For the third straight year I made the pilgrimage to the techno equivalent of Mecca, Detroit, and joined my fellow robots in submission to the electronic music gods. This year I arrived on Saturday evening, checked into the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center (overlooking the festival) and then walked over to meet Nora and Karen and pop my corn dog cherry for 2008. We caught a little Deadmau5 live, Alex Smoke live and Alex Under live (awesome!). Musically it was a nice start to the festival and on the social tip, I even ran into old Chicago buddy, Jeff (and his crew), for good measure. I vowed to take it easy on the night time after parties in an effort to save myself for the main event Monday morning and so I retired directly after the midnight end to the festival.
Sunday we got up around 10am and decided to skip the Resolute afterhours (questionable!) in favor of a ride on the People Mover and a yummy lunch in Greektown. As a side note, Nora was hitting the bottle early and often on Sunday - you know, that milky pink stuff? Ewww! After lunch we lounged on the grass in the back of the hotel overlooking the river and listened to the masterful track selection of iPod DJ Doubledip (that would be me) until we were ready to hit up the festival. We cruised over in the late afternoon, this time with props in hand and the now infamous "I <3 Corn Dog Techno" sign. Needless to say, it was a big hit with party goers many of whom made a point to come get their photos taken. My marshmallow blaster was also a hysterical addition to the day with the first and most impressive victory scored directly into the mouth of my friend, The Jass. 
My day was spent mostly in the Beatport tent catching Matthew Hawtin, Konrad Black, Heartthrob live, Paco Osuna (good!), Magda (awful!), Richie Hawtin (decent) and then over to the main to close it out to Carl Craig live (ridiculous!). It's always a pleasure to catch Carl but this time he was playing live with some old school jazz musicians he had flown in for the event. Definitely a highlight of the festival for me and can only really be compared to the Laurent Garnier live set I heard at I Love Techno 2006. I also had a chance to meet up with new Belgian friend, Lieven, whose introduction came by way of a comment he made on this blog. I love the dance music scene! After the festival ended I made the unpopular decision to skip the Temporary Tattoos party thrown by good buddies from New York and Denver. It turned out to be a good decision as I got some well needed sleep and I later found out some dude got shot outside the club. Gotta love Detroit! I will offer one final apology to Taimur, Fahad, Larry and Memo - I'll make it up to you boys! 
Memorial Day Monday... the day I had been anticipating for months. I got up at 8am and rallied the crew (including Nora who was on her death bed the night before) for the main event - Need I Say More, Part 3 @ The Old Miami. Last year's party was definitely in my top 3 of 2007 and I had big expectations going into DEMF 2008. Let's just say that Seth Troxler and Ryan Crosson (the hosts for the day) did not disappoint. In fact, this year was bigger and better despite what I'd consider *relatively* low energy sets by Jan Krueger, Ryan Elliot and Troy Pierce. But as most of you know, that didn't stop me from MAKING (legendary) PARTY! We arrived around 9am with a massive bag full of props and quickly went to work creating a Prop HQ and building a museum quality prop sculpture that would be marveled at all day long. It would be impossible for me to try to recap the exact happenings of the day so I'll just provide a few highlights and show the pictures (which are worth a few million words).--Collecting enough BAD IDEAS to last me until next year
--Blasting marshmallows at every god damn person within a half mile of The Old Miami
--Dusting coochies
--Insisting everyone listen to the yodeling pickle
--Googly-eye-ing everything in sight (Nora!)
--Watching the lawn come alive with the sound of music (oh and the fence melt, too)
--Getting lubed publicly by Shelley and laughing my a$$ off the entire time
--Awarding Detroit the 2008 Cracker Olympics and being the first cracker decathlete (specialty in coochie duster javelin)
--Swinging on the swing (Karen!)
--Looking for my long lost husband from last year's party
--Getting my gun re-loaded, my coochie dusted and my neck rubbed (simultaneously) by my hangers-on
--Inventing three new genres of music: Corn Dog Techno, Yodel House and Horn House
--Making new friends from St. Louis
--Finding one of the reindeer that fled Santa at last year's party
Nora and I were the last of the crew at The Old Miami and reluctantly left in time to shower and get over to the festival to catch Lee Burridge (good!), Josh Wink (very good!) and Dubfire (surprisingly good!). The sound at the main stage was ridiculously harsh so sadly I bailed for the night without thrashing in the electronic mosh pit for Speedy J and Oscar Mulero. No complaints though - the day was off the hook. I climbed into bed around midnight only to get up 4 hours later to head to the airport for my lovely 6am flight from Detroit straight into work. To add one more hysterical story to the weekend... my pickle decided to start yodeling in my bag as I was approaching the silent, bleary-eyed travelers sitting at the gate. There was nothing I could do, say or gesture to explain the extremely strange noise coming from my person so I just smirked, put my sunglasses on and sat down. Ha!No rest for the wicked though...it's off to Berlin for more techno on Thursday!
Photo credits: ResidentAdvisor.net, Nora, Karen
Hotel credit: Nora
Partner in crime credits: Nora, Karen, Joel, Betty, Nancy, Liar, Reds
Alex Under:
Lee Burridge:
Josh Wink:
More Josh Wink:
Carl Craig LIVE:
DBX Live playing Baby Judy (for Joel):
2 comments:
Nice review Wendy!
One thing I'd like to point out though was that was Paco Osuna that played right before Magda, not Marco Carola...
Good times!
-Kevino
Thanks for catching the typo, Kev - Marco was last year!
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