Monster Massive 2009 Review
Monster Massive 2009 in one word – unimpressive. Sure there were tons of people there and a lot of great DJs, but that doesn’t matter when the event is not run well. Go Ventures, who runs Monster Massive every year, should have been much more organized.
I’ll start off by telling my story for the night. I drove up from San Diego to the LA Sports complex Saturday afternoon. Traffic was light and we arrived at the event at 5:30pm, excited for the night ahead. The event didn’t open until 7pm, so I went to find my press pass to get into the event. I received an email the Monday before the event confirming my press pass for the event and was told to check in at the Guest-List line. After searching for a while I found the Guest-List check in, but there was no one there. I sent a text to the media correspondent from Go Ventures, and got no reply. Thinking nothing of it, I went back to my car and get ready, hoping someone would come to the Guest-List check in.
No one arrived to the guest list check in until 8:00pm, well after the event had started. There were around 200 people waiting to check in for the guest list. How can you not have anyone running your guest list? Very poor planning by Go Ventures. Final at 9pm, I meet up with Joey Luu, the media correspondent for Go Ventures. I asked him were I can check in and he responds by saying that they had to make a lot of last minuet cuts on the press list and that I may not have a pass. Baffled and explaining that I drove all the way from San Diego to cover the event, Joey told me there was nothing he could do for me, but I should check the guest list to see if I was still on the list. After waiting in line for about an hour and fighting people trying to cut the line, I find out I am not on the press list. I was not the only person this happened to, many other people on the press list, including a student from UC Santa Cruz, were also not on the press list. As of today, I still have not received an email saying I was cut from the press list. This was very unprofessional, unacceptable, and the Go Venture representatives didn’t seem to care.
Luckily, I meet a club promoter from San Diego in the Guest List line, who seeing what had happened to me, offer his extra ticket to me. I wouldn’t have been able to go to the event without his help and would have driven three hours for no reason. But without a press pass I wasn’t able to bring in my camera so I don’t have any pictures of the event. My ticket was a VIP ticket, so I was able to go in the shorter entrance line. However, my other friends had to go through the normal entrance. They had one entrance for a 70,000 person event, again bad planning. It took my friends an hour and a half to get into the event. The crowd in line was very rowdy, trying to take down the fence and the riot police almost tear-gassed the crowd. Not a high point of the night. Therefore, everyone entering the event was very upset causing the crowd dynamic from the beginning of the night to be negative.
Finally by 11pm, we were able to listen to some music. We went into the LA stadium first to see Pete Tong. The stadium set up was really cool and Pete Tong played a good set. After that, I wasn’t really impressed with any other DJs, no one wowed me like I have seen DJs do in the past. The crowd dynamic just wasn’t the same as other raves I have been too. MANDY also played a good set, but nothing totally impressive.
The only redeeming quality to the night was Armin Van Buuren. There is a reason he was just voted #1 DJ in the world and he definitely knows how to put on a show. The main stage was outside this year, which was nice and made it less crowded. The lights and fire special effects made for a great show, and I left the night feeling a little better about making the journey all the way to L.A. It was a fun night, but thank goodness Armin was able to play such a great show and make up for the poor planning by Go Ventures.
Monster Massive was an experience that should be done at some point, but I have to say I won’t be going back. Walking out and comparing it to the Electric Daisy Carnival this summer, everyone around us agreed it was nothing compared to EDC. I guess we need the bad shows to put into perspective how good the other ones are. I don’t even think I will go to Together As One Now, on New Years Eve, because it is put on in part by Go Ventures. Check out the videos of Armin’s set, pretty amazing.