Before half a million revelers could transform a racetrack into the world’s largest annual dance music party, there were 4,000 ravers making the walls sweat in downtown Los Angeles three decades ago.
Dieselboy was there, sowing the neon seeds of the very first Electric Daisy Carnival on June 1, 1997, at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium.
“I remember it was an extra vibey, massive event,” the American drum ’n’ bass pioneer recalls. “This was back when things were still very much underground, and even though the event was huge compared to other shows in the country at the time, the energy and the music just felt different. I remember having an absolute blast. The rest is a bit hazy.”
Fourteen years later, Dieselboy (aka Damian Higgins) also manned the decks during EDC’s debut at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the only artist to play both shows.
He was wowed. Again.
“I was blown away at the size and production that they had brought,” he remembers. “The Los Angeles EDCs were always big, but this was just on another level.
“Getting shuttled around the space and seeing all of the rides and performers and the massive amount of detail that went into everything was truly incredible,” he continues. “And playing to a crowd that size was unreal.”
The crowd, the rides, the performers — everything that Higgins speaks of — has only grown more massive since.
This weekend, EDC turns 30 in its adopted hometown of Las Vegas, where it has pumped over $2 billion into the local economy and had almost as pronounced an impact on the city as it has on electronic dance music itself, helping transform a once underground scene into a cultural King Kong, scaling the American mainstream like a metaphorical Empire State Building.
Like Dieselboy, fellow DJ-producer Simon Apex (Simon Antill) has seen EDC develop from the ground up: The British expat first joined the artist roster for Insomniac, the event company behind EDC, in the mid-’90s, before returning as EDC’s broadcast manager in 2025.
He was there when EDC was born, and he’s watched it grow into a behemoth.
“Electric Daisy Carnival, from the get-go, had this very fun, festival vibe to it. It just looked like more of a cultural event than it did a rave,” he recalls. “It created an environment where even the strangest square pegs fit in the round holes. Everybody was there on an even plane, all walks.
“Everybody came together as one for the unity of dance music. It’s just mind-blowing to see where it is now.”
Swapping exhibition halls for swimming pools, EDC returned for its second run in June 1999 at the Lake Dolores Waterpark in Newberry Springs, California, about two hours south of Vegas off Interstate 15.
The flyer for the show promised a “virgin outdoor never-raved-in tree-lined location,” though no address or venue name was provided — you had to dial up the info line for that.
As Antill notes with a chuckle, there are now more people on the EDC guest list each year than there were in attendance back then.
So, how did EDC go from those soggy, modest digs to sold-out speedways?
It started by being way ahead of the dance music curve in America.
Antill helped: A veteran of the European scene, he befriended EDC founder Pasquale Rotella in the early ’90s after calling the number on an Insomniac show flyer and getting a page back from the head of the young company.
“He was so interested in learning about the scene in Europe, because he knew that whatever was happening there was coming here,” Antill says. “The European stuff was just bonkers, and Pasquale was seeing this.
“He wanted Insomnia to reach a level alongside those European brands,” he continues, “because at the time, the people in Europe didn’t really take America seriously: ‘What are these idiots doing?’ Pasquale really wanted to get the respect that was due to the American industry, and put it on par with the U.K.”
To this end, Rotella steadily took EDC to bigger venues with bigger production values, turning his shows into events, the fest graduating from dusty, middle-of-nowhere theme parks to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in 2007, a watershed moment for electronic dance music in America.
A scene incubated in abandoned warehouses and off-the-grid, DIY spots was now taking over stadiums.
L.A. native and rave lifer Yogi Carranza, who’s been immersed in the electronic dance music scene since the early ’90s, still sounds a bit awestruck when recalling his first EDC at the Coliseum in 2009.
“When you walked down those steps, you heard that music for the first time — and it was booming — you were just like, ‘Whoa!’” remembers Carranza, a private chef who’s attending his 17th EDC this weekend.
“Going to that changed my life,” he continues. “It’s a place to experience something you’ve never experienced outside of EDC, because that’s the only place you’re going to experience it. Those memories still pop in my head today.”
Superstar DJ-producer Kaskade, who’s played EDC a dozen times now, also reflects fondly on the Coliseum years, citing the 2010 show as a personal favorite.
