Better Bob @ 30 – A Challenge For Us All

Hi friends.

A few months ago, I decided it was time to finally get my health in order after being overweight (or worse) for pretty much my entire life. Those of you who read my year end recap post on this blog know I lost 20 pounds in 2013 after September 18, the date in which I started a new job that I walk to every day – a mile each way. I felt very inspired, as I was able to lose the weight relatively easily. During this time, I also saw my sister, who has also been heavy most of her life, get very serious about her health and lose a very significant amount of weight.

I decided that after my busy season at work, I would sign up for the YWCA, which I walk past every day on my way to and from work. Since March 1st, I have missed only 6 week days, I have been to the gym every other week day. It’s nice to not have any excuses, I am literally walking right past the place, and once I got going, it’s been easy to maintain.

Since then, I have lost another 15 pounds, bringing me down to a weight that I have not been at since I was in high school. I honestly lost track of when I passed my current weight (210 as of the date of this post), but it’s been at least 11 years. I feel great. Every day. Well almost every day. I feel like I am in total control of almost everything in my life for the first time ever. I am happier, more confident, and obviously a lot healthier too.

You know that thing dummies say about how nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels? Well I can’t comment on that yet, but I will say I have never felt so good in my life, and it’s the sense of accomplishment that’s making me feel that way, cause I still have a long way to go before I’m skinny. 

I don’t have any secrets to offer on how I have lost this weight. The main thing I credit is using a calorie counting website. I use LoseIt, but there are a lot of options out there. LoseIt has a cell phone app in addition to the website, but a lot of them do. This is just the one that I have used in the past and have found easiest to use, and it’s free. I was sort of hovering at the same weight for the first week and a half after I started going to the gym, it was when I started using LoseIt again that I started dropping weight. It helps keep me accountable, I used to get a piece of candy out of the candy bowl at work probably once a day, but now it’s very rare. I’m being 100% honest with it because there isn’t a point of doing it at all otherwise.

Other than that, I’ve just been making small, gradual changes to my diet. Instead of two slices of pizza for lunch, I will get a slice and a salad. Instead of two turkey burgers, I will make some vegetables and just have one. Instead of eating some popcorn for a late night snack, I eat strawberries. These were all pretty changes to make, and it’s not like these are hard and fast rules, just something I shoot for.

But my health isn’t the only part of my life that I am trying to improve. I decided a few months ago that I wanted to jump into my 30th year headfirst, as the best person I have ever been. I have been learning to cook more, being involved in all kinds of exciting events, and just trying to improve myself every day, whatever that may mean on that particular day. My goal, for the next year (I turn 30 363 days from the date of this posting) is to go to sleep a better person than I was when I woke up almost every day, whether that means being healthier, knowing something I didn’t know, having a better relationship with someone, or any other improvement, I am aiming for 85% of my days being an improvement on the day before. That works out to 6 out of 7 days in a week, and it is obtainable, my friends. I have been doing it for 2 months now without the 6 out of 7 days requirement, and I feel like I have almost every aspect of my life in the palm of my hand. I feel as much control over my own life as I’ve ever had. And let me tell you what, it feels amazing!

To commemorate my achievement, I am going to throw an event close to my 30th birthday that will be a summation of almost everything I have done in my life that I am proud of, which is mainly as an entertainer. I’m not going to share too many details yet, other than it’s going to be a victory lap like most of you have never seen, and I hope you can be there for it. I know this is a little like Napolean building the Arc D’ Triumph before actually triumphing, but I got this!

NOW, the reason I am even posting this at all, is to ask you, my humble readers, to join me, to improve your life and feel what I have felt these past few months, so we can enjoy life more together. It’s a lot easier than you think once you get going, I promise. We can motivate each other to get better and be best friends. It will be fun. You don’t need to follow my schedule if you don’t want. And I don’t think I’m ever going to stop improving myself. But 30 seems like a pretty good target, so that’s what I’m going for. The whole point is to feel better about yourself, specific targets don’t matter so much.

Let’s roll!

2012 In Review – Change We Can Believe In

2012 was a very good year, my friends. I would say the third best year of my life, behind 2010 and 2009. A lot of big changes, most of them good, and some of the best memories of my life. As readers of this and my former blog know, I have written a year in review post the past several years, but did not write one in 2011. I actually started writing one while I was on a plane to Denver to see 3 nights of Ween, but I never finished it. 2011 was a good year, but 2010 was as good as it ever was and it was a tough act to follow. It’s not that there wasn’t anything worth writing about, but I just didn’t have the same sense of achievement and personal growth that I had in 2010; In a lot of areas of my life I kind of just tread in place.

That said, here are a few highlights just to get them in writing. Freaky Deeky was the big thing. Heading in to the year I was hosting the show by myself for the first time. We were on a crazy hot streak of amazing episodes in the first part of 2011, and then we moved to Hotbed Studios, where there were growing pains. A few months after the move, we changed to every other week and the shows got better for a while, and when I say better I mean the best we’ve ever done. The Halloween/Haunted House episode of 2011 is my favorite episode of the show. We also did a show in the main room at First Avenue, that was really just a dance party that we were a sideshow at. It was fun, it was a major goal, but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I set out to do a main room show. On the other hand, we also performed as part of Bassgasm 3 in February 2011, and that was the best Freaky Deeky live performance ever, by my count. I wrote about it here. I put out a few more videos with MPLS.TV, a couple of them good, the other not so good. Hey, 2/3 ain’t bad. I was paid to write something for the first time ever, and I got to take an African drum and dance class, so hey that’s pretty cool. And there you have it, 2011 (nutshell remix). It was a year.

The theme of 2012 for me was change. Not all good, but mostly good. Like 80% good I’d say. The biggest change of them all was my change in employment, and I have to say just 3 months in, I am incredibly happy with this change. I knew my old job at the accounting firm would not work out long term for me. I got into accounting because I liked doing math, but there were some major stressors at this job, like dealing with problem clients and co-workers, having to do customer service (even for the bad clients), having to try to sell myself and my firm outside of work hours, and having to enter every single minute of what I did every day into a time entry program. They paid for $2,500 in expenses for my CPA license (test fees, review courses, etc), with the agreement that I would work there for 2 years after getting my CPA or I would have to pay them back. The 2 years ended in December 2011, but I did not want to leave them high and dry before tax season so I knew I would be putting off the job search until 2012. I had a pretty rough 2011 at work but I snapped back into it somewhat during tax season in 2012, partly because we had one less person on staff and I was expected to do a lot more. I was given a bonus for tax season for the first time, which was very nice, but while having enough money to do the things I like to do is a big motivator for me, a specific amount of money is not. They could have given me a bonus twice the size and I still would have left.

I was worried about my work experience not necessarily translating into the kind of job I wanted, which was to work for a company doing their accounting. I got my new job, which is preparing financial statements, reports, and other financial documents for a huge company, through a search agency that just called me up by random chance one day (through the front desk at my old job, mind you). A few months of boring and trivial stuff later, I have an interview. I parked in a parking garage for the interview. I walked out a door into an alley, and came face to face with a guy dressed in full clown garb, make up and everything. He said “Hey” and I said “Hey” without batting an eye. This is the moment that I realized I was finally a real cool guy. I also figured that this would be some kind of omen for the interview, whether good or bad.

I thought the interview went terribly. The search agency guy who set it up told me to call him and tell him how it went but I felt too embarrassed, felt like I had wasted his time, and mine. But a couple days later I get asked for a reference, and the guy says that means I all but have the job. Looking back at the interview, after having worked there a few months, a lot of the things I said were perfect for the things I actually do at the job. The job is cyclical so far, basically I can’t do much with anything until a set of numbers is done. Every month there are a few things to do. Every quarter there are a lot of things to do so I am basically busy the whole month after a quarter end. And then what I was really hired for was the year-end, which I’m about to experience for the first time. I expect to be working 60 hour weeks just like I was at the firm, but it might be less than that, and it will end over a month earlier than tax season ends, so there’s that. It’s been pretty dead the last couple months, so some extra work won’t kill me.

So my new job is much more math oriented, and less to do with any of the things that drove me away from my old job. I essentially work for two people, really mainly one who had my job but was promoted. She is given a lot of work to do, and delegates the things that I can do to me. The only other person I really do work with/for is our main boss. I’ve felt that we have made a good team even from the very start of me working there, and I feel like what I’m doing is important. The work I do is passed on all the way up the chain, I mean the CEO is looking at this stuff. It goes through probably a dozen hands before it gets there, but I am the one who builds the bottom level of the pyramid, and I like that. It was kind of weird moving from an accounting firm with small clients to a company that has over a billion dollars in revenue, but I am totally used to the huge numbers by now.

The job is great, and that’s great, right? But the best part is it’s location. It is a mile away from where I live, and I walk to work every day, which means I barely drive my car. My car was a huge cause of stress in my life, and now it’s not. Enough said. If the weather is truly awful, I can get in the skyway 2 blocks from my house and take it all the way to the office. It’s a bit out of the way so it adds 5-10 minutes to my commute of 20 minutes. I have only done that twice since I started working there in mid-September though. Normally I can tough it out to right past the Dakota club, get in the skyway there, and that takes the same 20 minutes as it does walking on the streets. As I’ve been slow at work for a while I’ve taken some time wandering around the skyways, and have found my way around, going on 2 and 3 mile walks around the city, and I think I have found most of the good restaurants. Shout out to Andrea’s Pizza, a little slice of NY in the skyway.

Speaking of all that walking, another big change this year is my health. Or at least my weight. I started the year at 240 after an effort to cook more and eat healthier at the end of last year, down from about 255 earlier in 2011. I gained almost all of that weight back during tax season, I was certainly over 250. I continued to try to eat better in 2012, and by the time I started my new job in September, I was down to about 243. As of the date of this blog post, I am down to 225, so 18 pounds in 3 and a half months. I got myself down to 225 for a while in 2009, but this is is low as I’ve been since then, and I am feeling great and looking better. I have a long way to go though. I want to live forever, or at least as close to forever as possible. I owe it to myself to get in better health. I walk by the YWCA every day on the way home from work, and I decided I am going to get a membership there in March. It’s going to be very busy for me at work the next couple months, like 50-60 hour weeks, and I’m not going to kid myself. I’ve been there before with tax season and even just to not gain any weight during a busy time like that would be a win.

