What killed the rave scene?

Several factors contributed to rave’s decline in Chicago and throughout North America, but the biggest was probably the epidemic of drug abuse. The late ’90s saw the rise of GHB, or “liquid-G” as a fashionable designer drug. I even knew a kid named Jesús who started spinning under the moniker “Liquid G-sus,” which he thought was really cool but we all ended up calling him “Liquid Jesús” in the Spanish pronunciation, and the nickname stuck. Anyway, liquid G spiked both in popularity and in notoriety as a “date rape drug.” It definitely seemed to affect girls differently than boys, and claimed a series of female casualties. One such victim was a teenage girl named Laddie, who, in 1999, dropped some liquid G at a party on the south side, overdosed, and had to be rushed to the hospital.

This would prove to be the most consequential incident in the downfall of Chicago raves: as it turned out, Laddie’s father was Richard M. Daley, the mayor of Chicago! After this, our fate was cast.

Chicago began drafting ordinances and legislation to effectively ban raves, with the surrounding municipalities following suit. We knew it was coming, and tried to organize against it, with an organization called CEMA, or Chicago Electronic Music Alliance—organized by myself and my best friend, Matt; Chris Gin, from Thousand Words magazine; a representative from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (of Grammys fame); and others. CEMA arranged a meeting before of City Council, and we assembled a group of speakers to testify on our behalf which included legendary house producer Steve “Silk” Hurley. But Chris wanted at least one party promoter represented at the meeting, which I strongly recommended against. Still, against my better judgement, I started reaching out to promoters for support.

Because of the outlaw nature of raves, it naturally followed that the most successful promoters were notoriously shady, often connected to drug dealing and organized crime. The average promoter wasn’t pulling permits, or paying taxes, or playing by any of the rules—making him the worst possible liaison to an already-hostile administration.

I happened to know these two promoters who were sisters. They lived at home in a big mansion in the exurbs, their father was a mafia pimp, and they had a high profile in the rave game. The elder sister agreed to speak at city hall and it went about as well as I assumed it would: she used the floor to brag about herself, came across as the racketeer she essentially was, and made the rest of us look bad. With a combination of prohibitively stringent standards, unobtainable permits and harsh penalties for non-compliance, the city council regulated raves out of existence in May of 2000.

The Aftermath

Once outlawed, former rave atendees went in two directions: into the clubs, and into the lofts. Somehow, Matt got a bare-bones industrial pad in Fulton Market back when it wasn’t even zoned for residential habitation and the whole neighborhood reeked of livestock. He lived there with several other guys and they threw parties together to make rent.

In 2001, Chicago passed a law that if you had more than 15 pills of ecstasy on you, you could go to prison for 30 years. Nevertheless, one of Matt’s roommates got the bright idea to fly to Amsterdam and FedEx a jar full of pills to his own address. Since they were living in what was supposed to be a vacant building in the meat packing district, FedEx assumed the address was wrong and then re-routed the package to their central facility downtown. Fearing that the contraband within the undeliverable parcel would end up in the hands of the auhorities, the panicked roommate convinced him to go downtown and claim it in person. Matt said it was one of the most anxiety-inducing things he had ever done, and he was sure that when he reached out to receive the box he would get the handcuffs. Instead, he received the package without incident.

Class of ’99, Volume 17: Everybody In The House

Download the mix (MP3, 43 minutes, 99 MB)

About the cover

This graphic comes from a flyer for a 1998 party called Step Into A World.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Sunburst Band — Monte Carlo (1998)
2. Green Velvet — Never Satisfied (Studio 54 re-rework) (1997)
3. Ian Pooley — The Allnighter (1998)
4. Kristine Blond — Love Shy (1998)
5. Todd Edwards — Never Far From You (1998)
6. UBQ Project — Needin U (1995)
7. Tiko — Everybody Shine (1999)
8. Second Crusade — May The Funk Be With You (1996)
9. Ark — Absinth (1997)
10. Smokin Beats — Come On And Boogie With Me (1996)
11. Studio 54 — Freak It (1998)
12. BT Express — At The C!sa (1997)
13. Todd Terry — Jumpin (1993)
14. Earth People — Dance (1990)
15. Todd Edwards — Saved My Life (Let's Begin mix) (1995)
16. DJ Sneak — You Can't Hide From Your Bud (1997)
17. Trouble Men — Do It (1998)
18. Cricco Castelli - What's The Message (1998)

In 1996, The Museum of Contemporary Art began an annual, 24-hour event called Summer Solstice. In 1999, the MCA turned their cafeteria and patio into a rave called Brite Spot, putting high society in direct contact with the teenage underground.

Simultaneous to this phenomenon was the rise of the Internet, which ravers had been using since the early days of Hyperreal and Rollin. Web design emerged as an important new art form, and flyer designers like Airline Industries parlayed their talents into cutting-edge print and multimedia graphcs.

Rave culture had already seeped into the world of gaming with the Wipeout series, and this trend continued with 1999’s Space Channel 5. Sega originally asked Lady Miss Kier of Dee-Lite to star in this game as the main character, and when she declined they created Ulala, a character so obviously based on her that she sued the company (surprisingly, however, she lost the suit and had to pay Sega’s legal expenses).

Class of ’99, Volume 16: Let’s Do It!

Download the mix (MP3, 49 minutes, 112 MB)

About the cover

This is from an ad I found in an old issue of Thousand Words magazine, which I have mentioned before and which I consider the publication of record for the Chicago scene.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Daft Punk — Fresh (1996)
2. Mighty Dub Katz — It's Just Another Groove (1995)
3. Blow Out Express — You're Mine (1996)
4. Cricco Castelli — Life Is Changing (1998)
5. NYC Live And Direct — Everything U Need (1998)
6. Free Energy — Happiness (1996)
7. Nicole — Runnin Away (Todd Edwards mix) (1996)
8. Braxton Holmes and Dewey B. — The Smack (1997)
9. Spencer Kincy and JT — Can't Stop (1996)
10. Disco Tex — Love Is Wonderful (1996)
11. Troy McLure — Remember Me? (1999)
12. Sexy Kool — Move That Body (1999)
13. Mike 303 — St. Sylvestre (1998)
14. Daft DJ — Last Night (1998)
15. Deep Dish Presents Prana — The Dream (1994)
16. Ian Pooley — All Nite (1997)
17. United Funk Pilots — Keep On Dancin (1997)
18. Nick Holder — Paradise (Salt City Mix) (1997)
19. Iz And Diz — Down 4 U (1997)
20. Inland Knights — Don't Ever (2000)

Rave culture and club culture were two different, parallel scenes with some important distinctions:

• Raves were an under-21 affair, and clubs were mostly off-limits to teenagers, with a few exceptions (Dock Five, Shelter, and the original Juice).
• Raves were largely non-commercial. After the door price (usually 20 bucks, tops), there might be a booth inside selling mix tapes, but that was about it. Clubs, on the other hand, ran promos on B96 and had ads over their urinals featuring women in bikinis hawking menthol cigarettes.
• Ravers pretended to be against drinking. I don’t think this was actually the case, but while it was a drug culture, alcohol was not central to the scene—whereas clubs were always about getting drunk.
• Raves were actually exclusive. Clubs tried to cater to a specific scene and clientele, but they were generally pretty easy for anyone to find and were always full of weird gold diggers and pickup artists.

