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 ADVENTURES AT WEBSTER HALL, NEW YORK
STARRING: NINJASONIC, KLEVER, D.I.M.
[You can see photos of the Girls & Boys/Mishka party @ Webster Hall 08/28/2009 HERE or on FLICKR]
In our never ending pursuit of happiness and the desire to share it with the world I embarked on a trip to Webster Hall this past Friday, August 28th to catch a few favorites (Klever, D.I.M.) and to see what the hype is all about (Ninjasonic). They say that how your night begins is how it will end...thank goodness people who say that don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
It all started in a line that we mistook for the general admission line because there is no way the guest list line would be longer than the one for general admission, right? WRONG! It seems that the powers that be over at Webster Hall could care less if you are a reporter who drove from another state to get an interview and are on a tight schedule. Maybe if I had tits it would have been a different story but until that Twilight Zone episode becomes reality I'll have to make my own assumptions. 15 minutes into our wait, a female member of a British crew next to us became frozen against the wall. I figured that she was probably not in deep thought about whether Arsenal won that afternoon and deduced that this was not so much a medical problem as it was a medication issue. The policeman conveniently standing next to us quickly took notice prompting the friends, who are obviously thinking they'll get deported because of this, quickly lie, horribly, saying, "she's fine, it's one of her panic attacks." Almost on cue, the girl's eyes went blank as if she was staring at the devil himself, began to scream, and lost control of her legs before her friends caught her. 20 minutes later, we're not only watching 2 EMT workers carry this girl into an ambulance but we're still in line and getting rained on. VIP line? I strongly disagree.
50 minutes of waiting and we are finally a few people away from entering the club thanks to the 30 or so people in front of us that had more common sense than me and decided to go to another venue. Anxious as hell because I'm 10 minutes past my set interview time with Klever, I'm forced to find entertainment as a voyer spying on the inebriated scenesters who keep popping up and who all seem to know each other. Maybe if all these guys who think they're somebody weren't hounding the velvet rope proclaiming to be special the club would actually let us in and my experience would be smoother and much much dryer.
 
Webster Hall dancer (left) & Ninjasonic (right photo)
75 drizzle soaked, LSD tripping British girl, wannabe scenester minutes later the door man decides to arbitrarily start letting us in to discover that the club has a comfortable amount of people inside but is far from being packed. Rather than rack my brain trying to understand door man politics (I'll get my 10 year old step-son to do that later) I decided to look forward by heading up stairs to the Ninjasonic show. Remeber back in the 90's when Hip-Hop shows were everywhere and every artist had their 30 man entourage on stage and finding the actual rapper was a sort of ian mpromptu game of "Where's Waldo"? Well, it seems that times have not changed very much. You'd think that after 15 years of people saying, "you know why I don't go to Rap shows? Too many people on stage." the message would sink in. Then again, these new rappers were probably 10 years old at the time of my mid 90's hey day (some might call it the "Golden Age" of rap), so I try to find something else to enjoy. Too bad I didn't. No stage presence, corney crowd chants, and a catalogue of music featuring lyrics the 2 Live crew could have wrote in 1989 lead me to ponder why the blogosphere have decided this group is worth writing about. Will this night get any better...  Klever (top photo), 2 party goers at Webster Hall (bottom photo)
YES, it did. Klever comes on around 1:30am and promptly begins killing it as if his life depended on it. The crowd starts flooding the area in front of the stage and my ass is finally freed from the seat it had been glued to for the past 30 minutes. Hard Electro on a great sound system, hot women, 2 full bars and suddenly I feel like I 'm at a party. Back to business, I pry myself from the dancefloor and quickly find my way backstage to salvage my trip. I might have missed getting Klever on camera but I've got plenty of time for D.I.M., the German producer behind tracks like "Sysiphos", "Lyposuct", and a sick remix of Chromeo's "Fancy Footwork". Adam, my contact from the AM Only management team goes to talk to the man only to return and say that today's tragic news of DJ AM passing has put our German subject in a state of unease. In short, he's not doing the interview. Once again I am forced to look forward. 3:00am rolls around and D.I.M. takes stage. Despite doing all his mixing within the computer using Traktor (a bit disappointing) his set list is undeniably infectious. Within a few minutes I'm banging my head to his heavy, almost industrial influenced brand of Electro like I'm high at a Metallica show. The cool thing about New York is that people here are extremely liberal compared to most places. I know this because of the countless displays of PDA in every section of the club, the random girl on girl action, and how quickly women are requesting to be photographed by us without needing to know whether we are bloggers or perverts with an expensive camera. 60 sweat drenched minutes later (much more enjoyable than the preceding 75 rain drenched minutes) and the club is setting up to close so we decide to make our way back to Harlem before the drunken crowds flood the streets. All in all, an enjoyable trip. Did I mention that Klever, despite his semi-menacing tattoo'd punk rock appearance, is a very cool person and has promised to do an interview the next day? Well, we got an interview, handled business, and shot a roll of photos that prove that despite how the night starts it can always flip.
Check out our photo album from the night HERE on www.HipsterOverkill.com or on FLICKR- The Big Ragu |
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