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“Hi Kat! Justttt in case you happen to be in NY ”
That’s the email I got on Wednesday, February 15, at 2:39 pm ET. It was an invite to come to the Skrillex, Fred Again.. and Four Tet (who call themselves the Pangbourne House Mafia) concert at Madison Square Garden. It hit my inbox about two hours after the 20,789-capacity show sold out in three minutes, and I was floored.
My invite wasn’t predicated on promised coverage for Billboard or Spin or anyone but myself. People were begging for tickets to this show, and the record label was just gonna give me one to come check it out, even though I lived a three-hour flight away?
Further Reading: Kat Says: “Skrillex Is Back! Did He Ever Leave? The Legend Continues”
I sat on my couch for two hours and did nothing but feel super high on a rush of “you did it” chemicals, glowing with pride that the last 10 years of work had earned me the right to cover—for myself—a monumental performance that could easily go down as one of the most influential and noteworthy of the calendar year, and I hadn’t even asked for the opp. It came to me.
I panic-bought round-trip plane tickets from Fort Lauderdale to New York City, and booked a hotel an eight-minute walk from the arena. I secured a plus-one for my friend, and made all the arrangements I could to ensure a safe and comfortable experience for myself.
Then my surgeon told me some 12 hours later that I should in no way be getting on a flight that Friday, because the results of my MRI had come back, and it turned out I needed knee surgery ASAP. How did Tuesday sound?
That was without a doubt the lowest point in my post-injury depression.
While the rest of the electronic music-loving world Tweeted and think-pieced its way through a ravenous exploration of the hottest new supergroup’s week-long “takeover” of the Big Apple, complete with a livestreamed pop-up set that totally shut down Times Square and the back-to-back release of two full-length Skrillex albums, I sunk even deeper into the human-sized hole that had become a permanent fixture of my couch.
While my friends texted and DMed me their increasingly euphoric takes on “the most game-changing album roll out of all time,” I silenced my phone and played Paper Mario: Origami King for another 12 hours, anxiously checking to see if the hospital had called so I could ask what kind of anesthesia I’d be given.
And while the industry-at-large gathered in the streets and social media, united by the thrill of watching music history play out right before their eyes, I just wanted to be left the fuck alone.
I know. So dramatic, right? Ughh. But depression isn’t a reasonable response to anything.
I wouldn’t choose bitter hopelessness over feeling good about what was almost an ecstatic win. I’d still earned the opportunity, even if I couldn’t take it, and I could have smiled and been one of those happy internet kids digesting the updates as they uploaded, but no. I just…couldn’t.
The list of things I could do was really short.
I could use crutches to hop to the bathroom a few times a day.
I could slowly slide myself in and out of the bathtub to take the world’s saddest excuse for a shower if I left my vanity stool in front of the toilet, then pat myself dry if I laid my towel over said stool.
I could refill my water bottle and serve myself microwaved plates of food thanks to the fact that I’d put my couch right next to my kitchen counter, because I couldn’t actually carry anything while using crutches otherwise.
I could ask Alexa to turn the lights on and off. Fuck yes, technology.
Sure, technically I could do all sorts of other things. I could keep working from home, since I work remotely and write on my laptop all day anyway, but without any kind of exercise or fresh air or daylight on my face, I kind of lost the motivation to do anything more than the bare minimum.
Unfortunately, I didn’t lose the voice in the back of my head that said, “if you really wanted to be successful, you’d use this down time to edit those interview videos piling up from October,” or “if you weren’t such a loser piece of shit, you’d use this extra time to keep on track with your newsletters,” or “maybe instead of feeling bad for yourself, you should call your friends or your family, or use your weights to do some arm exercises, or read a book or something, literally anything other than suck.”
Nope. Nope. Nope. You know what’s fun? Paper Mario: Origami King. That shit fucks. Let’s eat a whole pint of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups and play that until we forget the world exists.
Author’s note: I realize this essay is getting to be a bit like a Cure song, in that the intro is going on for six solid minutes before the narrator even says a word about what it is we’re doing here. We’re just spacing out, swimming in chin-deep waters of ethereal guitar and heavy mood. It’s a vibe, but lemme back up a smidge.
