bassjunkee

I come from Chicago, and the whole candy/kandy/kandi thing is definitely struggling. When I started partying here in '99, the whole style was at its peak. EVERYBODY wore the bracelets and the fuzzy clothes, no matter how macho or 'hardcore' everybody thought they were. In fact, the more you wore, the cooler people thought you were. At my most candied-out party, I wore 164 bracelets, 6 necklaces, the teletubby backpack (and even my backpack was wearing 15 or so bracelets) and then the clothes. It was like the uniform. It itched really badly, and I could barely dance in it, but I loved it anyway. Eventually, it just sort of began to fizzle with the scene here. The older kids thought that all of the attention the candykids were bringing to themselves and the parties was bad for the scene. And they may have been right, because the media attention certainly didn't do anybody any good here. Nowadays, in Chicago at least, the candykids are scowled at, laughed at. If you admit you like happy hardcore, you're likely to be laughed at as well. It doesn't get played at parties. Generally, the darker and less cheesy your favorite genre of music is, the more respect you get. It's sad, I know, but it's true. I think a lot of kids here still have a place in their hearts for it, but they just don't want to admit it because people aren't as warm and friendly as they used to be. I fell out of the scene in 2000 and only recently resurfaced to assess the damage. When I looked into the Hullabaloo things, I was very pleased to see that kids SOMEWHERE were still doing things on a big scale and in a happy spirit. I wish Chicago could be reborn. I've never come up for a Hulla but I hope to soon. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get enough $ together to come up for Pacific Sun, but I'm shooting for April.