ADRIAN DOES STUFF

Well, August is almost over, and I survived, with my sanity and relationship relatively intact. DAMN.

It was just NON-STOP there for a while ... mostly gearing up for our MASSIVE Bootie 3-Year Anniversary Pirate Ball, which turned out to be the biggest party of our career. Over 1000 people there, with over half of them dressed up in some sort of pirate attire! Nine DJs, three performances to coordinate, plus, Smash-Up Derby performed a fucking mashup rock opera ...yes, we finally did Dean Gray: American Edit - The Theatrical Experience. It's been a dream of mine to perform that as a stage show, and with Foxy Cotton's help, we pulled it off!

The party was absolutely INSANE -- I practically had a nervous breakdown about four hours before the doors opened, and afterwards, I needed two days to recover. There was just SO MUCH going on, and so many little details to stay on top of. But it was A GREAT NIGHT, so much fun. I feel immensely proud. Two weeks prior to the party, the San Francisco Bay Guardian's annual Best of the Bay issue came out, and Bootie was voted "Best Dance Club" in its Readers Poll. To say that we were ecstatic would be an understatement! Over the past three years, we have worked so hard to create a party that is as fun and as mashed-up as the music we play there.

What surprised us the most is that this award didn't go to a nightclub venue (as it has in years past) but to just a single club night -– and one that happens only once a month! For a genre as wonderfully niche as bootlegs and mashups, it's a testament to the vitality of the Bay Area bastard pop scene that a club devoted to such a specific style of music could win this award. Plus, Smash-Up Derby won an Editor's Pick award, for "Best Slayer Meets Tori Amos." The great thing was that we all got to go to the Best of Bay award party!

So, in the midst of all of this, I also hosted "Smashed & Trashed" mashup night at Trannyshack, and did Bootie LA with DJ Tripp. Oh yeah, and then right after the Bootie Pirate Ball, I had to start working on Piss Clear, the newspaper I publish out at Burning Man every year. 60 hours of work in four days ... I ended up sleeping at my office one night! I was stuck there for 36 hours straight, working on that damn thing. But I think we've got a pretty good run of issues this year. I especially like the cover of the obligatory Drug Issue that Eric Shutterslut shot. Yes, that's my tongue. 

But now that's all done, and really, all I have to do this week is get ready for Burning Man, and get all my ducks in a row for Bootie LA (the one we'll be missing while we're in Black Rock City) and the Bootie SF that happens six days after we get back from the desert.

Packing for Burning Man should be easy ... this is my 14th year, and I pretty much already have everything. The thing D and I are really excited about this year though, is that we're going to be DJing for the first time out there! We're doing Bootie BRC on Thursday and Friday night! Woo-hoo! Black Rock City really needs some dance music that's not JUST trance and techno ... and we're happy to bring the flava! It should be a blast. Plus, we're camping with a bunch of cute gay boys who are bringing a big 16-foot dome, so for once, we'll have a cool chill space in front of our camp.

Damn, it is SOOO NICE to have a week of relative calm before heading off to the desert. Time to breath, get all our shit together, not have the stress and anxiety of a looming deadline always bearing down on you. Ugh ... because that's what the past month has been like! Anyway, still got lots to do, so I'm not going to write a book here ... just a lil' update before I head off to Black Rock City.

     I've got a blip of free time right now as I wait for the editors to give me articles to layout here at my day job at the Bay Area Reporter. So I figure I better blog now while I'm thinking about it, because looking at my schedule for the next month or so, I am very soon going to have NO TIME for anything other than work stuff. It's all GOOD work stuff -- in other words, it's all MY work -- but it's still work. 

 
Bootie post-party report

Bootie was last weekend, and it was a CRAZY NIGHT! Aaaaigh!

     We got a good crowd early (cheaper admission before 10:30, plus the kids still love those free CDs to the first 50 people) which was nice for Smash Hitley, our special live guest from Toronto. He played keyboard live, which triggered various audio and video samples. Pretty cool ... definitely the most art-damaged Bootie performance we've ever had!

     I must say, I really enjoyed Dada's set beforehand. Now that Smash-Up Derby is playing every month, he saves the rock mashups for the band. Most of the second half of his DJ set was very dancey, which I've been groovin' on. You can listen to an audio stream of the whole evening here.

     Speaking of the band, we opened up with "Smells Like Billie Jean" for the very first time (it's always been our set closer). And we tried out a couple of new ones: a version of Earworm's Depeche Mode vs. Goldfrapp (we dubbed it "Personal Trained Jesus") and Tripp's Cure vs. George Michael "Close To Faith" (which didn't work as a DJ mix, but was great for a live band.) We also did "Don't Stop Believin' 1979" (Journey vs. Smashing Pumpkins) which we LOVE doing. The audio on the webcast sounds like shit (the vocals are always WAY TOO LOUD) and you can hear every bad note me and Trixxie hit, but trust me ... it ROCKED live!

     Mysterious D and Party Ben both were there excellent selves. I especially dug D's set, as she mixed up some new faves with older "Bootie classics." Then it was time for our very sexy midnight mashup show, featuring Nicorette and Miss Glittorus (two very real girls, not drag queens) as feuding bi-curious baton twirling cheerleaders! Woo-hoo! Plus, it was fun to see Steven Satyricon, our gay go-go dancer, pretend to be a straight jock. So wrong!

