|
Better late than never? Yes, another bastard review to annoy you!
Jay--great seeing you again, btw. Hope your first zone experience was KILLAR. w00t! See you Saturday!
On with my review... cc'd to www.HOUSEADDICT.com
Ok...you know what? These cozo reviews are HARD to do. Because I really don't have any entertaining pictures to throw out there and make little stories from the things I remember or attempt to remember... so I have to really scrape my brain to make these interesting. So rather than try to over-embelish this, I figured I'd try and keep this review short, to the point, and tight. Tight...yes...toight like a tioger! yes yes!
First and foremost, if any of you know me, you'll know that Tribal is my favourite genre of house...especially the dark progressive kind that Entrena is known for spinning in the darker times of his sets. The last time I saw him was back in November when friends and I did the 'scorpio bash' thing at the gallery. I had no idea this 'mystery guest DJ' would rock the world as I knew it so hard-core the next morning at the zone. I still remember tribalfreak sitting down near the pool tables at the back of zone with a shocked look on his face. His expression was mirroring my own--what had hit us? This guy had hammered us with what we loved.
As a result, this event came with MUCH anticipation from me. The moment I heard he would be spinning at the zone again, i booked the following monday off work. This was probably 2 months in advance. Johnny Action was asked to watch kiddo for Leap and I about 5.2 nano seconds later. Talk about party planning. I was HYPED for this event...and couldn't wait to hear the raw dirty tribal beats on the sic zone sound system again.
Speaking of JohnnyAction, an interesting thing happend during the two month wait. Normally, he isn't a Tribal fan at all...but as he hung out around the house, and played some sets in his car, and finally hit up Behrouz & Creamer with a bunch of HouseAddicts, TranceAddicts and me, he found he really started to enjoy Tribal. As a result, I worked a deal with a buddy to play video games with the kiddo for the day so that Johnny could come along too. As the roll calls built for this zone event, I knew that it would be a MASSIVE event, on par with events like halloween, and perhaps even the energy of New Years Day.
As the weekend approached, I promised myself to conserve my energy for Sunday. We planned to stay in all weekend and then head down early Sunday morning to be fresh for zone. Well, Friday night beats called and I ended up heading to footwork to do some thoughtless mindless dancing...and had a BLAST. It was a surprise-energy night there, and I wish i had the time to do a full review on what happened at Footwork that night, because it was magical. Great tunes, great crowd, and pounding beats. Nathan & Carlo: Thanks for dropping Everybody - The Roaches Rmx...made my night. So I returned home early Saturday morning, crashed for a few hours, and spent the afternoon doing some family time things. Leap and I crashed early Sunday night and set the alarm for 4 am, but not before our zone prep ritual.
Leap_Frog & Ni-Cd's zone prep ritual: Ok, you get four grocery bags. In bag one: ibuprofen, tylenol, tums, and peptobismol--and any other meds you may require through a long day of dancing (ie, asthma meds!). Bag two: Energy drinks and power bars. Bag three: Gatorade and water. Bag four: Fruit, sandwhiches, and other food--maybe meal replacement shakes. This way, at any time you want to use your in/out privledges, you can get back to the car and chill for a bit without spending tonnes of money at the 7/11 or any other store around--you have everything you need, right there. I'm amazed at the amount of people who were begging for tums--we totally made their day. I guess dancing for hours with just 3 energy drinks in your tummy can do that to ya. So we prepped these bags and our dancin' shoes, pre-showered, and hit the hay.
Ugh, 4 am hits. I seriously reconsidered my sanity. I'm waking up at 4 am on Sunday to go ... DANCING. Come ON. I'm getting to old for this---but then the call of czurch comes rippling in, and a small smile of anticipation spreads across my face, and we eagerly hop up and into our dancing clothes, ready to go.
We live considerably north of the city, so there's a bit of a drive down to the city, and we reach the sacred parking lot around 5:45 am... amazingly, we meet most of our friends there at the same time. We've hooked a few of them into this ritual. It's amazing how hot some of the girls look...here it is, 5:45 am on a Sunday, and they look ready to kick some club ass, as if its a Saturday night. I love it!