Alright! Well there are some of the good changes, it’s time to get dark, I think. Freaky Deeky. The thing I loved most in this world, the thing that meant more to me than anything I’ve ever been a part of, the thing that really freed me and allowed me to become the person I was meant to be (or at least get closer to that person), ended. It had been coming since the end of 2011, when the city of Minneapolis passed a huge budget cut to our network, MTN – Minneapolis cable access. The only reason we were able to do the show as it was was because Hamil worked there. The studio was closed at that time, and we were allowed to use it because we were respectful and Hamil was there. Hamil knew then that there might not be much time left both for his job there and the show, and he told me that, but it seemed better to not tell everyone else, I am optimistic to a fault and I just figured it would blow over. Still, we were running on fumes, and not much else, for the last few episodes of 2011 and the 4 we did in 2012. We moved back to MTN for the final 4 episodes after spending some rough months at Hotbed, where we made some great episodes but were doomed by the technology not aligning as well as it did at MTN. The move back to MTN breathed a little new life back into the show, but it did not last. The problems just kept adding up for Hamil, an awful streak of months that I would not wish upon my worst enemy let alone one of my best friends.

A few days after the penultimate episode, Hamil said the show would be ending and it would be funny if we just went off the air without announcing it. Hal and I put some sense into him though, and we did one last episode to say goodbye and try to get a little closure. That said, it would have been truly funny to end without the finale. The last call we took on the 2nd to last episode was from a tea party lady who was honest-to-goodness fuming mad about the fact that taxpayer money could possibly be going into broadcasting our show. I have terrible hearing and it’s hard to hear in there anyway, and she sounded like friend of the show and former freak Ashley, who called in all the time with different characters anyway. So I treated her as if she were Ashley, and by that I mean I said some totally awful and mean things! I told her her voice made me want to run to the bathroom and I wasn’t sure if I had to diarrhea or throw up more. Then Hal went on screen and bunched up his undies in his butt crack. She ended up calling MTN the next day and complaining about us, making it the first formal complaint the show ever received in it’s 4+ year run.

So there certainly would have been some stories, and I’m sure there are at least a few people out there who think that’s why went off the air. Awesome! Anyway, the last episode was really great. We got everyone who had been a regular back in the studio, we had some very nice and heartfelt segments on the show. I had pictured the final episode of Freaky Deeky in my head for years before actually, and I pictured us all sitting in a room hugging each other and crying. Well it wasn’t like that at all. I definitely got choked up several times after callers said nice things about the show, but all in all there were a lot of smiles and heads held high in that studio that night. Until the episode was over at least, it was too chaotic and busy to have time for anything else really. We went back to Hotbed to have a party and watch the show, and that was a truly great time. We danced, we laughed, we cried a little sure, but I remember looking around the studio a lot and just seeing a lot of really happy people. I noticed particularly that Hamil was in good spirits for really the first time (in my presence at least) since everything started piling on in December. He was back to his old self, if only for one night, but it was very touching to see.

There is a hole in my life that hasn’t been filled since Freaky Deeky went off the air. It is nice to have Sunday nights to do what I want, and to not be dead tired (and I mean to the point of being brain dead) every Monday morning, and I don’t think I’d ever ever ever be ready to do Freaky Deeky every week again, but I sure would go back in a heartbeat. I had started a long blog post about Freaky Deeky a few weeks after it ended, but I never finished it, and at this point, I won’t be finishing it. I can’t say enough about this show though. We made some great episodes, some good episodes, and some bad episodes, and I am proud of them all, but that’s not the important part. The important part is almost all of my extremely close friends I either met at Freaky Deeky or hanging out with people from Freaky Deeky. The other important part is I am so much more awesome (yeah, I went there) and free since doing the show. I always had it in me to be a weirdo in a TV studio, but when I went on the first time I had some body image issues and didn’t get naked during naked time. I did my second time on the show though, and it all got easier and easier every time. At first I was frightened of getting on the mic and talking to callers, and then I became a co-host, and then a host. I feel basically invincible these days when I go out somewhere. I am not afraid to dress like an idiot in public. I am not afraid to be totally awesome in public. All the fucks I gave have been given to charity. I don’t need them anymore.

For any fans who may be reading this, I have a feeling we’ll have some good news for you in 2013. Not like REAAAAAALLLY good. But good. You’ll know when I know, my friends.

Let’s keep it dark for a while now, I promise we’ll take it back up in a bit. Another big change was my favorite band Ween breaking up. This might not seem like a big change but it is for me. I travelled to see Ween about once a year for the last 8-9 years. Along the way I met a ton of people through the Ween message board, and partied with them in cities across America. I did close out 2011 with seeing Ween 3 nights in a row in Denver, which turned out to be their last shows. I’m really glad I went, looking back. Leading up to the last night, I was pretty bummed to not be around my close friends for New Year’s Eve, I wasn’t sure if I had made the right choice. A lot of people I had met in my previous Ween excursions were there, a lot of us staying in the same hotel, but I missed my friends. Well the NYE show turned out to be the best Ween show I’ve ever seen (I believe I saw 15 total), and the new year’s countdown was actually pretty fun. The timing of the break up felt a little symbolic for me. I had just gotten back from a new tradition for me, the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. I was back at home, hanging out with some friends who picked me up from my flight home when I heard the news. Based on what I’ve heard since the break up, and what members of the band have said, I am not holding my breath expecting to see Ween back together in all its glory, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all with whatever ends up happening.

Over the past couple years in Detroit, I had met a few people from other cities. This time I happened to meet someone from NYC who I instantly got along really well with. There was a techno festival in Denver in September, and the girl from NYC was the only person I knew who was going. So I went, and hung out with her and her friends most of the time. Even stayed in the same hotel where I had stayed when I went for Ween. In Denver I met some more techno people, one of whom I hung out with here in Minneapolis when he was in town for work. One door closed, but another opened. It’s not the same, and I won’t try to compare the two, but it felt like I should tell life to go easy on the symbolism because it’s getting kind of cheesy.

Ok. I think that’s all the bad stuff I have to say. Not so bad, right? I’ll live.

I was paid to write for the second time in my life in 2012, and it was an honor to have it be earned by interviewing a true legend and hero of mine, George Clinton for City Pages. Here it is. My friend Jen was their online editor until a few months ago, and just a couple weeks after she left I got a message from her saying they needed someone to interview George Clinton and she recommended me to the current editor of the Gimme Noise blog on account of me being a funk mastermind. It was supposed to happen on a Monday night. I sat around, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. I eventually got a call to let me know that a back up singer in the band had passed away. . We were able to get it done the next day, I brought my laptop into a conference room at work (this was still at my old job) and did the interview. I never even told anyone I work with that that’s what I was doing in there. I like to live 2 different lives. It’s fun to see what I can keep from one side or the other.

I made a few more videos for MPLS.TV, a dance video called So You Think You Kahn Dance. Here’s a link to one of them. It was…..good. It was fun. For the first time, I was in charge of getting it shot and edited myself. I can edit video, I’m just not good enough nor do I care to learn how to make something look and sound really good, so there were a few issues there. Ultimately I lost steam on the idea, I had a few more episodes in the can that I could have put out, but I just lost interest. I did, however, turn it into what I really imagined SYTYKD to be, a real life dance class! I had always pictured a very loosely structured dance class that would have 2-3 leaders, who would each do whatever they wanted with the class, whether that be do follow the leader type instruction, choreography, or what I favor – starting a dance circle and letting people solo. I was able to do it at the Gamut Gallery thanks to the generosity of Jade and James Patrick. I will admit that I was a little let down by the turnout, not so much the number of people (if there were more, it would have been deathly hot in there), but that the people who were there didn’t really need my help. The goal was to get people out of their comfort zone a little so they could hopefully realize most of the things preventing anyone from being a great dancer are mental. I am clumsy and don’t have rhythm. I used to be afraid of dancing. If I can do it, anyone can. It was still really fun, and very rewarding. The class went off about as well as I could have hoped. Hal and Kara were guest instructors, and without even talking about what we’d be teaching, our lesson plans fit well. Hal was building on some stuff that I scraped the surface of and incorporate in my everyday dancing (like using your face in your dance moves and being sassy as fuck), and Kara taught some choreography to Cotton Eye Joe, which is like my 2nd favorite song of all time.  The finale of the class was all of us, in a circle, hands on each others shoulders, dancing and having a good time to this song, and I can’t imagine a better end. I felt very proud when I was done. Didn’t raise as much money for the gallery as I was hoping, but it was a decent take and I think there will be another of them sometime soon, hopefully in Spring 2013!

The next highlight of the year was the Vogue Trash fashion show at Patrick’s Cabaret this October. I was asked to participate by Arturo, who was the programming director at Patrick’s when Freaky Deeky performed live there in 2010, in what was our first time performing live. I didn’t realize how awesome this would be until I was there the night of. It was very serious, they had a good runway set up and the event had all but sold out with very few tickets at the door. I won’t lie, I don’t get nervous too often but I was before I walked the first time, as I didn’t really know any of the models and I didn’t know anyone who was watching, aside from a handful of people who were working the event. My first outfit was a denim urban cowboy, or:

I had that glove in the tool belt, and when I stepped down onto the runway, I pulled it out and raised my hand up to put it on as epic-ly as I possibly could. There was a roar from the crowd when I did that, and that was all I needed. I felt like I owned the place after that, and so that’s how I acted when I walked around. I ended up walking in 4 different outfits, would have walked in 5 but there were no people to go in between. It was a major rush that I have not felt from doing a show since Bassgasm with Freaky Deeky in 2011. It’s the kind of feeling where you know that everything you’ve done so far is paying off, and those are the moments that remind me why I do what I do. I already have a bunch of ideas for next year’s, assuming I am asked back.

I had been thinking about doing a variety show, with bands, comedians, and other entertainments at a rock club, which would mean a band-centric show, but I realized that Patrick’s is the way to go. I have had a great time performing there with Freaky Deeky and at this event, and I found out this year that 100% of what they take in at the door for ticket sales is given to the artist, they don’t even take a cut, which is completely unheard of. What I have in mind would be much easier pulled off in a place like this, and all of my experiences with everyone who works there have been top notch. I e-mailed the director there and she said they are booked up for 2013 already – I could get on as part of other people’s shows but not have my own show – but that 2014 is possible. So that’s my new big goal in life. Neat, right?

