because hal describes the uber greatness of midnight better than i do
Together as One
I was mentally prepared to spend the night sober. It didn’t really bother me. We arrived at the sports arena around 10. I got my VIP ticket and pretty much walked right in, didn’t even get patted down. VIP is awesome. Once inside, the ramp from the VIP entrance led directly into the mass which was the Armin Van Burren stage. I didn’t really know what to expect from Burren, he was playing a 9-hour set in what was called the “Armin Van Burren Experience.” Sounded interesting. The first thing I did was made my way across the crowd to our designated meeting spot, where I met up with Jordy, Dan and Skye. We tried to get down to the main stage to see Armin, but the ramp was closed off due to the sports arena being “over capacity.” Instead, we went to the drum and bass stage and danced there for a while, which was intense.
It was funny observing the evolution of the crowd from a sober standpoint. When I first arrived at 10, everyone was just having a good time and seemed hyper, but normal. By 11/11:30 however, the number of people rolling vastly increased. I guess people wanted to be peaking at midnight. All of a sudden there were way more half naked people, way more glow shows, and much much friendlier weirdos. It was pretty cool. We decided that we wanted to be at the main stage for midnight, so we made our way back inside. On the ramp, everyone was screaming HAPPY NEW YEAR! Which would result in unanimous screaming, and chants of T-A-O!! Would erupt every minute or so. We hit the floor and wormed our way as close to the front as we could get, which was about 50 feet from the stage. Pretty impressive considering the whole floor was packed. Later, I got a text message from my friend saying that he tried to get down to the main stage for new years, but they had again blocked the ramps off at 11:45. We had just made it.
Armin at midnight was awesome. Possibly the highlight of the whole night. For starters, the Armin Experience was an actual experience. He had the most intense laser setup I’ve ever seen, dozens of multi-colored laser beams were moving and interlocking to form this woven lattice work of light over the crowds heads. The stage was incredible. Armin was in the center at his DJ booth, with a stadium-sized jumbotron behind him and two giant screens flanking it. His set had all these changing themes, first this deep bellowing voice came on over the music,
“Imagine a world…without sight…”
Then all the lights went out and everyone starting SCREAMING the only thing you could see was peoples glow sticks, and the stadium was LIT up it was beautiful. Then the lights come back on, but they were only black lights so everyone was glowing. So intense.
Five minutes before midnight, Armin starts playing this really awesome beat that just keeps building and building. Then, on the jumbotron, he starts playing clips form Obama’s acceptance speech. I’ve never heard the crowd scream that loud, they drowned out the music. It was all these cut and DJ’d clips of Obama saying things like,
“Tonight belongs to you - Tonight belongs to you - tonight-tonight-to-to-tonight belongs to you”
And he had “HOPE” written on the adjacent screens. Everyone was freaking out, and the beat was building and building, and then there was the 10 second countdown to midnight, strobe lights, lasers, and then BOOM it’s midnight and Obama with an American flag are on the jumbotron and these enormous cannons bordering the stage start shooting millions of pieces of disco-ball confetti into the air, and balloons fell, and the confetti got swept up in updrafts and just flurried around in the air over our heads, where it reflected all the interlocking laser beams in a million directions creating the most intense visual spectacle I think I’ve ever seen. And I was sober.
Armin had all these musical guests too, which was awesome. Pink came out and sang a song, and a bunch of other people I didn’t recognize, some guitar players and singers. And every shift in theme was matched with a shift in the onstage show, with a new entourage of stage performers, all scantily clad women in really bizarre themed costumes. There was a bondage theme, and a neon black light theme, a circus theme and everything.
