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Epilogue for 808

Bleep's self-portrait

What did the 808 mean to you?
It was just a fantastically good time. First and foremost is the thing that means to me. It was a breath of fresh air in electronic music nightlife. People had said they stopped looking for this stuff in Boston nightlife. Nothing gave them what they needed for their techno. . . or whatever we played. That is, there was no compromises. Everything we did, we did around the music, techno and its variants. A place you could forget about the city around you, you felt like something really special. To me and to a lot of people who came there.

Who went to the 808? Was it just the heads or DJs?
Not everyone who went went for techno, or knew everything about the latest release, but they were all people with similar ethics, on how a party is supposed to be done. How it should feel. It was across a pretty damn wide range of people and musical interest and background. There were kids that had never experieneced anything like what we did. There were older folks who remembered what it was like in the Red Light loft, which was similar to what we did. There were a lot of international people, but not the people who would go down to the velvet rope, it was the people who understand how techno is done in Europe. To them, this is the closest thing they know to being in Berlin or Paris or wherever.

What was different about the club as opposed to a normal dance club?
It runs really late (laughs) and there are a lot less rules on how you conduct yourself and the people around you. There are a lot of people. If you're the type of person who would appreciate the 808, you would find other people there who appreciated it. You never had random people from Boston who may not appreciate it.

Was it all about drugs?
I would say absolutely not. That's nothing at all what it was about, and we had people who thought it was that and we would turn them away.

What's going to happen to the space?
Supposedly they are going to turn it into condominiums. We went up there and it's completely gutted. it's an empty shell of a building.

What sort of moment defined the 808 for you?
Sweat dripping from the ceiling (laughs), seeing a whole bunch of people sweating and dancing and staying despite the heat. Those moments when Jon (Schmidt) or Alan (Manzi) or any other DJ found their moment and found their groove and brought everyone else along with them. At four in the morning that's a powerful thing. There was room to work. Instead of having a two hour window where the party could possibly go off you had a lot more time to work with. And they were all good in their ways. For me it was when Jon Schimdt would pull out record no one had every heard of -- funky and minimal and weird as they could be. Or moments where Sleeparchive or Bruno played music that was incredibly good but would polarize people and they thought it was weird and not danceable. For me, one of the key aspects of knowing I've done something right is when people leave because they don't like it; and then some people stay and are incredibly passionate about it. It's a music and culture that's polarizing. Instead of being inclusive and trying to cater to too many tastes. I did a disco party and some people were into it and some people weren't.