Organic Festival Not Exactly a Rave Revue

“So this is an American rave,” mused Kelli Dayton, the singer of the Sneaker Pimps, early in the English band’s performance during the Organic ’97 festival on Saturday at the National Orange Showgrounds in San Bernardino.

Well, no. People at raves don’t just stand around watching the acts as they did with the Sneaker Pimps. They dance. And they don’t leave the stage area in droves when the band stops and a deejay takes over, as they did Saturday when Irish beatmaster David Holmes started spinning. They stay and dance.

So, technically speaking, this wasn’t a rave. Instead, it was the well-intentioned but disappointing remnant of what was planned to be a national tour showcasing electronic-based dance culture, bridging the gap between the established underground and the mainstream.

Mixing song-oriented groups with techno underpinnings (the Pimps and English post-soul collective Faithless) and leading techno figures (Holmes, the L.A. duo Crystal Method and English innovators Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert and Lionrock’s Justin Robertson), it sounded good on paper.

Even with the withdrawal of proposed headliners Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers and the advent of two competing tours, this promised to be a strong follow-up to last year’s Organic debut, which drew more than 5,000 to the Snow Valley ski facility in the San Bernardino Mountains.

But due to concerns about the weather and potential access problems caused by last week’s fire in the mountains, promoters made a last-minute move of the show to the less attractive but more convenient site in the flatlands. And the effort to bring the underground and the mainstream together seemed to backfire. The real rave kids apparently had little interest in seeing pop groups. And the pop fans that came for the Sneaker Pimps had little interest in the real rave elements.

Consequently, ticket sales barely passed 3,000, by one organizer’s generous estimate on Saturday, and the environment was somewhat stolid.--

The performers and deejays, though, all did their best. The Sneaker Pimps added live edge to the cool sounds of their “Becoming X” album. And Faithless, a sprawling 10-member ensemble, did get people moving with a slick but spirited blend of neo-soul, hip-hop, techno and quasi-salsa rhythms.

A highlight, though, came courtesy of techno visionary Richard D. James, who bills himself as Aphex Twin. With his intricate, unpredictable and sophisticated array of creaks and clicks as the soundtrack, three people in colorful, fuzzy bear suits cavorted onstage to the herky-jerky sounds. It was about as perfect a pairing of innocence and intellect as you could get--and thus the perfect display of the rave appeal.