Hey, the big day has come, America is waking up to anew era & one hell of a party! Alongside Washington & America, our outpost in Brighton, the coolest town in the UK, will be celebrating too.

To celebrate & as a thank you present for all our members we have posted a special page on Feel The Dream containing interactive remixes of Obama’s speech which you can remix yourself, you’ll find them on the Remix Now tab of the site.

Please also send in all your blogs, pictures & videos of the big day & your celebrations to the site, where they will get rime positioning on a special page.

Well, alongside that…what we can say that hasn’t already been said?

It’s such a momentous time, made all the more so that, even saddled with such an ominous legacy, for once we have a US President who by his very nature represents people of all races. Much more important though, a President who is actually a leader rather than a mere politician and a man who actually stands to inspire change from the ground up and who for once encourages rather than stands in the way of those that want to build a better world. It is not just America, but the world at large which is now faced with the facts that it is they that must play a part in this change.

Coming the day after the Martin Luther King holiday makes for a really significant historical resonance.

Congratulations America, we’ll certainly be raising a glass (or seven), we’ll be partying with you.

Give Chance a Piece,

Feel The Dream

Happy Martin Luther King Day to America from the world.
In celebration of the hope and change starting over the next couple of days, Feel The Dream has launched a special project where you can add your voice to Dr King’s famous words. Just listen to the video on our front page and yell the climactic words “Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty We Are Free At Last”. Record it & send your MP3 to feelit@feelthedream.org & we will add it to a very special mix. Include the names of all those taking part, we promise the first 100 will be typed in gold lettering & all of you will be included in the role call as pioneers when we send it to the ‘Highest Office’ (we think you know where we’re going here;)
You can all do it, it’s easy…. everyone can sing in the shower (or with a few Jack Daniels), so take your laptop into the washroom or share something nice with your friends If you’re not shy you can send us a picture or better yet a video.

Enjoy this ‘Cause for Celebration’. Enjoy it friends and enjoy it with your friends wherever they are. Make music, have a party, dance… whatever. Just yell ‘Free At Last’ as we leave an era bent on conflict rather than resolution. Let’s celebrate & celebrate ‘On Purpose!’

This project starts today & will culminate on the anniversary of the speech on August the 28th this year.

Bring in your friends, DJ’s & Artists from all over the world. Collaboration is the key, celebration is the goal, working together & with people such as Amnesty is the way.

Please support them… they are continually at the rock-face defending people who’s lives we cannot imagine, let’s not forget that it’s due to work by people such as them that we are made aware of injustice, whether it be to individuals or indeed whole nations.

It is your group, it’s our world.

Let Freedom Ring!

Feel the Dream’s main site has temporarily shed its colourful theme for a decidedly more somber outlook in sympathy for the innocent men, women & especially the children currently suffering in Gaza. It is to be hoped that this change of theme is short-lived, one which we hope will last hours, not days & God forbid weeks! We can only watch, protest and petition our representatives as the situation unfolds.

A video of Brian Eno has been recently posted on our site in which he talks calmly, lucidly but nevertheless frankly about the horrors being perpetrated right now and the totally disproportionate attacks on a people already imprisoned by walls & denied basic human rights & needs.

Our site supports Amnesty International, an organisation to whom we in the West owe so much thanks for their consistent work on behalf of us… and that means all of us… human beings & their rights everywhere. We urge their support throughout the world.

In the words of Martin Luther King ‘Let Freedom Ring’ and let it ring NOW for the people suffering so barbarically in Gaza. There is no doubt that where he alive today the word ‘Muslims’ would have had equal emphasis with ‘Jews & Gentiles’ in his famous speech and he would be fighting and motivating change with all his might on behalf those who are currently suffering such abominal atrocities.

