Photo: Youtube
Electronic music has been having its moment in the après ski scene. Sure, you could get in as many laps as possible on a Saturday afternoon, cruise straight to the lodge for a beer, and quietly kick back in front of a fire with friends and yes, life would be good. You could also just get those laps in as one piece of a much larger bender in a town like Vail or Tahoe.
And few people have benders dialed like John Summit.
The music isn’t for everybody but I’m a firm believer in the saying, “house music keeps you young” (shoutout to Dombresky for that one). It’s tough not to smile ear to ear when you’re surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people dancing. So there’s a reason people have been having the times of their lives doing just that in the dead of winter, fresh off the slopes. And part of that attraction might even have to do with science.
“The rhythm of the music is precisely 120 beats per minute, the frequency of the fetal heart rate, and the same beat believed to be used by South American shamans to bring their tribes into a trance state,” said Dr. Douglas Rushkoff in a study on the science of electronic music and the body’s natural release of dopamine.
Personally, I think loading onto a gondola at Heavenly only to find John Summit standing behind some decks would turn into a massive dopamine dump for anyone, even those who have no idea who the guy is.
Here’s Summit on a two-weekend bender through Vail and Tahoe that included pop-up sets at lodges, plenty of shot-skis, some evening shows with huge turnouts, and those once-in-a-lifetime gondola sets with the world-famous DJ. And a little bit of skiing, of course. But just a little bit.