Another highlight of the year was the Menneapolis 2013 calendars. I can’t take credit for more than rounding everyone up and trying to organize a few things, and putting the calendars on my credit card, but I am very proud of the final product! Have to give huge props to Matt Visionquest for doing such an amazing job and staying up real late to meet a deadline. We ordered 175, and I was a little worried that we would have a bunch left over, but as of the day that I type this, still in 2012, all of the calendars have either been sold or are spoken for. We have already had a lot of people asking about being in next year, so I think we will try to do some shots with multiple people in them. Saw a lot of hype building for this one and even more attention from people once they came out, so I think we will be expanding operations for Menneapolis 2014. We’re going to turn this sucker into a household brand, I tell you what.

The last big highlight of the year was the fifth and final Jean Jam. I wrote about why I decided to stop doing parties here, but the gist of it is my heart wasn’t really in it any more and I didn’t want to continue to throw half-assed parties, and that I should throw one last good one to end on a high note. Earlier in the year I did Dads Night Out 3, got a bunch of awesome decorations and booked some great DJs (shout out to Andrew “Naughty” Wood for actually DJing WITH his Dad), but only 20-25 people showed up. It was a busy night in town, but I was pretty let down. I still had fun throwing it, but it just wasn’t the same anymore. Jean Jam 5 was really great. Russell and his crew let me basically take over their night and do what I want, so I had Hal and Matt VJ like they did at all of our parties in the past, and had Danny play Hardstyle music, which was pretty fucking hilarious if you know what that is. I used to let it get me down when some people wouldn’t show up, and I won’t lie, I was a little bit bummed that some friends I was hoping would come did not make it out, but in all the pictures and videos of me at this, there is a big smile on my face. Someone asked me if I was on drugs (I wasn’t). It was a nice send off. Russell DJed last and played PYT followed by One More Time, which made me cry, right there at the front of the dance floor. Russell didn’t know it, but PYT was the anthem of my house parties back in the day. A very bittersweet moment, one that I will always remember.

I am really proud of the parties I threw/co-threw, especially the early ones with Drew, Eli, and Zair as The Original Truth Squad. Before the Jean Jam, I went through pictures of all the parties I’ve been involved with, and I saw a lot of people having fun, with huge, genuine smiles on their faces, and to me, that is all you can ask for as a party thrower. Here are the retrospective photos I compiled on a facebook album. Here is the last minute of Jean Jam 5, and I am pretty proud of the way it ended. What’s funny is in the couple of weeks since then, I have been asked to DJ and also asked to throw a Jean Jam-esque party with another crew. Haha. After I make a big deal about quitting. Well I will probably get involved with that stuff because I don’t think I will be able to stay away too long.

Phew, I’m almost at 5,000 words here already and if you are still reading, then props to you. We’re about to wrap it up, don’t worry. Before I go I want to list off my favorite memories of 2012.

First I will start with music. It was the worst year for concerts, and new music, in the past few, that’s for sure. I can’t even think of one new album from 2012 that I like right now, although I admit it is my fault for not listening to enough new music. Wait nevermind I can. The Bloodnstuff album is awesome, and so is the Secret Stash Twin Cities Funk N Soul album. Both are local, and I would highly recommend both. As for concerts, the best of the year would have to be Jeff Mangum at the State Theater back in February followed by Lee “Scratch” Perry at the Cedar in May. Honorable mentions to Hot Chip and Crystal Castles. I did go to Detroit again this year for the techno festival, which you can read more about here. I had a blast at Kevin Saunderson’s KMS 25th Anniversary party there, and that’s about all I’ll say in this one. Not sure where to classify this one so I will say I saw the Fela! musical and it was incredibly amazing. I reviewed it for TC Daily Planet, in what was, I believe, my only piece for them this year. Read it here.

The year in movies was also a big let down, and I saw fewer of them than I can remember. My favorite movie of the year, unquestionably, was Moonrise Kingdom. Wes Anderson has been a favorite of mine but I felt like his movies were getting worse. This one was a return to form, big time. Saw it twice in the theater and bought the blu ray when it came out. Honorable mention to Django Unchained, which was really really great too. Inglorious Basterds is my favorite Tarantino movie and seeing as there were plenty of similarities between the two, I was comparing them in my head while watching the movie. I shouldn’t have. They are very different movies, despite some similar themes. Go see it. For my sake.

OK. Almost there! Now I’m going to list my five favorite memories from 2012!

1) Jen and Dave’s Wedding. I wrote a big blog post about it here. Basically we were way up in the Northeastern tip of Minnesota, saw some amazing things, went on an amazing hike, and I fell down a waterfall and got cut up pretty good. It was truly beautiful up there, and I was very proud of myself for finishing the hike after falling, but it was after we got back to the cabin that we were staying at that was really the memorable time for me. We had a fire going right on the rocky shore of Lake Superior, with all of us sitting around the fire, sharing some laughs and keeping each other company. We stayed down there until the sun rose, and beyond, and that sun rise over the lake was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life. Imagine me, laying by the campfire, too banged up to even move (well I could move but it really hurt to). On the rocks in front of me, some of my friends were diving into the lake while a few of us remained up by the fire. The sky turned from black to pink to blue. The water was calm. I will remember all of these little details for the rest of my life. After the sunrise, I suddenly stopped being in pain and decided to join my friends for a little swim in the lake before crashing for the night/morning/afternoon/whatever. The wedding and the celebration afterwards was, without a doubt, the best 24 hour period of my life. I got some scars from the fall, and I am glad, because they will be constant reminders of this day.

2) Halloween with Hamil and Carolyn. The two of us had started the night at a party at Hotbed Studio, and then went on to a house party in Bryn Mawr with a bunch of our other friends. Then that party ended and we went back to my place, because there was no where else to go really. It was the end of a long night but we watched the sun come up from my window and ate some eggs and just had a good time hanging out together. We made a lot of inside jokes that I still remember (like Hamil naming a building that can be seen from my window the Sad Batman, or creating our own time system that related to when we ate eggs – before eggs and after eggs, you had to be there I guess). At about 9:30 in the morning, Hamil had suggested we go walk through Loring Park and it was weird because I was thinking I would like to do that like 15 seconds before he suggested it. Mind melder. So we did, and it felt like a victory lap because we not only started before our friends, we finished way after. None of them could say they saw all the things we saw that night/morning. None! Here is a picture we took during our victory lap in Loring Park, and since that day, when I am sad, this is what I look at to cheer me up.

3) Synchronized Swimming with Mark, Kurtis, and Max. We went to a rave in the hotel where I had my Bar Mitzvah 15 years ago. We had gone the year before and it was really fun so I figured this year would be the same. And just like last year, it was a great time, and also just like last year, the highlight was in the pool the morning after. We went down to the pool right around when it opened at 6, to find Mark, Kurtis and Max (and a bunch of other people) already in there. It was quite a shit show. These people were all still up partying, many with beers/drinks in hand. The hotel was not ready for this. Haha. Anyway, not sure who started it, but suddenly we were all synchronized swimming. God damn it was fun. I had already considered Mark, Kurtis, and Max to be friends, but something special happened that day in that pool, and we all knew it. I feel even closer to those 3 now, we share a special type of relationship, and in fact I can’t say I’ve synchronized swam with any one in the world but those 3. Also, no homo.

4) After party for the final episode of Freaky Deeky. I mentioned it above, and this was obviously a bittersweet moment. I was actually really sad and having a tough time coming to grips with the end of Freaky Deeky, but I couldn’t help but look around and smile as we all danced to Daft Punk, ELO, and the like. Like I mentioned above, it was the first time I had seen Hamil upbeat and laughing easily in months, and that was very nice to see at the time.

5) John Snell’s end of the world pool party. A late entrant. John Snell is one of the most interesting people in the Twin Cities if you ask me, and fittingly his house is probably the most interesting house I’ve been in. He had an end of the world house party on 12/21, and luckily the world did not end because it turned out to be a great time. There was a bit of drama in getting all of our friends there, that I won’t get into, but we got over it and made a great night for ourselves. John has a pool in the basement, not a full size pool, but probably something like 12′ x 20′, big enough to hold most of the party at one point. At around 12:30, I was itching to get in the pool, and so I did, the first one in. 6 hours later, I would be the last one out of the pool. Between then, some great times were had. We played pool games, my favorite was someone  grabbing onto an inflatable crocodile, while everyone else stood on the edges of the pool. The people on the edges would push the crocodile person across the circle, and then someone else would push them. Later on in the night there was some drama in the pool, but my friends and I just ignored it, rose above it, and just kept having fun together. I lost track of time but it was just the few of us down there for many hours, and there are some great memories from that time when it was just the five or six of us down there. I will say this though, I do not plan on being in a chlorinated pool for 6 hours straight ever again. Ever.

I would like to take a moment to congratulate Carolyn Kopecky, who was the only person who was present for all 5 of these moments. Congratulations Carolyn! I couldn’t have done it without you!

And a quick honorable mention for best moment was the 2nd night of the Detroit festival. I went to the KMS 25 year afterparty, which was my favorite thing of the weekend, and then went to see Minneapolis’ own DVS1, and ran into a bunch of Minneapolis friends, and even made some new friends from other cities there. That was a really good night.

Well friends, I’m at 6,500 words now and this has just got to stop. But first, I want to thank a few people:

To Jen and Dave – thank you for inviting me on the adventure of a life time that was your wedding weekend. I will never forget what we did up there, and the day of your wedding is literally the highlight of my life thus far. I am really glad that I have some scars from the cuts I got from the fall, as they will be constant reminders of the greatest day of my life.

To Jade and James Patrick – you both have been a huge positive force in my life this year. You let me teach my dance class in your gallery, and didn’t complain when I made a fraction of what I was hoping as donations. You have gotten me involved with a lot of cool projects, have been supportive of my visions at every turn, and I really feel at home at the Gallery with the great crew you have assembled. Your babies are really cute too! I look forward to more adventures in 2013!

To Arturo Miles – thank you for including me in the Vogue Trash show! It was amazing! Ever since I met you, you’ve been the kind of person who I feel like I should just give a big hug to, and not a handshake. I look forward to working with you more in 2013!

To Hal and Kara Lovemelt – thank you for continuing to be my fans #1 and #1a. Your supportive words have always meant a lot to me, and help to keep me going when I need a little reassurance. Your guest teaching at the dance class was exactly what I was hoping for, and I am not surprised that it turned out that way without even talking to you about it first. I can’t wait to meet the new Lovemelt sometime in 2013!

