From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (gogo is insane)
Subject: MEDIA:  Denver Post article on CO Raves
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 22:31:48 GMT

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BACKGROUND:  Denver Raves have 2 *major* promoters:  Poor Boy Productions and
Step-On Productions.  Poor Boy has been around for a long time now, at least
since March.  They at one point had a club called Club X (inconspicuous, eh?).
This summer, the scene really took off in Denver, and a local news station did
a report opn raves, and basically, typically, trashed it as "drugged-out kidz,
dancing all night" - Poor Boy were the victims in the whole thing.  About that
time, a local DJ named K-Nee began getting really involved in the scene.  K-Nee
has a TV show called Rhythm Visions, in which he plays rap, r&b, soul, some
house, and always the occasional Dee-Lite video.  Whoop-E.  K-Nee formed Step
On Productions, an Poor Boy and Step On seem to be bickering since then.  At
one time, the Poor Boy voice mail had a big "let's come together" message,
which I think was directed at K-Nee.  Poor Boy raves are *real* raves, IMHO -
mostly techno, but also Happy Mondays and Manc, an occasional Sade mix, ambient
w/ chill outs, etc.  Poor Boy is real.  K-Nee snd Step On, on the other hand,
have warped raves into their own vision.  Step On raves contain mostly rap (not
breakbeat or Quadrophonia-esque, just plain ole Ice-T type stuff), Reggae, Ska,
Acid Jazz, and the occasional techno song.  This is the "Cross-Colours" crowd.
Not what I would call a real traditional rave.  Probly not what any of you
would call a real traditional rave, either.
 
P.S:  I personally think K-Nee has an inflated ego.
 
BTW, reference is made in the following article, I think, to The Seed and Imi
Jimi's.  Imi Jimi's is near from Wax Trax and is a classic
punk/rave/snowboard/thrash clothes store, and it's where people not on mailing
lists or new to raving usually pick up the flyers, thus, lots of m0shers,
trend-e's, Skinheads, end up at Colorado raves.  The Seed is a really decent
rave zine.
 
PPS:  Here's the flyer for the Step-On "Rave" that the reporters attended.  I
was there for the free garb.  (Sorry, I'm greed-e)
 
NOV 21
FRESH BEATS NO. 1
Featuring Live The Pharcyde!
A 6 hour HipHop, Acid Jazz Ragga and
House music jam with Denver's hippest DJ        [mind you he wrote the flyer]
Posse playin 2 rooms.
Also for your pleasure we give you GEAR-
A street wear fashion show.
18Plus w/ Alcohol for those 21Plus.             [ahem.]
$10 Advance - $13 at the door.
 
This "rave" took place at Rock Island, a real legendary Denver alternative
club.  Oddly, the best DJ in Denver, John Chamie, works there, and also does
stuff for Poor Boy.  I did not see him at FreshBeats, though.  Most of the Poor
Boy crowd didn't seem to be there, in fact.  Now I know why.
 
 
THE RAVE SCENE:
Howling at the Moon
-------------------
Appearing in the Denver Post Weekend Section, December 11, 1992.
[Front cover of the section shows two girls in a cage (they both would be
stereotyped as trendies, but, I know the girl on the left is pretty cool.) ]
[Background of actual article shows shitty meaningless pictures of the
previously mentioned rave.  Lots of the kids (15, 16) look fucked.]
Reprinted w/o permission, but since it's so much bullshit I don't care.
 
Midnight Saturday and te rave scene is just cranking up.  The under-18s have
been thrown out of Rock Island.  By law they gotta go before the midnight hour.
The over-18s are upstairs in what looks to be a badly painted rec room.
Everyone is dancing - alone or with partners.  Doesn't matter much.  The bars
are deserted.  There's no liquor allowed.  It's a pretty mellow night, but
"dope."  Definitely dope.  (Dope is now the newest verbiage for very good, for
those who haven't made it to the rave scene)  [hahahahahahahahaahahahahaha]
 
        [PS:  I think this is me, cuz that nite I was wearing my "Dope" shirt
        that is in the Dole banana/pineapple logo.  It's the shirt I wear to
        the Step-Ons I go to, since it fits in heavily with the much more
        African-American-Culture oriented crowd.  Stll, I'm insulted....=)  ]
 
There's another rave being promoted by Poor Boy Productions later [it was
Ultra-Purex, and for some st00pi|) reason K-Nee was DJing that one as well,
along with other locals and DJ Ecstatic from San Diego], but right now K-Nee
and his partner L7 Square of Step On Productions are in the middle of Fresh
Beats #1.  For 13 bucks there's The Pharcyde, a rap group, fashion show and
plenty of hip-hop, funk, ragga and acid jazz to dance to.
 
