7,000+ Rave in the New Year With Upbeat Circa ’96

As with vastly more important things, the riots of 1992 had deep psychic effects on L.A. night life, plunging some clubbers into the dark-minded excesses of after-hours drug dens. What better way, then, to ring in a new era than with an upbeat, old-school, hands-in-the-air, whistles-and-glow-sticks rave.

It was good to see L.A.’s club scene back to health at Circa ’96 Sunday night, a fourth annual mega-rave put on by a trio of veteran West Coast rave promoters to benefit Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Held in front of more than 7,000 people at the Olympic Grand Auditorium, it was a cross-pollination of sounds, scenes and cultures downtown that would hardly have been likely two or three years ago.

Hard-eyed cholos rubbed shoulders with infantile ravers and skin-headed skaters as two stages, one indoors, one out, provided an infusion of much-needed new sounds.

The indoor stage highlighted a dance genre called “California breaks,” which consists of down-tempo hip-hop loops laced with organic instrumentals, such as cowbells and flutes. Deejay Robbie Hardkiss, the darling of the genre, came from San Francisco to school the locals on this funky, chunky sound.

The music under the white circus tent--180-beats-per-minute Dutch “gabber” and just-as-fast “jungle”--was the aggressive antidote to the hippie techno inside.

For perhaps the first time, a vast L.A. audience was turned on to the sound of jungle, which has taken England by storm. This deejay-spun sound of dance-hall-on-speed, performed by England’s Rude Bwoy Monty, had the club kids in a frenzy.

Drugs were plentiful, including ecstasy, LSD and marijuana (methamphetamine, the club drug of choice, did not seem as prominent on the scene as in years past). Plentiful, too, was security, a yellow jacket around every corner. The sound systems were top-notch, delivering crisp bass to go with those festively colored lasers. The only glitches: Enough litter to rival Woodstock, and a single entrance for the vast auditorium that created a human bottle neck.

Circa ’96 might herald the comeback of L.A. club life. At the least, it provided an outlet for some of today’s newest and most vital music and gave continued life to one of L.A.’s most underrated subcultures--rave.