Rites of Spring:
Throwing Bigger, Flashier Events
By Pete Ashdown
This article is brought to you courtesy of Hyperreal.com
In desperation for a location, I placed an ad in the classifieds that read,
"Wanted: 10,000 sq ft warehouse for weekend use." I'd done this before, but
had mediocre response, and never had anything come of it. I figured this time
would be my last shot at it. Surprise, surprise, it worked.
The people who responded had a 6,000 square foot warehouse that they used for
manufacturing a cardboard kitty litter box and cardboard bakery boxes. When I
was shown the inside, it was about half full with palettes of cardboard. The
woman who was leasing the place assured me that the majority of this would be
gone by the date I wanted to use it. It was a little smaller than I would
have preferred, but it was literally the only location that had been offered
in response to the ad. I offered her $400 if we had to buy insurance (usually
about $300) or $500 if we rode on her insurance (cheaper). It ended up being
$100 extra to ride on their insurance and I honestly think she pocketed it
rather than buying us a rider. I really didn't care though. Insurance has
never been a real concern for us, just the people we rent from.
I decided that we would fly in a DJ for this event. Moonpup came to mind
immediately. People had told me that he was very dedicated to the scene and
was always willing to bend easily. I had remembered he had worked in LA
during the birth of raves there, so I was curious to meet him and talk shop.
Also, in comparison to other DJs, he was rather inexpensive to do. I called
him up and told him I wanted to bring him to Salt Lake. Apparently, his
girlfriend's parents lived here, so he was very interested in coming. He was
amazed that we had been doing it since February '91. He thought that we were
just starting out, but he said he knew that Salt Lake would always be a good
place for it to happen. He agreed to drop his price a bit if we paid his
airfare, as for lodging, all he wanted was a comfortable couch.
My friend Grant came up with the idea to use a picture of Winnie the Pooh, our
unofficial mascot, stretching and yawning with the line "The Hibernation is
Over" for the flyer. We had thrown a small house party on New Years, but in
reality our last large event had taken place in the beginning of October (Sea
Monkey Love Castle). People wondered if "Taste" was still around. The flyer
was designed and the back wording was simple. I've grown really tired of
circus-like hype surrounding raves and I've been shooting more to surprise
people with effects than promise them something I can't deliver. I've always
found that it was important to put the price on the flyer as well. $10 has
become a standard, it is also our plateau. Unless it is drastically
expensive, like the Communion tour was, $10 is the maximum I will charge for
an underground here. So the end result was a flyer that just stated Moonpup
and myself as DJs, with "Rites of Spring", the date, and a few tag lines.
Brevity is beautiful. We mailed out the flyers to our list (last count 260)
and left it at that.
I originally wanted to either fly in a DJ or do extensive video. I decided to
do both. The people who had done the video for "Sea Monkey" had since gone on
to do a local club. Frankly, I wasn't very satisfied with what they had done
for us. They needed five people guest listed and they all got tired around
2:00. Even what they were doing for the club now was pretty pathetic. Cheap
video mixer effects over MTV's "Liquid TV" was about as far as they went
creatively. I had originally wanted another friend to do "Sea Monkey" but he
was under the assumption that he wouldn't get paid for it. I made it clear to
him this time that I wanted him to do it and he should give me a bid. He
couldn't figure out what he wanted to charge, so I offered him $200. He
accepted and went to work rendering scenes and collecting stock footage to mix
with.
Myself, John, and John's girlfriend took a vacation to San Francisco the week
before the 27th. We met up with Moonpup at a weekly. He was really excited
to do this job. I gave him half of his fee there.
I wanted to do really nice audio as well. I rented a large sound system, and
a smaller one and intended to do surround effects. When I finally found out
that nobody in town could rent me a sound processor to do these effects
(apparently the Ensoniq DP4 is the only one), I asked a friend if I could
borrow his home processor. As for displaying the video, I found a local
"Rent-To-Own" could rent us 32 inch tubes for $35 a week. This was in
contrast to the the audio/video places that wanted $125 for one night. When I
arrived back in town, I called the place and they told me that they didn't
have any 32 inch available. They told me they had four 27" though, so I went
down to rent them. Surprise, surprise, they only had one. I left and wailed
to John about how stupid they were. John had been highly impressed with a
projection unit we had seen in San Francisco. He asked his neighbor, who
worked for an audio/visual how much we could get one for. She said $200, but
she'd waive the insurance for us. John went and rented the 27" from the
~Rent-To-Own" then reserved the projection TV. I managed to get another 27"
from a friend. Then I had to get a video distribution amplifier to split the
signal cleanly, this was $35.
