Waiting For The Drop: Rise of the Superstar DJs (2024) Movie Script

1
[film reels]
[bright music]
[crowd cheers]
[electronic music: mysterious, downbeat]
[music: "Aural Psynapse" by deadmau5]
- [Narrator] They say that
a DJ is a puppet master,
a shaman.
All I know is that this world,
electronic music
[fireworks boom]
can be a magical place.
A change has been coming.
Today, it's all about candy
ravers, bottle poppers,
and 30-second explosions.
It's different somehow.
The era of EDM, the rise of superstar DJs
had many of us
waiting... for the drop.
[explosion]
[electronic music]
[crowd cheers]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[crowd cheers]
[music: "Stream" by Stanley
Gurvich. Gentle, downbeat]
The whole night was a journey.
- [Speaker] There was no money in this.
It was pure underground.
And really raw and it was special.
[gentle music]
- [Speaker] What it was about
was you started the music
at 10 in the evening
and it would go until six in the morning
and the whole night would
be a progression of sound.
So you get this movement of sound
it kinda locked you into the dance floor.
It hypnotized you, really.
[electronic music]
- [Speaker] You know,
watching those guys mix,
I would just stand in
the DJ booth behind them,
completely mesmerized
by their every movement
of their hands, their arms.
You could hear in the way they mixed
what they were putting into it physically.
It was the art of DJing.
- [Speaker] The ability to
hold a room, read a crowd,
is a fucking art form.
[crowd cheers]
[electronic music]
- [Narrator] Electronic music took off
in the underground clubs
of Chicago and Detroit, but it
was in the UK where the music
and the DJ would rise to
their greatest heights.
[electronic music]
[record needle scratching]
Together
[music: "DC Together" by
DSK CHK. Funky, downbeat]
Together
[electronic music]
Together
- We used to kind of
go late night clubbing
and then the next day go to school.
So we were going out when
we were 14, 15 years old,
going out and experiencing
night clubbing before we was 18.
- Now I remember when the
DJ would bring the decks in
and they had the red
light, the amber light
and the green light and
that was the light show.
- I got into this as a kid.
I grew up in Chicago. Going
into high school in 1985
and house music was, it was
on a few radio stations.
[electronic music]
- There was elements of disco music
that was really creating the club scene
in and around the UK,
but then disco started
to become a dirty word
and the house music movement
that was happening in the US,
we were able to latch onto something,
which would be exciting.
All the music that was coming
from New York, from Chicago,
Detroit, they're all making
this underground basement
kind of garage house music
and we just lapped it up.
We couldn't get enough of that music.
Now, I think a lot of
people from South London,
we'd never really had a lot of money.
- I came from a poor background,
a working class background,
but at 15, I thought
I could rule the world
and my mom said, "What
you gonna go and do?"
And I was like, "Well this is it.
We're in a band, we're going out.
The rest is history."
And she's like, "No you're not.
"You're gonna go and get a career."
So I end up going away
for four years studying.
I was a fully qualified chef,
the band we were still doing
on the side, it fell away.
I started becoming a bedroom DJ.
I'd come home and I'd have my decks
and I'd be learning.
- He wanted to get into the music business
and I said, if you want to, the only way
to get into it is really
to go to New York.
- [DJ] Yo party people, we
gotta keep this thing going.
You know, like the way we used to do it
in the Paradise Garage.
[music: "Larry Levan The Final Night
[of Paradise Garage 1987." downbeat, retro]
- The king of DJs was
playing, Larry Levan.
That was the moment that inspired me
to wanna play music as a DJ.
DJs were all going there and
trying to live the experience.
- He was trying to blag to
get into Studio 54 one night
Paul was absolutely
thwatted, drunk, thwatted.
So me and my cousin, we held him up.
The guy let us through.
We forgot about him
and he just fucking
hit the floor. [laughs]
He hit the floor
and we went, oh shit, and then
we got thrown out. [laughs]
- And they thought it was funny
to push me in the rubbish.
[bag of bottles clanks]
I would've done the same thing.
I would've pushed them.
- He was just a cheeky young guy
pretending to be a big music executive
and the dream kind of came true. [laughs]
- I always looked to my
proper job as working
for a record company,
trying to sign a band
going in the studio.
I suppose because DJing was
never seen as a proper job.
You couldn't make a living.
But then realized that
I was born to be a DJ.
[gentle, melancholy trance music]
[music: "Lonely" by Ferry Corsten]
- Ibiza is raw.
You can track Roman
hedonism back to Ibiza.
There's ruins of an old Roman disco there.
[melancholy music continues]
- [Narrator] In his early 20s,
Oakenfold was still
discovering the power of a DJ.
Then one summer, he went to Ibiza
and experienced Argentine
DJ Alfredo Fiorito.
Alfredo took him on a musical
journey from around the world.
- The DJs, Pepe, Cesar,
Alfredo, were playing
all kinds of music together
and you didn't have that in the UK.
You didn't have that in anywhere else
in the world realistically.
And then you had ecstasy
and ecstasy was underground.
It was the drug of the moment.
It played an important
part of it along with music
that you'd never heard anywhere else.
Paul came out in the early
summer of '87. Took him out
to Amnesia and give him a little friend
and that little friend was ecstasy.
That was it. [laughs]
I've never seen grown
men so stupid skipping
around clubs and stuff,
I'm telling you. [laughs]
- They were mixing sort
of electronic music
with sort of indie music and rock music
all mixing together to make
the sort of Balearic sound.
- Every kind of music
together was the creation
of the Balearic beat.
I never think I've been creating a sound.
For me, the essential thing was to make
that dance floor work.
- [Narrator] Oakenfold
and his friends captured
the eclectic style of the Ibiza DJs
and brought it back to London
they gave it a name, Balearic Beat.
- When we brought in Alfredo,
Alfredo played at the
project club in South London.
Then we opened a club called The Future.
Then the main club
that changed everything was Monday night
at Spectrum at Heaven.
- [Speaker] The early
Balearic music that everyone
brought back to the UK was
based on Alfredo's record box.
- We knew something that no one else knew.
As soon as you come down, you was hooked
'cause it was a revolution.
It was so different, fresh,
and exciting with a different mentality.
You didn't have to dress up.
You could wear sneakers and baggy jeans
and you was there to dance.
- It gave other people an
opportunity to be entrepreneurial.
So if you had a bit of money
and a bit of nuance, you
could take the scene out
of the clubs and put it in a field.
- You could almost drive around the M25
and just listen out
for the sound of techno
or see like the convoys of cars
of people dressed in psychedelic clothes
and you could follow them
that would lead you to a party.
- This was an age where
no one had cell phones.
You would go to a phone box,
you would dial a number,
it would tell you the
address of where it was.
It was in the sort of abandoned
jewelry districts of Birmingham.
You'd throw some tie dye
sheets up a disgusting wall.
You would try and make
a toilet outta a bucket.
The decks were on a table,
the lights were just
strobes, just flashing.
[pulsing, high bpm electronic music]
[music: "Reflections" by Stanley Gurvich]
- Ecstasy makes you very
susceptible to the effects of music
and you're having these
intense blissful experiences
and you can feel like
the DJ is controlling you
in this sort of benign way
and is kind of basically
giving you this experience.
And so it bred this kind of feeling
of worship towards the DJs.
- We wanted to have the
freedom to right to party
and all this sort of stuff.
It was quite a democracy
at the end of the day
by what we caused in a sense
of a fuss all over the country.
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
- It is just like stuff
make you wanna dance.
- [Speaker] You lose control.
- Yeah, you lose control.
And I don't know, you feel free.
- [Narrator] By the
early 1990s rave culture
was spreading in the UK.
Kids were looking for an escape
from the ailing British economy.
Ragtag groups of DJs
and hippie travelers organized
free parties in public spaces
playing a game of cat and
mouse with the police.
- The invasion which took
place at Castlemorton Common
on Friday the 22nd of May.
On that day, new age travelers, ravers,
and racketeers in drugs
arrived in the strength of
two motorized army divisions.
The numbers, speed, and
efficiency with which they arrived
Massing probably at one time
to as many as 30,000 people
combined to terrorize the local community
to the extent that some residents
had to undergo psychiatric treatment
in the days that followed.
