First Night Out in Boulder

Last night I went to Boulder's only dance club by myself. It is really more of a wine bar with one big back room of about 150 person capacity where they throw shows. It is closing down and reopening under new management. This was it's last night. It's called Trilogy.

It was a fairly awkward experience. I don't usually go to clubs or bars by myself. The crowd was mid twenties to late thirties, well dressed, with a few wallpaper hoodies and fresh-stickered baseball caps thrown in. Also a lot of dreadlocks. People in Boulder love dreadlocks.

There was a front and back room. The front had a black DJ, maybe 30 years old, playing hip-hop sure shots with a bit of an old school tinge.

I was smoking a cigarette outside when he came and asked me for one. I didn't know he was the DJ. I started up conversation complementing the DJ. He played Move the Crowd by Rakim and also a song that used the beat from another Rakim song, Microphone Fiend. He ripped the filter off of my cigarette before he smoked it.

I tried dancing by myself, kinda dancing with a girl. Ordered a whiskey and coke. Smoked another cigarette. It had started to rain, so the handful of smokers were in close quarters under the bar's awning. I said hello to a woman next to me, asked her name, she gave it, Michelle. Then she immediately started making out with the guy standing next to me. The three of us were all shoulder to shoulder at this point. It was pretty hilarious.

In the back room there was a DJ playing some trancy drum and bass stuff off Ableton Live while another guy did projections. On the stage a woman danced with a hula hoop that had a bunch of LCD lights woven around it.

I don't really understand music like that. I never have. I don't even really know what to call it, I'm probably way off using saying drum and bass. Minimal drum and bass maybe. I don't understand people who dance to it. I'm starting to understand house music as a consequence of reading a book on disco (Love Saves the Day, check it out) but this type of music is so far removed from groove and melody, so cold and synthetic.

As I describe it, I think to myself "Hmm, music like that could sound cool." But to succeed in that sort of endeavor requires understanding the absence of these elements and controlling the sense of space in the music, giving the listener a shadow of these essential musical pieces so as to fill in the gaps themselves. This shit just sounds like there's something missing. And I paid 5 bucks to hear it. At least I got to see some drugged out bitch on stage twirling a hula hoop.

I started another conversation with a girl and it wasn't very successful. I left the bar and walked half a mile in the rain before realizing I was heading the wrong direction to my car.