anabolic frolic

Cream softens edge to widen appeal

T'CHA DUNLEVY
The Gazette


Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Cream is to rave culture as Hollywood is to film. Or maybe as B-movies are to film. No, Hollywood. Either way, the annual Labour Day weekend party that went off with the help of more than 8,000 revelers Sunday night, wrapping up at noon Monday, presented a version of the techno-centric dance gathering that is very far from the roots whence it grew.

This is no surprise. In cultivating its audience over the past half-decade, Cream has voluntarily given up any ties to underground electronic culture, at least in terms of the audience it caters to.

The DJ roster, on the other hand, was padded with Montreal talent with strong, long-standing ties to the city's dance scene. Local boys Tiga, Laflèche, Luc Raymond and Iznogood carried the bulk of the programming.

But DJs alone do not a party make. The venue, the Molson Centre, is as clean and corporate as it gets - appropriate for a mega club event that panders to a mainstream audience out for some not-so-cheap thrills.

Tickets cost $50 - chemical mood-enhancers not included - but those willing to pay got their money's worth. Cream is an efficiently run beast of an event.

The Molson Centre ice is a convenient dance floor, providing an easy sense of intimacy for the proceedings, with an elevated stage for DJs on one side and live acts on the other. Add a laser light show and a massive, bass-heavy sound system and you're ready to, well, rave?

Kinda. Now we're back to the crowd, and this modern, commercialized version of an allegedly alternative dance-culture experience.

Dissecting the audience at an event is usually bad form, but in this case, the people are half the show. Bare chests were the requisite uniform for the throngs of buff and sometimes less-buff men, while for women, the skimpier the better.

One would have been hard-pressed to find anyone actually resembling a stereotypical raver. This crowd would have fit right in on Crescent St. on a Saturday night.

A walk through the room early in the "evening" - just before 1 a.m. - revealed a slightly uncomfortable tension. Like a high-school dance before it gets going. But different. The floor was full, people were moving, but there was a tangible self-consciousness in the air.

Two hours later, it was a different story. Dancing was often secondary as groups huddled together, exchanging massages and getting all touchy-feely - proving that, for those with only the faintest trace of creativity, there are ways to get your substances past the security pat-down on the way in.

As Tiga manoeuvred through a set of hard techno and occasional electro tracks - including his own now-infamous remake of Corey Hart's Sunglasses at Night - a vibe took shape.

Detroit techno-punk Green Velvet took over at 4 a.m. His one-hour set gave the night some much-needed attitude. He managed to keep energy levels up as he and his band (beats, keyboards and him on vocals) unleashed irony-fueled club anthems, despite the fact that few people seemed to actually know his music.

While the edge might have long been extracted from its audience, Cream still tries to include a bit of it on the stage. Like having a real-life alt-rock group perform in the background of a Hollywood movie scene, it was cool to have Green Velvet there, even if his presence was largely cosmetic.

At 5:30 a.m., this reporter called it a night - yes, missing the end of the flick, but somehow having a pretty good idea how it turned out.

- T'Cha Dunlevy's E-mail address is tdunlevy@thegazette.southam.ca