That was the strap-line they were putting on the anti Obama advert I saw as I was watching ‘Larry King Live’ on the in-flight TV channel from Memphis to San Francisco, I saw it several times too as I whisked in & out of my hotel rooms …. if you wanna get some idea of what an aggressive political advertising campaign is just check this out, McCain Anti Obama Campaign Ad.

Or why not give this one a go ….. Too Radical, Too Risky!

And it was these aggressive smear campaigns that… to my European eyes & from what I heard in general talk on a day to day basis,  very much proved McCain’s undoing, prompting further ads in defence & defiance of these blatant infamatory below the belt attacks… like this one McCain False Claims. But for me the moment this negative campaining blew up in his face, was this glorious bit of television… hey….you might ‘All be Joe The Plumbers’ out there… (who as I’m sure you’re aware didn’t turn up for McCain’s call to arms…. he has now got an agent & has stopped plumbing to launch a career as a country singer)…. but when you spit into the wind, sometime it’s bound to blow back in your face …. as this wonderful old lady proves to such a degree that McCain has to grab back the mike from her …and damned quick…. & actually jump to Obama’s defence

Well it just gives you some idea of the bare knuckle fighting that was going on… and… on …. and ongoing day in day out. For me it only served to heighten Obama’s stature, the claims were widely accepted as blatant distortion & the subject of much negative press for McCain as, consistently Obama just kept his cool & kept rolling confidently ahead.

It reminded me of why I decided to put the phrase ‘Obama, A Cause for Celebration’ right in the centre of the Feel The Dream website, a site dedicated to celebrating freedom and to dancing to the prolific use of Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech in Club Culture.

The sea change for me was another Larry King Live show, this time one that I had seen weeks earlier in a hotel in Germany. He was interviewing Michelle Obama and centering on the verbal assaults & accusations made against her…. she had after all said that ‘for the first time in her adult life, she was proud to be American’… booo hiss, what about this time Michelle, what about that? The phrase was turned around to make her seem fundamentally un-patriotic.

She didn’t miss a step…. not once retorting or throwing back a corresponding accusation in her defence. All she would say was that that these people were just doing their job, she saw them frequently, talked on good terms with them & that she & Barack felt no reason for animosity, there were too many other much more important things at hand.

That was the moment I decided to rescind on my decision never to have a political bias on the site and realised that if these principles had a chance of coming into power, we would truly have a ‘Cause for Celebration’. For the first time I started to see our all too familier confrontational ‘politics’ moving in another direction, which… on reflection I can only refer to as leadership.

By the time I got home from Germany I got the site hastily modified & started seriously thinking about getting out there to see it all for myself.

Even then, I refrained from publicising the site on this basis, preferring it to stand simply as a marker for a historic time. It is NOT a political lobbyist site and soon it’ll regain it’s proper emphasis on freedom, celebration, dance & music. But should Obama win??? Martin Luther King will have won too, and…. over the weeks his words will have again regained new emphasis & vigour… now with an added flavour…. the tangible reality that his dream has come a massive way forward in its potential for realisation.

There’s more to tell you about what went though my mind on that eight hour flight & the subsequent build to the climactic celebrations. But this post has gone on long enough.

These diaries are a reflection on a week or two which have taken me some time to digest & I’m glad to be writing them now with hindsight… at the time it was all I could do to bang out the odd ‘Twitter’ message, keep my eyes on the road, my hands upon the wheel & my little Facebook family… you guessed it… ‘Obama, A Cause for Celebration’, growing day by day.

I was collecting souveniers of Dia De Los Muertos , Beale St, the home of the blues & the Stax & Sun recording studios in Memphis & sketching out the beginning of a little ‘Road Trip Remix’ that’s still in the can.

And I was on holiday. And I’ve got the skulls to prove it

P@x

I’m sitting in a Delta Airline window seat on the way back from a really inspiring coupla days in Memphis Tennessee at an event in aid of Amnesty International called ‘Keeping the Dream Alive’ ….. many thanks to DJ Saturna, who you’ll all know is a key player in the whole ‘Feel The Dream’ scene.