Everyone refers to the Fresh beats party as a rae, but it isn't exactly the
same scene that began in the summer of '87 in fields outside London and
Manchester, England.  Those parties were something wilder, cruder, illegal.
Howling at the moon.
 
        [Read:  The above paragraph implies DJ K-Nee has morphed raves into
        his own neo-BreakDance jams, but still uses the word when he probly
        shouldn't.]
 
Then raves were outlaw - dance parties that went on all night in abandoned
warehouses and fields.  The drug of choice was something called Ecstacy (X,
disco biscuit [???  *never* heard this term used in Denver], or E).
 
Bingo.  Raves -- the music, the clothes, the scene -- jumped to the U.S. an
Europe, carried on the mysterious trade winds of hip.
 
Raves were in New York, L.A. and europe by '88.  Last summer there was a mega
rave in Berlin.  Forty-Eight hours and an estimated 20,000 people.
 
Raves have picked up production values, permits and taxes along the way to the
fall of '92.  The cops know where they are.  There are clothing lines inspired
by the scene.  Marky Mark [jesus, even mentioning his name in an article about
raves should be a warning] is making big moola hanging out his Calvin Klien
underwear, looking as underground as possible in a zillion-dollar photo.  Even
Calvin Trillan tried to decipher raves in The New Yorker.  [anybody got that
article? - that guy's pretty cool - might be a pro-rave article....]
 
Who knows where this stuff comes from or where it goes?  Raves, like most
scenes, began in the petridish of new music.  Originally the rave sound was
techno, a kind of distorted disco, reworked for a generation that never had to
endure the Bee Gees.  Now you'll hear house, deep house, hip-hop, funk and acid
rock.
 
        [acid rock?  I've heard TECHNO mixes of Pink Floyd and Jefferson
airplane, and I've heard shoegazer and Manc, all of which are fine, but
I have yet to year just plain ole acid-rock....Again, their perspective
is coming only from Step-On...I guess I'm part off the "Old Generation  of
Ravers" who still listens to techno....That darned out-of-date  techno....Man,
is that stuff old...Especially groups like the  Prodigy....talk about
whack....And don't even mention 808 Sate - that's       BeeGees era....=)     ]
 
It was in California that raves started going bad.  E-Bye-Gum, a 26-year-old
Brit and co-owner of Boulder's Poor Boy Productions,  wasn't putting on raves
in L.A., but he was around the scene.  He says promoters started getting
jealous of one another and calling the cops on each other's parties.  "Yeah,
there were some nasty drug dealers around.  People just ruined the scene by
getting greedy."
 
But local promoters say Denver raves are pretty good.  "There're some problems
among the promoters, but we're all trying to get together and make this a good
scene," says K-nee.
 
        [They *are* getting together, but in the process the raves are losing
        the communal sense of Denver's ravers, as they have to promote them
        to a wder audience, since K-Nee attracts a completely different
        crowd.  By joining the promoters, the community is being corrupted.]
 
What about the drugs?  Aren't they going to blow this whole thing apart?
 
"I'm not going to tell you there are no drugs," says Gum, "but we don't promote
and we don't encourage them, and I have to say you don't see a of real messed
up people at these things."
 
        [I have to put in a word here for Denver's drug dealers.  =).  They
        are generally considerate and nice and conscious, and have a
conscience.  Ie, whippits are almost impossible to find, ketamine is
        nowehere, some people hand out LSD and X flyers, and at one time
        there was a guy handind out free pamphlets of scientific info related
        to LSD when he sold to people.  And there's absolutely no hard drugs.]
 
For anyone who has ever witnessed projectile vomiting at a Grateful Dead
concert or been subjected to a coke rap, rave seems pretty tame.  Because there
isn't any sanctioned drinking, the parties don't smell nearly as bad as rock
concerts.
 
Casey Stongle's company, Neural Netowrk and the Messiah, recently produced Rise
to the Bass, held in a former movie theater in north Denver.  The music was
mostly techno and the scene was a little funkier than Rock Island, but still
not nearly as tense as big rock concerts can get.  It may have something to do
with the fact that raves are rarely, if ever, over $10 and concerts can be a
big-ticket item, making for a little snarlier crowd.
 
Raves, though essentially legal now, still keep some of the renegade about
them.  They do not buy into mainstream advertising on radio and in print [but
they get mentioned a lot on a show called Teletunes (Denver's own
alt/industrial/techno music video show) and on K-Nee's own TV show called
Rhythm Visions, and on KTCL (college-corporate rock radio) and in Denver's huge
alternative newspaper Westword].  The only way to get to most raves, unless
they're held in clubs, is to pick up one of the fliers passed out on the
streets or available at Imi Jimi's, Wax Trax, or at other raves.
 
