A Deep, Daft Cut
Random Access Memories of the 2009 unmasked, half-Daft Punk performance and other tales from the LA bloghaus crypt.
Every now and then I’ll meet a young raver who idolizes the glory days of bloghaus in LA and remember I was there. They heard the tales of the free Sapporo keg on the dance floor every Sunday at LAX, the secret guests at Dim Mak Tuesdays at Cinespace, the most legendary of all being Thomas Bangalter unmasked at Busy P’s 34th birthday party in 2009. In terms of lore, it’s not even the most interesting thing that happened that night and truthfully, I was sitting in the lobby for most of the set.
That’s a very me thing to do, by the way. During the Memorial Day Miracle, the legendary three-point shot my favorite Spurs player Sean Elliott made to seal Game 2 of the Western NBA Conference Finals for my hometown heroes, I was in the arena, fully underneath my chair looking for a tub of popcorn. I stood up afterwards, popcorn in hand, just in time to ask, “What happened?”
Pretty much the same thing at this party - it was just too crowded! And shortly before Thomas came on, there was a massive fight between the French Ed Banger constituency and Cinespace security, poorly mediated by Steve Aoki who got in the middle after Kavinsky started throwing hands. Talk about turning the club into a mosh-pit, no one really knows quite what happened except that the entire dance floor erupted into pushing and screaming. But the story goes that those Frenchmen walked in like they owned the place, and there were just too darn many of them. Security were probably just doing their job, but also didn’t like their attitude. Classic French trope.
And who would want to be in the middle of this? Truly, it was hell on Earth in there. And I’d previously dated that guy in the front with the camera, who turned out to be a total liability, so I was definitely avoiding him. But what mattered to me was not Thomas, avoiding Bryan, or the high drama of the international hipster clash - it’s the fact that I was in there at all. I had decided a little over one year before that I was going to find Daft Punk’s manager, Busy P aka Pedro aka Pierre Winter, and make him my mentor. I succeeded, and being invited to his birthday party was proof.
Earlier this week on a Tuesday night no less, I ran into Pirate Jeff, the old door-guy from Dim Mak Tuesdays running guest-list at another party in Hollywood. When I see other people who were around from that era, which I would classify as running from about 2006 to 2011 before the whole scene just collapsed into the supernova that is and was Skrillex, there’s a silent knowing between us. What we experienced back then can’t be put into words, but if you were there or if you got addicted to the electronic-rock hybrid music that emerged from the era, documented in now mostly defunct blogs, you know there was nothing like clubbing in LA during that time. This MSTRKRFT Essential Mix from 2008 sums the whole thing up better than I can.
Or! You can buy a Sapporo keg, leave it un-refridgerated for a few hours, download this DJ AM mix from Banana Split Sundays, play it at top volume, close your eyes and try to imagine the feeling of knowing you have to go to work tomorrow. A couple years ago I ran into that guy in the middle literally ascending next to Mehdi, and remembered how bold he was in his middle-aged rave hypebeast conquests! I wouldn’t have dared asked Pedro to be onstage back then. I just was so grateful to be in the mix, I didn’t even make a stink when HARD Events founder / train-wreck Gary Richards aka DJ Destructo grabbed me out of P’s entourage a few months later, pushed me against the wall and told me I was “not going with them.” His entourage-envy was thick that night, and I dance on his grave of his failed rave empire to this day. Destructo indeed - karma was swift for him.
Pedro came back for me that night, he always did, and the following night during HARD Summer, he warned me via text message to “run” when riot police raided Gary’s festival. That was so completely nuts, and I wish I’d thought to take video, but we were more or less running for our lives. It was at The Forum in Inglewood, and there were always drug-dealers outside of raves, but this felt different. We were deep in gang-country, and the usual hipster coke and ecstasy dealers who populated the LA to San Bernadino-county party scene were in other people’s territory. It felt volatile AF outside, and worse inside because the event had seemingly been oversold.
Crystal Castles were the only act to play that night, and P was supposed to be up next. RIP this amazing lineup - it was too good to ever happen. My iMessage records don’t go back far enough for me to pull up the text, but P said something to the effect of “you need to leave now, they’re shutting down the show - it’s not safe.” Before I could ask who was shutting it down, he just wrote “run.” That message gave my crew and I the 60-second head-start we needed to be the first ones out of the arena, headed for the exit. We were literally seconds ahead of at least 100 cops dressed in full riot gear, playing a little ‘get the fuck out’ song by tap-tap-tapping batons against shields.
I can’t verify whether tear-gas was actually shot into the arena, as some attendees said. But I did hear the sound of bat-on-human behind us and subsequent screaming as we ran out of there. One of my friends we got separated from was in a drive-by while stuck in traffic trying to get out of there. He couldn’t tell if anyone was hit cause he was ducking in the backseat of a taxi. There literally wasn’t even Uber yet, Y’all! Or Instagram! Even Twitter was still pretty new to us, so there’s very little record online of this debacle, which felt like all hell breaking lose. But once again, if you were there and you run into people who were too, there’s not much to be said. We all know how “Lucky Boy” we were to be part of it, even when shit went down.
Those are Pedro and I’s shoes next to each other at a house party in San Francisco circa March 2009. I wish I could get into my Facebook to find more photos of us, but my Moloch article got my account disabled. Apparently if you’re rich enough you can get away with being a pedo-cannibal, but you better not roast those who partake or Facebook will cancel you. Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering how I got the manager of the two most famous electronic acts in the world at that time (Justice and Daft Punk) to be my friend and mentor, despite the fact that he lived halfway across the world. Eventually I would learn that his English was so bad, he never had any idea what I was talking about. Ever. But that didn’t stop us!
Come, let me lure you behind the paywall and I’ll tell you all my secrets of converting voracious fandom to rave-clout success and financial opportunity! I am the person to ask - post-Pedro I worked for Diplo’s manager, was fired (for writing this) and went straight into a full-time Skrillex content gig for four years. I had health insurance!