[sheep bleating]
- The normally tranquil
common near Malvern had become
a traveler's shanty town.
Tents had gone up.
The 700-acre site normally
home to grazing sheep
had become a giant car park
for a motley array of vehicles.
Local people were angered
that the police had apparently been unable
to prevent the invasion.
- We got a phone call
from Bedlam Sound System
who were just over here
at Castlemorton Common, saying
there's this huge convoy,
36 miles of it coming down from Somerset.
- By Monday morning,
more than 20,000 travelers had turned up.
A large marquee had been erected
and the camp became a giant rave party.
From the air, the sheer
scale of the invasion
of the common could be seen,
achieving the dubious record
of being Britain's largest
ever illegal rave party.
[electronic music]
- Boom, boom, boom.
It never stopped for over a week.
I got in the back room
and kept the radio on all night
so I couldn't hear their
bloody music. [laughs]
- The dealers were the thing,
they were sitting there
with the prices of things,
prices of different kinds of drugs,
written in lipstick on the car windows.
I saw one child with a
thing on his head saying,
"My dad sells the best acid."
- [Speaker] There was
a huge public outcry.
They were all terrified
that this was gonna
happen on their doorstep.
And so there was a huge amount
of pressure on the government
to do something about it.
- If we wanna have a gathering, why not?
- Why can't we party?
- It's not hurting anybody.
I mean we clear up the mess
after the legislate, all
the mess was cleared up.
- [Narrator] After the
week-long rave ended,
British authorities began a crackdown.
They accused members of Spiral
tribe of organizing the rave.
- We tried to make our
escape down this direction,
but we were jumped on.
These undercover police guys
just jumped out the hedge.
We had no idea of course, that
we were being stitched up.
There was plans in the background
going on for Spiral Tribe
to be made an example of.
- [Narrator] Parliament pushed through
a criminal justice bill
that included anti rave legislation,
but they couldn't even agree
on how to define rave music.
- I agree with him entirely
that some of this loud music
is deeply offensive.
We might like to draft a clause
which would catch a rave party
but which would not catch
also a Pavarotti concert.
- I hope the noble lord
is not accusing Pavarotti
of emitting sounds wholly
or predominantly
characterized by the omission
of a succession of repetitive beats.
- I hope also we'll do our best
to avoid sending Pavarotti
to prison for three months.
- What happened at Castlemorton
crushed the British rave scene.
- The crushing of that free party movement
kind of encouraged that
shift towards the superclub.
[electronic music: urgent, high bpm]
- The electronic scene in a
nutshell saved nightclubs.
Nightclubs were dying
without a shadow of a doubt.
You know, the DJ was the nerd
who got $20 a night who
nobody cared about, you know,
and he could be facing a wall or whatever.
But the DJ in the rave tent was a god.
- The big change
that rave brought was
it made DJs into stars
and a crowd of people all
staring in the same direction.
- This was something that
we really wanted to sell.
The concept of a DJ,
no more important,
no lesser important than
Bono or Mick Jagger.
- He's got it.
He's got everyone listening to him.
Once he gets everyone listening to him
he can do whatever he wants.
- Every DJ is one song
away from being massive.
That's what it's all about.
One song away from being
massive and then that's it.
- [Narrator] Back in the UK,
Paul Oakenfold kept pushing
the envelope of what a DJ could be.
- Paul did a remix for U2
of "Even Better Than the Real Thing,"
which was an interesting title
because at one point, the remix
that he did actually was higher up
in the charts than the original.
- They were about to go on a world tour.
They came to me and asked me
if I would be the opening act.
"I'd love to, this is
an amazing opportunity."
- U2 were prepared to
tear up the rule books.
Paul went on that journey with us.
I had to think, adapt,
and prepare to play to
a rock and roll crowd.
I'd take a classic Rolling Stones record
or a big current pop record
and I would get the vocals
and I would do a house mix to it.
- Paul Oakenfold was the
very first superstar DJ
in the world.
Paul was always ahead
of everyone, you know,
sometimes too far.
He said in 2002 dance music
is gonna be big in America
and no one really believed him.
- I love Oakenfold's story
'cause I heard that he went
into his agent's office
and like threw a dart at America
and it landed like in Idaho
and he is like, "I wanna
play a show there."
He was like, "I wanna bring
this music to Middle America."
He was a visionary this way.
- [Narrator] In 1997,
Oakenfold signed with Cream
a club in Liverpool to be their
resident DJ every Saturday.
Back then, it was the biggest
contract ever for a DJ.
[bright electronic music]
- The biggest thing that
Cream did was we put
the DJ center stage.
We built a 20-foot gilt-edged frame.
So we framed the DJ
and that's when the DJ became the god.
[music: "Soliel" by Stanley
Gurvich. Dark, moderate pace]
By '94, somebody out there
coined the phrase "superstar DJ"
and it was, you know, Paul
Oakenfold commits to Cream.
It was in our world that
was like signing Ronaldo.
We were signing the best gold scorer
in the business.
We were gonna rival Ministry of Sound,
but we were gonna be a
lot more cutting edge.
I was trying to find new records.
I was in the studio making new records
The artists were making records for us.
Record companies were giving
us six months exclusives.
We were telling this
incredible story through music,
taking people on a journey.
We would just pull it apart,
learn how to break records.
You'd never hear a record
outside of that room.
It lived in this space for nine months
before I released it as a single.
So people were freaking out.
- Paul knew the rock
and roll sensibilities,
he saw it as a performance.
You know, some DJs would
never get eye contact
with the crowd but with his
limited amount of assets,
you know, he didn't have a guitar,
he didn't have a microphone,
Paul knew how to be a showman
and he knew the buttons to
press with the audience.
The first performance
of Paul's second year,
I remember it very well because
there was huge anticipation.
The lights went down.
And then Paul played this
like sort of intro track.
The crowd was getting whipped up
into like you know, a frenzy.
Then out of nowhere he sprung up
and he went straight into his first track.
The explosion of the
crowd was just insane.
I just remember getting
this rush through my body
and I remember standing
there looking at David Levy
and we both just looked at each other
and we're like, "What have we done?"
[electronic music continues]
[crowd cheers]
[music: "Lucky 7" by
Yanivi. Funky, upbeat]
- I think the difference
between a rock star
and a superstar DJ is not as
big anymore as it used to be.
Nowadays, DJs are the
superstars of the world.
[upbeat music continues]
- Tisto was just very fresh faced
and on a very different mission.
This guy to me came from
nowhere almost, you know,
and next thing he's the biggest thing
this scene's ever had.
[bicycle riding on street]
- Growing up there, it was pretty intense.
Our street was like borderline
against ghetto, burglaries
and wasn't a great area to grow up in.
- We live here in Breda
in the Laurierstraat.
He lived always on number 42.
[speaker speaks in foreign language]
[electronic music: trancy,
heavy synth topline]
[music: "Theme From Norefjell" by Tisto]
[speaker speaks in foreign language]
- I was four years old when
my parents got divorced.
I grew up with my mom.
I never really knew my dad.
Yeah, I saw him a couple times a year.
He died when I was still pretty young.
Basically my mom raised me
and she was crazy about music too.
So every night she was listening
to music on the couch.
We were listening to Abba and stuff.
When I was like 16.
I was playing for her.
She was dancing in my room.
She never complained me
playing loud music, either.
I would open my windows
and play really loud music
so the whole street could
enjoy my music. [laughs]
[electronic music continues]
The Spock in Breda was my
first regular paying gig
every week, three nights a week.
I was 19, got the equivalent of like $25.
I played from 10 till four. Six hours.
Different times back then.
- Back then we were playing Belgium Beat
and it was very depressing music.
We needed a new sound.
He started playing and I
still get goosebumps of it
when I think of that moment,
he was playing his music
on the wall actually
where it was very shabby.
He started playing and okay,
yeah, that's something new,
that's something, that's interesting.
Let's keep the guy.
- It was basically an experimental room,
which helped me a lot actually
because I can just really
experiment with sounds
and learn myself how to DJ.
Before the shift I helped
at the bar, you know,
making drinks for everybody
and after the shift, I had
to clean the restrooms.