I was in San Franscisco where the weather was DREADFUL &desperate to get as far away as possible from this all too English feeling, y’know, cold, damp…. only times 10! The girl in the hotel suggested Vegas, which seemed like fun, so we arranged all the flights & hotels & then just as I’m about to leave, Saturna (AKA Lorin) Facebooked me about the event…. now how could I POSSIBLY miss this??????? So there was an ……errrr quick change of plan!

Highway 101 quick to the airport to try to negotiate some kind of deal…… they refunded my ticket & before you know it I was booked on an 8 hour flight to Memphis Tennessee…… (& wondering if I’d completely lost my mind Plane left at 11.55 pm, touch down in Memphis about 9.00 am next morning… there’s some time difference, don’t ask me to work it out.
Suddenly I am recieving Tennessee hospitality & all fears of jet lag, sleep deprivation or rain was gone out the window. The sun was really shining in Memphis!

The event was in Tom Lee Park in which a group called circle up now, www.circleupnow.org, (really inspiring guys, do really interesting stuff) got a whole bunch of people to make an aerial shot of Martin Luther King’s face, they do this stuff all over the place….. & so we all lay down on the ground like perfect activists, looking up at the helicopters above taking our picture…….You can see the results here.

It was a great day & brought home something I’ve been increasingly noticing since I’ve been here. And that is the effect Obama is having on the people themselves, they’re really getting motivated for some radical change…. they’re gonna be not just supporting him or voting for him…… but civil rights, liberties and radical thought is coming back on strong. I can honestly say, I’ve never felt myself to be in such an inspiring time in America.

There’s more to come, let’s HOPE!

Having talked with a number of DJ, Promoters & Clubs we have decided to extend celebrations from Thursday the 29th of August through to the end of play the following Sunday the 31st.

This is because ….

a) Although many places have big Very BIG Thursday nights,  most clubs & DJs are preparing their events & sets for Friday & Saturday evening & besides,

b) Even on Thursdays… the night usually starts getting into its groove past 12:00pm

c) It gives us 3 more days to celebrate &

d) they can do it watching the sun go down at Cafe Del Mar.

Can anyone seriously disagree with a decision like that ?

Thought not….pass it on to all.

Give Chance A Piece

Love

The FeedtheDream Team

So, a coupla weeks on and the roller coaster effect is kicking in! Every day brings another move forward, another challange, another ‘how the fuck’re we gonna do this?’ thought & another solution. Sorry guys but this weekend is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit at a keyboard and get it out !

Feedback has been nothing but positive with encouraging signs of activity lined up for houseaddict.com , Amsterdam, London, we’re hoping Berlin, Ibiza & obviously our home turf in Brighton…. Want to get more feedback from the States.

BM-Soho Records putting the word out to all the DJs that shop there. Names being contacted as we speek…and we got a top PR company onboard brainstormin all through Friday …. there’s so many other things… you’ll know first as they happen.

Getting solid feedback from Danny Rampling ‘you have the right idealism mindset’ & Larry Heard’s blessing on the project has been really well… welcome … just trying to get the message out is the real challenge right now…but it will be done. Danny shares with us his lamentation of the banning of Righeous Knockside from Facebook… but RK’s time will come… our kind shall rise

Decided we at least owed you a goddam mix of our own, so sat down with J-Me Griffiths (Synthetik Voices, ex Hybrid) and put together our very own hour long version, running from ‘Back to My Roots’ through a series of classic ‘88 style & more contemporary chewns buildin’ up the vibe to Larry ’s classic ‘I Have A Dream’ as the climax…. but of course…. It’s there groovers … on our site & our myspace. Chooons!……but c’mon guys… do something better, we’re open to every interpretation.

Now we want a proper Brighton posse & are thinkin up ideal venues…

Gotta eat…. gotta go….more to come.

Feel The Dream

RK