Me, dressed up as “Neon Liger” for Halloween in 2011.
It was Feb. 3, a Friday, and I was on my way to Gainesville, Fl., to meet up with my college buddies, some of whom I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. It was my first time coming back for the annual Neon Liger reunion since 2020. We were gonna be stoopid and party for the next 48 hours, and I was gonna have my first sip of alcohol in 34 days.
I’d earned a little lettin’ of the loose. My January had been awesome. I was invigorated, having built a routine that saw me finally publish my first on-site interview video and get into a healthy cycle of hot yoga and exercise class four times a week.
I’d been taking care of my grandma all month, and had successfully dropped off her rent check before hitting the highway. On Sunday, I was gonna fly from Gainesville to visit my dad for his birthday. My phone interview with LP Giobbi had just gone super well, and there weren’t any day-job fires to put out. I was living my best life, and pulling it off!
“Ahh, I wish I was gonna be there!” My friend Jordan was on the phone, keeping me company through the drive.
“Hey, there’s still time,” I said in my sweetest peer pressure-y tone. “It’s Friday, and you’re only a four-hour drive away.”
“Yeah, but I have work at 8 in the morning on Sunday.”
“You know what 22-year-old Jordan would do? She would say ‘fuck it’ and go, and take drugs so she could stay up all night and drive back in time for her shift in the morning.”
“Oh my god,” she laughed. “You’re right.”
“I can’t believe this is the 15 year anniversary. I keep wondering if this is the year all the kids are gonna be like, ‘why is that middle aged woman twerking and yelling at us?’”
“Nooo way! You’re still cool!”
“Yeah, nah, I’m just kidding. Someone’s gotta teach these kids how to fuckin’ rage.”
“Haha, until you get a weird pain in your knee.”
WELP!
Man! I was having the best time. We had a pre-party in Gainesville’s Arcade Bar downtown, and as my bestie Joel DJed in the alleyway, more and more friends appeared. With each sip of low ABV sour beer and pull of a clove cigarette, I transformed into the rainbow-colored party animal who once had to be dragged under a bathroom stall because I’d fallen asleep while taking a piss—in that very Arcade Bar bathroom!
(That was at the first Neon Liger reunion in 2017, and I came-to in the backseat of my car at 4 a.m., startled by the sound of a homeless woman knocking on my window, shouting “baby girl! You can’t sleep here. There’s cops!”)
At 35 years old, I had definitely grown up enough that I would not black out in any toilets, but I was still young enough to defy the poor bouncer who told me I “wasn’t allowed” to twerk next to the DJ booth. It’s not his fault he wasn’t there in 2009 and doesn’t realize I’m the only person allowed to dance on the speakers, but he’ll figure it out, and it’ll be fine.
It was soooo cute when the venue staff came over and were like “turn the music off, it’s past last call,” and the crowd of kids all started shouting “one more song! One more song!” I looked at Vijay, the man who is ostensibly “in charge” whenever Neon Liger debauchery is at hand, and he was all thumbs up and “just do it” energy.
“Joel, Vijay says play,” I said, not entirely trying to piss off the angry bouncer who was, like, really not sure that was allowed, but we did it! And it was great! And then we all took shots and went back to Vijay’s house and played Justice and MSTRKRFT on vinyl and didn’t sleep until like 4 am or something.
The next night at the actual Neon Liger 15 shitshow, I put on my best color-blocking cartoon costume and channeled the energy of an angst-fueled 22-year-old me.
I’ve written about this extensively, but if you’re new to my life story, Neon Liger was the Saturday weekly party when I was in college that I almost never missed. I started going there by myself, a stranger in a new college town, and it’s there that I made a lot of the friendships that give me life to this day.
It was a fucking disaster of a good time, packing 200-plus kids into a grimy hole that’s now been converted into a “hip French bistro.” I can’t imagine eating anything that comes out of that place.
“The floor would be covered in sweat, drinks, God knows what else,” Jimbo, who founded Liger with Vijay back in the day, told me in 2018. “We used to have people use a four-foot squeegee before mopping just to get the fluid out of the club. It was just so many people going crazy in one space.”
