Rave Promoter:

Breaking the Law at the Turn of the Millennium

by Mike P

Written in February 2014

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Introduction:

This is the story of how I became a Detroit rave promoter in the year 2000, at the tail end of that legendary underground scene.

I grew up on a dirt road about 40 miles west of Detroit.  Before being a “nerd” became sort of cool in some circles I was a nerd.  I got straight A’s growing up and that didn’t equate to being very hip or popular.  Naively I hoped that becoming good at basketball would overshadow my good grades, but my classmates were too clever to be tricked that easy and darnit, they still saw me as a nerd.  My parents, especially my mother, was very protective, so doing the stuff cool kids did and getting into trouble was definitely out of the question growing up.  But somehow, someway, a little over a year after I graduated from high school I did something unbelievably cool that most nerds would never dream of doing. I threw my first illegal rave in Detroit.  I used a 90 year old building located in a dangerous, high crime area.   I flew in the headlining DJ.  1000 people were there.  The party went past 6am, and it was all an epic birthday party for 2 of my friends.  It was a huge success in every way possible and the magic of that night has never left me.  

In the last several years 2 of the most legendary Detroit promoters, Beau from Hazard-S and Dean from Syst3m, passed away far too young.  They threw some truly amazing events that I will remember for the rest of my life.  I often wonder how they got started.  What motivated them to risk going to jail or losing a lot of money to throw their events?  How did they feel when the rave scene was ending and they knew they had to stop?  I’m sure some people close to them have heard fragments of their amazing stories, but none of us will ever have the full story that connects all the dots and goes through their troubles as well as their triumphs.  Their deaths reminded me that you never know how much time you’ll have so I decided to write my story.  I wasn’t the biggest rave promoter in Detroit and I didn’t throw as many parties as some others, but I threw a number of really good events that a lot of people attended.  I’ve been told my parties were some peoples’ favorite events of all time, that some people met who they eventually married at my parties, and a friend (full disclosure: he was in a pretty euphoric state) told me during one of my events that it was the best night of his life.  So, perhaps for a number of partykids I achieved what Dean and Beau had done for me: Throw some parties that people will remember forever.  How that came to happen is a story that I think is worth telling.

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My definition of a “rave” and why remembering them is important:

Raves don’t exist anymore.  The term rave or raving is used often by journalists who write about EDM festivals and events at clubs or concert halls, but the main components that make up what I consider a rave haven’t existed in over a decade in the US.  For me, this is what constituted a rave:

-Raves were illegal events.  There was no age restrictions, no permits, no insurance, etc.  They were DIY events where you got in, threw a party, and got out as fast as possible.

-At raves dance music was played continuously on massive soundsystems.

-They took place in non-club, non-concert hall spaces which in Detroit were usually dirty, grimy warehouses.  

-They went until at least 4am and often past 6am.

-The location of the event was not revealed until the night of the event.

-There was anywhere from hundreds to several thousands of attendees.

I could get even more picky and talk about vinyl records, printed flyers, map points and other aspects of raves that made them so different from electronic music events today, but those core elements in my list were what defined a rave to me.  There was risk (for partygoers and especially for promoters).  There was drama (imagine dancing at 5am and in the corner of your eye noticing cops on a walkthrough considering if they’ll bust the party).  There was excitement (every second a rave was going on without a hitch).  It was a unique and special phenomenon.  Old hippies tell their stories of peace, love, Woodstock, etc. in the 1960’s and I know many of us wish we could have been there to experience it ourselves.  We love those stories because we see how much the magic of that time affected the people that witnessed it from their music and artistic interests to more significant things like their perspectives on life and love.  Their experiences and stories then inspired the generations that followed and they still do today. The rave scene for me and many others was our version of the 60’s.  It was a futuristic, euphoric, high-tech version of that magic that like the 60’s only existed for a decade, but would continue to influence the world for decades to come.  They were beyond fun, and in my opinion played a pivotal role in shaping many of the amazing music, event and counter-culture movements that exist today.

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My story:

To tell the full story of how I became a rave promoter I guess it all starts in 1996 in the small town of Willis, Michigan. I was 15 years old and staying up late watching the obscure music videos MTV only played really late at night after most people were asleep. I saw the music video for "The Box" by Orbital and it changed my life. I was listening to mostly alternative rock at the time and I had never heard electronic music like this before, let alone seen a music video for it, and it blew me away. I wanted to hear more. Compared to today there were barely any resources on internet at that time so I started asking my friends if any of them knew about this kind of music. I went to Lincoln High School 4 miles away in Ypsilanti. It was a school surrounded by cornfields and none of the people I talked to knew anything about this new sound I had discovered. I was bummed because I wanted to know more and had no idea where to look or who to ask. I didn't even really know what to call it so I just called it all techno at first. I kept asking around and one day I mentioned techno to my old friend Marshall, whom I had known since 1st grade, and to my surprise he knew a little bit about it. His Dad owned a DJ service that facilitated weddings, ice skating rinks, etc. and he told me about the British electronic music duo The Chemical Brothers. I was excited to hear their music and he made me a cassette mixtape that included their song "Life Is Sweet". I loved it immediately. I bought their album "Exit Planet Dust" and CD single "Setting Sun" and played them non-stop.

Pretty soon I turned 16 and could drive myself to Tower Records in Ann Arbor.  My electronic music CD collection expanded to include DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing...", Moby's "Everything Is Wrong", Tricky's "Maxinquaye", and Underworld's "Dubnobasswithmyheadman". Marshall noticed how excited I was getting about electronic music and introduced me to his older friend John because he was really interested in electronic music as well. John was a little older and seemed like a weird guy, but he knew a lot more about electronic music than me and collected it on vinyl so I wanted to pick his brain and learn all that I could about this music. I went with him to a short-lived record store in Ypsilanti called Hanger 18 that was on Washtenaw Ave across from the Putt Putt Golf & Arcade I frequented growing up. It was a small place with some beat up black leather couches and records on the wall and in racks organized by subgenres I had never heard of. I asked John to explain the subgenres to me and I don't remember how he described techno or house but I remember he told me that the newest genre jungle, which was his favorite, was like a combination of techno and house. Well, I know now that his description was so inaccurate that it's actually pretty hilarious. Bad understanding of subgenres aside, I started buying vinyl records. I didn't buy a mixer or plan to be a DJ or anything. I just thought it was cool to get a hold of the newest sounds that weren't available on CD's or at regular music stores. (Obviously this was before it became common for people to have mp3’s or use computers to play back music.) It felt cool to be listening to this cool new music that most kids at my high school had no idea existed. Like all vinyl record stores at the time I could preview records on the turntables in the store. To help select which records I would preview I started out asking the store owner for the hardest, fastest techno he had and I started buying records by Detroit's Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and Direct Beat Records.

Then one day John and I stopped in and he started talking to a guy named Mark Moss who DJ'ed by the name 8en. Jungle, which originated in the UK, was still very new in the US and I remember John asking Mark if he knew of any jungle DJ's in Detroit. I remember Mark saying that he was going to be the first one. I didn’t know what kind of events Mark DJ'ed at in Detroit but I was intrigued by jungle being so new so I started to check it out more and grew to really love it. Pretty soon it became the only genre of records I was buying and Metalheadz became my favorite label. One day I brought my friend Billy into the store and the owner asked us if we ever went to "parties". As I was not the most popular kid my sophomore year in high school I hadn't even been to a high school house party yet. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what this super cool record store owner was talking about. John hadn't talked to me about "parties" and I must have not yet paid attention to the little flyers that were on the windowsill by the front of the store. He described how this one particular Detroit party he was holding a flyer for was going to be a great one and he started talking about how great the DJ's and live acts were that were going to be there. I thought he must be talking about a big house party or something like that because it was obvious we weren't 18 yet and therefore wouldn't be able to get into a bar or a club. I was so confused! He talked about this so passionately and made it sound so freaking cool that I knew that whether it was that event or another one like it I was going to make it to one of those Detroit parties some day. I was going to find out what the hell he was talking about!

