Miami Nights

Frankly, everyone looked mean, and nobody was going anywhere, let alone getting inside -- even if their sunglasses were burning a hole in their pockets. Oh wait, you paid extra for that hole, I’m sorry.

One of my favorite parts of going out at night is the game of ‘getting in’. Most likely because it happens at the beginning of the night, making it the only thing I remember the next day. What a blast! I mean, I’m no rock star like your Phil Collins, I’ve gotta schmooze my way in with the rest of ‘em. Luckily, I come from a long line of schmooze, starting way back in 1864 with my great uncle Phineas Von Schmooze of York. Okay, I’ll stop.

The rest of you, on the other hand, are idiots wrapped in morons, dipped in retard juice. No matter how sad and pathetic you look, shaking in your leather sketchers (some people think these still pass for "dress shoes"), you’re not going to get in with a brilliant line like "I’m Douchey McDoucherson from Dickville, Ohio, brooo I’ll buy a bottle, it’s just me and her, c’mon maaan, can we just get in?" while waving your cash around like an epileptic banker. Duuude, Guuuy, Broskiiiii, you’re an idiot and she’s a Mongoloid.

Allow me to digress for a brief public service announcement: It’s called EYE liner for a reason. It goes on your eyes. They are on top of your face, usually in a pair. I know this can become quite confusing with everything going on around your head -- earlobes, nostrils, parasitic twins, but your lips are not for eye liner. They have their own liner, which we stopped using in 1994. I know I just blew some people’s minds, and you may be experiencing some sort of existential revelation. But just take a seat, it’s all going to be okay now.

This time of the night provides me with some of my best material, as far as lame lines and quality people-watching goes.

Anyways, I managed to make the situation much more complicated for myself by not opening my mouth and assuming I wasn’t going to get in any time before menopause kicked in. But I hunted out the least scary person at the door, a dashing gentleman in a suit who looked like he hated all of humanity. I know my people when I see them. Low and behold, I was on a list! A real list! It was on real paper and typed on a real computer, unlike the "lists" some of you are familiar with. I call those maniacal free-for-alls. I could have gone home right there, that was enough to make my night. I was expecting the guy to pull out a ruler and whack me on the forehead, let alone give me a comp ticket and send me on my way, leaving Broski in my dust.

So in we go, to mingle with an assload of people who are there for one reason only -- the ultimate HOLD ON. Perhaps after this, they can finally let go, once and for all.

The initial release date of Bob Sinclair’s Western Dream was April 10th, 2006 in his native France. It meandered over here by July 11^th of that year, and the date I finally heard "World, Hold On" being played on Y-100 was sometime last month, heralding it’s death once and for all.

That is only relevant seeing as how the crowd at Mansion did not seem like seasoned house heads. Which makes sense because any seasoned house head wouldn’t be caught dead at a Bob Sinclair show this far into the game. Now I’m not ripping on anyone, I’m as guilty as the next guy. I love Bob Sinclair. He has given me some of my favorite and most memorable moments in DJing. He is the reason for the booming napkin economy in Miami as far as I’m concerned. But I’ve spent a lot of time surrounded by the elusive ‘house head’ (ie: Space, Sunday morning, 6 a.m. -- not to be confused with what we refer to as a ‘crack head’), and the people at Mansion were different, Weekenders, if you will. I do appreciate their zealousness for Bob Sinclair, but he might as well have been Britney Spears, albeit with more hair and less tragedy, and the way people were lining down the street was akin to camping out for Spice Girls tickets circa 1998 (yea, that was me).

I took a deep breath and entered, preparing for complete overwhelmosity. The great thing about Mansion is that there is a bar as soon as you walk in. That’s the drink-first, get-groped-after mentality I love. I’m the kinda girl that needs liquid backup before I place myself helplessly amidst the masses. The first place we set up shop was on the mezzanine towards the back of the main room. A bizarre sight, people were just facing forward as if they were watching the American Idol finals, not dancing wildly like they were, hmm, I don’t know, maybe hearing one of the biggest producers in the world? I swear I saw a neon pink posterboard sign with ‘I <3 Bob!’ on it in glitter glue.

