20 Year Anniversary Party for Saskatchewan Ravers - July 19, 20, 21 - Design by Yusuf Ahktar

20 Year Anniversary Reunion Rave in Saskatoon

OMG OMG OMG

We’re having a 20 Year Anniversary Reunion rave in Saskatoon to celebrate our scene! The party is a three day shindig (just like the good ol’ days) and is from July 19th – 21st, 2019 at a few different  awesome venues in town. I am soooo freakin’ excited about this that it is hard to contain myself…this means so much to me and so many people who are attending! My mad love and respect goes out to Scott Wallace and Yusuf Akhtar (DJ Mr. Fudge) for putting together this event! This is sure to go down as a legendary weekend for us all.

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RSVP to the 20 Year Anniversary Reunion on the Facebook Event Page!

BUT

DON’T FORGET TO BUY YOUR WEEKEND PASS TICKETS ASAP! <—SOLD OUT

This event is definitely going to sell out – so u better hustle, pal!

Also…

Join the Facebook group to get in on the digital cuddle puddle of graver pix & stories

(oh gosh! ooopsie poo! the Facebook Group is now “secret” again so tuff luck! You’ll have just make do with my fabulous tales of yore)

My Special Assignments for the Weekend

I’m going to be doing two performances at this event, one DJ set and one VJ set, both on Saturday night at PAVED Arts.

My DJ set on Saturday is from 8-9pm on Saturday, July 29th at PAVED Arts…and then I am VJing from right after my DJ set all night until the end of the party, which ends at 2am-ish. Then on Sunday I get to chill and disco dance with a whole bunch of my old pals and get my giggle on.

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IF YOU ARE AT THE SHOW, COME SAY HELLO!!!

my special secrets:

I haven’t DJed for about 15 years! LOL! This should be fun ;)

I’m planning a super kooky interactive set involving skill testing questions, karaoke, audience readings, and speed races for a certain raver skill. Back in the day (1994-2004 when I DJed experimental, lounge, breakcore, and IDM), I used to involve a lot of performance art and costumes into my sets, so I wanna keep it real and do it up in a proper style again! If you’re curious about that part of my life, head on over to my Sound Art and DJing page on this website. There are a few goodies from the tickle trunk of my archives for you there (and more coming if I can ever get my extra old hard drive up and running again, eeek!).

Aaraarararaaagh! :D

Performer Set Times

20 Year Anniversary Party for Saskatchewan Ravers - Schedule of Set Times - July 19, 20, 21 - Design by Yusuf Ahktar

20 Year Anniversary Party for Saskatchewan Ravers – Schedule of Set Times – July 19, 20, 21 – Design by Yusuf Ahktar

Event Promo Gallery

The Lady Gates Experience Strikes Again

I did my DJ set from 8-9pm at PAVED Arts and oh gee darn golly I had some fun with that ;) For my DJ set, I really wanted to bring back the “freakbeat” vibe that I was known for spinning when I DJ back in my baby raver days of the 90s ;)

Deep Thoughts with the Lady Gates

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We make our own meaning in life, but this can be really difficult to fully realize from day to day when the society we live in has so many rules and expectations about how we interact with one another and make our life choices. However, there are so many ways to be ALIVE as a human being…there are so many other different ways that society could have unfolded over time if just a little wiggle was made over here and over there in the timeline of humanity. Riiiiiight?

So, what I like to do with my performances (whether it is DJing or VJing or coding Pizzabook, etc.) is remind people that we have the power to create the Fantastic. Each of us really does have the power to create our own meaning in life, through setting our own rules and our own expectations for how we encounter others and help create the world that we share. We don’t have to buy into the sense of “proper behaviour” handed down to us in beige capitalist chains. We can cultivate and celebrate the Awesome, the the Fabulous, the Strange, and the Unknown. We can use those celebrations to forge new ways of making meaning in our lives that is personal, unique, and inspired by the truth we feel within ourselves as we process new experiences. Employed as a lifestyle methodology, the technique of cultivating and celebrating the Unknown provides a viable alternative to the crushing doom of failure felt from not being able to live up to homogenized cultural norms.

When we make our own way through the jungle, we clear a path for others, and we also show them that they too can walk their own path through the jungle if they want to. Personally, I like to leave behind a trail of gummi bears, a subtle waft of raspberry chocolate perfume, and a faint echo of the cackle of my busted PeeWee Herman talking doll (right, Jason?).

 

Well aren’t I getting philosophical today? 

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty then, shall we?

SOooOOOoo, what I did was made a super sweet “Activity PowerPoint” to play behind me while I spun my trusty, dusty vinyl on the wheels of steel. I took that mic and did not let go for 92.7% of my set, egging on the crowd to get involved in the FUN ACTIVITIES I had planned oh-so-carefully for this very special event.