Around 12:30 we left Armin and went to go see Pendulum. Pendulum totally rocked. Pendulum is actually a live band, but at TAO they played a DJ set with a live rapper free styling over the beat. The music was really really good, but the people were the best part. It seemed like everyone at this stage was rolling way harder than everyone else at the rave. Maybe it was the drum and bass. Either way, everyone was dancing CRAZY and there were some absolutely GORGEOUS girls dancing with us (or near us). I kept going up to girls, it was so easy, and I said the same thing every time: “Happy New Year!!! I love your costume!!!” To which they would either say “Thanks, happy new year!!” Or, “OMFG IM ROLLING SO F-ING HARD RIGHT NOW WILL YOU GIVE ME A GLOWSHOW? HAVE YOU SEEN MY FRIENDS I LOST MY FRIENDS I CAN’T FIND MY FRIENDS. IM LOOKING FOR A 300-POUND CHEROKEE NAMED BUBBLE BATH DO YOU SEE HIM?? WOW YOU’RE TALL. OMG I LOVE YOUR TEETH! DO YOU HAVE ANY VICKS VAPO-RUB? OR WATER?”
Ah, ravers. I love them.
This one really attractive couple near us was either actually having sex, or they were damn close. Skye later articulated what we were all thinking and said that they should have just had sex, because we all wanted to see it and they sure as hell wanted it. Anyway, I really let go at the Pendulum set and danced my ass off.
After an hour or so at pendulum we walked over to the other outside stage to see deadmou5. On the way, this totally random guy was like “hey you want pills? 3 for $20.”
I was skeptical because apparently there were a lot of sketchy pills going around this rave, but I checked them out (blue buddhas) and they seemed good. And hoo boy. They were good. I had pretty much given up on rolling at this point and was still having a fantastic time sober, which just made rolling way more intense.
Even through my escalating roll, Deadmou5 sucked. He was terrible. I’ve heard that he plays a good live set, but not at TAO. We left after about 15 minutes, and went to sit in the grand stands and miraculously found three seats directly over the Armin stage. We chilled up there and watched this incredible visual spectacle of the stage, the crowd, and the glow stick-infused grandstands in front of us. Every seat was taken, this place was packed. At this point it was about 2:30 and I was rolling pretty hard, so we decided go “pilgrimage to Mecca” as Dan put it, and worm our way back into the center of the crowd. Which is exactly what we did.
Once back in the crowd I became a total E-tard. I was just dancing and flailing and laughing and jabbering away to anyone who would listen. I was just yelling at girls “Happy new year I love your costume! Happy New Year I love your costume! Happy new year I love your costume!”
Then I went up to this uber hot girl and said Happy New Year I love your costume! She kind of gave me a cocked eyebrow, and I looked down and realized she was wearing a bra and a thong.
Hot Girl: You love my costume?
Hal: Yeah. Well. Um. Yeah.
Hot Girl: How many times has that line worked so far?
Hal: psh line? What line that wasn’t a line.
Hot Girl:……
Hal: You would be the first.
And then she rolled her eyes and walked away. I was too belligerent anyway, I just laughed at my own silliness.
Armin’s finale was incredibly epic. He brought all the musical guests from the whole 9 hour set out of the stage, and they all bowed and danced to Armin’s mix of that Killer’s song that goes “are we human or are we denserrrr”, which as a song isn’t great, but Armin's mix was pretty tight. Then he played an encore, and they shot more confetti out of the confetti cannons. Then they had these fog machines go on, which were amazing. Normally, fog machines belch wispy muggy smoke that smells terrible and makes you hold your breath. I don’t know how they did this, maybe liquid nitrogen or something, but these fog machines shot out a billowing, rolling mass of marvelously thick smoke, which enveloped us in an icy cool, refreshingly oxygenated mist which was the most invigorating feeling ever. I imagine that is what it feels like to live inside a cloud. And I was just so happy.
After it ended, I smoked two cigarettes that I shamelessly leeched off people, and we drove back to Phi Psi where we smoked a lot of weed and watched the iTunes visualizer while listening to Radiohead. Plus, I got to sleep in a real bed. Overall, probably the best new years of my life.