Keeps you humble.
I also told him look at the audience
and see what's happening.
And after a while he started,
okay, they're bouncing.
[electronic music]
Look, they're really bouncing now, yeah.
They were always wondering
where is he taking us,
what's the story tonight?
I can feel it in my
body still the adventure
of the evenings when Tijs was playing.
I mean he had three turntables,
one of the first guys I think that played
with three turntables.
We had to build a special set up for it.
[electronic music]
Tijs had a plan in his head.
He wanted to be famous, he wanted
to be the best in his music
and that was I think his drive
and that was the drive that I
needed behind the turntables.
[music: "Underwater" by Joel
Freck. High energy, upbeat]
- In Belgium, you had like
the super clubs, Boccaccio
and Confetti's, and they
all played like experimental
new beats music and acid house.
For me, it was great to
discover those sounds
and this was the first time
I heard DJ Sven Vath play.
He was a legend from Germany
and he would play six hours
and you would don't recognize any records.
[electronic music continues]
Everybody in Holland
back then had a DJ name.
You know DJ Tijs didn't
sound very sexy. [laughs]
And it's very hard to
pronounce for foreign people.
Apparently.
I wanted to make [it] sound more Italian.
[electronic music]
- [Emcee]: Mr. Tisto!
- Rotterdam has always
been a pretty rough city.
There was this one street in Rotterdam,
the Binnenweg, it was a
street with record store
after record store after record store.
- There was this one particular
store called Basic Beat.
I was already looking for
the more trancy side of music
and not too many stores
over there were, you know,
were specialized in it.
Until I got to Basic Beat
and there was a certain
gentleman named Tijs Verwest
working there.
- I was very lucky to get that job.
The owner of a record store
in Breda was also the owner
of the record store in Rotterdam.
I said, "Look, if you ever
have a job for me, let me know.
"It's my dream job to
work in a record store.
"It's like a kid in a candy store."
- A bunch of DJs that are
international right now,
they all hang out in that
store on a Friday night
when the latest shipment came in.
We're all looking for the one track
and there were only like
two copies in the shipment.
- That's when it really
started happening for me
because in that record store in Rotterdam,
Every DJ had his own mailbox.
I had the first pick of
all the trance tracks,
so I always had better
vinyl than everybody else
on trance music.
Paul Oakenfold actually called
me to ask me for tracks,
"How do you get these records?"
I said, "Well, I can send you some stuff."
And I start mailing him records
and he gave me his old acetates.
So it was a win-win situation.
- Tijs was, you know,
looked up to him a lot
at that particular time in his career
and Paul was a big advocate of Tisto.
- I remember him was telling me
how he was doing six one-hour
gigs a night in Holland
and he'd drive himself
around and I respected that.
[electronic music: dark,
pulsing, medium tempo]
- It was like 1999, a very
important gig in Amsterdam
during an ID&T event called Innercity.
And that was the time
just before the big
breakthrough of trance music.
And he did a remix for
a track from Delerium
with Sarah McLaughlin,
"The Silence," which
became a trance anthem.
- I was just signing CDs there
and I was only huge in Norway
and in Israel.
So not even Holland.
But one DJ got sick.
I got the opening slot on that night.
It was 30,000 people.
- Tijs was in tears. There
was a lot of emotion going on.
There was the big breakthrough
of trance music in the Netherlands.
1999, after Innercity
everybody knew Tisto
and that was the next big thing.
- I feel like I'm getting somewhere
finally after all these
years of hard work.
[electronic music: mysterious, pensive]
[music: "Breeze" by
Yanivi. Lively, bright]
- I started DJing when I was 11,
around 11 years old. I saw DJs like Tisto
and Armin van Buuren on TV
and I just started to download
programs from the internet
and started to, yeah, work on
my own beats and my own songs
and before I knew like one
radio station in Holland picked
one of my records up
and started playing it
and I was 14 years old when I
signed my first record deal.
[people converse in foreign language]
It's like a little boy with a dream.
And it's getting bigger and bigger now.
[lively music]
- I grew up in Germany,
I was always into music.
When I was around 20,
I went out and bought some
turntables and a mixer.
Becoming proficient at beat matching
took me like two years.
You know and I would literally
like listen to a record
for like a minute and count the beats
and then write on the back
of the record, the BPM.
'Cause I couldn't figure
out which one was faster,
which one was slower.
It was all very confusing, you know?
I DJ'ed at Ministry of Sound,
I had a residency at a
club called Leisure Lounge.
It's funny, it took me so
long to learn how to DJ.
It's just crazy to think
of how long it took me
and how long it took
Kai to learn how to DJ.
- You can't just be a DJ,
you have to make music.
Like if you don't really
make music, you won't be able
to play your songs when you perform.
But also like other DJs
won't be playing your song.
- Kai released his first mix album
when he was eight years old.
It came out on Ultra Records.
So they posted this
little compilation video
of Kai's mix album on their
YouTube channel and a third
or maybe even half of the comments
were complaining about the fact
that he was only a DJ and not a producer.
Kai was eight.
That blew our mind.
Yeah, the pressure is there, no question,
there's really no big name DJ out there
that's not also a producer.
- I've taken music production classes
for like a couple years now.
- Like it drops with this one too.
You see after one, it goes up?
Look.
[upbeat music]
Cool, no?
- I don't really know
where it's going, you know.
He's only 11, you know, who knows
what he's into when
he's 18 or when he's 20.
But for now, that's what he wants to do.
He wants to be a DJ.
You know, if you ask him
what are you gonna do in your 20s?
I'm gonna be a professional
DJ, I wanna be like Tisto.
- [Narrator] Back in the UK,
by the late '90s, something had changed.
DJs fell off in popularity
as British fans revolted
against the rising cost of admission.
They turned away from music that seemed
to get harder and faster
with each passing season.
- The craft of DJing changed.
Instead of taking the
crowd on this long journey
and playing more varied music,
[It] became much more like every DJ
trying to blow the other
DJ off stage, you know.
- The whole business had become bloated.
DJ fees were out of control.
- [Speaker] Agents would
just whack a zero on the end.
There were several committees
that got together that tried
to regulate it but it didn't work.
- The values in dance music are more akin
to values in the hippie vibe, right?
Of togetherness, unity,
love, peace, respect.
And it just felt like
by the end of the '90s,
that the values in dance music
had been replaced by money.
- Kids don't wanna go to a business,
they wanna go to a rave.
And if they start feeling
like, "Oh this is a brand,
"there's logos everywhere, you know."
It loses its cool, it loses its rawness.
Woodstock didn't have Woodstock
logos hanging everywhere.
- By the end of '99
there was so much negativity around that.
Nearly every event that took place
that night suffered.
We lost a lot of money.
- The production companies
raped us, the venues raped us,
the DJs raped us and we raped the kids.
And they went, "No, I'm not paying that."
- And it felt like collectively,
thousands and thousands
of kids woke up that day
and they weren't in love with dance music
as much as they was a month before.
It was crazy.
- Greed, just greed.
- [Narrator] After the millennium,
electronic music lost its way for a while.
September 11th sent
shutters through the world.
In the US, anti-rave laws
designed to control drugs
kept the scene mostly underground.
It wasn't like in Europe.
In America, most DJs
still weren't dreaming
about how to become rich pop stars.
- There was definitely a whole new era
of artists which gave us a new foundation
in which to build upon.
Swedish House Mafia,
deadmau5, David Guetta.
Tisto was big but then became huge.
- It was that second generation
of kids like the Swedish House Mafia.
And it was those guys that
were able to wrap it up
and market it to an
audience here in America.
[music: "Summer Nights" by
Jhojan Pardo. Bright, upbeat]
- Born and raised in Sweden.
Italian father, Swedish mother,
I was the very annoying ADHD kid in class
that never listened.
I lived in my own world. [laughs]
I stopped school when I
was 14 years old, actually.
My father said, son you have two choices,
go make music or go back to school.
So I said, "I'm gonna make music."
And then my father
started a record label '89
with like techno and trance
and so I kinda fell in
love with that pretty early
and look up to all the DJs
and producers that he signed to his label
and wanted to be like them.
I met Steve Angello first time, actually,
I went to disco where I grew up.