While “rave” had a very specific connotation, “club culture” was more nebulous and meant different things to different people. As in NYC, Chicago had its own “club kid” culture which overlapped heavily with the rave scene, and featured a lot of “outlaw parties” which were basically just raves with a gayer, slightly older clientele. In Chicago, the king of the club kids was Jojo Baby.

Jojo was always there, both familiar and unrecognizable. Usually, he was at the front door of the party, and while he was clearly a club kid and not a raver, he always made the rounds in the rave circuit. By day, he was a hairdresser at this salon off the Belmont red line called Milo’s Hair Studio. Raver girls loved this specific A-cut where their hair was long in the front, and all spiky and blown-out in the back, and many swore that only Jojo knew how to cut it properly. He had an art studio in Wicker Park’s Flat Iron building, where he designed these creepy, lifelike dolls using body parts from animals and human cadavers.

Jojo passed away earlier this year, after suffering multiple forms of cancer. This month’s mix focuses on the clubbier side of house music, and Volume 15 is dedicated to the late Jojo baby, the ultimate Chicago club kid.

Class of ’99, Volume 15: Tony Humphries’ Guest List

Download the mix (MP3, 44 minutes, 101 MB)

About the cover

This is a still from the movie Kids, which I’ve mentioned multiple times in this series and which provides most of its background images. This scene is shot at NASA, a very important piece of American rave history.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Point G — Basenotic Breaks B4 (1999)
2. Celine Dion — Misled (MK Dub) (1993)
3. Mateo Matos — It's Alright (1999)
4. Industry Standard — What You Want (1996)
5. Deee-Lite — Call Me (1994)
6. Mixx Vibes — Just Can't Get Enough (1994)
7. Eddie Perez — Deeper, Go Deeper (1995)
8. DJaimin — Open The Door (1998)
9. Bjork — There's More To Life Than This (1993)
10. Daft Punk — Revolution 909 (1996)
11. DSK — What Would We Do (1992)
12. Stacy Kidd — So Fat (1997)
13. DJ Sneak — Freak Me, Feel Me (1996)
14. UBQ Project — Oh Oh Oh (1995)
15. The Chicago Connection — Dancin (1997)
16. Crystal Waters — Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) (1991)
17. Johnny Fiasco — Sunrise (1997)
18. Turntable Brothers — Get Ready (1996)
19. Ian Pooley — Relations (1995)
20. Stardust — Music Sounds Better With You (1998)

It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.

Not everyone understands house music, and it’s certainly not for everyone. Critics complain that the genre is formulaic, repetitive, and nondescript—admittedly valid criticism. This is because house’s form is defined by the DJ format. A cohesive mix requires a certain amount of uniformity and compatibility between records, so house tracks are almost always organized on 16 bars in a steady, unchanging 4/4 rhythm signature. They tend to be minimal, because fewer notes mean fewer opportunities to clash with adjacent tracks.

I think it’s really important to match records in key, which is a challenge because a record’s pitch changes when you adjust the tempo. Ideally, you want to create some kind of harmonic progression, rather than just mixing a whole set in the same key. But you can’t usually transition from one key to another because two simultaneously-playing records are going to have overlapping key signatures. Sometimes, you can blend in a track that’s a perfect 5th of the last one, or a perfect 4th, and everything will just line up. Or, you can overlay a relative minor or major. Sometimes, you can cut the bass from one record, while the bassline of the next record inverts the root of the first.

I have always committed to diatonic mixing, which most DJ’s didn’t care about and which was prohibitively difficult. As a vinyl DJ in the late 90s, I spent most of my time testing records against each other, and giving up in frustration. Today, we have software that tries to detect key and which allows us to run through a lot of permutations very quickly. But when I listen to old mixtapes from the vinyl era, one DJ that stands out to me as exceptionally committed to harmonic mixing, and that DJ is Miles Maeda.

I always admired Miles Maeda’s technical proficiency and his meticulous attention to detail. My DJ friends all considered him a “DJ’s DJ” because of his dedication to his craft. Luckily, he has remastered and digitized most of his old tapes, most of which are hosted on his website, and which include gems such as Star (’95), Isness (’96), Done and Done (’96), Easy (’97), Painting (’97), Stand Right, Walk Left (’98), Us (’99), and Sunshower (’00).

Maeda is apparently a yogi now, and lives in Japan, but still Deejays as Total M. His 90s mixes are so well-selected, so well arranged, so timeless and perfect, so essential, they belong in The National Archives. This month’s mix is dedicated to my favorite DJ of all time, Miles Maeda.

Class of ’99, Volume 14: After All This Time...

Download the mix (MP3, 41 minutes, 95 MB)

About the cover

This image comes from an old VHS tape and features a raver chick rocking Minnie Mouse gloves and afro puffs, a Fine shirt, and a pacifier on the end of a lanyard. I don’t know why lanyards became such an essential accessory in the late 90s, but it seemed like everyone in Chicago was wearing one. The most popular lanyards has “WWJD?” printed on them, as in “What Would Jesus Do?”

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Sound Design — Bounce to the Beat — 1994
2. Smokin Beats — Dreams (Vocal Mix) — 1996
3. Crustation — Flame (Borderline Insanity Dub) — 1998
4. Straight No Chaser — Turn It Around (Red Dog Dub) — 1997
5. Doug Willis — I Got It — 1996
6. Urban Blues Project — Your Heaven (Sol Brothers Club Mix) — 1996
7. Mixx Vibes — Body Music — 1994
8. K La One Project — World — 1997
9. Todd Edwards — You Don't Want to Lose It — 1998
10. 909 Disco Babes — Going On + On + On — 1995
11. Luscious Jackson — Here (Squirmel Mix) — 1995
12. Kardek — Oh You (Inferno remix by Superfunk) — 1999
13. Paul Jacobs — Happy Days (Unreleased Version) — 1997
14. Jack-N-House — A Man With A Horn (Roc + Presta Remix) — 1997
15. Junior Jack — My Feeling (Kick 'n' Deep mix) — 1999
16. Daft Punk — Da Funk (Ten Minutes Of Funk Mix) — 1996
17. Funk Junkeez — Got Funk (DJ Tonka's Remix) — 1997
18. Da Mongoloids — Spark Da Meth (Bangin' Like A Benzi Mix) — 1996
19. Roy Davis, Jr. — Rock Shock (Thomas Bangalter's Start-Stop Mix) — 1998

This month, I had the honor of chatting with Music For All about my mix series, and about rave culture in general. The conversation got me thinking about raves as a counter-culture movement. Despite its apolitical nature, the 90’s rave scene was truly countercultural. It ran parallel to mainstream culture completely, and against the grain of society in more than just the symbolic ways we often associate with teen rebellion. For better or worse, this meant a lot of antisocial behavior.