Within the next month or so I went to a what would later be recognized as an extremely rare event. I saw Aphex Twin at Clutch Cargo’s in September of 1997. It was unlike anything I had been to before or anything I’ve seen since, and I’m not trying to brag but I’ve seen a lot since.  Nothing stood out like that show!  There was a couch in the back of the stage with what looked like a bookshelf in front of half of it. There was nothing else on the stage. I had been to a number of rock concerts by this time but I could already tell this was going to be completely different. When the lights went down a skinny guy with long hair that obstructed his face walked over to the couch and stretched out on it so we could see his legs and feet, but his entire torso was blocked by the object that looked like a bookshelf. “What the hell?” I thought. “We can’t see him and he can’t see us. We can’t even see his equipment!” I never saw his face or his equipment, but over the course of the show I heard the most amazing music of my life. Through all the other crazy surprises of that show including dancing teddy bears with Aphex Twin’s face, a guy that came out and shaved his head, and a finale with the shaved head guy dancing around naked, I got a weird glimpse into the mysterious, secretive world of underground electronic music. For me this had nothing to do with raves. It almost had nothing to do with music. For me this was about understanding and trying define this idea of underground. I didn’t know it yet but this was a big part of what would later influence me to create events of my own that I wanted to have that same sense of mystery and magic for those that attended. After the show I was somewhere between cloud nine and totally confused. As I walked out of Clutch Cargo’s I was still on the cement steps when I was handed a flyer like the ones on the windowsill at Hanger 18. The guy that handed it to me explained that it would be the first party in Detroit with an all jungle line-up. To me that sounded like the coolest thing ever. Be a part of the birth of something new in Detroit at one of these “parties” that seemed like they were the epitome of this mysterious underground music and scene? Sign me up. Now!

Well, when you’re a nerd with protective parents the odds are they aren’t excited about the idea of a 16 year old heading into one of the worst parts of Detroit to go to an illegal party that goes until 6am. That presented a challenge. I would need help to get to this all jungle party. I enlisted the help of my friend Billy and explained to him that in addition to these events being known for having the most cutting edge music I had gotten the impression that they are known for being euphoric atmospheres that are unlike anything we’ve experienced. Billy was in.  In general he was more interested in hip-hop (and would later most appreciate witnessing some of the biggest, rare hip-hop performances at raves including Eminem, Afrika Bambaata, and a turntablism battle between DJ Rectangle and DJ Magic Mike) but he was open to new experiences and embraced this chance to check out something new.  All we had to do was tell my parents I was staying at his place, wait until his parents were asleep, and we were good to go. It got closer to that day and I noticed that the flyer didn’t have directions. It had a phone number instead. It was a standalone voicemail that had a recording and said to call back the night of the event for directions to the party. Well, once Billy’s parent’s fell asleep we snuck out and headed towards Detroit. The voicemail told us to go to a map point where we would get directions to the party. As many partykids know this was a way to prevent the police from finding out where the party was. The map point was a hip clothing store at the edge of a bad part of town, and I remember thinking the cool people working there wearing all their awesome rave gear looked cooler than anyone I had ever met. I was stoked. Then they told us about a problem. The venue the promoters were planning to use didn’t work out and the party was now in Windsor. Crap. Maybe this was all for nothing. Maybe this wouldn’t work out. Maybe raves are a bad idea. Or maybe not.

We decided we were going to cross the bridge into Canada to go to our first rave. There was no stopping us! When we got to the venue I couldn’t believe that as a 16 year old I wasn’t even ID’ed. I was patted down harder than I ever had been before (or since!). They guy even felt inside my shoes which surprised and slightly terrified me to be honest. Once we got inside I knew I had found what I was looking for. I had finally made it to one of these “parties”. People were dancing in futuristic, beautiful, and unquestionably urban styles I had never seen before. The coolest vinyl records from all over the world were being played and I was starting to better understand what “underground” was and what this scene was all about. It wasn’t the biggest or best party. In fact I know the promoters were disappointed that the last second venue switch from Detroit to Windsor caused hundreds of partykids to not show. However, it was my first rave so it will always be special to me.

In the following year or so I was able to sneak out to a handful of parties with John or Billy, maybe one every couple months or so. Some of the (now legendary) venues I partied at were the Packard Plant, “The Theatre” and “Mack & Bellevue”.  I went to one of the largest Detroit raves ever called “Freaks Believe In Beats” at the legendary “Under The Bridge” venue, and I saw DJ’s like Magda spin opening sets years before they became famous.  I couldn’t make it out to Detroit as often as I wanted to but I’d always call “Linda G’s Ambassador Snap” info line to get info on all the upcoming raves. I would write down the info just in case I was able to sneak out.

One day in school I wore a Goldie shirt I had picked up at a recent show.  He was a drum & bass icon that made a rare US tour where he performed with a live band. A guy in the back row of my advanced physics class asked me where I got the shirt. I couldn’t believe it. I thought nobody in my school (aside from Marshall) even knew the subgenres drum & bass or techno, let alone knew specific producers or acts. I was ecstatic to find someone that shared my interest! His name was Dave. He had just moved to our school from Thailand (where he had to work just as hard as I did to find out about electronic music) and we became friends immediately. What completely blew me away was that he wasn’t just a listener like me. He actually owned drum machines and synthesizers and produced electronic music himself!  His artist name was Triptronix.  He would give me demos of his music on cassette or I would stop over to his house and he would play his music live. It was so interesting to watch the music be triggered live on his hardware and see how drum machines and synthesizers work. Nowadays almost all electronic music producers (and many DJ’s) play their music out of a laptop when producing or playing live so I miss seeing those big machines sending the music to the speakers.  We also went to some great parties in Detroit together and before long I was mailing out his cassette demos to promoters trying to get him gigs at raves. A promoter named Scott from Havoc, one of the bigger production companies in Detroit, liked the tape and got back to us. He let us into one of his parties for free and we talked to him about booking Dave but he wasn’t interested in committing to anything. To make matters worse when we left the party there was a minivan blocking the alleyway to the lot where we were parked.  Many of us scrambled to find a solution as nobody could find Scott.  I tried convincing a guy we met to break into the minivan so he could try to put it in neutral and move it, but to my surprise before he could our friend Dusty smashed the window and Dave jumped in instead!  As luck would have it the police pulled up at that very moment and dragged Dave off to jail.  Shit!  I had to call Dave’s Dad and tell him that he was in a Detroit jail.  After that night Dave was worried that his Dad would be so mad that he’d have to sell his gear and never go to a rave again.  Luckily, that didn’t happen and these roadblocks never stopped my determination to get Dave a gig at a rave. I got him an odd, but really fun, gig playing in the drama room during lunch at our high school and he played at my graduation party, but I had my sights set on something bigger. One way or another I knew I’d have him playing at parties in Detroit.

Before long I was headed to East Lansing to go to school at Michigan State. It was an hour away from my friends Dave and Billy in Ypsilanti, and it was a little farther away from Detroit, but I found out pretty soon there were plenty of other ravers that would make the trek to Detroit on Friday and Saturday nights. I met a DJ named Dan that had his turntables and mixer set up in his dorm room. To me that seemed like the coolest thing ever. Sometimes I would just chill in his room and watch him mix for an hour or so. He had tons of great records and I loved studying the art of beat-matching and mixing vinyl records.  Sadly in many ways those skills are now obsolete now as the current hardware and software DJ’s use can easily do most of that work for them.

Pretty soon I started dating a girl in my dorm that was also into electronic music and raves.  She was surprised I had never taken the step deeper into the euphoria of raves that many ravers do. I'm going to avoid going into specific details but I'm sure it's not hard to guess what I mean by that. She told me that for her going to that next level at raves had been essential to get the full experience of what a rave can be.  She wanted me to enjoy a party with her that way.  I set my limits, which I always stuck to, on how far I’d go but I decided to join her at that level.  Another couple drove us to a “Get Freaky” party in Cleveland (co-thrown by DJ/promoter Wilhelm K) that was supposed to be more massive than anything I had ever been to in Detroit.  The venue owners backed out at the last second and the promoters scrambled to send their headlining DJ’s to a number of clubs throughout town.  We went to the club where “Superstar” (now complete joke) DJ Keoki was spinning.  I didn’t know much about him but he was the favorite DJ of the boyfriend in the couple that drove us so we went for it.  I was disappointed that we ended up at a club (as I’ve never liked clubs) and I wasn’t impressed by Keoki, but that night I stepped into that next level of euphoria and finally understood what my girlfriend wanted to show me. I felt like I had ventured into a hypnotic alternate reality. It was pretty unreal, and after that night I felt like I finally had the full understanding of raves were and what drew people to them.

I wanted to share what I experienced in Cleveland with more of my Ypsilanti friends, and that's exactly what I did. I started coming home from MSU almost every weekend and pretty soon a lot of friends were going to raves with me. I went from feeling like the lone Ypsi raver to having a whole crew that would ride multiple carloads deep to raves in Detroit. Goings to parties with a big group of friends proved to be the real final piece of the puzzle for me. While it had been fun to go with a friend or a small group of friends, the experience became more incredible the more friends you had. Those friends made more friends at the parties and pretty soon it felt like you knew a hundred people on any given night. You could hang out with one group, dance for a while, run into some other friends, check out the DJ for a while, catch up with someone else and repeat. When I started going to parties I felt like an outsider that didn't know anyone, and now I truly felt like I belonged. Our group of friends had so much fun we often weren't ready to leave when the parties were winding down around 6am!