To Hamil and Carolyn – thank you for all the amazing memories in 2012. I already felt very close to you before this year but I feel like we went to the next level this year! 2012 was most unkind to the both of you, and I really hope things turn around in 2013. I am here for both of you, always.

PHEW! I think that’s it! Almost! To everyone else who I interacted with in 2012, thanks. It was a great year and you likely had something to do with that.

See you all in 2013.

Love,
Bobby

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends – The End Of An Era

Well friends, the time has come. The fifth annual Jean Jam dance party will be held this coming Saturday (December 15) at Clubhouse Jager. With a somewhat heavy heart, I decided that it will be the last party that I throw.

We (The Original Truth Squad) threw our first Jean Jam in July 2008, but this really goes back further than that. As some of you know, we had some pretty bonkers dance parties at my house at 25th and Aldrich. It was at these parties that I really broke out of my shell for the first time. In the months before our first house party, I had been listening to a lot of funk music and secretly dancing to that music behind the closed door of my bedroom. I remember going out to a bar no more than a month before, and still being afraid to dance in public. But I decided to put on a Parliament album at the party, and an impromptu dance party broke out in our living room, and finally I showed the world what I had. The rest, as they say, is history.

We had too many parties there and eventually got evicted, and more than enough things stolen/trashed for me to not want to have another party at a place I lived ever again (besides one more the next year, whoops!). My friends and I had been getting into going out dancing more and more, and throwing our own party seemed like the logical next step. So we threw our first party, The Jean Jam, in 2008. 

It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. We made denim headbands with our name on them, and more importantly, it seemed like people were genuinely having fun. At this time dance nights had become very popular, but a lot of them were populated by people I wanted nothing to do with. They seemed to be there because they wanted to look cool, not because they wanted to go crazy on the dance floor and have fun. Our themes really took the ego out of people – we asked people to dress outrageously and we were not let down. We decorated the place. We brought a cake, but didn’t have anything to cut it with or plates so we just brought it around and people dug into it with their hands.

We gained more and more steam over the next few years, despite not having regular gigs. We made all of our parties very special, and I am very proud of what we did. There were a lot of great memories over the years, and sure, some bad ones too. But the good far outweighed the bad. In April 2010, we held what would be our last party at the VIP Room/Record Room at First Ave, which was called Dads Night Out. We made up this whole back story about how we were given the night but were going to be at a DJ convention in Finland so our dads, who were also in a DJ group, took over the night for us. I guess the story was very believable because a lot of people didn’t show up and I got a bunch of texts the next day from idiots who thought we were telling the truth. As a result, after having a streak of parties that close to 250 people came to, we went backwards, and never really made it back. I know we shot ourselves in the foot, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. We did it our way god dammit!

We moved to Clubhouse Jager, throwing Jean Jam 3 and a few other parties in 2010 before Drew moved to New York City in September 2010. We threw him a going away party, and I think my favorite moment from any of our parties was Drew and Eli playing End Of The Road by Boyz II Men at the end of the night, with a lot of our close friends belting out the lyrics with us. it was very sad, it wasn’t until then that it really hit me that Drew was leaving. Here’s a picture from that moment

At that point The Original Truth Squad was done, and the parties I threw after that were never the same. That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time, but between Drew moving and my developing other interests, my heart wasn’t in it any more.

We’ve/I’ve had a really good run, but it’s time to hang up the party pants for good. I’m sure I will be involved in future parties thrown by other people in one way or another, but this is it for me. Thanks so much to everyone who has come to our parties and seen the light, that connected with us and really “got” what we were trying to do. I really, really appreciate it!

And now for a few thank yous, in chronological order:

To Simon and Ben – thanks for putting up with me suggesting we have a house party every other weekend. I’m sorry that we got evicted.

To Eli, Drew, and Zair – thanks for all the great memories. We had a really good thing going for a while there, something I am still very proud of.

To Hal and Papa Matt – thanks for doing some really amazing video work at our parties for well below your market rate. It really set our parties apart.

To Russell – thanks for being one of the kindest people I have ever met, and also the easiest to work with. I would have stopped right after Drew moved if you didn’t inspire me to go on a little longer.

And to everyone who came to our parties – I can’t thank you enough, we never would have done any of this if it weren’t for you.

Well, that’s that. It’s been a good ride, and I hope to see you at Jean Jam 5 with a smile on your face! This is not the time for mourning, it’s time for celebration! 

Bobby

Jen and Dave’s Wedding: An Adventure Of A Lifetime

I’m sure all you Pangaeniacs out there have noticed that I don’t post here very much. I mostly keep it to things that have left a big mark on me in one way or another. Not to say I haven’t been living a very exciting life, because I have, just nothing to write home about I suppose. Well to the 5 (give or take a handful) or so of you who actually read this blog, I recently went on what may have been the greatest adventure of my life, so here I am. Writing about stuff.

As a precursor to this story, I will say that I had never been to the North Shore of Lake Superior before this trip. Never been to Duluth. None of it. I went to Spirit Mountain Water Park at summer camp a few times but that’s as close as I got. It took me 28 years to get up there, and I am ready to learn from my mistakes.

Never again, my friends. Never again. Already trying to figure out when/how/with whom I can get back up there.

I left for the cabin we were staying at, which was in Two Harbors, Minnesota, at about 7 Thursday night and it was a roughly 3 hour drive. By the time I got to Duluth it was pretty dark out and raining so I didn’t get any good views right away. The cabin was ridiculous. 2 huge living rooms, 3 bedrooms AND a small “guest” cabin a few hundred feet from the main cabin. Between all the beds, couches, and fold out couches, there must have been room for at least 16 people. I should give a shout out to the cabin’s owners, the family that owns the Bryn Mawr Market and Bryn Mawr Pizza/Fast Freddie’s, which is unquestionably one of the top 3 pizza pies in Minneapolis. Maybe even #1. A fair case could be made either way.

By the time I got there, 7 of the 11 people total who were going to the wedding were there, a solid crew to say the least. They showed me the ropes for a while, which included getting led down a very dark and hard to see path by Roxy, the extremely useful and well-behaved dog (and she’s pretty cute if I may say so!). Someone suggested we go down on the rocks by the lake and have a fire, and everyone seemed to be down for that. But I’m not much of an outdoorsy type, and I was not really into the idea. At first. Hamil led us down a steep path/stairs to the rocks, it was very dark and we couldn’t see very much. The water was very rough that first night so I could hear waves crashing all around me but I could not see water. We felt our way around and made it to a more central area and had a fire there. I was pretty scared when we first went down, and out of my element, but my eyes started to adjust, I found a little rock chair, and started to enjoy myself and knew then that this was about to be a really amazing weekend.

Made it to see the start of a beautiful sunrise over the lake before calling it a night. It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning and walked into the living room to see this:

that I finally realized how amazing the place we were staying at was. Now I could see all the paths and rocks that didn’t seem so bad now that I could actually see them. There was this area of rocks on the shore that was basically a circle of rocks, the edges were low enough that there was plenty of water going inside there at high tide, and water was even spilling in at low tide when the water was choppy. It was referred to as “The Living Room”, and I can’t deny that we all did some serious living down there. I gravitated towards this extremely flat rock that was jutting into the floor of the lake diagonally, about 2/3 of it underwater. This became my chair for the weekend. The water was pretty cold but I guess my Eastern European blood and borderline ridiculous (ok maybe not borderline) amount of body hair, I could handle sitting in there for a long time. Felt good, man. Took it easy the rest of the night because we’d be leaving early the next morning for the wedding and all of our adventures.

We left for Grand Marais at 11 Saturday morning. It was a very beautiful drive, and Grand Marais itself is quite a sight to behold. They happened to be having a Dragon Boat festival that day, so it was pretty crowded. We hung out there for a while while Jen and Dave picked up their wedding rings. During that time a few sea planes were coming in for a landing, and they were probably not much more than 30-40 feet above my head. Cool story, right? We went on farther North East to Grand Portage, where Jen’s Reservation is. We were only a few miles away from the very NE tip of Minnesota and the border to Canada. We got to the path that led to the Witch Tree, and headed down. Jen and Dave requested that we walk in silence, with only a quiet beat of a drum making noise. We walked up to an observation deck that had a great view of the tree, but was about 100 feet away, and I thought that’s where we were stopping, but Dave and Jen climbed through the railings and down we went. When we got down to right in front of the tree, where the wedding took place, I could instantly feel the power and importance of the tree. There were offerings left at the base of the tree, and there was just something very unique about the tree. It was off on it’s own at the edge of a rock with no trees around it, and it had been twisted around a few times, as if it had twisted out over the water to get towards the sun. See for yourself.

After the beautiful and brief ceremony (masterfully performed by the Reverend H. Griffin-Cassidy The Third), the new bride and groom took a dip in Lake Superior, and then we were off! After a brief stop at a fur shop that wouldn’t have necessarily seemed out of place in the popular computer game Oregon Trail, we had a little picnic, and then it was off to the greatest adventure of them all: a hike up a river, which included climbing over some waterfalls. I was pretty scared about this. I won’t lie. As I said earlier, this isn’t really something I do often. Or at all. The beauty of the place was apparent immediately. There was a path down the side of the river, but it wasn’t long before we were walking through the river. The path went up and suddenly we were surrounded by a beautiful canyon, full of all kinds of things I have never seen in Minnesota. Here’s a picture of the place

Now that picture may be slightly edited, and probably taken at the perfect time of day, but it is not far off from how amazing it actually looked. It’s called the Kadunce River and is about 15 miles North East of Grand Marais, right on Highway 61. Jen described it as “fairy land”, and I can’t disagree. Anyway, we were hiking, and it didn’t seem so bad. Some of the terrain was pretty slippery, and it was very rocky, but it was easy enough to walk around if you were careful. We got up to what I assumed was the first waterfall, and it was super easy to get up, just a few steps, and I’m all like “Hey now, this ain’t going to be so bad!” Then we got to the actual first waterfall. Whoops! It was quite a bit higher than the first and would require some actual climbing, and was a good 15 feet up. I struggled but got up with some help from Hal and Dan, climber extraordinaires. Then we got up to the next waterfall, where this story really gets interesting. The people who had gone up the first fall with relative ease got up to this difficult part, where there was no other option but to go up straight through the middle of the water fall for a few steps, and looked pretty lost, which was terrifying to those of us who didn’t do so hot on the first one. After a bit of a struggle, some of the party made it up and were helping the rest up one by one. I climbed up the side and had gotten nearly to the center of the waterfall part, when I suddenly slipped, couldn’t get grasp on anything, and started falling down. I slid down the rocks on my stomach, all the way to the bottom. I don’t really remember much of the fall. I do remember a girl yelling out “Bobby” in kind of a sad way. And strangely enough I remember actually thinking “Hey, this is kind of fun” as I slid down a water slide made of rocks. Weird, right? I swear to Jord optimism is a curse sometimes!

