by RAF KATIGBAK

Ask the Vitamin DJ Team to reminisce about their good ol' days of raving in the early '90s and you won't hear any tales about the night a massage circle changed their life or how they got, like, everyone at the party to sign their fun-fur pants. What you will hear are the kind of wild, drug-fuelled tales you're more likely to find in a Hunter S. Thompson novel than in a banal, PLUR-filled rave diary.

There's the story of how they laughed as a young Moby once ducked to avoid the cigarette smoke blown impertinently in his face, or how one member's torrid intercontinental love affair forced seminal Frankfurt techno label Harthouse to change their entire phone system, and then of course there's the tale of how a thick-headed Mix Master Morris came "this" close to a major Cozmik Kay ass-whuppin'.

Indeed, in the early '90s, the infamous Vitamin DJ Team (Martin Dumais/DJ Thunderbold, Sylvain Houde/Vitamine S, Sylvain Ferland /Cozmik Kay, Alexandre Lepage/DJ Alex) were no ordinary DJ crew. And it's certainly not because they were amazing DJs (admittedly, they were terrible) and lord knows their weekly theme concepts weren't always so hot (remember the Old Techno Ranch? Exactly.). So why did so many people flock religiously to their weekly Dimanches Techno nights at Foufounes for two years solid? For the same reason you wrote that number for your pure-MDMA hook-up in about five different places - you just couldn't get what they had anywhere else.

The Mirror recently had a chance to sit down with DJ Thunderbold (now part of les Jardiniers and owner of Hautec and Haute Couture labels) and Cozmik Kay (head graphic designer at www.zupton.com) and found out that their 10th anniversary Ravevival '93 party was not so much to help Montreal techno vets remember the amazing times they had, but mostly because they don't remember much of it themselves.

Mirror: Why did everyone think you guys were so bad-ass in '93?

Martin Dumais: It was just the way we looked. We came from a rock and punk background, so imagine blending that attire with a bit of rave. I had long hair and I'd wear it like Pippi Longstocking but then be dressed like a biker with flowers in my hair. That would freak people out.

Sylvain Ferland: I think one of the advantages we had was that since people perceived us as crazy or nuts, we could do what we want. The philosophy was, anything goes, and we just played what we wanted to play, from the hardcore, experimental and noisy right down to the cheesy stuff.

M: I guess the freedom helped motivate you to get started.

MD: For me it was mostly the fame and the women. Seriously, '93 was like a second teen-age for me! Most of my teenage years were very quiet - I had a girlfriend and I was pretty settled down. Then I totally went nuts, hard drugs all the time, hardcore music, hardcore lifestyle, dressing up, going totally nuts. That was the motivation, to go nuts, and it worked.

SF: On my part it was a lot of naïveté. I though we were going to do something new that would change the way people think, without being pretentious about it. Also, we had the option of believing that we could all be mega-stars. Being a DJ back then wasn't like being in a rock band, where you have all these people to go through, because there was no scene to begin with, you're creating it. In a lot of ways I ended up having a rock-star lifestyle, except instead of staying at fancy hotels I stayed at friends' houses and instead of flying first class, I took a bus.

M: So was it all a big blur of sex, drugs and techno?

MD: I remember, at the Solstice party, we were pretty much taking anything that was available. People were bringing in Kool-Aid and I saw Kool-Aid and I snorted Kool-Aid. It got stuck in my nose until the next day, when I spat out this nice blue substance. I knew it was time to start slowing down.

SF: I remember being at a party and I was wearing these "rave-vision" glasses for the longest time - you know, the one where you see like, six duplicates of the same thing - and at one point I really wanted to take them off because they were really messing me up. Then I realized that I actually didn't have them on anymore.

MD: I remember DJing and throwing my underwear on somebody's head on the dancefloor. They were pretty surprised, partly because they were leopard print but mostly because I'd been wearing them for three days.

M: Any chance of that happening at Ravevival '93?

MD: Maybe, but this time they'll be bagged - and clean.

DJs Thunderbold, Cozmik Kay, Vitamine S and two of the original '93 Synergie visual crew members, Jimmy Lakatos and Yves Labelle, at RaveVival '93 at Foufounes Électriques on Sunday, May 11, 9pm, $8

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