Lining up at the door, we face a familiar situation. I'm gonna voice it here... i don't know what uh, impact this will have... but i have to say something... it's clear who has the real 'influence' in the zone. There's a steady stream of one ethnic race that gets Alex's attention far more than any other. They are rude, they pushed me rudely onto Leap_frog, and force anywhere from 4 to 19 of their friends into the zone before anyone else. Oh, and this is with us greasing just as well as anyone else. You guys know what I'm talking about. But you know what? I'm not going to let that ruin my day. So after the identifable dude chews me out for not getting out of his 'f*cking way' (obviously, its MY fault that i fell onto Leap, not his), i get out of the way and let him and his zillion associates by. It's not worth it, right? And I sure as heck don't want to meet a pile of them inside, angry that i decided to hold my place in line. This doesn't phase me though...it's the zone, stuff happens--i'm good. I smile at my friends and bob to an imaginary beat and imagine myself writing about the experience later to get it off my chest...and what Dr. Phil would say if he were to console me. Nah, forget that, i can't stand Dr. Phil.
Finally, we're about to get in, when 5 men in blue storm through the line and push their way into zone. Everyone goes quiet. Cops in the zone, at 7 am. What the heck? We had already paid our line-bypass (they weren't accepting line-bypass cards of white nature, so we had to use "cards" of green nature...too cold to wait it out in the non-"guest list" line). Were we gonna lose that moola AND not get to dance? We were tense. One of the bouncers came out and waved at a few asian ppl trying to hand him a wad of cash. "no. not now. not now." No one was getting in. I was tense... i was really eager to hear entrena and to dance off some serious energy i had built up from the weak... can they close the zone? The bouncer wasn't telling us to go home, so I was guessing that it was a temporary thing. Sure enough, 15-20 mins later, the cops came out of the club, and 10 mins after that, alex emerged ready to let people in again. We were next up, thankfully, and slipped into the sophacating darkness known as The Comfort Zone.
The cover was jumped up by 5 bucks. This surprised me... i didn't know the zone jacked prices for DJs. Knowing how steady the zone is with their cover, I could only conclude one thing...entrena was a little pricier than normal to bring in. You know, I'm not sure what I think of that... the last time i saw him, the cover was 20. Was the hype worth 25? I don't know... For me, that means, cover, + line by pass + an extra 5 bucks, times two (for leap and i). It was a 70 dollar day, and we hadn't even started dancing yet. That's alright though. I'm good with capitalism, and if i were to have a great day with my friends, and Leap had a good day, it's money well spent. As I say so often, it's cheaper than therapy, or so many other bad habits. 
In we go, and Nathan Barato & Carlo Lio are on the decks as The Roaches.
 Nathan Barato
 Carlo Lio
These guys rocked my socks off on Friday, and one of the reasons why we came so early was to hear their opening set (we got in around 7:30). Between the cops and the dude in line giving me a shot to the ribs (did i mention that?) i was a little winded and frozen, so i took the opportunity to go up to the decks and give a holla to the roaches. They asked if there was a huge line outside 'oh yeah'...then i mentioned about the cops stopping the line for a while. That explained why at 7:30, the zone wasn't rammed yet--they hadn't been able to process people inside. Carlo & Nathan's set was perfect for the mood of that type of the morning... hard and hammering for all the ppl coming from a long night of clubbing. I was a little shocked to discover it was a little TOO hard for me, being so used to enjoying opening sets when i first go to a club. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and started jumping up and down like a foo' to the music to warm up my body from waiting in line. I quickly warmed up and took off my zone sweater.
Clubber tip: Zone Sweater. Ok, in the winter time, when you want to go to the car, or go for a walk, eat, go to the patio, whatever, it's TOO cold to go without a coat. Going from being uber-sweaty to super-cold isn't cool. You'll get sick. You don't want to take your coat out of coat check because its a pain. Thus, get a zone sweater. This is a sweater you can take off and stash somewhere in the club, then retrieve when you want to go outside. Make sure the sweater isn't one you mind losing, or getting dirty. It's function over form baby. Johnny Action has been known to wear two zone sweaters...so he can lend one to the ladies in their time of need. What a thoughtful guy.
