Junebug

For about five, maybe six years during my teenage rave days, there were always a few things you could count on when going to the function.

First, there always had to be a jungle room. Had to be. No question. It was required. I wish it was still like that. The smooth drum and bass bouncing off the walls or into the night air; everybody just bouncing around to their own rhythm and beat, as if nothing in the world would ever care more.

Second, somebody was always selling balloons. You didn’t know when or where they’d pop up, but you could always count on somebody with a tank selling 2 for 5. For some reason, no matter where I go, that’s always the price. Same in Detroit, same in LA, same in some desert in the middle of nowhere. Always 2 for 5.

Third, the music was always the priority. People want to pretend it’s about the drugs or the popularity, but back then just like now, the music and the sound always came first. Which was always understood, even for me, at such a young and naïve age when I first discovered the music in the night.

Fourth, well fourth was only true here in New Mexico, but looking back I feel it was as much a tradition as anything I have experienced since. Every year, somewhere in the deserts or mountains of New Mexico, right around a couple weeks from now, they’d have a rave known by the same exact name and nothing more: Junebug.

It’s almost time for Junebug.

Looking back, I’d say it’s been around 15-16 years since the last Junebug, a fact that hurts my heart to admit, since not only does it admit my age, but it also reminds me how long it’s been since the last one as well. Will we ever have another one again? I really couldn’t say, although, part of why I bring this up is because deep down I know, based on what has already happened, Junebug will live longer than just those few years it was around, but only if we want it to.

I didn’t go to the first Junebug. I knew it was happening, and I knew where it was, but that was when I was fifteen and still not able to find friends to go the rave with. By then I had already gone to a handful of warehouse raves, and I was hooked beyond belief. So hooked that I called the info lines and searched for fliers wherever I could. The info line is actually how I found out about Junebug, long before I saw any flyers or lineups on it.

I called a local info line, which I’d do every time I got a new flier. Just to see what it sounded like. Being fifteen, sitting in your room, smoking cigarettes you stole from you dad, calling a phone number that would give you information on an illegal gathering with drugs and music, was something that can never be duplicated or imitated. It’s starting a life I still live now. It’s deciding that yes, I am going to be that person I wanted to be. Maybe I didn’t realize that at fifteen years old, but I see it so clearly now. This was one small way I was choosing the path of my life for myself. A path that would lead me to Junebug, but not until the next year.

The first year I just heard about it, and wanted to go so bad, and dreamed of what it actually was. I had not gone to an outdoor rave yet, so I had no image to connect to it. All the ones I went to before were in some dark building downtown or up in Santa Fe. The desert raves I’d come to love were not a thing for me yet. How quickly that would change.

Just a couple weeks after my missing out on the first Junebug, I met a few people who would eventually become my rave crew, and the people I would spend the next five years going to every single rave possible with. We’d start with a couple in town, and then we went to a two-day outdoor rave called Rumors together, which would be my first outdoor rave, and after that we were hooked, all of us, together.

I spent that entire summer going to every outdoor function I could find with my friends. We went to one in a canyon up in Chama, one in Moriarty, one at the Three-Sided Hole, even one down by Socorro that got broken up. We were all over the place. It was an amazing summer that changed the rest of my life. I had music, my friends, and the rave. Will we ever need anything more?

Then the fall came, and we shifted to the warehouse functions again, as is the tradition for every New Mexico raver. Spend the fall and winter in the warehouse and the spring and summer under the stars. It’s still like that now. Some things will never change.

My first Junebug did not come till that next year in 2001, but after that I did not miss another. It was too much of a tradition to pass up. They even had a fall edition of it called Dreamscapes that I also went to every year, including that first one they had in August of 2000. Every time this group had something going on we knew it was a good time, a safe time, and some amazing music by DJ’s we loved. From that first one it was always the same. The start of the summer and the best example of how good New Mexico Raves can truly be.

After that first one I can admit they all just kind of smash together now into a giant blobby blur in my head, which is the way it should be. I have chunks that pop up from time to time and I know I’m not the only one. Here are two I can recall right now.

