IMF's Electric Forest 2012 GUIDE

Given that Electric Forest is two days away and that it will be my first said festival and I'm searching the web and social media sites to find any and all info about it. Most generic information could be found on electric forest's official website locate HERE. But I'm looking for the inside scoop, some useful tips from people that have gone before and know what will make the experience better. That being said I stumbled onto this gem of a site, which I encourage you to check out as well as follow on facebook.  Here's the link to the SITE. They also have a review to Spring Awakening that you can check out.. To go directly to the Electric Forest guide follow this link LINK.

Electric Forest Facebook
IMF Website
IMF Facebook

Also be sure to share this with your friends and follow me on facebook!!! Undercover Clubber Facebook

Electric Forest 2012 Trailer

Can you tell someone is excited to go?

Its Monday I leave Chicago on Thursday early morning, CANNOT WAIT!!!!

Another SAMF Video - Tribute

Just something I found while browsing for some Spring Awakening Content Online. This is NOT MY VIDEO.

RIP SHM :-(

I'm glad I had a chance to see Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello perform their individual acts in the last year since the EDM super group has decided to split after they complete their tour.

Follow this Link to the full article. 

Who's going to save the world now?

Spring Awakening 2012 - Chicago

Experienced on 6-16-2012 and 6-17-2012


WOW.... what a weekend. If this doesn't put Chicago on the map for hosting great EDM type events I don't know what will.  Simply put if you were in Chicago and you like electronica and you WEREN'T at Spring Awakening you should be disappointed in yourself. Everyone was killin' it even the lesser know DJ s. The headliners were just God like. This doesn't come without some criticism, which I'll get to in a second.

First I wanna star off by giving a lot credit to the staff at React Presents, Congress Theater and the entire staff working the whole weekend for making it run really smooth. I was pleasantly surprised how well everything went. I'm doing this because after Saturday I saw a lot of people bitching on facebook about how people weren't allowed to bring in empty water containers and came backpacks n such, to which I say stop bitching because there were plenty of water fountains in or around the stadium and cooling stations. So if you bought one water for $4.50 or $4.75 whatever it was YOU COULD REFILL IT for FREE. I see no problem with that, when you see any type of festival like this obviously the organizers are going to try to make as much money as possible. The DJ s that performed probably cost a lot of money to book, and that price gets passed on to the consumer. But I do have a problem paying $8.50 for a bud light, but i drank a bunch of those anyway, if you don't have much of a choice there's not much you can do. Though I made it to the festival at 5pm on Saturday and 4pm on Sunday I still think I got more than my moneys worth in terms of music. Give the heat wave that weekend I give props to anyone who attended both days fully.

On day one I fell in love with Morgan Page, Benny Benassi was ridiculous at the main stage and Skrillex absolutely destroyed his set. No one seems to mind when it started to drizzle especially when Skrillex said "Its the rain dance Chicago!!!" causing everyone to go nuts. His lasers also looked like a million little dots in the rain which made for a nice visual effect. One bad thing was when it started to pour and the lake wind kicked in. Not to mentioned the grueling "march of death" from the stadium the long as way to get back to the city in an attempt to hail a cab, which was impossible as thousands of other soaked party goers were trying to do the same.  It was funny though watching 3 guys hiking in some bushes in the median of a major street jumping out to hail a cab only to find out it was a pizza delivery guy. "fuck you pizza guy!" haha highlight. 

On Day two I finally got to see Nervo who I missed during the MiD's 1 year anniversary week. They were awesome, Felix Cartal was great, Datsik satisfied as always, Flux Pavilion, (Base Cannon was especially sick) rocked the main stage and so did Derick Carter from what my buddies told me and Carl Cox. Later in the evening I had to decide between Wolfgang Gartner and Laidback Luke, so I decided to see half of Wolfgang and half of Luke, only to be disappointed for leaving Wolfang's AMAZING set. Laidback Luke at least finished it off right with his collaboration song with Chuckie "1 2 3 4". Unfortunately Afrojack let me down but maybe I was setting myself up for failure after watching his Ultra 2012 set life in my friends living room (same time I bought my Spring Awakening tickets) and expecting the same sort of set. I personally didn't like that he mixed in Beyonce and Pitbull songs because this was not the B-Bash. This time around the walk back to the car was a lot more enjoyable as the weather was perfect on Sunday night and this beautiful city of ours just looked fabulous.