I cut my hands up pretty good, and got some pretty deep cuts on my right knee and left elbow that bled for a while. I tried immediately to climb back up, but I didn’t have any strength in my right leg or left arm. Dan, the most experienced climber of the bunch (at least it seemed that way?) AND EMT, offered to go back down with me. The only problem was once you go up the first waterfall, there’s no going back down, it’s too far of a drop into no more than a couple feet of water. I didn’t really have any choice but to get up that god damn waterfall. So I got up again, and went back at it, and I’m sure glad that I did. I found some strength that I didn’t know was there. My arms and legs were killing me, but I just pushed myself, and much more importantly, I had the best help a guy like me could ask for.

Once I got back to the waterfall part, Dan supported me from behind (get your mind out of the gutter, perverts), while Dave coached me on where to grab and step, and Hal offered me his wrist to grab on to. Gus grabbed Hal by the waist and yanked him backwards, pulling me up with them. When I got up I crawled for a ways before I was ready to get on my feet. I was not about to head back down the way I came! But I made it. God dammit. I made it!! I didn’t really quite understand how awesome that felt at first because once we got up I’m like FUCK! What’s next? But it turned out there wasn’t much left. The only remaining waterfall could be climbed entirely on dry ground, and suddenly we were at the path that would safely lead us back to the cars. I was so happy, so proud of myself, so proud of my friends, and just really having a surreal, borderline religious experience. It felt so good to finish that, and more importantly to walk out of there on my own power after what I went through. This is what I felt like when I got to the path, and this is the music I heard (this is a must-click link!!!). I bawled in happiness almost the entire way down, and a good chunk of the 2 hour car ride home. The adrenaline from the hike masked the pain of my wounds, but when I finally got out of the car at a gas station on the way home, the pain shot right back.

We got back to the cabin, cleaned up my wounds, and then it was time for part two of the wedding, and this is a time that you may know as PARTY TIME! We made our toasts to the bride and groom, and then I played the role of Jen’s father in the traditional Father/Daughter dance. It was an honor! I spent a lot of the next few hours on my own, trying to comprehend what the fuck had happened to me that day, specifically why I wasn’t hurt more than I was. Before we left, I was wearing a protection pendant necklace. Dave told me I should probably leave that in the car so it doesn’t snag, but I just tucked it inside my shirt, I knew I would need all the help I can get. I thought Jen’s ancestors may have been watching over us too, and when I was looking at the Wikipedia page for the Witch Tree when I was writing about it up there, I saw that traditionally, a tobacco offering was left for safe travels in Lake Superior, and Dave and Jen left some tobacco. We were pretty close to the Lake so I’ll count it! Stuff got really deep and emotional for me, I was having a really good time with everyone, but I was just looking at the beautiful stars in silence and trying to figure it all out. And then I did.

Mother Nature may be the strongest force we know, but she doesn’t know what kind of friends I have! She didn’t know what we could do when we all got together and climbed up a god damn waterfall. And a river. All of it. I did a lot of heavy thinking this night, and it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. If you go back and read some older posts on this blog you can probably find some posts where I figured it all out – that if you surround yourself with people you love, your life will be significantly better. It all comes back to that for me. Now maybe that’s not the lesson that I was supposed to take from all this, but it is the lesson I took nonetheless. At one point in this profound portion, I was kind of off in my own head and heard Carolyn talking to someone, asking “What does it all mean?!?”. I’m not sure what she was talking about, and she might not have even heard me respond, but it hit me right then and there: what it means doesn’t matter. What matters is that it means SOMETHING.

Carolyn was working on setting up a meditation labyrinth most of the day Friday, but I didn’t really “get” it. Then. Just like I didn’t get the significance of really any of the things I did up there, until I actually did them at least. I went in the labyrinth with a few others, I was instructed to bring in a bottle of wine that Hamil had put in his back pack for the river hike, but never ended up taking it out. It went up the river, and back down with us, all in one piece. It turned out that Hamil happened to grab a bottle at random that happened to have gone on a trip out to New Hampshire, and back again. This was no ordinary wine my friends. It has arguably been in more states than I have. Arguably. Like I said, I didn’t “get” the Labyrinth earlier, or even while I was walking through it, but once I got to the middle, I did get it. But I can’t really explain it in words. You shoulda been there, maaaaan.

After finishing the profound portion of the evening, I was ready to join back up and actually talk to people for a while! Cool, right? I started getting a little PSTD from the river incident when I was heading down the steep path to the rocks, and I took it really easy on the steps and walked around like a little baby. So sue me. My leg was killing me. I’ll do what I want. Had a really great time shooting the shit, telling jokes, and just enjoying the heck out of each other’s company at a fire down by the lake. Eventually the sun started coming out, and it really couldn’t have been much more beautiful. At one point some of the more adventurous of us started jumping in the lake. I still didn’t feel like moving at all. After a particularly good dive by someone (I can’t remember who. Bummer. It was a good jump.), I thought it would be great if those of us still above by the fire had score sheets A LA the NBA Dunk Contest or some other contests. You know, where the judges have 10 cards, each with a number on it 1 thru 10. So using pieces of a PBR box, Carolyn made us up some number cards. But now no one was jumping in the lake. So I had to convince Hal to jump in, without blowing the surprise of the score cards. I told him if he did it right, it could be the start of the best day of our lives. Without hesitation he threw off his clothes, did a little dance, and jumped in. The 4 or 5 of us still up there lifted our score cards up, and it was arguably the coolest surprise thing I have ever done in my life. I thought about it later and laughed for 2 minutes straight.

Around 8 or 9, when the sun was really out and getting into full swing, I decided I wanted to go swimming, a 180 degree shift from my no-movement policy of the previous few hours. I stood up, and to my surprise, I felt like a million bucks. No, FIVE million bucks. It was a miracle. I later remembered that at some point I had gone inside and taken a few advil, and that probably had a lot to do with how good I felt, but who really cares? It was still a miracle. We went back to the water Living Room, I sat in my spot, and all was good in the world. I finally turned in at 10 or 10:30, with a few stragglers still holding out in the living room, ending what was probably the best 24 hour period of my entire life.

I learned a lot on this trip, about myself, about the world, about my friends, and about Minnesota. Tradition led us up to the places we went, but we blazed a new tradition all our own, and it’s something I will always remember. If I get a scar on my knee, where I suffered my deepest cut, I should consider myself lucky, because maybe someday someone will see it and ask me how I got it. And then I can refer them to this 3,000 word blog post, as I have done to you.

To everyone who was up there with me, both friends that I have known for years who I feel even closer to now, and new friends who I just met and already feel a connection with: thank you! You made the trip as great as it was.

To Jen and Dave: A very special thanks to you for including me in this, it really meant a lot to me. Your wedding adventure changed my life for the better, and I can’t wait for the next one! (Next adventure! Not wedding!)

DEMF 2k12 – A D-Cap

Hey there little hombres. It’s been a while since I rapped at cha. So I’m going to rap about my trip to Detroit for a little while here.

Another year, another Movement festival, and another great weekend. I’m starting to get worried I won’t be able to enjoy other music festivals any more because they can’t won’t shouldn’t even try to compete. Just like last year, I was ready to make a down payment on next year’s festival before I even left Detroit.

Saw a lot of people complaining about the price and the acts that were booked this year, but I don’t get it. I paid $60 for a 3 day pass before the line up was announced, most people probably paid more but not much more. It was only $75 after the line up was announced. If you want to complain about that, maybe you aught not be attending musical gatherings, eh? And considering a tangent to this kind of music is getting mainstream, they could easily have gone about a billion times more commercial with the line up but they didn’t. Almost all of the dubstep and flash in the pan type acts were all at one stage (Red Bull), and it was no surprise that almost all of the bro neu-ravers/festival types swarmed that stage. Not only that, they mostly stayed over there, so I didn’t have to deal with too many of them as long as I avoided that stage. Nice work, guys.

This year I flew in instead of taking a party bus. I did miss the bus, but it was nice getting there and back so quick. Ended up on a flight with a bunch of my closest techno bros, and my seat was right behind theirs. Friday was spent mostly chilling out and eating deep dish pizza. I went to some opening party. It was ok. The music was so so. I couldn’t get into it, and I wasn’t really trying to. Went back to the hotel at 1:30 and called it a night.

Day 2 got off to a great start with some in-room visits by Albert, Frankie, and the Nightstalker (he made us call him that all weekend, btw). You don’t get that every day. Went down to the festival around 3:30 to catch Mark Farina, who was playing…….rap music? Ok. So then I went to check out the Red Bull stage and stayed over there for a while, my only extended stop at the bro-step stage. The first noteworthy act of the day was at the Beatport stage, where I spent a lot more time than I did last year. Benoit and Sergio tore the place up, they were playing some great funky house music and it was the first time during the festival that I was really “into it”.

Went over to the main stage for Todd Terje, who kept the funk levels high. I don’t remember much about his set other than I really enjoyed it. Sue me. Right after him on the main stage was Derrick Carter, one of my all time favorites of all time. He did not disappoint. I planned on leaving his set a little early to catch SBTRKT, but I couldn’t. The music was too good. I physically had no control of my body. Metaphorically speaking. I did leave for some SBTRKT, who I really wanted to see, but it was pretty crowded over there and I didn’t really like what I heard, so I went back to Lil’ Louis on the main stage, who put on a pretty good set but nothing remarkable. He was using some kind of sound boxes. I’m not sure what exactly, but he had a lot more gear than most people on the main stage, and I’ve always been a gear guy. Here, you take a look for yourself:

I left the festival a bit before it ended to recharge for the event that was the highlight of the whole weekend last year: The CLR party featuring Collabs, a tag team duo of Speedy J and Chris Liebing. Just like last year, I went right up to the front and did not leave the whole time. Ok, maybe I left once. Same diff if you ask me. There’s something about seeing a tag team set that really gets my juices flowing, and these two are two of my favorites on their own. You get the point. I had as good of a time as I did last year, at least. Met some cool new people from other cities up front, just like last year. Basically it was a lot like last year, and that’s pretty high praise. I did end up seeing my buddy from Detroit that I met up front at CLR last year here too. It’s all full circle, my best bros. Here’s a picture taken by Mike Gee at the end of the CLR party. I’m in there somewhere.

