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The last week of June I eyeballed up my calendar and smiled with pure mirth as I spied out the Canada Day “long weekend.” Falling on a Tuesday, I knew that the long weekend would immediately inflate (Scene-wise) into a four day long weekend. I dutifully booked Monday off in addition to taking the stat holiday of Tuesday July 1st, then hit Facebook and Scenester’s Scene Events to see what was going on.

Of course everyone was talking about the infamous Steve Lawler coming to town. Slated to go on Monday night with a to-be-expected sunrise set at Skybar (The Guvernment Entertainment Complex) Tuesday morning, Lawler was a definite crowd-pull. I had mixed feelings. I had experienced a Lawler sunrise set 2-years ago and it was magical—my expectations would be unreasonably high to try and get the same enjoyment a second time. Additionally, Lawler would draw massive crowds and you can be sure The Guv would be packed to capacity. Lawler’s love for Toronto is reciprocal, his latest mix compilation, Viva Toronto, is an obvious testament to the fact.

So I put the idea of a party at Guv with Lawler on the back burner. I asked Miss Raquel what other parties were going on in the city that weekend, and she had some great suggestions. She also suggested I check out Pride seeing I’ve never been.

Sunday: Check out Pride, specifically the South Stage where Jelo, Deko-ze, DJTK, Don Berns and Robb G would be spinning.

Monday: Soul Baruka Orchestra at The Mod Club for some live Deep House and finally Tuesday: Amigo’s boat cruise with DJs Addy, Deko-ze, Jayforce and MK. I looked at my little note pad of weekend scheduling bliss and smiled to myself with glee. This would be one for the books—such a wide musical range, with a dash of culture unknown, and events ranging from indoors to outdoors to on the water!

Part 1- Footwork, Friday June 27. 11:00pm.
Bitchslap: The Final Bitching – Pride Edition & 3 Year Anniversary
w/ Sydney Blu, DJ TK, Cedric Grevais & Cam Maxwell
(going on elsewhere in the city this night: Switch @ CiRCA)

I was really excited to hit Footwork. I’m a fan of DJTK and hadn’t heard Sydney Blu in a while. I had just recently heard Cedric Gervais’s track “Let’s Take Drugs” which sample’s President George Bush’s voice reworked into saying things over top of sic beats like “everyday…drugs. Every night…drugs. Terrorists do…drugs.” Lastly, to hear Cam Maxwell was opening and making his Footwork debut was the icing on the cake. This was going to be a fun party beginning to end.

I got off work early on Friday and hit the shower. I had this new hair gel I was dying to try out, but the Hair-Cut-Mafia Boss had told me to make sure my hair was wet before putting the stuff in. He told me some other stuff about it, but that’s all that I remembered being important. So I leapt out of the shower, unscrewed the tiny jar of hair-stylin-gr00ve and slapped a healthy heap of the stuff onto my scrawny skull. I lathered up my locks, closed my eyes with lips in a smile imagining how totally suave I would look all James Bond-a-thon’d in my sweet hair do.

I remembered somewhere someone saying if you blow dry your hair with gel in it, it’ll stay in place. I grabbed out my wife’s super-blow (ahem) 3000, pointed it at my now very creamy hair and flicked it on. Very quickly I realized I had made a tragic error. I felt the skin under my hair getting very tight, and gingerly poked my spikey-do. I put my fingers in my hair and they actually stuck there for a second! I pulled my hand away in shock. A moment later, my hair was absolutely rock solid—and I don’t mean, wow, you’ve got some strong hair gel solid—I mean I could easily be considered a lethal weapon with near concrete-meets-barbed-follicles permanently affixed atop my head. I thought of RobSt*r for a moment for some bizarre reason, then decided to put the concoction’s weakness to a test: water solubility.

After shower No. 2, a small amount of hair gel, no super-blow 3000, things were in proper order and I was out the door. In the car with tunes pumpin’, I got a txt from Megan: could I give her a lift?

Me: Yup! I’ll pick you up! I txt’d Miss Raquel offering a ride as well since we’d be covering the event together.

Then another txt from a sales agent, “Can you drop those marketing materials on your way to Toronto tonight?”

Click to launch new window with enlarged image.

Footwork was pretty empty upon arrival, but as always would obviously fill very quickly. Footwork is one of my favourite clubs in the city. I like how it builds ambiance yet still has a dirty underground feel to it. The lights beside the DJs add some epic and stark effects to the DJ booth. They also allow for some pretty cool pictures.

