Holiday Dmitri

The boys from BassByThePound are on a mission to save the party.

In a city where underage kids struggle to find fun, these Chicago party promoters are willing and wanting to provide a good time. Their plan: bring back electronic music. But rather than feed the kiddies electronica's orthodox "four on the floor," these ambitious fellows approach it another way. They are using drum `n' bass--or "jungle," as the sound is often called--as a lifeline to save the soul of rave music.

On any given Wednesday night, jungle's 160 bpm (beats-per-minute)-plus breakbeats and rattling basslines spill out from Big Wig nightclub on the corner of Ashland and Division. Inside, the boisterous T-shirt-and-jeans crowd tears it down on the tiny dancefloor, wildly submitting to the night's hectic, hyper-rapid beats. Blood, sweat and gusto fill the club. One word best sums up the atmosphere: raucous.

A Wednesday night regular and a self-proclaimed "diehard drum `n' bass fanatic," Matthew Martin from Bolingbrook is reputably one of the rowdiest guys on the dancefloor, an enthusiast who supports the local scene "as much as energy and wallet will allow." Martin has attended more than fifty of these jungle parties, calling the night "a mainstay of Chicago drum `n' bass culture."

Since the spring of 1997, BassByThePound has been throwing these "Seminar" nights on a weekly basis in Chicago. Since December 1998, with the exception of a half-year stint at Red Dog, the events have been hosted by Big Wig, a nightclub often known more for its glitz than grit.

"Their nights have brought us a lot of diversity in our weekly lineup and by far have gotten the best press coverage out of any promoter that a venue could ask for," says Big Wig co-owner Jay Runnfeldt, who met the BassByThePound boys five years back while doing marketing for a liquor company in Chicago.

BassByThePound's popular jungle parties bring in a host of Stateside and international talents, the main attraction for most jungle fans being the imported DJs from England, the birthplace of drum `n' bass. The Seminar continually brings in the top players of the sound: Ed Rush, Andy C, LTJ Bukem, DJ SS and Shy FX, to drop just a few names. Hailed as the number one weekly of its kind in the Midwest and one of the top five weeklies in the nation, at its peak, The Seminar packed Big Wig with roughly 350 party people each week.

But after running five years strong, BassByThePound will end its regular night in about two weeks. Its members will transform their format from regular events to grandiose one-off parties. These Chicago drum `n' bass foot soldiers are now focusing--not on the number of parties they need to throw--but on putting together large-scale parties that they hope will attract the next generation of junglists. On August 27, 2003, The Seminar will officially wrap up session.

The core of BassByThePound consists of six guys who've known each other for nearly ten years: Phil McFarland (aka Glyde), Chip Barney (aka Flipside), Ryan Keesling (aka Kee), Matt Simpson (aka Gamewarden), Ty Fujimura (aka Poolside) and Jim Zimmer (aka Carbide). Five of the six met during the first week of their freshman year at Indiana's DePauw University in 1993. Zimmer, a year behind, would be introduced to the group of friends almost three years later.

College was the beginning of the BassByThePound friendship, a relationship that would persist through nearly a decade and more than 300 parties. Their college days illustrate the strength of their collective entrepreneurial spirit. Long before they became DJs or formed a crew, the future BassByThePound boys got their kicks another way. For a bunch of freshmen uninterested in partaking in Greek life in an environment akin to "Animal House," there wasn't much as far as party life. McFarland and his boys had to create their own fun. They decided to throw parties in the basement of frat houses, distributing photocopied black-and-white flyers, and using their dorm phone number as an info line. It was all very haphazard. And little did they know at the time, that it would be the beginning of their days as party promoters.