We were about eight, 10 years old.
One day we went to my father's office
and we heard the Daft Punk
album together, "Homework."
And he was like, "What is this?"
And then we met Axwell at
a release party in Sweden.
- Next time, I'm just going
to drench my T-shirt in water
to start with and people
won't think it's weird
that I sweat this much.
I do this for you people,
I do this for you.
- We were like just a couple of guys
making dance music in Sweden.
You know, one day we said
we should just go out
and DJ together and drink beer for free.
And that's how it started
very organically. [laughs]
We were super drunk in every gig,
so there were people around us
that said, "You guys smashed it."
We were like, "Did we?"
You you have something magical going on.
There's something going on when
you play all three together.
We were like, really?
We just going bananas behind the decks.
Then we went into the
studio with Laidback Luke
and made "Leave the World
Behind" and something happened.
Leave this world behind
[electronic music: bright, upbeat]
[music: "Leave the World Behind"
[by Swedish House Mafia and
Laidback Luke ft. Deborah Cox]
We were kind of the first
house music band, you know.
People were like, "Whoa
they are a band now."
There was a forum in
Sweden called The Tribe
with some dance music lovers and haters.
And on this forum, we said something like,
"How could they give us cold pizza
and beer and a shit hotel room."
And people start to hate at us like,
"Who the fuck do you think you are?
"The Swedish House Mafia?"
And we said, "That's exactly what we are."
- We wanna thank everybody
coming down tonight.
Some of you are ending
your summer here and now
with us today and we hope
that you will remember us
when you are at your home
in this mother fucking cold winter
we have in Europe. Remember
yourself here tonight.
How you looked, what you were drinking,
what you were listening to.
And remember that the Swedish
House Mafia loves you.
[crowd cheers]
And see you next summer.
[crowd cheers]
[bright music]
- I mean, the fact that they're
the Swedish House Mafia.
I mean, guys from Chicago
just hit their knee
and buckled over laughing.
We thought that was the
funniest thing we'd ever heard.
I mean this is a uniquely Chicago term,
- But Sweden are famous for Abba and Ikea
and Swedish House Mafia. Avicii.
- And meatballs.
- And meatballs. [laughs]
Yeah, of course.
The Swedish meatballs, yeah.
- For me, music is my life.
Music is my fuel, music is
my blood, music is my soul,
music is my air, music
is everything for me.
If I don't listen or make music
or trying to make music,
I get very depressed.
And you know, I don't see
the purpose of living.
- [Narrator] It wasn't only the Swedes
who were busy invading America.
In California, a new generation of DJs
fueled a fresh movement
in electronic music.
[music: "Atrio - Id4" by
DSK CHK. Dark and wistful]
- I had always heard about
these massives on the West Coast
and that these candy kids,
they all wore like Mickey Mouse gloves
and bracelets up to their elbows
and they listened to like
hard style and happy hardcore.
It was a very different
thing than what we were into.
So when I started to work with Kaskade,
you'd come home from a gig
and be like, "You don't understand.
"These festivals are massive.
"There are so many kids
"and they're young,
everybody knows the songs."
- The moment that it changed for me,
that's the first time I
played the main stage at EDC.
And I just remember
standing in the Coliseum
and watching the people pour in.
I had never seen anything like it.
And that next day, I called
up Ultra Records, the label
that I was signed to at the time
and I'm like, "You guys
have to see this firsthand.
"You have to come out."
- The energy was that this
thing was at like critical mass.
- [Announcer] The party will be stopped.
Stop now.
[excited music]
[people clamoring and shouting]
[bloodied girl sobbing]
- At the end of the
weekend when it came out
that a young girl had passed away,
the government, the city, it was too much.
It was to the point
where they had to move.
- [Narrator] After the
death of Sasha Rodriguez,
Electric Daisy Carnival
moved to Las Vegas. The
first year in its new home,
the festival drew 230,000
people over three days.
Death and scandal were not
enough to slow the EDM movement.
- We played New York. We loved it.
And then we did a rave on a beach in Miami
called the Masquerade Motel.
It sold out.
And then I remember saying
to our agent at the time,
I wanna do Madison Square Garden.
It wasn't because it was an ego play,
it was because, okay,
where would the fans wanna go
that was just once in a fucking lifetime.
- She had a plan.
And you know, we went out
on sale, I was so nervous
and it sold out and we didn't believe it.
We were like, "Wow, this is crazy."
[gentle electronic music]
[music: "The Computer" by Niv Ben Eli]
- And Madison Square Garden
sold out in nine minutes
with 250,000 people in a
holding pattern to buy tickets.
And we crashed Ticketmaster
and it was history.
- When we played Madison Square Garden
really stamped dance music.
- It was the best moment
ever, Madison Square Garden.
But it came with its baggage afterwards.
It attracted the wrong kind of people.
I regretted it in so many ways
because it attracted
these guys that were like,
"What do you mean this sound
"sold out Madison Square Garden?
"What do you mean there were
250,000 people in the queue?
"That must mean there's a
hundred of these artists.
"That must mean there's 100
Madison Square Gardens a year."
It was in that much demand
because it was one Madison Square Garden.
So all of a sudden,
these like billionaire,
zillionaire, trillionaire, whatevers
were like circling around
trying to buy, "oh, quick,
"we must understand, what is this?
"Let's call this EDM."
And you're just like, whoa, really?
- EDM sounds like a disease for me.
It's like I have EDM, you know. [laughs]
- I felt bad afterwards
that I used a venue
that the name was so recognizable
to some people that I now
wish were not a part of rave.
- I think one of the biggest headlines
for dance music in the last 12 months
has been the enormous
amount of consolidation
that's started to go on.
A lot of companies are getting bought
and put together and one of the men
with the biggest purses
and done the most shopping is here
with us today, so Shelly Finkel.
- [Narrator] The rise of EDM had caught
the attention of Wall Street.
After the Swedes rocked
Madison Square Garden,
businessman Robert Sillerman set out
to conquer the EDM world
with SFX Entertainment.
He hired Sheldon Finkel,
a former rock music
and boxing promoter
to help him transform the EDM
movement into big business.
- Bob Sillerman was on the cover
of Billboard famously in September
with holding a glitter ball
with like a billion dollars
and he decided to go shopping.
It was like supermarket sweep
and every everyone seems to have
got the Shelly Finkel calls.
[electronic music: urgent,
dangerous, high bpm]
- What our basic strategy
is to acquire certain major brands
and to acquire promoters in
different parts of the world,
which can expand these
brands into those markets
that they probably never
would've got to do otherwise.
So we have someone we just
bought in South America,
probably a dozen different
companies in the United States.
We bought the largest promoter in Germany.
- Is there any money left?
- There's plenty of money left.
- I have to sell you something.
- [Narrator] In October
of 2013, Bob Sillerman
and the DJ Afrojack rang
the opening bell at Nasdaq.
SFX Entertainment,
after buying more than
a dozen EDM properties
in just over a year, was
now a public company.
[cymbal crash]
[bright, excited music]
["OCT ID" by DSK CHK]
- [Narrator] As Wall Street
was investing in a scene
it didn't understand, dance
promoters were finding new ways
to reach out to a global audience.
[bright music]
- What I love about dance
music is that, you know,
we all come here with the same vibe.
You know, it's all about PLUR,
peace, love, unity, respect.
You know, we enjoy the music, we enjoy
the company of each other
and just, you know, having a good time.
There's no judgment here.
You don't have to worry about you know,
what you are gonna do tomorrow
or your finances, it's just
kind of like an escape.
[excited music]
- All of us rushed a fraternity together
last semester. We saw this
video online about Ultra
a couple hours away from our school
and we got tickets and
decided to come down.
[electronic music continues]
- What happened in 2010
made it so that everyone had
to look at their business
and treat it more like
a live concert event.
- Television and radio
weren't paying attention
to dance music.
So they just found their own way.
- [Narrator] Festivals
like Ultra and Tomorrowland
turned the after movie into high art.
Sprawling video teams
filmed dreamy recaps that
celebrated the major moments
of each party, which helped
sell tickets to the next one.
- The after movies and the
pre-movies and the teasers,
it just allowed the culture
and the festival experience
to be like bottled up and packaged.
