"No more tears."
-MC Kemst 06.16.2001 3:12 a.m.
"It's tough at the top, it's tough at the bottom, hard
to survive, in a world of destruction. It's tough when your young,
seekin' a system for justice, open your eyes, it's pure devastation,
it is this." These lyrics always make me want to cry, but
I don't always know why. This time it was easy. It was because
I just had a great time, the kind I have every week. The kind
I have every time I can go to a party, hear some House, some
Premium Drum and Bass, and see the (always diminishing) number
of people from all over Southern California that leave their
separate lives behind and do whatever it takes to make it out
to the party. Smoking a cigarette, now alone in my car -fellow
jungle Dancer Nick has gone home, he has work in fours hours-
I think about whether this will be the last party ever. It won't,
there will be a few more, maybe there will be a million more.
I don't know.
Heavy Sound Seminar was great (all parties are
). I can
tell you about how much fun it was to dance in the spotlight
of the House room, I can tell you about how the vibe was right
there in the Trance room, or about how Usual Suspects spun a
set that built upon itself for the first half hour and took me
to a higher level. About how I danced to Jungle until 4 a.m.
-once again, about the good clean fun you can have at a rave
with just music and other dancers. I can tell you that this was
like fifty other parties I've been to in the last two years,
and served it's purpose just the same. But what I keep thinking
about is not what this last party was like, but how I could possibly
survive without my weekly fix of raving. Right before my very
eyes the rave scene has gone from 30,000 plus person massives
(year 2000) to 3,000 person parties at the Masterdome (2001)
and Orion (2002, a few weeks ago, in fact), to the state it is
in now, with a 1,600 person turnout at "Mystic Illusions"
seemingly the best we can hope for.
I listen to a bootleg (from the now defunct raveworld.net)
of Bad Boy Bill's "How Sweet It Is" set from 2000 and
can hear thousands of people screaming, whistles blowing, and
energy crackling from the crowd. I remember that night, with
over 30,000 people at the Orange Show until 7 in the morning,
maybe half of them were rolling, and maybe that is why there
was no HSII 2002. Maybe the government has a point, and in all
honestly I remember thinking at that very party "California
is such a laid back place, on the East Coast they would never
allow such a thing. 15,000 people obviously on drugs, and for
some reason it is OK."
Well, that didn't last forever. Lately the rave scene has
been getting kicked around more and more, and the last common
venues are, for one reason or another, being shut down. It's
hard to say if this trend will continue until the scene goes
completely underground, or if at some point things will get better.
As of now I sit alone in my car and listen to Jungle, wanting
to bask in the glow of having just been to a rave, but instead
think only what it would be like if I never got to do it again. |