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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 2013)
at 17 because of a Magical Thursday fl yer that he came across in his hometown of Cottage Grove. He remembers sneaking out with some buddies and driving to WOW Hall one Thursday night in 1999. “People are smiling, people are having a good time, it’s a dark room — sweet,” he remembers thinking. “I was like, ‘This is for me.’” Cogburn started helping set up and tear down EDM shows so he could get in for free to see the big acts they were pulling in, like the U.K.’s DJ Dara. In the process he met many players in Eugene’s original EDM scene — music promoters Real Kidz, the Stylus Grooves record shop people, DJ Mattie Mataus, the rave crews Joy Scouts, Vujadé and Gaia Tribe. Like many scenesters, he went through the “candy raver” (think neon and plastic beads) and “fat pants” (“Bell bottoms? No, they’re not big enough. I need something I can sail away on,” he remembers) phase, but before long, Cogburn ditched the neon look and became a self-proclaimed “drum-and-bass jungle head” (a genre of EDM with heavy bass and sub-bass lines and fast breakbeats), deejaying at underground word-of-mouth parties. There were the “breaking-and-entering” warehouse parties, the BMX track parties and the astrological “sign” parties hosted in the basement of a former salon on Oak Street — parties that dissolved in minutes as soon as there was any word of the fuzz. “You’d have your main house trance room where it was like a big dance party kind of thing. Sometimes you’d have a down-tempo room,” where people could relax and cool off from ecstasy (a common side eff ect is hot fl ashes) and dancing, he says. “Then there would be the edgy room with all the junglists.” Cogburn remembers the morning of one sign party when Mataus was deejaying. “We’re going hard. The generator cuts out or the breaker pops or something. So there are no speakers. Turntables with a needle and a record? You can hear the sound coming off the needle. Everyone rushes the DJ booth,” he says, mimicking putting his head down to a turntable and moving to a silent beat. “We’re just going to keep dancing. … Since the beginning of time, that’s all people want to do is shake their ass.” Magical Thursdays came to a close in the early aughts. Fennessy says that it was around this time that hip hop began dominating Eugene’s music scene, and EDM went back underground. For Cogburn and many others, it was the introduction of Scratch Live (also known as Serato) — vinyl emulation software that uses digital audio fi les — into the music producer’s toolbox that marked the end of his deejaying days. “I faded out of the scene mostly due to Serato. I couldn’t beat it anymore,” he says. “I couldn’t aff ord to pay the 500 bucks to buy a piece of DJ equipment while I [was] going through school.” KIDS THESE DAYS Athena Ortmann, 19, describes entering Oregon’s millenial EDM scene as a culture shock. Raised in a conservative Mormon home in Springfi eld, one of her fi rst concert outings was seeing Israeli dub-step producer Borgore at the Roseland Theater in Portland when she was 17; for her, it was a “completely new world” of music, lights and people. “An EDM show is one thing and a concert is another thing,” she says, laughing. “It’s not like going to Mat Kearney.” Her fi rst EDM show in Eugene was Beats Antique — it wasn’t long before Ortmann was hooked and photographing shows like Candyland and Disclosure at WOW Hall. Now a freelance photographer and a media director for OneEleven (the production company behind Kaleidoscope Music Festival), and hot off attending the Paradiso Festival, Ortmann knows the Pacifi c Northwest EDM culture well, describing it as “tribal.” In today’s lingo, the term candy raver has been replaced by kandi kids and PLUR people — PLUR is an acronymn for “Peace, Love, Unity, Respect,” a kind of EDM mantra with roots that date back to the mid-’90s U.K. club scene. Snarky, candy-colored tanks with phrases like “Maybe Partying Will Help,” fi shnets, furry boots, EMERALD MEADOWS CONTROVERSY Outdoor music festivals bring joy for participants but can bring headaches for neighbors. LandWatch Lane County fi led a “notice of intent to appeal” to the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) on July 1 about the recent upsurge in outdoor spectacles at Emerald Meadows in the county’s Howard Buford Recreation Area. LandWatch says the group hasn’t made a decision about fi ling an injunction — which would mean the events in question would not be allowed until LUBA made a decision. In a recent EW viewpoint, LandWatch President Bob Emmons writes that the gatherings were “piggybacked onto a 2003 county permit for a small campground and caretaker’s residence.” Nearby landowners Jim and Mary Evonuk of J&M Farms say the traffi c and noise aff ect their ability to sleep and work on their farm. Emmons writes that the festival approval bypassed a state statute limiting events with more than 3,000 people, which requires a public hearing. UO architectural historian Richard Sundt wrote to the Lane County Parks department that the events are visible to hikers on Mount Pisgah’s north slope. He went to Pisgah during the Cascadia Music Festival, hiked the slope, which also has views of the nearby The Nature Conservancy lands, and reported hearing music from the festival there and in other areas of the park. — Camilla Mortensen TIME FOR SUMMER SANDALS! Follow Your Feet to Footwise for Classic Granada Sandals FOLLOW YOUR FEET TO FOOTWISE Shown: The Lennox by Birki’s Downtown Eugene &#SPBEXBZt 'BDFCPPLDPNGPPUXJTFFVHFOF .PO4BU4VO Downtown Corvallis 48.BEJTPOt 'BDFCPPLDPNGPPUXJTFDPSWBMMJT .PO4BU4VO Longer version at eugeneweekly.com eugeneweekly.com • July 18, 2013 13