After movies are fun
'cause you're like, damn
I missed out on that.
Like, that was awesome.
But then you just think like,
if last year was awesome,
this year's gonna be awesome
so let's go.
- What's nice about it,
everybody's looking at it now
and comparing the after movie
from Ultra with Tomorrowland
and EDC and which one is better.
- You need to sell the experience.
For any of these festivals, you need,
it's all about, let me put it this way,
goosebumps never lie.
Forever in my mind
Only you
[gentle and bright music]
[music: "Lullabies" by
Adventure Club and Yuna.]
The pieces in my life
run away with you.
When you get those feelings
on the on the arms,
there's nothing like that.
And even if you see it in a video,
a video can bring out those goosebumps
and you say I need to be there.
[music: "Homeward" by Ferry
Corsten. Upbeat, trancy]
- I think it's a beautiful reality
as a filmmaker, that is my passion.
[electronic music]
50,000 people at the festival
but a million people that are able
to watch it at their homes
or if this grows even more, you know,
maybe 100 million people in the future.
[music: "Eugina" by Salt
Tank. Dreamy, trancy]
[crowd whistling and cheering]
[electronic music continues]
With dance music and the artists
within the new digital age
and internet has made it possible for them
to just show themselves.
- I think that why young
guys, DJs, producers,
whatever it is, blow up so
fast is because the internet.
- I'm doing my social media myself
with one of my friends so that's my focus
and well my financial managers
will take care of that part.
I don't want to be involved with that part
and I just take care of my social media.
I think it's really
important, you know like,
social media is everything.
People are living on Facebook.
- That's my hobby.
I love making little videos.
It's what, I used to
read. Once upon a time
I used to read all the time.
Then Twitter came along and Instagram.
I don't read anymore.
Damn, did you see the London video?
Come on.
I got deep in the new
iMovie. It's so sick.
- Did you do it all on the phone?
- [Kaskade] Yeah.
- Impressive, man. I thought you would've
- All on the phone.
- Everything goes so fast.
Today, you're not even
number one for four days.
You know, if you're lucky.
- I think today, DJing
has really become a popularity contest.
It's all about how many
Facebook followers do you have
or how many Twitter followers do you have
and that's almost like how
your worthiness is defined.
It's really not so much
about what your skillset is
and how much time you've
put in, and to a degree
it's ruined the scene.
I make a new single and two weeks after
they ask me, "Where's your new single?"
The new generation just
wanna be first on everything.
They don't care about
the quality of your song,
they just wanna have
your song on the phone.
They want run back to school and say,
"Look, I have the Avicii
song and you don't."
The new generation is pretty damaged
by the internet, I guess.
[electronic music]
- Okay. Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the Electric Canteen.
My name is DJ Kai Song
and I've been DJing for
seven years right now.
I was just on my first
tour called Camplified
and we went from like
camp to camp to camp.
17 dates
The tour, I definitely,
it was totally worth it.
It definitely boosted my
fan base on Instagram.
[music: "Run" by Tristan
Barton. uplifting, upbeat]
[uplifting music continues]
- We were on an RV
and we drove from New
York, we went as far west
as Wisconsin and Michigan.
- [Kai] I was like signing
people's arms and foreheads
and business cards and posters.
- They heard about him
and they were like, "Oh really, he's a DJ
"and he's this young and
is that really possible?"
- I might have a tour better than that
but I always will remember
that as my first tour.
[kids chanting "DJ Kai Song"]
[electronic music]
[music: "Dlirio" By Bonzai
Classics. Dark, pensive]
- We've definitely felt the push
from America, haven't we Liv?
- The love from America, the energy there.
Our fans there are crazy.
They're so involved in
the whole EDM movement
from what they wear to the candy they make
just the peace and love vibe.
I just, I love it.
- Just the togetherness of everyone,
Everyone like vibing in a crowd together.
It's what I live for, man.
[electronic music]
- People look back at Woodstock
and say it was a crazy event
where they wish they could be there
and I think people will
look back at this era
and say that they wish
they could have seen this.
[electronic music]
- There isn't really anything
counter-cultural about these events.
They're fun and full of color
and escape and celebration,
but there's not really a sense
that youth is standing up
against the establishment
or represents change.
[electronic music]
It's much more like the idea
of leaving reality for a while.
It's escape from a world
where things are not looking
that great for young people,
you know, a lot of them are
leaving college with debts
and there aren't jobs waiting for them
that would ever give them a
chance to pay off those debts.
- I show my friends EDM
and they're like, "I can't listen to this
"unless I'm high, drunk
or something like that."
But these are also friends
that aren't like chill like me.
Like every group has that one
Like weird different kid, that's me.
I got my gloves and everything.
- [Narrator] One reason why
the festivals grew so popular,
they gave the crowd what
they craved: release
Every 30 seconds
the music would surge
like a rush of dopamine,
sending bodies leaping into the air.
The drop, as it was known,
came to define the EDM era.
- Dance music is really simple.
It's a four by four kick drum
that actually make a track.
So for me the drop is actually the bar,
the transition between the break
and when the kick drum is kicking back in.
[electronic music drop example]
That's the drop.
[electronic music]
- Certainly, at this point in time,
it's become about
something else, for sure.
I mean I'd be an idiot to argue
that it's just about the music.
It's not. It's about carnival
rides and food and concessions
and everything that's happening
around this. Going
together with your friends.
It's kinda a rite of passage
for a lot of young kids.
Went to my first big party
- Ultra tickets are about $500
each that we come out to do.
So I mean we're all
putting money into the DJs
- In a sense, they have something
that is a much bigger draw
than the drawing power
of the specific DJs.
They have the biggest DJs
but they have created something
that is kinda like a unique atmosphere
and they have these dedicated fans
that come dressed in fairy wings
and crazy outfits and costumes.
There is this sense
where it's the brand name
Electric Daisy Carnival
and the crowd itself that is the star.
[crowd cheers]
- [ATB, DJ] Ladies! Gentlemen!
Make some noise!
[music: "9pm Till I Come Home"
by ATB. Excited, celebratory]
- [Narrator] The success
of Electric Daisy Carnival
and Ultra Music Festival
fueled the movement
and bred an explosion of EDM festivals.
The modern version of rave
spread around the globe
and became a multi-billion
dollar business.
- There's a festival
in like every city now.
It's a little excessive.
The festivals are absolutely,
they're taking it a little bit too far.
There's only so many kids to go around.
I don't know if any of them
are pushing us further.
- It seems as though we're
heading down this road
to where things were
going in the late '90s
where it's like cannibalizing
itself a little bit.
Where less people are traveling to some
of these really big events
because oh man, I don't
need to go to Nevada
to see some big show.
They're doing it here in New York.
You know, the people that
are trying to make the most
and get the dollars out of this thing
and squeeze it for everything
that it's worth will not know
when to say stop. What's too many?
[music: "Eternity" by Ferry
Corsten. Dreamy, trancy]
- [Narrator] The rise of
the DJ faced another threat,
one that was all too familiar.
MDMA, known as Molly in its
purest form, became the drug
of choice once again for
ravers in the EDM era
and kids were dying of overdoses.
- Molly had sort of became
like this casual thing
and it was all about like
PLUR, you know, peace,
love, unity, respect.
So it was kind of seen as like
this mind opening, you know,
not addictive drug.
- All these people are
dying 'cause they're eating
whole handfuls and so they
don't know what they're doing.
- It's horrible that people
will OD. Kids don't know the consequences.
I saw a girl take six mollies at once.
It's mind boggling but I
don't think you can say it
just because it's dance
music that makes people die.
- [Interviewer] Does Molly
make the experience better?
- No...
- Of course, fuck yeah it does.
Molly's dope. But you gotta
know what you're doing.
A lot of people will push
it into their bodies,
and have no idea what they're doing.
That's an individual responsibility.
- You can't be like that
well versed in the culture
and not realize that like
Molly's that prevalent.
They sell those binky light-up things
that I guess you're
supposed to suck on like
while you're raving so
your teeth don't clench.
The festival knows like
how lucrative that is.
They're not gonna stop just
because people are dying.
It's just they're making
way too much money to think
that it's even an option to
stop having these festivals.
