Manny King John
Today is June 8th and I’m mentally preparing myself for one of the biggest festival-party in the United States! In preparation, my friends and I went through the rave ritual of taking 4 hours to get ready. Fully equipped with enough neon accessories, glitter and tutus to keep a strip club in business for weeks, we got ready and “pre-partied”. The doors opened at 7:00pm, but we did not leave until around 7:30 because my home is about 10 minutes away from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Well, that 10-minute ride turned into a 2-hour ride.
EDC Day One Was Like:
On Friday, we made our way to see quite a few dj’s. On the main stage kineticFIELD, we had the chance to see Knife Party, Afro Jack & Kaskade. In between seeing them spin I went on a few carnival rides, purchased an insomniac refillable water bottle, lost every last person I came with, [laughs] picked up some new friends, traded kandi, found one of my friends and purchased some seven dollar lemonade. The atmosphere was amazing there was so much love in the air everyone was being so hospitable holding doors open, the please’s and the thank you’s it was awesome, One of my favorite things on Friday is the big bamboo structure insomniac put together as one of their ambient art pieces, it was huge there were easily hundreds of people sitting on the fixture and the base of it listening to its smooth heavy bass filled tunes. At the stage circuitGROUNDS I was able to see Gabriel & Dresden, I really enjoyed their set and the amazing visuals that went with the music, the lighting was pure perfections and the effects were awesome as well, at one point the whole background of the stage was generated from a large scale camera panning out the length of the audience so we saw ourselves on the screen.
EDC Day Two Was Like:
We got to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway around 9:00pm but the d j we wanted to see wasn’t spinning until 11:00pm so we decided to explore what insomniac had to offer for the wondering eye. The first art installation that I noticed was a very large butterfly that was trimmed in bright neon lights that strobed and created different designs and also opened and closed its wings. Then we got on some more rides, we finally found the tilt and whirl (it’s an edc ritual for my friends and I to ride it ) at this time its almost 11 so we head back over to the circutGROUNDS stage to get ready to watch Rank 1, we get there rank 1 is amazing as always the sound was on point really clear I love that, it got pretty packed at that stage it was madness people jumping and screaming everywhere. Then we head over to kinticFIELD to go catch Calvin Harris. And this is when the night started to get crazy. My friend and I are fighting our way to get through to even hear Calvin Harris bc there are sooooo many people its crazy so at first we just fight through the crowd but we don’t make it that far in when my friend says “ something is wrong” and Im wondering what shes pertaining to and she said its not right over here, I know you really want to see Calvin Harris but we have to get out of here, So I listen to her and we start “trying” to make our way out of the massive crowd. Well half way out the music stops completely and Calvin Harris gets on the microphone and says “ there are way too many people over here and its getting too crazy so were cutting the music” everyone starts booing and screaming it was pretty frightening so we are now fighting along with everyone else to make it from the main stage and as we do we walk by the Qdance stage and notice that there is no one there the music is off everywhere and all the stages are being cleared by seas of neon green uniformed officers. They are telling everyone that we need to get off of the flat top and into the grandstands for our safety and this all started around 12:45am. So we make it up to the grandstands and sit, and sit and sit as this guy on the microphone keeps repeating, “please everyone to the grandstands for your safety this is a temporary situation and we will be up and running as soon as the winds die down, thank you“. So at this point more than half the people that were there have gone it started out with over 300 thousand guest but after hours of no music the crowd reduced to about 80 to 90 thousand and at around 3am there was a little miniature boat fixture that was brought out into the grass where everyone that was not in the stands were sitting and markus shults took the stage and started spinning for the die hards that stuck it out. Everyone was so happy and excited to finally hear some music we started pouring onto the grass it was awesome like an old school party just kicking it, then after markus shults went on steve aoki also took too the makeshift stage the night ended on a high note even though more than half the artist book for Saturday night never got a chance to make it to the stage.
EDC DAY THREE WAS LIKE:
LAST DAY OF EDC !!! We are on a mission to party to the highest potential after the way Saturday turned out we def had to make up for it. We got the the speedway the earliest out of all three days it was about 730ish when we arrived so we hung out in the parking lot for a little bit chatting up strangers and drinking monster energy drinks to help us make it though the night. Our first order of business is to see Bunny of RITM on the discovery STAGE (side note Bunny is creative director for insomniac so all the dancers, stage performers etc he played a big part in bringing to life) Bunny went on at 9:00 and OMG HE WAS AMAZING the stage show was the craziest one I’ve seen all weekend girls came out in all silver outfits with bunny ears and gas mask with 2 big balls of fire on chains and started flailing them about in only the way a professional could. And while all of that is going on, on the stage down in the audience with us there were navy blue uniformed girls on roller skates with led lit edc signs on their back skating through the crowd. Very large colorful animals dancing, an orange jumping cactus out shaking his groove thang with all the ladies there was just so much going on at once it was crazy. Then once bunny’s performance was over we went back over to circutGROUNDS to catch the tail end of Dash Berlin and the whole Ferry Corsten set. Both did a super job I love love loved Ferry’s set it was perfection. Once we were done over there we went to cosmicMEADOW for what we thought was going to be Carl Cox not relizing we stayed too long for ferry and completely missed him but we made it in time for Danny Tenaglia at 4:00am am and pretty much stayed at that stage until the sun came up, We were sitting in the grass chatting it up with people trying to prolong the moment because we were relizing that this magical weekend was coming to an end.
HIGHLIGHTS
Stages/Lighting Effects
Size of stages
Carnival Rides
Kaskade’s Statement “ I will never ask you to make some motherfucking noise, I let the music speak for itself”
Cooling Stations
Water Refill Stations
Ferry Corstens Set
Insomniac letting people with Saturday tickets come back on Sunday, Free of charge.
Not So Highlights
EDC Shutdown on Saturday
No toilot paper in the bathrooms
No signs to find anything
Water refill stations had no lights at all
Until we all meet again, under the electric sky.
Peace, Love and GrungeCake from Las Vegas, Nevada. This is Jazzlyn Kirkland.
