New Years Eve - San Francisco - An underground resolution

On 2007-12-08 00:19, bastardsamadhi wrote:
return to goa WOOT!!!
*straps on SH-101 with guitar strap*

Remember when you could hear trance, breaks, techno and downtempo in a big warehouse with an old school vibe? Remember back in the good old days?

On 2007-12-09 01:43, the dog of tears wrote:
oh yeah, a "multi-genre"...
mmm the wonderful sound of 4 totally different BPM genres all trainwrecking together in a brilliant cacophony of bad somarts acoustics...

Funny how things come full circle sometimes. After the Lovefest afterparty this year, where we only had 450 people even with two rooms of psytrance, I wondered about the feasibility of using Somarts for future trance parties. We'd already stopped using the big room in the back, but it just seemed that with the parties getting smaller, we were heading back into a more underground style mode, of smaller parties mostly with local DJ's. In some ways, I was actually looking forward to that. Those were some good old parties, I tried to look at the bright side. I decided to do NYE with local DJ's with an old school goa theme, just to try something different. As Sho said, we'd all been talking about it for a while, it needed to be done.

So with NYE coming up fast, I contacted Pascal (Know:Audio) and Michael (Ambient Mafia), with whom I'd teamed with nicely last year at Somarts NYE. Multi genre is obviously the only way to make SomArts work these days. Just when we had things somewhat settled, Adam O'Hana called to ask if we wanted to add a breaks area featuring Freak Nasty to the big room at Somarts. At first I was not sure if I wanted to deal with how that would change the party (and if I wanted to work that hard on NYE lol). But after much reflection, I remembered back to the time when we scrambled each year to find large spaces for NYE and Halloween. That was part of what launched me on my long quest to develop a more fair permit process in SF and my fight to get SomArts (a city owned building) legal for events.

I've also been reflecting a lot lately on all this history because of the recent death of long time SomArts Director Jack Davis, a true patron of the arts with whom I'd fought the police and the fire departments to get the building legal. The final city sign off on the 1100 SomArts occupancy came the week after Jack's death in September this year. Jack began the permit process in 1996 and was denied repeatedly by the City bureaucracy. I forced the cops in 2000 to allow a one off benefit--anyone remember the "No on Knight" party with Thump Radio, Friends and Family, Cloud Factory etc??? I tried again in 2001 but was denied the use of Somarts. I tried again in 2002 and the police dept. tricked me-- promised me a one off permit, then denied it five days before NYE (anyone remember Ancient Future with Junya and John Phantasm--the NYE party that never happened- and I lost a lot of money. But by then I had teamed up with Supervisor Mark Leno, we were in the process of removing the control over permitting from the SFPD and creating the Entertainment Commission--only then did the SFPD relent, knowing that the Entertainment Commission would grant the permits anyway. Then in 2003 Liam and the Youth Commission passed legislation allowing 18-20 year olds to be in permitted spaces after 2am. But the fire department still gave us hell every year until we got the final sign offs on the high occupancy with no more fire marshall needed just this year, after a seven year process. Finally, all night permits, appropriate occupancy, ability to have 18+, with a bar. Just as Jack died.

So after all this, it has been with some sadness that I've watched the trance parties at Somarts grow progressively smaller, to the point where they just did not work economically. First the breaks scene split off from the trance scene and eventually moved into clubs, then when the Otherworld started doing the techno NYE parties in Oakland, that took away another nice fit in the multi genre matrix from the old days. Not too many other genres fit well with trance and with everyone so specialized, it's not easy promoting to a multi genre crowd. So the opportunity to fill SomArts again and team up with the breaks, techno and downtempo scenes was just too cool to resist, especially with my plans to do a more retro goa room. This should be the most rocking party in the city.

But obviously, the addition of Freak Nasty to this party will mean a few changes necessary to make it run smoothly from my previous NYE events. Without a doubt, the party will max out at some point in the night, if not before. That could well mean a wait in line to get in. So BUY PRESALES AND COME EARLY! We'll have the Black Rock Rangers doing security and we'll have enough of them to organize the lines properly but this will be a very popular event so BE PREPARED--the modern day trancer style of showing up at 2am will not likely work for this party. I think that it will be so rocking that you won't want to miss any of it anyway.

The first email went out yesterday only to Adam's list and already presales are brisk. So those of you who want to get the $30 price, move quick because those will most likely last only a few more days.

damm time flies by fast.......appreciate what we have why it lasts.......This event is dedicated to Jack Davis...a true believer from the 60's, who understood that electronic dance music is part of the ancient tribal ritual and fought for us until he died.

dance on people

John

Wow, someone had a big glass of hateraide for breakfast.
If you don't like it stay home. The bay area is lacking outdoor locations (and frankly it's too cold for one this time of year.) John does his best throwing events in the locations he can secure. I'm just thankful we are having any NYE event whatsoever!