[authorbox authorid=”11″ title=”The CEO of DMNW (and the Weekend)”]
FVDED in the Park offered an opportunity that is increasingly missing in EDM: See world-class acts in an intimate setting. Like many other EDM addicts, I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of festivals and club shows. The one thing they have in common? Everyone is trying to get bigger. Bigger lineups, bigger venues, bigger stages, big.
Blueprint Events went the opposite direction for FVDED, booking a small city-bound park and stuffing in huge talent like deadmau5, The Chainsmokers, Excision, Pete Tong, and Afrojack. The result was a festival that focused on music, not massive showmanship. It was a breath of fresh air, one that is frustratingly absent in the current dance music explosion. In creating this “new”experience, Blueprint has begged the question, “can you keep a festival small when its size keeps making it more popular?”
Photo Credit: FVDED in the Park
While we won’t be able to answer that question until next year, our first year at FVDED represented a perfect moment in time. Breakout performances to 3-digit crowds from Botnek, Tokimonsta, Haywyre, and Keys & Krates were refreshingly informal. No one was forced to appeal to a 50,000-person lowest common denominator. Everyone just had fun, and wandered off if they didn’t.
On the mainstage, it was a treat to see huge artists like deadmau5 bring large-scale thinking to what could be imagined to be your backyard. His performance, truly the performance of the weekend, included his entire new mau5trap stage (complete with a visit from Left Shark). In the Canada locale over 4th of July weekend, we (Americans) were able to find many Independence Day-minded friends, all ready to dance and party with us.
Leaving FVDED wasn’t the exhausting effort of trudging hours home from 3 days of living on the edge of comfort and danger, instead feeling more like leaving your friend’s killer house party. I can only hope that FVDED continues to put experience over profit, and that other event producers learn to keep it small.
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