Rave was America’s last great outlaw musical subculture: created by kids, for kids, designed to be impenetrable to adults. 

NPR, “How The Internet Transformed The American Rave Scene”

Ravers were a motley assortment of drug addicts, wiggers, juvenile delinquents, and other undesirables. Chicago ravers, in particular, had a deserved reputation for being especially shady, and were notorious for:

• Organized Shoplifting: There was this one department store called Sunglass Hut that started selling ravewear in the mid-90s. We would go there and throw a bunch of clothes into the wastebins, which would then be thrown out by the night crew once the antitheft alarms had already been disabled. We would then break into the dumpsters in the middle of the night to get our stolen wares.
• Cheating the CTA: I knew kids that would jump the fence at Belmont, climb an electrical transformer, then crawl up between the train tracks to get a free ride that would normally cost $1.25! One time, a group of us skipped the fare at Bryn Mawr by crawling around the toll booth and under the turnstiles. A friend of mine tried to lay on his skateboard and paddle under, but he stood up too soon, hit the turnstile, the agent in the fare booth saw him, and she radioed the police. We dashed up the stairs to the platform, but with no approaching train to save us, we had no choice but to jump off the end of it and run down the tracks to the Berwyn stop, hoping not to trip on our giant pants. CTA tracks are electrified, mind you, and if you touch that third rail you’re toast!
• Sneaking into parties: If there was a will, there was usually a way. They used to throw huge parties at the Logan Square Ballroom, and we would go into their alley, climb onto a van, pull down the fire escape, run to the top and pry open the door to the balcony. At some point, kids figured out you could scale the wall at Route 66, walk across the roof, and there was a spot where you could crawl into the duct work and then fall through the drop ceiling onto the dancefloor below. Ravers would congregate in that spot, so when a new kid fell through the ceiling they would just get lost in the crowd.
• Running away from home: It was practically a rite of passage for a raver to just stop going home at some point. One of my closest friends ran away for months, and lived in the basement of this cokehead named Lolo. His mom called me once, exasperated, asking if I new where he was. I lied and said I didn’t, but that I knew he was OK. There was this weed dealer we knew called Bagl (because he was Jewish and because those were his initials) whose home became a halfway house for ravers when his parents left for an entire summer. I actually ran away from home for about a week, and I didn’t even remember it until a few years ago when my mom reminded me. And I still don’t remember where I was for that week.
• Ganging up on you: One time, I phoned this kid Bashamba from Bagl’s house, calling him out for stealing my visor at a party and demanding he come return it. Instead, he showed up with 5 other kids who jumped me in the alley behind the house. They really gave me a beating—one of them even tried to rip out my eyebrow ring! A neighbor saw it all, called the police, and brought me into her apartment to clean all the blood off my face. Bashamba and his crew spent the night in jail, after which he vowed to find and jump me again for “getting him arrested”.
• Taking the money and running: I once threw a party in River West with my best friend, and this Korean kid who worked at a flea market called Clark MegaMall. The kid colluded with the bouncer to steal all the money collected at the door, and they made off with over a thousand dollars! Turns out he already had a one-way ticket to Seoul and must have planned this heist out in advance. My best friend and I tried to go ambush him outside his job, but he had already left the country. Motherfucker!

I wouldn’t characterize ravers as rebellious, so much as out of control. I hated the city for shutting down raves, but it was probably the responsible thing to do.

Class of ’99, Volume 13: Underground

Download the mix (MP3, 45 minutes, 101 MB)

About the cover

This month’s cover comes from a 1998 party called Meow Mix and features the once-famous, now-forgotten Sanrio frog known as Keroppi.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Solar Sides — Birk's Works (1999)
2. Disco Elements — Muzik Takes Me Higher (1994)
3. Johnny Fiasco — Keep On Dancing (1996)
4. Disco-Tex — Open Your Heart (1997)
5. Smokin Beats — Smokin Funk (1997)
6. Dave Angel — Funk Music (DJ Tonka remix) (1997)
7. Smokin Beats — Musik (1996)
8. JohNick — The Captain (1998)
9. Ian Pooley — 900 Degrees (2000)
10. Gene Farris — Visions Of The Future (1996)
11. Daft Punk — Musique (1996)
12. Mousse T — Horny (1997)
13. Wildchild — Jump To My Beat (U.S. mix)
14. Les Rythmes Digitales — Jacques Your Body (1999)
15. Baffled Republic — Knee High (1996)
16. Ground 96 — Throw Ya Hands Up (1996)
17. Freesoul — Disco Eyes (Freeform Reform)
18. Basement Jaxx — Automatic (1999)
19. Paul Johnson - No Big Thang (1996)
20. Nail — Dancin (Unilateral Disco Free Zone Revision) (1998)

Party Girl is a really cute, very 90s movie that you should watch if you haven’t already. Also worth watching is the 1999 UK film Human Traffic. By this time, British rave culture had moved almost completely into the clubs, after parliament passed a law making raves not just illegal, but very illegal (Chicago passed a similar law in 2000, which I will discuss, in detail, in a future post).

I actually haven’t seen this in over 20 years, but seeing that wall of records, with all those classic labels—V, Subliminal, FFRR, Manifesto, Positiva and more—definitely brought me back. I might have to watch this one again.

The American rave scene saw very little exposure in popular culture, including film and television. There’s another 1999 film called Go which looked stupid when it came out, and which I never saw, but this intro looks awesome and gets everything right (except the music), so it might be worth checking out. And then there’s Vibrations, one of the absolute dumbest, most out-of-touch subculture movies ever produced.

I’m going off memory here, but this is how I remember the premise of Vibrations: a rock band keyboardist encounters a group of hillbillies out joyriding in a stolen backhoe, which they use to crush his hands. He loses his livelihood and becomes a homeless drunk with stumps where his hands were. One night he falls asleep in an abandoned warehouse, and when he wakes up there’s a rave happening all around him.

From there he meets Christina Applegate, the unlikely costar of the film. She introduces him to techno, and her nerdy friend constructs robotic hands for him that he can pre-program somehow, and then he starts touring as a robot, playing techno keyboards at raves with his automatic hands.

It’s not even worth explaining what’s wrong with this movie. It has to be seen to be believed.

Honorable mention

I’ll just leave this here because it was one of the few times I saw raves depicted on television. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a short-lived, live-action series, similar to Power Rangers and to the TMNT movies—except now they also had a girl ninja turtle with boobs on her plastron.

About this volume

This month’s mix is heavy on the jazz. It features a number of fusion acts, from France and especially Italy.

