The Roxy closed for good Saturday night.

Although rumors of its eventual demise had been going around for years, like cockroaches and Cher, I always felt the Roxy would outlast everything. The many nights I spent there were a mixed bag, sometimes transcendent, sometimes downright awful, always memorable (if I was actually sober enough to do so). So, in saying goodbye to the Roxy, I'd like to take a stroll down memory lane.

Veronica - Someone to Hold (Johnny Vicious Remix) - Razor and Guido's remix to Kim English's "Unspeakable Joy" may have been a more obvious choice for the biggest Roxy anthem of all time, but it's really this gem from 1998 that should take the cake. Excessive peak hour hard house to the nth degree, over 12 minutes in length, going from vocal anthem, to a deafening helicopter build-up, to a serene flamenco ballad, this song was epic with a capital E.

Robbie Rivera - Feel This - I first went to the Roxy to check out Victor Calderone, whom rumor had was giving Danny Tenaglia a run for his money. It turned out Danny didn't really have all that much to be worried about, but Victor had certainly mastered seamlessly weaving a night of very, very dark and apocalyptic tribal, and I cannot think of a single set of his at the Roxy during which he did not drop this track at least once. Easily one of my favorite house tracks of all time, it is as timeless as it is influential.

Pete Heller - Big Love - It's fitting that the first YouTube video I found of Roxy's closing night was of Peter Rauhofer dropping this classic. Beyond the music and the dancing, Roxy's largest contribution to my life will always be the fact that I met my partner there on a chilly December night eight years ago. Pete Heller's "Big Love" always signalled that the night was truly about to begin, and my partner and I would always make a point of dancing to this one together, singing and staring deeply into each other's eyes amidst the lights and the beats.

This video is actually making me a litle verklempt today.

So, I turn 30 in three weeks.

When I graduated from college I told a fellow music geek friend of mine that in our 30's we'd end up buying the two albums that sold bucketloads during our college career but never bought- Bush's Sixteen Stone and Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill. Both of them were inescapable in the mid-90s. I hated Bush for being so popular despite their lack of originality (I still swooned over "Swallowed", beating out the Toadies and McClusky for best Pixies rip-off ever). I hated Alanis for her calculated confessionalism and that frickin' harmonica. I really hated both of them because the Nerve played them every five minutes.

So, today, inbetween procrastinating and doing an assignment for school, I realized the grunge-hating other half (for some reason) has Sixteen Stone, and I'm listening to it. I'm kind of liking it. Still not diggin' Alanis too much, though.

So, in honor of Bush, here is a list of things that were popular when I was 20 that noone really cares about anymore:

-Sun Dried Tomatoes
-The Smashing Pumpkins
-Doc Martens
-Automobiles smaller than tanks
-Low fat everything
-NYPD Blue
-Drum n Bass
-Compact Discs
-Democrats
-Jeans that cost less than 200 bucks

I love the 90s!!

Much is being said about the closing of CBGBs, I think it's time for the place to go. The longer it stays open, the more images of its heydey in the late seventies are tarnished.

Just a few blocks down from CBGBs on the Bowery, though, another NYC establishment is closing its doors too. Satellite Records will soon be no more as well, at least in brick and mortar form.

After I bit the bullet and dropped the cash for my Technics 1200-MK2s, I asked my favorite DJ where he got his shit from, because it certainly wasn't at the stores I was going to. Prophetically and with angels flying around his head, he said "Go to Satellite, ask for so and so, and you'll be on your way."

I spent years digging through the piles and piles of vinyl contained within, searching for the secret weapons I'd heard the Friday before. I quickly learned to branch out from the standard Hard and Tribal House sections, into Tech House, Progressive House, Deep Trance, Minimal Techno, and the billions of other sub-genres, searching for the perfect loop. It was incredibly intimidating at first to stare at the walls and walls of underground stuff from all over the world, but pretty soon I was just grabbing everything and plowing through it on the listening stations, pitching down the hard german techno from 160 to 125 bpms to see how it sounded.

You can't imagine how much horrible horrible dance music I heard, but I also heard plenty of moments of genius as well.

A few years ago, it became apparent that something was very wrong. The moments of genius were becoming more and more thinly spread amongst the rest of the crap, the new stuff listed online wasn't available in the store, and you were no longer fighting for a listening station. Every time that I've been there in the past two years I was generally one of four customers in the entire place, and unless I had specifically ordered something online to be picked up in the store, I probably walked out empty handed, feeling like I had wasted my time.

I suppose that just as with CBGB, it's Satellite's time to go. I kind of knew it was coming, but I'm also kind of sad to see it happen.

