Post-EDC Thoughts & Comments

Sorry that it's taken me so long to post again...things have been pretty busy on this end, what with all the shooting I was doing at the end of June (chronicled in my last posting), working on my book project, and doing research into getting a new car. Fortunately, all of that's done now...the last round of photo editing for the book went better than expected, and I'll shortly be picking up a new Ford Fiesta...so at least on that end, things are pretty good. :)

Unfortunately, if you're an electronic music fan, then you probably already know that things didn't quite go so well over at Electric Daisy Carnival back in June. Though the event had its highest-ever attendance (185,000 people over two days), as well as stellar performnces by many of the headlining artists--Deadmau5, Armin Van Buuren, Wolfgang Gartner and Swedish House Mafia come to mind, among others--it was sadly also marred by the death of a fifteen year-old attendee. This has already been covered extensively in the local and national media during the hoopla that surrounded this truly regrettable turn of events, so I won't labor over all of the details here. Instead, I'll summarize. Over the two days of the event, more than 200 arrests were made by the police, and more than 100 people were sent to the hospital. In the case of this young girl, reports seem to indicate that she overdosed on Ecstasy after drinking water from another person's water bottle. Apparently she collapsed and hit her head, and may have been trampled by other concertgoers before slipping into a coma. The next day, her distraught mother took her off life support systems, which led to her passing. It should be noted that this girl was less than candid about telling her mother where she was going to be this night--news reports are saying that she told her that she was going to be with her father and not at the event. Toxicology reports are still pending, so it's unknown at this time whether Ecstasy is the only substance that this girl had in her system. However, the press has been having a field day with this, and there is an investigation pending into the performance of Security at the event, and whether future events like EDC will be allowed at the Coliseum (and indeed the city) in the future.

There also has been a bunch of videos that have surfaced (mostly on YouTube) about the unruliness of some elements of the crowd; jumping fences, clogging entranceways, and generally messing with security. Needless to say, these videos are for the most part unflattering, to say the least. Also unflattering are the reports of the performance of at least some of the security guards at the event. Some attendees are saying that there was no searching done by these people at the entrance gateways to the event (which were jammed solid when I arrived), although some people I know who were there in attendance dispute this. A major problem that dogged the festival was access--meaning the inability of attendees to get from one part of the venue to another, particularly the staudium floor. The access points to and from the floor were so choked with people that it was nearly impossible for folks to get in and out. Also, the construction of some of the fences leading to the stages outside the Coliseum were nearly maze-like, leading to some extreme difficulties in navigating from stage to stage, particularly at night.

I have had considerable time to sift through the information that has been trickling out, so now I feel ready to offer up some thoughts of my own. I should preface this by stating here that I have not talked to any member of Insomniac (the event producers and promoters) after the close of the event. Thus, I have not been influenced by any input from them, even though I've known them personally for a very long time. The opinions I'm about to give are purely my own.

First off, I want to say that it's always terrible when a concert-goer loses their life while attending a show like this one. I don't mean only raves, either: arena and stadium shows have had a long history of attracting casualties in multiple genres of music. There is the tragic example of the infamous Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979 when eleven fans were crushed to death. Similar events have happened at AC-DC and Guns 'N Roses shows. There have been several instances of fans being shot or stabbed to death at hip-hop concerts in the past. People died at the original Woodstock, and even more horribly at Altamont--outright murder. And there have certainly been many occasions where fans have overdosed on drugs at rock shows which didn't make the local or national news. So, this is not a problem that is exclusive to electronic music or their fans, and to pin the blame on the culture in this genre alone is not only incorrect, but downright hypocritical as well. Rave culture did not create this issue; it's been around for a long, long time already...something the press should take note of, but unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) rarely does.

One of the primary issues at hand here is the sheer volume of the crowd in attendance, and whether the event staff were in any position to actually control the crowd in a way that would not result in incidents and injuries. I am usually pleased when an event does so well that it exceeds its expectations for attendance. However, in the case of the Coliseum, I have my reservations, mainly because this is an old football stadium that was not built to handle the enormous throngs that a festival like EDC attracts. The inner entraceways can get easily clogged with people looking to get in and out, which rapidly turns them into choke points. This was clearly evident in some of the videos posted, which showed gangs of people completely stuck in large piles in some of these choke points. Those unfortunate enough to be at the bottom of these piles were in genuine danger of getting crushed, or worse. If there was a fire or other smiliar incident in the stadium, these people would have been completely screwed. This access issue was particularly evident at the access points to and from the main floor of the Coliseum: those fortunate enough to arrive early were the ones who were actually able to make it onto the floor, while the rest were banished to the stands above. I don't really blame Insomniac for this; there's precious little they can do about something like this short of limiting ticket sales to something well below 100,000, as this is a structural problem. Perhaps limiting the attendance to somewhere around 75,000 to 80,000 would have been helpful...but then again, a production company is a business, and to stay in business a business needs maximum ROI (that's Return On their Investment for you non-marketing people out there). This isn't merely a question of greed; indeed, in a business such as entertainment, it's a question of accumulating enough capital to ensure that future events can be produced at all. The L.A. Times has been reporting in numerous stories that steps are being considered by city officials to prevent the Coliseum being used for future massives. Quite frankly, considering the headaches I've run into at that place as a fan and as a photographer over the years, I won't be shedding many tears if this comes to pass. I personally have no problem with the notion of gigs like EDC going back to places like the Orange Show in San Bernardino, or Verizon Wireless (or whatever it's called now) in Irvine, or even the Rose Bowl. Hell, even the Polo Grounds in Indio would do...it certainly worked for Nocturnal Wonderland back in the day.