Honorable mention goes to the amount of hotties that could be seen at Spring Awakening, the ratio of Hotties to Duffs was I'd say 9:1, if anyone cared to know. "Where do these girls hide during the day" ..."I don't know man, libraries? That's the last place I would check"

Thank you everyone who made it out to make this amazing festival a success, thank you to the new friends I made and thank you Soldier Field for setting the stage for something very memorable, I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing everyone next year when this is even bigger and better .

MTV'S SAMF Day 1 Video Recap

MTV'S Spring Awakening Day One Video Recap

Enjoy its short but sweet.

Officials see progress at Congress Theater - Article

But police, neighbors say drug use, underage drinking, noise still a problem at concert venue

June 19, 2012|By Ryan Haggerty, Chicago Tribune reporter

Managers of the Congress Theater have made progress in tackling neighbors' concerns about excessive noise, security problems and public intoxication, but they must sustain the effort in order to minimize future complaints, said police and city officials Tuesday.

"Things are better, and I'm glad they're better," said Barbara Gressel, assistant commissioner of the city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. "But we have a ways to go."

To view the rest of the Chicago Tribune article follow the link here

Cień Klub - Kraków

Visited on 6/9/2012

While being in Poland for 3 weeks after not visiting for almost a decade I told myself I'd visit at least one club while here in order to get a feel of how things go down. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

The club I visited while being in Kraków (Cracow) was Cień Klub on in short Cień (Shadow). It's located a few hundred feet from the Rynek Krakowski (Old Town Square of Cracow) like most clubs in Kraków considering the Town Square is where all the tourists go. Cień is located in a 17th Century Presidential Palace that has been gutted and transformed into a multi level club. Once you walk in through the old metal French doors you enter the ground level space that is a lounge/chill-room filled with a few couches lining one wall about almost 2 dozen bean bag chairs and a Foosball table.  Given Euro 2012 is in full effect in Poland the chill room also had a huge projector screen showing the Germany Portugal match. In the front of the room you have a staircase going up (I’ll refer get back to that) while in the back you have a staircase going downstairs.

Heading downstairs you are encountered with the first of the 3, yes 3 downstairs bars and a tough choice to make. If you head to your left into a separate room you get one dance-floor with an attached smoking lounge and a connection to a second bar with lots of room to sit and chill out. There's also a hallway leading to a UNISEX yes unisex bathroom. I’ve never seen that before but it works (there are no urinals just smaller individual stalls will doors from floor to ceiling).

If you were to head to your right from the first bar as you walked down the stairs, you enter a second dance floor room and continuing to your right you get another bathroom (didn't explore it) a VIP room a small bar and another smoking lounge.  Take the tour and check it out yourself. Visually I think the club looked very nice with enough room to move around so it doesn’t feel and a lot of places to sit and smoke. Given that most of the action is the basement in gives it a different feel from most Chicago clubs.

If you remember I mentioned earlier there was also a staircase going upstairs from the main floor's lounge. When you head upstairs you walk right into another dance floor (the largest of the 3) with high ceilings and more lighting systems. (Due to limited space don't expect anything too fancy downstairs in terms of lights). You have a second coat room to your right and the dance floor is to your immediate left. If you walk through the crowd you will walk into a very large lounge area with white couches and white furniture set up with small tables where you can place your drinks and bottles. Connected to that lounge is yet another bar, the largest of all them in the club. It is lit up with blue neon lights almost in a way to make sure you know where to go to get boozed up. In the same room you have a chandelier hanging to add to the decor.

Prices in relation to the US dollar are cheap as the $1 will give you 3.5 złote. A 500 ml bottle of Vodka with our bottle service was 100 Złote (you do the math) If we were told we would have gotten the 750ml for 150zlote. Adding to this discussion about alcohol, Cień has its own brew called "Biała Śmierć" or White Death which is a Spirytus type drink they make and sell by the bottle. Surprisingly not a lot of people here tip so once you tip a few zloty here and there you get more attention from the hostesses/bartenders. Many girls filled this place the night of my visit and most want/like to dance, but be warned the legal drinking age is 18, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few under age ones slip between the cracks from time to time.

