Music on the Playa

If there's one definitive thing I can say about music on the playa this year, it's that I've now heard all the James Brown I need to hear for an entire year. Every day, several times a day, I would hear The Godfather testifying from somewhere, and even saw him being towed in effigy around the Esplanade behind a bicycle one day.

The aural omipresence of James Brown was an indication of what seemed like the general musical mood; breaks and big electronic thumps certainly had their place at 10 O'clock and along the Esplanade, but when you got into the small soundsystems the vibe was much more about easygoing party pop 'n' rock. On Thursday night, trying to find my way among various pathways of the mind, the dance party at a camp down Allante made me think I had stumbled back into Drunk and Horny, while during the day I had happened into a Rolling Stones party at the Solar Snow Cone camp.

There were of course plenty of big whoo-whoo parties with electronic music, but distance and the difficulty of getting around on bikes due to the sand traps kept me from really going out to the big dance camps like Opulent Temple. There's something about the scale of those camps, too, that I find a bit off-putting; if being around a thousand fucked-up people at 1015 seems a little much to deal with, try adding a couple thousand more people to the mix. Just think about the amount of dust generated by all those stomping feet.

My best musical moment came on Friday at the Deep End, where Worthy of Dirty Bird fame had the opening set. I had been up for a pretty intense twenty-four hours at that point, and had become even more doggie than usual, but Worthy's set sparked me back to life for a few more hours. After that, though, I was basically done with dancing at Burning Man; I checked into the Honey Sound System party at Comfort and Joy after midnight that night, deemed it too hot and reeking of sweaty faeries for my physical condition, and soon after was passed out in my tent (J, though, later told me that Pee Play laid out a fun set).

I did play a set at Camp Zoom on Wednesday night, but it was Lord Kook who can lay claim to two truly awesome sets, both at Glitter Camp on the Esplanade. On Tuesday, after struggling through a dust storm on Monday and then spending all day Tuesday working on our camp art project, we were ready to party, and so, it seemed, was everyone else there. LK held that space for a solid two hours that night, drawing in lots of wandering gay boys, including Pee Play, who was drawn in by the whoops that went up when LK dropped Lindstrom's "Another Station." LK returned on Wednesday to play a tag-team with Jovino that lasted a full five hours, until both of them were just too exhausted to play another track.

On the Burning Man census this year there was a section to check off the things that brought you to the playa, and one of them was "the music scene." I ticked this off as one of my attractions, but I really think that the version of the Burning Man music scene that I experience here, through Opulent Temple, Space Cowboys, and the host of fundraisers is a lot more interesting for me than what I've encountered on the playa. In many ways, the sound of the playa has become pretty predictable, and the scale of the event makes it both very difficult to find things that are more off the beaten path, and to get to them when you do find them. I know, though, that all these things move in cycles, and just as breaks superseded trance as the sound of the playa, something else new will eventually come along; I just wish it would hurry up and happen already.

Event Review: Dirty Bird 3rd Anniversary at Mighty

On Saturday myself, the boyfriend, Kitty, and our friend Matt G went out to Mighty for the Dirty Bird label 3rd Anniversary party, where we were looking forward to hearing what the producers behind one of our most up-and-coming techno/tech-house labels would put forth as representative of their sound. We got a pretty broad cross-section of music, from lush and deep to tribal and almost full-on trance, but then Christian Martin dropped the one track that will make me leave the dancefloor, if not the club, every time, and that, combined with the generally schizophrenic vibe from the crowd, convinced us to head over to Sparky’s for burgers before Claude vonStroke, the label’s founder, ever came on.

We arrived around 10.30 as Justin Martin was just getting into his set, playing what, for me, was the best music all night. He started out with a deep, very lush house sound and gradually built in more techy elements as he went along. As the boyfriend remarked, you can tell he has a background in production, as he was constantly fiddling with knobs and effects to push the sonic elements of his tracks around. There was a complaint that he was perhaps too oriented around breakdowns, but his mixes were tight and kept everyone moving along quite nicely.

After Justin, Worthy took to the decks with a tribal house sound that eventually worked its way up into what almost sounded like hard trance – there was a moment toward the end of his set when I could have sworn that I was back at a candy rave, and there were plenty of hands in the air to help with that impression. Unfortunately, by this time the dance floor, and the entire club, was so packed that the best I could manage was to hang out toward the back of the dancefloor and nod along – if Dirtybird has a 4th anniversary party next year, I hope they’ll take it to a larger venue, like Mezzanine.

And then Christian Martin came on and dropped a remix the one track that I absolutely cannot stand as his opener, Khia’s “My Neck, My Back.” For me, no matter how smart, innovative, and fun the music has been before this track, once it gets dropped it turns the entire club into a strip joint and lowers the IQ of every person present by ten points. I’ve walked off the dancefloor when it got dropped at gay nights, I left the dancefloor when Joakim dropped it, and my thought this time was, if this is Christian Martin’s indication of where he plans to take the mood of the night, I’m going elsewhere. At the time that simply meant a trip to the loo, but when I got in there I walked into the middle of some shout-down between two guys, and that was enough to convince me that it was time to leave.

A word about the crowd: I have yet to figure out who these people are that come to Mighty. I see more button-down shirts, black cocktail dresses, and expensive handbags than any club outside of North Beach here, and nobody really struck me as being that much of a music head (but, I will say, they do dance, which is far better than a bunch of people standing around looking vaguely ill-at-ease, which you find at so many gay nights). I did see some folks there representing the club freaks, which was great, but every time I go there I get this vibe of white collar professional guys taking their girlfriends out to this dance club that they think is kind of edgy, trying to impress them that they know about places other than North Beach and the Marina. There’s also a seriously ugly undercurrent to the vibe here, perhaps because so many people get packed into a small space with bad traffic flow, inadequate bathroom facilities, and no place to sit down. While standing outside waiting for Kitty to fetch his coat I saw two other guys get into a shouting match, with one calling out to the other “yeah, yeah, what’s your name, where do you live?” Even the bouncers get into it here; standing in the smoking area out front I saw a guy hop the barricade, only to have a security guard grab him by the throat and essentially force him back over the barricade. Hey, you know, sometimes talking to people works too.

So, having heard Claude vonStroke last week at The End Up, where there was plenty of room to dance, a much more congenial atmosphere, and a better sound system (seriously, unless you’re right at the focal point of that big new 7-way system at Mighty, it sounds like crap, and too loud crap at that), getting burgers at Sparky’s before the 2AM rush sounded like an excellent way to end the evening. I like a lot of the stuff Dirtybird is putting out, and they certainly demonstrated that, both individually and collectively, they’ve got serious chops and a mastery of a wide variety of genres; I just hope that, next year, they’ll be partying in a better venue, with a crowd that’s a bit less B&T.

Upcoming Event: Dirty Bird 3rd Anniversary at Mighty, Saturday March 8

This Saturday Dirtybird will be celebrating its 3rd Anniversary with a blow-out party featuring Claude vonStroke, Justin Martin, Christian Martin, and Worthy at Mighty!

10PM - 4AM
$10, free before 11 with RSVP, $5 before 1AM with RSVP
Mighty, 119 Utah x 15th