My initial assessment was that the lighting in this place was cuh-ray-zee. In fact, My "I went to Mansion and all I got was this lousy seizure" shirt is in the mail. We happened to be standing directly adjacent to the lighting booth, in which there were three guys, happily pushing buttons. One video guy with the DVDJ’s, one lighting guy with a computer, and another guy checking his MySpace. Not sure what his purpose was.

Luckily, the kind gentleman next to me had a spare pair of sunglasses! Oh yes, one on his head, and one on his shirt, just in case. In fact, he and the four of his friends all had extras! You know what they say, don’t bring any if you can’t bring enough for the whole class. What a lifesaver.

As far as Bob goes, he had just begun when I got there. He seemed to exhibit a keen sense of the Miami crowd, playing the hits early on and making sure they didn’t get too bored.

A DJ should be fun to watch, and he was, throwing his arms in the air and jumping around, and even though the crowd was mildly stagnant (from my bird’s eye view), there was a great sense of interaction. There was enough energy for him to be able to drop the volume several times, leaving the crowd to sing. Bob Sinclair seems to be the kind of guy that never got caught up in the electro/tech house movement of recent years. I know that should be obvious if you have heard any of his music, but regardless of what he produces, I half expected him to be a little more obscure, seeing as how the guy has been in the house scene for-ev-errr. But he kept it light, and that is something that a lot of DJs have forgotten how to do. The environment was simply fun for the majority of the night. Even the darker stuff he did play were big-room-bangers and not bang-my-head-against-a-wall-ers. Of course those were the ones that stuck in my head, such as Federico Franchi’s "Cream", Miami Transplant Ralph Falcon’s "I need someone", David Guetta’s sing-along "Love is Gone" and The Freaks’ electro banger "Creeps" (I’ve issued that one an eviction notice from my brain, as it refuses to leave).

But the majority of the night focused on his signature disco/funk sound, highlighting a remix of his 1998 disco house track "Ultimate Funk", then going into a house remix featuring Fat Man Scoop yelling like only he can over it. That, in my opinion was a great move for a Miami crowd, and an excellent segue into his single "Rock This Party".

As much as it pains me to say this, I think the defining moment of the night came during an electro house remix of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Otherside". By this point I was on the floor, mingling with the natives. This is the kind of song that people are going to sing regardless of whether you want them to or not, with a very yell-able chorus, even if you have no idea what the words are (think: "how long, how loooooong…") He dropped the volume for what seemed like an entire verse, threw his arms in the air and backed away from the decks to let the crowd take over. And boy, did it work! It was very "Friends in Low Places" (If you know what I mean, bless your little country-loving heart).

Did I mention that it snowed? Yea, not Miami Snow, like little snowflakes from the ceiling snow. If your club is making so much money that someone can say "Hey guys you know what? Let’s just throw some of this away, we’ve got too much of it. I know, Snow!" Brilliant.

All in all, for those of you who went to Mansion to see Bob Sinclair, the two-hit wonder, hopefully you went home and did some research. Had I known nothing about him, or house music in general going into it, this show would have given me a great glimpse into the wide spectrum that it offers. He played the hits, but if that’s what it takes to keep people happy, so be it. There’s too many DJs out there that simply play what they want to hear, reveling in the fact that they know more than the common folk, and like I’ve always said, DJ’s tend to DJ for other DJ’s. For a lot of them, getting props from colleagues takes priority over having your crowd right there with you. Bob Sinclar doesn’t seem to be affected by this jading-with-age trend, and I applaud him for it. It takes more courage to risk being pegged as an unsubstantial DJ then to go obscure and keep your ‘DJ dignity’.

But then again, when you had the 35^th best selling single in the entire world, what the hell do you care?