[Dynagroove] EDC 2010‏

A-ron aaron at crunk-house.com
Fri Jul 2 16:10:07 PDT 2010 

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At the Electric Daisy Carnival
A look at how underground success is measured

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By JIM FUSILLI

Los Angeles

By 9:30 p.m. on a recent Friday, the vast field of the Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum—site of Super Bowls and Olympic Games—was already
crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with bobbing, bouncing, undulating music
fans. Two brightly lit amusement rides whirled on one end of the
pitch, but most eyes were on the stage where the sounds were provided
not by a hip-hop megastar or a veteran rock act. They came from the
laptops, mixers and controllers of Swedish House Mafia, a trio of DJs
from Stockholm, on the first night of the two-day Electric Daisy
Carnival, Southern California's annual celebration of electronic dance
music.

When the Swedes finished their two-hour set on the main stage, Kaskade
took over, while Moby worked at a smaller venue. Elsewhere in
Exposition Park, there were performances by Felguk featuring Sporty-O,
Excision, Dada Life, and Basement Jaxx. Deadmau5 was the opening night
headliner. On Saturday William James Adams Jr.—better known as
Will.i.am, co-founder of the Black Eyed Peas—was among the DJs who
entertained on a bill that also featured Groove Armada, Sasha,
MSTRKRFT and Armin Van Buuren.

More than 80 DJs and a handful of live bands played from 1 p.m. until
past 2 a.m. on both days for more than 180,000 electronic dance-music
fans—a figure that dwarfs the number of attendees this year at either
Coachella or Bonnaroo, the biggest rock festivals in the U.S.

These numbers suggest the possibility of a new mainstream genre. But
just before the festival, Mr. Adams told me my standards for measuring
music-industry success were an outdated remnant of the thinking that
ruled when the major labels ran things. He said the audience for
electronic dance music comes to EDC and club shows for the music and
the communal experience. Despite world-wide traction, it remains an
underground movement. Meanwhile, the major labels create a culture
that isn't based on music, but on celebrity.

"Let's take Rihanna, then let's take Tiësto," Mr. Adams said,
mentioning the famous pop singer and the Dutch producer who may be the
world's most popular DJ. When Mr. Adams indicated to the Los Angeles
Times recently that he knew a DJ who made $20 million a year through
his music, it was widely speculated that he meant Tiësto.

"To youth culture, who's mainstream?" he asked me. "Is it Rihanna
because she's all over tabloid magazines and she's on radio and
television? I mean, what is television nowadays? When you're talking
about impacting youth culture, the old machine is not strong. This is
a culture that's complex and authentic.

"Tiësto is not old-media machine dependent," he added. "So who's
financially secure solely off music? Tiësto by miles. See, there's
being a celebrity, and there's being well known. I'm not a celebrity
but everybody knows me. You're going to hear my music in clubs all
around the world."

By "my music," Mr. Adams meant the kind he spun here before the
sun-swept crowd on Saturday afternoon. Over big beats, he dropped
prerecorded trumpet and piano riffs, sang a little bit, sampled from
Fatman Scoop, Nomad and the Doors' "Light My Fire," which he
disassembled brilliantly, cutting up the sound of the snare drum, bass
and organ and slipping them amid the music and rhythms he created. The
crowd, young enough to be Jim Morrison's grandchildren, sang along,
then exploded in glee when Mr. Adams pumped up the power.
Tune In

Listen to music by some of these artists:

    * "Arguru" by Deadmau5
    * "Dynasty" by Kaskade
    * "Raindrops" by Basement Jaxx
    * "Paper Romance" by Groove Armada
    * "One" by Swedish House Mafia

At one point in our conversation, Mr. Adams told me I should expect at
EDC the same kind of people who attend Coachella, but it wasn't so.
The crowd here was younger and more diverse. For some, outrageous
fashion is part of the scene: Many girls wore torn fishnet stockings,
fluffy boots and, over bikinis, ballet skirts in day-glo colors. For
both sexes, pacifiers were popular, as were backpacks made of stuffed
animals.

