Free at last, free at last, thank god all mighty, free at last! English Drum ‘n’ bass DJ Grooverider (Raymond Bingham) has been pardoned by the Dubai Royal Family. He was released from prison on Thursday after serving ten months of a four year sentence for possessing 2.16 grams of cannabis and pornographic material. Grooverider was arrested at Dubai airport last November, and although he claimed he was unaware of the contraband found in his bag and the country’s no-tolerance policiies, the DJ was convicted and imprisoned. According to the BBC, the DJ, who helmed a popular weekly show on Radio One with Fabio, has already flown home to spend time with his family and friends. Grooverider’s release comes during Ramadan, a holy time in September when Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed, traditionally pardons foreigners caught with small amounts of narcotics.
A literally blinding eye injury from a festival in South Korea has changed the life or Rabbit in the Moon’s Bunny forever. The dance community is rallying to help him, this Saturday with a benefit dubbed the Bunnyfit, at Giant’s anniversary party in LA on September 6th.
For more than a decade, Rabbit in the Moon has pushed the boundaries of live electronic music through stunning stage antics, theatrical costumery, and a dedication to expressing the best of life through their music. RITM frontman Bunny personifies what the group is all about, and he’s become a sort of icon in the dance community. He is warm and gracious to eager fans who declare their obsession with him after a gig and accessible on stage and off for those who want to share in the love-filled rave or post rave experience.
It’s a cruel irony then that Bunny would fall victim to an act of violence that has caused his near-blindness brought on by an audience member. This past May, Bunny and Rabbit in the Moon were hired to perform at the second Annual World DJ Festival in Seoul, South Korea. Bunny performed the first night and accompanied his friends DJ Dan and Donald Glaude to the festival the second night when they performed, assisting them with some technical and sound issues. It was the second night when a glass bottle, thrown by a member of the festival’s crowd, was launched intentionally and directly at Bunny, hitting him squarely in his left eye, destroying his retina, lens, some skin underneath, and his vision. He talked exclusively to Big Shot about his ordeal and the painful aftermath.
“I was standing next to Dan and I got hit in the chest with like, a coin, and some dude in the crowd was flipping me off and looking at me like ‘yeah, I threw it.’ I didn’t think anything of it, just what happens at festivals and stuff.”
“It went right to my face. I got hit in the eye with a bottle. It went directly into my eye. I immediately collapsed, bleeding. They carried me off and took me to the hospital. I basically thought I lost my eye. I’m a visual artist, so losing an eye would be like… I mean, it’s a big part of my life and livelihood.”
It was 20 minutes later when the second object was thrown. “It went right to my face. I got hit in the eye with a bottle. It went directly into my eye. I immediately collapsed, bleeding. They carried me off and took me to the hospital. I basically thought I lost my eye. I’m a visual artist, so losing an eye would be like… I mean, it’s a big part of my life and livelihood.”
At the hospital, his flesh wound was stitched up, but he was given the option of having an immediate and dramatic surgery on this eye to recover some of the vision there in Seoul, risking complications that would have stranded him overseas, unable to fly for months. Bunny opted to return to the US, with the promoters’ promise that his medical expenses would be paid for. That was not the case.
Although every live music event is contractually obligated to insure themselves for these kind of accidents, and RITM’s contract with the promoters of this event was no different in its stipulations, it has become clear since this incident that any insurance policy on hand was insufficient. Unlike in the US, Korea has no law regulating punitive damages, meaning nobody can be sued for liability. Bunny has no legal recourse in Korea, only in the US, and even if the promoters are sued in a US court, they would have to be extradited to enforce a US court’s penalty of law.
Bunny has paid out of pocket for two surgeries this summer. At this point he has about 20% vision in his left eye, which renders his depth perception and peripheral vision obsolete. From the surgeries, he’s also acquired trauma-induced glaucoma, which creates erratic levels of a painful pressure on his eye. “It’s so extreme I can’t even put sentences together,” he says of the times when the glaucoma flares up.
It’s been four months since the accident. While he’s learned to manage the day-to-day details of his life, it’s understandable still an upsetting ordeal. He describes moments of waking up and thinking that it didn’t really happen, and then—upon looking at anything—realizes it’s all too real.
He estimates his basic monthly expenses for his eye care—including doctor’s visits and eye drops—is about a thousand dollars, and that doesn’t include any extra procedures or surgeries, many of which still loom in the future. Because so many artists like Bunny don’t have healthcare (certainly not group health plans either), and the US has no national healthcare, Bunny’s story has caught the attention of the dance community, which has organized a benefit, the Bunnyfit, to aid and offset his considerable medical expenses.