However, the attendance problem admittedly was one of the contributing factors to another problem--that of people defying security and police by jumping fences. This was a problem that was rampant at many locations around the site. This is somethng I have a big issue with: people flagrantly challenging law enforcement in such a stupidly cavalier way. I can understand one's frustration at the inability to get down to an area where their favorite artists are playing, but fence-jumping is not a solution to this problem. All it does is encourage other equally stupid people to follow this dubious example, and add to the chaos in general. There were plenty of other stages to go to where amazing DJ talent could be found, all around the stadium. The numerous carnival rides and art exhibits all around the stadium were also available for public entertainment. In other words, there were alternatives. If people were manhandled and/or injured by security or the police while getting nabbed when fence-jumping, I'm not surprised or sympathetic to them in the least. The sheer lack of respect for authority--indeed, treating the open defiance of such authority as something like a game--is not glamorous or heroic. Rather, it's galling at best, and disgusting at worst. It almost smacks of gang culture, which is something the electronic music community has gone to great lengths to distance itself from over the years. Again, there's little that Insomniac could have done about this, except perhaps to build higher fences so as to discourage such behavior. This was not an organizational problem, it was an individual problem.

Then there's the issue of the security itself--whether there was enough of it, and the competency of the staff at the location. I have shot literally hundreds of parties, concerts and raves over the years, and in my humble opion, I don't believe there were nearly enough staff there, and I don't believe that many of them were up to the task at hand. This particular security company (which I'll call the Yellow Shirts, as that's what they wear as a uniform) has been notorious in the past for lax and or unprofessional behavior. I have received multiple reports that they were not checking IDs at the event, which could have been one of the factors in enabling the young girl to get into the event (she was 15 years old, and the "official" cut-off age for EDC was 16). There were many cases of security not being able to provide assistance to attendees to such basic questions as where certain stages were located on the premises. They certainly were clueless in several instances as to how to keep the crowd moving smoothly through the areas that would turn into choke points. There was at least one incident reported on the URB web site of a security officer removing his Yellow Shirt and then assaulting a member of the crowd. And above all, there just weren't enough Yellow Shirts around to prevent the rampant fence-jumping and other similar behavior; in many cases, they had to be assisted (or perhaps "bailed out" is the better phrase) by the police in carrying out their basic duties. I don't know where the Yellow Shirts recruit their people from (outside of the Marine base at TwentyNine Palms, according to ABC-7 News), but based on my observations of them at multiple events, I can say that their performance standards have more than once fallen far below that of the professional standards exhibited by the regular security personnel at most sports stadiums. One has to wonder, given this track record, why would Insomniac choose to go with the Yellow Shirts to provide security for this event? Obviously paying for such a large contingent of officers isn't cheap, but considering that EDC nearly sold out both days, wouldn't it have made sense to spend the extra money to hire more personnel, or another security company, to help prevent some of the problems that ended up arising?

And then of course there is the issue about the unfortunate victim herself. Obviously more facts need to come out regarding the circumstances surrounding this girl's death, such as just what other substances this girl may have had in her system besides Ecstasy--if anything--and just how she got it into her system. As of this writing, sources are saying that she injested it solely from the contents of a water bottle from an unfamiliar source, presumably laced with the drug, perhaps even without her knowledge. Based on long experience at raves, I find this scenario to be at least somewhat unlikely. I'm not looking to assign blame here, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to surmise that this girl may have exercised some incredibly bad judgement, as uninformed children often do. Much as many of us would like to believe otherwise, security can't be around every attendee in the stands babysitting them, and the fact is that it's almost ridiculously easy to sneak drugs into an event like this one...just as it's easy enough to do so at a rock, hip-hop, pop, or country music event, if one is so inclined. Unfortunately, Insomniac will almost certainly be vilified in the public eye for this, even though they themselves had next to no control over who brings what into one of their events. They stated very clearly in their flyers, brochures, and on the EDC web site that illegal substances would not be tolerated at the event. It's not entirely their fault if security failed to do its job, and it's certainly not their fault if the parents of the girl never adequately discussed the potential dangers of illegal drugs (or prescription drugs, for that matter) with her. The only real fault I can find with Insomniac on this issue--and I am only one of many in the electronic music media to bring this point up--was that they made EDC an all-ages event. It would have made a lot more sense for them to restrict this party to 18 and older. Why they didn't do this, I don't know...as I said earlier, I haven't spoken with anyone in Insomniac about this issue, and they're not talking to the media now.


In any case, there will almost certainly be more public fallout in the media in the future, as the latter has been all to eager to target this music and this community over the years. Whatever the city does as far as allowing electronic music festivals like EDC to take place within Los Angeles is out of the electronic music community's hands now...although personally, considering how deep in the financial hole the city is, I believe that these festivals will continue to operate within the metropolitan L.A. area in one form or another. However, wherever the next parties take place, the event producers--whether they're Insomniac or someone else--are going to have to run a tighter ship if they expect to survive in the long run.