- People show up for Need I Say More right at the crack of dawn—the party starts at 7 AM, and at this particular juncture in the weekend (the beginning of the final day of Movement festival), a small but lively portion of Detroit's population has not yet been to bed. The line snakes around the corner and ends by the green awning at Old Miami, a veteran's bar turned live music venue ("Miami" is an acronym for "missing in action Michigan"). Inside is a musty tavern with classic rock on the juke box; the party is on the lawn out back. At the tense little opening where people pay and receive wristbands, you can usually spot Seth Troxler or Ryan Crosson—the Visionquest crew have thrown this thing every year since 2005, and it's usually one of these two manning the door.
Like No Way Back—which ends just as this one begins, forming a convenient but grueling migration pattern—Need I Say More is one for the battlers. Getting in can take a while, there's no shade anywhere near the dance floor, and in recent years Memorial Day has been either rainy or brutally hot. This, combined with the ambitious timeline (7 AM to 7 PM at the end of a heavy weekend) creates a sense of manic team spirit ("how you holdin' up?" is a common greeting all day). The atmosphere, meanwhile, is part crusty afterhour, part 4th of July barbecue. On the one hand you've got Carl Craig chunking it out for a heaving dance floor. On the other, young folks sitting cross-legged in the grass, eating mac n' cheese under an American flag.
Past lineups at Need I Say More have included the likes of Dixon, DJ Tennis and Ben UFO back-to-back with Gerd Janson. This year, for their tenth edition, they decided to go 100% Detroit. Norm Talley opened with one of the city's many unsung heroes, Mike Clark, rewarding the sleepless early crowd with a set of smooth and slamming deep house. Fresh from No Way Back, Mike Servito and Carlos Souffront took the midday slot. At Tangent Gallery they'd been deep and dark, but here they let their hair down, plowing through floor-fillers like Chez Damier's "Untitled," Model 500's "Time Space Transmat," Virgo Four's "In A Vision" and Danny Wang's "Like Some Dream (I Can't Stop Dreaming)." The crowd lapped it up, along with a welcome bit of wind and rain. Daniel Bell hemmed things in a bit (as he does) but kept the sunny vibes flowing—Crustation's "Flame (Mood II Swing Dub)" floated nicely on the breeze.
Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen pulled out the big guns for the final slot: Cajmere's "Percolator," DJ Sneak's "All Over (My Face)" and so on, all with long breakdowns and colossal drops. Yeah, it was a little heavy-handed at times, but consider the situation: a rambling cast of local party kids, techno tourists, DJs and industry types from around the world, all looking on as a bunch of Detroit DJs throw it down in the backyard of a dive bar in their hometown. Any way you slice it, it's pretty special.
Photo credit: Will Calcutt