Inside the Coliseum, EDC felt like a happening. As laser lights soared
and video images dazzled, silver-clad tumblers bounced on a downstage
trampoline and acrobats flew into the air. Stilt walkers roamed in
from the nearby midway, where amusement rides swirled and fried cheese
was served. Women in go-go boots and dresses danced near the DJ booth.
So did monochrome clowns with wild parasols. In a well-maintained
restroom, a security guard in his 50s complained to me that Mr. Adams
had "desecrated the Doors." Trying to process that statement was my
most surreal moment of the weekend.

I did find myself groping for familiar musical touchstones—four beats
to the bar grows tiring after a few hours. Chuckie mashed up Oasis's
"Wonderwall" with Queen's "We Will Rock You," and Afrojack ended his
set with a remix of Imogen Heap's lovely ballad "Hide and Seek."
Kaskade followed Swedish House Mafia with confidence, jumping off with
"Dynasty," the opener from the new compilation, "Electric Daisy
Carnival, Volume One" (Insomniac), that he produced. Not long ago,
before Mr. Adams turned me around, I asked Kaskade how many albums he
sold. Sales aren't an accurate measurement of popularity, he told me.
"My fans are all computer literate. For every album I sell, it's
passed on to 30 other people."

Mr. Adams said, "The behavior of the underground business is totally
the opposite of surface music. It's not a big industry structure that
made this happen. You know 'Build it and they will come'? No, it's
'How do you inspire them to come?' That makes it the realest thing on
the planet. That's what tomorrow's about."
—Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at
jfusilli at wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.

love,

_A

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 3:26 PM,  <splaticus at aol.com> wrote:
> Hey A-Ron,
>
> that wall street link didnt work..
>
> any chance you could copy paste?
>
>
> Splat
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A-ron <aaron at crunk-house.com>
> To: dynagroove at dynagroove.com
> Sent: Fri, Jul 2, 2010 12:11 pm
> Subject: Re: [Dynagroove] EDC 2010‏
>
> *SHEER MAGNITUDE!
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:06 PM, A-ron <aaron at crunk-house.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I think a real success would be no deaths, no one taken to hospital,
>
>
>> no one crushed by a crowd trying to get through blocked entrances, but
>
>
>> the shear magnitude of this party is definitely noteworthy.  The Wall
>
>
>> Street Journal picked up the story, and there was a great piece by URB
>
>
>> on how EDC could have done better.  I'm glad I decided to go because
>
>
>> all the coverage can't really convey what it felt like to be there.
>
>
>>
>
>
>>
>
>
>
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704103904575336633105444948.htm
>
>
> l
>
>
>> http://www.urb.com/2010/06/30/six-things-edc-should-do-to-improve/
>
>
>>
>
>
>> buy your music,
>
>
>>
>
>
>> _A
>
>
>>
>
>
>> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 7:31 PM, Kelly Newman <newman.kelly at gmail.com>
>
>
> wrote:
>
>
>>> Percentage wise the event was a success.  200000 heads and only 150 or
so
>
>
>>> with any sort or reported problem.  Leave it to the media to spin it and
>
>
>>> dwell on only the negative.   What about the other 199850 people that
had
>
>
> no
>
>
>>> incidents.    Big respect to Pasquale's vision.  I hope for the best
and
>
>
>>> future shows.
>
>
>>>
>
>
>>> On Jul 1, 2010 7:12 PM, "Smiley Face" <smilyfaces32 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>
>
>>> Yeah just saw the news the Colosseum has a  temporary ban on raves
>>> because
>
>
>>> of
>
>
>>> incidents of 100's of casualties this could hurt the scene more than
>
>
>>> help.....quite serious stuff.
>
>
>>> _________________________________________
>
>
>>>
>
>
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>
>
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>
>
>>>
>
>
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>
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>
>
>
>
>
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>
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