A long weekend in Detroit [1]

So I was updating the thread I started on the purple radio forum with a few impressions from the weekend just gone, but thought it might be good to try and flesh things out somewhat for posterity.

Friday:

Arrived at the motel around 10:30pm. Being able to drive to Detroit after coming home from work still feels surreal (in a good way), but certainly wasn't complaining. About 3.5 hours' drive, plenty of time to listen to some recent downloads (Four Tet vs Burial stands out in particular, and the Surgeon RA podcast made a lot of sense en route). No fecking service stations were fully open on the 403/401 heading west, though - sort it out!

My room-mate, as discussed, has already left for the evening (he was off to a private barbeque/gig round someone's house) but my car license plate attracted comments from my neighbours - first time someone's GOT it, but hardly surprising under the circumstances. Turns out not only do these good folk know my room-mate, but we have other mates in common, *and* two of us are on DJHistory! You know when you sometimes feel "yup, I'm definitely in the right place"... hadn't been out of the car even an hour, and I knew this weekend was gonna be special :)

So I ended up tagging along with them to a party - early night, pah! - which my room-mate also happened to come along to. Can't really recall much, apart from Karizma was playing (and was great - so were the others who played before), struck by what a great crowd it was (very mixed, no attitude/lairiness, everyone up for it, and seemingly fuelled on little more than booze and ciggies - there's no smoking ban in Michigan). But a great first night in Motor City, and the festival hadn't even started!