I was so happy to have a group of friends that went to parties together that I thought our group should have a nickname. Looking back this may sound a little cheesy, but a lot of partykids had their own raver nicknames so I figured why not give our group a nickname? I didn't come up with anything profound or amazing. I pretty much just called us what we were. We were crew of kids from around Ypsilanti that went to parties. So, I called us the Ypsilanti Party Crew, or YPC for short. Everybody loved it and before long all the friends we made in Detroit knew us as the YPC. In addition to me, Dave and Billy there was Dusty, Lucas, Shannon, Gerilynn, Brad, Dub, Kellee, Ahkeem, Aldez, Jayme, another Luke, and another Mike. There were also a number of girls like Amy, Jori, Elin, Angie, Rachel, Chelsea, Dawn, Erin and Kelly that hung out a lot and were part of the YPC as far as I was concerned. I was even surprised to hear that several kids at raves from other cites were asking if they could "be part of YPC". This was funny to me because I didn't expect this to happen and thought it didn't even make sense since they weren't from the Ypsilanti area. However, I have to admit it felt pretty cool to be a part of something special that others wanted to be a part of.

Since there were two of us named Mike I often went by Mike P and the other Mike went by Mike A. The previous summer before I went to college we had thrown a sweet hotel room party for Mike A's birthday. He visited me in Lansing one weekend and while riding with some other ravers to a party in Detroit he asked, "I wonder how we can throw an even better party for my birthday this year." Dan the DJ from my dorm said, "You guys should throw a party in Detroit." This sounded impossible and I couldn't believe he would even bring up such an idea. I thought "Yeah right!", but it turned out he knew a promoter named Squish and he started to explain more about how raves worked. He told me that the sound and lighting people set up everything themselves. For the venue you just need to become friends with the other promoters and through them get contact info for whichever warehouses were being used around the time of your party. For all of these expenses and for bigger DJ's you only needed to pay half upfront, and he and his friends would be the DJ's for most of the night for free. At the end of the night we could use the money we made at the door to pay the rest of what was owed to the venue owner, sound company, lighting company, and the bigger DJ’s. I started to do the math and it actually almost sounded feasible. If we decided to do this and I took the lead on organizing it I knew that we should throw a Friday party. Saturday parties were always bigger with multiple rooms and several headlining DJ's flown in from out of town, but Friday parties could get away with being a little smaller and having only one headlining DJ. Mike A told me he was getting some money from his dad soon and that he'd be able to pay for everything. I was surprised to hear him say that, but it sounded great to me and I wanted to go for it! We decided this would be a big joint birthday party for him and Billy, and I was excited that this would finally give Dave the chance to play a live set at a Detroit rave as Triptronix.

I knew I had a lot of work to do before throwing a rave could realistically happen, but it ended up being more work than I expected. I needed to meet Squish and as many Detroit promoters as I could. I needed to figure out what other DJ’s I would book for the party. I needed to come up with a production company name and a name for the party. I needed to get a standalone voicemail to post directions to the venue. I needed to get a flyer designed and printed. I needed to find security guards. I needed to buy tons of bottled water to sell. I needed to buy a cashbox to use at the door. I needed to establish from 10pm to 6am who would take money at the door, who would pat down boys, who would pat down girls, who would sell water, and who would “make drops” of money from the door to a hidden location. For the headlining DJ I needed to book their flight, hotel, and determine who would drive them from place to place. Most importantly, I needed a venue. I was 19 years old and before the party even happened it had become bigger than anything I ever done before.

After the weekend when Dan planted the seed by giving us the idea to throw a rave I started gathering info and created a table in Microsoft Word where I organized separate line items for everything that had anything that had to do with the party.  It started off pretty bare with with “Triptronix (Live PA)” and Dan’s DJ name “Kid Kinetic” under the lineup section, but as the weeks went by I kept adding info and making decisions for the party. I decided to name my company YPC Productions after the name of our group of friends. It didn’t even feel like it was a decision I had to make because all of the YPC was now involved in this and I wanted to feel like the crew of friends and the company were totally connected, not separate. To this day I’ve never heard of another Detroit production company that was named after a group of friends, and I think that’s pretty cool and it made us unique and special.

Dan started to confirm more free DJ’s but I knew I needed more than just his friends. My friend Angie recommended Detroit DJ Trancender. She was adamant that tons of people who show up just for him so I took her word for it and booked him for a few hundred bucks. I also booked Wilhelm K, who at this point had stopped throwing parties in Cleveland and was now one of the biggest promoters in Detroit with his new company dubTech. The only other thing I needed was a headlining DJ from another state that I could fly in. One Friday night when a bunch of the YPC was at a party at the “Whorehouse” rave venue I started to hear something that I hadn’t heard before. It was a jungle DJ that was scratching continuously over the music. I immediately headed closer to the DJ to get a closer look and I was blown away. I had heard some jungle and drum & bass DJ’s do a little scratching over small parts of their sets but this guy was an animal! He was doing the kind of next-level scratching you see at national DMC scratch competitions while maintaining a danceable groove. I asked some guy next to me who the DJ was. He told me his name was K-Step and he was a from Indianapolis. I knew immediately I had found my headliner.

I decided to call the party “Likwid” after a rave dancing style called liquid that we all really liked. I spelled it differently because I thought it looked cool that way. What’s funny is years later I’ve seen former Detroit ravers online reference that style of dancing and spell it as likwid. I thought that was pretty amazing because before my party Likwid it was never spelled that way anywhere. With that being the case I think it’s safe to assume that after going to Likwid, and knowing it was named after the dancing style, many people thought that was the way to spell it when writing it down. Pretty sweet!

I purchased a standalone voicemail and had Lucas start designing a flyer. He created a dark cityscape with the word Likwid floating above it in huge graffiti-like letters that looked like they were melting. It was perfect. Wilhelm K had told me about a place in Florida that would print 5,000 flyers for a good price. For some reason they would ship them to the airport where you could pick them up there. I used them and I’ll never forget the day they arrived. Most of our friends were hanging out at Dave’s house. When I arrived with the big brown box of flyers everyone knew that Likwid was really going to happen. Dub even admitted that up to that moment he didn’t think it would actually happen, but when he saw those flyers he knew this was no longer just a dream that a lot of us were talking about. This was real and it was going to happen.

We were all on cloud nine once the flyers arrived but we started to hit some snags. Mike A had some story about how he was no longer going to get the money from his Dad. I had suspected this might happen because although I loved him as a close friend he was not that reliable and had a tendency for exaggerations. Billy contributed $600, but if the party was going to happen everything else was up to me. I had to think long and hard if I was going to empty out my savings to make this happen or if I should cut my losses. This was not an easy decision as a college kid that was watching every penny while trying to figure out my future.  I had saved several thousand dollars while working in the Sears hardware department in high school, and if I was willing to gamble that money on this party I knew I had just enough. I finally decided that I would go for it, but I knew I needed a big, special plan to make sure the party was a success. At every party you would get handed flyers for upcoming parties. Maybe you’d get some walking in, maybe you’d be handed one while you were dancing or hanging with friends, or maybe you’d get one handed to you while walking out. Typically the person that handed you the flyer wouldn’t say anything and they’d just move to the next person. This is where my big plan came in. When the YPC went to parties with the flyers I told them to talk to everyone they gave a flyer to. I told them to say the party was being thrown by a bunch of friends, it was birthday party for a couple of us, and that it was the big premier of our amazingly talented friend Triptronix who would be playing a Live PA. We were friendly with everyone and that extra explanation went a long way, just as it did when I was handed the flyer to my first party walking out of the Aphex Twin concert and that guy talked to me. Before long everyone in the rave scene knew at least someone in the YPC, whether it was Gerilynn, Dub, Ahkeem, Billy or any of the rest of us. We had made tons of new friendships and our friends wanted to support a party being thrown by a group of partykids that were just like them.