“It was a big event, but nothing like it is now, way more stripped back,” he recalls. “But there I was, sharing a stage with Swedish House Mafia and Deadmau5, and my big move was to release large balloons into the audience. It was so fun to be eye to eye with people vibing to the music and punching balloons back and forth to each other.”
A year later, EDC moved to Vegas, where it drew a sold-out crowd of over 230,000 fans thanks to big names like David Guetta, Skrillex and Tiesto, who’s the only artist to perform at every EDC since, returning again on Saturday.
“It was really special to play at the Vegas one,” Tiesto told Neon in an interview prior to a previous EDC. “The set was great; the crowd was great.
Going to that changed my life. It’s a place to experience something you’ve never experienced outside of EDC, because that’s the only place you’re going to experience it. Those memories still pop in my head today.
“I just really love EDC,” he said. “It’s like a dream — like a magical paradise you enter.”
Tiesto also started seeing EDC’s greater impact on Vegas, helping turn the city from a dance music desert just a little over a decade ago into an EDM capital.
“I think through EDC, everybody goes to pool parties that weekend as well, goes to the clubs and discovers new DJs, new music,” he said. “There’s room for way more music now than there was. It has developed from Britney Spears mashups to every form of dance music you can find in Vegas now. And it’s doing well. It’s packed everywhere.”
If not for Electric Daisy Carnival, there would be no “party potty” to peer into right about now.
Carina Carancho opens the restroom door at her new downtown rave store, PLUR City, 1405 S. Commerce St., revealing walls lined with snapshots of DJs and fans in the Vegas scene — hence the lavatory’s nickname.
“I have all my friends and the rave community pictured up here,” she explains. “That’s the theme that we were going for, so people can see the rave community out here. I always tell people, we are PLUR City.”
A purple oil barrel topped with free kandi beads marks the store’s entryway. Inside, racks of rave wear hang next to fuzzy bucket hats, homemade kandi purses, bright yellow hockey masks and other fest essentials.
Carancho says PLUR City, which takes its name from the longtime rave motto of peace, love, unity, respect, has gotten off to a strong start since opening in early February, underscoring how the local scene has grown: There are over 200 EDM events here annually.
“The amount of people and sales that we’ve had have been astronomical,” she says, noting that things have gotten even busier with the approach of EDC, which Carancho first attended in 2021, tagging along with friends.
It was her first big rave, her introduction to the scene, and her store is a direct result of the experience.
“I had never listened to EDM, I had never been to a rave and I absolutely fell in love,” she recalls. “It was the people, the fashion, the culture. I felt very accepted. Rave culture is where you can dress how you want, dance how you want, and it’s all love, you know?”
Speaking of love, EDC’s local impact has also grown to encompass another one of the city’s cottage industries: weddings.
Since first being approached by Rotella to open an EDC chapel in 2013, minister Brian Mills, president of the Vegas Wedding Chamber and owner of Theme Las Vegas Weddings, has presided over more than 1,200 ceremonies at the fest.
He and his wife will do 152 weddings this year at two chapels — that’s one every 15 minutes, from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. each night — not including a highly popular third chapel where festivalgoers can exchange unofficial vows with their besties.
“I do weddings at a lot of different festivals and sporting events,” says Mills, who also works Formula One and NASCAR events and the Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender. “This is definitely, by far, the most excited group of brides and grooms that we have every year. It’s the most unique experience.”
Even the fest’s performers are getting in on the action: Last year, Chinese EDM standout Kromi became the first DJ to get married at EDC.
“Peace, love, unity and respect,” says Mills, a PLUR veteran nowadays. “We’re the love.”
When EDC turns 30 this weekend, Antill will be back in the house performing, doing a tribute set to his late friend and fellow DJ-producer Danny “Lostboy” Baldwin on Sunday.
Before we end our call, he shares a more recent memory of being on the skydeck at EDC 2024 with his old buddy Rotella by his side.
“I’m like, ‘Mate, take a minute, look at this,’” he recalls telling his longtime friend as they gazed about all the colorful mayhem engulfing them. “‘This is mind-blowing, dude.’
“‘This was your vision, what you set out to do all those years ago,’” he continues. “‘And you did it.’”
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.
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