Further Reading: Remembering Neon Liger, Florida's Most Epic Party (Miami New Times, 2018)
Liger was one of those tiny clubs that helped give birth to the EDM scene; a small but important island on a nascent touring circuit that turned nerdy DJs into whiskey-stained rock stars. I graduated college and moved back to south Florida in 2011, and Neon Liger eventually stopped being a weekly. Now we get together for one big Neon Liger party every year on its anniversary, and it feels like my personal mission to show the new generation of kids how rowdy a party can actually be.
I mean, someone has to fight the K-fueled tech house monotony. I volunteer as tribute.
Me screaming at children at Neon Liger 15
Look, as far as I know, none of the actual kids thought I was embarrassing. I get to play MC at these Liger reunions, and I was having the time of my life rock-star sliding on the stage, leading chants on the microphone, jumping on the giant speakers in the front and shaking my ass in everyone’s faces.
Vijay told me the venue staff axed the idea of me shooting everyone with champagne guns, but I did get a hold of some hard seltzers during Joel’s prime-time set and started pouring them into the mouths of everyone in the first few rows.
I was doing a good job. The kids were getting the message, jumping on the stage and making the responsible parties among us reasonably uncomfortable. I went outside for a clove, and this girl was like “omg, I just want to tell you how incredible your energy is. How did you get started dancing like this?”
“Well, uh, I mean, I just started showing up to this party every Saturday and now they let me do whatever I want.”
When Joel played “Rumble” by Skrillex and Fred Again.., I grabbed the cryogun and started shooting it in time with the wicka-wicka-wicka breakdown, you know what I’m talking about (and if you don’t, read this). I was feelin’ myself pretty hard, so I was swinging the cryogun around and then I kinda just tossed it when I was done with it. Then I felt really bad, because it broke.
I tried to fix it buuuut, that shit was fubar. It still shot cryo, just not with a concentrated stream. I was all “god damn it, Vijay’s gonna kill me. Fuck. Why am I such an asshole?”
But some 30 minutes later, while I was back up on the giant speakers, doing whatever it is I was doing, I felt the incredibly jarring sensation of my right kneecap sliding distinctly to the left, and I fell right off the speaker and to the ground.
Me dancing on the speaker, mere moments before disaster.
I am such a good faller. I didn’t fuck up my wrists or my head or my butt, but god damn did my knee hurt. Gingerly, I got to my feet and gave a thumbs up to the kids. I’m not dead! But I did need assistance to get off the stage where I was immediately given a trash bag full of ice.
My knee was not good, but on the upside, there’s no way Vijay was gonna be mad at me for breaking the cryogun now. I’d broken myself, and that had to be worse.
I was in denial about how bad it was. I kept telling myself I could stay, maybe just sit on the speaker, but still be able to say something sweet at the end of the night about how much this party means to us all, and that everyone there is a part of the Neon Liger family now, then shout the party’s closing tagline that “if you’re not working here or fucking someone that works here, get the fuck out.”
I stood outside with my friend Manley for a bit, trying to pretend I was fine. Some guy came up to me and was like “Omg, your energy is amazing. You really connected with everyone in there. I’m running for office, and I’d love to know how to get in contact with you.”
“What the fuck was that?” Manley said when he walked away.
“Idk, guess he wants to twerk the vote or something.”
When I finally flew the white flag, Manley helped me into a Lyft and we went back to Vijay’s where I muscle-memory demolished the original Mario Bros. game and generally underestimated how fucked up my knee really was.
We had a mini after party, drinking beer and watching Limp Bizkit’s Lollapalooza 2021 set on Vijay’s projector. (He was not mad about the 12-year-old cryogun, by the way. He just laughed and said “It was so rusted, it was bound to happen”).
When I woke up in the morning, my knee had swollen to double its size. Everyone was gone or asleep, and while Joel packed my suitcase before passing out, I still had to gather a few errant chargers and objects from different parts of the living room. My knee was screaming in pain, and by the time I got to the airport, I’d missed the flight to visit my dad for his birthday.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been more pathetic than I was in that moment, ugly-crying alone in an airport wheelchair, no one at the desk because the Gainesville airport has all of four fucking employees, and the people that check you in are the same people that handle the baggage. Thank god Vijay was there to pick me up, and my friends Keenan and Jocelyn were able to take me to the emergency care clinic and give me a ride back to Ft. Lauderdale, stopping at Walmart to buy me crutches and ibuprofen.