With the financial snag taken care the biggest concern I now had was I needed to find a venue. I’ve always been very organized and planned everything ahead as far ahead as possible, so it was killing me that I couldn’t confirm a venue until the week of the event. I had too much money tied up in this and I was afraid I would be stuck without any venue at all!  One shady, small-time promoter named Erron tried steering us towards a venue that he knew wouldn’t work and wasting time on that became very discouraging.  I thought after going to many great Friday parties at “The Whorehouse” maybe that would be a good venue to use. Weeks before Likwid Dave winded up playing a set there in the second room of a Squish party called “Stil” (pronounced style) where in a very uncharacteristic set of events the sound company threw together some speakers at 2am once Dave, unexpected to them, showed up with his drum machines and synths. The second room had never been used in that way before and it didn’t work out well, but it seemed like throwing our own party there would be a perfect opportunity for Dave to finally play in the main room where he belonged. However, a party got busted there not long after Squish’s party so there was no way we could use that venue. I was starting to freak out. I was passing out flyers at a party at the “Mound & Outer Drive” venue and a middle-aged guy, who was definitely not a raver, approached me. He asked what venue I was using for my party and I said I was still looking. He told me that he was the middle man for the “Butternut & Tillman” venue and through him I could use that space for my party. I had heard of that venue but I had not been there. Luckily, there was a party there the weekend before Likwid and I checked it out. It was awesome. It was at least 5 times bigger than “The Whorehouse” so I thought it was more than big enough for the Friday party I was throwing. It had plenty of parking, the main area opened up beautifully after you walked up some stairs, and the DJ’s played on a stage, which I thought was cool. Nowadays it probably sounds funny that I mentioned thinking the stage seemed cool, but at the time I was used to parties at warehouses where the DJ was always on the same level as the dancefloor. The turntables and mixer would typically just sit on a stack of cinder blocks and anyone could walk up and watch the DJ spin and dig for records. I generally prefer the DJ being on the same level as the crowd, but since that was not the norm at the time I liked the idea of my party being a little different in this way. I booked the venue and was almost ready.

I proceeded to hire X-Caliber Security as well as the assistance of a retired cop named Frank. At the time promoters paid Frank to stand out front all night and when the cops stopped by he was able to get rid of them. Devlin, the head of X-Caliber Security, also knew a lot of cops from playing basketball with them on weekends so I was counting on the two of them to make sure the police didn’t bust the party.

July 14th, 2000 finally arrived. I’m sure I probably didn’t sleep the night beforehand. I was excited, but more nervous than I had ever been in my life. On one hand if everything worked out this could become a legendary night many of us would remember forever, on the other hand there was a fair chance I could end up in jail.  It was a risk I decided to take, and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made.

Most of the YPC and I got to the venue in the afternoon.  Part of the deal was that we would clean up the mess from the last party.  We were also going to put black plastic sheeting over all the windows.  Naturally we also needed to be there while the sound and lighting companies set up.  Oddly the venue was in more of a residential neighborhood than an industrial neighborhood, and when we started setting up some young local kids kept coming in the venue and running around.  This was awkward for me because as much as I wanted to yell at them so they would leave, I didn’t want to frighten them enough for them to get their parents as to be completely honest I was definitely scared of the idea of getting confronted by the locals.  This was the ghetto, and I had a lot more to lose than these people, so I didn’t want to piss any of them off.  Things were going according to plan until we hit a couple more roadbumps.  Lucas wasn’t able to get the video camera he promised, and whoever was supposed to pick up K-Step at the airport had to back out.  I was very stressed out and anxious about the party and admit that I flipped out on Lucas.  This night had become the most important thing in my life at that time, as I’d like to think it was for all of the YPC, and I knew we’d want video footage of it to watch down the road. Unfortunately, there was no back up plan and there was no footage shot that night.  The next problem was determining who would now head to the airport to pick up K-Step.  For some reason everyone seemed to have an excuse for why they couldn’t, so it was up to me.  Kellee and I drove to the Detroit Metro Airport.  At the time you still could walk up to a gate where someone was arriving so we parked and went in.  We went to the wrong gate and when we realized that and knew we were running late we started running to the correct gate.  Nobody had cell phones at that time so if we missed K-Step there would be no way to get a hold of him!  It was really dark at the party where I saw him spin before so I barely knew what he looked like.  We finally got to the gate just in time and there he was!  He had a big, hard case full of drum & bass and scratch records, and he was wearing the coolest clothes I think I’ve ever seen.  I was relieved.  I was excited.  I was starting to calm down because I knew we were one step closer to the party going off.

When we got back to the venue the lighting and sound was ready.  Everything looked great and was ready to go.  To my surprise people started showing up between 9 and 10pm before I had even posted directions.  I knew this happened at big Saturday parties when the location of the venue leaked, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen at our little Friday party.  I started to get the sense that we might get a lot of people and that this party could be something really special.  I realized I had to get authoritative because I didn’t want these people walking into the party for free.  I yelled out to all the people that showed up early that they needed to form a line on the outside of the building.  Within seconds I realized that the line was as long as the building and would need to wrap around soon as people kept showing up.  I knew that before anything else I needed to change the recording on the YPC infoline to list the directions.  I had a very retro, mobile phone in my car that my parents had given me just for emergencies and I planned to use that.  There was just one problem.  I didn’t realize it before that night, but once someone listens to my placeholder greeting and hears the beep they automatically leave a voicemail, and the system wouldn’t let me record a new greeting with the directions until I had listened to every voicemail and every hang-up.  Shit!  Lots of people were calling and even more were calling as I was listening to the initial messages.  It seemed like it was neverending!  I would hear a few hangups and then a couple messages with a raver saying something like, “Hey man!  We’re trying to get directions to the party.  We don’t know where to go!”  I was freaking out big time because it just wouldn’t stop.  Dozens and dozens of calls kept coming in and the line along the side of the building kept getting bigger.  Finally, I reached the last message and I was able to record the new greeting.  As was the standard in those days I listed directions from the north, east, south, and west. I did it slowly and carefully because I didn’t want to risk having to record it again.  Once it was done I double checked it and then booked it for the door.  I knew later in the night I’d be able to let someone else do it but I decided to take the money at the door myself for most of the night.  That was the only party I threw were I didn’t offer pre-sale tickets and I learned my lesson because it scared the crap out of me to have that much cash in my possession.  People started coming in non-stop for hours, literally.  I was stuck by the door but I knew the party upstairs was a success by 11pm.  It wasn’t until around 2am or so that I was finally able to have Kellee take over the door so I could head upstairs.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I did.  The venue was completely packed.  There was no way this many people could have fit in “The Whorehouse”!  The security guys were freaking out because they only brought 2 people and the party was 5 times bigger than they expected.  Even Wilhelm K said he was only expecting to see a couple hundred people and there was clearly a thousand.  It was magical.  I touched base with my YPC friends and soon realized that I was possibly the only sober person in the building.  People were dancing.  Everyone was having fun.  The dream I had been working on for so long was finally realized.  There were even breakdancers getting down on the linoleum that Billy brought.  I couldn’t get over how many people were there!  I had assembled a good lineup, but this party became legendary because of the YPC family of friends.  All those times they handed the flyer to someone and talked to them about it, all the times they told someone about Triptronix, all the times when the conveyed that this was a rave by partykids for partykids: That’s what made the difference.  We made a lot of friends and those friends all came with all their friends and their friends’ friends.  It was a team effort and we were all enjoying the night together.  I had actually timed my entrance into the main room specifically to catch the end of K-Step and be there for when Dave started his set as Triptronix.  When K-Step finished he surprisingly got on the microphone and thanked the crowd.  He gave the YPC a really heartfelt compliment about how this was by far the best 1st party he had seen thrown by any production company anywhere.  To this day that still means a lot to me.  After that Mike A got on the mic and gave Triptronix an unbelieveably over-the-top intro.  It was so big and Mike A talked him up so much that several attendees that we met years later actually thought Triptronix was a big headliner from out of state!  What was great about the sound setup is that Dave’s gear was connected to the PA mixer differently than everyone else.  All DJ’s played on the same equipment (Technic’s 1200 vinyl turntables and Pioneer DJ mixer) but Dave had his drum machines and synths plugged into the PA mixer.  The reason that matters is that his music was set at a slightly higher volume than everyone else, and when he started his set around 3am it was louder than anyone else had been the entire night.  The bass hit so hard it was unreal.  In fact, it was so loud that pieces of the ceiling in this old building actually started falling onto the floor.  Everyone was going going crazy.  Halfway through his set the unthinkable happened.  A random raver had snuck onto the stage and tripped over a cable completely cutting out Dave’s music.  The building went from epic euphoria to a dead-silent standstill at the drop of a hat.  Shit!  The few of us on stage looked over and immediately rushed the randoms off the stage, but before we knew it Dave plugged it back in and before anyone could really grasp what happened the music came back on perfectly timed to a beat!  Everyone in the building went fucking apeshit!  It was incredible.