During their formative years, the guys hosted a radio show called "The Breakbeat Seminar" on Fridays at lunchtime, playing a mix of house, breaks and jungle--music not commonly heard in the middle of the afternoon. "We played what we liked, which wasn't necessarily what everyone around us liked at the time," remembers Fujimura. Their mixing was bad and they hadn't a clue how to operate the boards, admits McFarland. Nevertheless, the boys always tried to make their show more exciting, sometimes handing out pairs of underwear ("still in the plastic wrap"), gift certificates to Wendy's, and pretty much anything else they could get their hands on to callers able to identify a jungle artist.

In May 1997, BassByThePound moved to Chicago, with the exception of Keesling, who followed two years later. They scored several deejaying gigs as part of Rollin and ASCII Production's Urban Primitive Experience. After a short stint at the Subterranean and the Dragon Room, BassByThePound landed a weekly at Big Wig in December 1998. Their night was dubbed The Seminar after their college radio show.

The early days of throwing The Seminar weren't always easy. On some nights, only twenty people would show up. A jungle-party fixture, Alleyne Hoyt, 35, recalls going to the first few Seminars. "I remember Seminar being born," she says, "and I remember going to support it and it being not very well attended at the beginning."

At first, The Seminar presented a mix of sounds ranging from hip-hop to breaks, but soon the BassByThePound promoters found that--in the case of jungle--it was better in Chicago to specialize. "You have to sell one thing. You have to come up with an identity," Simpson puts it, "and for us, drum `n' bass worked."

The idea to have their club night adhere to a strictly drum `n' bass format was hardly new. In 1996, Dubshack, a drum `n' bass promotion outfit started by Scott Manion, began throwing monthly jungle parties at the Liar's Club, featuring Chicago's old-school drum `n' bass talents. Dubshack's Brockout! was the staple for the small jungle community in the Windy City. "You always saw the same people there; it was very consistent," McFarland remembers. "It was also the only place in Chicago to hear that sound."

But while Dubshack was the first in Chicago to bring jungle DJs from a rave setting to a club venue, BassByThePound took it one step further by bringing headlining U.K. artists to their club night--and even more unusually, they did it on a weeknight. "We were the redheaded stepchild in the middle of the week," McFarland explains. "But somehow it worked out." By bringing name-brand DJs commonly seen at weekend raves to a small weeknight venue, BassByThePound remapped Chicago's jungle scene. They gave jungle fans accessibility to the sound. They started importing guests from the U.K., beginning in September 1999 with Stakka. Business soon picked up two months later with their Mampi Swift and MC Fats show. On one nasty Chicago winter night, despite two feet of snow on the ground, around 400 jungle enthusiasts stormed the doors of Big Wig to partake in the Seminar's two-year anniversary event featuring Andy C, his first club appearance in Chicago.

"They're getting older," remarks Barney, shaking his head. He could easily have been talking about himself and the rest of the BassByThePound posse--but instead Barney is referring to drum `n' bass fans. Nearly three-quarters of the people who show up for their 18-plus one-off events are over the age of 21. BassByThePound believes this demonstrates the decline of electronic music and whispers the sad truth that kids nowadays are no longer interested or have accessibility to get to know drum `n' bass. They don't know where to begin with dance music, Barney says, and that is the problem.

Barney is talking about the disappearance of rave culture and the slow asphyxiation of the all-night illegal warehouse parties. Parties like those don't exist anymore he bemoans--at least not on the same scale and level of accessibility. "The key distinction back when we were getting into music was that we went to raves, which were places you could go to watch the DJ and learn about the music," says Barney. "There, you developed opinions. Today, there's nowhere for the kids to go. There's no underground scene. The risks are now too high for the promoter." All the BassByThePound members share this sentiment.

The past few years have seen an increase in measures being taken to stop rave promoters from throwing parties. In an effort to protect youngsters from being enticed into taking designer drugs, the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act--essentially the RAVE Act of 2002 renamed--became federal law on April 30, 2003.

Cities like Chicago are following suit, threatening rave promoters and landlords who allow their buildings to be used for a party with criminal prosecution. Since the city's own "anti-rave" ordinance was passed in May 2000, building owners and managers now face jail terms of two weeks to six months if they intentionally let a property be used for raves where controlled substances are used, distributed, stored or made. Rather than go after the drug users or drug dealers, the laws are making music promoters the potential criminals.

