URBAN GROOVE PREVIEW
FRIGHT NIGHT
Friday, November 1
Venue TBA (call 284-INFO)
While civic bylaws have severely curtailed the potential for small-market DJ events, Fright Night, the annual Halloween institution organized by local dance music impresario Fever is a successful gala of goblins and ghouls.
This year, Fright Night will be held in a smaller venue, but Fever assures us that the event will still send thrills down your spine with biggie headliners that include drum ’n’ bass innovators Darren Jay and MC Riddla.
So what’s the mystic brew necessary for creating a successful Halloween party? If you’re Fever, it’s the same elements as always – a clarity of vision and a dedication to dance music and to the community that supports it. In Calgary, that community seems to be dwindling, and Fever speculates about the reasons why.
"Honestly, people got bored – way too many bad events, way too much of the same thing, plus too much attitude and meddling from certain people who hadn’t been involved in the development of this community, who only saw to exploit the community for their gain. Add to that a corporate angle. When the corporate parties started... that was the end. As a business, how can you compete with events that are intended to lose money and sell cigarettes?"
Fever and his Imperial Brothers promotion company, on the other hand, hold just one event each year, and that's Fright Night. Beyond that, Fever has kept his hand in the DJ scene, spending a substantial amount of time and energy on fostering a national drum ’n’ bass community in Canada. He says it's tough to develop grassroots support for dance music in this country, though, when large events get more attention.
"I mean, who wouldn’t want to see world class talent for a fraction of the price that it actually costs to bring them?" he asks rhetorically. "The thing is, those events never transfer into local support, you’ll have 1,000 people out for a big DJ, but maybe only a couple hundred of them could tell you who in this city plays as well as them, and even fewer supporting a night like Rice’s Sunday Skool."
It’s Fever’s off-the-cuff pragmatism that distinguishes him from fly-by-night event co-ordinators – it's probably the factor that contributes most to his longevity as an underground innovator in Calgary.
"I do these events naively believing that it helps further the city, push it forward, that maybe my effort may foster a sense of community.... I can tell you it would have been easier to maintain my night at 318 (now Arena) than try to build something that I’m passionate about and probably will lose money doing more often than not.
"I’m gonna keep putting these on. Maybe in 30 years, I’ll be smoking a cigar and pulling up in my electric wheelchair in my pyjamas to spin records for 15 of my friends in a lounge somewhere, but there should still be a Fright Night, I hope, somewhere." |