Before long K-Step had to get to get back to his hotel.  As the rest of the YPC was not sober it was up to me once again leave the party and drive him there.  Unbelievably Billy had somehow worked something out so that I was bringing a cute girl to his hotel room too.  I don’t know how that worked and I won’t go into details about that.  Anyways, I got back to the party around 6:30am shortly after it ended.  I was told that when Trancender’s set ended at 6am tons of partykids were screaming for him to put on one more track!  He did and the party kept raging until around 6:15am.  To be honest I wish I could have seen that.  Pretty soon we somehow got stuck with having to do some cleaning again before we could get our cleaning deposit back.  Once we were done the venue owner had a few of us follow him to his house to get it.  He seemed a little shady, but he was being pretty nice and told me that that was the best party that had been at the venue since he bought it.  That made me feel really good, but I had been awake so long I was barely coherent and I couldn’t imagine what it was like for my friends running on fumes.  He took us into his house and I remember feeling pretty uneasy.  He had us follow him to his bedroom and I remember feeling even more uncomfortable.  He then opened part of his dresser and pulled out what was clearly thousands of dollars so he could grab a few hundred for me.  I think I saw a gun in there too.  It all seemed too weird.  Why would he show me where he stashed his money?  Luckily, it didn’t turn into some sort of trap and nothing bad happened.  I got the money and made the long, tired drive back to my Dad’s house in Willis.  I had more cash in my glove compartment than I had ever seen, and I didn’t feel safe with it until I brought the box into my childhood bedroom.  Once I was there, I knew I was done for the weekend.  I could relax and reflect on the fact the Likwid just became the memory of a lifetime for me, my friends, and a number of people I would never meet.

I’m going to continue my story of throwing raves in Detroit and of the YPC but I have to note that nothing ever topped Likwid.  I brought in bigger DJ’s, printed bigger flyers, added multiple rooms, etc. but the truth is nothing could ever top Likwid. It was like touching heaven for one night.  Everyone had the time of their life.  Dave played the set of his life.  Mike A and Billy had the best birthday party they would ever have.  I could keep rambling on about it but I still feel that no words could ever do it justice.  As far as being a rave promoter goes it was my masterpiece.

The story continues with everyone in the YPC living on cloud nine again for a while.  We were heroes when we came back to parties the weekends after Likwid.  We had thrown a legendary party that was by ravers for ravers.  It wasn’t about looking down from the ivory tower of some big wig making money off the little guy,  It was a party by the people for the people, and all of our peers knew that and loved it.  Before long I knew we had to plan the next party.  Lucas’ birthday was in October and I thought he deserved a great birthday party as well.  I got the idea to call the party Pop N Lok, as like Likwid that was the intentional misspelling of a style of dance that a lot of us were doing at raves.  It combined the elements of popping and locking that breakdancers did and fused them into a eclectic style more fit for continuous dancing.  I knew I needed to pick an out of state headlining DJ but I didn’t have any ideas yet.  The YPC, and several of our friends from Lincoln Park, were at a Vita-Girl party at a virgin (never before used) venue and I noticed a house and speed garage DJ from Philly was spinning some good tracks and really rockin’ the faders and EQ’s like a bad-ass.  I went closer to the decks to check him out.  Someone told me his name was 7-up.  Just like at Likwid the sound was so loud that pieces of the ceiling started falling and a huge piece fell right onto one of his records while he was spinning.  I couldn’t believe it!  What happened next surprised me even more.  He handled it like a champ by fading into the other track that was already in tempo, removed the piece of the ceiling, cleaned off the needle, picked up the record, cleaned it off with his shirt, put it back on the deck, and within seconds mixed back into it.  I was blown away.  Just like I had known right away with K-Step, I knew 7-up was who would headline my next party.

Before long I had found out what agency did bookings for 7-up and booked him for the October 6th, Lucas’ birthday.  All I needed to do was book the rest of the lineup and I’d be set.  What happened next though was not what I expected at all.  My friend Dan had grown jealous that I’d thrown a successful party after getting info from him, and he decided that he was going to throw a party himself.  He started to be kind of a jerk to me because of his jealousy, but I told him I thought he’d be a great promoter and that I was looking forward to his party.  Then one late summer night at the “Under The Bridge” venue something happened.  We started talking and I told him I had booked 7-up for my next party.  I could tell from his body language and his voice that he was now really jealous that I was already putting together my second party before he had thrown his first.  He told me that unfortunately he had booked the famous New York jungle DJ Soulslinger for his party on the same night, October 6.  If this was true and we threw parties on the same night I would definitely lose money and have a disappointing party as the scene would be divided with a lot of people going to his party with the bigger headlining DJ.  However, this was an important moment.  This was the second I knew I had went from the naive kid from a dirt road that stumbled into throwing his first party to a promoter with experience and enough street smarts to be able to call bullshit.  I knew Dan couldn’t afford DJ Soulslinger.  I knew he wouldn’t even be able to book a headliner that big without references from throwing previous parties. I knew that if he had booked Soulslinger I would have known immediately as we had many of the same friends and word would have spread through the grapevine.  He was trying to tell me that I needed to call back 7-up’s booking agency and change the date of my party.  Guess what?  That shit was not about to happen because I knew this prick was full of shit.  I didn’t call him out directly and tell him I knew he didn’t book Soulslinger.  I just told him 7-up’s date had already been confirmed and I couldn’t change it.  He was furious.  He couldn’t believe that the guy he’d given the idea of throwing raves to wasn’t going to do what he said.  He even went and got Squish to back him up.  Squish started getting in my face and telling me I’d have problems if I threw a party the same night as Dan, but I knew I had to stand my ground.  I had already had to deal with other jerks like Greg from Biokidd Produtions trying to intimidate me for no reason and I was going to make it clear my party had a date and it was confirmed.  No jealous punk ass wannabe promoter or any of his friends were going to stop me for no reason.  I was going to move forward and throw the best damn birthday party for Lucas that I could.4

Before long I had booked local favorite DJ Whistleboi, Beau Gangier from Hazard-S, CDX from dubTech, and some other local DJ’s. When it got closer to the weekend of the party we got a tip on a virgin venue through Mike A.  We were given an intersection in a bad part of Detroit and went there one night to meet the venue owner.  We had no problem finding a parking spot because we were in a really ghetto area. Once we got out of the car I’ll admit I was already afraid.  Nobody was out on the street. It was dark. It wasn’t clear which building we were supposed to go to. It felt wrong.  We paced around the block and couldn’t figure it out. We didn’t have a phone number to call either.  The building that seemed closest to what was described to us did have a set of stairs just off the sidewalk though.  I figured maybe we should go up the stairs and see what was there.  We went to the top of the stairs and saw a sheet of paper taped up with hourly rates.  I thought about this for a second and realised I had only seen things like this in movies.  It was a place where people rented out rooms to bring prostitutes.  Judging by where we were, these weren’t high-end prostitutes, either.  This was the worst part of one of the most dangerous cities in the country and I didn’t feel very good being in this dark staircase.  We booked it to the car and never looked back!  We would find our venue somewhere else.

Before long KG from BHP Productions told Mike A about a venue at Springwells and Jefferson.  It was in an even more dangerous area than where I threw Likwid and I believe it was nicknamed either “The Bank” or “The Detroit Vaults” because it used to be a bank.  It had been an after-hours venue but there had never been a proper rave there.  I was skeptical because this was no after-hours I had heard of so odds are it wasn’t ravers that were normally partying there.  I checked it out and saw that in addition to still having a vault in the basement it had a good sized bar with stools.  It would be uncommon for a rave venue because raves generally never took place in places that even resembled bars.  That didn’t bother me much because I knew we could sell water at the bar.  What concerned me was there was no big, main room.  The area with the bar and the room next to it could each fit only a few hundred people if you included the hallways and area connecting them.  I had a thousand people at Likwid and worried this wouldn’t be big enough.  The owner showed us the huge basement and said we could use that too.  I knew there wouldn’t be music down there, but I figured many partykids might appreciate the ability to sneak away from the dancefloor to explore the basement and do the kinds of things partykids do.  I kept the information on the place but I wasn’t totally sold.  I decided I would keep calling around to see if I could find somewhere better.

Well, it was getting closer to 2001 and I was starting to see a trend in the rave scene.  Raves were getting busted more frequently and promoters were struggling to find venues that could go all night.  I called all the other promoters I knew and asked around but nobody had any ideas.  It wouldn’t have been my first choice but I had to go for it.  Pop N Lok would be at Springwells and Jefferson.

The evening of the event the sound company and I were struggling to figure out where to put all the speakers. The room next to the bar area would be totally crammed if all speakers were in there so we put half of them in the bar area.  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea but it seemed like the best option.  I felt slightly more confident than I did before Likwid, but I was still a little worried about the location of the venue.  We were a long way from Downtown Detroit and I just had a bad feeling about the neighborhood.  Regardless, the show had to go on.  People started showing up early as they did for Likwid and we had a good, continuous influx coming in for several hours.  Just as at Likwid I didn’t get to go inside and check things out until it was pretty packed, but once I went inside and saw it going off I knew it was a success.  There were people dancing in both the main area and the bar area, where the breakdancers ended up doing their thing, which made me really happy.  The main room was jam-packed and everyone was having a great time.  I went into the basement and I’m not going to lie: There was some shady shit going on down there.  But that’s ok.  I knew those people were having fun too.  Some of the YPC were in the bank vault which we had made into the VIP area, and they just loved the idea of having this vault as their special VIP room.  I loved it too.  The party was going great and the cops stopped by a few times but each time retired officer Frank was able to get them to leave.  I tipped him extra because if he wasn’t there I knew the party would have been shut down really early, and that would have been horrible.  He stayed his post and the party was jumpin’ late into the night.  Dave played his live set wearing a white shirt that some friends wrote all over, and when 7-Up played we put a huge cardboard sign for the beverage 7up (that we had stolen) behind him.  His set was great and I found out later that he partied as hard as anyone there!

