[Dynagroove] Re: I may get in (even more) trouble.

[AbstraktJazz at aol.com]

Cade, I completely agree with what your saying. I have not stressed this 
enough myself, but we need to RECRUIT NEW LISTENERS !!   We need to encourage new 
listeners from anywhere we can   (school dances, kiddy raves, 18+ clubs or 
hangouts in remote locations, remote meaning OUTSIDE OF HOLLYWOOD!).. 
I love to play at abnormal venues where people have never heard this type of 
music before. For example, Dance for Peace at Venice beach, I had all kinds of 
people, young and old coming up to me asking "What is this music? It's 
wonderful!." It's comments like this that keep me going as a dj. I just wish they 
had put me at a peak time slot with that music instead of opening, maybe a few 
thousand more people would have heard it!   
Also, a couple years back I was doing some gigs in the rave scene (as it was 
dying out). But I was actually enjoying some of them. But Cade is right, the 
younger generation had this super sick vibe and I could tell that many of them 
were going to be our future house heads. However the rave scene was dying. Why 
was it dying?   Well I believe because the quality of the productions were 
VERY LOW!! These shady promoters were cutting corners every which way they 
could, they were trying to pay me a hundred bucks at most, while charging these 
kids $35- to sometimes even 50 bucks for entry!   And these were not the massive 
events, they were the smaller, 2 or 3 room productions (usually with the 
CHEAPEST and WORST sound!), with like maybe one headliner in each room, and usually 
that headliner was a washed up name that was popular years ago, or someone 
new that had just released one or two records, that just totally sucked!   
I noticed there was a problem becuase after my sets at the raves, tons of 
these kids would come up to me and explain how much they loved house music and 
that they wanted to hear more of that in their scene. (sometimes i'd be the only 
dj at the whole party spinning deep house music).   
So when you older "house heads" have the idea that all the younger generation 
are just a bunch of e-tarded ravers, that's not true at all. Actually a 
majority of them are lost causes, because they weren't lead in the right direction. 
Think about if all you were exposed to was crap, then it's going to be pretty 
damn hard to discover the quality. right ?
But lets get back to these rave promoters, I place much of the blame on the 
dying of the house scene on them!   I used to try to set up meetings and 
explain to these promoters that their crowd is asking for MORE HOUSE MUSIC!   I 
would offer my help in any way that I could, and offered my advice on who they 
should book.   Instead they would book a list of dj's with no name, pay them 
shit, some of these dj's actually claimed to spin house music, but when they 
dropped, it was nothing but a bunch of hard trendy bullshit or progressive.   So, 
the lack of quality music caused people to want to take more drugs, I mean lets 
look at this realistically, the more drugs your on, the better time your 
going to have, even if the music sucks (atleast thats the way these kids looked at 
the situation)   Back in the day we learned to appreciate the music first, 
the drugs were just like a special addition to enhance the experience. However 
drugs should not matter, I have much respect for the dancers that stay till 6 
in the morning while sober!    Anyways my point is, the quality of everything 
is dying as people have less money to throw quality events, and it is much 
harder to throw events with the government cracking down any which way they can 
(you all know they DO NOT want us to gather!) but that's another discussion.   
Alright I'm done.. 

oh one more thing.. much respect to a lot of these new clubs in remote areas 
who are recruiting new listeners and starting little (mini-scenes) in their 
cities. Clubs like Prana in Pasadena, Focus in Orange County, etc..   We need 
more spots like this, a little house club in every city, so that when Hollywood 
or LA has a super big huge house event, everyone can come together and it will 
just be fat as hell!   ok.. now i'm really done..     any more thoughts ??