Sasha and Digweed
Los Angeles, CA, Mayan
November 15, 2001

This is a show that you need to mentally and physically prepare yourself for. The show starts at 9pm and ends at 4am. Think about it, that's seven freakin' hours! My brother is the big progressive trance fan and I didn't want to be the one to say, "I'm tired, let's go home" at 1:30am. If he wanted to stay 'till 4am, I was going to be prepared to stay 'till 4am. Plus, I would be dancing for hours on end so I was actually going to the gym and doing a bunch of cardio so I could build up my stamina. Looking back, how stupid does all this sound for a concert?!?!

I got into the Mayan around 10pm and I love the way they set it up. Instead of a huge empty stage with a couple of turntables, they put some stairs where the floor meets the stage and turned it into a big dance floor. The DJ's were setup in a booth that was behind the stage so it looked more like a club instead of a concert. There was loads of room to dance, walk around, and it wasn't super hot either.

The opening DJ was Jimmy Van M and he wasn't half bad. It's a little hard to tell who's good vs. bad because a lot of it sounds the same. And that's my problem, not the problem with the music. You will probably never get a catchy Sasha/Digweed single on the radio, you need to forget about all the expectations of "normal" music when listening to this stuff. Their CD's aren't 45 minutes with a bunch of 4-5 minute singles, they are usually 2 CDs that total around 140 minutes of music. I don't think it can be enjoyed in small parts either, you have to listen to the whole set to understand what they are trying to accomplish.

Around 11pm Sasha started spinning and we moved to the dance floor. After about an hour, I didn't recognize any songs. I asked my brother if he knew any of this stuff because he's more familiar with the music but he didn't know any of it. That's another rule that we need to forget about: dancing to the familiar songs. This isn't your local dance club where you wait to hear "Born Slippy", "Praise You", or "Setting Sun" before you head out to the floor. Let's put it like this, I had a really great time and out of the whole night I only knew one song, Future Sound of London's "Papua New Guinea". Digweed came on at 1am and I imagine that he spun for another two hours. I have no idea what happened in the 3am-4am hour because I left around 2am.

Good trance isn't boring. Once you can get over that fact then it opens up a whole new world of new music. And that's what it's all about, finding new music that makes you feel.