San Fran Lovefest: Review

San Fran Lovefest: Review

2 October, 2007 | 4.38AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Industry Boy Blog
• Written by: Industry Boy

“Calling out around the world. Are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer’s here and the time is right, for dancing in the street.” Martha Reeves might have sung it, but on Saturday the citizens of San Francisco lived it. The annual San Fran Lovefest brought the city streets to a standstill as tens of thousands of clubbers, dance music fans, hippies and naked folk danced all day to the beats of DJs such as Gabriel & Dresden, Lee Burridge and DJ Dan.

Like the original Berlin Love Parade, the onus of Lovefest is on participation, and the party is in the name of peace, tolerance, love and social harmony, man.

Dance music brings people together, we’ve all seen it before, but to see it on such a massive scale in the streets of one of America’s greatest cities is a spectacle that few other music scenes can replicate.

Whilst Europe’s electronic music culture is indigenous - the Berlin Love Parade and its copycat techno street parades in Zurich and Belgium (City Parade, Liege) have been going for years - San Fran’s Lovefest is a relative new kid on the block.

But despite this fact, the organisers estimate about 80,000 have turned out.

And from the top of Beatport and Spundae’s jointly hosted float Industry Boy looks out and only sees a sea of happy faces.

The fact that the sun is shining brightly just makes the whole day better.

Our float crawls along at a snail’s pace as DJ Dan blasts out the Fedde Le Grand remix of Ida Corr ‘Let Me Think About It’ - a crowd pleasing anthem if ever there was one.

The thousands on either side of the float cheer and raise their arms in appreciation like puppets controlled by the giant hand of a rave god above.

A huge female reproductive organ tosses a condom at Industry Boy as we drive past, presumably she doesn’t want me to impregnate her.

A bloke wearing absolutely nothing except a pair of black boots stands on the side of the road drinking a can of beer like it’s a totally normal thing to do: ‘Hey I’m just standing here with my cock and balls out, enjoying an ice cold beer.’

Industry Boy jumps off the Beatport/Spundae float to check out the other floats in the dance music convoy.

San Fran’s Supperclub impress with what has to be the coolest DJ booth in town. It’s built into a furlined cockpit.

“All the floats are way cooler this year,” a girl in the crowd says to her friend.

The sound systems are indeed booming but not distorting.

Clearly a lot of planning has gone into this from all parties concerned.

In the space of about 30 minutes Dubfire’s ‘Roadkill’ gets played about five times.

Because the floats aren’t connected figuratively or symbolically none of the DJs are communicating with each other and there’s no warm up sets or planning going on.

It’s each DJ for himself, and so each jock is pulling out only his biggest tunes.

But no one really cares, today isn’t about trainspotting, it’s about dancing in the streets and having fun with like-minded people.

Back on the Beatport float, Eddie Halliwell wacks things out with a chunky electro tech set.

Donald Glaude too kicks some proverbial bottoms with a solid pumping house set.

The day goes by in a flash, and before you know it, we’re stumbling around the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for the official afterparty.

British superstar Sasha kills it with a quality progressive house set.

Sasha has been on form recently - his recent Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 proved that he’s still the no.1 DJ for epic house and prog - and tonight he doesn’t disappoint with a pitch perfect Ableton set.

It then goes all trancey with Ferry Corsten, Gabriel & Dresden and John 00 Fleming, and the crowd lap up the euphoria.

Summer maybe over now, but it still feels great dancing in the street.

Industry Boy just wishes one DJ had played the Martha Reeves & The Vandellas track - that should be the anthem for all street parades from now on.

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