Because of such regulation, raves are dying down, says Simpson, with no new blood is flowing into the drum `n' bass scene. "Raves are an essential part of the ecology," he says. "That's where kids start to develop their taste in music. It's your kiddie league. We worry about kids not going. We start to wonder where all the new people will be coming from."

While BassByThePound has talked about throwing all-ages events, success is not guaranteed. "You see these huge house and techno parties and they're not getting big crowds," says McFarland. "We're doing better than techno and house, and we'd love to do all-ages, but I wouldn't know where to begin." "I'm not even convinced that 16-year-olds want to go, though," says Zimmer.

Keesling disagrees. He and three partners--Bartek Karas (aka Jeekoos), Leia Gaten (aka Kat_Zyie) and David Lloyd (aka Cringer)-- host "Part Time Sucker Radio," a program in its third year airing every Wednesday night from 9:30pm-11pm on Northwestern University's WNUR 89.3 FM. "Fourteen-year-old and 16-year-old kids call the show and email us all the time," he says. The radio show serves as a "teaser" to the BassByThePound Seminar parties, providing a way for jungle fans to pump up for the night ahead. Keesling, who started the show in March 2000, speaks fondly of the preceding drum `n' bass show on WNUR, DJ Snuggle's "Strictly Jungle Show," which was the first weekly drum `n' bass radio show in the nation. "We were kids, age-wise anyway, when we were hearing that show on WNUR," says Keesling. "And it was amazing to be hearing those beats on the radio."

Keesling now feels an obligation to keep jungle alive on the airwaves. "We can provide this service to others who have less legal mobility than those over 18 or 21," he says. "We can put the sounds in their space--in their bedrooms, headphones and on their computers. We must share what we have with the community."

Since their basement dorm parties, the BassByThePound boys have dreamt of throwing massive all-out parties. Today, as established members of Chicago's electronic-music scene, the drum `n' bass sextet is able to bring jungle's heavy hitters to the full-size stage of the Metro.

"Something that needs to be said about these guys is that they will still have a strong hand on what happens to the drum `n' bass scene," says Runnfeldt. "BassByThePound shot themselves in the foot and created such a good thing."

McFarland talks optimistically about the future of BassByThePound. "Big 18-plus shows get us excited," he admits. "It's a chance for the younger crowd to get a taste of the good stuff that only 21-plus crowds were privileged enough to experience." He pauses for a second to collect his thoughts and adds, "BassByThePound is evolving. We're going to be doing things bigger and better."

A few years ago, Dubshack's Manion explained his motive behind starting Chicago's legendary Brockout! as providing an outlet for those who've outgrown the rave. "The rave scene served the younger kids, and we wanted to find those who have graduated from that scene," he said.

In 2003, BassByThePound seeks just the opposite. Chicago's new-school drum `n' bass promoters are on a mission to bring the music back to the kids. "I think the best thing we do as promoters is throw a good party," says Barney. "Because people leave our events, tell their friends, and then a lot of people who've never been to our nights. I ask them why they're here, and they say that they heard that the Seminar is the place to go on a Wednesday night."

BassByThePound wants to bring this buzz to the younger set. "The Seminar has run its course," says Fujimura. "It did all it could do for the older crowd, and now we want to keep the music going by giving kids a chance to hear the music even earlier. Without them, club nights like the Seminar wouldn't be able to exist much longer."

"We are interested in the younger cats bringing their interpretation of the music to us," Keesling adds. "The real mission is to share cultures, not just present them."

(2003-08-13)

Also by Holiday Dmitri

Smile-High Club
The freelance graphic designer and web developer is here to promote his fledgling project Flight Club, a growing online matchmaking community striving to make the skies a friendlier place for air travelers.
(2003-04-30)

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