Article About The Underside Of The Old Toronto Rave Scene
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» recoil replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 3:25pm |
 Coolness: 86545 | interesting. someone just linked me to this.
an old article about the rise and fall of Pleasure Force [ www.montrealmirror.com ] damn man. lots of nasty stuff went on behind the scenes. I used to go to X-Static to get my tickets and mixtapes. everybody did i've heard plenty more first-hand stuff that never got printed in that. always was supposed to "about the music", but then of course, "business" people take over. it became all about drugs and money, and a lot of good people got edged out. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» qwertyu replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 4:31pm |
 Coolness: 72920 | teens on stimulants humping on late twenties guys, drugs everywhere, people taking pictures of teen girls with them, rave clothes store selling tickets....
Hey wait, all thse things somehow sounds real familliar to me. |
| I'm feeling at peace right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» FUCKERS replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 5:00pm |
| Coolness: 89780 | and how is this different then montreal? |
| I'm feeling porny right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» HamishTheMack replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 5:14pm |
 Coolness: 38060 | exactly |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» qwertyu replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 6:50pm |
| Coolness: 72920 | i'm pretty sure i'v seen worse things than a girl shitting herself |
| I'm feeling at peace right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MolocH replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 7:06pm |
 Coolness: 226315 | Originally Posted By LAURENT
i'm pretty sure i'v seen worse things than a girl shitting herself I have heard about a mudslide on the dancefloor at parking. |
| I'm feeling euro-thrash right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» qwertyu replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 7:13pm |
| Coolness: 72920 | Originally Posted By MOLOCH
I have heard about a mudslide on the dancefloor at parking. .... horror :S |
| I'm feeling at peace right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MolocH replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 7:36pm |
| Coolness: 226315 | Originally Posted By LAURENT
.... horror :S Slippery horror from what I heard. |
| I'm feeling euro-thrash right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Trey replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 10:11pm |
 Coolness: 102805 | 
---------- there's sketchy stuff in every rave city in America. I remember Camp Earth (1)(1993 or '94?) in Warwick, Rhodes Island, where we, a busload of Montreal party people, were waiting, or hearing stuff from Tiga. Promoters just took off without paying the DJs. This was just when the scene was rising in North East seaboard. Then with Channel Productions ( and also the other big production, Storm ), at the height of Montreal Rave scene in the late '90's, you can feel there's something just oily, sketchy. I never asked them, the married couple who were Channel, as I was friend with them and work for them a bit. But I was hinted about where the investment money would come from. After all, these mega parties would cost in the hundred thousands of dollar. I kinda didn't want to know about the dirty side, so i put it out of my mind. I knew paradise was over. I was already jaded by then too. Anything that involves money or organized crime just gets ugly, and make good people do bad choice. EDIT: This is why I never got into promotions, or whatever. I just wanted to go a party. I remember people were being "friends" with me because I had at the time access to good LSD. Just one summer, I was like fuck this, all you care about is about what I can get or what not. Our circle of friends, we were all teenagers, weren't exactly good either. Stealing money, shoplifting, to go to a rave, and for our drugs. People think that the "scene" got bad, or went downhill, because of big commercials parties, or organized crime with their cheap drugs, or greed. Now i think of it, it was never pure or innoncent in the first place. This PLUR was just a way to cover the dirty side. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Blisss replied on Sun Sep 13, 2009 @ 10:44pm |
 Coolness: 129760 | Originally Posted By TREY
