From the Front Lines: The Detroit Electronic Music Festival, pt 2
Posted by: admin in Reviews, Culture, Cool Shit, music2. Uncertainty Principle
I had been traveling extensively for the previous six months before my departure to Detroit. I had gone on road trips all over the west; Los Angeles to a warehouse party. Denver three times to Club Beta to hear a variety of DJ’s play. Las Vegas just for some tomfoolery. Indio, CA, to attend the Coachella music festival, and San Fransisco to participate in the Bay to Breakers marathon/march. Any weekend that I thought I could get away from this state, this city, I have. Getting away from this place, and the situations I have found myself in here, has in a lot of ways changed the person who I once was. I would detest coming back to boring old Albuquerque, a small city in a large, empty state, boring, dull on every occasion. This was a mistake by myself that I will not make again.
The Detroit electronic music festival, called DEMF my many of the attendees, has been in operation since may of 2000. The first four years of the festival, held in downtown Detroit’s Hart plaza overlooking the Detroit river and facing southward towards Canada, were free and brought in upwards of 1.7 million people for the first three years of the event. Staffing problems, management changes, and lawsuits, however, led the event off course. In 2003 there was a drop in attendance by more than half down to 630,000 along with a name change to Movement. In 2004, it dropped even further as it was the first year that the event organizers began charging to get into the festival, 25$ for a full day pass. Attendance dropped again to 150,000, and still struggled to break even in costs. 2006 saw the worst attendance numbers of the festival, barley seeing 41,000 people paying to get in. It was estimated that in 2009 upwards of 80,000 people were in attendance but this has not been substantiated yet.
2009 saw 57 acts spread over four stages inside of hart plaza, with the addition of a truck with a small sound system featuring a few drum n’ bass acts that were not advertised. In contrast almost 90 acts played on five stages in 2008, and 48 acts in 2006, which was also the worst year in terms of attendance. Because all four stages run congruently with each other it is quite impossible to hear every act play their live set, and one often has to choose between acts that they love and down time where none of the acts is worth their time. This happened several times during my experience at this years festival, much to my dismay, and to my group’s. Most dj’s sets lasted around an hour and a half to two hours in the early part of the day and up to three hours for headliners on the main stage in the evening.
The main stage (conveniently called the Vitamin Water Main Stage, thanks to vitamin water being a major corporate sponsor of the event along with Red Bull) sat within the large amphitheater built into Hart Plaza, which also sported the best sounding system. This amphitheater gave the event a much needed epic feel to the entire production. There was plenty of space to dance on any tier of the Amphitheater which meant that almost everyone had space to do anything with the exception of peak times in the evening when navigating up and down the stairs did get a bit tricky at times. A large LCD screen just below the DJ booth thankfully gave the name of each dj that was up so that there was no question who was going at any time.
A second stage (the Made in Detroit stage) sat underneath the entrance to the event and to the right of the main stage, which I have to admit gave a very omnious feel that I really did like. Unfortunately the sound from this stage was not nearly as good as any of the other stages and the strange shape to the space and concrete walls only worsened the fact. Getting in and out of this stage required either finding one of the very well hidden routes that fed directly into the space from the periphery of Hart plaza, or going straight down near the main entrance to the main stage.
Two other stages sat to the left and right of the main stage. The Beatport stage sat to the far left and had its sound system turned away from the venue across the river towards Canada. On the second night as we left back to our hotels via the people mover/train Detroit has, I noticed a major street tunnel entrance moved traffic directly under this stage. The engineering must have been really solid because I never once felt or heard traffic flowing below us.
The fourth stage, the Red Bull Music Academy stage, sat a ways away from the other three. It was right next to a step pyramid structure in the plaza that kind of acted as an above ground seating/amphitheater structure which kind of divided itself from the other stages. This would prove to be my favorite venue for the duration of the trip, as all of the acts that I thought stood out and were the best ended up performing at this stage.
Between all of these stages was organized both a food court and the typical festival shopping mall experience. Vendors sold shirts, stickers, countercultralish wares found at most festival venues. Food was a bit pricey considering the price to get in. Cheep beers (bud light) cost 7$, which I thought completely ridiculous especially when better beers at coachella in California were a dollar less and had 30% more for your dollar. Red Bulls were 5$ and mixed drinks at the hard to find bars were 11$. An overall rip off that made us eventually sneak in our own alcohol that we purchased on a venture into downtown on the second day. I bought a 2$ orange on the first day there but that was only because up to that point I had only eaten bloody Mary’s in the airport along with a few nachos. Food ended up being my biggest single expense for this entire trip, which isn’t saying much. The best deals were found outside of the festival in Greek Town and small sandwich shops around town, when you could find them. Overall my experience with keeping myself feed, hydrated, and buzzed was super negative and if i ever go back will have to come up with a solution for. Even renting a car with someone in my group and driving a few miles down the road to a store would have ended up proving a better deal than the prices we ended up paying.
Because I was dealing with a migraine for the first day of the trip and starting to develop some sever jet lag from partying in San Fransisco the weekend before, I did not end up making it to any of the many after parties, which is where a ton of dj’s who weren’t booked for DEMF were playing. From what I could tell from my friends experiences only one or two of the after hours parties ended up being enjoyable for them. Many of the events were not as good as they had hoped, or filled with very weird vibes. The one night i did try to venture out, I ended up walking over to an event that was being held inside a Hotel down the street from ours. As soon as I got there some of the angriest, hardest techno was being belted out at about 4am, and it had the effect of driving me away quickly. I was told later that the vibes inside that venue were extremely sketchy even for a hotel, and i’m glad I listened to my instinct and turned around and left back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