When the 26th rolled around, I went to the warehouse to find most of the
stock still there. I realized that we would have to use the existing stock as
partitions and just deal with it. A forklift had to be rented. John and I
spent most of Friday night rearranging the warehouse. We built walls around
the door so people could not see inside, then built a small chill-space off
the side of the dance floor. The dance floor had one entrance. The DJ and
video table itself was made up of flattened stacked cardboard.
A nice aspect of the warehouse was the 30" ceiling. This was the highest we'd
ever had to deal with. Putting the usual effects lights from the rafters
would really breath new life into effects which were getting tired anyway.
John came up with the idea to hang kites from the ceiling as well, but this
was abandoned when Grant borrowed a large parachute from his brother. I shot
the laser off the bottom of it. It really looked great.
My surround sound was not working well. The processor sounded like crap
coming through amplifiers. I gave up and ran the audio signal into the video
distribution amp and then ran two signals out to the separate amp packs.
Another problem was the fact that the power setup in the warehouse completely
sucked. We had to use a generator for "Sea Monkey" and even THAT was better
than what I was dealing with now. Extension cords had to be run all over the
place. There were absolutely no outlets near where I had the DJ booth
positioned. Once everything was setup, breakers were getting thrown on the
lights, the video, and the front sound. This was baffling since I thought I
had each of those on separate circuits. I had to eventually run cords into
their office to find other sources.
The video projector was beautiful. We had a 20 foot image on a back wall that
was as sharp as a tack. As for the video itself, the end result was awe
inspiring. He took two VCRs, a Video Toaster, a camera, and tons of stock
footage that he had collected. Time lapse photography of flowers opening,
milk dropping, cells multiplying, thrown over footage of canyons, clouds, and
of course fractals. It was literally eye candy to watch. My favorite effect
was when he took 1950's footage of people in a swimming pool and reversed the
color. It was really etherial to see. I wanted to record the whole night on
video tape, and got two SVHS tapes to do 10 hours on EP. Unfortunately, we
couldn't figure out how to switch the SVHS recorder to that speed, so we got 5
hours on SP. All the audio and mixing was recorded as well during that time
period.
Moonpup made it in about half an hour before 11:00, the time we opened the
doors and started. We agreed that he would play his set after me, about 1:30.
I had a local community radio DJ friend who I had worked with in the past do a
set at 11:00. He was leaving town in a few weeks, so it was a favor to him.
I was to start at 12:00.
The front amp was having problems. Even the monitor was losing power on some
heavy bass. I found out after it was all over that it was most likely plugged
into a 15 amp circuit rather than a 20 amp like it needed. We had three 600W
amps, huge bass bins and people were telling us to turn it up! The volume
wasn't near enough as loud as it could have been, however this turned out to
be a blessing in disguise since it was just barely carrying outside and there
were a few residential homes near. If it was any louder, we could have
attracted a lot of complaints. I've decided that from now on, I'm paying the
audio shop to do delivery, setup, and takedown. I'm sick of hauling speakers
and then being baffled at various problems as well.
I did my first set, which went over moderately well. I was playing a lot of
trance, but the crowd was wanting harder stuff. I picked it up a bit and
played some real funk which got them moving. What then amazed me is while I
was playing Intermix's "Down and Out", Moonpup came up to me and said, "This
is great! What is this?" That was a real shock. Things got weirder over the
night.
Moonpup came on after me at 1:00. He started messing with the 1200 I had
recently purchased and the second on I had to rent. I had originally planned
to get two new 1200's, but the shop had sold my second one by accident. He
started to curse at the rented table. It was apparent that it was a piece of
shit. He then started to curse me, by this time we were into the middle of
his first track. "NEVER give a DJ a piece of shit like this." I responded,
"Look pal, this isn't my fault. It was either this table or nothing. I had
no idea that the rental shop didn't have a clue." People on the floor started
to notice that the two DJs weren't in a happy-go-lucky-ravey mood. Moonpup
calmed down and then asked for a quarter. We already had two pennies on the
needle already. He taped that down and shook his head while cuing. He told
me to get a CD cued up. We had about 20 seconds before the first track was
going to end. I started to scramble. I was taking the CD out of the case,
when the track started to fade. Blammo, he started the second record on the
crap table. "Look, its going to skip," he said. Nothing happened. It kept
going. Moonpup was still angry, but continued. I ran to find my friend who
owned two 1400's at home. I asked him if I could borrow one. He agreed and I
drove to his house to get it while Moonpup was playing. When I brought it
back, we swapped the cartridges and taped it up to the wobbly arm. It was
working much better, but still not 100%.