We socialized for a time, and I decided to take a look around at all the madness happening around as the zone filled up quickly.
First and foremost, I noticed the car wash crew building up, near Juice Bar #2. Does anyone know why they are called car wash crew? Later on, Ty and I asked a few of them, and they didn't know. We empathized in agony with them over the mystery. They offered us a drink of their water, which tasted like it had gone bad or something. We recommended they not drink expired water.
Second of all, someone has gotten wise to keeping it clean in the zone. I saw SEVERAL people bring hand sanitizer in with them. They were even sharing it around with other people, putting it in small vials so they could wash their hands later. So giving! Washing your hands in there often is important; JennyPie says you should never touch you hands to your face when you're at the zone. Good advice. Use the sanitizer there! Ask around, someone will give you some.
Thirdly, we discovered a cool zone game. You send a friend outside for 10 minutes. Then they come to coat check, and you give them a location to go to in the zone. For example, pacific rim, or Juice Bar #1. Whatever. Then start the timer, and watch them rush in with their un-climitized eyes. Fun for hours. Best time wins a free gatorade.
Nathan and Carlo's set ended as quickly as it had begun for us...we had only heard just over an hour because of how LONG it took us to get inside. That's ok. It was worth the wait. And sometimes, sacrifices had to be made for Czurch.
Then it was time for Mass with this power-beat-pounder dude
Deko-Ze has had the 9am - 1pm slot at CZ for a while now, and the feedback lately has been that this guy knows how to drop the patchy tracks like NO one's business--but that his sets tend to be a little all over the place. I noted this myself on my previous review.... is that wrong? By no means...in fact, it probably adds huge variety to his 3 hour set. But i think a lot of zoners want to be taken on a steady journey during that time through a few genres, instead of ping ponging around. I will tell you this... several people had freakin' HEART ATTACKS when he dropped patches of Round and Round - Bodyrockers into another track. The room exploded with energy at several of his patch-ins, and he didn't let the crowd down a bit. I took the last bit of his set to go seek some lunch.
A few of my asian friends invited me out for Dim Sum... apparently Sunday was the Chinese new year! So they were headed to Dim Sum down Spadina a bit to eat. I'm very culturally isolated, so this was a fantastic experience for me. The food would be needed for Entrena, so I ate until I was compeltely stuffed. I kept chking my watch, knowing that i had picked a poor time to go, but couldn't pull away from the great company and food. I kept getting txt's to my phone from my friends 'are you nuts?! get back here! You are missing Entrena opening!' --I choked on my . We settled up the bill and rushed back to the Zone.
Entrena was dropping some club anthems with some sic tribal beats mixed in; it wasn't as dark and hard as I wanted, but i knew he was gearing up, and catering to multiple audiences. The whole crowd was dancing HARD, and we joined along with them. I found the Trance Addict corner of the dance floor (just to the left of the dj booth) and met a pile of very cool TranceAddicts. Thank you all for the kudos on the reviews, what an ego boost. It was hard to move around the dance floor with my head inflated so much. I got the FUNNIEST comment from one cool dude... Hammat, if I heard his name right? "Dude, are you a journalist??" lol! Or another comment "I thought your parents helped you with these reviews or something!" hahaha, do i look that young? Super funny, we all laughed together, Dr. Evil style.
As Entrena's beat's continued to pound the floor, and I was in audio blissful heaven dancing it up with a huge group of friends in the pacific rim area (easier to breathe over there...HOLY cigarette smoke..*hack*), i thought of why my mind, body and soul relates to these beats so much...
I think that it relates to human biological rhythm...it feels very natural and harmonious. Then i thought of the Discovery Channel and the show "How its made." Don't laugh--for real, I did. I thought of these machines that make things. EDM is sort of like that. Relatively predictable, and some of the beats sound like giant machines going about their work to make our lives better. Isn't that what music is about? Think about it next time you're dancing to some hammering rhythms. Think about "how its made."
