on stage with chaos during the fest. He's originally from LA he says. very nice dude. Gerald mitchell stopped by also and said hi ...these guys are all criminally nice. gave him props on his music and then he said he was off to catch aux men. We hung around for a bit for mike to come back and then we went upstairs and got the tour. the conference room was nice...loved all the framed pictures of YMO, Kraftwerk, cybotron and mojo. There was also a huge picture of Jeff Mills' hands. pretty nice hardwood flooring too. We hung out for a few hours in the game room next where mike plays golden eye on his playstation. We were talking about real funny chit...the inside story on the whole sony debacle was dope...mike is a riot (no pun intended) very funny guy who has a deep personal passion for this music. Also, Gerard was very happy to be there too and receiving admiration from mike and mark ernestus was something he never expected. after being in hiatus for 2 years...he's really inspired to make music again. we left for the DEMF finally to catch Aux Men and it was great!...a shame everyone was leaving but what can you expect from a bunch of phatdawgs...I'll never complain about raverdowgs again...detroit has way more than Dallas haha..the dowgness was out in full effect though hehe :P they are about as funny looking as mullets to us. aux men played some jams...computer games...moments in love and cosmic raindance...wow...real dope...wish keith and crew played more new stuff though but it was all fun to us...soon as it was all over we made the long trek home back to Dallas...thanks Detroit! it was a blast. what a beautiful weekend! maybe we'll see ya next year. back to the grind - minto __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
