Tough summer for events promoter

Gary Richards hopes to forget the last few months, including a canceled L.A. show and fallout from a mega-rave that he was not involved in. Coming Saturday is his Hard festival at an L.A. park.

AT THE CONTROLS: Diplo is among the… (Noel Vasquez / Getty Images)

August 06, 2010|By Scott T. Sterling, Special to the Los Angeles Times

As recently as June, summer 2010 was looking good for event promoter Gary Richards. In just three years, Richards had built his Hard music festivals from what he calls a "career Hail Mary" into a lucrative national brand featuring eclectic lineups of emerging acts, most of which make electronic dance music.

It was all about to pay off with a summer full of events, including a national tour featuring underground avant-disco duo Crystal Castles, buzzing South African group Die Antwoord and a dozen others, as well as two daylong festivals in New York and L.A., both headlined by controversial artist M.I.A.

FOR THE RECORD:
Hard Summer music festival: An article in Friday's Calendar section about the Hard Summer music festival referred to "British beatmakers Soulwax." Soulwax is a Belgian band. —

However, that all changed after the Electric Daisy Carnival in June. The event drew negative attention when a 15-year-old girl died after attending the mega-rave. Although Richards had no business ties to that event's promoters, Insomniac Events, his Hard concerts became a part of the conversation about dance music and public space.

"There are already so many hurdles to clear for an event like this, but those hurdles grew tremendously after EDC," Richards said in his Hollywood office, walls festooned with posters and fliers for myriad events and a detailed layout of Los Angeles State Historic Park in downtown L.A., where his Hard Summer festival will take place Saturday. "We met with city government countless times, and they did have some areas where they wanted to see additional measures taken. We obliged. It's costing us more, but it's worth it for everyone to feel safe about our event."

In addition to Crystal Castles, Saturday's event will feature performances by British beatmakers Soulwax, Chicago house legend Green Velvet, dubstep pioneer Skream and L.A. producers Flying Lotus and Gaslamp Killer, among others.

The event is a fraction of the size of Electric Daisy Carnival, which attracted an estimated 185,000 people to downtown L.A. and ended tragically when attendee Sasha Rodriguez died of a suspected drug overdose (a toxicology report is still pending). The media fallout and public outcry led to the city creating a "rave task force" to take a closer look at such large-scale dance music events.

Richards canceled the first of two Hard L.A. events this summer amid a swirl of rumors, including pressure from City Hall and poor ticket sales.