     After that, DJ Earworm was up, with a selection of mashups that seemed to be mixed with either electro or 70s rock. Yes, that was a Steely Dan mashup in his mix, along with Kelly Clarkson singing with the Doobie Brothers (soon to be a Bootie Top 10 exclusive!)

     The crowd was kinda insane ... and definitely having a good time. We had a little over 800 people there over the course of the evening. A lot of new peeps, but familiar faces in the house as well. A totally fun night ... including the after-party at our house until 7 AM. Can't wait for the 3-Year Anniversary Pirate Ball next month! 

 
So much to do over the next four weeks!

     Of course, putting together this Bootie 3-Year Anniversary Pirate Ball is going to be kinda crazy. Gotta mix and burn 500 CDs, send out press kits, set up a liquor promo, make new decorations, just a zillion little things.

     And Smash-Up Derby is mounting a fucking mashup rock opera! It's been a dream of mine to do a theatrical interpretation of the Green Day bootleg album Dean Gray - American Edit. It's sorta started off as a joke, but now it's taken on a life of its own. And then Foxy Cotton did this epic performance art-like lip-sync to "Dr. Who On Holiday" at our first Bootie at DNA Lounge back in March, and I just saw all these possibilities. So now Foxy and I are conceptualizing this mini rock opera. I know we're over-reaching here, and what I visualize is so ambitious, that there's no way we're going to be able to pull it off as nearly as epic as I envision. But even if we get half-way there, it's still going to be really cool.

 
Smash-Up Derby is in the studio!

     Besides that, Smash-Up Derby is also in the midst of recording a ton of new mashups. Last night we were at Coast Recorders until 3 AM, laying down all the basic tracks. We got 11 songs down before we burnt out. Tonight we start working on overdubs, vocals, basic mixing, etc. Hopefully, in a month or so, we'll have everything mixed and mastered.

     As it stands right now, the plan is to possibly release this as a full-length CD. Of course, for what we're doing, song licensing is a bothersome nuisance, so we'll probably be doing this underground style -- at least until we can find some sucker who wants to pay all the publishing companies and lawyers that represent the songs we're bastardizing! Where's our rich sugar daddy who wants to bankroll Smash-Up Derby?

 

I should be SO be on Rock Star: Supernova

     My latest TV obsession has been the second season of Rock Star, the rock singer version of American Idol. Last year, it was basically a talent search for the new singer for INXS. Kinda creepy, but it made for great television. This year, it's a search for a singer for a new band called Supernova, formed by Tommy Lee (Motley Crue), Gilby Clarke (Guns 'N Roses), and Jason Newsted (Metallica).

     Watching this show is an exercise in frustration and masochism though. You see, back in March or so, I checked the Rock Star web site, to see what was up with the second season, and what one had to do to get on the show. That's when I found out that I had missed the San Francisco auditions by just a week! FUCK!

     At the time, I was like, "oh well, whatever." But now that the show is airing, and I'm seeing who made it on to the show, I'm so mad at myself for blowing my chance to audition! Adding insult to injury, Storm Large, who used to live in San Francisco (she's now in Portland) and who my old band, Blue Period, played with a couple of times, is on the show! She's an amazing singer and she totally DESERVES to be there -- and I hope she wins -- but to see a colleague of mine on the show just rubs salt in the wound. Grrrrrrr....

     And most of the people who made the final 15 contestants kinda suck. The women are interesting, but most of the guys are kinda generic, and half of them can't sing or have zero stage presence. I should SOOOO be on this show! I'm not saying I'd win ... I may have attitude and personality in spades, but Storm can easily sing circles around me. But I have a feeling I'd get pretty far -- and just think of the boost it would have done for Smash-Up Derby's career! DAMN. Oh well, maybe there's next year. Not sure how many more "rock star years" I've got in me, but ... y'know ... botox and dreadlocks keep you looking young!

Another year, another Burning Man

     It's been no secret that I have not exactly been looking forward to Burning Man this year. This is going to be my 14th year on the playa, and my 12th year of publishing Piss Clear, my Black Rock City vanity project-turned-alternative newspaper. And frankly, I guess I'm a little burnt out. There are already too many good things going on in my Real Life right now ... therefore, another trip out into a pretend desert dystopia just ain't what it used to be.

     Still, I'm going anyway. And in fact, I'm finally starting to warm up to it, after nearly a year of being a big sourpuss about it. Eric Shutterslut has assembled a whole team of gay boys to camp with us ... so many, that we may as well call our camp "Piss Queer." The best part? They're bringing a nice 16-foot dome for the front of our camp, so we'll have a much nicer "meet-and-greet" area than we usually do. 

     My printer deadline for Piss Clear is much earlier than it usually is, which sucks. I'm really going to have to hustle to get everything finished, and I'm not looking forward to the inevitable all-nighter I'm sure I'll end up pulling to get it all done. However, the good news is then I'll have two weeks of relative calm before we head out to the desert, and I'll need that time to do all the pre-production prep for Bootie and Bootie LA, before I go check out of Real Life for a week.

     Oh, and I plan on checking out! Me and D both need it! Last year, I had the flu for the first few days of Burning Man, and it sucked. This year, I plan to make up for lost time, and I'm going to party like crazy the first few days ... and then become more sober as the week wears on. We're doing Bootie BRC out there, and I'm looking forward to actually DJing on the playa. How crazy is it that there are so many DJs out there, yet we've never spun a set at Burning Man? 

     Okay, that's more of an update than I've done in MONTHS. Now it's time to get back to work!