Kat Says: “After 13 Trips to Ultra, What Is There Left To Say?”
A look back at how Ultra, WMC and MMW have shaped my life and career.
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Hey Friends!
I can proudly say my brain has almost totally recovered from yet another hectic Ultra Music Festival and Miami Music Week. (My bout of party voice hasn’t fully receded, but uh, we’re getting close!)
If you don’t know what Miami Music Week is, well, it’s a week of electronic music parties, networking events and industry get-togethers that takes over every corner of the city from the tip of South Beach to the farthest reaches of Hialeah (thanks, Factory Town).
It’s a marathon and not a sprint—a true gauntlet of fire that can make or break your soul, your career, your ability to ever sleep again.
And if you really want to get a good picture of what it’s all about and for, you should read the story I wrote for Billboard last week, below. They ended up featuring it as the newsletter lead. Go ahead, read it. It’s good:
Further Reading: ‘It’s Definitely Also Business, Otherwise We Wouldn’t Be Allowed to Fly Over’: What Gets Done During Miami Music Week? (Billboard, March 2023)
TL;DR: It’s a really big party but also a meaningful moment of the electronic music industry’s greater calendar that sets the tone for the coming festival season. As it turns out, it’s also a really important part of my own career.
I’ve been covering Miami Music Week since 2010. Back then, it was still called “Winter Music Conference” by everyone who attended, even though the actual Conference had been overshadowed by the monolith Ultra Music Festival had become and the satellite parties it inspired.
The pieces I’ve written during these past 13 years launched and helped define the professional trajectory that brought me to this moment, writing this newsletter—but even more than that, this weekend represents an important part of my story, because it actually represents my introduction to rave culture.
Yes. Ultra Music Festival 2005 popped my party cherry.
If I were to compare my first Ultra with my 12th, we’d be talking about two completely different festivals.
In 2005, Ultra was a one-day event that centered around progressive house, trance, techno and drum’n’bass. Yes, Tiesto was a headliner and Carl Cox already had his own tent, but when I say “tent,” I mean the stages were actually inside giant canvas tents with little to no production—and there was an entire stage dedicated to The Future Sound of Breaks.
The actual flyer for Ultra Music Festival 2005
My friend Lauren; who was one year older than me, played trumpet in the high school band, and wore her hair in tiny braids; didn’t really invite me so much as she told me I had to go. She was very cool, and I was already addicted to going to concerts, so it wasn’t going to be a hard argument. Once I saw Moby was on the lineup, it was a done deal.
Moby was one of the most formative artists of my teenage years. If it weren’t for Play and the emotional escape it offered my adolescent depression, I could actually be dead. Suffice to say, 17-year-old me was not going to miss this fucking show.
My mom approved, bought me a ticket (thanks, mom!), and my life changed forever.
In 2005, Moby was playing his own original songs with a full band and back-up singers. Let me tell ya, coming up for the first time hearing “Natural Blues” with live soul singers is a fucking a-plus game changer.
I spent the rest of the festival chewing gum with my mouth open, eyes the size of UFOs, soaking up every insane part of it. I’d been to plenty of one-day music festivals before; radio-hosted rock shows, Ozzfests, the revived touring version of Lollapalooza in 2003, and even the Cure’s Curiosa Festival in 2004 with Interpol and The Rapture, among others.
But I had never seen anything like this.
A whole massive park full of happy people, smiling maniacal smiles and exuding a sort of rainbow glow. I mean, literally, people were covered in glow sticks and reflective gear. It was the last stand of the JNCO age, after all, so it wasn’t fluffy tutus and flower bras just yet.
I remember going into the drum’n’bass test—or what was probably the area dedicated to The Future Sound of Breaks. It was so smoky inside, all you could see was the disembodied hues of various glowsticks. Some guy asked me to blow him up, and though I had no idea what I was doing, I instinctively spun the glowsticks in his face and gave him a show. I did feel pretty bad when I hit his nose, but he seemed to be fine.
I remember sitting on the lawn of what is now the live stage, watching Tiesto play a euphoric trance set as the main stage headliner.
“Lauren,” I yelled in my friend’s ear. “Thank you so much for showing me this culture.”
And that was that. I never looked back.
Me at Ultra 2008 in a homemade t-shirt with what I thought the lyrics of Boys Noize’s “&Down” were.
I went to Ultra again in 2007 and 2008. (I wanted to go in 2006, but it was the same weekend as my college entrance exams, so boo.) Still, it was another couple of years until I learned about WMC.
