I took a short dip into the waters of Vancouver nightlife last Friday night. Now, I won't insult the people of Vancouver by playing judge and jury over their music scene after being there for only one week, so keep in mind that these are merely observations.

Trying to get into the DJ Krush show at Sonar proved fruitless. When the papers say "doors open at 8 PM", Vancouverites must do the wacky, sensible thing and actually show up on time. By ten, the place was packed and the lineup outside more closely ressembled your average glacier than a horde of young music fans. The art of deciphering the start time of a show from the listings in the papers is a problem akin to finding a cure for the common cold, i.e. nearly impossible due to the hundreds of different varieties of the elusive beasts. The lineup itself was startlingly calm and reserved. In Toronto, people would be trying a thousand different means to skam their way past the security, saying they know anyone from the head bartender to the roadies to the janitors in order to bypass the line. Vancouverites seemed more concerned with what they scored earlier in the day, what they could score once inside, and who they needed to score from once inside.

Afterward, I got to play out a little fantasy of mine. In early 1980's Detroit, house parties (in whatever sense of the phrase) were attended by smartly-dressed, upper-middle class kids. The music was smart and energetic, the crowds extremely lively, the DJ's willing to drop any wild record at any time. Everyone was mad for it but the overall impression (at least to me, and it's my fantasy so I can think what I want and mix fact with wishful thinking without malice) was that of culture and class.

I was at such a club last Friday. Its name has been wiped clean through subsequent alcohol scrubbings, but no matter. It was in a beautiful, spacious second floor loft overlooking the pleasant red-brick streets of Gastown, massive video screens blasting kaleidoscopic cartoons flanked the DJ, who was clearly having the time of his life, and the crowd was fashionably dressed, and very clearly in a mood to dance, drink, socialize and immerse themselves wholeheartedly in this scene.

One more thing. THE YEAR IS 2001. Everybody in there -- the staff, the DJ, the customers -- looked desperate. They desperately believed that they were in at the genesis of something groundbreaking. Their body language desperately intoned that in the room in which we stood, a unique, vibrant rump-shaking happening was taking place, and our collective responsibility as club-goers was to spread the fledgeling gospel, bring more converts back to this haven of budding revolution before it got too massive and watered down to fully appreciate, all while wearing an "I'm so cool to be here, so cool that I won't even show it on my face" look. And it was all so pathetic because everything that I described did exist -- TWENTY GODDAMNED YEARS AGO. You can play dressup all year long but it can't change the fact that the genie's been out of the bottle for decades, and you can't pretend that he just popped out of that bottle just because you didn't notice him until years later.

Learn. Listen to some house music. When you solely rely on the DJ to shape your tastes, you end up in a loft dancing your tits off to dreadfully soulless plastic house music with nary a memorable pounding beat in sight. Use your ears. A sax solo does not soul music make. Think before you dance.