Then at 5:15am the police came in and Frank couldn’t stop them.  They were forceful and aggressive and had the music shut off immediately.  It all happened in seconds.  To my surprise they took the ID’s of everyone that was under 18 and they made those of us that were 18 stand in a line so we could show them our ID’s as they let us leave.  I had never heard of police busting a party this way before.  I had heard of kids getting tickets, but this was being handled very strangely compared to other parties that had been busted.  I pretended that I was just a normal attendee, showed my ID, went to my car where I had already stashed the cash, and booked it for my Dad’s house.  Since nobody had cell phones I couldn’t call around and see what was going on with all my friends so I knew once I dropped off the money I had to head back to see what happened.  When I got back around 7am I was surprised to find Mike A and some of the others were still partying.  They just kept at it after the cops left!  They were hanging out with the venue owners, who like the Likwid venue owner told us that was the best party they had ever had there.  They told me the cops eventually let the underage kids go without giving them tickets.  Apparently after they had taken their ID’s they changed their mind, had them all form a crowd, called off the names on the ID’s, and handed them back.  This was just completely crazy as I’ve never heard of police handling a bust like this before, but I was extremely relieved that nobody got tickets and that the party still went to 5:15am.  It was scary how it ended, but Pop N Lok was a success.

After throwing 2 successful Friday parties I knew the next step was to throw a bigger party on a Saturday.  I would have to fly in more headlining DJ’s, get a bigger soundsystem in the main room and also have a second room, have bigger and better flyers created and print more of them, and general upscale everything. As 2001 rolled around more and more parties were getting busted and less and less were being thrown, but ever since Likwid started coming together I had planned to take YPC Productions as far as I could, so despite the growing risks I decided everything was full steam ahead.

Around that time Mike A started dating a girl named Rechelle who I always had a bad feeling about.  She seemed nice on the outside but I knew there was something dark behind her outer shell. A lot of us partied pretty hard on the weekends but Mike A and Rechelle started partying pretty hard during the week. This was starting to worry me. His behaviour became more erratic and on top of that people were telling me he was acting pretty cocky about being part of YPC Productions and he often took credit for the work I was doing, as though he was the head of the company. Him taking credit didn’t bother me too much because I wanted him to enjoy being part of the YPC, both the family of friends and the production company, but I really was starting to worry about him and how he had changed. His arrogance eventually put me in a situation where I had a fire to put out because when KG, the promoter that found the venue we used for Pop N Lok, asked Mike about the idea of YPC throwing a party with him he apparently blew him off pretty rudely. I was adamant that I wanted to be on good terms with all the other Detroit promoters because I didn’t want anyone throwing a party with the same night as me, so I called KG and settled things down. He, like many people, had become under the impression that Mike A was calling the shots for YPC Productions.  When finding out that wasn’t the case he then asked me, but I declined in a much more courteous way. I was honored that he was interested in working with me but I was too much of a control freak to throw a party with another company.  I thought more about the impression Mike A had been leaving on people and at that time I determined it would probably be fine.  I wasn’t seeking fame or popularity like him, so I thought maybe it would be better if he was the face of YPC and I was more more like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.  

I decided to call the party “Intelligence” because I thought in many ways that represented our scene.  Anybody could go to a club, but you had to be smart to know what raves were going on each weekend, where they were, who the best DJ’s were to determine which were the best parties, etc.  The fact that, for the most part, you couldn’t use the internet for those things is definitely worth noting.

I started considering a potential date for the party and took it extremely seriously as again I didn’t want to risk throwing a party on the same day as someone else.  I called Wilhelm K and ran some dates by him.  To my surprise he recommended a date to me!  He told me that dubTech had been planning to throw a big party on St. Patrick’s Day but they had changed their mind and he thought I should take that date instead.  With a 1 in 7 change of St. Patrick’s Day being on a Saturday I couldn’t pass up the idea to throw the party on a big national party day like that so I went for it!  Match 17, 2001 would be the date of “Intelligence”.

I wanted to book a big DJ that had never played at a Detroit rave before.  John Kelley had always been one of my favorite DJ’s.  He had played at Detroit club Motor and I saw him when he was the tour DJ on the “Community Service Tour” with Orbital, Crystal Method and the Lo Fidelity Allstars, but the one time he was supposed to play a Detroit rave at the “Chop Shop” venue he didn’t make it for some reason.  He was an underground DJ that rose to fame at the legendary Moontribe “Full Moon Gathering” desert parties in southern California. He spun breaks and tech-house and had just released his 5th mix CD that was even available at retail stores like Best Buy.  Back then the electronic music sections in those stores were even smaller than than they are today so the idea of bringing out a DJ whose mixes could be picked up at a store like that was a pretty big deal.  I called his booking agency in California and made a fool of myself as the rep I talked to made me feel pretty small-time very quickly.  She asked how many people I was expecting and how much tickets would cost.  When I told her she said his fee would be $4,000.  I told her there was no way I could spend that much.  She broke down the math to me and what I told her worked out so that $4,000 would be less than a quarter of what I would make off the door.  Crap.  I then realised I should probably stretch the truth when talking to booking agencies for bigger DJ’s if I wanted to get a DJ at a price I could afford.  John Kelley (or any other DJ from the same booking agency) was now out of the question.  The good news is it didn’t take me long to figure out a second choice.  The second most notable DJ from Moontribe desert parties was DJ Brian.  He had 4 DJ mixes that were in retail stores, and my friends and I had been listening to his mixes for a long time.  I found his booking agent, stretched the truth a little bit about the ticket price and number of attendees, and I got him!  It was a great feeling to book my first big headlining DJ. He had never played in Detroit before at all so it was perfect.  From the same agency I also booked Thee-O, who like K-Step was a great turntablist and with the ability to scratch on top of a danceable groove, so he was fun to watch and dance to.  I could have stopped there but I wanted one more act from out of state.  My friend Stephanie and I had went down to Indianapolis one weekend after Likwid and hung out with K-Step for the weekend, and what he did at the Indy party he played at that weekend was something I wanted to bring to Detroit.  He and (what I think was his girlfriend, but don’t know for sure) fellow drum & bass DJ Vibe Raider performed a tag team set where he played bass guitar over her tracks and she sang over his tracks.  I thought it was a brilliant idea and they executed it perfectly.  They called their collaborative set “La Mierda” which is Spanish for “The Shit”.  And yeah, it was the shit!  As “Intelligence” became a bigger event I decided to grow YPC Productions by add another artist to our roster.  Triptronix was the only YPC artist and I thought it would be good to have an official YPC DJ as well.  Once thing that was great about being a promoter was a lot of local DJ’s would give me their mixtapes.  Nowadays mixes are exchanged so easily on the web using sites like Soundcloud or Mixcloud, but at that time cassettes were the standard so I’d come home from a lot of parties with pockets full of cassettes.  Some were better than others, and one that stuck out to me as a DJ that would complement Triptronix was Matthew D, not to be confused with Matthew Dear!  I have no idea where he handed me his mixes but they were good and I decided to meet him.  I think we met at a Barnes and Noble coffee shop, which somehow seemed like a strange place for ravers to meet, but I liked him a lot and was looking forward to having him spin at some YPC parties.

Lucas had designed the flyers for the 2 Friday parties, but I decided to use the professional design and printing company Klever Design now that I was throwing a Saturday party.  Klever had been a staple in the Detroit rave scene so I was excited to work with them.  I wanted the flyer to be twice and big as my previous flyers and have a fold in it so you could open it up to see the full line-up in the 2 rooms.  They did a great job and even took the idea of Intelligence to the next level by creating a 3D flying robot that looked like some kind of futuristic drone with artificial intelligence.  It was flying through a 3D cityscape that had a green (for St. Patrick’s Day!) color palette to it.  I loved it.