Since I was starting off the event on Saturday, I thought that perhaps a few rousing games, spoken word readings from classic rave literature, and sing-a-longs would be well balanced with my music. In addition, I arranged some slides in the presentation to encourage us all to give big shoutouts on the mic, to give thanks to one another. There was also a little wild card in the mix to shake things up, as people could secretly sign one another up to sing 90s rave karaoke songs. All the while, the activity slideshow was carefully designed to meet the expectations I suspected the crowd might have about the visual content and animations in a contemporary PowerPoint slideshow presentation.

Would you like to see my raver PowerPoint presentation?

(actually it is on Google Slides, not PowerPoint, but I like the way PowerPoint sounds better)

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—> Little looking eyes CLICK HERE Little looking eyes <—-
to view my special animated Rave Reunion DJ Set Activity Slideshow Presentation!

I highly recommend that you view this on a desktop computer in the “Presenter Mode”, accessible from the top right hand corner of the Google Slides Page.

HAVE FUN! :D

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L’il Teaser from the Slideshow…

OH YES!

How could I forget?

Please play these two YouTube videos at the same time while you view the slideshow presentation.

These songs were two of the more important tracks I spun together during my set.

Compact Disc

Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Hymnen”

The Z.A.C.K. – “565, Where are you?”

CONGRATULATIONS

To Lisa for winning the Kandi Korner Speed Race Kandi Making Contest!

U ROOL!!!

BONUS: RAVE KARAOKE

So, you may have observed that in the presentation slideshow, there are several slides that say “RAVE KARAOKE” on them. Those slides were the cue to encourage the people that had been secretly signed up by their friends to perform karaoke versions of 90s dance music and raver classics to “come on down” and “shake it up” on the mic. I created a VERY FANCY and HELLA #RARE karaoke playlist of 40 traxx for just this occasion!

You are warmly invited to participate in the rave karaoke festivities Right NOW through my YouTube playlist, wherever you are!

SUPER WILD BONUS: Download the PDF spreadsheet of all 40 raver karaoke tracks right here in color or right here in black and white (better for printing :) )

Under Construction

Saturday Nite Video Documentation!

Suuuuuch a good vibe in the air all weekend at this event! I can’t begin to say how good it felt to see so many people come out to this event all weekend – some from half a country away! The way everyone was dancing…and hugging…and yelling…and smiling…sigh! It was amazing. Really amazing.

Everyone who DJed played so well and with such wickedly diverse sets that it was an especially fun challenge VJing for them all night! Kept me on my toes!

I am so freaking grateful to Mr. Fudge (Yusuf) and Kyomi (Scott) who put this event together. They made a place for us all to make some magic :)

More big ups and heart shapes go out to Elise Pallagi and DJ Snakeboots for giving me permission to post their videos and pic from the event on my website! <3

Jeff Galaxy totally slaughtered us with a really tight, relentless set of hard, bangin’ techno tinged with a wee bit of a psy and industrial vibe that was hard to put my fingers on as far as naming it with a single genre. Holy smokes, it was SO GOOD! Jeff Galaxy ran the Connect Festival in Saskatchewan for 23 (?) years, up until 2017 when the last edition of the festival took place. Mad respect to Jeff Galaxy fore not only managing the longest running electronic music festival in Canada (!), but being a kick ass DJ and all around driving force in the Saskatchewan rave scenes since the early 90s. He gave a lot of us (including me!) the encouragement and opportunities we needed to advance ourselves as artists

DJ Deko-ze came in allll the way from Toronto to give us the icing on the cake of the weekend and then some. Deko-ze is not only one of the most skilled and versatile DJs out there AND one of the most joyful souls I have ever met in my life, but he’s also kinda the sugargranddaddy of our scene out here in Saskatoon.

Back in the 90s, Deko-ze (along with Wade and Sherri!) ran the legendary PPM club (Plastic Puppet Motive) in the warehouse area in town, which featured INSANE performance art and decor, wildly fresh underground electronic music, and a really diverse, caring, and accepting community for all of us Wild Ones. There is far too much to say here about the intensity of how Amazing the PPM was for so many of us. Just trust me, it was a pretty revolutionary path through the jungles together for all of us.

Sooooo, it was really important for Deko-ze to be with us, DJing at the Reunion <3  He took us on a journey, the way that DJs used to spin their tracks into sets that told us stories…stories we would echo with our bodies, imaginations, and passion. I haven’t heard people cheer for a DJ the way they did for Deko-ze that night for a very, very long time. Warmed my icy little heart, yes it did.

The videos below can’t really do it all justice, and neither can my exceptionally long-winded stories, but I’m really glad that we could have this time together to ponder the mysteries of the Universe.

Fun Fact: DJ Deko-ze gave me my DJ name “The Lady Gates Experience” at the Ascendance party, back in the dino-days!

Don’t Stop Don’t Stop: Random-ish Mini Gallery of Some of My Old Skool 90s and Early Y2K Rave Pix

(just getting my mega-nostalgia on, don’t mind me!)

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