My buddy Joel and I had just formed our blog, Fresh Wet Paint. It was dedicated to covering “the freshest is music, fashion, art and culture,” but he had been a DJ for some 10 years already and I was deep in the throes of being a bloghouse burnout, so it ended up covering a lot of electronic music.
Joel was the one who told me about Winter Music Conference and the parties that took place all throughout the city, of which Ultra (now a two-day festival) was the climactic cap. We decided it was very important to drive down to Miami that March to grab interviews with DJs and get the word out about our newly-born blog.
With all the confidence of a cis-het white man, Joel lied to a bunch of promoters and publicists and told them we got some 10k views a month, therefore clinching our press passes to a bunch of dope parties and securing interviews with really cool DJs including Star Eyes, AC Slater and LA Riots.
He also set us up with some old hippie lady on Craigslist, who agreed to let us sleep in her house on South Beach in exchange for a ride from Gainesville to Miami in my car. She was nice, but she ended up picking up some hitchhiker kids at a Turnpike rest stop and promising they too could stay at her house. I had not yet learned to establish boundaries, so I just let these weird kids we didn’t know into my car. It was a fuckin’ awkward vibe. We didn’t wanna party with them, lol.
Joel and I at WMC 2010
Whatever! Joel and I had a total blast at our first WMC. I pulled all those interviews off and had my first ever experience doing what it is I do now. Joel played cameraman, and we went to a ton of parties in hotel lobbies, giant warehouses, swanky nightclubs and sunny beaches. We absolutely rocked it, and we felt kind of like gods as we left—disgusting gods who ran out of clean clothes and needed showers and sleep, but gods nonetheless.
My only regret is that we were invited to meet this dude at Diddy’s and we didn’t go because, again, we ran out of clean clothes, and needed showers and sleep. That was stupid, because I never got to go to Diddy’s house in all the years that followed because, as I was soon to find out, I would be stuck covering Ultra for the next 12 years in a row. Diddy would not have minded. Diddy’s house is always full of party animals who haven’t showered and need sleep. Fuck.
Anywho. Joel and I ran Fresh Wet Paint for a few more years. Shout out my FWP family. We’re still family to this day, and it’s because of my experience with FWP that I was able to secure a gig freelancing for the Miami New Times when I graduated college in spring of 2011.
Come March 2012, I was assigned my first trip covering Ultra Music Festival as a member of the press. It felt like a huge accomplishment, and I didn’t really trust that it was real until I entered the grounds.
There I was, returning to the place where it all began only seven years earlier. I was a professional music journalist walking into a three-day music festival not just for free, but getting paid! It was magical. My dreams were coming true.
Unfortunately, I was also completely exhausted and alone, crying in a crowd of thousands while sweaty frat bros on drugs shoved me in their haste to get to the main stage.
Wait, what? How did I get here??
Further Reading: Fool's Gold Miami: A-Trak Ignores Exclusivity Contracts, Rocks (Sorta) Secret Set (Miami New Times, March 2012)
Well, I was 24 at the time and really overzealous to be covering my first WMC as a professional freelancer of the Miami New Times. I agreed to cover parties every night from Wednesday to Sunday, even though I lived in Ft. Lauderdale and didn’t know anyone in Miami who could let me crash. That meant I was out partying, drinks and all, until 4 a.m. every morning, then driving 30 minutes home, waking up at 6 a.m. and filing my reviews so they could be published by the required 9 a.m. deadline.
It was fun. Seriously. I loved every irresponsible second, but by Friday evening’s first day of Ultra, every nerve in my body was about to burst into flames. I was hungry, completely depleted of serotonin and also really, really desperate to do a good job.
Ultra had exploded in my absence, becoming the first glimpse of the festival we all know today. Seven massive stages strewn across Bayfront Park, some 50,000 people entering the gates each day. My phone signal wasn’t working, and all I wanted to do was find my friends. Eventually I did find them at the front left of Digitalism’s DJ set or Treasure Fingers or something, and the torrent of nu disco washed away all my fear and sadness.
Me at Ultra 2016
That was the second year Justice played Ultra. I saw them headline in 2008, and it was amazing, but in 2012, they were playing the main stage as it exists now (albeit slightly smaller).
My favorite memory of Ultra to date was during their set on Sunday (always Sunday, because † Cross). I’d started the set at the front of the stage with some cool industry people I’d met that Wednesday, but then I realized they were gonna play “We Are Your Friends,” and I really wanted to be with my actual friends.
