Friday, March 20, 2009. 4:14 p.m.
I smell like a stripper. I’ve slept a maximum of five hours in the past two days. I’m pretty sure my friends are planning an intervention for my addiction/dependence on Amp energy drinks. But it was worth it to hear some good trance and house music.
My original plan last night was to catch some zzzzs before checking out the new-ish Global House Afterhours party at Seamless and DJ Marlon Florez’s (aka Art Stylus) set. With the event starting off at 4 a.m. and Florez as the night’s featured DJ taking control of the decks at 5, I had plenty of time to sleep. However, I don’t do morning and getting up before 10 a.m. while frequently covering nightlife is a daily battle. So, I decided to skip the sleep, down my second energy drink and weather the weariness by killing some time at Tabu in the MGM Grand with a set from Dirty Vegas.
Arriving at 11:30 p.m., Tabu’s crowd was an old man sausage fest. The only familiar face was Funky Bad Chad DJing for the opening set. Long story short, some friends eventually showed up, Dirty Vegas was disappointingly boring and the only amusing portion of the evening a buy-one-get-one special on Mickey’s Malt Liquor. Seriously.
My trance-loving roommate had originally planned to come to Seamless with me because she wanted to hear Florez in his official return to the scene after going on hiatus (his previous residencies include Empire Ballroom and Blue Note). She’d planned to stay home and sleep before the gig, then show up at the club around 5 and go to work directly from Seamless. It sounded plausible, but she wasn’t able to wake up until right before she needed to be at her office. I know the feeling.
Around 4 a.m., I was half way through energy drink number three and on my way to Seamless. Energy drink three-and-a-half came in the form of a vodka/Red Bull while DJ Shift was kicking off Global House afterhours. Apparently he didn’t get the memo you don’t have to spin overplayed commercial music for such an event and I cringed at his set list and abrupt mixing. One transition was so rough, and audible I heard “Goddamn!” rise from the DJ booth. Guess it wasn’t his night…
But it wasn’t all bad. I had stopped by Global House Afterhours for its first party two weeks prior, and the Thursday night/Friday morning event appeared to have more attendees this time. DJs Jeff Retro and Josh Abrams showed up to hang out, as did a promoter from a competing afterhours. “Aren’t you on the wrong turf? Is your presence going to start some kind of afterhours gang war?” I joked with the promoter. He replied he came to hear Florez’s set and wanted to show support for the scene.
Florez somehow pulled off a successful transition from Shift’s last track—I believe it was a remix of Simple Mind’s “Don’t You”—and switched over to trance. Retro, Abrams and I nodded in approval from the table we parked at near the stage. A less-than-fit stripper approached Abrams, who was checking text messages, and instructed him to “Quit cupcaking with your phone!”
Though I had been awake for about 22 hours at this point, I felt the need to get my exhausted and slightly tipsy ass out of the chair to show approval for Florez’s tunage. Resident DJ smashBOX (aka Alex TerraNova) was bouncing around the club and joined me on the dance floor, as did Retro’s girlfriend, Cassandra, and her friends visiting from Florida.
Dancing at 6 a.m. is an easier and more enjoyable way for me to exercise than trying to go to the gym, although I know vodka is not part of a healthy exercise routine. Maybe Seamless could capitalize on this and start offering all-natural fruit smoothies. I’d totally buy one (although they’d probably charge $20 for it).
Around 8 a.m. I dug the sunglasses out of my purse and attempted to mask the eau de stripclub with fruity body spray from the selection in the club’s restroom. Though a significant culture of dance music fans exists in Las Vegas and more big-named DJs playing less-mainstream styles of EDM (electronic-dance-music) are here every week, fans like myself have to be out until after the sun comes up just to catch the truly underground music. As I headed home in the morning rush hour traffic, I wished the music of afterhours and events like Global House happened during regular hours.
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