Detroit parties provide surreal musical environment

[detroitPLURkid]

Detroit raves have recently become an adventurous weekend activity for University students seeking something extraordinary. A decade ago these extravagant dance parties began to occur in Detroit on a small scale. Along with the accompanying electronic music culture, popularity has grown year after year. Only a 45-minute drive from campus, these modern cultural events present an alternative to the mundane repetition of weekend campus life.

Some people choose to stay on campus and do a little drinking. Others catch up on their studies or go watch bands play some good old rock 'n' roll. Basically everyone does something to unwind from a stressful week of class. Yet of the various on-campus weekend alternatives, not many are as relieving as a night dancing to electronic music at a Detroit party with anywhere from 500 to 3,000 other people.



Ask anyone returning from a Detroit rave about his or her experience and prepare for a poetic tale of adventure and enlightenment. Most parties create an extreme environment unlike anything found in Ann Arbor. An experience such as this will most likely be more memorable than another one of those nights at The Brown Jug reminiscing.

So what exactly goes on at these raves that's so fun?

For some the appeal can be all-night pill-popping and the use of whatever designer drugs always seem to be on-hand at some raves. For others, it can be the simple thrill of flocking to an illegal party. But for most, going to raves is not about the illegal activity and hard-drugging you've read about and scene on almost every TV channel. And, what is also often overlooked by everyone - most raves are not illegal.

Music First year student, Anne Lauckner, serves as a perfect example. When asked about what goes on a rave she described a common myth among students. "I thought it was all about drinking and all about drugs," she said.

Engineering Senior Shane Eaton has been intimately involved with Detroit's party scene for years. Recently he has begun throwing parties of his own in Detroit as one half of his company, PLURKids Productions.

"That's the first question to come out of everyone's mouth," Eaton said. "The basic question is 'aren't raves just a place to go to get high and do drugs?'"

And LSA junior Doris Payer said though raves often offer a clean way to have a good time for many, what really goes on is not what makes it into the newspapers.

"I think it's mostly the media that makes raves out to be these crazy drug-infested orgies with deafening music and strange props like pacifiers and face masks to complete the rituals," Payer said.

Another University student involved in Detroit's party scene, LSA sophomore Gabe Sandler, said these myths have become problematic.

"The main problem I see with the scene is the judgmental attitude that American people who have not participated in it tend to have," Sandler said. "It's the type of thing you should see for yourself and form your own opinion on."

Located in the farthest depths of Detroit's inner city ghettos, some may be hesitant to investigate these non-traditional musical gatherings. Locations don't get revealed until the day of the event and even then directions can only be found on a voice mail recording. Tactics such as these help foster an atmosphere of mystery as well as functioning to keep the parties as underground as possible, where only the most courageous dare venture.

Once you arrive at the party, park the car and finally enter, a whole new world presents itself. "It was kind of dark with minimal lights, loud music, dirty floors, potholes on the way to the party with steam coming out of them," Engineering senior Gary Givental said, referring to his first experience at a Detroit party.

Givental found the environment to his liking, motivating him to become an aspiring DJ and Eaton's partner in PLURKids Productions.

"People are there listening to the music, they're dancing, they're sitting on the floor chilling," Givental said. "Whatever it is they're doing, it's just a totally different atmosphere. I totally got into it because it was such a friendly environment, like I'd never seen at a concert before.

"It totally blew me away because right away you could feel it in the air - you could feel the vibe. That sounds weird to some people but you definitely feel the atmosphere," he said. "After that I wanted to go back. I wanted to hear more - I wanted to learn more about it."

Eaton's first experience prompted him to begin throwing parties as part of PLURKids Productions.

"This was a whole new experience," Eaton said. "This was an exciting new world. This was me experiencing something I'd never experienced before and meeting all these new people.

"There were no fights, no belligerent drunken people, no gangstas walking around trying to be all hard, just fantastic people. The more I got into the music and the more I realized what I love, the more I wanted to spread this stuff around," he said.

Sandler puts this environment - which Givental terms "the classic Detroit feel" - into further perspective: "A good Detroit party for me requires that two ideals are met. First, the music played there should be aesthetically pleasing in the sense that it's art and beautiful. Second, the crowd should reflect many different types of people there for the same reason - the love of fun."

Also, the fact that Detroit parties last all night separates them from traditional dance clubs. Since dancing can sometimes go from 10 p.m. until noon the following day, most people come dressed more for comfort than glamour. Tennis shoes, comfortable pants and light t-shirts are the norm.

Also, don't expect a meat market. This isn't the Nectarine or Rick's. People come for the music, not to fulfill their sexual desires. "You will never ever see a guy freaking a girl at a party, and if you do, you're at the wrong party!" Eaton explained.

Depending on the particular party, the music can range from hip-hop to jungle but in Detroit, techno and house music reign as most popular. Usually, most raves have more than one room in order to offer multiple DJs and genres along with separate chill-out area away from the booming bass. Since raves do go until dawn, people often need a break from the loud music and dancing to hydrate and recharge.

Some of the better Detroit raves offer other sorts of entertainment besides just music and people. Professional light shows add an aura of otherworldliness to raves, eliminating any remaining mundane elements. Depending on the time of night or the party, light shows can range from near-darkness with carefully positioned strobe lights to all-out barrages of every imaginable color.

The sum of these various elements creates a surreal world capable of overloading one's senses. Being lost in the middle of a strangely lit ocean of youths all reacting wildly to the channeled energy of a DJ's music can become utopia for a hedonistic individual interested in sensory overload. The combination of stimulating environment, forward-thinking music and thousands of peaceful dancing youths continues to convert music lovers of all kinds to party culture.

Richie Hawtin, better known as Plastikman, engineered some of the first and most legendary parties in the history of Detroit. During the past decade, parties such as "Spastik" and "Consumed" are now considered historical events for their ambitious attempt to create surreal environments capable of immersing the partyers, making them forget about the outside world for the night.

Held in an early 20th Century temple, "Consumed" needed four floors to accommodate its various environments. The first floor consisted of a gigantic lobby. After ascending the stairs, partyers had the option of entering the main dancefloor 72 feet in length and 45 feet wide with a quadraphonic sound system where Hawtin performed.

Then after taking the elevator up yet another floor, partyers could explore two audiovisual installation rooms or several other special artificial environments. Finally, the fourth floor consisted of more technologically disorienting art installation rooms and another large dancefloor where partyers could relax and socialize as other DJs spun ambient music.

"We were involved at a time when there were no parties," Hawtin said in reference to the early '90s. "It's different now because there's a whole different mentality, there's a whole different reasoning behind the thing. When we started throwing parties this wasn't a big scene. There was no fame involved. There was no money involved. There was only one real reason to be doing it. It was to make music, to go out and hear music, to go out and dance to music."

Detroit's rave scene continues to grow with multiple parties occurring on weekends. But as the scene rises from the underground, Eaton said he believes it is slowly spreading itself thin.

"I arrived when the scene was on its way down to where it is now, from the true underground, where it once was," he said. "I never saw the true underground. It was mostly dead by the time I arrived a few years ago. Parties now are all too often marred by a focus on everything else but what really matters, the music and how it makes us feel."

Still, even as raving has become increasingly trendy, Payer's maintains an opinion that correlates with the common attitude among University students familiar with the party scene: "It always has been and always will be about the music."