On my way moving back through the crowd, I came across a freight truck parked in the middle of the field. Ostensibly, it was there because it housed all the parts of the stage once the thing came apart, but now it was just parked there in the crowd, chillin’.
I decided to climb onto the hood and take in the view of Justice and their wall of Marshall amps glowing over a crowd of some 10,000 people. I was alone up there, high as fuck on being a professional fucking music journalist getting paid to take it all in, getting away with a bad thing while my favorite band play headbangers to a bunch of EDMers. It was incredible, and a feeling I’ll never forget.
Further Reading: The Seven Ravers You Meet at Ultra Music Festival (Miami New Times, March 2012 [Editor’s note: This was my first viral listicle that directly contributed to the growth of my career. Lol, I was a satire list queen for the next few years.])
About three songs later, security yelled at me to get down, and I finished the set with my friends, so it was all good. I also saw Kraftwerk that year on the live stage, and Neon Indian, and Miike Snow, and 2manydjs. It was great!
Then I went and did the same fucking thing every March for 10 years.
Yes, I had moved to Miami by 2013, and that made my life a little easier, but I was still overzealously covering every party I could from Wednesday to Sunday, drinking and not sleeping much, losing my voice and pushing myself to the limit like a rave-baby psycho.
Still, the hustle paid off. I’d made a name for myself with this coverage, and each year, a bigger publication wanted to hire me—the apparent preeminent dance music journalist in Miami—to cover Ultra. That’s how I started writing at Billboard, which became my main source of freelance income from 2015 until the COVID outbreak in, yes, March 2020.
Further Reading: Ultra Music Festival Crosses Over: 10 Highlights From a Star-Studded Weekend (Billboard, March 2015)
It became common knowledge among my friends that I was not to be bothered this week. I was going to fucking war, and I was probably going to lose my phone and my voice and my last inch of sanity.
I think the worst year was 2016, which is ironic because it was the year I lived across the street from the festival, which meant I could actually go home any time I wanted to use the bathroom or eat something real. I remember my bestie and roommate Jordan trying to talk to me come Sunday morning, and I was just so frustrated and over-tired that I couldn’t really form words to speak, choosing instead to roar like a feral animal and kick a chair over in the living room.
Me and bestie/mentor Jose Duran at Ultra 2016. I look happy, but I’m insane.
I think that year was really hard because I was covering Ultra for two outlets at the same time, turning in two stories every morning and still going to bed at like, 4 a.m. I was the main writer at Billboard Dance by then, and Red Bull wanted me to cover UMF for their music publication, too.
This is incredibly unethical and not something anyone in journalism should do, but I told my editors the plan and they understood the money-grab hustle. I just had to turn in different coverage angles and copy, and I maaaay have left my name off the Red Bull pieces? Honestly, I don’t remember how I pulled it off, but I did get paid, and I guess that was worth needing to spend a full week recovering?
Eh, that money is gone now, so who knows?
Further Reading: 12 Best Things We Saw at Ultra 2016 (Red Bull, March 2016)
(LOL, I just found the coverage. It was the other way around. I kept my name off the Billboard coverage and put my name on the Red Bull pieces. Holy fucking shit, I will never do that ever again in my life, wow. Don’t be like me kids. That shit is not okay.)
Further Reading: Ultra Music Festival 2016 Day 1 Highlights: DJ Snake, Martin Garrix, Carl Cox & More (Billboard Dance, March 2016)
I was there in 2019 when Ultra went totally off the rails and held its doomed three-day event on Virginia Key. I was one of those poor pieces of shit who had to walk across the bridge at 2 in the morning, trying not to get hit by oncoming highway traffic. It was awful, and that was the only time in my career that I skipped the last day of Ultra, because I just couldn’t fucking face that shit show again.
Of course, I wasn’t there in 2020 and 2021 when Ultra was canceled because of COVID, but I was there last year when it returned triumphant to Bayfront Park, its rightful and honestly only sensible home.
And yes, I was there a week ago, for my 10th consecutive year covering Ultra.
It was weird. It felt heavy this year, a whole full-circle moment—which if you’re counting, is my second full-circle moment with Ultra. I’ve literally been to Ultra so many times, I have made two full walks around the metaphorical block. Jeeeesus christ.
I’m back in Ft. Lauderdale, which meant that, just like in 2012, I was back to driving 30 minutes to and from the festivities.