Music wise one of the dance-floors in the basement played what could be best described as Chicago house mixed with some 80s n 90s hits, with a steady beat pulsing the whole night. If you wanted something more rhythmic to dance to the second downstairs dance-floor had more of a euro feel and vocal music. Upstairs with the largest dance-floor played the closest thing to top 40, but it is not our top 40, a lot more European artists are played with a mix of Rhihanna and Pitbull type dance songs that all the girls dance and try to sing along to.

All in all Cień is a decent place to visit when in Kraków. The locals I was with had mixed reviews about this place as they had their own favorite clubs (CoCo and Base just to name some) they'd rather be at, but my taste in music was also different from theirs so we had to agree to disagree.

All in all Cień is a decent place to visit when in Kraków. The locals I was with had mixed reviews about this place as they had their own favorite clubs (CoCo and Base just to name some) they'd rather be at, but my taste in music was also different from theirs so we had to agree to disagree.

Follow this link to view my photo gallery from Cień

KoolHaus - Toronto

Date of visit 4/21/2012

I was in Toronto from 4/20 to 4/22 for reasons unrelated to EDM but when walking around town I noticed flyers for Swedish House Mafia's Axwell visiting town on Saturday April 21st. Having already seen both Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello in the past 6 months I took this as a great opportunity not only to see a good concert but to also party for the first time outside of the US.

I did some online searching when in my hotel room and found out the event was being held at The Guvernment  or "The Guv" which is Toronto’s Entertainment Complex. After a short cab ride from my hotel from downtown Toronto to the Guv and after paying $60 for my Axwell ticket at the door I was in. The Guv is exactly what it claims to be, an entertainment complex, as it is composed of 6 separate clubs (KoolHaus, Chroma, Surface, Skybar, Haven and The Guvenrment). Axwell was spinning specifically at KoolHaus which is a huge open space resembling a gutted warehouse, just check out the floor plan. From its website KoolHaus actually looks pretty nice, but it was so dark and packed when I was there that it didn't look like anything special. I also didn't notice as many bars lining the walls as the floor plan shows there should be. 

Koolhaus claims its capacity is 2000 but I wouldn't be surprised if they exceeded their capacity that night as the crowd was shoulder to shoulder causing the place to heat up fast. The heat is my only complaint. Our Aragon Ballroom and Congress Theatre have a balcony where you can escape the heat (if they're open), or an open space outside of the main stage area. Koolhaus was hot n sweaty all over even all the way in the back of the room where I stood most of the night as I wouldn't dare push my way through all those ragers and candi kids..

That being said, most of the crowd is comparable to our crowd at EDM concerts. The crowd is also younger as the legal drinking age is 19. A plus for the Canadians is that they are generally nicer than our crowd here, another is that there are a lot less stereotypical club goers here and more stereotypical ragers and ravers.

My experience at Koolhaus was a good one. The sound was great the atmosphere as well. It reminded me more of an underground (rave) in a warehouse rather than a concert. I'm definitely coming back to the Guv to check out its other parts next time I'm in Toronto.

Here's a video I shot while at Koolhaus

Here's another one

Intro

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in EDM (electronic dance music) it all started back in the day when I heard Darude's Sandstorm. Going through different phases in life I've switched between favorite music genres, yet I keep coming back to this music and this scene. In addition to my almost regular clubbing, in the past year I've spend a good amount of time and money going to numerous concerts around Chicago venues, from concert halls to more intimate settings in clubs. Seeing how this is something I enjoy doing on a regular basis I figured I might as well start blogging about my outings for those who might not have been able to make it out and for out-of-towners that want to visit Chicago and need some input on where to go.

This blog will be mainly a personal review of different Chicago clubs and concert venues. It will be my personal opinion so I do expect some criticism and disapproval of what I write. But honestly I'm tired of reading redundant and inaccurate reviews on other sites that will remain nameless ( one rhymes with help :-) )

What you can expect this week? Two reviews in a short amount of time. One of a club in Toronto, a slightly overdue review, but I didn't start this blog till now so it will have to do.The second review will be of a club in Krakow (Cracow) Poland, as I am currently here visiting family till Wednesday. My first Chicago review will be of the Spring Awakening Festival which starts on Saturday June 16 at Soldier Field.

Thanks for visiting my blog, any comments and feedback are always appreciated.