WMC Recap
i guess now's a good time to write about my time at the winter music conference.
i've had about a week to marinate on it, and tomorrow i go back to work at the job that pays me.
first let me get this out of the way:
holy fuck where'd all the hot half-naked girls come from?
damn.
moving on.
i really learned a lot attending the panels this year, and i highly recommend it for anyone who's thinking of making a career in any part of the music industry.
i learned a lot on how the industry works:
marketing, promotion, magazines, licensing, radio, internet, etc...
all great stuff.
i also learned a bunch on the future of the industry and how to use the internet to market and promote.
and i heard lots of speculation on how the industry will soon fail.
different theories on what the industry would look like in a few years.
basically how the standards of promotion, marketing and even the act of selling may soon not exist anymore due to the internet.
-thats an essay or even a book all in itself.
i'll not get too much into it, except to say that i heard a lot of conflicting opinions from people who are (hopefully) more qualified to state their opinions than i.
ultimately, all i have to say is this:
long live our new overlords, whomever they may be.
i'll be preparing vermin street to exist in whatever form the music world becomes. actually, i'm preparing for every doomsday scenario i can think of as we speak.
as for the night life, i went to an average of 2 events every night.
whenever i go to a town, i'm always interested in the real life there. not the resort bullshit you get when you stop over on your cruise. and not the 100,00 people who come to town for the conference. but the residents, the real peopel who exist there.
i'm lucky be able to say i met a few really nice people in miami.
tuesday night, i met a kid who threw a party with clp, and parallel. rich was very cool and he threw one of the more interesting events i went to that week.
a good variety of music. clp's set kicked ass. sadly i missed parallel. but saw a dj set by "famous french bloggers" who have probably blogged about their wmc experience 2 months ago.
it was a fun night.
i think later that night we went to a breaks night which was ok.
a lot of the events were just kind of ok.
from the breaks night on tuesday with a bunch of dj's i never heard of, to the massive night wednesday with major dubstep acts who all played the same records.
-no offense to y'all, you had a ton of people rocking out at your show, but i was less than thrilled after i heard 3 djs play that remix of that benga tune.
maybe this lack of enthusiasm has more to do with me than you. perhaps i've moved on from the days of wanting to hear one kind of music all night.
maybe, under my crew's influence, i've grown to appreciate a variety of styles all night.
and maybe thats why i can't tolerate hearing dj after dj play the same style of the same genre.
thursday was cool.
i met up with hot pink delorean at the tommie sunshine party. we pretty much left after they played.
then i met up with zebbler who got me and tiff comp'd into this party with diplo, switch, chromeo and some others.
though the sound in the main room totally blew. giant sound system in a warehouse the size of stop and shop, echoing and bouncing off the walls. all i could hear was mud. 250 htz resonating in that giant room.
i deliberately skipped some of the cool events at that venue the next couple of nights.
i might've missed diplo and switch that night. or i might've just gone outside since the sound was so weak.
but outside i saw hollywood holt, who put on a great show and was a freaking comedian.
good stuff.
friday we went to ultra for a little while. it was cool. definitely reminded me of what raves are like in europe. or were when i was there 10 years ago.
i think i heard the attendence was around 70,000.
again, peter hooked us up and got us back stage, on stage and some free beer.
met up with more friends, travis, bonk and dorothy.
this was the only night we didn't go out twice i think. and the only night we got almost 8 hours sleep.
saturday was probably the best day for us.
tiff and i met up with my distro rep at a rooftop pool party.
we all bought each other some wicked expensive drinks. $52 for 3 drinks! but it was fun still.
later on we went to an awesome show at ps14.
it was by far the best all week, and most of the acts were miami locals.
outstanding things about that show:
we missed richard devine's set to go get food. :(
but his set up was more than remarkable. he had a 2'x2' table full of gear. he couldn't even fit all his gear on the table. it was rediculous.
skymall was great. bassy booty house with half-time breakdowns into dubstep. "ghetto tech" is i guess what the kids call it now a days and it rocked.
mochipet ruled, as always.
otto von shirach... by the end of his set, he had like 15 people jumping around on stage with him, a dude with a giant collage of casio keyboards wrapped in red ropelight, a dude in a giant green lizard monster mask, a geisha girl with tons of make-up, a dude wearing a trenchcoat and skull mask, and maybe 10 other people all dancing around, making weird symbols with their hands and holy fucking bizarre, i loved it.
next was palm trees. and though the sound guy wasn't on point with the girl's vocals, they definitely put on a good show.
it was girl singer, guy computer jockey, and 2 skinny white boys, one with black wifebeater and real mustache (which is apparently all the rage in miami right now -ahh the age of irony...) and another in a black hoodie with sparkley facepaint across his eyes and nose. the dancer boys had LEDs taped to their wrists, and they'd dance choreographed moves with colored fabric on their hands shaped into 3d objects.
the first song they each had a half heart in both of their hands. they'd dance and put the pieces together, making a glowing pink heard, and then the girl would sing "you broke my heart" and they'd break the pieces apart.
best show all week. best performances.
and all played tunes off their computer.
i remember, specifically, one wmc panelist saying he thought computer dj's were boring. he couldn't be sure if they were checking their email or what.
its funny, because when me and my friends were discovering rave culture, everyone thought dj's were boring to watch and that bands were so much more impressive.
which they are.
and computer jockeys are generally just as boring as disc jockeys.
and nearly every single dj i saw over the week could've learned a few things at that ps14 show.
i, myself, wish i had a pen and paper to take notes.
thoroughly schooled!
i'm not really trying to defend computer jockeys though. ultimately i'd rather watch a band perform. but i'd rather hear the music being played at a club -which is why thats where i find myself.
i think the reason rave culture broke out into a "scene" was because it was never about the performer, and never called a "rave," but always called a party.
thousands of kids going out every weekend to see their friends and be in their community. and to hear their favorite music played -but not performed.
djs and computer jockeys have to work pretty hard to put on a performance.
and maybe thats why i was so blown away by the performances saturday night.
and let me end this blog by asking:
why the fuck does anyone give a fuck about tiesto, or any other larger than life dj.
seriously, my dj friends play records and cd's jsut as well. selection is jsut as good. they dont trainwreck, and they dont have the ego.
i guess, to hypothesize on my own question, perhaps in the entertainment industry, consumers are purchasing the personality, just as much as they are the music.
and i see a great distance between the awesome and underrated performers i saw saturday night, and the 5 minutes of tiesto's set i heard while walking by from a distance of a quarter mile and over the heads of probably 20,000 people.
crazy.
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