There was one where I was walking with my best friend at the time, and Jay Z had just released a song where he sampled the Jackson 5, and I remember saying,

“I just love how he raps like that. It’s so unique.”

“No, Mango. He didn’t invent that. He copied Snoop. Snoops been doing that for years.”

“You’re right.” I said. “But he’s the one who put it on a record.”

“True.” He said. “I heard he never writes his lyrics down. I respect that.”

“Really? Like never?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Wow. If I ever meet him, I’ll ask him that.”

We laughed as the sun rose over the desert and the DJ played this beautiful house music from the back of a uhaul van surrounded by dazed and colorful rave kids who wanted nothing more than to lose their minds.

Another time I remember I had gotten into a fight with my girl that day and I stormed off, walking the streets of Albuquerque, like I do sometimes. Like a hobo.

This time I found myself on central walking past what suddenly appeared to be a record shop popped up right across from The Copper Lounge. I knew I would’ve noticed it, so it must’ve been new, and yet as soon as I walked in, I felt I recognized it immediately.

I’d spend the rest of the day listening to records in that shop and forgetting the reason I was even mad. Eventually I’d find one that I loved, and I listened to it over and over and over again. I can still hear it in my mind. I can remember loving it so much that I wanted nothing more than to buy it, only to find out I left my wallet at home.

From there I walked straight back home just to tell my girl that I didn’t wanna fight anymore, and that I found a new record shop. I wanted to go back to get that record but instead we just got ready for the rave. Like we always do.

Later on, we’d go to Junebug together, where we’d meet up with friends and dance under the New Mexico stars all night long. It was right around the time the sun was coming up that morning, and we were all dancing together in the dirt and anonymity of our lives, that the music became soulful and smooth. New Mexico has many sounds, but to me it will always be about House music, and this moment was a reminder of that, especially because of the record the DJ played. The same record I listened to all day long in the record shop that same day. The same record that led me back home to my love, and eventually to the rave again, together.

Without any way of knowing that DJ seemed to have been sending me a message that only I could hear, and I could feel it right there as I stood on that dancefloor somewhere up in the mountains. It wasn’t just that we both picked the same song on the same day, it’s that we were all right there at that moment together, and the music was what brought us there. I remember how fresh and clean the air smelt even though there were clouds of dirt everywhere.

How is that possible?

Clean air surrounded by clouds of dirt?

Where in the world does a place like that exist?

New Mexico.

In the end, I know that stretch we had wasn’t as much about Junebug as much as it was about a time in our lives when everything just made sense. No worries, no troubles, no mayhem from the outside world. Just us, and our music, and our backpacks that we decorated just for this rave, and our friends we somehow found in all this fucked up madness we call life. Somehow, we found each other, and we did it in the desert, or the mountains, or the warehouse, and it was for the best possible reason.

Love and Music and Junebug.

When I think of Junebug, I think of the love put into it, and I think of how I felt that every time I was there. I think of the dark nights I spent in the dirt with my friends laughing and enjoying every single minute of it. I think of seeing people I hadn’t seen since before the winter. Gathering again to celebrate that we made it to another summer. I think of how far the music flew into the night air, and how nobody in the universe would ever believe all those moments were real, because they weren’t there, and for so many of us, that was enough.

I think of how much we grew, and learned, and have become the people we wanted to be, and I think of how much intent and purpose was put into every single event they had out there. They wanted us to have fun, and to be free, and to be safe, and most of all, to be together. We could feel that. I can still feel it now. All we had to do was show our love back.

By staying till the end, by helping pick up trash, by saying thank you. Thank you for the night, and for the music, and for all those years every summer when all the Rave kids knew one thing for sure, and that was enough for us. Its what got us through. It’s what helped us endure. We knew we at least had that.

We had Junebug.

It’s almost time for Junebug.

See you on the dancefloor.

Maybe Junebug again, someday?

——–Pinky Mendoza