My friends really showed the fuck up. Someone was always there to cook me food, keep me company, send a friendly text, play a round of online Mario Party. Still, whenever I was alone, I couldn’t help but get lost in the monotony.
I ate, slept, worked and spent every moment of the next month laid out on my couch; the same couch I was so proud of buying just five months earlier. Boy, am I glad I got a comfy one. Proper investment, there.
Six days later, I started to lose my sense of reality. I felt like I was 12 years old again, staying up late to watch Toonami over summer vacation. Mostly, I just got really upset, because I was so helpless and in so much pain, and it didn’t seem to be for any good reason.
“You must have fallen really hard,” the doctors all said to me.
“I didn’t fall! I was just dancing!”
How the hell could I have messed myself up so bad doing something that I loved? I mean, what did this mean? Was I not supposed to go so hard? Was I even going hard? The fuck?
Dancing is not just something I do for fun. It’s the way I let go and cope with my stress. It’s like therapy, or how church must feel for the highly devout. It’s the escape valve that lets out all the pent-up pressure so I can survive.
I thought it was healthy, but there I was, sinking into the woven fiber of hard pillows, dissecting my own masochistic past, uncovering a sad pattern of self-abuse that maybe kind of sort of led to this moment.
Is it healthy that my idea of “dancing” is throwing myself into the floor so hard that I’m covered in bruises; that I dislocate my knee simply being myself? For sure, I’ve always used pain as a means to control my emotions, and I like the feeling of obliterating myself until the anxious inner monologue disappears. The same reason I cut myself as a teenager is probably the same reason I like harsh noise breakdowns in a DJ set. I feel at home and safe when things are teetering at extremes.
I haven’t cut myself in more than a decade, and I stopped using drugs once all my favorite substances turned on me and made my anxieties worse (although it did take a few rides on the rollercoaster to finally accept that I don’t wanna feel like that anymore).
I joke, but I truly enjoy the feeling of settling into my middle age, learning to treat myself like a real human and not a rag doll that puts herself inside any and every chaos tornado just because she knows how to weather the storm—but dancing? Who am I if not completely devoid of inhibition, bouncing every part of my body until my muscles literally seize and I can’t breathe, channeling blissful numbness set to a broken four-four beat?
Further Reading: Kat Says: “The Prime Time of Your Life, Now, Live It—Again”
I started taking life coach sessions about a year ago, which is basically the same thing as therapy, I think, except my life coach isn’t a licensed professional and is instead a dance punk legend whose band is on hiatus.
He’s kind of over the whole, “get on stage and bleed yourself dry in the name of art” thing, and is really inspired by self-care and mental health awareness, and is dedicated to bringing the wisdom of true growth to people like himself, or me, or anyone who’s open to hearing it.
“Music lifers.” That’s what he calls us, and it’s true. Music is my career, my hobby, my obsession, my escape. It has been since I first fell in love with a Beatles greatest hits cassette tape at 5 years old, and it will be when I make everyone play “One More Time” at my funeral.
It was really important for me to lose my shit to a soundtrack of bloghouse in my 20s, and I guess it’s really important that I figure out how to keep that energy going in a somewhat less insane, more body-conscious manner in my 30s.
I do want to be that kooky 70-year-old at the rave. Honestly, I don’t think I have a choice, but there aren’t a lot of folks modeling what it looks like to be a healthy music lifer in the entertainment. All the biopics are about rock stars who burned bright and died of drug overdoses by the time they were my age, or the documentaries just kind of end with the high point and then the “scene” fizzles out.
Everyone talks about Iggy Pop diving off stages and rolling around in broken glass, but what happened between the heroin addiction and moving to Miami Beach?
