It was 19 years ago, to this day, that I stumbled upon my first rave party. I was in the military and a seasoned attendee of the mainstream club circuit. I’ve always enjoyed music, especially dance music. Long before the repetitive beats of electronic music reached my ears, I was listening to (what is now called) synth-pop, funk, and even upbeat R&B. DJs like Junior Vasquez, Shep Pettibone, and Georgio Morodor we’re already remixing dance floor friendly renditions of the music that I enjoyed. It was then on that serendipidous evening out at a watering hole, when a young bar maid handed me and my friends a hand printed piece of paper with directions to an “after party” with dance music. I had little recognition that what I was being invited to was actually a rave party.
Had I been pummeled with the same negative annotations that much plagues the media today about raves. I would have not likely attended that party so many years ago. Nor would I have probably experienced one of the greatest moments of life. Now don’t get me wrong, part of the experience is the whole surreal nature of the rave. It’s the feeling of anonymity while still being connected. It’s the euphoric feeling you get (with or without chemical induction) that occurs when you are asynchronous with others. Times have changed and so has the rave itself. But for the most part, I see it as a positive way of expression and an exercise in self-reliance.
Festivals like the Electric Daisy Carnival are not “raves” as one who has experienced the real deal will tell you. If you want an example of what a rave really is, you’d be surprised. Talk to one of the many local underground DJs, they can tell you that the rave is definitive subculture that rivals the punk rock scene in the early 70s or hip-hop culture of the 80s. That’s not to say that the Electric Daisy Carnival and its parent company Insomniac Productions aren’t well versed in rave culture. This festival indeed started out as an underground rave party some 15 years ago, along with other quarter-yearly parties thrown by the same company.
Yet, people become concerned when they hear that something like this is coming to their town. A single death among 80,000 attendees last year (for any event) is hardly a cause for excitement. Yet the media continues to blow the truth out of proportion. They selectively refrain from giving the numbers of comparative events or reflect on the events of the past as a catalyst for information. Instead, it’s talked about the single death.
But if you’ve attended any of the major nightclubs here in Las Vegas you’ll be first to notice that the format isn’t much different. Between the visual and auditory stimuli and the pushing of legal narcotics at $10 a glass or $400 for the bottle, you find that what the Electric Daisy Carnival is pushing is nothing different. It’s just doing so on a greater scale. If you’ve ever thought about going to South Beach, Miami for the Winter Music Conference then you’ll know that what Insomniac Productions offer a similar experience but catering towards the more youthful at heart.
What appalls me the most, though is the level of hypocrisy that occurs regarding this event. If you’ve ever attended one of the pool parties along the Strip, you’ll find that nothing more than narcissitic cess pools of sex that’s fueled by cocaine and booze. The soundtrack is practically the same as their night time counterparts yet there’s no hiding the true ugliness and shallowness that isn’t restricted to the wading area of the heavily chlorinated pool water.
While nightclub and pool club security claims to have a “zero tolerance” for drugs and actively pursues regular and thorough searches. These are selective and the number of ODs or accidents due to exhaustion and dehydration are never released nor discussed. Yet, an insider whom I have the acquaintance to have known for many years says that there’s at least two incidents per weekend day.
Instead, these people are discreetly taken from the party by EMT trained security and then reported elsewhere on property. And only very rarely, on the most busiest of weekends, do we ever hear about these incidents on the news or in the paper. If we’re lucky, we get a first hand account from somebody’s Twitter account or maybe a rare piece of footage via YouTube.
Even Oscar Goodman, our city’s happy-go-lucky mayor is taking a hand’s off approach to the presence of the dance music festival. Perhaps, he sees it as a something to generate income. Thousands of attendees travel from Las Vegas to Los Angeles when the festival was being hosted there. In the process, they’d spend in total of thousands of dollars. From the ticket, to hotel rooms, to dining out, and even in gas. The stage is set for Las Vegas and it is rumored that Pasquale Rotella, owner of Insomniac Productions has a multiple year deal with the Las Vegas Motor Speedway to do the show.
http://www.electricdaisycarnival.com/LasVegas/
http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/14923536/raves-reputation-doesnt-faze-goodman?redirected=true
Dallas J. Martin 