wordplay by orange peel moses
image by Catherine Nguyen

     Belief is reality.  Probe an unimaginative paleontologist or three and they’ll probably insist that the dragons of fairytale infamy never actually pancaked villages, polluted skies, spelunked bat caves, roasted knights or even existed at all in the flesh & blood.  (Dinosaurs were their closest would-be genetic cousins, but weren’t yet blessed with the evolution of sideshow freaks to school them in the ABCs of hocking flammable loogies.)  Probe my buddy Betsy in Montreal, though, and she’ll pinky swear that mythical creatures are the only kind that really matter.  Goat-horned gods and unicorns.  Nubile nymphs and trickster imps.  Fortunately for the rest of you, that kind of evidence-free belief isn’t necessary in the case of two Saudi Aurora-based Dragons.
     Anyone who believes that raves went the way of the dinosaur hasn’t been to a Triad Dragons massive lately.  While most ex-rave promoters are now strictly nightclub promoters (if they’ve still got their sticky fingers in a pie at all), Triad Dragons still manage to pull off multiple massives every year, including Caffeine (currently at Fat City), and one of the most scenic electronica events on the entire planet—Global Dance Festival at Red Rocks.  Not that Triad doesn’t have its fingers in the club scene.  Global Fridays’ continued success at the Church (in cooperation with both Twenty40 and Old Norsk), averaging nearly 1,100 patrons weekly, clearly demonstrates that their promotional muscles can be flexed just as effectively in the weekly realm as well.  DC10, a brand new joint venture with Kostas K. and Michael Guerrero, will likely only further cement their winning record.
    John Le and John Lee, better known as DJ Dragon and DJ Trajikk respectively, have been pinning down Triad Dragons residencies for nearly seven years.  In the better part of a decade, they’ve been privileged with some of the choicest, most coveted prime time slots in all of Colorado, along with occasional others in places like California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Wyoming and even The Dominican Republic.  Dragon even got to rock Red Rocks’ main stage on his freaking birthday once, for crying out loud.
    “Global Dance ‘04.  Paul van Dyk got sick and didn’t make it.  My slot got bumped to a later time and I dropped a Martin Luther King a capella over ‘Airwave’ as the sun set and the visual screens came up.  It was perfectly timed and the crowd of 6,000 went ape sh!+”
    Talk about every DJ’s B-Day wet dream (whether they acknowledge it yet or not).  Opportunities of a lifetime like that are few and far between, especially for non-Triad residents.  Fortunately for Dragon, he’s known the production company’s owner Ha since they were pre-pubescent boys in junior high school.  In fact, the two played varsity tennis together all throughout high school.  Before Dragon could even beat match, they put on their first event, Event Horizon, at the Root in Boulder.

            “Ha and I decided to throw a party and we drew over 800 people to the event.  I couldn’t beat match for sh!+ but it worked out.  Five years later, I think I got it down.”

 
To be continued…

July 22nd @ Red Rocks

TriadDragons.com