"I guess all of you guys will understand and feel related to these lovely memories and I'm pretty sure that Darren will have something to tell us about this night.
I'm not a nostalgic guy, but sometimes I really miss the feeling of controlled chaos of moments like the next lines will try to tell.
Going back on some moment of 2000, 20 years ago, a friend from São Paulo call me and said:
- That Bad Company group you talk about every time will be playing here next month.
And I said:
- Are you sure? Because there is a Rock and Roll band with the same name.
And he said:
- No, it's those guys from England.
And so I said:
- Dude, both of them are from England.
And so he said and sang:
- Man, it's the Bad Company from that NNNNNNHHHOOOOIIMM NHOIM NHOIM.
(I'm pretty sure all of you know which song is)
And so I was convinced, it's time for BC UK.
My first all night DnB party ever and my first night inside the Overnight Club.
I've bought my flight, my hotel, and my friend bought the ticket for me. Unfortunately he couldn't join with me so I went alone to the club. But wait, you are never alone on a Drum and Bass night.
A lot of people (a lot!!) used to love Drum and Bass in Sao Paulo, and we have the same DIY punk attitude like every real underground music scene has: If we can't buy, we can make.
I have no idea where, when or how it beginned, but it was very common to find DnB t-shirts in São Paulo with some Rock and Roll/Heavy Metal references on it. Metallica and Slayer skulls, bloody-type writings, exploded or smashed brains, monsters and vampyres and, now my favourite, the Powell Peralta smiling skull (You will see it in the comments).
I'm a second era former skateboarder so I can recognize this smiling skull miles away, like an old friend backing to town.
And this was my first memory from the line in front of the club, I felt so angry and jealous to see a guy using a t-shirt with my beloved Powell Peralta skull on it but, you know, the first rule of the streets is never have a fight with a man using a skull t-shirt.
And so I entered the club.
And what a club, Overnight is one of the most importants venues in brazilian electronic music scene history with its roof made of lights, its walls made of sound, and floor made of happy people.
From this moment on it was business as usual in brazilian DnB crowds: the insane contest between speakers and people screaming.
And at the very first song of the BC UK set, at the very first drop, a very thin, very black and very smiling crazy dude grabbed my shirt with so much anger and energy and screamed during his smile became bigger:
- HIROSHIMAAAAA!!!
Maybe he was just the happiest dude of the night or a Michael Jackson's Thriller character or an alive version of that Powell Peralta's skull, some kind of curse from Book of the Bad (sorry, I like puns) and this is the second rule of the streets: If a crazy dude smile and screams Hiroshima, you smile and scream back to him.
So I smile and screamed back to him, not because I understanded but just because I wanted to stay alive to see the rest of the night.
I did not scream Hiroshima because I was late, and did not scream Nagasaki because I guessed it was early, I just visualized an atomic mushroom in my mind and screamed.
And I don't need to say a lot more about how perfect the night was: Scary, deep, heavy and incredibly funny.
It was totally a Mass Hysteria (yeah, pun intended).
My knees, my back, my anxiety attack.
For over a year I thought that "Hiroshima" was the name of the tune, could be a BC UK new dubplate or a new track of someone else, until I discovered that the song was "Messiah" from Konflict when I bought the "Fine Tuning Vol. One" Mix CD from Jumping Jack Frost.
And it took one more year to discover the truth: I always imagined that the smiling guy was just confused about the name of the tune till another day in São Paulo other guys start scream "Hiroshima" again on another drop and I was feeling so confused and konflicted (yeah, pun intended again!) about it, but so another friend of mine explained:
- Some crazy East Coast dudes use to scream "Hiroshima" when the Dj drops the bomb.
Yes, it was just the bomb, the brazilian humor, we have the best DIY t-shirt game and maybe not the best humor, but pretty sure the most outrageous one.
And guess what? The night was more Rock and Roll than Rock and Roll itself, heavy metal night with t-shirts with smiling skulls on it.
This constant feeling of roof falling and floor shaking that you can only experience in DnB nights.
Some kind of funny despair like a rollercoaster, the face of a random guy beside you almost dying and smiling and screaming at every single drop is priceless.
And guess what again, there was a YouTube video with a VHS edition of this night but the original uploader went down.
But guess what (again), I saved it on my computer a few years ago so I uploaded it myself for everyone to see it.
You can watch the Hiroshima drop moment at 01:13 and the NNNNNNHHHOOOOIIMM NHOIM NHOIM moment at 02:52 (double drop with Champion Sound!!), but my favourite part is the sharp and clever Miami Flashback X Kloaking Device mixing moment at 06:54, the last BC UK track and the first track from our local hero Dj Andy, shaking hands with Darren like true junglist gentlemen.
I'm not a nostalgic guy, I'm really not, I like music, I like words, and words about music and good stories about it. And I guess we all here are a little TOO HEADSY to stay in the past in life or music or whatever but man, what a night it was.
Funny, scary and heavy as a real electronic music night have to be.
I felt so lost and found because I didn't know half of the tunes but at the same time I totally enjoyed each one of them.
It was one of those nights when you just can't find the Exit (OMG, pun) and it doesn't matter.
But Darren found it and so here we are, twenty years later.
A few months later I saw Fabio for the first time in my life and, like everyone else who was there, I still have no words.
Fabio is the man.
And he played a tune that I just can't take out my mind since that day and became the nickname of my first email adress: Otto's Way. Yep, by Fresh and Vegas. Mail me to ottosway@hotmail.com if you don't believe me, I'm still using it haha.
The thing that I love the most in Drum and Bass nights is the same feeling of Reggae or Hip Hop nights: the sense of community, just to keep it simple.
So if some of you guys ask me who or what is the face of Drum and Bass, I will feel forced to tell you that is not Goldie making a bad face with his golden teeth or Fabio with his eyes closed mixing or even dBridge with his nostalgic Predator's dreadlocks.
The face of Drum and Bass is the very funny and not scary-at-all Powell Peralta's neutral smile skull with the can't-take-my-eyes-of-you bright eyes because we know, Drum and Bass is a freaky smiling living thing.
I bought Timeless in 1995 without any idea what kind of music was, just because of that blue alien metalhead skull on the front cover, and now we have Sonic Nostalgia Mix to prove that we also are TOO METALHEADZY to ignore how strong this album still is and forever will be.
Youtube suggested this happy guy as a tumblr of the video so if you know his name tell me in the comments below, I'll give you a nice heart reaction.
Brazilian Exit fan here, known as Brexit (I've told you guys about brazilian humor and my obsession about puns some words ago, so deal with this)."
Bad Company BC UK @ Overnight Club São Paulo 2000
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7teUlOZGVc