Legoland Review - Jay Carlson

2/24/98

Well, Legoland was a complete success. Here's how the day went for me:

At around noon, we woke up and got breakfast. Then, JP and I went to Wade's to get the trailer full of sound and light equipment. We all went to the location, with three vehicles loaded with stuff for the event. Once there, we all began setting up. Everybody did something; I worked mainly on lights and sound.

Sometime during setup, the Sheriff decided to stop by. I walked out of the building to join the party, and answered a few questions. It appears that the night before, 20/20 aired a show about raves. Apparently it was biased, and they claimed that "Raves mean drugs, typically extacy" and "Raves our killing our children". It seems that this show prompted some concerned parent somewhere to call the police and tell them that "There's going to be a RAVE called Legoland, and there will be extacy at it." Well, after showing the sheriff some legal paperwork and assuring him that drugs won't be a problem, he left, saying that they'd be back later.

Some time later, we had everything we could have setup, and it was time to head back to Rapid to grab anything else we'd need that night. I had everything together except for two long 1/4" mono cables to reach between the EQ and the amp. We all cruised back to town, and JP and I went in search of the cables. After some searching around, we finally found what we needed at a gig that Dave was DJ'ing at the time. Then, we ran to campus to get a window fan, just in case it would be needed. Once stoked, we went to Hardee's to get some food, and then hit the road.

At around 8:30, we got back to the location and I put the cables in place. We put a record on, and... It sounded like shit. There was enough treble, but the bass sounded really weak. After looking everything over, I traced the problem to a homemade cable that was inverting one of the signals. I took it out of the signal path. Once that was fixed, another problem surfaced; whenever we turned the volume up even slightly, we were getting some really nasty feedback. We discovered that the feedback was getting in through the table that the turntables were on. The table was resonating at around 100 Hz, and the feedback was finding its way into the system through the needles on the turntables. To fix it, we placed the turntables on a sleeping bag that we had on hand, and used the EQ to cut all audio at 100 Hz by 15 dB. By now it was 9:00, and with one hour till the official start of the event, our first guests began appearing.

I spent the next few hours parking cars. The grounds around the place were divided into 5 or 6 separate lots, and I waited for cars to show up, and then I led them to park. This was necessary because most of the parking area was tricky to get to, and would end up being blocked off if someone wasn't on duty. At one point, things were really hectic, so two of us were parking cars at once. After being parked, I would tell the guests the rules: "Leave your coats in the car, no alcohol, no drugs, no weapons, don't hang around outside, and once you're in the building, you either stay or leave for good."

After walking to the door, Zac the security guard was there to make sure that everything was good. He did a hell of a good job. For the entire night, he stood by that door, making sure that nobody broke the rules on the way in. He stood there, putting up with every single person that had to complain about the rules, and making sure that no trouble was happening for the duration of the event. For the most part, everything was under control, but during the evening one person had to be kicked out. Oh well, I guess that should be expected.

At one point during the night, a police cruiser drove up. I parked him just like I would've parked anyone else before even realizing who I was parking. When I looked and saw that it was a cop car, I walked up and started talking. They wanted to walk through the place. I didn't bother going over all the rules, but I did ask them if they could leave their weapons in the car. Well, they couldn't do that, but that was okay. One threw on his undercover cop uniform, and they both strolled in. Since we'd been doing everything the right way, they didn't see any reason to hang around, and headed out. Unlike many others, this party didn't get busted!!!

During the night, as the number of people peaked, we began having trouble with the amp. The room temperature was about 90 degrees, and we were pushing our sound pretty hard to overcome the amount of sound-absorbing bodies we had in there. Facing those stresses, the amp began overheating and going into "protection" mode. To give the amp some relief, I unplugged two of our four bass pins and put the window fan right in front of the amp to cool it off. That, in combination with turning it down just a little, was enough to get us through the rest of the night. I also opened a few of the windows (the ones that didn't have a direct acoustical path to the neighbor's houses.) Next time, for sure, we will have to find a way to keep that amp cool. I'm sure we'll think of something.

Eventually, as the night wound down, I actually got a chance to have some fun. I went inside the building to join the crowd. The atmosphere was great, with tons of people dancing, illuminated by glow sticks and by the special lighting effects which pulsed electrically in sync to the beat of the music. Inside this place, where free expression was prevalent, anybody could be anything they wanted to be, and nobody judged anybody. In this atmosphere, fear, anger, hate, rage, distress, confusion, and any other negative feelings were absent. Instead, the rave carried a positive vibe--one in which love, acceptance, indifference, happiness, and satisfaction were abundantly present. While it lasted, I had a blast.

At around 3:30, most of the guests had left and we began cleaning up. 3:30 is a little early for a rave to end, but when you think about the location and the fact that we had under 200 guests peak, we didn't do too bad. Maybe, as time progresses, our crowds will grow, and these things will go all night. Maybe.

Cleanup didn't take near as long as we thought it would. After cleanup, we headed back to Rapid City. First stop was Perkin's, where we all got some breakfast and talked about how much fun the night was. From there, we dropped the trailer off at Wade's, and cruised over to the after-party at the map point. Some time later, we took off and drove into the sunrise towards the dorms. DAAAAMNN that sun was bright. Finally, I crawled into bed to get some sleep.

It's been a few days since the first event that Zoop Productions has done, but every detail of the night is still bright and vibrant in my mind, and I'm sure that the memory will remain with me for a long, long time. I can't wait for the next one...

See ya later,

--Jay Carlson
jpc2125@silver.sdsmt.edu