WMC is still for me

For the last few years I've been wrestling with the concept of "age-appropriateness". When someone says that you are too old for something, what does that really mean? I suppose there are some absolutes (I am too old for bed wetting), but other concepts are much more vague. A man grows up and is too old to play with Hot Wheels, but having a child completely justifies that same man to kneel on the floor with his son and play "vroom vroom"!

So does this age appropriateness concept apply to certain types of music?

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still rocking, although the argument may be made that their music sucks now. Apart from that, is it "age-appropriate" for a 60 year old guy to go out on stage and strut the same way he did 40 years before?

With that said, a few weeks ago I made the annual pilgramage down to Miami with my friend Trey for the Winter Music Conference. For those unitiated, WMC is the end-all and be-all gathering of DJs and musicians in the world of electronic music. The list of events is staggering. DJs by the hundreds are spinning everywhere from clubs to hotel lobbies and bars to even retail outlets. I've seen DJs in Apple stores, Urban Outfitters, and Sephora.

The conference more or less climaxes with Ultra, which is the two day music festival at Bicentennial park in downtown Miami. Many of my friends that are in the music scene frown at Ultra. I admit that in the past I have as well. Ultra is a huge commercial endeavor that takes on an almost state fair like atmosphere, except instead of cheesy rides there is cheesy techno music. Nevertheless, from a cost/benefit perspective, it's a no-brainer. There are 6 or 7 tents that house DJs and musical artists for up to 12 hours straight, and if you want to hear some big names, Ultra is the place to hear them without shelling out $60 to hear them at a nightclub.

We only went for the Saturday edition of Ultra, and then only for the evening's performances. One of the first things that struck me was how many candy ravers there were. Candy ravers remind me of 1991 when techno was fresh and the beats were hard and frenetic. As the genre has branched and mutated over the last almost 20 years, I'm always a little surprised to see that candy raver fashion still shows up, at least at big muscial festivals like Ultra. What really surprised me was to see a "mom" candy raver Is this age appropriate? Still, when you are wearing little satin shorts and your butt is too flat to fill them in, your age doesn't really play into it...it's just gross! Trey said it best: "you don't have to dress like an a**hole to enjoy the music".

We saw great performances by Boyz Noise and MSTRKRFT, both masters of hard gritty electro tinged techno. From there we ambled over to the Carl Cox tent (a veteran of the scene at the age of 46) to see the one and only Moby.
Moby played a pretty hard set, completely unlike what you hear on his brekout 1999 album "Play" or even his recent release "Last Night". I like that. A DJ/artist doesn't need to be
pigeonholed into one genre. DJs like Paul van Dyk and Tiesto, although good at what they do, have fallen into that DJ trap. When he played Fukkk Offf's Rave is King the crowd went crazy. It doesn't hurt when you climb up the rafters and start shaking your fist like a crazed ape. And this guy is 45!

Our Ultra night ended with the Prodigy (all in their mid to late 30s). The Prodigy's new album is the aural equivalent of crystal meth. It is loud intense, and tweaked out. Samples from the Experience days are brutally apparant. They played a healthy dose of tunes from the new album, plus tracks like "Smack My Bitch Up" and "breathe" that made "electronica" a household word to some, a dirty word to others. I only wished they had played the song that popularized (and perhaps killed) rave music: Charly

There were other more low-key events that we attended that rounded out the weekend....a pool party at the Hotel Victor with Felix da Houscat (age 37), Late of the Pier playing live at the Vagabond, cumulnating with John Digweed (age 42...I see a pattern here), who performed Saturday night at the same club. Really the only thing that marred the weekend was the fairly high concentration of douches on the street and at select events. After all, spring break was going on at the same time.

I don't know if I'll go back next year, but if I do, I know I won't dress like an a**hole and I'll know that I'm not too old to still enjoy the music.