When I first heard about the Winter Music Conference maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I made it a life goal to somehow attend before I left this old world. The fact that it took me all this time to finally achieve that goal was a bit of prolonged foreplay that made quite the feeling of euphoria as I stepped off the plane into the warm salty air. At the sound of some older Cuban women talking to one side of us, Reggaeton music playing outta someone's car, and the sight of guys with suitcases with headphones hanging on them just here at the airport, my traveling companion Brother McWilliams grinned at me, knocked the fists friendly and stated, "We're here, dude!" Yes, we were!
So, doing my best not to bore you with a bunch, 'Oh, it was awesome! You shoulda been there!' stories, here's the highlights.
Our first night, Tuesday, was one that all other WMC evenings would have to measure against. Not only did I smoke a fantastic fat locally-made cigar and have an invigorating, flirty conversation with a beautiful Jamaican girl, *lovelorn sigh*, but the Fischerspooner party that night was sick! Held at The Mansion, the interior design being made up of different levels, lighted floors, VIP lounges, dancing poles- well, it was really just everything a person's imagination would fantasize a club should be if money were no limit. If that weren't enough, the 'guests' of Fischerspooner were Benny Benassi, Boyz Noize, & Lazaro Casanova, all rockin' their glitchy electro and tweekin' their mixers and laptops to death. It was surreal to say the least. But the show stealers by far were MSTRKRFT. The duo had the dancing masses on strings with their live track constructions and unrelenting grooves, all while softly nodding their heads, downing liquor and chain smoking matter-of-factly.
With the goal of getting some good pictures, I was climbing all the place, swimming through bodies and at one point found a clear spot under a girl on a pole whose jealous boyfriend kept pulling her ever-hiking skirt down. But every so often, I would glance over to the dance floor where I left Brother McWilliams to make sure my fellow midwesterner was cool and after a while I couldn't help but notice we was dancing with all these beautiful women. 'How'd he get so popular all the sudden?' I wondered to myself. Well, on the way out the Mansion at in the early morning, he showed me some pics from his digital camera of he and all the ladies in question and I was like, "Dude, how'd you swing that?"
