The big relax

The rain pelted down in buckets, lumo paint glowed brightly and I was wearing a poncho, all in all, the setup wasn’t too far from the Glastonbury festival.

But this wasn’t the festival, this was the full moon party, and thousands of ravers packed the beach while 5 or 6 massive bars with huge PA’s fired out everything from Drum and Bass to Trance to Cheese.  We went with Carys and Alice and while the rain made the whole evening look like it was going to be a bit of a mare, a whiskey or two later and we were raring to go.

This, however, is still not the coolest thing I have ever done.

This happened when we were dancing outside the drum and bass bar. The packed beach front was going crazy to the combined effort of the DJ (who was rather appalling) and a lone MC. For those of you who don’t know, and MC at a drum and bass rave is the person that rares the crowd up, waxes lyrical at the speed of light and is right up there with the DJ in terms of importance, possibly even surpassing the DJ in that the MC uses his voice and therefore seems to have more creative control of the night. (as well as the ability to command the crowd to raise their hand/go nuts/’ave it which the DJ doesn’t have so readily at his disposal.)

As I mentioned, I had had a whiskey or seven and was suddenly flooded with a nostalgia from a time when I was a bedroom MC, when me and some schoolfriends would play around on some decks and I would try my hand (mum, I’m sure you remember!)

So I thought, in the spirit of things, ‘why not?’ and headed into the bar, leaving the girls dancing out on the beach.

I had to approach this correctly, they wouldn’t just let any schmo take over  the highest and most important part of the rave (other than the DJ) so I quickly put on my most sober, and grumpy face.

I walked directly to the DJ stand where the entourage were standing. The lone MC was doing his thing, really rather well and I thought for a minute that maybe I should just leave it and go back, but instead I just went right for it. I grabbed the man who looked like he was in charge, he was loitering behind the DJ and generally looking menacing. I shouted with barely controlled anger in his ear;

‘My agent said you morons were going to pick me up from the harbor, I’ve been messing about in the friggin’ rain looking for this place, now where’s the second microphone?’

The man looked like I’d just asked him the millionth number of pi and shrugged. I felt that I had the initiative and carried on.

‘I’m MC Eksman you idiot,  you booked me two weeks ago’

MC Eksman is a real professional drum and bass MC, just as I stopped listening to the music wholesale, he was exploding onto the scene. Eksman, if for whatever reason you are reading this, I’m sorry, but I did your name nothing but good.

Upon hearing the name of a relative superstar, the man in charge changed instantly, he practically forced the mic out of the MC’s hand and gave it to me. Suddenly, I had a crowd of up to 1000 people, possibly even more considering that there was around 10,000 on the beach and people were constantly on the move, at my finger tips. And I went nuts. I was getting approving looks from those around me at the DJ stand, eve the other MC, the actual professional, was telling me that ‘my lyrics were tight,’ an the crowd were cheering me on.

After my first bout I ran out to find the girls and drag them in, they were like my groupies, it was awesome.

To surmise, I went to one of the worlds largest and best known raves, blagged my way to MC and then put on a killer show. A girl from the stand even said she was a Drum and Bass producer in Bangkok and would love to work with me.

Cool huh?

Tags: Drum and Bass, Full Moon, Koh Pangnan, Thailand, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Thailand, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.