This was a special event. It came on the heels of the rave scene simultaneously experiencing its peak and also terrible tragedy with 3 separate drug related rave deaths at Toronto events during the last half of 1999.
It didn’t feel right to me at the time to just proceed business as usual and pretend none of this had happened. It was a hard time for me, personally. Only decades later do I recognize my own trauma of having to deal with all of that at the time.
I felt the scene was too important to just give up on and I knew I didn’t want to quit because this was bigger than me and meant so much to so many people. I was committed to staying strong even though I was dealing with my own unchecked stress of the weight of all of it.
My idea was to do our next event on a more low profile. To this end we did not print any flyers to promote it, which was unprecedented at the time for a large event, early into the internet and a decade ahead of social media. It was called “For Those Who Know“. In addition, $1 from every ticket would be donated to the local harm reduction outfit (TRIP – Toronto Raver Info Project), which received a cheque for $2200.
Even with no flyer, the event immediately sold out the capacity of the venue.
I wanted to do something special and different in light of this and came up with the concept of having our most frequent headliner, Vinylgroover, and I do an unprecedented back2back set we called “UK Vs Canada” with the addition of MCs Magika and E-by-gum.
The atmosphere was like no other that night. The same importance that our scene was worth saving weighed on everyone in attendance.
I present this set in all its glory, all 2 hours and 20 minutes of late 1990s happy hardcore spun by 2 of the biggest names of that era. Enjoy.