I’m also re-learning how to represent myself and my personal brand, making the most of Miami Music Week as a means to get the word out about this newsletter and my on-site video interviews, using the adorable stickers I rush-ordered to pass out, kinda like the business cards we made for Fresh Wet Paint in 2010.
I did it right this time, though. I did start working earlier in the week, setting up back-to-back interviews for that Billboard piece about MMW as early as Tuesday, though I didn’t go down to Miami to cover an event until Thursday. I also only had one beer that night, and I left the venue at 2, so I went to bed by 3—and there weren’t any 9 a.m. deadlines to meet.
On Friday, I sat on a panel hosted by LP Giobbi and Femme House, speaking about the importance of allyship and equity in the dance music scene. I had managed to keep my voice for it, and I had taken care of myself enough to say smart things. I was credited on the flyer as Kat Bein from Kat Calls, and that was really cool.
My bestie Jaime is now head of Ultra’s PR, so I don’t even go to Ultra like I used to. Now I get to bring a friend or two with me, and she made sure I was hooked up with ADA access and gave me golf cart rides whenever she wasn’t already disposed (because of course, I’m still recovering from knee surgery. Nothing says “you’re old, bitch” like being at Ultra after knee surgery).
Further Reading: Kat Says: “Sorry For Party Rockin’” (March 2023)
But it was cool, because I was there with Joel! Our first time being at Ultra together, 13 years after launching our blog at WMC. We watched Eric Prydz’ Holo, and it was mind blowing, and again, I was drinking lots of water and mostly treating myself pretty nicely.
I went all three days, and I had a blast of a time, meeting up with old friends and making new ones. My favorite part is getting to pal around with other journalists and show them around, making them all stop and pay respects to my deceased goldfish, GoldenBoy, who I buried between three trees in front of the main stage.
I think it means a lot to me to show people around, because I know how intense and overwhelming it can be if you don’t know your way. You don’t want to end up exhausted and crying as sweaty bros bump into you, wondering where your life went wrong. You want to have a good time and reconnect with the silly, over-the-top joy of rave culture. Or, well, I guess that’s really what I want to do.
Ultra, Miami Music Week and Winter Music Conference mean a lot to me, I guess—even though it feels like an incredibly fraught relationship. It’s kind of like having a little brother or something. Like, I get to talk shit about Ultra, but you don’t, because that’s my family, and that’s just how family works.
Me and my friends at Ultra 2023
After so many years covering the same fucking thing, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to write. I mean, 10 years of consistent coverage. What else is there to say?
Turns out, something pretty good. I wrote this essay about “mainstream” and “underground” culture, using Ultra as the medium to explore what has become a rather bogus culture war among the electronic music scene. I think it’s a lot like something I’d write for this newsletter, and I’m really excited that my Billboard editor published the piece.
Further Reading: Ultra Music Festival 2023: What Does ‘Underground’ Even Mean Anymore? (Billboard, March 2023)
It’s actually doing really well on the site. I found out Pete Tong has been sharing the link among his friends as a “fun read,” which is pretty fuckin’ nuts, tbh, especially considering I had no idea what I was gonna write until 4 p.m. that Monday.
I’m really glad I went this year, but I still don’t know what I can possibly say in the future. Maybe next year I’ll finally take a year off and go to SXSW or something, or maybe I’ll just keep covering Miami Music Week and Ultra Music Festival until I die. Maybe I’ll be buried next to GoldenBoy in front of the main stage, and young music journalists will come to pay their respects to me.
I hope Tiesto will still be headlining.
Wow, for someone who doesn’t know what there is to say about Ultra, I sure said a lot!
Thanks for reading and walking with me down memory lane. If you enjoyed this essay and haven’t already joined the paid tier of this newsletter, please consider it supporting my insanity by doing so! If you do, I will reach out to you personally and send you a Super Kat World sticker. They’re cute! You’re cute! We’re cute!
Alsooo
It wasn’t enough for me to cover Miami Music Week and Ultra Music Festival. I also needed to conduct and turn in an interview with Elderbrook, celebrating his recently released, sophomore studio album Little Love! That got published today on Billboard. Check it out!
Coming Up Next
Hey! Did you see my email blast last week? Kat Calls is back, and season four is off to a great start thanks to my special guest, Moon Boots!
If you missed the show, you can rewatch it now on Twitch, or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel and look out for the official upload coming Wednesday.
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
Eyy, them playlists are updated, bruh. They even include a new rendition of Moby’s “Extreme Ways,” played with a full band and choral backing! FULL. CIRCLE.
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!