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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
- From: alexpace@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Alex L. Pace)
- Newsgroups: alt.rave
- Subject: Most Commercial Rave Yet Award???
- Summary: Knott's Berry Farm "K-Rave '93"
- Message-ID: <85787@ut-emx.uucp>
- Date: 24 Dec 92 05:50:34 GMT
- Sender: news@ut-emx.uucp
- Organization: The University of Texas at Austin
- Lines: 53
-
- Wow, I found this on page B-1 of Today's (12-23-92) WALL STREET JOURNAL!
- This one is so well publicized that it is written about BEFORE it happens
- in a conservative newspaper on the other side of the continent.
-
- _____________________________________________________________________________
- KNOTT'S BERRY SETS HOLIDAY JAM BUT MAYBE IT SHOULD STICK TO JELLY
- By David J. Jefferson -- Staff Reporter for the journal
-
- Every trend-setter knows that once something hits the mass market,
- its no longer hip. Take Peter Max. Disco. Junk Bonds.
- So the avant-garde may have to give up "raves", huge, all-night
- dance parties. Because on New Year's Eve, "K-Rave '93", a rave to end all
- raves, will be held at Knott's Berry Farm, the Buena Park, Calif., theme
- park that jelly built.
- Heretofore, raves have been mostly underground affairs, often held
- illegally in abandoned warehouses and other remote locations, and
- attracting thousands of young people dressed in neo-hippie and faux-gang
- garb. Rave revelers gyrate to lyricless computerized music called
- "techno", drop amino acid in the form of vitamin-enriched "smart drinks",
- and pop the occasional, illicit "ectasy" tablet. The atmosphere is equal
- parts '60s psychedelia and '90s urban street culture: If rocker Grace
- Slick and rapper Marky Mark got their friends together, it would be a rave.
- That's not at all what you would expect to find at Knott's, which
- for years has shunned raucous New Year's revelry in favor of its
- "Jubilation" evening of contemporary Christian music. But the devout have
- been fewer in number, and Knott's needed a revenue-booster.
- The Knott family was uncomfortable with the idea of letting
- teenagers dressed like the Mad Hatter and go-go dancers invade the park,
- but Dan Anderson, the 22 year-old great-grandson of founder Walter Knott
- and a raver himself, convinced them that it could hold a rave sans the
- seedier elements. "You don't have to worry about dirty lyrics, because
- rave music has no lyrics," says Knott's spokesman Stuart Zanville.
- Won't a Knott's Berry Farm rave be like a Muzak rendition of "Like
- a Virgin"? Knott's doesn't think so. In keeping with the latter-day
- Renaissance Faire flavor of other raves, Knott's will populate the park
- with bizarre street performers: a snake charmer, tribal dancers, atheletes
- on Stairmaster machines, Vegas-style showgirls riding Snoopy floats.
- "We're juxtaposing elements in a surrealistic way," says Jeff Langley, a
- one-time collaborator with feminist folk singer Holly Near and now Knott's
- director of entertainment. He's hoping that "hokey becomes hip."
- The hip crowd may show up simply to poke fun. But Knott's will
- have the last laugh: Each raver will have paid $27.50 to attend.
-
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