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Levitation de-elevation, or how to throw a rave in five hours.
by Anonymous
This article is brought to you courtesy of Hyperreal.com
"Levitation" was the name of the rave we were going to throw on the rooftop
of an apartment building. Despite warnings from everyone I knew that the
person arranging for the rooftop was not worthy of our trust, I trusted him
anyway. After inspecting the roof, I decided it would be best to keep this
one fairly small, since it looked like only 100 people could fit up there at a
time. So I made 150 flyers and sent out mailings to the 35 people on our
list. We didn't post any anywhere, nor did we hand them out in clubs. In
fact, we probably handed out most of them in Colorado, where we knew nobody
would come from to attend. We just wanted to advertise the hotline/mailing
list.
I decided it would be worthless to rent lights, especially since the effect in
the outdoors isn't as good and you can't use a fog machine. Instead, I rented
two slide projectors with auto-advance and a 16 mm projector with "Donald Duck
in Mathemagic Land". This cost about $60. The sound was from the same place
we've always used and cost $80. I had the pleasure of having speaker stacks
fill my living room on Friday, since the rental place would have been closed
on the 4th. I wish I would have been more prepared as I would have thrown a
party in my house with all that good equipment.
The Wednesday before, we are informed by the guy giving us the location that
we can only go till 2:00 and we can move it to his parent's house in the
suburbs after that. This is agreeable since they had a pool. So I make up a
bunch of little cards that state this fact and gives instructions on how to
get to the second location.
6:00 PM on Saturday, we change the message on the hotline to give the address
of the rooftop location. 6:30, we call the guy giving us the property and
find that he wasn't home. 6:45, he calls us and notifies us that we can't
have it on the roof at all and that we'll have to move it to his house.
*FUCK* He certainly is living up to his reputation. In short, he wants to
turn it into his own little private beer-fest with us paying the bux for
lights and music. I'd rather play drums in a parking lot than be his personal
monkey, so we promptly decide to screw him over and find a different location.
After a bit of driving around, we make a few calls and come up empty. Then
someone suggests the spot where we had DOSE at. I feel bummed in having a
rave in the same place, but I walk (it is less than a block from my apartment)
over to the warehouse to see if they have any art installations going now. It
is empty. I call the owner and she is delighted with us using it again.
After all, two one night rentals by us in one month has paid her rent. So we
had a location, and four hours to set things up.
My laser isn't working very well. The power supply is pulsing, but the effect
is still fairly good. Just like a dotted-line spirograph rather than a solid
one. We have no fog machine or lights, just the projectors. I set up my
Amiga/Mindlight with it's 13" monitor running graphics. John manages to
scrounge up a mirror ball, a bubble machine, and a light with rotating color
cells. I use a filmstrip projector to illuminate the non-rotating ball.
Again, we were amazed with the results. Everything looked really good.
I felt so bad about not having it on the roof, I was going to throw it for
free. However after being convinced that this was a big mi$take by my
friends, we decided to charge $3.
People didn't start showing up in force until about midnight. This made us
very nervous since we started at 11:00. I sent a guy over to the old location
to hand out and post flyers with the new location and the apartment manager
nearly arrested him for loitering! We found out that bozo was still throwing
the party at his parents house and advertising it under our name! We heard
rumors that about 100 people got suckered to go there, but still don't know
any hard facts about it. As for how things went at the new place, I had the
best time ever. The DJing went smoothly and people danced themselves into a
frenzy. Only about 120 people showed up, but they were all hardcore and
STAYED with it until about 2:30. The laser started to function properly when
it warmed up and performed well for an hour before blowing another fuse.
I felt like it was my best night of DJing ever. I was able to work in
requests well, and kept the crowd going strong, but gave them ambient breaks
to rest in. There was one point where I pushed it and played a track that was
around 160 bpm. This made people drop like flies, so I didn't go that fast
again. The crowd really started screaming when I threw on "Everybody's Free"
right after "Free Your Body". Also got a fairly good response from "Blue
Room".
It lasted until about 3:30, when I had three people on the floor. They kept
coming over and requesting different things. I didn't mind, I was still
riding the rush from the previous few hours.
We doubled the size of the mailing list that night. Things are starting to
grow exponentially. Next weekend we're going to try and throw a Winnie The
Pooh themed rave titled "Heffalump Hunt". This time we're chucking in an
ambient room and the smart bar. The big one is still tentatively planned for
August, but not at the original castle that I wanted. The owner was a
complete schmuck. It will either be at a waterpark or at a multilevel parking
garage. I prefer the park, but we've already got the OK on the garage.
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art, altered states of consciousness, and experimental ways of expressing those memes over the wires. Information like this
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