EDC LA times article
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Party out of bounds - Los Angeles Times
There may be a recession on, but that doesn't mean the people aren'tdancing. This past weekend, North America's largest dance musicfestival, Electric Daisy Carnival, packed in more than 135,000 peopleover two days at the L.A. Coliseum and Expo Park, topping theproducer's anticipated numbers by more than 30,000. Proving again thatdance music (and massive parties) are in high demand in Los Angeles,hoards of teenagers and 20-somethings paid anywhere from $55 to $200 toexperience over 100 performers, plus art installations and a carnivalatmosp here.
But how big is too big? Event producer Pasquale Rotella and his crew atInsomniac pulled off an event of staggering size and complexity, butEDC was not without its chaotic moments, as waves of gate-crasherssometimes clashed with police and forced the fire marshal totemporarily pull the plug at one point. Even in the face of Insomniac'simpeccable production values and organizational efforts, theparty-going masses proved that they had power to both make up and shakeup the dance music festival.
Friday, the first day of the festival, saw 45,000 pass through thegates. Large scale art installations dotted the Expo field, multiplestages were lighted with cutting-edge LED technology and music thumpedthrough state-of the art sound systems. Headliners ATB and PaulOakenfold played amid the pulsating lights, while Boys Noize and PrettyLights held their own on different stages. Visuals, pyrotechnics andlive performances ran smoothly, thanks to stage direction from Rabbitin the Moon's Stephen "Bunny" Eachon and Brien Rullman. "The level oftechnology we had available to us was unbelievable," said Rullman, whohas been working with Rotella for 12 years. "Absolutely top-notch."
For world-traveling dance music producers like Oakenfold and DavidGuetta, the event was only further evidence that dance music isflourishing here in the U.S. Getting ready to headline Friday night,Oakenfold quipped, "How can anybody say dance music is dead? Look at itout there, that's 40,000 people having the time of their lives!"
The French-born Guetta, who currently has No. 1 hits on both the UK andthe U.S. Billboard charts, confessed, "This might sound strange, butright now, North America is my favorite place for dance music, becausethe anticipation from the crowd is so big. It feels like how Europe was15 years ago. You don't play this music on the radio so much here.People are frustrated, so when I play [in America], they go crazy."
Crazy, indeed. So crazy, in fact, that Saturday night's estimated90,000 attendees forced city officials to shut off the music on themain stage for approximately 45 minutes until numbers were counted andtraffic was diverted to other parts of the festival. Security and theL.A. Police Department had their hands full on the outside of theColiseum as well, as one officer (who declined to give his name) said,"We've had multiple groups of 60 to 200 attempt to rush the gates allover the perimeter."
Behind the Neon Garden stage, the party-crashers succeeded in knockingdown the fence, spilling some 200 people through and injuring patrons,stage performers, and one police officer along the way. Ticket-holderThom Vest witnessed the rush from the outside, noting, "Lots of peoplewere on their cellphones, texting or maybe Twittering, and then therewas a huge bum-rush of the fence."
The music was down from about 11 to 11:45 on Saturday night, but then,with fireworks and confetti cannons bursting from the main stage, BennyBenassi and Guetta took their turns on the decks. Elsewhere, InfectedMushro om was slamming through a set of psytrance, and Simian MobileDisco kept bodies moving until 3 a.m. Paul van Dyk closed out theevent, keeping an ecstatic crowd churning right up until 4 a.m., andthen did some of his own boundary-breaking. Van Dyk exited the DJbooth, jumped off the stage, and reached across the barricade to greethis fans, giving hugs and signing autographs.
Isolated instances aside, Capt. Armando Hogan of the L.A. FireDepartment was pleased at how his personnel dealt with the massivecrowds. "Overall, we were happy with how things were handled," thecaptain said. LAFD reports that 70 EDC patrons were taken to hospitals,mainly for alcohol or drug intoxication. "None of the cases were toocritical, to my knowledge," Hogan said.
Regarding the crowd's attitude, Hogan was complimentary, "For the mostpart, these were just young people who wanted to have a good time."
Smashing their previous attendance records, and a gate or two, EDC 2009closed up shop at 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning, with fans still clamoringfor more beats and breaks, making impromptu dance parties in theparking lot and asking that age-old question: "Where's theafter-party?"
