> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 12 November 2004 18:43 > To: Tristan Watkins > Cc: ''SeanDeason C''; ''fwdthought''; [email protected]; '/0' > Subject: Re: (313) Metro Times: Detroit > > it's interesting to me because i wrote essentailly the same > article for urb this past summer. and i'll admit, a blinding > weekend in berlin with hawtin and company is a heady > experience that'll get you thinking about what it all means. > > of course- i don't have the capacity for such verbos > (pretentious?) prose as walter, which i think it's a benifit > as a writer but a weakness in myself. > > but enough about me- whatever they're doing over there, a lot > of it is just drug induced mumbo, but then again, how much of > the crap about spacefunk and drexciyans and fear and loathing > in las vegas and electric kool-aid acid test and french > romantisism and all that other old stuff i don't know enough > about is basically unrealistic babble. not all drug related > (although a LOT is). But my point is that any sort of valid > artistic movement will (and should) have a fair amount of > pretentious and abstract thought that never amounts to a hill > of beans. > > so yeah- what he said...
It's a fair enough point. I mean, I've been caught up in bullsh*t like that as much as the next guy - not to say that I think I'm right, just that I think it's bullsh*t, being fully aware that I am just as likely to be wrong as the next guy. And because I think I end up sounding like a twat more than a hippy most of the time, I'll tell you what I think people should be making a big deal of (if they want to intellectualise about the clubbing experience): the communal vibe. In my experience, few things encourage as much excitement as when you get people in numbers getting off on the same thing, whether that's political rallies, a small black church on the east side of Detroit, sporting events or the rave. It's when community becomes nearly tangible - especially if everyone is witnessing with the same spectatorial vocabulary. It's like a controlled (or sometimes not) hysteria. The numbers don't need to be massive, but of course if the connection and numbers are there together, it all goes off in grander fashion. For me, this tends to happen in smaller venues more often than not (but I'm not trying to resurrect that debate), and few things make me happier than either going into myself with the volume up, closing my eyes and feeling nothing but the pleasantness of everything around me, or looking around at my friends when 'The Wipe' comes on, knowing that we're all equally happy that some bloke in the DJ booth knows how to make us happy. It's yet another kind of fulfilment when you're in the position to guide this along, especially when you don't know the crowd at all, and you're just hoping to God they'll dig your sh*t - it's one of the few things that makes me a humanitarian and an optimist, despite the troves of evidence to the contrary. And I love both sides of the booth. So if I were ever going to consider how DJs should big themselves up (especially if I was trying to claim that ego had nothing to do with it), I wouldn't be spouting about how my ego is no longer a part of the process. I'd be spouting about how the barrier between performer and audience is eradicated when the right crowd is assembled for the right DJ in the right place on the right night - which requires a good crowd, a good venue, a good owner, a good promoter and a good DJ. None of which happens without the right people, dedication, planning, fingers on the pulse, ground work, experience, history, execution and the right wax. When that happens, it's pure f*cking magic. In my mind, that's what must be happening in Berlin, because I know that's how good nights happen in London. We might not get the same kind of international press or have the same people migrating in droves, but for at least the last few years, all of these ingredients have come together with regularity here, and I bet it's not that much different in Holland, Tokyo or Berlin. $.02. Tristan ======= http://www.phonopsia.co.uk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