Then with Channel Productions ( and also the other big production, Storm ), at the height of Montreal Rave scene in the late '90's, you can feel there's something just oily, sketchy. I never asked them, the married couple who were Channel, as I was friend with them and work for them a bit. But I was hinted about where the investment money would come from. After all, these mega parties would cost in the hundred thousands of dollar. I kinda didn't want to know about the dirty side, so i put it out of my mind. I knew paradise was over. I was already jaded by then too. Anything that involves money or organized crime just gets ugly, and make good people do bad choice. I worked for Channel Productions on most of their events & I used to hang out at Kiki and Nics all the time Never saw anthing sketchy, they were just really into the music, and their lineups were wicked I remember there was some problems with Crazy Eddy from 514 productions who were pretty skecthy (beating people up and that kind of crap), I even got threatened once flyering outside of Sona because I was part of Channel But yeah, I was pretty young back then and didn't do drugs or any of that stuff, so I definitely wasn't as aware of that kind of skethiness back then as I am now that I'm older and seen a lot Personally I always tell the kids to stay away from the drugs, you honestely don't need them to have a good time and enjoy yourself |
| I'm feeling sunshine right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» recoil replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 12:30am |
| Coolness: 86545 | Originally Posted By TREY
Anything that involves money or organized crime just gets ugly, and make good people do bad choice. People think that the "scene" got bad, or went downhill, because of big commercials parties, or organized crime with their cheap drugs, or greed. Now i think of it, it was never pure or innoncent in the first place. This PLUR was just a way to cover the dirty side. QFT gangs & organized crime have always been involved with parties/raves. wherever there's money to be made / laundered... they'll be drawn to it. especially if it involves a ready-made market for drugs back in the late 80s, some of the acid house promoters were also gangsters/drug dealers. or the promoter would have to pay a heavy tax to the football gangs whose turf they were on my one friend in London told me... in 1993 or so, he DJed at a squat party at some abandoned building. after day 2, he'd had enough and wanted to pack up and take his rig home. the promoter - who was also a local gang leader - held a screwdriver to his neck and told him to keep the music going, or else my friend said the party got busted soon after, and he'd never been so happy to see a cop in his life. hehe I know a lot of wickedness from Toronto too, that a lot of other people don't. shameful, some of the things that have gone on. these certain promoters would invite their coke and E dealer friends to their parties, telling them they will make a killing there. then they would have their security target them once they arrived and confiscate their drugs. then they'd secretly split it up between them and the security. when the dealers complained to them, they'd say "oh you should have been more careful - now there's nothing we can do." setting up their own friends! this one guy I know.. used to be a very very well known jungle/drum & bass DJ, right from the beginning. he was an original. but he got edged out of his own very successful production company by his partners - who used to be his best friends. more and more money kept going missing from the huge parties they were throwing. when he confronted them about it, they just said - 'hey, if you're not happy, let us buy you out'. so he was essentially forced out. and they basically ran things in Toronto for years after that. sadly, even if people knew, most didn't seem to care. he actually posted that story up on his website, so I don't mind repeating it here. as for him, he saw how shady the scene had become, so he just completely stopped playing out in Toronto. I big him up for that too. he's a decent guy who refuses to work with dirtbags. nice to see he stuck to his principles. these things happen in every city though.. point being, people can look back on "the good old days" but behind the scenes, raves have always been dodge city |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Trey replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 1:05am |
| Coolness: 102805 | Originally Posted By BLISSS