Class of ’99, Volume 12: For Renée

Download the mix (MP3, 46 minutes, 107 MB)

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Dajae — U Got Me Up (Cajmere's Underground Goodie Mix) (1993)
2. Deee—Lite — Party Happenin' People (1994)
3. DJ Fiasco & Chunk a Bud — Zig Zag (1993)
4. Ricky Bradshaw — Black Keys (Filtered Jazz Mix) (1999)
5. Solar Sides — 'Round Midnight (1999)
6. The Believers — Who Dares to Believe in Me (1993)
7. Afro Elements — Lagos Jump (Raw Dub) (1998)
8. Rinôçérôse — Rock Classics (Vol1) (1999)
9. Second Crusade — The Choice Is Yours (Rare Groove Mix) (1996)
10. Mateo y Matos — Home (1998)
11. I:Cube — Mingus In My Pocket (1997)
12. Todd Edwards — Saved My Life (1997)
13. Kenlou — Moonshine (1995)
14. Natural Rhythm — Enchantment (1999)
15. George Thomson — Goin' Home (1997)
16. Ian Pooley — Higgledy Piggledy (1997)
17. Disco Dust — Feels Good (1997)
18. Cricco Castelli — Roadblock (1998)
19. Disco Elements — Livin In Harmony (1999)
20. Jack-N-House — A Man With A Horn (House Jazz) (1997)

Happy new year to you all, and welcome back. I guess I’m going to dedicate this month’s mix to Flat Eric. As I have mentioned before, there was a close connection between the house scenes of Chicago and Paris, with French DJs regularly performing at Chicago raves. Sometime in 1998, Flat Eric made its way onto the scene, probably brought to Chicago by its Parisian creator, Mr. Oizo. I don’t know if there were multiple Flat Erics floating around, or just the one, but I distinctly remember a friend of mine walking around a party with this guy. On film, he seems more like a marionette, but “in person”, I remember him more like a Muppet in that one hand went in his head/mouth, and your other hand went in one of his hands, which meant that his other hand was just kind of vestigial and couldn’t be moved.

While electronic dance music never really enjoyed mainstream success stateside, it did find a home in late-90s advertising. Flat Eric seemed to disappear from the Chicago rave scene as quickly as he appeared, but in ’99—much to my surprise—Flat Eric became the mascot for Levi’s jeans. American ad agencies had apparently discovered ‘Electronica’, and were all trying to outdo each other by licensing artists like The Orb, or Moby, whose 1999 multi-platinum album, Play, probably netted more in ad licensing than in direct sales.

Class of ’99, Volume 11: Time Will Tell

Download the mix (MP3, 40 Minutes, 94 MB)

This month’s cover comes from an ad I scanned out of an old issue of Thousand Words magazine.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. DJ Q — We Are One (1996)
2. Glenn Underground — 70s Trip (1997)
3. Blue Boy — Funky Friday (1996)
4. Sexy Kool vs Superfunk — Sea, Sweet & Funk (1999)
5. Baby Pop — Love Potion (1996)
6. Romanthony — Trust (Kerri Chandler dub) (1995)
7. Jesper Dahlbäck — Bottle Up! (1997)
8. George Thomson — Fatty's Lunch Box (1997)
9. Rasoul + McCarthy — Retrospect (1999)
10. Point.G — Basenotic Breaks B1 (1999)
11. Papermusic — Downtime (1995)
12. Care — Soul Suite (1997)
13. Thomas Bangalter — Club Soda (1998)
14. Fantom - Faithful (1997)
15. Rinôçérôse — La Guitaristc House Organisation (1999)
16. Global Communication — The Way (1996)
17. Denki Groove — Shangri-La (1997)

I still have my flyer for Blessings ’97, which was illustrated by Chicago’s resident caricaturist, DJ Phil Free Art. Phil mostly worked in pen-and-ink, and then used his Kinko’s card to print up the zines he handed it out at parties for free (hence the surname). This flyer was the first time I ever saw him do a vector drawing. Somehow, the cover art got screwed up and her shoes aren’t masked properly (though the back is correct). That bugged me when I was 17, and looking at the flyer now, it still bugs me today because I’m uptight like that.

Phil was a staple of the Chicago rave scene, with his signature style of illustration and his cheesy Happy Hardcore sets. Sadly, Phil passed away in 2015, and was honored in that year with a Blessings revival that featured his iconic raver-girl character.

“Show Me The Way” is therefore dedicated to DJ Phil Free Art, for whose contribution we are eternally thankful.

Class of ’99, Volume 10: Show Me The Way

Download the mix (MP3, 42 Minutes, 96 MB)

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Rinôçérôse — Mes Vacances à Rio (1999)
2. Smokin Beats - Look Who's Lovin' Me (1995)
3. Street Corner Symphony — Symphonic Tonic (1996)
4. Rinôçérôse — Le Mobilier (1999)
5. The Plastic Avengers — Sideburns (1997)
6. Byron Stingily — Get Up (Mateo & Matos Back To Paradise Dub) (1997)
7. Dirty Harry — Deep In Vibe (1996)
8. Street Corner Symphony — Symphonic Tonic (1996)
9. The Bucketheads — The Bomb! (1994)
10. The Brand New Heavies — Shelter (Danny D mix) (1997)
11. Bob Sinclar — Vision Of Paradise (1998)
12. Rinôçérôse — Radiocapte (1999)
13. Roger S — Get Hi (1996)
14. Wildchild — Jump To My Beat (Todd Edwards Jump Remix) (1996)
15. Boris Dlugosch — Ready (1996)
16. I:Cube — Disco Cubizm (1996)
17. Trouble Men — Come Into The Party (1999)

I had never experienced humidity until I came to Chicagoland. It was 1995, and I was 15, when I stepped out of my mother’s Oldsmobile and staggered across a sweltering parking lot to our motel. For the uninitiated, the experience is something like altitude sickness, but more immediate and distressing, as your body tries to cool itself with perspiration that won’t evaporate.

Back then, Chicago was absolutely filthy, and the black soot from the city bus would mix with windswept dirt and stick to wet skin. The humidity somehow locks the heat into the atmosphere, so that it’s stiflingly hot even at 2 in the morning. The streetlights’ sodium filaments emitted a harsh, orange glare that desaturated every other color, so all you saw was orange and black. It was like wandering around in a giant smelting plant.

That first summer, as I tried to acclimate myself to this new reality, I heard persistent buzzing over my head. I assumed that the humidity somehow caused the transformers on the power poles to buzz in this way, but only later did I learn that it was actually the sound of swarming cicadas, these insects the size of a thumb with wings, that look like they belong at the equator. Trees of heaven turned the concrete into a jungle, especially in deserted areas where raves were most prevalent. Nicknamed the “ghetto palm”, these noxious weeds thrive in blighted areas with lots of cracked asphalt and little competing flora, and will take over an empty lot in a single summer.

Between the oppressive heat, the ghetto palms and the giant bugs, summer in Chicago often felt like I imagined San Juan or São Paulo to be (though I later visited San Juan, and found it much more pleasant). In addition to these natural features, the party spots often ended up in neighborhoods with cultural roots down in Puerto Rico and Mexico—Like Humbolt Park, where DJ Subzero had a whole, 3-story brownstone that he used as an after-hours spot. For short while, promoters were even throwing all-night raves in the gym at Roberto Clemente High School, which I still don’t understand. Why would CPS even allow that? It’s a mystery to me.