Way too much money.
[music: "Thoughts in Motion"
by Tristan Barton. Gentle, sad]
[crowd cheers]
[cars gunning engines]
[vehicles whooshing by]
[birds chirping]
- It was Rock Hudson's
house I think in the '40s.
It's a very traditional early bungalow.
But yeah, Marlon Brando also came here
for barbecues, which is
quite frightening. [laughs]
And now I have as many friends
here as I have at home.
Everyone's here but I still love London
so I haven't moved here full time.
[electronic music: mysterious, mournful]
I think some DJs very much
like young reality TV stars
have had it too fast too soon.
I do worry for them
because I think that
struggle was so joyous
and I can sit here with you
or I can sit by my campfire outside
and we can have talks
for hours about years
of working towards this.
And those memories are so precious.
I don't know that those
guys are then equipped
to handle fame at the top
but that's not their fault.
They're getting this opportunity now.
The demand is high.
We need immediate superstars.
No one wants a tragedy in this scene.
- [Speaker] So how you
liking Vegas so far?
- Oh I like it. [laughs]
- I know
two people who have really suffered
in the last year with
alcohol and drug addiction.
One's young and one's not so young.
And it is tragic.
[music: "Thoughts in Motion"
by Tristan Barton. Somber]
- EDM, I'm just so happy
to be kind a part of it
and you know,
we're like right in the
middle of it at this time.
'Cause I do think it's
the most interesting time
for electronic music right now
'cause it's never been this big before.
[rumbling of sports cars approaching]
[music: "Melodic House" by
Descent. Bouncy, upbeat]
[indistinct chatter while walking]
- Hey.
- What's up, Ian?
- Hey.
- Did Costa Rica get sorted or no?
- The whole Diplo thing?
- We're working on it.
They basically have me
being their private jet coordinator.
- You should ride in the jet, then.
- [Speaker] $200,000
for a private jet, huh?
[upbeat music]
- It's a young company.
You know, it's actually probably the
youngest company in SFX.
I would say everybody's
in the mid to late 20s
and early 30s.
I think it's really cool.
And we're doing it just
as big as a, you know,
25-year-old company that's
been throwing parties.
We're so connected with
this millennial crowd
that's growing throughout the world.
I mean we're part of that.
- Then we all met working at restaurants
then we used to watch "Entourage."
So we're like one day we just want to live
that lifestyle.
- We were all in college
so we didn't have money.
[upbeat music]
We grew so fast. A year and a half
of just touring in Florida,
next thing you know we did a
national tour of like 20 cities
and then the following tour was 60 cities.
You know, literally 60 shows
in a matter of three months.
- I just knew it was gonna
be a lot of hard work
and a lot of restless
hours, a lot of Adderall.
- [Speaker] Do you think
the fees are getting...?
- Ridiculous
- Because I feel like in Central America
what Diplo's asking for
is somewhat reasonable.
- I don't think it's reasonable.
I mean we had the offer in for 45 days
and then he comes back
the day that he's supposed to confirm,
"Oh, I need a private jet."
- Yeah.
- That changes everything.
- I started doing events
about six years ago
at the beginning of
the EDM scene in the US
and I was paying some of
these now-superstar DJs
$5,000 to come play.
Now these guys are
getting $500,000 to play.
Today, I got a phone call for a DJ
who's gonna be touring South America
around the same time that we are
and he wants $1 million a night.
- It's kinda like a battle
that's been going on
for the past few years,
but now it's been getting
kind of out of control
where it's time to draw the line.
- [Narrator] But drawing the
line wasn't always so easy
because as EDM DJs became more popular,
they made millionaires
out of nightclub owners
like David Grutman.
[music: "Beach House" By
Marcos Bolanos. Bouncy, upbeat]
- How I wound up in the club business
was after I graduated
college, I said I'd go bartend
for a year in South Beach.
I'm from Naples, Florida.
I was gonna go home
and do title insurance,
couldn't get hired on the beach anywhere
because I'm a chubby Jewish guy.
So the only place I could get
a job was at the Aventura Mall
at the Biz Bistro, which is a restaurant.
This is a bucket made out of like Legos.
Walk with me.
Alex Turco did my fireplace,
which is kind of crazy.
These are Legos in the wall.
[groovy house music]
Am I a competitive guy?
People ask me if I have hobbies
and my hobby is to dominate.
That's literally my own hobby.
I don't play tennis, I'm
not climbing some mountain.
I'm not collecting stamps.
I'm dominating the club business.
You know, people like to
say that DJs just push
the button play and then walk away.
I would've thought that from
David Guetta out of all people.
But you know, he train wrecked
a couple weeks ago with me
and I was like, "What?
What just happened?"
He's like, "It happens every two years
"and see, I do really play David."
And so I get surprised
here and there, you know?
It's great.
And you can see how these DJs
before their show want to
like go do new edits and cuts
and stuff like that and
literally I laugh at them
and say, nobody cares about the music.
Just stop it already.
Just get up there and
play your fucking hits.
[upbeat music]
[upbeat music continues]
[upbeat music continues]
We really track these guys
around, these table customers.
It's a constant thing,
especially in the club business
because that one guy can change
the whole outcome of a night or not.
It just depends.
You have certain guys that are, you know,
the arms dealer from, you know,
arms dealing is not illegal
in every country, so.
I've seen a 350 table, which is pretty,
It's a crazy table.
- [Interviewer] 300?
- $350,000.
I mean, there's one guy
that spent 3 million
with us in two months
and he was just buying the
$150,000, you know, Ace of Spade.
He sadly, is gone.
Meaning his parents saw,
cut off his trust fund
and that's what happens.
So a big whale like that, what happens
either they get a girlfriend,
they run outta money or they go to jail.
It's one of the three.
Right now, I feel my only competition
is not other clubs in
Miami, but it's Vegas.
Is that big whale,
is that big bottle spender gonna go spend
the weekend in Vegas?
Or is he gonna go spend
it with me in Miami?
Miami, Miami.
[no audio]
[music: "Rafaelson Groove" by
Descent. Dark and throbbing]
- There was the crash.
2007 the wheels fell off Las Vegas.
[electronic music]
Now that was really what
changed everything here
because without that, there's
no way would the industry
that we have today exist.
Because what Vegas had to do
is change how it operated,
changed how it attracted people.
Because people didn't want
to necessarily just throw money at gaming.
Whatever residual cash they had,
they wanted to spend
on their own enjoyment.
And nightclubs for some
reason seemed to be something
that they were willing to spend money on.
- Las Vegas can be kind of stiff,
they're not necessarily known
for embracing electronic music.
At that time, it was all hip hop.
I mean you were going to see Celine
or you were gonna go listen
to like mashup hip hop.
- Electronic music for a while,
its home was essentially
Ibiza and London, Berlin.
Europeans never took this
market very seriously.
- [Narrator] Paul Oakenfold
saw the potential in Las Vegas
for a DJ invasion.
In 2008, he brought Planet
Perfecto to Rain Nightclub.
- And I stopped with the DJing
stopped writing on for my album
and realized I'd lost my balance
and had to get back to
finding the balance.
And finding my balance was
my residency in Las Vegas.
[electronic music]
[crowd cheers]
- Every Saturday, I would go to one place,
play for three hours.
There was 5,000 people.
We had 50 performers.
Every hour, the music style would change,
start off very commercial
and it would go into more melodic,
then it would end on trance.
We would take you to this
planet that didn't exist.
And I would make special
tracks for scenes.
There was 12 screens behind me.
There was fire, there was artificial snow,
people trapezing and it
was electric grinders.
Yeah, it was good.
[music: "Atrio - id4" by
DSK CHK. Dark and uptempo]
- Oakenfold's residency at Rain, the first
of its kind in Las Vegas,
lasted for three years.
It opened the door for other
clubs to ride the EDM wave.
[electronic music]
[jet plane whooshing by]
- My dream was always to
go to Las Vegas, you know,
to be there as a resident.
And I've been in Ibiza for over 10 years
and I think in Ibiza I've done everything.
I've seen everything.
All of a sudden, Ibiza
couldn't buy the talent they wanted to
because nightclubs in Las
Vegas wanted the same talent.
