This weekend,
myself, my girlfriend (who doesn't node),
psydereal, and
kimonade went on a fun little road trip to The Lazarus Project, one of those dangerous
rave parties you've heard so much about on
20/20. But it wasn't just any party, it was to be huge, with insane talent and lots of kids. Headlining were
Kenny Glasgow (!),
Dave Angel (!!), and
Derrick May (!!!!!). Since this was probably going to be one of the biggest quasi-local parties of the year, we all brought various and sundry forms of
psychochemical enhancement with us. There are lots of little stories from the party and the
roadtrips to and from it, but the one below is probably the funniest. Enjoy.
Well, we're almost there, twenty minutes or so away from the venue, and we see a car parked in the breakdown lane. No big deal, even though the tail lights are on and nobody is outside of the car. As we drive by, I see the lights on the car's roof. Uh-oh, it's a cop. Ok, this isn't too bad, gonna slow down ten miles per hour so we're going the speed limit, and Mr. Pig won't be able to pull us over. I hit the brakes hard, and we're slowed down before the cop gets a chance to clock us.
In the rear-view, the police car turns on its headlights and swerves onto the road to follow us. Ack. Shit.
I tell everybody to get ready to eat their drugs if the cop lights come on, and we all rustle around to unwrap our stashes and get them ready. In thirty seconds the car's panic potential has gone from zero to so thick it could be cut with a knife. My face lights up as the redwhiteblue strobe of police flashers is reflected by the rearview -- we're getting pulled over even though WE HADN'T DONE ANYTHING. My girlfriend drops my pill of ecstasy into my hand and I dry-swallow it. Now usually, I can dry-swallow anything smaller than a golf ball (my record is seven various pills in one go), but because of the tense situation I had a hard time of it. Plus, the pill is unusually large, and, as with all good ecstasy, has the nastiest of all nasty tastes. Once everybody seems to be done with their munching, I pull the car over onto the shoulder
Cop comes up to the window, shines in a flashlight. "Do you have a driver's license?" I get my wallet off the dashboard and hand him the license. "Whose car is this?" "The blond girl in the back seat," I say, pointing my thumb back at psydereal. "You'll need to get out and get into the passenger's side of the police car, please." Yikes. At least all the drugs are gone, so if he searches he won't find anything. If he calls in the drug dog, though, it'll take so long that we'll be coming on before it's over. Not fun.
In the cop car, I try my hardest to look really, really sober. No lip-licking, or rubbing my eyes, or paying too much or too little attention to my surroundings. Perfectly straight, nobody's on drugs here, officer. I pretend to study the function of all of the little devices in the car's cab, although in retrospect it might have looked like I was frying out on all of the blinkenlights on their panels. The policeman looks like he was built to be run underwater or something -- his face is almost slicked back, like slightly melted plastic. Creepy. I'm reminded suddenly of the cop from Terminator 2, realistic features but somehow just not right.
"You crossed over the center line a couple of times after you passed me. Were you trying to hide a bunch of stuff?"
CROSSED OVER THE FUCKING CENTER LINE?! PLEASE! "Oh, I hadn't realized that. I'd noticed your police car, and braked sort of hard to get down to the speed limit." No sense in lying, he obviously hadn't clocked me.
"So, where are you going tonight?"
"Oh, we're going to St. Joseph, probably going to stay there all night."
"Hmm. Are you carrying any alcohol, weapons, drugs, or explosives?" Yes, he actually asked us this exact question.
"No sir."
"So I could search your car, and I wouldn't find anything?"
"Yeah, but you should ask psydereal first, it's her car." I point to the blond hair visible in the police car's light.
"Hmm. Are you going to the civic arena?" Aha, so he knows there's one of those evil rave parties going on in St. Joe tonight.
"I don't really know, the brown haired girl is reading me instructions as we go. Am I, uh, going to get a violation on my insurance record for this?" I point to Kimonade, and try to look concerned about my insurance rates. My heart is going about twice it's normal rate, and I'm almost positive the cop can smell the pill's horrid chemical aftertaste on my breath.
"No, I'm not going to ticket you. Go on along, and be careful." He hands me back my driver's license. Kickass!
I get back in the car, and everybody looks at me all concerned like. I make eye contact with my girlfriend, and break out a big shit-eating grin. The whole carload starts laughing with relief, and we take off. A minute or two later, the same cop passes us and pulls over another poor sucker. In the distance, we see yet another police car stop somebody heading the opposite direction, it must be a rave task force or something.
At any rate, the party was bangin', and we got there safely before the drugs kicked in. Kenny Glasgow's set was surprisingly strict techno goodness, and he played a big percentage of my favorite tracks. Dave Angel (who only plays in the USA about ten times a year) threw down an uplifting, pretty set, with almost as much trance content as it had techno. While I don't usually go for trance, his tracks were excellent and mixed masterfully, and he is highly recommended.
And then there was Derrick May. Stunning, absolutely stunning. He was all over the mixer like it was a Bosendorfer and he was Igor Stravinsky on meth, mixing in all of his own breakdowns and beat drops. He helped invent techno, and knew exactly what to do with it to make you want to jump. Breathtaking.