Moonpup started to relax. At about 2:00 things really started to groove.
The sound was just loud enough, the bad 1200 skipped only infrequently but
wasn't terribly noticeable. I relieved John from watching the parking lot and
he appreciated the break. I was half expecting the cops to come and shut
everything down, but they would just drive by and keep on going like nothing
was happening. A neighbor came over and said he couldn't sleep because of the
noise. He left, changed his clothes, then came back and enjoyed himself.
It felt so good to be back in the saddle again. Because we had sent flyers
out to only the mailing list, we didn't have to deal with a lot of bad
attitudes. The smart bar was doing brisk business and sold out of water and
oranges. I was originally opposed to selling water bottles, but people were
actually amazed were were only charging $1 for them. The smart drinks were
just as yummy as I remembered them, and made even easier with Nutrient Cafe's
mixes. We found that by using a little Sprite, it made it more of a "drink"
rather than a "good-for-you drink". People weren't complaining to wait in
lines for the bathrooms (we had to rent one for the men's), they weren't
complaining to wait in line to go outside, they weren't complaining at the
door price. They were just happy to be there, happy that we were back. There
wasn't one bad attitude in the house all night. I was really proud.
Moonpup's set started to go in the unbelievable realms. I was on the floor
and people were just ecstatic over it. "So Pete, how long are you going to
keep him here?" "I'll move back home and let this guy live in my apartment,
I'll even pay rent for him." I was really impressed for the first time since
I saw Orb play. Once he moved into some really funky stuff and stripped off
his shirt, things just exploded. The whole place was bouncing.
I played a second set at 4:00 AM. This time I threw on some hard acid
immediately to satisfy the requests for hardcore we were getting all night.
Then I sloped it back into trance. It worked a lot better. Moonpup took a
break in the chill area, then came back at about 4:30 when I was doing trance.
Although I was spinning a bit of vinyl for the first time, he was fascinated
by the CDs. He told me that he had always been an advocate of CDs, but had
been disappointed with the equipment. Denon had sent him the first model of
their DJ deck and he hated it, but he commented about how much better the 2000
looked. I showed him a few things and he watched interested, then he left and
started dancing on the floor. Then he repeatedly asked me what I was playing.
Coil's "The Snow"??? He hadn't heard "The Snow" before? I hadn't played that
for almost six months and was just doing again because I loved it so much.
Then he asked about other tracks. I was amazed. Maybe my collection isn't as
crummy as I thought it was. He thumbed through my stuff telling me that I had
some really great finds. I was dumbfounded, but he sure stroked my ego.
Greg in Berkeley managed to find me a pair of technician flashlight glasses
that I had been hunting for. These suckers were so wonderful to have. I
could see EVERYTHING. No more messing with the flashlight. Plus they look
great. Moonpup ranted about how cool they were.
At 5:30, there were about fifty people left. Moonpup put on two records and
told me that he wanted to finish up with them. Then he decided to do another
set altogether. He played until 6:15, when there were ten people on the
floor. It was utterly beautiful. Trancey, deep, and funky I danced like I
hadn't in a long time. He threw on a final piece, a white label acid jazz
track that he had just purchased. He told me that he hadn't even heard it
yet. God, it was unbelievable. My favorite, big band music over a funky
beat. He came out on the floor and boogied with the rest of us. The video
guy, who had stayed behind the desk all night, continued his magic. My only
regret was the fact that I wasn't recording it at the time. The tapes had run
out at 5:00.
When it was all over, John and I took Moonpup to breakfast. He told us he was
eager to come back to Salt Lake, insisting that what we had heard that night
was not him at his best. He told us that there were a few surprises for him.
First was the CDs, he was really blown away by it. Second was the fact that
there were people with beer there. He said usually he's the only person who
brings beer to a rave. The crowd was good to him, and after the turntables
had been resolved, he really enjoyed things.
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