It won't be the festival without Hart Plaza, that's the big draw and it's really important to hold on to that.
All the same, in my view the real weakness the last couple of years has been the storied afterparty scene, which is mostly either lame club nights or disastrous so-called renegades. I think the festival should expand outward to the city and include official showcase nights at the various clubs -- Forans, Oslo, Bleu. And let's not stop with a few clubs on lower Woodward. Corktown, St. Andrew's, Agave, that place in Greektown where I saw Sean Deason play, the Stick, and lots of places I don't even know about could play a role. And how about a *real* cabaret night. So this is kind of like merging the DEMF-as-it-was with the approach SXSW and similar club-oriented festivals take. There certainly is enough talent and enough draw to do both. While I'm sure Paxahau would want to do its own after-party, after watching Buzz Goree work it to the bone last year pulling things together for a series of official parties that had excellent sound and lights and not much attendance, I don't think that's a very promising avenue for covering expenses. The unofficial afterparties have been going downhill for years, with rare exceptions (hellooooo Cannonball). Watching AO play his heart out to a bunch of bored suburbo-kids at DCA last year was a low point, but being at a pretty decent party down the street that got shut down by the po-po at 1 am was worse. Not to mention those all-time fiascos we've seen at Eastern Market, the Masonic and so on. And the ones in the condemned buildings the city hasn't bothered to pull down, instead of the solid buildings that they demolish. (Ah, but what would Detroit be without mindless illogical behavior by both the public and private sector.) Ahem. Anyway, not knowing the people involved at all but seeing how they do things, if Paxahau gets the nod I hope they build on strength and make this more of a festival that brings in all the electronic music in Detroit. fh ----------------- >I would imagine pax doing the fest across many smaller venues instaed of >doign a woodstock-style techno party at hart plaza. > >I may be wrong >
