This New Year's Eve I went to Coolworld's Planet New Year at the Cow Palace. Let me first start out by saying that I was sober and that might affect this review...he he anyway, I got there a bit late ( about 10:00pm and I missed Ghost and Frank Nitty, who I love) and we did the routine exploration of the venue to get our bearings and talked to friends. Apparently Coolworld had rented out booths to DJ crews to spin in the hallways, so in addition to the long lineup, there were about 100 bedroom DJ's who "played at Coolworld's Planet New Year!!!" They were talented from what I heard , but the barrage of flyers and advertisements from the individual crews was unbarable, so we ducked into the main room which was amazing to enter with all of the lasers and stadium style sound system. When we got in the main room a live act named Planet B was setting up....they took so long for a set change that we continued walking around and got a d rink. I went into the Happy Hardcore room where Anthony Mad was about to begin his set. The DJ before him had broken the needle and no one had a spare. So they did what any DJ determined to play would do...that's right...one turntable. Start ...stop...start ...stop...I was over it. Anthony Mad is a good DJ, but damn. One turntable and a microphone. He He.

So around 11:30 we go in the main room for the main festivities and Planet B. is still playing. They have guitars and a live drummer...a full band. They had a slow breakbeat sound, like trip hop, but they were very vocal and shrill. I would describe it as hip hop meets dark metal with a touch of earth contious lyrics. One was an MC who rapped and the other was a singer....not that good. At midnight,They lit off some indoor pyrotechincs for a melancholy crowd...low on the energy scale. I stayed in the room for Donald Glaude to play next but another set change from band to DJ took 30 minutes. Donald gets on and is being his usual energetic self, but he was playing dark HARD tracks! Not funky, not house.....but full on techno industrial. I happen to love industrial music (and Glaude), but this was way out of character for him. I tried to dance a bit but was not moved by the sounds. We went to anot her party at about 1:30am where we had a blast.

So, unfortunately, I have to give the party a 6 on a scale of 1-10. The six was only because of the production that coolworld put on and the venue. I hate being a downer, but whatever party you ended up at, was probably better.