I must have made a dozen random zone friends. I bought water for a random stranger who seemed to need it--they were very appreciative. I even kept the lid sealed for them so they'd know i was 'the real deal.' Do you think what goes around comes around? It did for me that day... random acts of kindness add to the mystique that is the zone. Give it a try...I dare ya. It produces some VERY cool effects.
One thing that I love about Comfort Zone is how social the day is; it's not super-compressed intensity into a few hours, it's spread out, so there is time to really visit with friends, meet new ones, ask what people did last night, ask them how they like the zone if it is their first time. We found 5 people that day who were zone-first timers, and I made sure to talk to them throughout the day to see how it was going--they were all very positive, and it was all about the music.
I went upstairs to use the washroom (mucho cleaner, less 'sketch') and caught this cool picture of besma dancing in the sunlight. Uh. She's there. Honest. Dangit. Blinded by the light.
As I danced it up with old and new friends, i checked my watch... 4 pm. WHAT?! he was done already.... arrggg over way too soon. :angry: I really wish that he would have had one more hour to continue to pound away with sic tribal beats... I was truly disappointed that it was over so quickly. I said to Leap 'over too fast... ' and considered getting ready to go.
But then, something cool happened. The music ... got even MORE intense. I looked up to see Val from Vinyl Junkies on the decks pounding out some tunes I had never heard before. My brain was swimming--WOW! A txt from Nathan stated that King Louie had cancelled--gotten sick (according to a post on trance addict, he was 'drugged while in mexico, couldn't get on the plane')--so VJs had a 4 hour extended set. PROPPA!! four more hours of this? Momma mia! Get me some orange juice! w00t!
You know what? There's not really much to verbalize properly about this set. It blew my mind...i was there to see Entrena, and VJs took the catch. Wow. How'd that happen? I had a blast with Entrena and his pounding beats (he really got into the crowd too, which I really like DJs to do), and the VJs took the vibe he created and multiplied it. It was a fantastic thing to be part of.
A few of the clubbing friends i had met made comments that they did not enjoy entrena...and when val came on 'thank god, finally, a REAL f*cking dj!'. This was SHOCKING to me--Entrena pounded it, and I was shocked they didn't feel it. I made a mental note to myself that although they may not have 'liked' entrena, they sure were dancing hard to his beats. Hmmmm.
We stayed to the end of Val & Vince's set, and when they finished, it was my cue to leave--had to relieve the kiddo-sitter. I had gotten my fix, and was thoroughly satisified.
Throughout the day, I had several people ask me about Addy--usually right in the middle of the dancefloor, where i can barely hear my own thoughts. I don't know when he's coming back to spin, but i'll tell you this: when he does, I'll be there, front and centre. I still can't believe I only heard him spin TWICE live before he decided to take a break. Didn't he take my feelings into consideration?? how inconsiderate. And no, i don't know any of the gossip or anything, i try to stay out of that...but i do know that the scene needs the unique style that Addy brought to it, and I can't wait for it to come back, politics or no.
Final verdict... I wish that Entrena had a 4 hour set...one more hour of his stuff would have really hit the spot, but Vinyl Junkie's really took the cake that day, showing that they have this dark progressive side that I just totally ate up. I would LOVE to get a set like that to play in my car. Val--hit me up with something, would ya? I have no sets like that in my collection, and it felt as fresh to me as a cool summer night. Still thinkin' about those beats. Btw, HAPPY BIRTHDAY--rip it UP at Hotel on Thursday. w00t!
I drove home alone that night after saying good bye to many zone friends and thanking Val & Vince for a great set. Leap and friends stayed behind to ride the vibe... that's the thing about going fresh--you can party for a LONG TIME if you party during the day. :P It was great dancing with Dannie, Besma, Kelly, Lauren, and all the other hotties who love teasing me while Leap is RIGHT THERE. thanks so much. hahaha. It's all good, such a great time, great vibe, and some of the best beats I have heard in a long time.
So....Ultra Spin 12 anyone?
|
You owe me that dance off, you know who you are......
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oh boy...