The fliers can be clever and highly produced.  Anyone in the know can tell you
what kind of music will be at that particular rave by reading the names of the
producers and Djs.
 
The Djs are, according to Hamblin [K-Nee], a big part of the rave scene.  "You
know that if you go to a rave by one guy you'll hear techno.  Or if you go to
my show [yeah!  he didn't call his own stuff "raves"!!!]  you'll hear more
hiphop and acid jazz."
 
Fliers list a phone number, which when dialed has a recording telling the ravee
[hehe, cool word] where to go the day of the rparty to pick up a map and pay a
fee.  this cloak-and-dagger act is a holdover from the days when cops were
regularly busting raves.
 
According to the local promoters, there has been only one bum rave in Colorado.
A stranger to town put out a flier, collected money at the map point.  But then
he stffed the crowd.
 
At a recent rave, Alicia (who didn't wan to use her last name) was waiting
outside on the corner of 10th and santa Fe [LoDo - the trend-e part of Denver].
She said she'd love to get some X, but she couldn't find anyone selling.  She
seemed pretty happy just to dance with her friends, but she had to leave a
little early to be at early mass the next day.
 
Like everyone else in her group she'd seen the Ward Lucas-Channel 9 report on
raves, last July.  The consensus is that Lucas is a geezer [try wanna-be
HardCopy].  Ravers say he was just looking "for the bad stuff".
 
His report consisted of cock-eyed fuzzy video footage, since the "team was
unbdercover," ad a lot of asking for drugs.
 
Even to those not on the rave scene it was not television's finest moment.
 
        [Co-inky-dink-ily, it was also the time the rave scene exploded.]
 
Kem hamblin III, aka K-Nee, a dj and partner [main guy] in Step On Productions
says "it was just so negative.  They dudn't even try ad understand that there's
a whole culture here.  A new kind of music and a lot of different kinds of
music.  What's interesting and exciting to me," says Hamblin, 31, "is that a
lot of us are creating careers around this scene. [read $$$]  I started in the
club scene, dj-ing and bartending.  Now I'm promoting these parties.  I havent
had to have a day job, so far.  [please find one and keep it.]  And take a look
at these fliers.  They're a big part of the scene.  Designers are getting to do
a lot of great work."
 
Rave attendence can run from several hundred to several thousand in the Denver
area.  One last summer held near Watkins [Enchanted Forrest or E. F. II - a
Poor Boy Prod.] was particularly memorable:  "You've never felt anything so
great as 3000 people just really dancing at 3 in the morning," said one avid
raver.  One or two raves have been held every weekend this fall, some going all
night if they can get the permits.
 
What most of the people on the rave scene don't find unusal enough to comment
on is the racial mix.
 
At nearly every rave, there will be African-American, white, Hispancic, and
Asian People.
 
        [and when there are, there are usually some Yellow-laced Doc Marten
        wearin' bald guys outside waiting until 4 in the morning. Skinheads
        are a problem in our community, and have been present at raves.]
 
Not exactly usual in the club scene, says Curt sims, who has run Rock Island,
Basins Up [now I-Beam], and 23 Parrish [take a right at the knife-toting
homeless carjacker].  "It (racial mix) is a non-issue, which is great."
 
William Logan is an ex-Dj and a graphic designer.  As editor of an underground
paper [zine], The Seed, [which is really cool and on-target], which covers
raves and other alternative scenes, he has had a lot of experience with Denver
night life.
 
"of course," he said, "raves are mixed and diverse.  This is just happening.
It doesn't have to be legislated.  there isn't any politician standing around
preaching diversity."
 
----
 
Overall, it should be clear that I don't like K-Nee and Step On productions.
He is really into the scene, and a decent, average dj, and he can put on a good
show, and his TV show is decent, but, he has alterior motives ($$), he also
caters to the African-American scene, and I've seen white people be harrassed
aoutside some Step On stuff, which has lead to the Skinhead tensions that exist
after some Step On events, especially around LoDo.  But, of course, e's not
responsible for that, but I don't see him making a positive contribution to the
rave scene here in Denver over all.  He plays the music he wants to play, and
then he calls it a rave when most of the readers of alt.rave would not.  Would
you wanna hear Body Count at a rave?  I don't, so I no longer go to Step Ons.
The only thing is that Step Ons often times have the sponsership of Fresh
Jive/Raw Vibes, and I really like FreshJive stuff, so I go to pick up a t-shirt
or something every so often.
 
--

    ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu	        FutureCulture:  In/f0rmation
    ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com		future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu

Xref: sparky alt.rave:5860 rec.music.funky:1957