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seeking advice/guidance: throwing a first rave
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SgtFoo
I want to know what'd be involved in throwing a rave. I'm gonna be DJing soon, so I just wanna know what's implied in throwing my first rave. A friend of mine and I are quite bent on doing this to get ourselves started. Any and all advice/guidance/comments are accepted and appreciated!
Clyde77
w/e hppns. make sure no one pops E, and good luck. let us know how it went after the gig aight? p3c
montie
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde77
w/e hppns. make sure no one pops E, and good luck. let us know how it went after the gig aight? p3c


well if you want a good party, lots of people want and need to be ed up to make it a good time :)


but thats besides the point. be ready to spend alot of money. make sure you have a nice amount of dough ready to throw down. you are almost guarenteed to lose a good deal of money on your first party.

the biggest concern is locking down a location. i know of lots of promoters who thought they had a venue, but the owners pulled out at the last minute.
not too many people are willing to hold a "rave" so thats the last word you want to use to promote your party.
especially with the rave act and such, its alot hard to find a venue.

if you want a party get you and your friends name out the best thing i suggest you can do is go to some clubs around town and see if you can buy out a certain night for your own party there. thats the easiest way to go to secure a venue.

if you still wanna have a rave, then start looking around. skating rinks are pretty popular for parties. so are bowling allies. try as many places you can to get a spot. even farms way out in bumble work. i remember going to a party once in a barn on a farm. it was a damn good time. there maybe some desperate for money farmers out there.

promotion for your party is a huge priority. hopefully where you live you have a rave community message board. make sure you frequent it alot and make yourself known. and promote your event as much as you can as early as you can.
drop off flyers at record stores at hair salones at clothing stores or whever raver people frequent. just make sure you advertise in any way shape or form you can as much as you can. the more people there the better.
also don't charge too much at the door. the normal rave crowd don't want to spend too much to come to a party (most of them are broke drug addicts, who think anyone who charges more than 10 dollars at the door is an evil capitalist pig). also throw out lots of demos to the people who you are promoting too. give them a sense of your sound and what type of party that you are going to provide.

another big thing is finding a good sound system. alot of the "big time" rave promoters in your area prolly already own a system, so see if you can rent one from them. if you rent from them they may want to put their name on the event, which would be a good thing, cuz if people see their name on the flyer then that will increase their liklyhood of coming.

anyway man i'm getting tired of typing. hope your event goes off well. and i hope this is useful too you
Clyde77
but that's the main reason why our big clubs are getting shut down bcuz of stupid raves.:whip:
veezee
best advise you will ever get:

DON'T!


If you decide to do it, good luck. Be sure to get talent, and not just your friends..

Jay
hapamoto
i was a promoter a few years back, when the rave scene was pretty much at its height here in southern california, and i watched it go to , along w/ the company i was promoting for. if i was you, i'd follow the advice of the person above me.. DONT do it.. you need a lot of cash up front, and your gonna be ting bricks throughout the night hoping that you will make your investment back.. and if your lucky, you might have a few bux afterwards as profit. first thing, you need at least one or two big names.. im not talkin like ing pvd or ferry corsten, but try to land AT LEAST one big local dj, something that the locals will recognize when they see your flyer. next thing, u need to charge as close to nothing as possible, remember, ravers are all cheapasses.. plus a lot of them will need money for drugs (unfortunately). drugs, will and won't be a problem, if you get a venue, like a club for example, the club management should probably provide security (included in the cost of renting the venue) and its up to them to search and destroy the drugs that the ppl try to bring in.. if ur doing something like out in the woods, good ing luck trying to stop ppl from either crashing ur party, sneakin in, and all hell breaking loose.. especially when the cops arrive and everyone just jams, but look whose stuck having to packup all this equipment. so best advice is go w/ a club.. it will probably be hard finding a club that has permits for all-ages but thats wat you want, if u go 18+ u are really cutting off a large target group of ppl that you are promoting too. ur gonna need cases and cases of water.. candy... etc.. all the normal u see at raves.. talk to some vendors that sell accessories, ya kno like lights and neon beads and pipes and all that , usually they try to rent space from you, or u can let them setup for free but then they have to give you a cut of their take on the night.. this really all depends on how big you wanna get.. keep in mind promotion is really key.. talk to other promoters, let them know what your guys are doing, u get on their guest lists as promoters by offereing to let them on ur guestlist so they can promote at ur event.. and as metnioned before, getting a location will be difficult, but it is the most essential element cuz u can't promote a party that u don't have a spot for. some advice, try to hook up w/ some promoters and work w/ them.. this will probably be a tough deal if you have had no experience "behind-the-scenes" so to speak.. throwing a party is a rather stressful thing, usually u don't see the smiles unless u've got a line around the block, and/or ur ticket counters finally let u kno that youve broke even and from here up ur making money.. i dunno man.. its a lot of work.. good luck.. but then again, thats just my experience in southern california a few years ago and i think raves are banned here now, canada might be totally different for all i kno
Kamikaze Badger
Dont do it. Its a waste of money and half of the people there are going to be drug addicts that think that $3 is tons of money. Unless you have about 30 billion dollars stashed away, its not worth it dude.
SgtFoo
maybe I shouldn't have used the word rave.... that's ok.
So call it a party/clubbing event. I'd wanna get 3 to 5 DJs to be able to spin including mysefl and maybe 2 friends. promotion, understood. merchandise, understood. Club venue, understood.

SO, Around how much money is this gonna run me? It would be somewhere in or around Toronto, Ontario, Canada. what's the avergae that clubs would charge? and a good cover at the door would be?
Walter Mindz
quote:
Originally posted by SgtFoo
maybe I shouldn't have used the word rave.... that's ok.
So call it a party/clubbing event. I'd wanna get 3 to 5 DJs to be able to spin including mysefl and maybe 2 friends. promotion, understood. merchandise, understood. Club venue, understood.

SO, Around how much money is this gonna run me? It would be somewhere in or around Toronto, Ontario, Canada. what's the avergae that clubs would charge? and a good cover at the door would be?


Depends where you plan on having the event... venues require a fee to rent the place and some also want a deposit down too (which you get back after if nothing gets ed). You might have to get security if the venue does not have their own. And if there is alcohol at the venue that might want extra money for that too.
Most places have a sound system in it, so the only other piece of equipment you might have to supply will be TT (with needles), and a mixer.
Now if you plan on having flyers for this, then there's another expense.
I'm not sure about the cost of alot of venues in Toronto, but I know The Opera House is around $2500 + deposit, the supply the security, and this venue can be 16+.
Labrynth Lounge I think is $1500, but this place is 19+ only.
That's the most info I know so far... hoped it helped.
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