I worked for Channel Productions on most of their events & I used to hang out at Kiki and Nics all the time Never saw anthing sketchy, they were just really into the music, and their lineups were wicked I remember there was some problems with Crazy Eddy from 514 productions who were pretty skecthy (beating people up and that kind of crap), I even got threatened once flyering outside of Sona because I was part of Channel Oh don't get me wrong. Kiki and Nic were the friendliest and nicest people I ever met in the Montreal's nightlife. They were so kind and even just after a summer of knowing me, they ask me to housesit their loft. Man, they had soooo many demo tapes from DJ's all over. I borrow them and made copies with a double deck. But yeah, all the people I met at Channel were really kind. I think Channel started to downfall after, fuck i can't recall the name. Mega..something. I won't go look for the flyer. It was at the hockey arena at the Mountain. you just walk out and you see the gazebo. They lost a lot of money for that. The thing I'm wondering is where all that investment money came from? They spend thousands just for lights at a party for Metropolis, D001 i think (Nic didn't like lasers at all). You know their parties cost thousands of dollars. Kiki and Nic weren't rich. I don't think it was Corporate money. Diesel, and some others, gave clothes as promotion, but to invest in a rave? no. This is where the sketch comes in, the money. And I don't think there was a drug link at all. If there was, they certainly hid it from me. They love to party, they did for the music. And they threw good parties, it was after the success of Sir.cus rave that they became so well known that even some lame ass people started an Afterhour name Sir.cus a few years later. Anyhow, Nic and Kiki got divorced shortly after Mega... something. Not because of anything related to the rave scene or people. Certainly being in debt after Mega didn't help, but it was more on a personal level. Thus ended one of the best and honest production from Montreal rave history. ------- Eddy was really sketch but he had the drug connection, and maybe the gangsta mentality, after all he's Puerto Rican. He was also a real good dancer and I even told him so. Crazy Eddie and Spectro Crew joined together to form 514 productions. I had the feeling they were quite jealous of other Promoters success. I can't recall where I heard this rumour maybe i read it here. But he pulled a gun in a club on some guy who he saw with his ex a few years back. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» recoil replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 4:16am |
| Coolness: 86545 | well I don't think we should be calling out specific names and their rumoured crimes.
like here... He had an empire, down to the drugs," alleges Toronto jungle DJ Sniper. "Alan was even bringing the rave drugs in. He was [smuggling] E inside the [imported] mix tapes being sent to X-Static. Whoever was sending the tapes would take out some of the tape reels, and fill the shells with E, and then seal the tapes up again, and send 'em to X-Static. That's how Alan was getting pills into the country. Like, how insane is that?"
I'm really surprised Sniper said that. this article was written in 1999. He was running Vinyl Syndicate, and was one of the biggest - if not the biggest - jungle/D&B DJs in Toronto. very weird and unprofessional thing to say, for someone of his status at the time. maybe he had an axe to grind with the guy. |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Blisss replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 4:18am |
| Coolness: 129760 | Trey,
The party was Megabyte, it had Hardfloor, Tiga and a bunch of others on the bill, yes it was on the mountain. But yeah they lost a ton of money on that party and basically couldn't continue. I was even owed a lot of money for the work I did on that party Anyhow I do remember Kiki telling me that they had "ricH" friends investing in the events. And yeah Crazy Eddy was really crazy, that story about the gun was even in the papers Its funny cause he did start out being this dude who was known as this wicked dancer/party guy Its when he got into the whole promo thing he slowly started going downhill, mainly due to jealousy I think He also smashed a bottle on one of the guys from Channel's head at some bar cause he didn't like them The guy even threatened to break my legs if he ever saw me flyer outside of Sona again. He cornered me with two of his goons in the parking lot. Really scary situation cause I knew how nuts the guy was |
| I'm feeling sunshine right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» qwertyu replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 11:10am |
| Coolness: 72920 | i so would love to own a gun lollolol |
| I'm feeling at peace right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Gamos replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 12:07pm |
 Coolness: 93535 | Say what you want, but I think some of it is pretty romantic. Like take this excerpt for instance:
"I remember this one party. I was cruising around, high as a fucking kite," continues Andrew, "and I saw a filthy girl sitting balled up in a corner. She was crying--she was on crappy E and she had soiled herself [defecated]. She must have been about 16. Anyway, I took her in the bathroom. The bass was going beuurm-beuurm-beuurm, shaking all the stalls, and there were a buncha guys in there cursin 'coz they had put their lines down on the sink surface and it was wet and their blow had instantly turned to mush.