Since everything about this party was bigger I knew I needed to promote it bigger and even flyer at parties on the west side of the state including in Grand Rapids in Kalamazoo.  I’d head out to those parties with people like my friend James from Grand Rapids, and it felt like a different world from the Detroit parties where I knew a hundred people.  While I knew it would be best if I was outgoing and talked to everyone I handed a flyer to (since I knew that’s what had made the first parties so successful) I started to feel awkward and self-conscious about talking up the party to people.  Mike A’s cocky attitude of trying to impress people by telling them how great of a promoter he was and how great his party was going to be was something I was continually growing contempt for, and I didn’t want to come off that way myself.  I wanted partykids to come to Intelligence and have an amazing, beautiful time, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to them and tell them that.  I had become one of those faceless people that stood in the shadows and handed you a flyer, and as much as I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to be my mind wouldn’t let me risk coming off like Mike A.  It got to the point where I felt like I was going crazy.  I was a promoter that lost my ability to verbally promote my parties like I had asked all my friends to do.  It didn’t feel very good, and worst of all I didn’t feel like there was anyone I could tell about it because I didn’t want to risk there being any drama or negative vibes that would take away from Intelligence being a great success.  So, I kept all those feelings to myself.

What made me start to feel better was the excitement of bringing out DJ Brian.  While K-Step and 7up had great headliners for me at Likwid and Pop N Lok, for a Saturday party most people would just consider them regional DJ’s, and DJ Brian was a true headlining DJ.  In fact, Moonshine Music, the label that distributed his mix CD’s, even mailed me a package with posters for his new CD and hundreds of (now extremely rare) DJ trading cards for him.  I’ll admit that just getting that box in the mail was an exciting moment for me.  I put the trading cards into hundreds of the flyers, which was definitely tedious, so that when people opened the flyer they’d see the card.  Those DJ trading cards were so new nobody had seen anything like that before and it felt cool to do something original like that.  While booking the flight for Thee-O from Los Angeles was no problem and La Mierda agreed to drive out from Indianapolis, getting DJ Brian to Detroit proved to be more difficult.  He had moved from southern California to Vancouver and there was no flight from Vancouver to Detroit within a reasonable timeframe of when he needed to come out.  The only solution I was found was booking a helicopter ride from Vancouver to Seattle and then him flying from Seattle to Detroit.  This seemed incredibly strange to me, and while I wasn’t excited about the additional expense of the helicopter ride, there was something cool about the idea of my headlining DJ taking his vinyl records on a helicopter ride as part of the trip to Detroit.  I booked it and everything was set.  Closer to the night of the event I actually had an e-mail exchange with him, which was not typical as I expected to only communicate with his booking agent.  I actually embarrassed myself a little bit because he asked if we could get a CD player hooked up to the mixer so he could “play his new track LOUD” and after checking with the sound company and confirming that was ok I told him I couldn’t wait to “hear his new track called LOUD”.  Well, it turned out the track wasn’t called loud and he just wanted to hear a new track he produced on a big soundsystem.  So, I probably sounded pretty stupid and amateur, but looking back now it’s pretty funny.

We decided we should really try to ramp up the decorations in the venue as well.  Naturally we’d put up several of the promo posters for DJ Brian’s CD.  Billy and I also (in the middle of the day!) stole a humongous Sonic The Hedgehog cardboard sign from Denny’s.  It was perfect because it said “Sonic Underground” at the top and had both Sonic and Knuckles on it, with Sonic playing the guitar.  Since K-Step would be playing bass guitar as part of La Mierda we added labels listing K-Step as Sonic and Knuckles as Vibe Raider.  It was cheesy but I loved it.  What’s funny is that wasn’t even the most daring thing we stole for the decorations!  For St. Patrick’s Day I thought it would be cool to have huge paper clovers taped up all over the venue.  While I knew I could have probably purchased a big roll of green paper from an art supply store I thought it would be much more fun to steal a roll from my elementary school as I knew they had big metal holders with giant rolls of colored paper that could be rolled around from room to room.  Looking back this was a really stupid thing to do, but in the moment we all felt invincible and Mike A and I went for it.  We walked in during a school day and headed to the cafeteria.  We could still pass for 18 so if someone asked us what we were doing my plan was to say we were borrowing the paper for an art teacher at the high school.  However, if someone didn’t believe us and looked into it we’d be screwed!  The paper wasn’t in the cafeteria and before we could think of the next plan the janitor spotted us.  Before he could ask what we were doing I assertively asked him, “Where’s the stand with the big rolls of paper?!”  I tried to act like I was just doing my job and that this was normal.  I could tell he seemed a little surprised, but apparently he bought it and he told me it was in the teacher’s lounge.  Shit!  I knew I had to make the call immediately.  Would I actually go into the teacher’s lounge on a school day to steal this paper or would I get out before we got busted.  Well, as I said I was dumb enough to think I was invincible so I went for it while Mike A went and got the car started.  I snuck in to find the paper and luckily nobody was in there.  I was so relieved.  I went to take the big green roll of the holder and I started to hear someone walking up to the door.  Shit!  I didn’t know what to do so I panicked and hid in the closet!  Crap!  If I was found I would look so guilty it wasn’t even funny.  It would definitely be the kind of thing a teacher would call the cops over!  I didn’t know how long the teacher would be in the room so I just remained as quiet as I could and hoped they’d leave soon.  After about a minute they left.  I let go a huge breath and got out of the closet.  Taking the roll of green paper off the holder was awkward and ended up taking half a minute (which felt like half and hour!) but I finally got it off and booked it out of the room.  I walked swiftly down the hallway like everything was normal, and once I got out the front door I booked it for the car.  Mike A couldn’t believe it!  His eyes got so huge when he saw the roll of paper and we laughed about it all the way back to Dave’s house up the road.  We knew immediately that we had totally lucked out and it was a miracle I got out without getting caught!  It was one of my last great memories with Mike A.

To make things even more festive we had YPC hockey jerseys made by our friend that owned a hockey store.  I thought this was another thing that made us and the party unique as some other production companies had T-shirts, but no production company ever had hockey jerseys made.  The jerseys were done before our friend had a chance to put the names on the back so he told us to come back in for that, but I was the only one that ever did.  I had “Mike P” written on the back.

As it got closer to the week of the party I could feel the rave scene continually shrinking as more and more parties were getting busted.  It got to the point where there were no venue options in Detroit so several parties were being thrown at an indoor area within 4 Bears water park several miles north of the city up in Utica.  While I didn’t like the idea of throwing a party outside of Detroit, I had no choice and I made arrangements to use 4 Bears.

The night before the party I was laying low but somehow several of the members of the YPC got into some altercation in Ypsi and a couple of them were thrown in jail.  When I heard the news I couldn’t believe it.  It turned out it wasn’t some huge crime that would screw them over later in life, but for some reason they were being kept in custody for a couple days and would miss the party!  I was really bummed, and to make matters worse the venue owner was now trying to tell me I had to make the event 18 and over.  Now this may sound reasonable to a lot of people nowadays but I was strongly against this.  For one thing we had passed out 10,000 flyers that did not say 18+ (as no rave flyers did) and ID’ing people at the door would make the event seem more like a club than a rave.  I was completely against that.  I went to my first party when I was 16 and tons of partykids weren’t yet 18.  I didn’t want to turn anyone away, and I didn’t want my party to be the first one that switched to 18+ at the last minute.  I reluctantly told the venue owner that I would ID people and make the event 18 and over, but there was no way I was following through on that!  He showed up earlier in the evening and I lied right to his face, but once he was gone I knew we were home-free.  I didn’t ID a single person that night.

When things were starting up I was a little surprised when our friends from Lincoln Park showed up with some beer.  They hadn’t asked me about that and I was a little weary of it after just lying to the venue owner about something else, but I told them if they kept it in the room we had designated the VIP area it would be ok.  They brought a video camera, something I’m very thankful of to this day, so I figured it was ok if they got this extra benefit.  The lighting company was running late so they even got some rare footage of a rave with the lights on.  We had a steady stream of people for hours so I knew the party was in great shape.  People overflowed the main area and 2nd room into the hallway so it was packed everywhere.  The hallway actually had some cool lights built into it so it became a unique third area to hang out.

As with Likwid and Pop N Lok I didn’t leave the front door until the influx of people had slowed down and the party was in full swing.  I was happy to see that it was as packed and exciting as I had hoped.  One little scare was when the security went to kick out one of our friends.  The security was told by the venue owner they had to be tighter than normal so I wasn’t sure if I could do anything.  Luckily, when I explained to them that that friend was the one who helped transport all of Dave’s synthesizers and drum machines and we needed him they let him back into the party.  Other than that it was smooth sailing and everything went great.  Around 4am I had to shut it down based on the agreement with the owner, but local favorite CDX was having too much fun in the second room to stop.  He was headbanging and blasting speed garage and the room had become especially jam-packed since the sound had been turned off in the main room.  As I looked in I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to stop.  He played another 15 minutes or so until the sound company finally had to call it a night.

When I got home I counted the money and noticed it seemed a little bit off.  I had purchased a counter that I asked the security guy at the front door to use all night so I’d get an accurate count.  It almost seemed like around a thousand dollars was missing, but I had still come out ahead and had what I needed to throw the next party so I assumed I must have just miscalculated something.  I headed back to East Lansing for my classes on Monday.

