BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE

Chemical Heads, Clean Up Your Act Or You're Gonna Wreck The Rave

Sitting inside my friend Nick's car, listening to a phat Carl Cox
track while I pre-roll the last of our several joints for our Friday
night at System Soundbar, I feel nothing but excitement, especially
because Kenny Glasgow is just about to start tearing shit up.

When Nick and I get in the lineup, I can feel the bass pounding my
chest, giving me a sense of anticipation that kills me, until we open
the big metal door and there it is, exactly what we waited for all
week.

Nick and I do the prerequisite ritual and land on the cushioned
couches in the VIP room, where we light up the first of our
prizewinners.

I end up talking to a cute girl named Lara, who's really impressed
with our once-a-week herb-consuming technique. She thought she was
the only one not on a chemical cocktail and who came just for the music.

As the joint gets passed around, Nick says weed is perfect for house
or techno because of the way it helps plug your soul in to the
invisible electric vibe.

I say I've done ecstasy in the past and it made my body feel
incredible but never connected me to who I really am. Lara says it's
sad that most people who go to their first rave always do E or some
other dirty chemical like crystal, Special K or GHB, but that these
parties are already addictive because of the music.

People, she says, develop the reinforcement between house and drugs
and don't realize that it's really the music that's the true
addiction, so they end up fucking themselves up for nothing.

We all laugh and decide it's time to hit the dance floor. People at
these parties think you need crazy body energy to have fun and dance
hard with the house. But the best way to take it in is to close your
eyes and dance in the music, letting your mind just go with the
journey. House is a spiritual thing, and to get lost in it is to go
on a soul ride. E can never let you get there. Neither can other
chemical junk.

When I open my eyes, I see one of the many muscleheads with tank tops
on doing a cap of G. These guys with their many insecurities who
dominate the scene now don't see the art hanging in the house and
treat the scene as if it's a deli where they come to pick up meat.

They don't understand that these parties are a contemporary tribal
culture full of love and respect for each other that aren't generated
by E but by everyone relating to the true meaning of house.

Before we know it, it's 6 am, and the party ends as everyone gives
Kenny a round of applause. Parties like this are rare. Things have
got really ugly now, compared to how they used to be.

My nightclub life started when I was 14, nine years ago. For me and
many other kids in Toronto, that was the beginning of the evolution of
all-age party nights.

At clubs like Super Stars, Night Loose, RPM and Factory Rave, kids
between 14 and 18 came to dance all night long.

I stopped going to clubs when I turned 19 because most of them stopped
playing house for a couple of years. The scene was taken over by the
meaningless sound of Euro and dance. Eventually, the music
reappeared, and so did I. But some really ugly things that do nothing
for the music but give it a bad reputation also appeared -- Special K,
crystal meth and GHB.

The only good part of the house resurgence is that the music came back
bigger and better. It's is no longer just in the category of acid
house or garage. It now consists of this plus a wicked variety of
breaks, trance, tribal, progressive and its cousin techno.

(I'm not going to mention anything about jungle, because personally I
miss the old-school jungle with MCs who were truly from the Islands.)

Total downer

I don't mean to be a downer, but to me, if you're going to do E or
other synthetics at a party, you might as well just walk in, spit at
the DJ and boo out the house. Don't you realize that you're just a
sucker in a rave market that's making tons of money off your
insecurities, like a spider catches a fly?

The rest of you chemical wannabes might just as well do crack in an
alleyway, because drugs like E, no matter where you are, make you feel
amazing and give you a fictitious temporary love for everything and
everyone. But the shit is never real.

House is what I need, so please don't let it be dragged down. It's my
classical music. And to promoters of raves who, just to make an extra
$30 a head, tolerate young kids being messed up by synthetics: learn
to put morals in front of money.

Everyone, clean up your fucking acts and put your heads back on. The
music is the true soul vitamin. Don't let it get sucked into this
mess, causing not only the DJs to be hung, but also the house.