Then there was Little Village / La Villita, which had a number of rave venues including The Black Hole, a videogame arcade with blacked-out windows. Chicago was (and is) a slice of Latin America in the upper Midwest, and this month’s mix explores the Latin impact on Chicago house—from its disco beginnings, to its Italian emulators overseas.

Class of ’99, Volume 09: Una Más

Download the mix (MP3, 43 minutes, 99 MB)

About the cover

This month’s cover comes from the flyer for a 1998 Vibe Alive party called Soul Revival 3.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Negrocan — Cada Vez (Grant Nelson Vocal Mix) (1999)
2. Michael Lange — One More Time (1997)
3. Cricco Castelli — A Day In Copacabana (1997)
4. Paul Johnson — With My Eyes (1997)
5. Gene Farris — Summer Affair (1996)
6. Disco-Tex — Aquilo (1996)
7. The Mighty Dub Katz — It's Just A Groove (1995)
8. The Innocent feat Derrick Carter — Theme From Blue Cucaracha (1995)
9. Afro Medusa — Pasilda (Knee Deep Club Remix) (2000)
10. Cricco Castelli — Batucada Soul (1998)
11. Rainbow Garden — Scrumpin (1998)
12. Solar Sides — Afro Paris (1999)
13. Latin Aspects — Estrangera (House Brazil Mix) (1998)
14. Basement Jaxx — Samba Magic (1997)
15. Sun Trust — How Insensitive (1999)
16. A Man Called Adam — Qué Tal America? (1996)
17. Nick Holder — Paradise (1997)
18. DJ Paul & Vincent Nello — Hammond Tribal (1997)
19. The Heartists — Belo Horizonti (1997)

The classic rave venue was an empty warehouse, unassuming and seemingly abandoned during the day, which came alive, secretly, in the middle of the night. The ephemeral (and illegal) nature of these events made the rave party a kind of temporary autonomous zone, where teenagers met in an empty space, made it into an actual place — which then evaporated the next day.

Other than warehouses, raves typically occurred in three types of venues:

• Civic centers in run-down municipalities that bordered Chicago. This would include the Harvey Expo Center, the Dolton Expo Center, and the Maywood Civic Center.
• Roller rinks, or former roller rinks, e.g. Rainbo or Route 66;
• Former ballrooms. Many of these were probably built in the ’30s or earlier, with dancefloors ideal for raving. Evergreen Ballroom and Grand Ballroom are two examples.

But there was one venue in a category all its own, the greatest rave venue of all time: Photon. Imagine lining up in a parking lot at 11pm, in the middle of nowhere, and then you walk in and see this:

Photon was a laser tag franchise that went bankrupt in 1989. In the mid-90s, an original arena sat just outside city limits, shuttered, surrounded by slumburbs, but preserved in its original state. Photon was discovered by party promoters and reinvented as the ultimate rave cave. It was already designed for lasers and fog machines, and the terrain included platforms, labyrinthine corridors, suspended cargo net hammocks, steep ramps, and tall balconies. It was a totally immersive experience. My first trip to Photon was for an alien-themed party called Unified, which I still count among my favorite parties ever.

Eventually, Photon got raved-out and fell into disrepair. Promoters kept renting the complex, but they’d have the party in this adjacent warehouse that wasn’t the same at all. The late 90s economic boom brought a lot of other warehouses back online, and the rest were converted into lofts. Once the rave scene died, there was a decent loft scene in Chicago that continued on for a few years. A bunch of friends would move into an unfinished loft, split the rent 6 ways, and throw parties to pay it down. Loft parties weren’t as good as actual raves, though, and no space would ever hold a candle to Photon.

Class of ’99, Volume 08: Keep On

Download the mix (MP3, 46 minutes, 107 MB)

About the cover

This month’s cover star is Justin Long, who I’ve mentioned before. Justin was one of the most popular DJs in the Chicago scene at that time.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Sun Trust — Windchimes (1999)
2. DJ Sneak — Keep On Groovin' (Pitch Disco Mix) (1996)
3. I:Cube — Picnic Attack (1997)
4. Daphreephunkateerz — Get Pissed On Brooklyn Bridge (1996)
5. Dimitri From Tokyo — Back In The Daze (1997)
6. Chris Simmonds — Rush n Soul (2000)
7. Todd Edwards — EveryDay (1999)
8. DJ Phats — Phatman Boogie (Phat Club Mix) (1996)
9. Fresh & Low — Besos De Los Angeles (Cool Side) (1997)
10. Atmosfear — Dancing In Outer Space (MAW Lunar Mix) (1999)
11. Smooth Touch — Tripping (Trip Out Dub) (1997)
12. The Knowledge — Until The Day (1997)
13. Paul Johnson — Hear The Music (1996)
14. DJ Rasoul — Night At The Top (1999)
15. DJ Rasoul — San Francisco Nights (1998)
16. Glenn Underground — Do You Like It (1997)
17. DJ Duke — Just Can't Get Enough (1996)
18. Troy Brown — Instant Replay (1995)
19. 7th Movement — 606 Luv (1997)

Funnily enough, Evan Dorkin gets this partly right. Rave was never a highly sexualized subculture. I’m sure there was more risky sex in the rave scene than in the general teen population, as well as every other kind of high-risk behavior. But the scene was never overtly sexual. Raves seemed to draw about as many girls as boys, all cloaked in XXXL threads that left everything to the imagination.

There were lots of gay teenagers in the rave scene. Gay guys would sometimes wear tight shirts, and lesbians seemed to identify each other with dad-sized, buttoned-down Oxfords. No one was letting it all hang out, females were generally non-slutty, and guys weren’t aggressively macking on girls even when everyone was fucked up. This is how I remember things, anyway. Maybe that wasn’t everyone’s experience.

Class of ’99, Volume 07: Untitled B

Download the mix (MP3, 45 Minutes, 103 MB)

About the cover

This volume’s cover is from an ad for Untitled, a landmark ravewear store in Lincoln Park. The original Untitled featured a balcony with a DJ booth on it, overlooking an Art Nouveau fountain that flowed into a stocked koi pond. The store always smelled like Nag Champa, and they let you hang out in there for as long as you wanted.

Back in those days, there were about 7 shops between the Belmont and Fullerton train stations where ravers could congregate, distribute flyers, and collect mixtapes: Belmont Army Surplus, Ragstock, Rocket 69, Gramaphone, Untitled, plus a few cafés and skate shops. Southsiders also had their spots—like Level and Hot Jams—but these shops were few and far-between.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Alex Gopher — Super Disco (1997)
2. DJ Rasoul — Slingshot (1998)
3. DJ Duke — The Rain (1996)
4. Mateo & Matos — New York Style (1996)
5. Natural Rhythm — For Real (1999)
6. Demon — Lil' Fuck (Funkasized Version) (1999)
7. DJ Sneak — Summer Day (1996)
8. The Village Blunt — Don Village Hights (1997)
9. Prassay — One I Saw J.C (1997)
10. Moodyman — Shades Of Jae Part II (1999)
11. Paris Angeles — Stuff (Original Mix) (1997)
12. The Buffalo Bunch — Buffalo Club (1998)
13. Le Knight Club — Santa Claus (1997)
14. Paul Johnson — House Illusion (1999)
15. Bob Sinclar — Mo Underground People (1998)
16. Cheek — Venus (I:Cube remix) (1996)
17. Trouble Men — One Note (1999)
18. Sun Trust — Blues Ride (1999)
19. Belizbeha — Inhibitions (Clear Horizons Mix) (1998)
20. Rinôçérôse — Le Triangle (1999)

Evan Dorkin was right that the rave scene was basically a revival of disco. Dorkin was, at the height of his cartooning, an unofficial spokesman for Generation X, drawing Milk & Cheese, the Bill & Ted comic, and designing cans for OK Cola. But his kind of ironic, misanthropic, self-referential narrative was specific to Gen-X, which had nothing to do with ravers, who were wedged right between Gen-X and Millennials.

