So I decided to liven up my blog a bit with something I truly love; music. I'm going to write a top 10 of my most favorite and memorable eletronica tracks and why/where I fell in love with the song.

The best place to start would be #10. Robert Miles - Children. Dream trance, progressive trance, dreamhouse those were categories I had never heard of until this song came out. Blasting into the rave scene in 1995, people were enthralled at the climatic build ups, haunting vocals and incredile melody from the piano. I swear there were times we'd forget that we're driving home from 9 hours of dancing in Seattle on many occasions.

I first hears this song in 1996 in London. I was on a month long History of Arts tour and the first stop was London (actually it was Edinburgh). We all wanted to go out and explore the nightlife and a local told us to check out Cream.

I digress. In 1994 my boss at the time was a DJ in the Portland scene and invited us out to see him spin. It was during the early days of the Portland rave scene, so the groups were small, everyone knew each other, and the music was minimal. Oh yeah, and we all parties pretty hard. It was that night listening to Adam spin that I realized I love Trance and all music electronica. I danced until 4:00 AM and only stopped to realized that my legs were completely gone. That night ingrained in my mind that this is how a perfect night could happen. Ever since, I've partied in 13 states and 4 countries looking for the next great experience.

Back to Cream. I, by that time, had seen some BIG venues but Cream blew those ideas of magnitude out the door! Once a warehouse for tractor trailers, it was converted to a 3 storied open-air club. It fit +3000 people and had no neighbors to complain about the noise level. Our collective jaws dropped as we approached. It was like walking up to the Kingdome in Seattle and THAT was the club.

We partied, we danced, we met people from all over Europe; we even got carded, only to be of age! It was amazing! I can remember every lighting feature, every area of the the dance floor, what the crowds looked like from the many catwalks. I could not think of anything getting better until I can hear the haunting piano from Robert Mile's - Children. I lost it at the point. My best friend Rick knew the song too and we went ballistic and start screaming like mad.

It's like those many scenes you see in movies, when everything is slow motion, the music's still playing, everyone is smiling at each other, everyone's dancing. You see that scene and you can only think of happiness. That was me, that was us. We soaked in one of the coolest moments in our lives, with strangers from various countries, on a whole new continent, with the most incredile song playing.

It's moments like that, which will always make me love electronica. I've built some of the greatest memories from songs at that moment in time. I hope you will be able to live through those moments as I count down the rest.

~Philly