"I Went to Twilo and You Didn't"
In the Sasha and Digweed pantheon, there are only a handful of ways to one-up the Twilo group for sheer street cred for, even now, a decade later, few DJs have made such an impact from a single residency. To my eternal regret, I only made it to Twilo once, on a muggy night in June.
Sasha and John had just released Communicate, and were riding on a massive wave of p.r. I got there at midnight or so, and saw a line that stretched around the block. I was waiting for a friend by the door when Digweed arrived. I had met him the night before, and he graciously invited me to walk in with him. Because my friend (who later stood me up) was late, I told him I'd see him inside. Which turned out to be delusional.
After waiting another 30 minutes, I decided to go inside without him. But the doorman, who had witnessed the entire interaction with Digweed, looked like he had never seen me before. Another 30 minutes later, I had braved the hallway that made you feel like a cow en route to the slaughterhouse and walked into a crowd that seemed incredibly young by California standards. Feeling very out of place, I kept asking people who was playing. No one had the slightest clue.
I would like to say that the gods of clubland shined on me that night and whisked me and some supermodel into the DJ booth where I found musical nirvana. But the reality was less prosiac. I didn't know anyone, felt like I was the chaperone at the high school prom and figuring I'd just catch them next time around, I left an hour after I had pushed my way through the hellish hallway they funneled the crowd into. Who was I to know that the place would soon burn down and that I would spend the next seven or so years being told, "you shudda been there?"