I remember rave culture getting panned (but mostly ignored) by cultural critics at the time, and I think there were punk rock, Gen-X assumptions to this critique that were incorrect—specifically, that every youth subculture is meant to be totally novel, to rebel against the previous generation, and that disco epitomized conformist, mainstream artificiality. By the end of the 80s, I barely knew what disco even was, and couldn’t define it for you if you asked me. Disco had almost completely disappeared from commercial radio, and was too recent to count as ‘oldies’. So to me, at least, disco was fairly novel.

Rave was also not about teen rebellion. If anything, the ravers I knew tended to be latchkey kids without a lot of parental supervision, who therefore lacked much structure to rebel against in the first place. Nor did rave consciously reject mainstream culture. Typically, there are fashion cues that differentiate a counter-culture from the general zeitgeist. Brand name sporting gear tends to place one squarely among the latter—especially branded team jerseys. And yet, I often saw ravers rocking Adidas shell-toes with extra wide laces, a baseball cap, and a Sox jersey so over-sized that it looked like a judge’s robe.

A friend of mine had this Adidas visor that he would wear upside-down and backward, which not only looked really stupid, but also got his visor ‘confiscated’ on the street by some guy who claimed to be in the Gangster Disciples. For whatever reason, the GDs’ main symbol was a star of David with pitchforks shooting out the top, and they apparently saw an upside-down, three-pointed Adidas logo as a sign of disrespect to their gang.

This became a problem when ravers started sporting these T-shirts sold by Massive Magazine, one of the Midwest’s biggest rave publications. Their brand was literally just an inverted Adidas logo, and I knew at least one kid whose Massive tee got him jumped for ‘flipping the forks’.

Anyway, the world of raves had nothing to do with the world of Evan Dorkin, and it’s not surprising that his outside perspective missed the point completely.

Class of ’99, Volume 06: The Night

Download the mix (MP3, 43 minutes, 97 MB)

This month’s mix comes out as a double release, after a two-month hiatus. Side B has been released simultaneously.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Chiapet — Westworld (Medieval Funk Mix) (1999)
2. Point.G — Basenotic Breaks Volume 1 B3 (1998)
3. Disco Revisited — Gonna Roc U All Nite (1995)
4. DJ Sneak — Disco Erotica (1994)
5. 7th Movement — Odyssey (Love Star Discomix) (1995)
6. Moodyman — I Can't Kick This Feeling When It Hits (1997)
7. Pépé Bradock — Deep Burnt (1999)
8. Studio 54 — Toni and Stephanie (1997)
9. Scott Grooves — Mothership Reconnection (Slam Mix) (1998)
10. Iz & Diz — Latest Freak (1997)
11. Rinôçérôse — 323 Secondes De Musique Repetitive Avec Guitare Espagnole (1999)
12. DJ Tonka — The Night (1997)
13. The Nighttripper — Future City (1993)
14. Todd Edwards — Dancing For Heaven (1995)
15. Sexy Kool — Kool Vibrations (1999)
16. Alan Braxe and Fred Falke — Running (2000)
17. Full Swing — Freestyle '96 (1996)
18. Blue Boy — So Lonely (1996)
19. Peter Funk — Dreams of You (1997)
20. Ananda Project — Destination (1998)

“I’ve got an idea: let’s go to the rocks!”

So begins this month’s mix, as captured on camcorder, proposed as a solution to the dilemma of where to go after the rave is over. At this point, the sun has already come up, so there’s not much point in going to sleep. You might as well keep partying.

Chicago had a number of bizarre after-party locations, including brownstones that were gutted from the inside, semi-functional bowling alleys, and even a funeral home. But if you couldn’t find an afterparty, there was always the lakefront.

Chicago has very few actual, sandy beaches; instead, the shoreline is filled with boulders and chunks of concrete. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, ravers would crawl out of the warehouses and beach themselves on the rocks. Northsiders met at the Belmont rocks, and Southside kids had ‘The Point’, A.K.A. Promontory Point in Hyde Park.

The rocks often felt like a giant cosmic bust, the horizontal sun blasting in your face like God’s flashlight. However, it was an important bonding experience, I think, because you could meet other ravers and actually have a conversation, which was almost impossible over the deafening din of a typical rave party.

At some point, the cops started kicking us out at the Belmont rocks, but I don’t even remember why. It wasn’t illegal to be in the park after dawn—although I vaguely remember people bringing huge tanks of nitrous oxide down there, and selling it in those giant punch-balloons that little kids tie to rubber bands. That was probably why we were cleared out (though I think NO₂ was also technically legal). After that, some kids moved on to the Montrose rocks, and then were chased up to the Foster rocks, and after that, who knows.

As a teenager, my best friend lived with his mom, across the street from Juneway Beach in Rogers Park. I would tell my mom I was sleeping over at his place, and then we could crawl out the bedroom window of his basement apartment, run around all night, sneak back in the next morning, pretend we just woke up, and then go out to the Juneway rocks. A little known secret, even to most Chicagoans, is that Rogers Park has the best beaches in the city.

A Saturday In 1999 is dedicated to the rocks—you can decide which ones.

Class of ’99, Volume 05: A Saturday In 1999

Download the mix (MP3, 45 minutes, 103 MB)

About the cover

This graphic comes from a record release party thrown by the Dust Traxx, a Chicago House label. The flyer was perforated into several mini-flyers, each featuring a Sonic the Hedgehog character. Brand parodies were an iconic element of the Rave aesthetic, going way back to the beginning, when Rave culture overlapped with the gay ‘club kid’ culture.

