The Early Days…
I grew up in the Hip Hop / Rock / Reggae / Top 40 music scene when I was young. I hung out with a multi-racial group all my life growing up in Canada’s Silicon Valley North (home to Corel [CorelDraw, Corel Linux], Mitel, Newbridge Networks, Northern Telecom [renamed to Nortel], Bell Northern Research, QNX, JDS Uniphase, Cognos, Computing Devices Company [now part of General Dynamics], Zim, Canada’s National Research Council, and loads of other pioneering tech spinoffs).
No doubt Top 40, Hip Hop, R & B, Rap and Rock were popular while I was in elementary and high school. Once I got to University, clubbing just seemed like going out, drinking beer, and socializing with friends to these same genres — as well as Gino (Euro Dance??) music since I also had close friends from various Mediterranean cultures: Italian, Greek, Lebanese among others.
Hello Toronto!
In all honesty, I enjoy dancing – a lot! It’s just part of my nature, I guess. But something happened one day when I moved to Toronto to do a 16 month Computer Science Industrial Internship. Thanks to karma — or perhaps the EDM gods finally thought it was time to ‘call me’ — I met 2 kool girls at a funky clothing shop around by Yonge & Bloor. “Hey, where’s a good place to club around here?”, I asked.
One Asian gal named Tammy (from Most Wanted Entertainment) said, “come to Turbo on Friday!” Well, I dragged my then Lebanese roommie with me to Turbo in Toronto’s famous Club District area. And as they say, “the rest is history.”
Turbo-charged and more…
The music at Turbo was soooo good — with a House, Progressive sound! The atmosphere was intimate. The sound system was delicious. And there was an amazing underground ‘club vibe’ atmosphere that I’ve never experienced in my previous ‘commercial’ clubbing. I was hooked! My roommie was more on the conservative mainstream side and took off at around 12:30 am. But I was just getting warm.
I met so many kool people that night, which is something that most EDM revelers can ‘relate to.’ By the time Turbo was closing its doors at 7:00 am, I was already invited to an after-party at a condo by Yonge & College. Great vibe! I ended up sleeping by the condo pool in a beach chair, woke up around 10:30 am, said goodbye and headed for the subway to go home by DVP & Eglington.
One thing leads to the next…
After frequenting Turbo, I was introduced to other underground EDM clubs. Nite spots like System SoundBar, The Guvernment, Kool Haus, The Comfort Zone, Life, NV, Red Square, Film Lounge, Bahaus, Elements, Industry and a host of other venues too numerous to mention, became my ‘second home’ so to speak. 🙂 Let me just say that the Toronto EDM club scene is, arguably, one of the greatest EDM scenes on the planet! No joke! There’s a special vibe in Toronto for the EDM scene. Montreal too.
The vast EDM sounds that I experienced from Toronto’s talented (and under-rated) EDM DJs may never be duplicated any where else. Thank god I was able to be part of the ride. So that’s why I LUV EDM! I owe it all to Toronto, even though I’ve long departed the city. But, I will be back for a dance – some day!
Do you luv EDM? Why? Tell me about how you got into the EDM scene! Was it by sheer luck? I’ve met so many newbies at big EDM club events who always end up saying, “Wow, the music is amazing! Everyone loves to dance! I didn’t know it was like this at all.“