After CLR, I texted around the horn to see who was still rippin and rarin. I found some solid bros still going, and long story somewhat shorter, we decided we would go to this party called Shit Show that started at 7 AM, and would feature Minneapolis’ own DVS1, who was playing at 8:15 under the name “special guest” because he was headlining a party almost 24 hours later. When we left my buds hotel room, there were a few other guys who were walking down the hall way. We all looked at each other for a second and then said Shit Show? all at the same time. It was awesome.

What can I say about Shit Show other than it seemed like a good idea at the time and it lived up to its name. It was $30, and I went in pretty quick not even batting an eye at the cover (when in Detroit, y’know?) but my buddies decided not to pay that much so they left. I charged in headfirst though. Most of the people in there looked like they had not stopped from the night before, it was a pretty funny and surreal scene. The bar was the most fucked up bar situation I have ever seen. Went to this little bar inside where there were 3 women working. I swear for every drink they sold all 3 of them had some part in it. If it was a mixed drink one person got the liquor, one got the mixer, one handled the cash. One bartender was writing stuff down in a notebook when someone ordered. A fellow bar patron and I watched in awe of how fucked up and disorderly that bar was. I’ve never seen anything like it. I started losing steam, and fast, and I went home at 9, didn’t quite make it through DVS1′s set.

Day 2 ended up being the worst day of the festival, which was kinda weird, but the best day overall. Got my shit together in time to get there for about half of Carl Craig’s set, then I went back over to the Shit Show, planning to stay for the last hour and a half for Tim Sweeney’s set. When I got there there were like 20 people there, and almost all were sitting down. I was still pretty tired from the previous night and I couldn’t fight it, I sat down for a while too. Tim’s set was so so, nothing like the great set he played at Too Much Love a few years back, and after a while I left. When I got back in to the festival I ran into a few buds and we checked out a little bit of Wolf + Lamb, who are cool + neat, and then went over to watch Maceo Plex, who turned out to be one of the bigger surprises of the festival. Great stuff!

I wandered around for the next few hours. I was checking out Hot Natured at the Red Bull stage, the bro-raver spot. I wasn’t that far in but I kept getting crowded out of my spot by some kid on a bunch of drugs and usually not wearing a shirt and sweaty. It was awful you guys. That was the only time all weekend I had to leave a stage cause I couldn’t take the crowd. Mathew Jonson was another highlight of day 2 at the festival, but I wandered a lot the rest of the night, not satisfied with any stage. Claude Von Stroke is ok. Sometimes I like his music and sometimes I don’t. This one was an “I don’t”. I watched about 2 minutes of Public Enemy before leaving. Super crowded and I couldn’t have cared much less to see them. I left the festival an hour early, my dogs were barking and I had a big night ahead.

This was where it got really good. Had tickets to the DVS1 party, but I had seen just about everyone on that line up already. It was announced about a month before the festival that there would be a 25th anniversary party for the KMS record label, which seemed to be a huge Detroit institution. I will admit to not being too familiar with too many of the people on the line up but I knew this would be the place to be. One of the big lessons of the festival these past two years is it’s about Detroit as much as it’s about the music, and within minutes of stepping inside this party, I knew I made the right choice. I was up front the whole night. When Inner City came out to do a live set (you may recognize this song of theirs), a very enthusiastic older black couple came up next to me and shared some Inner City stories with me and just seeing them so excited and into it made it easy for me to feel the same way. After the short set, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May did a tag team set that was definitely the highlight of the festival. The party was only scheduled to go till 4 but they played until 5 (the CLR party was supposed to go to 5 but went till 4, for comparison’s sake). Despite it being the hottest and sweatiest party I’d ever been to, I left feeling totally energized and happy. I got in a cab and went straight to the DVS1 party to catch the last 2 hours of his 3 hour set.

This may or may not have been hotter and sweatier than the KMS party, either way they are definitely 1 and 2 on my record book. I was feeling it though. It was nice to see some Minneapolis people again after being off by myself most of the night at KMS, and it was really great to see people from other cities getting down to DVS1 like we do. I saw some people from NY who I met at CLR the night before, and I heard the next day that a few of them thought DVS1′s set was the highlight of the weekend! Who am I to argue? It was awesome. When DVS1 finished at 7, I was ready for some good old fashioned sleeping times, and that’s exactly what I did. Until 4 PM!

I wasn’t too mad about that, actually it was nice to get some sleep, it left me feeling kind of ready to face the third and final day. Like last year, the weather was pretty nice the first two days then really hot the third day. We got pretty lucky the first two days, but the third was 90 and humid. I parked it in front of the main stage and didn’t leave once for the whole day. Cassy and Radio Slave were pretty awesome, but I needed to sit for a while so I enjoyed them from a seat. At some point I sat on gum . Entire weekend ruined.

I started getting up really close to see Chris Liebing, but I started getting really hot and having a hard time breathing up there so I went towards the back where I had more room to work on my moves. This turned out being a great idea because I ran into a bunch of people from Minneapolis here and we hung out for a while. It was no surprise that Liebing’s set was amazing. I probably sound like a broken record there. Liebing always has this huge smile on his face while he’s DJing, which seems to transfer right over into me. His face says “Can you believe I just did that??!?!?! Because I can’t believe I just did that, and I did it!”

After Liebing came Kevin Saunderson, and you might as well get out your broken record player again because this was another great set. I don’t care that I saw them each for at least 2 hours already as part of tag team sets, these two were the best of the festival itself.  They have 2 set ups on all the stages so 1 DJ can get set up while the other is still playing and the music doesn’t stop. The transition between DJs is always pretty cool, applauding all around, DJs paying homage to each other, etc. Liebing played a very little bit of Inner City’s “Good Life” at the close of his set leading in to Saunderson’s. Cool story, right? Here’s a picture of that transition:

I danced my ass off during Kevin Saunderson. Yeah, I’m tooting my own horn, I don’t care. At some points I was thinking to myself “how the f am I moving my body this way?!?!” I still don’t know, to this day. Towards the end of his set though, it all started hitting me and I was dead. Out of energy entirely. A bunch of red bulls later I was kinda dance-swaying to the Jeff Mills finale. It wasn’t entirely my type of music, but when he came up to use the 909 at the end of his set, I could see how techno started. He was so fast with all his knobs and switches. I could see how it all evolved from there. Compared to the Fatboy Slim closing set on the main stage last year, this was a million times better. Like I said, this festival is about Detroit as much as it’s about the music, and no fancy lad from the UK should be on that stage at the end of the festival. It was a great way to end it. And with that, another year was over.

I thought I was going to fall asleep while walking back to the hotel. I made it back though, by god, and we ordered room service. Shitty pizza never tasted so good. Flew back the next morning, and life has been kind of weird since then. Tried going out on Friday night and I realized I am still really exhausted from the trip. I need to take a woof off!

Before I leave, a few observations about the festival:

So many times, some guy pushed his way in front of me only to hold up his camera and record a 9 minute video. Jesus christ man. I don’t remember it being quite so bad last year, but it was EVERYWHERE. I remember 2-3 dickknockers in particular at the CLR party. Here’s an idea: take a mental video. It’s called life, live it.

There were a totally unhealthy amount of beautiful girls/women/etc at this festival. I called the Cialis hotline but they said they could not help me with my 4 hour erection because I didn’t use their pills.

A bottle of water cost $4, and a red bull cost $3. That’s not right. I don’t care who your sponsors are. That’s fucked. They didn’t lower the price of water when it was really hot the 3rd day either.

So many meme shirts. Some have 4-5 names, 1 on each line and it says ___________ &  _____________&. You know the ones. Enough, bros! Get original! The worst are these shirts that they sell at the festival that say I Love You But I’ve Chosen Techno (or Dubstep, Trance, House, etc). I don’t know why but those shirts piss me off so bad and my first instinct when I see one is to light it on fire. I still haven’t lit any fire, but that’s only because I’m good at controlling my instincts. I can’t promise it will never happen.

Well, I think I’ve left you more than enough here. Thanks for reading. Also even more thanks to the many friends, old and new, who experience this with me. It’s a very communal experience and I certainly feel a lot closer to anyone who goes through the same thing. I knew a lot more people going in this year than I did last year, and while the weekend didn’t quite knock me off my feet like my first experience last year, it was a better time all around. If that makes any sense at all.

See you next year, Detroit!

The Importance Of Being Scharpling

A few weeks ago, someone on an internet message board that I frequent asked who would go on a personal Mt. Rushmore. The first name came to me without even a hint of hesitation: Tom Scharpling, host of the Best Show on WFMU. I barely knew who Tom was as recently as a year ago. I followed him on Twitter after seeing some re-tweets and had heard about the Best Show, but I didn’t really have any idea what it was. Last April, I got a bigger iPod and decided to start downloading some podcasts I had heard about, including the Best Show. It was not until I was on the bus to Detroit last Memorial Day weekend (yes, it’s been that long since my last post on this blog. Sorry.) that I finally listened.

The Best Show is a call in talk show, but just calling it that doesn’t do it much justice. On most shows, Tom has either an in-studio special guest or a call-in special guest (Todd Barry, Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifinakis, Paul F. Tompkins, amongst others, have been frequent guests over the years) and almost always includes 1 “set-up”, pre-written call. The first show didn’t do much for me, maybe because I didn’t listen to the full 2.5+ hour show in one sitting, but it did enough to get me to keep listening. It didn’t take very long to get me totally hooked. Since then I have listened to every show I have multiple times, even while I have over 100 other podcasts sitting on my hard drive that have not been touched.

Tom is kind of a jerk on the show, regularly threatening to fire his call screener/associate producer AP Mike and having very little tolerance for bad callers. On just about every show, there is at least one pre-written call with Tom’s partner in crime, Jon Wurster, who is the drummer for Superchunk and Mountain Goats. It took me a few episodes to realize it was the same guy who was doing all of the amazing calls, I realized something was fishy when I googled “Magic” Todd Manheim, an alleged high school basketball player and viral video star from the fictional city of Newbridge, New Jersey and didn’t find anything besides references to the Best Show.

