Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:27:46 -0500 (CDT) From: Wallace Winfrey To: mo-raves@nicar.org Subject: Radiance, April 5 Kansas City in review Short review: Good party. Jeff Feller rocked the muthafucking house. Jazz room was cool, but too well-lit. Another quality production from our friends at FLUX. Long review: Well, there was a lot of tension going into this party. A week or two before, KC Vice Squad shut down a "Dave Rave" and arrested both the promoter (Dave) and the sound guy (Alex). Dave was arrested for not having a dance permit and Alex was arrested for not having a biz license (which he did). This was apparent in the heavy level of security at the door, with security taking stuff out of people's pockets, etc. Not that I blame FLUX for this -- they did what they had to do to make this party go down, which it did (they even got a dance permit!) Space was an old supermarket turned into a bingo hall. Some people were complaining about the "aboveground" nature of this party, whatever the fuck that means. If underground means breathing in asbestos dust in some dingy warehouse with nasty porta-potties, then you can have your underground for all I care. I thought the space was pretty cool. It was also fucking huge. Quest kicked it off around 11:15 with some quality jungle. Some shouts out to the crowd didn't exactly get the crowd hyped (I'll have to work on MC-ing and quit calling people "motherfuckers" and telling them to get off their asses...), but it was still early. I went outside to hang with Alex the Sound Guy who gave me the scoop on KC's rave woes. When I went back in there were alot more people there and Jeff Feller was at the decks. What can I say about Jeff? He's one of the few house DJs that rocks my world, and he even spins the vocal stuff, which I almost always hate. But he was tossing down on some mad tracks with flawless mixing and having a great time as usual. I danced my ass off as did everyone else. Don't ever miss Jeff if he comes to your town. Super-duper nice guy to boot. Kimball Collins, the headliner, was on next. I dunno, he's a good DJ and all, but his track selection was kinda flat. Crowd certainly seemed to enjoy him, maybe cause he's "BIG-TIME", but I thought he was pretty boring myself. Track after track of slightly-trancey house that never went anywhere. Have I mentioned I'm not the biggest house fan in the world? After that, I went up to see Jeff spin in the jazz room. The jazz room was cool, but a little small and way too brightly lit. Wandered downstairs to check out the Ryan Vaughan/Tim Johnston tag-team effort and well, Tim's a nice enough guy, and I've seen him spin some killer sets, but the last few times I've seen him spin I was definitely not impressed. I mean, people were cheering when he went on, but....there was one point, I was watching Ryan cheer Tim on from behind the decks, then Tim pulled a shoes-in-the-dryer mix (aka a trainwreck) and the smiles and cheers immediately vanished from Ryan. Time to head back upstairs. I guess a lot of kids don't go for the Brazilian jazz thing Jeff was throwing down, but I thought it sounded perfect at 4:30 in the morning. I looked around at one point and realized that I knew everyone in the room and that felt pretty good, even if it was only 5 ppl. Well, Jeff wanted to go home at 5:00, conveniently I had brought my records with me ;) so I was more than happy to go on. First thing I did was unplug the lights. Then I spun an extremely rare trip-hop set (for me anyway) which seemed to draw a few more people into the room. Bobby (Eden Flux) came in and started setting up his drum machines to go on next, so started pulling tracks outta my jungle collection. Things were going good, but then too many people started dancing and the needle had it's own ideas about my mixes. By that time, Bobby was ready to go on and I was ready to go home. Bobby started busting out on some mad mad techno, but I was pooped. On leaving, I noticed that about 20 more people had wandered into the room during my set which made me feel all warm and fuzzy. My traveling companion Missy and I then packed up, said our good-byes and started the torturous 2-hour drive back to Columbia. Missy said that was one of the best KC parties she had been to. I agreed. In summary, a pretty nice party. peace and respect wally -- wally@nicar.org "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, You are gods'?"