:::: Nitevibe :::: WMC 2005

Miami 06' My Second Year
By Andrew Casden

As this was my second visit to Conference, I have only one previous year to base comparison, but can still manage to say it was a different experience than before. Conference 2005 was like being a kid in a candy store for the first time. I couldn't comprehend the logistical realities of the thing, and found myself giddy with anticipation on the flight down. Once there, I was literally overwhelmed with choices: How could this be? How could all of these people be here at one time? Here I was in Miami Beach and virtually all of musical heroes were at my fingertips, often for free! I wanted to see as much as I could, and found myself running from one event to another so as to not miss a single moment of the action. Needless to say, it left me burned out and exhausted, and often times I would leave a great party in the hopes of getting to another one, not truly soaking up the energy of any one time and place.

Going down this year, I already felt like somewhat of a veteran, even in my short year progression. In a way, I had already had attained a bit of the "been there, done that" mentality. I was actually glad in a way that I had hustled to see x, y and z DJ last year, because it meant that I could pass them up this time and not feel guilty about it! "Oh yeah, I saw him last year, he was pretty good." This time, I would be more focused, this time, I would take it easy.

Well, that's often times easier said than done. Not only were there a lot of great new acts that I wanted to see that had not been around last year, but I was also going down as a hired gun with a mission, shooting a video documentary for Om Records, documenting an independent dance label's artists, DJs, producers, and staff, as they went about their business at the industry's biggest week of the year. I had always kind of taken the filmmaking expression "Shooting from the hip" at face value, but it couldn't be more literal. I often found myself lugging my video camera around everywhere I went, trying to whip it out at the sight of something interesting, be it household DJ celebrity or horrendous fashion blunder. This made for a mostly fun experience, as I was granted access to events and parties that would have otherwise proved too difficult to enter, given the "Iron Curtain" door policy of many Miami nightclubs during Conference. But it also meant that I would have to miss out on a few people and places I wanted to see, and stay on the clock when duty called. But it can hardly seem like work when you're doing what you love to do, so I certainly ain't complaining.

In the end, we got our job done, shot pretty much everything we intended to (along with some stuff we didn't!), and still managed to have a great time in the process. As for taking it nice and easy, that didn't really happen, and I was possibly even MORE exhausted upon my return to Sand Francisco this year. This was, of course, aided by the fact that I passed out on South Beach for almost two hours on Tuesday morning, completely scorching my back and front with first-degree burns.ouch. I think I attended slightly fewer actual events than last year, but was workin' that much harder.

For anyone who's into this scene (and if you've read this far, you must be), I highly recommend going down to Miami for Conference at least once. Of course it's a lot of fun, but it's also more than that. People say it's much more commercial and less 'industry' than it used to be back in the day. Well, that may be true, and I can't really comment on the 'good ol' days' of Conference. It's a time where our music takes over the town, where our sound pervades the streets. But even more importantly, its that when you're down there, you feel like the global underground dance community of ours has a place and a time where we can all come together. For one week you really feel like you're part of something bigger than the little isolated scenes in our own home towns. Of course it's a lot more interesting when you've got an agenda, but hey, even if your agenda is only to party your ass of on South Beach and hear some of the best music in the world, then 'SoBe' it..(couldn't resist)

By Andrew Casden