Not only is he a jerk, he is also a tough guy who is quick to tell an aggressive caller that he will “knock their block off”. One particular exchange that always makes me laugh was when a caller from South Carolina was talking shit before Tom gave him the heave ho and told him to book a room in a hospital in 13 hours and let them know that he will need his block re-attached. He also went through a Zodiac Killer phase last year in which he challenged the Zodiac Killer to a fight, and if he lost, he would confess to the Zodiac Killer’s crimes.

Tom’s cockiness and anger are an act (most of the time), but he doesn’t always keep it up, and it’s very nice to hear him break character once in a while. He usually says some cruel things about AP Mike, and occasionally goes far enough that he clarifies to the audience that it is just a joke. But the show means a lot to a lot of people, and sometimes the calls can get emotional. One of my favorite all time moments from the show was from the 1/3/12 episode (call starts at about 24 minutes in on the podcast), where a 9 year old kid from Chicago who called in and said he was a fan. The kid plays Dungeons and Dragons, and it turned out that he had two different characters, both of which he named after Tom’s dog, Dogmo. Dogmo is dead now, but Tom often talks of him fondly on the show. Tom was clearly caught off guard, he said he was about to cry, and it sounded like he did get a little choked up, and I teared up myself.

Tom becomes the straight man when Wurster calls in, and he lets Jon get away with things that no other caller can (such as calling Tom a “dipmunch”). The calls are pre-written by Scharpling and Wurster before the show, and usually feature some fictional character from Newbridge – frequent callers are Tom’s co-worker, the mayor of Newbridge Philly Boy Roy, and members of Tom’s family – or sometimes a cultural icon like Gene Simmons. It’s somewhat difficult to capture the greatness of these calls in words, so you should really just listen to one.

You can get some highlight clips, most of which are Wurster calls, at Best Show Gems, or I would highly recommend any show from the last few months, as Tom especially has been on fire since October. If you listen to a few shows I’m sure you will hear one you like, I have played it for friends on every road trip I have taken since last May and all of them have liked the show and asked to hear more.

If you still need some more convincing, consider this: Scharpling and Wurster wrote 4 of the best episodes of Tom Goes To The Mayor: “Wrestling”, “Undercover”, “Jeffy The Sea Serpent”, and the eternally great “Bass Fest”.

Some recent additions to the show that have me cracking up are puppets, which is an absolutely ridiculous concept for a radio show if you ask me. The first Best Show puppet was Vance, a deep-voiced, three-eyed progressive rock fan who is very particular about sound quality and drops some seriously deep prog rock references. The latest addition though, had me worried that I was going to get fired for laughing so hard while at work. The new guy is called Gary The Squirrel, he is a roommate of Vance’s and he likes to talk about movies, specifically box office numbers. He insults AP Mike brutally (he starts his second appearance on the show apologizing for “busting [Mike's] beans”), and their interactions are hilarious. Again, it is hard to describe the greatness of this, so I would suggest listening to the last half hour of the 1/17/12 (Gary’s debut) or 1/31/12 shows.

All of the things above make for a truly entertaining radio show, but that’s not all the Best Show is. The Best Show reminds me of Freaky Deeky in some ways, in that it gives a voice and an opportunity to shine to everyday, normal people. Back in October, Tom called himself the “Dollar Menu Dickens”, which is not only one of the best nicknames I have ever heard, but it’s actually true! Some callers don’t need much help, but Tom is there to make the call entertaining if they can’t. I have tried to model myself after Tom as a host of a call-in show, and I do feel that I have gotten sharper and better at the job, and yes maybe a little meaner too.

A recent episode of the show featured in studio appearances by one of the best regular callers, Greg “The Greggulator” Gethard, and his brother Chris Gethard, who is a comedian in New York City and the host of a cable access show that is similar in spirit to Freaky Deeky.  I reached out to Chris via Facebook about Freaky Deeky and his show, and he saw the similarities as well. Hopefully you will see some collaboration between the two shows sometime soon.

Tom is one of the funniest people on Earth, has a lot of connections, and could obviously be putting more effort into some things that would earn him more money (he loses money on the Best Show every year), but he still does the Best Show almost every Tuesday. In Fall 2010, Tom took a 6 week break from the show. It seemed pretty clear that his anger and frustration weren’t just an act on the last episode before he left.

The last week of his hiatus was the 10 year anniversary of the first episode of the Best Show, and despite his absence it was a very touching and emotional show. AP Mike and frequent Best Show guest and WFMU DJ Therese hosted the show, which featured several clips from past shows and calls from many regular callers, old and new, celebrities and normals. The show featured a quote from a caller that really struck home with me, both in regards to the Best Show and some things in my own life – he called the best show a “victory for normal people doing extraordinary things”. I could not agree more.

Speaking of extraordinary things, Tom raised $101,000 for WFMU on a recent episode of the Best Show, which I believe is a personal record for him and a truly amazing sum. WFMU is an entirely listener-supported station, and survives solely on the donations of the people who listen to it. One of the reasons I am writing this post now is because they are in the midst of their annual “Marathon” pledge drive. If you donate $75 and choose the Best Show as your show (this link should take you to the donation page with the Best Show already set as your show), you get a very nice prize pack, which features the first ever Best Show magazine, a CD with material from Scharpling and Wurster, Zach Galifianakis, and Jen Kirkman, and tons of other stuff.

Update! The second marathon show just ended, and he topped $100,000 again! His 2 show, 6 hour total was $206,433! Unbelievable! Makes you wonder what else is possible!

As MTN just went through a brutal budget battle with the City of Minneapolis and ended up getting about 10% of their budget cut ($100,000) despite an increase in the fees paid by Comcast that are specifically for things like MTN, I realize the importance of places like WFMU even more. There is not much that is more important than giving a voice to the voiceless. It’s a great cause. They could use your help. So could MTN for that matter.

It’s pretty easy to listen to: the entire 11 year history of the show can be listened to, via Real audio, at the WFMU archives. Several episodes are also available via iTunes. Even if you can’t contribute, you should really give this show a shot. I would put it up against any show of any format. Please. Just listen to this show. Don’t do it for yourself, do it for Tom. And more importantly, do it for me.

Thank You.
Bobby

DEMF 2011

DEMF was amazing. No other way to put it. Life changing even. I’ll tell you why in a little while, but lets take it from the top.

I committed to this back in March or early April. I was excited to hear that several close friends would be making the trip with me. By the end of May, all of those friends had backed out, but I still had my heart set on going, and I would not turn back. By this point, 2 people I barely knew had filled 2 of the spots left open by my friends, but now we only had 3 people. Luckily, a couple other people I barely knew also had some roommates cancel on them, so we merged and it worked out great.

The journey started at 8 AM Thursday, when the bus I was taking was supposed to take off. We eventually took off by 9 and had turntables set up by 10. I didn’t know more than about 5 of the people on the bus, and even those 5 I didn’t know too well, but people were really nice and shared stuff with me because I came very unprepared. Someone threw my bag off the seat I originally had it on to save the seat because they wanted the seat more than I did I guess, so I ended up sitting up front, but I wasn’t too angry once the music started. The music went the whole ride, which was great for a while but did get old by around 9 or 10 at night. We had to stop every 2 hours or so for the smokers and one stop took about an hour because a part on the bus had to be fixed. We rolled in to Detroit around midnight, an approximately 14 hour journey.

Our hotel, the Atheneum, was a few blocks away. It’s a really great place and I’ll probably stay there whenever I go to Detroit. The rooms were really nice, the staff was really helpful and nice, and basically every problem I had, which there were several of and entirely of my own doing, they helped me out. It was also very close to the festival, about a 10 minute walk. When we got there we had a few victory beers in the room, but that was about all I could take for the day.

We took it really slow the next day. Didn’t leave the hotel until 2 or so, had some breakfast, then explored Downtown. Detroit was a really cool place. You can find most of my feelings on the place here. Long story short, yes, there are a lot of run down buildings and bums, but that’s not what defines Detroit. I’m sure there is some crime too, I didn’t see any and felt safe the whole time. I met one of my buddies from the Ween Forum for a few beers at a neighborhood-y bar Friday evening. I told the people there it was my first time, and they asked me “See, it’s not as bad as they say on tv, right?” No, it wasn’t. The people had a lot of pride in Detroit, and it was obvious. One of my favorite parts of the festival is the random chants of DE  TROIT that broke out.

Later Friday we went to this sports bar type place to see a few DJs, amongst them Minneapolis’ own Aaron Litchske. It seemed that a lot of places were not regularly techno venues but the whole town was talking about the festival and catering to it. It was cool seeing Minneapolis so well represented, I saw plenty of people I knew, some people from the bus that I didn’t know, and some others that I see at parties around Minneapolis all the time. I met a lot of those kind of people on the trip, it’s funny that it takes going to another city to make that happen. Anyway, my roommates had some tickets to an afterparty that was sold out, and so around 10:30, I went back to the hotel to try to figure out what to do for the night.

I woke up at 2, I fell asleep on the couch. At that point I wasn’t too interested in doing anything besides going to sleep, so that’s what I did. It ended up being really great that I did that though, because I was feeling great when I woke up the next day. I woke up early so I figured I’d start trying to take care of some of my hotel problems (I didn’t make a long enough reservation the first time, it seemed like we might have to change rooms and worse yet, change from 2 queens to 1 king bed) and I ran into Grant, who was the person with whom I originally planned on going to the festival with back in March (we had so many people join in that we had to split off to two rooms). There was a Five Guys right across the street from the hotel, so we went there for lunch. Good stuff, but not even close to In N Out. After that, we went down to the festival to get our wristbands. We walked in to check out the festival site. After taking a few steps in, this security lady asked to see what was in my pockets, because they were bulging with ipods, phones, wallets, etc. Long story somewhat shorter, she got me for a little bit. But just a little. It still sucked. At least I didn’t get kicked out of the festival, that would have royally sucked!