Phyllis tagged me, so here we go:

10 Years Ago Today: I was on summer break from college, working at Toys R Us (which is more hellish and stressful than you could possibly imagine). Working out everyday and in the middle of losing 100 lbs. Lollapalooza rocked this year, and Portishead, Bjork, and Sebadoh were in heavy rotation.

Five Years Ago Today: I was plotting my climb up the corporate ladder (it worked, I guess, I've been promoted four times since then). Living in Hoboken with my shmoop-dog, and going out to Vinyl and Roxy just about every weekend.

1 Year Ago Today: I was in Madrid and London!!!! I took the summer off from school and we walked through a huge chunk of Manhattan and Brooklyn on the weekends.

Yesterday: Slightly hungover in the morning and was inexplicably exhausted all day, left work shortly after five, came home, took a nap, went out for dinner, and slept some more.

Today: Went out for brunch at this amazing Cuban place that just opened down the street, went to Lowe's in Red Hook to get a new pot and some potting soil, made it home before a sneak attack thunderstorm (it really came out of nowhere), getting stuff done around the house, waiting for the other half to get off the damn phone so we can figure out what we're doing tonight.

Tomorrow: Going to open houses in the Chelsea/West Village area. Replanting my basil plant, which is thriving!!!!

5 Snacks I enjoy: Tortilla chips with guacamole, tortilla chips with pico de gallo, tortilla chips with hummus, tortilla chips with baba ganouj, tortilla chips.

5 Bands That I Know the Lyrics to Most of Their Songs: Nirvana, Radiohead, the Pixies, A Tribe Called Quest, Massive Attack

5 Things I Would Do with a $100,000,000: Buy a four story town house in the Chelsea/Far West Village area, fix up my Mom's house a bit, invest in an emerging markets hedge fund, spend a year travelling.

5 Locations I Would Like to Run Away to: San Fransisco, South Beach, London, Madrid, Barcelona

5 Bad Habits I Have: Forgetting to call people back, forgetting people's names when I meet them, throwing my clothes on the chair instead of hanging them up when I get home, shaving too fast in the morning, hitting snooze too much in the morning.

5 Things I Like Doing: Hanging out in the citay, going to bars/clubs with friends, dancing, going on vacation, shopping.

5 Things I would Never Wear: Boat shoes, a cowboy hat, leather pants, anything from International Male, a bathing suit.

5 TV Shows I Like: The Simpsons, Barefoot Contessa, Martha Stewart Living, Futurama, The Price is Right

5 Movies I Like: Psycho, Pulp Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Clueless, Night of the Living Dead

5 Famous People I would Like to Meet: Madonna, Bjork, Henry Rollins, Courtney Love, M.I.A.

5 Biggest Joys at the Moment: My shmoop-dog, my iPod, my cat, my Game Boy, my 30 gigs worth of mp3's.

5 favorite toys: See above.

5 People to Tag: Hmmm... Kreblog, Underground Dragon, Contagious, Life With Basu, and Lnotes (so she'll update her blog!) :)

I'm sure I must have linked to stuff from this site before, but nonetheless, I have rediscovered Retro Junk and hereby deem it the best website in the world.

They've got tons of old commercials that you can stream, and watching them after not seeing them in years has made me realize something - your life before reaching eleven years of age must be the most confusing time in the world, because I barely remember any of these commercials that aired before I reached 6th grade. This is strange considering I watched TV nonstop.

Other important lessons:
-There was a Go-Bot named Baron Von Joy! He was a friendly robot sports car!
-Any hope of me developing into normal heterosexual adulthood flew (fabulously) out the window as soon as I saw the opening sequence to She-Ra. Woah. Just... woah. It even sounds like Giorgio Moroder wrote the theme song.
-You can have your stupid Mac G5. The Commodore Vic 20 is the wonder computer of the '80s.

To build anticipation for my 30th Birthday Showcase Showdown, which is only a precious 10 months away (reserve your seat now, folks), I present the top indicators that I'm really getting old:

-I've stopped counting the grey hairs that fall off my head when I get my hair cut.
-New musical genres (see emo, crunk, glitch, screamo) irritate me and are basically just noise.
-Biz Markie is on a reality show.
-Flavor Flav is on TWO reality shows.
-Ice Cube is in a family movie!
-I find teenagers to be really dumb.
-Strangers say things to you like "Oh, to be young again" and expect you to say something in return like "I know what you're talking about, sweetie!"
-I find newfangled video games to be needlessly complicated and time consuming, and the fact that Mario and Zelda are key figures of my childhood dates me quite a bit.
-I'm starting to watch CBS Sunday Morning.