Electric Daisy Carnival

For more than a decade, Los Angeles' two biggest independent dance music promoters, Go Ventures and Insomniac Events, put aside their rivalry to put on a massive New Year's Eve bash dubbed Together as One. Over the last three years, in particular, the event grew to draw tens of thousands to the Los Angeles Sports Arena & Exposition Park as Go Ventures' Reza Gerami and Insomniac's Pasquale Rotella snagged big names such as David Guetta, Deadmau5 and...

As recently as June, summer 2010 was looking good for event promoter Gary Richards. In just three years, Richards had built his Hard music festivals from what he calls a "career Hail Mary" into a lucrative national brand featuring eclectic lineups of emerging acts, most of which make electronic dance music. It was all about to pay off with a summer full of events, including a national tour featuring underground avant-disco duo Crystal Castles, buzzing South African group Die Antwoord and a dozen others, as well as two daylong festivals in New York and L.A., both headlined by controversial artist M.I.A.

As Kaskade, Ryan Raddon is at the forefront of an electronica wave that's sweeping pop music and upending underground dance culture. But after a year when he did almost everything right as a DJ and producer, he's still trying to shake the one concert that went wrong. The San Clemente-based artist was among the biggest stories in dance music this year, reportedly commanding up to six figures per gig and conquering the global circuit with a double album, "Fire & Ice," that redefined his near-decade-long career and landed in the Billboard Top 20 (with its iTunes release hitting No. 4 on those charts)

The president of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission acknowledged Tuesday that the commission failed to closely monitor its managers, a statement that comes several months after The Times disclosed that a commission events manager was also employed by a rave company that held events there. As a result, commission President David Israel said he wanted to determine if there's a better way to oversee managers of the center, which has been thrown into disarray with the resignations of the events manager, Todd DeStefano, and the longtime general manager, Patrick Lynch.

When it comes to pushing dance music frontiers, there seems to be little left for Moby to explore. The 44-year-old producer and erstwhile beat music star has headlined arenas and stoked up parties around the world and has crossed over into the mainstream with his multi-platinum 1999 album, "Play." Over the course of nine studio albums he's tackled ambient music, house music and hard techno. At the Electric Daisy Carnival two weekends ago, for example, he stood below synchronized fireworks and pyrotechnics that illuminated the faces in the swirling crowd, whose wide eyes were transfixed on the stage.

In 1975, Donna Summer released a pop single unlike any before it. The singer, then an unknown in the U.S., was living in Germany and working with Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and lyricist Pete Bellotte. Together they came up with a breathy, minimalist number that sounded flagrantly sexy. Summer's coos acted as musical erotica atop a simple, four-on-the-floor drum beat. "Love to Love You Baby," all 17 minutes of it, set a template that would ignite Summer's career, and a style that defined an era: disco.

On a recent evening at the downtown Standard Hotel , the monthly dance party called Culprit Sessions had lissome bodies moving to experimental disco when a shadowy figure appeared amid the poolside revelry. "This kid came to the party in full zoot suit, like a gangster straight out of the '40s," said Andrei Osyka, the producer and label owner behind Culprit Sessions. "It was so out of place, but I was fascinated, so I found him later on Facebook and he said he'd grown up in San Diego and was never accepted for dressing like that.

Kids will be kids Re "Why does Electric Daisy draw fire?," Opinion, Aug. 22 My son has been attending the Electric Daisy concerts for several years. Like many attendees, I'm sure, my kid isn't your typical juvenile delinquent: He's on his high school's honor roll and is a hospital volunteer, among other things. Why he likes Electric Daisy is a mystery to me. But I doubt my parents understood why my generation liked Jefferson Airplane, the Doors or, for that matter, love-ins at Griffith Park.

The premiere for a movie about a music festival with a controversial past got out of hand itself late Wednesday when thousands of people attempted to crash the Hollywood event, police said. Crowds spilled into the street around Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, with some people throwing bottles at police. Witnesses said others were dancing on a police car, taunting officers and "planking" -- lying down in the street. There were also sporadic fights among people in the crowd.