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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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It’s Time to Party
Let HearSay drop a little techno-funky wisdom on ya: People in the know don’t call those big tent parties in woods or warehouses with the strobe lights and the throbbing beats and the sweaty bodies “raves” anymore. That’s a pejorative term. Hipsters refer to these social functions as “dance parties” or “dance events” — and these deals are more or less the same things as raves but without the decadence attendant to that old word. (Read: no drugs.) One of the biggest raves — er, um, dance parties — in Texas has been happening near Denton every year for the past three years. It’s called the Massiv Music & Arts Festival, and at its biggest last year attracted about 7,000 music and arts lovers from across the state. This year’s Massiv happens Saturday.
The event is not just for technoheads or “ravers” or folks whose understanding of instrumentation stretches as far as a turntable. Massiv also offers real, actual live music in the form of a few jam bands — Spoonfed Tribe, Moses Guest, Black Velvet Lunchbox. It’s a wonder nobody thought of this sooner.
The brains behind Massiv are the same guys who threw “The Electric Eyeball Experience” at the Ridglea a few weeks back which attracted about 800 people off and on throughout the evening. Jay Anderson and Don Gentry started putting on “free parties” or “after-raves” in the early 1990s — back when “rave” had relatively good connotations. Anderson was living in California when he got a call from Gentry. “He told me he found this beautiful spot,” Anderson recalled. “And he wanted me to help him promote it, so I started doing the fliers.” This was the first Massiv. And it wasn’t long before Anderson returned to Denton for good. Both he and Gentry realized they had a hit on their hands.
“Sometimes it’s all about a drum ’n’ bass party, or there are house-heads, and other people like rock bands,” Anderson said. “We decided to get all these people together, and experiment, and see how people interact, because, ya know, we’re all voyeurs.”
But Anderson takes no responsibility for uniting worlds. “We just bring them together. The people are the ones who make it happy.”
By all accounts, Massiv is a safe party environment. Eight police officers and 70 security guards patrolled the party last year, and there was an ambulance on site. “I used to go to bigger raves and not feel like the promoters cared about me,” Anderson said. “They weren’t worried about my safety. That’s part of why we started doing [Massiv].”
Massiv will take place at the Hawkwood Fairgrounds at the Southeast corner of I-35W and Hwy 114 in Roanoke and will begin at 7pm. It’s 17-and-over, and tickets are $10-$25. Call 817-355-4808 for more info.
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