atlas post abandoned in illness then perfunctorily finished upon rediscovery

3/11/07

That was one crazy ATLAS night. I feel hung over and I only had a sip of a very spicy Holocene Bloody Mary towards the end of the night. I awoke the morning of the show from a very powerful gig-gone-wrong nightmare. I have these occasionally. I’m DJing at a party, everything is going wrong. No one is there. The equipment is failing. I keep having long stretches of dead air between songs despite all my efforts. I clear whatever few people are there. This one hit me pretty hard. It was centered on Andaz. No one, and I mean no one was there. I thought, “Wow, the party is finally over. After all these years people have moved on.” These dreams never result in a party as disastrous as the nightmare but it still makes me wary the day of the show if I wake up from a scare like that.

Anjali and I were thrilled that the absolutely amazingly knowledgable Jacques (of tribe.net fame) made a trip to Portland to come to ATLAS . . .

3/21/07

So I got hit by the flu and spent a week energy-less at home. During that time I never finished this post. I don’t know how much energy or memory I have at this point to do it justice. I had totally forgotten about the nightmare I had the morning of the show until I went back and re-read my priorly-started post just now. The basics. Jacques came into town and it is always wonderful to have him at a show. It was also great to hang out with him and converse for several hours before the show as well. (Thanks for the fabulous lunch at Typhoon!)

Our friend Jeevan decided to throw her birthday party at Holocene the night of Atlas and there was a large early turn out. I played first shift and halfway through my set there were already quite a fair number of people in the club. I felt bad that it took a while to get a dance floor, and that for a bit it looked like nothing was going to move people off the walls, but people started dancing eventually. Afterwards several people commented on how much they liked my selections, so I have to remember that dancing is not the only measure of the quality of a set. One woman wanted me to write down every song I played and send it to her. I know some DJs keep track of their set lists, but I would only be able to do that if I were writing the songs down as I played them, and when I am frantically searching for what I think will be the perfect next track, “Well, that’s not gonna happen.”

Very quickly the place packed out, and it was a jammed and raging dance party for the rest of the night. Jammed and raging. Hyper energy levels, people dancing on the speakers, etc. My second set was very well received, which felt good. I played a mix of bhangra, kuduro, Bollywood-house, reggaeton, Funk Carioca, and Arabic house. All within an hour. Somehow it all worked and I was able to exit the stage to applause, which was much appreciated. Anjali DJed the last set of the night and played a blast-from-the-past Panjabi Garage set with some Asian R&B tacked on at the end.

That’s all you get. It’s been two weeks and I’m afraid I can’t give you the epic blow-by-blow this time. Believe it or not there have been a number of other posts I wish I could have written. Right now I need to spend every spare minute getting my tax paperwork together and handed over to my accountant. Hope everybody is doing well. See you soon.

IK