"Anyway, I cleaned the girl up and then propped her up by the sinks, and I went to pee. When I came out, she was, like, practically fucking some other dirty rave kid in the corner of the bathroom--in front of everyone, no one cared... it was all so sketchy." fuck...so romantic. Its just like this little sketchy washroom, and the bass is pounding, and this girl just shat herself, but nows shes all clean. And then she meets this guy in all the kaos and they fall in love. He's all like "Fuck I dont even care that u just soiled urself, I love u so much" And they love eachother so much that they dont even care who watches as they phsyically express their emotions for eachother. I wish I could find love like that in the bathroom of a rave. |
| I'm feeling a message in a bottl right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» qwertyu replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 12:35pm |
| Coolness: 72920 | come to montreal Gamos, you'll find bathroom love alot, but the 14yrs old girls are not shit soiled. |
| I'm feeling at peace right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» JasonBeastly replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 5:33pm |
 Coolness: 76750 | I dunno man, I worked a lot of raves as first response for bad trips and otherwise bizarre drug incidents. I saw a lot of fucked up stuff and got to know every dealer in the parties I went to. I don't feel that this forum is really the place to air all the dirty laundry, but ketamine injection used to be a major problem at Toronto parties, and I had to help a lot of people with needles over all that time, though mostly needle exchange for smackheads. When I wasn't dealing with that it would usually be people ODing on ecstasy and not drinking any water, acidheads who had taken way too much and were going psycho, or methheads who needed someone to talk to incessantly at all costs.
While I was most heavily involved in the rave scene (1998-2001) I was dealing with a good friend who had far too much involvement with Satans' while the lead singer and drummer of my band slid into heroin madness. We had gotten our apartment from a really awesome girl who had both her arms cut off for dealing at the wrong party in the mid 90s, who had crossed the Viet mafia turflines. The basement belonged to a crack dealer, and half of the people we knew were alkies or junkies. It was not a pleasant time. I was trying to figure out a different way to party because of the shit I had seen at WEMF, but I had also let a lot of dark and shady characters into my life. I got away with minimal damages, a hole in my head and a hole in the roof, and a bad case of paranoia. It was bad. At WEMF a double-wielding psycho (two nines) tried to rob the booth I was camped at (THC), the folks I knew in the psy scene had been chased out of Montreal after getting the shakedown from the Riders about their exports, and whenever we made it out to Montreal (mainly around 99, 2000) we used to have Rockers screaming in our faces at any of the parties we hit. I was working at the Industry, where I witnessed the sketchiest people in the world getting fucked out of their faces, drink doping like you wouldn't believe, and just plain awful, criminal promoters doing whatever the fuck they wanted to. I used to work at the Ascension parties and the shit that would go down made no sense. System Soundbar, where we used to flyer, beat at least five dudes up per Saturday night, and we'd be there on speed and crappy e trying to smile through it all. When I worked at this weird afterhours called Circuit a bunch of dudes with AK-47s once ran in and robbed the place, then had a shootout in the alleyway next door. I used to work upstairs from there, in a bar called the Charlotte Room, which was the number 2 pool hall in town, as well as a good place to get blow, that is if you didn't want to stroll up to Queen and try your luck at the Bovine Sex Club (aka the Blow Vine). In a word it was traumatic. For all the fun you could have out there you had to be fucking looped to not notice all the bad vibes. I think that ecstasy smuggling is basically nothing, and not even worthy of print. Way worse shit went down in that scene, but nobody wants to talk about it. I think it's ridiculous how naive and ignorant many people are to the kind of shit that goes on behind the scenes, and denying the truth doesn't make it any less real. |
| I'm feeling mighty frisky right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» HamishTheMack replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 5:49pm |
| Coolness: 38060 | Dude, no one wants to hear your boring industry stories
Most of that shit sounds made up anyway |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» JasonBeastly replied on Mon Sep 14, 2009 @ 5:50pm |
| Coolness: 76750 | You're just jealous because you were mostly into Moby's Play that year. |
| I'm feeling mighty frisky right now.. | |
Article About The Underside Of The Old Toronto Rave Scene
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