It went from London and Ibiza to whoop,
I'm sorry you guys are no longer important
and don't really matter
much in this music.
It's now LA and Las Vegas.
[music: "City Lights" by
Kai Song. Bouncy, upbeat]
[crowd cheers]
[music continues]
[champagne spraying]
[pool Splashing]
[music continues]
- What's been really a game
changer club has been Hakkasan.
- [Narrator] In 2013, the MGM
Grand paid millions of dollars
to hire Tisto, Calvin Harris
and Hardwell for its summer parties.
- Neil came up to me, we
started this, building
a whole new club, the biggest
club in the world, fresh, new.
"I want you to be part of it.
"How do you want the DJ booth?
"How do you want the layout?
"and what can we do to make it your home?"
I don't wanna be in the
spotlight all the time
because the challenge
is that it's so bright
in the club already.
Sometimes, you have to
make it more darker.
Like this, like that, yeah
[music: "Maximal Crazy" by
Tisto. Intense, high bpm]
- Our venue cost over
$100 million to build.
- The money that's being
put into these new clubs
and these new nights
and these new concepts,
is astronomical.
And these guys don't care
about electronic music.
- A lot of people have
talked about Hakkasan
and you know, we pay this and we paid that
and we overpaid for this
and we overpaid for that.
It's like spoiled
children in a sweet shop.
Stop. Right?
It's it's it's it's silly.
Until DJs wanna build $100 million venues.
I decide when it opens and when it closes.
[electronic music]
- You know what, I forgot mine.
Like you're in trouble.
- Yeah, you're really in trouble.
You forgot your earplugs?
- Yeah.
- You're fucking in real trouble.
- Well the good thing is I
never put monitor to that.
[Unintelligible chatter backstage
from girls and DJ Group]
[music [in background]:
"Leo" By Norman Doray.]
Why I chose for Hakkasan
is because I really loved
the club in the first place
and they offered me my own
night with my own visuals
and like everything was like customized
the way I wanted to be.
That's Vegas.
Vegas is all about that.
Like you should give the people experience
and play, instead of playing
like a normal DJ gig.
[crowd cheering]
[electronic music]
[crowd cheers]
[music: "Heaven" by DSK
CHK. Bright, up tempo]
- What a lot of promoters
are saying is Vegas
is pushing everybody's fee up.
- All I know is that Vegas
pays more than anywhere else in the world.
- The grand opening of
Hakkasan, they had a customer
that spent $600,000 in just champagne.
One customer.
- We're also one of
the few venues that has
what we call our Dynastie package.
A half a million dollar package
for some of our top clients.
And very quickly, we went from three
or four nightclubs to several.
[loud boom effect]
[bright up tempo
electronic music continues]
[cars riding by]
- Yeah, everything in
Vegas is a bubble, I guess.
There's tigers disappearing
on a show one day,
there's a girl singing about love
for four hours one day,
there's Tisto and there's me
and Calvin Harris one day,
and there's P Diddy the other day.
So of course, it's a bubble.
[electronic music]
[crowd cheers]
- It's a little bit silly at this point.
It's like dance music by numbers
or night clubbing by numbers.
Okay, here's the flashing
batons, here's the dancers,
here's the confetti, here's the cryo.
And it's like American excess on blast.
[music: "After All" By Niv
Ben Eli. Pensive, downbeat]
- [Speaker] What happened in the UK
was that when the DJ fee started
to be very publicly known,
resentment started to kick in.
- I mean, I can remember the
first year that I made $80,000.
I was like, "This is so much money.
"I cannot believe I'm going
to be able to do this.
"This is what I'm going to
be able to do as a career.
I'm gonna make records
and go out and play shows.
"That's what I'm gonna do."
It was like this watershed moment.
[upbeat music]
And it was huge for me.
I mean now, dude, I'm making
twice that tonight at the club.
As my fee.
It's like ridiculous, it's like.
- The most I've ever paid a DJ
besides New Year's Eve,
obviously, is 200 [thousand].
The year that the DJ fee turning point
happened was 2009, 2010,
when the world was falling
apart, that's when DJs
decided to make big fees.
I would love to be paying
Tisto 1,000 bucks.
It's not happening anymore.
That ship has sailed.
- [Interviewer] Forbes said
you guys made 25 million
as a group last year.
Is that true?
- Did we? Where's the money? [laughs]
- [laughing] Do we deserve
this kind of money? Umm...
If I didn't feel like I deserved
this money, I wouldn't take it.
I mean, there's been a lot of work
and effort that's gotten me to this point.
I've sacrificed, I don't
know, countless holidays,
birthdays, anniversaries,
you know. [laughs]
Right now, it just seems
that the nightclubs
and the festivals, they
can't make them big enough.
- Where are we?
- The first stage when
you go...[Unintelligible]
[electronic music]
- I'm about to get painted.
[bright electronic music continues]
- Alright, only a few more nights
to make some memories here in 2014.
C'mon, Miami!
[crowd cheers]
[music: "Rain" by Arty. Dreamy, upbeat]
The rain is falling down
Oh oh, oh
What a life
The rain is falling down
Falling down, falling down
Falling down
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
- [Announcer] Make some
noise for the one and only
Kas-kade!
[crowd cheers]
Make some noise for your
Life in Color performers.
[crowd cheers]
[unintelligible]
- Good times, thank you
very much for having me.
[upbeat music]
- People talk about it today, you know,
with all the paraphernalia
that goes on around DJs
and all the money involved
and the private jets.
People are like, you know,
these guys are like rock stars.
I think DJs are going past that point.
I still see rock stars traveling on buses
and DJs in different level now.
- So we got a jet with Hardwell
'cause we were both coming
from the same place.
We had to go to another festival together
and then Robbert ended up playing the gig.
We played straight after him.
And he ended up getting a
chopper to the private jet
that was waiting there to
then go fly somewhere else.
- It's insane.
So it is insane.
But the transfers and
the hotels, you know,
we do get treated a
little too well, I think.
- yeah
But you know, we're not gonna say no
when they offer [laughing]
to give us a jet.
- yeah.
[music: "Relentless" by
K Solis. Bright, upbeat]
- With EDM, it becomes a brand.
It's no longer just the music.
I mean, that's always gonna be the core,
but then from that you extend,
you extend to the merchandise.
We have Avicii ice cream,
we have everything Avicii.
You know, it's useful stuff.
It's flip flops, it's water
bottles, it's earphones,
things that you would buy normally.
And it's even better now
because it's Avicii branded.
That's pretty much it.
- [Interviewer] Wow.
- Oh and Avicii condoms and
tattoos and sunglasses. [laughs]
[upbeat music continues]
- Some of the branding
that goes on right now.
It's almost becoming a
little bit clownesque.
It has nothing to do anymore with the core
of what we're doing, which
is great dance music.
It's not something that I find
myself doing eventually, no.
I just can't do it.
I come from a different era, I guess
and you know, there's a
limit to things for me. Yeah.
[music: "Organized Chaos"
by Descent. Upbeat, intense]
- All you do really is just press play
and you know, pull in a show.
If you're a DJ, it's simple.
- You could jump up on stage,
play Tisto songs and no one would know
it's not Tisto.
- But I would say it is
cooler if they're mixing live.
But I'm not gonna just leave.
I'm gonna say, "Oh, you know what?
"They're not mixing live."
I still enjoy the music.
You know, I still have
the sound of the speakers.
You're not gonna get that in your car.
- For sure.
- So that's also something too,
to hear it live is like whoa.
[bright electronic music continues]
- Some people argue that
some of this software
that's come out, whether
it's Ableton or Traktor
or any of the products that
are out there, even Pioneer
that now sync your music for you,
that it's making lazier DJs.
And you do see some professional DJs
that actually are not
doing very much up there.
I remember seeing a very
popular pop EDM group
that was playing prerecorded
synced tracks at a concert.
And everybody that had
a visual point of seeing
what their players were doing knew
that nothing was in those players.
- I think they're just
pressing play and looking busy.
- Do you? [laughing]
Yeah. [laughing]
- [Crowd] Davincii,
Davincii, Davincii, Davincii.
