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Hart Plaza's Movement festival spins
Adam Graham / The Detroit News
Electronic music superstar Moby -- along with near-picture perfect weather and a bustling downtown scene that saw home games from the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers -- helped propel Hart Plaza's Movement festival to a highly successful first day.
Saturday's attendance was 21,977, more than double the first-day attendance at last year's festival, according to organizers. The figure puts this year's fest, which marks Detroit's ninth annual Memorial Day weekend electronic music festival, on track to exceed the producers' goal of 60,000 attendees over the three-day weekend.
"This is a really positive moment for the whole team," said Jason Huvaere, president of Paxahau Promotions Group, which is now in its third year of producing the festival. He noted one of Saturday's problems -- long waits for those who purchased advance tickets and had them held at will call -- will be addressed today.
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Moby, who closed Saturday with a 110-minute set on the fest's main stage, is the most commercial artist to perform at the festival in years. He played to a packed main bowl and opened his set with "Good Life," a track by Detroit techno godfather Kevin Saunderson's late 1980s outfit Inner City.
Wearing a zip-up Detroit sweatshirt, Moby jumped on top of his DJ table and stretched his arms wide before the mass of people in front of him. It was a gesture he repeated several times during his set, and the crowd responded later on by tossing glow sticks at the famously bald-headed and bespectacled performer.
Moby's pounding set -- which included strains of L.A. Style's "James Brown is Dead," Basement Jaxx's "Where's Your Head At," Chemical Brothers' "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" and Moby's own "Go" and "The Stars" -- had the crowd of thousands dancing and waving their arms in the air. It hit a lull in the center, but Moby won the crowd back with his closing version of "Thousand," a machine gun of rattling bass that has been noted as having one of the highest beats per minute of any song ever recorded.
Moby was one of more than 30 performers spread out over five stages at Movement's first day. Aside from thunderous bass and pounding rhythms, the fest's other hallmark is its colorfully-dressed crowds, and Saturday's people watching scene did not disappoint. Aside from the hip-hop heads, hippies, glow stick children and rave kids sucking on pacifiers, among those in attendance were a pair of guys wearing hard helmets adorned like disco balls and with Mercedes Benz hood ornaments on them; a couple wearing matching leotards; a man wearing a hospital gown; and one person dressed like one of the members of Daft Punk, complete with robot helmet and light-up suit.
Egyptian Lover's Greg Broussard, who performed a decidedly old school set on the Red Bull Music Academy stage Saturday -- at one point he had the crowd chanting "1983! 1983!" -- said he had a positive experience playing the fest. "I loved it," he said, of his first performance at Movement. "There's all kinds of different music playing, and everyone's loving it."
Movement continues today and Monday at Hart Plaza. Tickets are $25 a day and are available at the gate.
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I woulda gone nuts hearing "James Brown is Dead"
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"When I die, I want to be buried under the dancefloor"- Frankie Madgenta
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) I got to have my IHOP breakfast, party with some great friends and honk and celebrate with the Red Wings fans getting out of the arena as I was trying to get out of the city.. lol. (I had to make the best of being stuck in traffic forever)
