Stay Up Forever...
Posted on Mar 9, 2009
Hey Folks,
Alas, the Drew David interview will have to wait for another post. We've both been brutally sidelined with our day jobs and - up until two weekends - were embroiled with getting our acts together for the Phosphene party.
So, speaking of the party, sweet merciful crap... where did all of you people come from?!? Our entire crew was blown away with the number of amazing people that showed up to that party and stayed until the very end.
This was supposed to be a "Soundproof Lite(tm)" type event. We wanted to test the waters after the Trance/ission / Trancemission 11 party in August and see how much life there was to be had with the Soundproof name. The original idea was to scale back our normal production and have a smaller party. I was pretty firmly in the camp that thought we'd kind of reached the end of our shelf life.
Man oh man... how wrong I was...
For those of you who don't have the patience for long, semi-coherent blog posts, I think the photos I've out a link down below speak for themselves. These photos are courtesy of the amazing Mr. Euan Forrester, who somehow manages to stay awake for superhuman periods of time on a can of Red Bull and the energy of the crowd. Euan, thank you, so much...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/euan_forrester/sets/72157614716199901/
[definitely view this as a slide show]
And, of course, the "b-roll" of photos that didn't make the final cut:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26513402@N02/sets/72157614827582789/
[definitely view this as a slide show too]
- - -
So, smaller-sized event aside, we still took care to make sure the venue looked great. Having a smaller party does not mean letting ourselves get lazy. We got enough sound for the space to feel full - but not deafening - and decided to transport everything in separate cars and trucks as opposed to one massive rental van. Lights were taken care by a our friend, Graham, who did a wicked job with select grouping of lights carefully placed.
At the end of the day, I think it's the best that venue has ever looked, but without the massive headaches of transport logistics and clean-up factored in. The last indoor party we held at this location was fun but small - We were expecting attendance along the same lines.
Needless to say, we were floored when it came evident that our pre-sales for tickets had shot ridiculously close to our maximum capacity. In 11 years, that's never happened. We'll sell an okay number of tickets beforehand, but selling almost all of them beforehand just doesn't happen.
Following this bit of news on Friday night, we proceeded to run out of tickets at the last pick-up point on Saturday. We had a quick panic meeting during setup that night at the venue to figure out if we'd have to start turning people away people at the door. In the middle of this lively debate (around 9:00pm) party-goers started showing up looking for more tickets.
Almost sold out before the party begins *and* folks showing up at the venue an hour before the party starts?What the hell. When I took a deep breath, shrugged it off and realized we weren't running around like mad trying to finish set-up when 9:00pm rolled around. I thought - rather smugly - "hey, we're actually getting better at this as we get older!"
However, keeping in with the rest of Soundproof tradition, we managed to break several other things over the course of the evening and accidently kill the sound at least twice. Go us.
What really surprised me was the number of people I recognized. I'm used to knowing almost all of the people at these events - This time around, I'd say I only knew about half.
I don't know where all of you came from, or how you found out about the party to begin with, wow... thank you! We were packed to capacity with an amazing crew of people and you all made sure there was a wicked vibe for the entire evening.
I remember Chris working the front door when more people came in around 2:00am. I remember Chris making that "are you freakin serious?" look when they asked for tickets, as space was kind of at a premium. He was trying to make up his mind when one of the girls stubbed out her cigarette on the group. She picked it up, drew Chris' attention to it and then asked, "Where's the garbage so I can toss this out?" Chris smiled, pointed out the garbage can and then showed them the door in. The entire evening was full of small, considerate moments like this... not to mention all the people who came up to say they were having a blast.
I'll be the first to admit I was leaning towards throwing in the towel after the last Soundproof party, for a variety of reasons. I think I just thought Soundproof's time had come to end. None of us were expecting such an amazing turnout, a completely new crowd to magically appear and - surprise - the desire for the crew to keep plugging away.
No one is hanging up their headphones anytime soon.
So, massive props to all the volunteers, all the folks that showed up out of the woodwork and all the crew members who welcomed me into this mad little family over three years ago. Thanks for keeping me sane these last couple of weeks and reminding me this little community we have is still alive and strong. I seriously don't know what I'd do without all of you :)
kpd
- Jones