Da grunj

The past weekends problems with the rave scene is not only happening in Toronto, but all over our country. If it was not for pHil from pHryl, the out come for Anabolic Frolic could have been much worse.

A simular situation happened in Vancouver a few weeks ago, the entire rave'n comunity was out to get the organizer who tried to do the best he could. We must all keep our heads up. Raves are cancelled approx. 50% of the time in Vancouver (my experiences).

april 05 2000 - Epic Productions (Matrix)

Official Press Release

"In regards to the Matrix on April 01, firstly I would like to express my deepest apologies to all the people who never made it into the Matrix and to all who had to put up with the bullshit outside. I am not here to make excuses for myself or my company and I do take full responsibility even though the factors that hindered this event were external. What I really want to do is to make an understanding with all of you who we failed.

I can take a lot of things that are said about me, whether it be that I'm a failure, a dick or that I throw bad parties but the one thing that I cannot accept is when people refer to my company as a cash grab. Because that is the furthest from the truth, if we were in it for the money I would not have gone through w/three venues, losing most of my personal savings; I would have just cancelled the show--it would have been that easy. I'm not here to rip you off, if I was why did I even throw one. But instead I did everything that I could humanly do to make sure that a show did go on.

In hopes that you will understand, these are the events that transpired:

We hired the services of Undernet to obtain our license and to get our venue which was the PNE Agridome--We had put an initial deposit on the Agridome and went to the Fest. Committee for approval. What had happened with the PNE was that the never handed in their revised fire safety and security plan in time to the city which resulted in us losing the license. This can be attested by the comment made by the city in the Georgia Straight and VTV news. Thus a week and a half to the show we had no venue.

We scoped every single venue we could think of and on Monday the week of the show we came into contact with the owner of the A-Frame building in Delta who really wanted to rent us that building. We made our agreements and put a half down on the venue and secured it. We thought everything was saved, made plans and designed how everything was going to be set up. Come Friday night my sound and lighting crew went into set up only to be harassed by police and threatened by them. The police did not want a rave this size to occur in their town. Like most closed minded police who are prejudicial against raves and our scene, they would not stand down. Thus at midnight we came to a standoff. I had to make the decision whether come Saturday we would standoff w/the police and risk having the party shut down or pull out of the venue. I chose to pull out of the venue because I did not want to risk the safety of any kids since a standoff with this many people would have resulted in a riot.

So come Friday night we had no venue, at this point most people would have just thrown in the towel and buried their heads under a pillow. I was fortunate to have really close friends who stayed up with me all night infusing courage and telling me not to give up and that a show must go on no matter what the costs. Not sleeping the whole night I paced up and down my room trying to think of a solution, outdoors? Underground? but nothing could be done under such notice. Then at 10 am Saturday morning I got a call from a friend that Foolproof had cancelled their show and that the Halls were now available-- Thus at 12 in the afternoon we set up both the halls and believe me setting up two parties in eight hours is not the easiest thing to do under these circumstances. I guess the rest you all know. Those that did not get in I'm very sorry, the police were very uneasy about the crowds and they wanted to get everyone dispersed to avoid any commotion.

Right from day one we had amazing opposition from the authorities, I believe that they were very afraid of the numbers that we could draw and thus they chose to gridlock every single step of our process in order to make us fail.

I would like to thank my sound and lighting company Juice Entertainment for sticking by me till the bitter end. Moses I know you stuck your neck out for me and I will never forget it, thanks for not pulling out. And thank you Bobby and Sangeep, I know you guys got into a lot of heat.

The very last thing I wanted to do was to disappoint all of you and it does hurt me to know that I did. The whole reason I wanted to throw parties was to look at the whole party and see the house jumping up and down having fun. Even though my name and my company is being hammered right now, I have no regrets about not canceling the show. I truly apologize for what has transpired and am trying to figure out what to do. Give me a day or two and I will make an announcement. I know I fucked up your night but everyone makes mistakes and at least I tried my very best to make things go through. To all those who made it into the party I hoped you enjoyed the music, the lighting and sound show, because nothing like that has ever gone into the halls. Whether you believe me or not is out of my control, all I can do is explain exactly what happened and hope that you understand.

Sincerely,
Nathan--E.P