After the history bit, Saunders took several questions about all the new developments in dance music from digital versus vinyl to all the new musical styles constantly emerging, at which the veteran simply said several times, "I love it all, Man! I'm still a 14 year-old kid in my bedroom that doesn't know what he's doing and is excited at all the new possibilities!"
After the viewing, McWilliams and I stopped a few doors down on Espanola Way for an excellent fried asparagus and shrimp meal and ended up becoming sort of heroes for the restaurant staff. At the table next to us, a tourist clearly from the eastern seaboard started to became crazy and verbally abusive to a food runner who just happened to come by to bring the dinners their checks. The guy was just hurling insults about the girl's work performance and even her weight, saying if she worked at his restaurant, "I'd fire you right this second and make sure you'd never work in the industry ever again!" The same girl had been nothing but sweet to us, so me and Brother McWilliams started making faces, vulgar gestures, and mocking the guys' words behind him, which caused the runner to grin a little and after the jerk left, she and all the staff kept coming over and talking to us bout what monster the guy was. We got all kinds of handshakes, hugs and 'Have a great night's and we felt pretty proud of ourselves.
From there we closed out the night with fellow Nashvillian Miss Kai at Sobe Live for the Jazzanova vs Bugz in the Attic show. True to its event name, the members of both groups traded tracks ranging from broken beat to funk to afrobeat, all while Bugz's Daz-I-Kue MCed the pop-locking crowd. This show I got to participate a bit more in, as Kai had adequate control of photo taking duties, while me and my bud cut a rug as best we could.
On Thursday, McWilliams headed out by himself to Key Largo to go scuba diving and I met up with DJ Isaac Marksman & photographer Jahn-Paul Mazotas. We headed for the in-store performance of Rabbit in the Moon, followed by Ultra Nate at FYE. Both artists rocked it in the relatively intimate setting, eventually their infectious breaks and house respectively pushing a few of the head-nodders to finally bust moves there in the retail chain.
It was about at this point after leaving the record store while cruisin' down the crowd filled sidewalks that the Tennessean in me finally got it that people in Miami weren't staring at me cause something was wrong with me. Everybody is checking everybody out and in turn want to be checked out. I am so used to stolen glances or just polite nods where I was born and raised, it was a little unnerving at first. But after I finally understood that's just what folk do down there, I really enjoyed the practice, I gotta admit!