Went back to the hotel to get ready for the long day/night ahead of us, and eventually returned to the festival site in time to see Metro Area on the main stage. I remember enjoying them, but that’s about it. What can I say, there was so much music over the weekend that only a few acts really left a mark in my memory. After that I went to see Daedelus, who I always love to see, but every time I’ve seen him he plays more dubstep than the last time, so hopefully that trend gets reversed next time. I went to the bathroom on the other side of the festival (Festival pro tip: Find the bathroom with the shortest line, and use it, every time. This was easy to do because it was at most a 5 minute walk from any one point in the festival to any other). I was walking back to the stage Daedelus was on to catch Dam Funk, one of the acts I was really interested in seeing, when I heard some amazing sound coming from the main stage. It turned out to be a band called Tortured Soul. They had a synth player so there was definitely something electronic about their set, but it was defined more by the funk and soul sounds. I was so impressed that I stayed and watched their entire set. I had seen Dam Funk twice, and I do not regret the decision. Here’s a bit of their set:

It started raining around this time, which actually felt really good, but after Tortured Soul I went over to the Beatport stage, which was really the only stage that wasn’t entirely cement. They put down some metal on the grass, but the metal part wasn’t too wide and the grass was the best way to get forward. The rain lasted for a while and it got really, really muddy over there. I almost lost my shoe a few times, and I saw plenty of people that did. After the day was done I had to wipe my shoes down, the only pair of shoes I brought (DUMBASS) and then blow dry them to make them wear-able for the after party.

I was wandering around from stage to stage at this point, watched most of Felix Da Housecat and part of Richie Hawtin’s set. I had fun at both, but I think I spent more time than I should at Felix’s and didn’t give enough to Richie. Oh well. That was it for Day 1 for the festival, but the night wasn’t over yet.

We stopped back at the hotel to de-mud and dry shoes, have a few beers, then it was off to the CLR afterparty, which featured Marcell Dettman, Radio Slave, and a Speedy J vs. Chris Liebing tag team set. We got there around 1:30, and Speedy J and Chris Liebing were on upstairs. I didn’t learn until it was over that there was a downstairs part of the venue where Marcell Detmann and Radioslave were, but I honestly couldn’t leave. Speedy J and Chris Liebing was hands down the best set of the whole weekend. I had such a great time dancing up front, and for whatever reason, girls up by the front were all over me. I was loving life. This dude near me liked my dance moves and we started a little circle with some other people. He kept encouraging me to go in, but when he finally did, he pulled these amazing moves out that I never would have seen coming. The dance circle with him was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. That’s the way it’s supposed to happen! I actually found the guy again at the festival on Monday, and now we are facebook friends and we took this picture:

The lights went on around 4, but the music went til around 4:30. We stumbled back to our hotel, and met up with the new set of roommates who we had not seen yet because they had got in Saturday after we had already left for the festival as well as Woody McBride, who was on our floor. By this point, I already knew I would want to go back next year. I think this is a start of a new tradition for me. I’ll get into that a little later, though.

Got some really crappy sleep and was finally ready to face the day around 2. I couldn’t bring myself to eat any real food, so I didn’t. We went early to catch someone who one of my roommates wanted to see. I decided to wander around a little bit, and didn’t find a whole lot that I liked that much. Eventually Soul Clap went on at 6, and they were one of the highlights of the festival. The music they played was very different than what most played. It was funk, r+b, soul, and I can’t exactly put my finger on what was so different about it, but it really sounded great. It was slow building and felt like just the absolute perfect combo of songs. Here’s a bit of their set:

After that, I went to check out Ricardo Villalobos on the main stage, who was apparently a big deal but I hadn’t heard much about (although I hadn’t heard about a lot of these acts). He was #1 on Resident Advisers Top 100 DJs 2 of the last 3 years, and he had to cancel at the last minute for DEMF last year. He was listed as a surprise guest until about a week before the festival, I’m guessing so the festival had leeway just in case he couldn’t get in again. Hard to put my finger on exactly what I liked so much, and I was sorta of in the mindset that I wouldn’t like it because I read he plays minimal and I don’t really like minimal, but he really did a great set that I had a great amount of fun dancing to. That’s basically how I rate a DJ/act, how much they made me dance and how much fun I had while doing that. Not very scientific, but it’s served me well.

After that, I wandered around trying to chase the right beat, and I ended up at the underground stage to watch Ben Klock, who I had decided I would skip because I had just seen him a week before at Future Classic, but I didn’t hear anything I liked and I made the right choice. I ended up getting really close to the front and wound up being right by some of my roommates and a bunch of people from the bus. It was awesome to see everyone going crazy on the dance floor. I am a loner when it comes to these things, if I want to go see something I will, I don’t mind being by myself, but that said it was very nice to be around people I knew and I definitely felt a great connection with them while dancing. I was right in front of the speakers, and this was the underground stage, probably the most concentrated dose of sound anywhere in the festival. My brain was shaking. I kept having to put my ear plug back in because it was popping out from the vibration.

I had to get out of there after Klock’s set. It felt like cancer down there. So fucking hot and sweaty. I settled in to watch Carl Craig’s live set to close the 2nd night. At first I wasn’t such a big fan of the set, thinking that it was good but that if it wasn’t Carl Craig it probably would have been on at 3 or 4, but the more I thought about it, the more I really liked it and it actually inspired me to think about making music in ways I never thought possible. These ideas are really new and really un-detailed, so I don’t want to talk about them, yet. But soon enough, you’ll know, you can count on that, my friends. That was it for the festival for day 2.

It rained again on Sunday, but not enough to get me to blow dry my shoes, but it was a lot hotter and I was sweating my ass off, so I took a shower then it was off to another afterparty, called deteksupport. I had tickets for another afterparty, but everyone was going to this one, so it made too much sense. Unfortunately it cost me $40 to get in, so I spent $55 on afterparties on Sunday between the two, which is about as much as the festival cost. Oh well, I spent a lot of money on the trip but it’s just money. You can’t have any regrets about any of it, or else you’ll just worry the whole time. Same goes with music, there are so many choices to make, and you just need to be confident in your decisions and have no regrets. It’s the only way to do this kind of thing.

The afterparty was really good, but would have been better if I could have got in the same mindset that most of the other people there were. I had a lot of fun, and it was nice to be around so many people I knew. I didn’t know any of the acts names. I did find out the name of the act that did the one set of the night that really set itself apart from the others, Kink. Here’s some of that set:

Left the afterparty at about 6:15, with plans to wake up in about 5 hours to go see the Twins, who were in town to play the Tigers. It was a really great change of pace. After that 2nd afterparty, I was just happy to have silence for a while. This day was much, much hotter than any other day before it, and the baseball game was brutal. I sweat my ass off several times over. It was a nice stadium and I’m glad I got the chance to do it though, even if the twins lost. I had never been the enemy before, it was sorta weird, but people were pretty nice, possibly even nicer than Minnesotans would have been if you can believe that.

The game took a lot out of me, and I took my sweet ass time getting ready to go back to the festival. From the sounds of it I missed some good acts in Scuba and Art Department, but I’m not sure if I would have made it if I went that early. We got in around 7, and were immediately tempted by the sounds coming from the stage closest to the entrance, The Made In Detroit Stage, where I had spent the least time of any stage to that point. This group called the Detroit Techno Militia was on, and they had 5 (FIVE!) DJs going at the same time. It was an amazing sight and the music was great too. They were the only act all week that made me want to go find a t-shirt and buy it, alas I couldn’t find one there. Here’s a bit of their set, which ended up being one of my favorite of the whole weekend

After that, we caught a little bit of Dubfire’s set on the main stage, who was pretty damn good. It was time, though, for who I really went to Detroit to see: Green Velvet!! I made my way up pretty close for this one, as I was pretty far back when I saw him at North Coast. Unlike at North Coast, he stayed in front and sang/danced the whole time, which was just fine with me because he’s a really good dancer and it didn’t sound any different. The set was very similar to North Coast, again not a problem at all. At one point he said something like we’re going old school on this one. Before the beat even dropped, I yelled out “It’s time for the percolator!” and then right after Green Velvet said the exact same thing, and then the beat dropped. People around me looked at me like I was weird or something. It was awesome.

After GV’s set, I ran into my dancing friend from back at CLR and then later spotted a couple of my roommates and watched about the first hour of fatboy slim’s set. I really liked fatboy slim when I was younger, but I was not digging the set at all. In fact I wasn’t dancing much either, I was started to get really bummed about the trip being over. I started thinking about how awesome Detroit was and all the terrible things that had happened to Detroit and her people, and I started crying a little bit. I won’t lie. Like I said, I was not digging the set at all, and told myself I wouldn’t let this great journey end like this. So I left trying to decide what stage to go to, when out of thin air I got slapped in the face (metaphorically) and a voice (also metaphorical) said to me: Hey Dumbass, go to the Made in Detroit stage. Duh!! What a perfect way to end the festival! So that’s exactly where I went, and I caught the last hour of a downright amazing Claude Young set, and I ran into a few people from the bus and danced with them for the last hour. A few more tears trickled down, but these were happy tears. I was so fucking happy. Everything felt so great.

I had a religious experience. I felt so ecstatic all weekend (and get your mind out of the gutter,  it was created organically in my own brain). Some of you may have heard me tell the story where I had my first religious experience that I can remember, dancing with a bunch of orthodox Jews in front of the Western Wall when I was in Israel during Hannukah. Despite the religious conotation of that place, it was the dancing that really made me feel something. It was a bunch of people doing the same thing, together, in celebration. I felt something then that I hadn’t felt before. I have felt that a few times in my life since then. After Bassgasm this past February was one. Another was when I graduated college.

I think I have locked in on how to get to that place, though, and that is going to Detroit for DEMF. I felt a deep connection to the city and all the people I danced with. DEMF is my church, and it is my Hajj to go there every year, to TESTIFY on the dance floor. I left with a bunch of new friends that I didn’t have before, and that’s just the icing on the cake. All told, I danced something like 30 hours in a 77 hour period.

Well, there you have it. If you read all that, props to you, buddy. Before I go, a few special thanks:

Tanya and Travis Norman – These guys stepped in and became my roommates after their’s had also cancelled on them. They were on the bus so we stayed together all 5 days. I met them at Bassgasm this year, and here we are now! I didn’t know them very much before the festival, but I felt a strong connection there and they were absolutely lovely roommates and they are just awesome people in general.

Willow Windy and Jimmy Green – Other roommates, also didn’t know them too well, but I also felt a good connection with them and they are my kind of people. They are a hilarious couple, Willow is a riot who talks a lot and goes a mile a minute, Jimmy is really laid back and is just along for the ride, enjoying it all.

Jared Ostream – He set up the technobus and I’m sure ended up spending more than a lot of us did on the bus because a lot of people cancelled. He was very generous the whole time, and he was one of the people I danced to Claude Young with at the very end. Of all the people on the bus, he was always asking me if everything was ok and how I was. I look forward to riding the bus with him again next year!