Then something big happened.  Dave called me on the landline phone in my dorm room to tell me that he had gotten Mike A to admit he stole money at the party.  I had trusted him to make the drops of cash from the door to the glove compartment of my car and apparently he had been pocketing money throughout the night and took $900.  I couldn’t believe it!  I knew he had changed and I had been worried about him, but I didn’t think he would steal money.  The way I viewed it he wasn’t just stealing money from me.  He was stealing money from the YPC because 100% of what was made was always put towards the next party to make it bigger and better.  I started to feel sick.  I considered him one of my best friends and I knew almost immediately we would never be friends again.  I called him and although he tried to deny it I made it clear that he had admitted it to Dave and I knew the truth.  He finally broke down.  He said he needed the money to give to Rechelle for something.  I told him I needed it back immediately and I’d drive back to Ypsi or Detroit to meet him.  He told me it was too late and the money was already gone.  I was pissed.  I demanded Rechelle’s number and when I talked to her she confirmed the money was definitely gone.  I asked her why they’d taken it and she told me Mike had conveyed to her that it was is cut as though him and I agreed he would get $900.  I was pissed about the money, but mostly I was sad that I lost a friend.  The two Mikes that were part of the YPC were no longer.  Mike A was out and it affected the entire group.  Things didn’t fall apart completely, but it was never quite the same.  The unending joyful optimism and “let’s all do this together” spirit was fading, and it all started in those couple days after Intelligence.  Some friends like Dusty and Luke D were having their own personal problems and they started to disappear from the group.  On top of that more parties in Detroit were getting busted and it was getting to the point where there was only about one party a month.  Many ravers were scared to go out if they had been at a party that was busted by the police because they were giving out tickets that were expensive and often required appearances in court.   Things were getting rough, but I decided to press on.

I decided to call the next party “Mind Over Matter”.  I liked the name and thought it was consistent with the theme of Intelligence.  I liked that my two Friday parties were both named after dancing styles and my two Saturday parties had a similar theme as well.  I booked Dave Aude from Los Angeles because he threw down an amazing set at the party Stephanie and I went to in Indy with K-Step.  I also liked the fact that he was one of the major players at Moonshine Music and thought if he caught part of Triptronix’s set maybe it could be a big break for Dave.  I booked him for $3,000 which was by far the most I had paid for any DJ before, but I thought he was worth it.  The second headliner was DRC from San Franciso.  I had caught a set by her with James on the west side of the state and she spun a unique mix of techno and drum & bass that I’ve never heard anyone else do in the same way.  My third out of state DJ was Nosmo from Chicago.  Lansing’s drum & bass scene had been growing so I brought down La Resistance, a great collective of 3 DJ’s and 1 MC, to play in the second room with other Detroit locals.  

Problems continued to arise as Klever was having problems printing the flyers.  I had them design the flyer to look like a Discman portable CD player (as hilariously I thought that seemed futuristic at the time) that you could open to see the line-up, and I paid a lot extra for them to cut it so the edges were rounded like a Discman.  Apparently they had a problem with the first cut and all 10,000 flyers were unusable.  They printed them again but when Jason from Klever delivered them to me I could tell something was wrong right away.  They felt thinner and flimsier than what was the standard for rave flyers.  Clearly he had went to a cheaper stock to make back the money he had lost from the cut going bad on the first cut, and I was the one that was lost out because of this decision.  I tried to justify it in my mind and not be pissed but I couldn’t get over it.  They felt cheaper than all of my other flyers, even though they had the cool rounded edges.  

Naturally the next big problem was finding a venue at a time when all parties are being busted.  Someone told me about a venue at the intersection of of Lafayette and Bellevue and and I went to meet the middle man named Junior.  He had a huge tattoo on his neck and he seemed like a serious Detroit bad-ass that you didn’t want to mess with.  That being said he was nice to me and happily showed me around the place.  It was a big, dirty warehouse and was exactly what I was looking for, but I still wanted to explore other options.  I arranged a meeting with the owner of the legendary Mack and Bellevue venue just down the street.  He showed me around parts of the building I had never seen before and I was intrigued.  I loved the idea of throwing a party at this great venue that I had been to many times, but he wanted a thousand dollars more than Junior wanted for Lafayette and Bellevue, so I declined.  Looking back, I wish I hadn’t.  In the next couple weeks I met a weird, dopey kid named Jabour that told me he was now the middle man for Lafayette and Bellevue.  He introduced me to the owner and actually gave me a price lower than what Junior had.  That sounded good to me so I paid the deposit directly to the owner.

As it got closer to the night of the event tried stopping by Dusty’s house to see if she and Luke D would come out, but she wasn’t there.  I put a flyer and a heartfelt note on her door telling her how much I valued her friendship and would like her to come to the event, but they didn’t show.  Years later we touched base over the phone and on Facebook but I never actually saw her again.  She died a few years ago and I still think of her often.  

We also lost our friend Rachel when she tragically died in a car accident.  The last addition I made to the flyer was a little note saying, “Rachel, we will never forget you. You will always have a special place in our hearts.”  I had actually teared up a little when sharing those words with Jason from Klever over the phone.

The day before the event I heard through the grapevine that Junior found out I was using the venue and not going through him and he’d become furious, and was determined to make sure the party is busted by the police.  Shit!  It was too late to switch venues and I didn’t know what to do!  Frank somehow got in trouble and was no longer available to work at parties, so I called Devlin to see what he thought I should do.  He was calm and cool, and had me give him Junior’s phone number.  He called Junior and I patiently waited by the phone at my Dad’s house.  What was minutes seemed like hours but he finally called back and said he got Junior to calm down and they made an arrangement.  Junior and his friends would control the parking and get all the parking money and in exchange they wouldn’t bust that party.  I hated the idea but I was pushed in a corner and had no choice, so I agreed.  The night of the event I was terrified of even seeing Junior.  I avoided going outside and stayed at my usual post at the front door.  More things started to go wrong as the huge soundsystem I brought in obstructed the view of the second room so it was hard for people to see how to get to it.  Problems just kept adding up.

Matthew D opened up the main room while La Resistance opened up the second room.  Things were going good and Dave started to play around 11pm.  I knew from Devlin that Junior was getting restless and was still unhappy.  I decided to man up and talk to him myself, whether that was a good idea or not.  I told him I had 2 big DJ’s flying in and all I cared about was that the attendees got to see their sets from midnight to 3am.  He acted like he understood and was going to be cool, but that turned out to not be the case.  He called the cops and they were in the parking lot part way through Dave’s set.  My friend Joe said there was a huge amount of people outside ready to come in, but because of the cops they were all waiting in their cars to see what was going to happen.  Once I saw an officer approaching the entrance I bolted inside and left someone else in charge of the door.  I wondered if this was going to be the end of YPC Productions.  I walked around pretending I was just a normal attendee and before long Deacon from La Resistance told me the officer made it to the second room and told him they’d need to turn the music off.  “What should I do?” he asked.  Fuck!  I told him to leave the music on and keep playing.  I thought maybe I could reason with the officer but within seconds he started yelling in the main room for the music to turn off and that the party was over.  The party was busted just before Dave Aude was about to play his first record.  The cop started asking who threw the party and someone said “Mike”.  “Where’s Mike?” he started asking.  He was serious and he was pissed.  I knew I needed to take the YPC jersey that said “Mike P” off and get the hell out of there.  I already had friends move the cash box to an office in the building so I snuck in there, stuck it under my shirt, and got out, leaving my friends and around a thousand bottles of water in the building.  It was all over.  The party was over.  YPC Productions was over, and the Detroit rave scene as we knew it was over.  Beau from Hazard-S tried throwing a party a couple weeks later but that got busted too.  The scene had truly reached it’s end, and it was never coming back, at least not like it was in those days.  The night of Mind Over Matter I don’t know if anyone else in the YPC knew it like I knew it but it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I’m older now and as I write this I live in the Chicago area and my wife and I are expecting a baby.  I’m excited for the future, but I know my past in Detroit will always be with me.  My friends and I got to be part of an amazing scene and have amazing memories that will last our lifetimes.  Words really can’t do justice to what that experience meant to me.  We found euphoria, utopia, and nirvana all in some dirty warehouses in Detroit.  Those that were there will hold those memories in the same place of their hearts as those hippies that experienced the 60’s.  Many great records were made by sampling and altering other records. Looking back on that experience I can only sample and alter some words from Hunter S. Thompson to try to paint a picture of how I see it all now...

“That kind of peak never comes again. Detroit’s rave scene was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something, maybe not, in the long run. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, several years later, you can look back at Detroit, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”