MTV used to air this video in the early 90s, of George Michael covering an early Rave anthem called “Killer”. I was 13 when I first saw this, and while I’ve never been a fan of George Michael, the video was one of the first mainstream glimpses into Rave culture that I remember seeing on TV, and it totally rocked my world.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. David Alvarado — Dub Plate No2 (1997)
2. Cricco Castelli — Roman Holiday (1998)
3. Jamiroquai — Cosmic Girl (Full Intention Mix) (1996)
4. Deep Down - Give Me Your Love (1999)
5. UBQ Project — Groove It (1996)
6. Chaser — Tall Stories (Pooley's "Lars From Mars" Mix) (1997)
7. Disco-Tex — Clap Your Hands (1997)
8. Daft Punk — Burnin (Ian Pooley Unreleased Mix) (1997)
9. Daddy's Favourite — I Feel Good Things For You (1997)
10. Mike Delgado — Byrdman's Revenge (1997)
11. Solar Sides — Side's Effects (1999)
12. Gusto — Disco's Revenge (1996)
13. Smoke city — Mr. Gorgeous (Mood II Swing Dub) (1997)
14. Danell Dixon — Yeah (Get Hype Mix) (1996)
15. H2O — Nobody's Business (Deep Zone Club Mix) (1996)
16. Paul Jacobs — Soul Grabber Pt. 3 (1997)
17. Raven Maize — Forever Together (Future Shock Remix) (1996)
18. Basement Jaxx — Bingo Bango (1999)

Ravers say there’s a real unity to the scene, that there’s no small-mindedness or cliquishness, but they’re only looking from within. It’s kind of like the Trilateral Commission saying it has no closed-mindedness or cliquishness—everyone who’s on the Trilateral Commission is welcome!

— from Generation Ecch!, 1994

It’s true: ravers preached unity and openness—and practiced extreme exclusivity. Let’s say you had heard of raves, but had never gone, and you wanted to check one out. First, you had to already know where in town to even find rave flyers. Once you had a flyer, you had to know to call the number on it, the night of the party, and then you’d get directions to a checkpoint, where you would have to go to get a map to the event. Sometimes, the kid manning the checkpoint just gave you a second phone number to call, where the promoter would read the directions into the outgoing message. So then you had to find a pay phone, write those directions down or memorize them, and hope you didn’t get lost.

Almost none of my friends drove, and this was before cell phones, so unless that venue was either in or just outside the city, we would have to organize a carpool using pay phones and pagers (which every raver had, luckily). But you couldn’t get called back on a payphone if someone else was using it, and you couldn’t exactly call dibbs on a public phone.

Once you got to the venue, you could still be denied entry. Sometimes, a bouncer would pat you down, and ravers would get bounced for stupid shit like drawing up the cuffs of their UFO pants and trying to smuggle a whole 40 oz in one pant leg. Or, the venue would reach capacity, and your only option was to tailgate, sneak in anyway, or leave.

If you did get in, there was definitely this vibe that everyone is welcome at the rave party—provided that you made it though the gauntlet leading up to it. But this also meant that no one just kind of ended up there. You had to really want to be there, so the secretive nature of rave parties did select for a kind of sincerity, intentionality, and dedication.

Raving was a whole weekend ritual that included calling the number on the flyer, the day after the party, to hear the promoter wax about how great the party turned out and to thank the participants (or to apologize, if it got busted and shut down). This month’s mix opens with a day-after message from Underground Elements’ Southside Chicago, which drew almost a thousand people. I remember dancing to “South Side” at this party, as well as “Chicago Southside“, and it was, indeed, on the South Side, and, it was, as the promoter says on the recording, the BOMB party!

Class of ’99, Volume 04: The BOMB Mixtape

Download the mix (MP3, 41 Minutes, 96 MB)

About the cover

This month’s cover art comes from a flyer designed by Justin Fines, AKA Demo. This guy was the best rave flyer artist in the Midwest, hands-down.

I didn’t have Internet growing up, but we did have a PC at my mom’s house, so I would go to the public library and download web pages to a floppy disk, then load them up at home and edit the source to learn how web pages worked. This strategy helped me land a Web design internship in ’99, and then in 2000 I got my first freelance gig, developing the branding and website for the Chicago DJ Summit (which was cooler when Flash was still supported).

Anyway, I always admired Demo’s vector-heavy style, which inspired my work early on in my career.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. The Bucketheads — Bucketheads Outro (1995)
2. Terra Dëva — Fresh Start (Joshua's House Mix) (1997)
3. Travis Nelson — The Latin Quarter (1996)
4. Pépé Bradock — Atom Funk (1997)
5. Sauza Doble — I Luv' To Dance (Disco Doble) (1995)
6. To-Ka Project — Café Style (2000)
7. Free Energy — More (1996)
8. Natural Rhythm — Spoken Word (1999)
9. G. Flame & Mr. G. — Make Me High (1997)
10. Ricky Bradshaw — Higher (1996)
11. Tim Deluxe — I Know (1997)
12. The Don — Got To Be (1996)
13. Cheek — Venus (Sunshine People) (1996)
14. Studio 54 — Do That Work (1998)
15. Glenn Underground — I Need GU (1996)
16. The Republic — Earthshaker (1996)
17. Johnny Fiasco — Fixation (1997)
18. Atmosfear — Motivation (Dimitris Motivated Respect Mix) (1999)

Rave culture and Japanese Otaku culture seemed to overlap more than a little, and since Chinatown was Chicago’s hub for Japanese imports, a lot of us ravers turned up there on a regular basis. I had a girlfriend who always wanted to visit the gift shop in the Pui Tak center for her Sanrio gear (she was all about some Badtz-Maru). There was an electronics depot down there where we bought these translucent, Japanese beepers that lit up all crazy when someone paged you, and we even bought Tamagotchis together. Then one day, we broke up, and my Tamogotchi died the same day. Tragic, I know. ♡ｏ｡.( ´༎ຶ ʖ̯ ༎ຶ)・・・[×_×]

I had a close friend named Ethan who shared my interest in synthesizers, and making music. He spent most of his childhood in Hong Kong, and was fun to hit up Cermak with because he actually spoke Cantonese. I remember there was some kind of Chinese clove cigarettes that he just had to have, and could only get in that neighborhood. That, and this chrysanthemum tea that came in a kid’s juice box.

My DJ buddy Mike was obsessed with anime, and had his whole room decked out with Evangelion wall scrolls from Chinatown Square. We would get these reflective anime stickers and cover all the labels on our vinyl, so other DJs couldn’t peep our selections when we spun out at parties. We kept going back to this one little shop on Wentworth, year after year, buying up all their stickers, until all that remained were from this basketball manga called Slam Dunk that we both thought was really stupid. Recently, I went back in there and lo and behold, those same basketball stickers were still hanging there, unsold, under the cash register, 25 years later.

This month’s mixtape is entitled Three Funkyness, in honor of Chicago’s Chinatown, as Chicagoans will surely get the reference.

Class of ’99, Volume 03: Three Funkyness

Download the mix (MP3, 40 minutes, 94 MB)

About the cover

Rave culture also overlapped with the Five Elements—deejaying being the most obvious connection—though graffiti and breakdancing were big in the rave scene. I used to write with my best friend, Matt. His tag was ÊTRA, and I wrote FFWD» and we mainly hit up transit stations while we waited for the bus or train.

In 1996, the city started putting undercover cops all over the CTA as part of their Graffiti Blasters program, to try and clean up the city in anticipation of that year’s Democratic National Convention, held at the United Center. In ’97, Graffiti Blasters was still in effect, and Matt and I got busted by two undercover cops, tagging up the Belmont train platform.

