This fine tale of rave despair was contributed by DJ Tamerax. You can find out more about Tamerax and his music at Tamerax.com

When I was living in Ottawa, there was a small group of us who all shared basically the same birthday, give or take a day. We usually ended up partying together at one place or another.  In this group was a fellow Ottawa promoter who we shall refer to as JK who had worked with me on a couple of other parties in the past. Now I didn’t really want to do anything more with JK because our last few ventures had not turned out so well - JK was somewhat on the sketchy side. Money going missing, venues not getting booked, flyers never getting printed. The usual things a bad promotions partner does.  So, suffice to say, it was not in my best interests to work with him.

I deceided to throw an event this year for my birthday, and I invited the group (all of whom were either promoters or DJs) to play at my event. The keyword there was MY event. Now, I should clarify that I did go into this alone. I had the help of my close friend Ryan who worked at a local sound  rental company and had an interest in promoting events. Also included was my friend Colin who offered to help as best he could.

I got a message from JK saying he had a venue we could use that was out of Ottawa so so we had no bylaws to worry about and most importantly, it was FREE! The venue was JK’s friend’s (we’ll call him P) cabin on the shore of the Ottawa river about 45 minutes from Ottawa just past a small town called Kasabasawa.  It was basically a 2 floor cabin that was more or less empty save for some random furniture.  The garage was covered and faced out onto a field which would make for a nice main area - plus,the basement was large and could easily be a secondary room. The top floor was “reserved” by P and you’ll see why momentarily.  The other side of the garage was a one story drop and then a small hill which eventually ran down to the river bank. The cabin itself was not on the main road but rather about 1 km down a one lane dirt road that lead towards the river. There was only 2 other houses out this far, and I was assured no one would be living there at the time of the party. Ideally, this seemed like a blessing from heaven despite the distance issue but hell, the party was about 2-3 weeks away at that point and we needed something fast.

I had forgotten the cardinal rule of raves: Nothing is free. Ever.