I like following Annie Mac for this reason. The stalwart DJ and former BBC Radio 1 host is a 44-year-old mother who retired from her illustrious position to spend more time with her kids and get back to touring. She throws these parties called “Before Midnight,” where her DJ set starts at 7 p.m. and ends when you’d think it would, in line with the name. She also started a podcast called Changes, which features interviews with creatives examining how they face and overcome the most pivotal shifts in their lives.
She’s just a cool human setting a really cool example, and I can point to that and feel like, “yeah. That’s real. That’s a good place to be in 10 years time,” and that’s an important thing to have, because I feel we’re all waking up to the reality of mental and physical health, and how self-care goes deeper than bubble baths and face masks and a vacation here and there.
Oh gosh, there I go again, disappearing into my stream of consciousness and taking you with me. Do you want to know what actually happened to me that night at Liger, and why I was so laid out for a month that I ended up questioning the fragile threads of my existence and ultimately needed surgery?
The final prognosis was that my knee dislocated while I was dancing, probably because I’d twerked the fucking speaker off its support like a raving lunatic. Even though my patella popped back into place right away, it did chip two small fragments of cartilage clean off, and those inch-long pieces had to be arthroscopically removed or else they’d continue to float around in my joint, causing who knows what type of long-term damage.
Miraculously, I didn’t tear anything, and since my surgery, my recovery has been pretty positive. I’m not really depressed anymore, due in large part to the fact that I was cleared by my surgeon to go to the Ed Banger 20-year anniversary party in London, which served as a rowdy reminder than I’m not dead, and I will dance again, and music is still fun, and there are people out there who get it and feel the way I feel.
See also: Kat Says: “Not Even Knee Surgery Can Keep Me From Tthhee Ppaarrttyy”
I spent that whole night sober, not a single drop of anything, my spirited fandom fueled only by how much I fucking love that music.
I’m not entirely sober. I’ve had a few beers since then, but my relationship to alcohol and nightlife is slowly changing. It has to. I’ve gone so hard for so long, my body is just tired, and that’s fair. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean I’m done. It doesn’t mean I have to stop twerking—but maybe I’ll stay off the speakers.
I am not going to stop covering the electronic music scene. I’m not going to stop going to raves or flying halfway across the world in search of the next elusive “perfect party.” I’m a god-damn lifer, and I’ve got to take care of myself and make sure I don’t miss out on the story, on the experience, and the otherworldly sense of community and spiritual release.
I’m in my Scarlet O’Hara era, fist raised to the heavens on some “they’re not going to lick me” type shit. As God as my witness, I’m gonna live through this, and when it’s all over, I’ll never miss the Pangbourne House Mafia again.
And shit, maybe I didn’t make it to NYC, but I am finally walking without crutches, and the record label did send me a t-shirt. I guess that’s actually pretty cool.
Wow! What a ride. If I have any advice for you, it’s not to dislocate your knees, but the adventure continues this week, because it is officially Miami Music Week in Miami, and I’ve got ADA access for Ultra Music Festival and more parties to choose from than the grocery store has modified corn starch.
I know for sure I’m gonna check out the Brownies & Lemonade shindig with Madeon and San Holo and friends, and I’m speaking on a panel hosted by LP Giobbi and Femme House this Friday at the W South Beach. I and a bunch of folks more important than me will discuss equity in the dance music scene, and it’s free to attend. If you’re in town, you should come say hi and rsvp at the link below!
ALLYSHIP + AMPLIFICATION: CREATING EQUITY IN DANCE MUSIC
Alsooo
Hey! Do you want to actually read about the Skrillex, Fred Again.. and Four Tet at Madison Square Garden and not just mire in my bitching? My friend and editor Katie Bain wrote about the heart-warming experience for Billboard Dance. You should read her story.
And while the entire electronic dance world descends upon Miami to treat our city like its breezier Vegas (which it is not, people, we have culture), perhaps take a moment to read about the true Miami scene and its thriving, emergent voices via this beautiful profile by Sofia Andrade in the Miami New Times.
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.
Once again, I have written a 4k+ word essay that got deeply personal, so I’m going to spare your inbox and just let you know that the playlists have been updated, so go and check those out. I promise the songs are DANK AF.
Catch you next week with another long-form and probably over-emotional take on what MMW is all about! Love ya! Besos! Later!
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!