Cam Maxwell was on deck tackling a slow building opening set—apparently something relatively new to him. He handled it very well. I was disappointed later to hear he dropped a Paolo Mojo track I love called Riding Armidilos. As he closed his opening set, the club now totally rammed I heard some familiar tracks pumpin’ out that Cam featured on his promo CD Bump that I talked about in the Film Review. The crowd loved the vocal Electro he was throwing down and gave good indication that Cam’s introduction to the club was well received. No, this isn’t a total plug for Cam, at least not one on purpose. He’s actually a bit of an ass *wink*—despite this he’s a great DJ and has recently played a great part in my never-ending House music education. Enough of Cam Maxwell!

Sydney hit the decks next and I hadn’t heard her spin in quite some time. To be honest, I’m not a fan of the Electro-tunage I had heard her throw down in the past. That being said, every time I had heard her at Zone, she had totally knocked my socks off. She started her set with a slightly different mood than Cam had ended with and built the beats up slowly. She has a huge passion for music, and it certainly shows as I could see her singing along. Being Bitchslap’s last event and 3-year anniversary, I was surprised (and disappointed) live vocalist Mandy J wasn’t part of the evening’s festivities, but we can’t have it all. I wasn’t surprised to hear Sydney’s recent releases in her set as she belted out Saeed Younan’s To The Beat (Sydney Blu & Matteo DiMarr Remix). I also heard Sydney Blu – Give It Up For Me, which of course we’ve all been hearing everywhere lately. I’m super-proud of our local residents putting out such high caliber productions that are garnering international attention and respect.

Sydney handed off the decks to Cedric Gervais and as he spun up his laptop and started coating the audio layers, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Exactly the kind of music I like to hear. Building bass lines with steady pumping beats and catchy cool sound clips, some chopped vocals, weaving in and out of the tracks. Coming from sets that were a little more vocal, a little more Electro, Cedric’s set was a perfect set to transition into. The pulsating beats were sic. He mixed in Let’s Take Drugs and a holler went up from the crowd. Check out Cedric’s tracks by hitting his Myspace. I was surprised at the number of tracks this man has produced that I know and love. A lot of tracks with soulful vocals on top of hard hitting Electro beats, like, Give Me Luv, Delacy Hideaway and Pills feat. Second Sun.

Behind the decks, Cedric had a stern focus look as he moved from his laptop to the mixer, but still took a few minutes here and there to vibe up with the crowd. By 4am the club was still rammed.

Footwork had splurged and purchased an extended alcohol serving license. There was more than one conversation about the wisdom of allowing bars to purchase extended serving licenses on even regular weekends.

DJTK closed down the club. I was excited to hear her set, but unfortunately only heard about 20 minutes of it. It was hard hitting Techno, hammering the crowd hard with wave after wave of heavy bass putting a smile on my face. I’m still learning the Techno side of EDM and I definitely liked where DJTK was going with it. I consoled myself I would get to hear more of her Sunday at Pride (South Stage).

As a quick side story, this party was also celebratory for another friend on HouseAddict.com—Psiico who has been part of the HouseAddict.com community, bringing a unique and ‘real’ feeling with his open and frank posts. At this party he said his good-byes, deciding to leave his job and friends behind, to seek new friends and visit family out east. What’s so unique about this? The dude is riding his bicycle—and it isn’t like he is a triathlon star or anything. This is your average guy, 30+, deciding, “Hey, I’m going to ride my bike back to the east coast. The last txt I received from him read, “1000 km down, 2000 to go.” Could you imagine? Taking an opportunity for such a drastic change in your life? For many of us it would be a completely healthy process. I have to admit I was a little envious, but moreso proud of him for going for something and sticking with it. What an experience!

Kudos to Sydney Blu, DJTK and Shanna for taking the Bitchslap! franchise so far: 3-years! Footwork was a great place to throw such a fantastic party. With the weekend of Pride beginning, spirits were high and the crowd was in a good mood. Footwork’s sound system was balanced as I didn’t need my ear plugs to fend off the offending & damaging high frequencies. Sitting in the back couches suitably reminded me of being housed in a World War II bomb being dropped off over the Nazi bastard’s homeland. All was well.

Part 2 >>