[music: "When Will The Bass
Drop" ft. Lil Jon and Sam F]
[chaotic, ominous, upbeat]
- The guys that are trying to
confuse people, like, no, no,
I'm this guy who's just like pressing play
and standing up there cheerleading
in front of a prerecorded set.
A lot of those guys try and masquerade
as somebody who's really
doing this incredible thing.
And that's when it damages the scene
[electronic music]
Get turned up to death
[electronic music
[head exploding]
- Technology has destroyed
the art of DJing.
I mean, let's be honest.
What do you actually need to do now?
Everything's done for you.
Where's the art?
But hey, that's the way it is.
And it's very important
to embrace technology.
It really is.
But as an art form in
terms of DJing, it's gone.
You can do tricks, you
can move things around.
But that feeling of going
through records, of playing live
of it being very difficult
to keep everything in time
'cause the drums are not locked.
And moving things around
and building the
arrangement, the structure
and then going to CDs and
looking through your wallet.
All that's gone.
It's just literally you scroll,
you find your track, you can quantize it,
you can just sync it in.
It's locked. You press play.
- I think the opposite. Or
you have more opportunities
than ever before.
You can loop real time. If you want
you can play like eight
records at the same time
like synced and stuff.
You can just use drum loops everywhere
with all the effects like
the delays, the reverbs.
You can actually produce a whole new song
just while you're DJing.
- The technology hasn't
killed the art of DJing.
Some of the people in
the other generations
they couldn't keep up
because they wasn't that good
on the music programs.
The art of DJing, you can never do that
on a festival with 55,000 people.
It's too big. When you're on a lineup
with 15 other mega acts that's
been preparing for this show.
It's like the Olympic
Games, you know what I mean?
You cannot go to Olympic
Games and just wing it.
- I don't see the
difference, me personally,
between a DJ giving a show,
embracing the audience
and Britney Spears lip
syncing at a concert.
I think they're the same in many respects.
I think the customer wants to see that.
- When I saw Dillon
Francis at EDC in Orlando,
there was a couple times
where he like messed up
and he's like, "Sorry guys.
"Like that's what happens
when you're a real DJ."
You know, and I thought
it was really cool,
seeing him kind of mess
up and be real like that.
I thought it was awesome.
- Yeah, the best always mess up.
- Yeah, last night Tisto did like
for like, just like a second.
I mean, it does show that
he was actually like-
- Human?
- Yeah, yeah.
- That they're actually human.
- Listen, it's easier
to write and produce a
song than it's ever been.
The accessibility of what
it takes to make a song is,
like, it used to be up here. 808, 909.
You have to used to buy these analog gear.
Now, it's like cool.
You pop open your new laptop
and it comes with some kind
of music-making program.
There's some kid in Amsterdam
right now that's making a hit.
- [Narrator] As Hardwell prepared
to headline TomorrowWorld,
the stakes were high
for SFX Entertainment.
The company's stock price was tanking.
Sillerman's big gamble was
on the verge of failure
and a steady rain was about
to make it a tough night
for the Dutch superstar, and for EDM.
[rain falling outside]
- I never prepare my complete set.
I just select a couple of tracks.
For example, for today,
I have like 2 1/2 hours
but I only play like
an hour and 15 minutes.
So it's gonna play a couple of
tracks at the festival itself
that's the moment I decide
which tracks I'm actually gonna play live.
[electronic music [on
laptop]: eerie topline]
- [Speaker] They're saying it's the rain.
- What do you mean?
Is it raining?
- [Speaker] It's raining
a little bit outside,
but they said that the weather's
really bad at the venue.
So a lot of the SUVs that they
had and vans got stuck inside
or they broke down at the venue.
So they lost vehicles.
- Are they expecting
more rain for tonight?
- You're pretty lucky
when it comes to that.
- I know.
- You're pretty lucky.
- Don't jinx it. [laughs]
[music: "Blackout" by
Hardwell. Dark, heavy synth]
- A lot of new kids on the block now,
if you try to book them,
they only can play 60 minutes.
They're not gonna play five minutes longer
'cause they don't have enough music.
I think that's completely
against the DJ culture.
- Listen, there's a
lot of jokers out there
that are making millions
and millions of dollars
that are really just that, they're clowns.
But I can't hate on that
'cause they wanna go and get money.
I'm like, whatever.
That dude's got some hustle,
he's trying to make a living.
Whatever, man.
I only hate on it when
they start encroaching
on my territory.
It's like, there's like a lane.
There's a big gutter in between
where my space and your space.
I only get mad when they try
and you know, move into my world.
That's when I'm like, "Okay, cool.
"The charade's off."
- Now this style of music is here to stay,
but if all the big DJs get paid $300,000
to play the same 20 tracks,
it's not gonna stay relevant.
We need to make sure that
it's not just about the show,
but it also stays about the music.
- To see anything diminished,
it becomes a little bit sad
because I know the
importance of that craft
as somebody who's taken a
lifetime to master that.
I've been to countless
shows where I've seen guys
where my mind's just been blown
and it's like, man, if we miss that
and we're just onto like guys standing
and playing the radio
hits, that's kinda boring.
You know? [laughs]
Like, is that really where we're at? Uhh
- Of course, we press
play, it's a CD player,
of course, we sit home
and prepare, give the show
to our lighting and designers
and the visual guy to keep the show tight.
But we also do a lot of things.
We perform, we speak to the crowd,
we filter it down music when we need to.
And if we don't, they complain.
Ah, he wasn't prepared
or the set was not good.
That's the mind fuck for people
because they're like, "But you are a DJ."
No, but now we're not DJs anymore.
We're rock stars.
[music: "Atrio - dark17"
by DSK CHK. Dark, powerful]
[sucking sound and explosion]
[crowd cheers]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
- Who knows how long anyone
gets a chance to do this, right?
What's the lifespan?
How many years have we been talking about
is this the year that
the bubble's gonna burst?
I don't think it's going to,
but you know, people in the
industry continue to say,
is this gonna go away?
[music: "Blackout" by
Hardwell. Pleading, upbeat]
[electronic music continues]
- It's Swedish House
Mafia for life, this time.
[electronic music continues]
[crashing sound effect]
- If the EDM bubble did [mimics popping],
then all of a sudden,
this whole house of cards
would fall down around Vegas and Miami
and all the really big things of it.
But, I've been around long enough
to see that happen a few times.
And what happens is we
just go back underground.
[electronic music:
mysterious, dark, upbeat]
["Welcome The Night" by
Sevenn and Silver Panda]
Welcome, the night
[electronic music]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
Welcome, the night
[electronic music continues]
- If you're with me, can I
get some energy, Tomorrowland?
[crowd cheers]
[electronic music continues]
Welcome
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[music: "Underwater" by
Joel Freck. Light, downbeat]
- I am just waiting for
the bubble to burst.
And then I'll be like,
that was fun. [laughs]
Time to have babies now. [laughs]
[electronic music]
- Every year, we come back
to this amazing crowd.
[crowd cheers]
- I look into star signs sometimes.
I notice when, I'm a Capricorn
and born January 17th,
but a lot of superstars DJs are born
in the Capricorn star sign.
Deadmau5, Skrillex,
Hardwell, Nicky Romero,
Armin van Buuren, me, Calvin Harris.
We're all born between 20th of
December and 20th of January.
There must be something with the star sign
that all those guys are Capricorns.
- I'm 40 years old.
I have no kids.
I'm dying for a kid.
So if you know anyone that would like
to have a kid with me, I would love that.
I have two dogs.
I have a one-eyed cat
and I'm very lonely.
[electronic music]
- You should be sweaty after.
- That's right.
- If you don't, then you're
just pressing the button.
- That's right, I'll be
very sweaty [crew laughs].
- These are all the
places where we was going
to put lorries and carts
and whatever to stop another invasion.
We kept this just in case they
had an anniversary. [laughs]
- We're wearing bum bags,
which are very much in fashion.
Five pound TK Max, waterproof.
It's versatile, you can spin around.
- And we're gonna show
you, two hands to party.
- We're gonna show you the bum bag move.
Ready? One
[hopping up and down]
- Yep.
[hands slapping]
[music: "Run" By Tristan
Barton. Emotional, swelling]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]
[electronic music continues]