I went to school in Boone, North Carolina at Appalachian State University. When I picture heaven in my head, it looks more or less like what I remember the drive from Banner Elk to Boone along 105 looking like - Grandfather Mountain, the old Gold Mine tourist joint in Foscoe, Hawk’s Nest ski area where I used to be a lift operator, that sandwich place on the corner of the turn to Valle Cruces, the leaves in the fall, the walk up Howard’s Knob, hiking up Table Rock in the middle of the night to see the most beautiful sunrise a few hours later. I get goosebumps thinking about it.
For some reason I’ve been thinking about that drive a lot the past two days. I wonder what it looks like now. There used to be this rock quarry at the top of the hill as you were leaving Boone toward Foscoe, at the corner of the 105 bypass. I was cleaning up my yard this week and I remembered driving past that quarry probably 8 or 9 years ago. This was just as I was getting into DJing in college. I didn’t go to Phish shows in college like all of my friends did. The String Cheese Incident was just starting to get really big about the time that I graduated. Instead I got into the whole Electronic/DJ/Rave scene in the late 90s. This was before kids started sneaking out of the house and getting themselves killed ingesting drugs meant to put Fido to sleep at the vet, in a golden year-long period where the rave scene in NC was exactly where I wanted to be. I spent my time driving to big parties all over the SE to go see DJ Icey, Dieselboy, Sasha and John Digweed, Jimmy Van M, Simply Jeff, Scott and Robbie Hardkiss, DJ Keoki, Donald Glaude, DJ Dara…
I went to this one party in my hometown of ATL one time. The headliners were Simply Jeff and DJ Icey and Dieselboy. There was a point earlier in the night where I was dancing my ass off and I noticed that there was this circle around me of people watching. It was weird because I wasn’t paying any attention to anything other than the basslines coming out of the system courtesy of Mr. Icey. I still remember this one record he played that night - the vocal hook was “can you feel the BASS”, and when the record said ‘bass’ there was this note that came out of the subs that can’t be related verbally. It shook the world. It made my hair stand up. It made the entire party, all 5000 of us, stop dancing and look around at each other. Yes, we could feel the bass. Oh my God, could we feel it…
Later in the night I found myself up on this stairway platform looking out at the whole crowd rippling like a flag blowing in the breeze. I came down the stairs and some girl walks by with a backpack full of glowsticks. I said it was the late 90s, didn’t I? I guess this girl was part of what I now know as the ‘ambiance crew’. I’d never seen her before, but she walks by me and pulls out a glowstick and cracks it open and hands it to me. I still have that glowstick. That glowstick was the light bulb that went on in my head at the moment that I looked around and noticed 5000 people dancing in unison to 1 guy’s music. 1 guy hidden in some corner of that place had this entire party under his spell. 1 guy was responsible for guiding this entire party and making them get down like they’d never gotten down before in their lives. That’s was the moment I knew that I needed to get a pair of turntables and start figuring this thing out.