Naturally, DJ Dan and Donald Glaude are performing at the Bunnyfit, forgoing their fees to help their friend. Other performers include LA-based artists like Sandra Collins and her husband Vello Virkhaus, Quivver, and Freddy Be. Rabbit in the Moon, of course, will also DJ at the event.
This experience has impacted Bunny in ways yet to be seen, not the least of which is his intermittent anxiety about what could happen to him when he’s on stage. “Things I never thought of in fifteen years of interacting with an audience,” he says of these fears.
Luckily for his fans and his own life, he hasn’t let any of this stop him. “I have to trust. I am at the mercy of the audience and they are to me.”
Words: Zel McCarthy
Update: September 6, 2008 Since this story first ran on September 3rd, we’ve received a great deal of feedback from fans and members of the dance music community. Many have asked if there’s a way to help the cause if you’re not in the LA area. Bunny has sent us a link to a page set up specifically to help him out. To make a secure donation, you can visitTheBunnyCoalition.com.
What did you do this weekend? Us? Well, Big Shot conducted a rather interesting interview in LA with Sam Sparro and Lady Tigra that’ll appear in Issue 24. Stay tuned for more information.
Despite boasting collaborations with Alanis Morrissette, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ed Kowalczyk from Live and Cyndi Lauper, Tricky’s Blowback failed to live up to the hype in 2001. Tricky released the critically panned Vulnerable on Epitaph in 2003 and left the label because it didn’t have much of a UK presence. He eventually signed to Domino, the label that broke Arctic Monkeys. Tricky’s eighth solo album, Knowle West Boy, was released last month in the UK and will arrive on US shores next month. The album doesn’t have a duet with Alanis, and the Peppers can’t be found either—in fact, it’s filled with collaborations with newcomers you’ve never heard of. But if you ask me, the album is his best effort since 1995’s Maxinquaye.
I interviewed Tricky—who now divides his time between LA and London—in July. Previously, I had met him at a bizarre lunch in a South Beach hotel before he dropped Blowback, and later interviewed him at his home in New Jersey, where I met his extended family. It was a rather surreal experience, one that I’ll never forget. Even though Tricky didn’t remember meeting me, I wasn’t hurt. But the one thing I did notice was that this time around he didn’t have a posse or cell phone that was ringing off the hook. The Tricky I met a few weeks ago seemed far more grounded; I like the 2008 incarnation much better.
“What the press says about me is disposable. When the magazine is faded and gone, my music will still be here.”
When I asked him what other journalists were saying about his new album, Tricky told me that he doesn’t care what critics say about his music (“What the press says about me is disposable. When the magazine is faded and gone, my music will still be here.”), and said fans around the world keep him going.
Why does he reckon his blend of trip-hop, rock, ska and pop has touched so many? “I share my mistakes. Some things I shouldn’t have released. Now if you look at music [today] it’s perfect—the videos are perfect, the people are perfect, the songs are perfect ‘til the end, the visuals are glossy, and everything is mixed so well. I put out demos. We’re not perfect as people, and I put out my mistakes and blemishes and things some artists wouldn’t want to show about themselves. We all want to be perceived as being cool, especially for musicians. I’m clumsy. I bump into things. I have bad relationships with girls. I’m not totally honest sometimes. I think people see that in my music as imperfect music for imperfect people. I think they like the fact that I put my warts and scars out there.”
In addition to his music, Tricky launched an Internet label called Brown Punk with music industry icon Chris Blackwell. He’s also helping to get a nonprofit in England get off the ground with John Stokes, the mentor who he credits as helping him discover music at a local youth club in Bristol.
Tricky told me a story about a gig in Canada or maybe in America (he couldn’t remember). He was hanging out at his merchandise booth before a show and a guy walked up to Tricky and told him that his parents played his music for him while he was in a coma. Tricky took a drag from his spliff and his eyes widened in a this-is-so-amazing way. “I realized that this is why I’m in it,” he said. In Philadelphia (it was definitely Philadelphia), a woman who said she was a nurse gave something to his drummer to sign. “She told him they played my music in a children’s burn unit. If I can touch a few souls, everything else…. There’s not a lot I like about myself, but that’s the only pure part of me—to get into people’s souls.”