Chicago had also enacted a curfew for anyone under 18, and they started trying 17-year-olds as adults, which made 17 an especially bad year to be picked up off the street in the middle of the night. Matt, who was still 16, got to call his mom to pick him up, but I had to spend the whole night in big-boy jail.

I ended up getting community service, which wasn’t so bad, but enough for me to discontinue my vandalistic ways. After 25 years, my handstyle is pretty rusty—but I think this cover turned out OK. The photo is scanned from Thousand Words, Chicago’s indispensable rave zine.

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Ruffneck — Move Your Body (MAW Your Body) (1996)
2. Sylk 130 — When The Funk Hits The Fan (Mood II Swing Mix) (1996)
3. Julius Papp — Justified Music (1997)
4. Baby Pop — Day & Night (1996)
5. NYC Live And Direct — Move Like This (1998)
6. Trouble Men — Our Thang (1999)
7. Natural Rhythm — Mantra (1999)
8. D'Pac — Everybody (Different Shade Club Mix) (1994)
9. Sound Design — Melissa's Dream (1994)
10. Rick Wade — Players Theme (1997)
11. Reel Fusion Band — Keep It Coming (Lifted Fusion) (1997)
12. Mateo & Matos — Release The Rhythm (1997)
13. Brian Transeau — Relativity (Carl Craig's Dub) (1993)
14. DJ Sneak — Show Me The Way (1995)
15. The Black Science Orchestra — Philadelphia (1994)
16. First Choice — The Player (Mousse T Vocal Mix) (1997)
17. Sandy Rivera — Expansions '97 (1997)

One time, Manny asked me what my stage name was going to be. I told him I was going to have to think about it, because I didn’t actually have nom de guerre, but I didn’t want to release records as Morgan, which is my actual first name. One day, I was in the studio and saw the talent roster he had sent out to all the labels. He listed me on there as Morgo Deep.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked him. “No fucking way am I going to go as ‘Morgo Deep’!” Manny insisted that this was a hot pseudonym. “Man, you’ll be up on stage, behind the decks, and all the girls’ll be like ‘Go Deeep! Go Deeep!'” After this, it was all downhill between me and Manny. My performance in the studio was generally lackluster, and he eventually dropped me from his lineup.

This volume is entitled “Go Deep”, in honor of Manny Mohr, who gave me my first big break in the music industry (which I squandered). It’s also named after The 1998 Janet Jackson video in which a mob of ravers trash some kid’s house when his parent are out of town (I can attest to this happening many a time, irl).

About the cover

The cover art for this volume comes from a flyer for Ladybug², designed by Ladybug Collective. My girlfriend had this flyer taped to her wall, and I was always jealous that I didn’t have it my collection. It’s significant because it was the first flyer (to my memory) that employed this Designer’s Republic aesthetic, a trend that would last through the 90s.

Ladybug² was a rave that would live in infamy. I didn’t go to 1 or 2, but this is the story I remember: Ladybug 1 was an unprecedented success, considered by many to be the best Chicago rave to that point. There was massive hype and anticipation for Ladybug², with a star-studded lineup that included Keoki, the high-profile club kid and self-described ‘Superstar DJ’, and actual superstar DJ James Christian.

Co-organized by multiple promotion companies, and sponsored by multiple record labels, Ladybug drew the largest crowd of any Chicago rave to date. And then it got busted by the police, and shut down — hard. Normally, when the cops shut down a party, they would just tell everyone to leave. Worst-case scenario, they would see some dealing and arrest a few people. But this time, for some reason, they detained large numbers of kids, made them sit against the all, brought in a fleet of paddy wagons and performed mass arrests. If anyone was there, or knows more details about Ladybug², please chime in.

Class of ’99, Volume 02: Go Deep

Download the mix (MP3, 45 minutes, 104 MB)

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Ray Mang — Love Dancing (1997)
2. Faze Action — Original Disco Motion (1995)
3. Sixteen Souls — Late Night Jam (1997)
4. Phatt Pussy Kat — Find A Way (2000)
5. Braxton Holmes And Mark Grant — Psychotic Pimpin' (1997)
6. Bluelite — Lite Juice (1997)
7. Ricky Bradshaw — Ricky's Guitar (1999)
8. Ron Trent — I Feel The Rhythm (Inner Experience Revision) (1999)
9. Rosie Gaines — Closer than Close (Mentor Club Mix) (1996)
10. Free Energy — Nite Position (1996)
11. Todd Edwards — Can't Live Without You (1998)
12. Ahmen Rah — Everybody Sometimes (Box Clever Remix) (1998)
13. Todd Edwards — Steal Your Heart (1998)
14. Zak Toms — Feel It In The Air (1997)
15. Barbara Tucker — I Get Lifted (The Bar Dub) (1994)
16. Mateo + Matos — Dark Side (1999)
17. Sun Trust — Red Trip (1999)
18. DJ Rasoul — Let The Music (1998)

The Class of ’99 series is meant to revive the sound of Chicago’s second House era, and to capture the spirit of ‘Y2K’, from 1995 to 2000, when Chicago rave culture was at its peak. The tracks are digitized from my vinyl collection, accumulated during my time as an amateur House DJ.

About this volume

By 1999, the ‘raver’ moniker was considered passé and was dropped in favor of the vague and noncommittal ‘party kids’, or ‘party people’. “Do you go to parties?” became a euphemism for “are you a raver?” But unlike the detached, jaded irony of so many teen subcultures, rave had a spirit of sincerity, and of enthusiasm. Why not just own the word? My closest friends and I absolutely lived for these parties back then, and for a time it was my whole world. Those of you who came of age in this period know that what we had was something that can never be recreated, and is hard to convey to those who weren’t there. So this one is dedicated to all my ‘party people’, wherever you are.

Party People showcases 18 classic Chicago-style House records, exploring the French Connection and making its way back home through Köln, Glasgow, London, NYC, Jersey and Detroit. The cover art for this volume comes from a Y2K-era ravewear company called Fine.

Class of ’99, Volume 01: Party People

Download the mix (MP3, 45 minutes, 102 MB)

Track List

Follow these links to read more about the selections:

1. Angelo Tinsley — Get Down With Me (1981)
2. Robert Armani — Arrow (1997)
3. Shaboom — Nokturnal (1996)
4. Mateo + Matos — In My Soul (1999)
5. Blue Boy — Dub-A-Dutch (1999)
6. Disco-Tex — Come Easy (1996)
7. Daft Punk — Around the World (1997)
8. «Rinôçérôse» — Sublimior (1999)
9. Cassius - Feeling For You (1999)
10. Mike Huckaby — The Stranger (1997)
11. Todd Edwards — Stronger (1995)
12. Cheesy D — Get The Cash And Run (1996)
13. Cabrini Greens & Cornbread — Club Lonely (1997)
14. Hardsoul — Fantasy (2000)
15. Plastic Park — Music’s Hypnotisn’ (1998)
16. The Black Science Orchestra — New Jersey Deep (1994)
17. Naked Music NYC — It's Love (Joshua's Vocal Mix) (1998)
18. Charly Brown — Freaked Out (1997)
19. Davidson Ospina — Love Rhythm (1996)