Finding the Rhythm

Yesterday was the first official day of Billboard Magazine’s Dance Music Summit (DMS) here in Las Vegas. Following is a mish-mash of thoughts and observations and things done since arriving here on Sunday. (We arrived early to take-in some Vegas, and to attend some of the events of the related Vegas Alliance Music Experience [VME], a series of club events with major DJs, dance artists, etc.)

This trip was my first opportunity to meet in-person my many friends with CAPP Records, an indie dance label out of San Francisco. I talk about CAPP and CAPP artists often. I do that because I genuinely like the people, they are passionate as heck about what they do, and they have a positive attitude and outlook that I admire and share. It was incredible to finally shake hands with Dom (the label owner) in-person, and to give a hug to Rikah, one of CAPP’s artists, who is beautiful, delightful, and very positive about herself and about life. Dave, Rudy, RP, Armando, and the rest of the team were awesome as well.

On Monday night, the whole CAPP team, me, my other half, and some other CAPP friends hung-out all evening at a Hookah bar. I’m not a smoker, so I was sort of dreading the experience. But honestly it’s not about the smoking as much as it is a unique social experience that was thoroughly enjoyable, and it was a terrific opportunity to get to know all the CAPP folks one on one. As for the Hookah, that was fun too, actually, and not unlike what I’d imagine smoking flavored teas to be like. (Pictures of that are coming soon to my MySpace page.)

I also had a chance to shake hands with Tim Corrimal for the first time; he has produced a podcast for over a year now where he interviews dance music artists each week called GoRainbowRadio.com. Tim has managed to turn the podcast into the only one of its kind, and gain a considerable amount of traction with it. He was buzzing around the conference yesterday networking like a mad man, and has artists lined-up for his long-form interviews for months at this point. Check it out.

Perhaps the highlight of my day yesterday was getting the chance to meet and chat a bit with Kristine W. (picture coming soon to my MySpace page too). She’s delightful, beautiful, and as we all know, very talented. It was a joy to meet her.

Last night, I also met someone I’ve admired and certainly have spun during my sets repeatedly… Jacinta. She may not have the recognition of Kristine W., but her track Destination from 2006 was one of my very favorite tracks of the year, and if it’s possible to “wear out” an MP3 like you can a vinyl record, I’m pretty sure I wore that one out. This year’s track, Can’t Keep it a Secret is equally great, and I’ve been playing it often. She gave me a CD single with all the mixes (I had but one mix up to now), and I look forward to spinning the fabulous Dave Audé mix in particular, which is very hot. Like Kristine W. and Rikah, Jacinta was such a positive, delightful lady, and if it wasn’t for the horribly loud music at Gypsy (the nightclub where she was to perform later in the evening), I would have enjoyed a chance to chat longer. But even from my short chat with her, the passion about music oozes from her pores, and that’s something I can definitely relate to.

Another artist I had a chance to meet and hang-out with at several events last night was Ohsha Kai from Philly. Ohsha is an energetic, upbeat, passionate (notice a theme here?) lady whose current single is Outta My Mind. I had one decent mix of that song; there too, she gave me a CD single with the full mix suite on it, and I’ll be checking it out soon and incorporating them into my sets no doubt. I was just left with this “wow, she is so cool!” kind of reaction to this very funky and funny girl… It’s hard to articulate, but she simply had this very positive aura about her that made you gravitate toward her.

At the Empire Ballroom event last night, I had the chance to meet Pleasure Center: producer Cory Conley and vocalist Jennifer Rivers. I liked their song Getcha Some from last year, but their current single, You’ve Got it All Wrong, is a winning track to be sure. Jennifer and Cory are hilarious, high-energy and once again, very passionate. Jennifer, in fact, is just a riot—plain and simple. I so look forward to hearing more from them in the years ahead… They have a bright future for sure.

One of the low lights from last night were the performances of new artist Stevie Jewel. The single she’s promoting is One Last Kiss. The song itself isn’t bad, and I’ll consider spinning it when I get back home. But someone needs to break the news to her that the high school talent show grade lip sync performance was not a good idea, and did nothing to further her career with this crowd. It was unbelievably awful, and the lip syncing so incredibly poor, I was actually embarrassed for her. And the two dancing twinks with her have received choreography, but far, far too few rehearsals. It’s too bad, because I think this bad first impression might well be so indelible that no matter how good her song is, it might get skipped by some folks in attendance (me included).

That’s probably all from me for now. Today is the second and final day of the DMS; there’s some more great VME events tonight, but we’ll leave for Denver tomorrow morning. I look forward to trying to resynchronize my sleep schedule (not)… Night after night of 3:00 AM bed times is starting to take a toll.

Turn up the volume… Wes.