Chemical Brothers & Paul Van Dyk @ Nocturnal Festival, Downtown, 9/29/07

I crawled out from under my Westside rock this Saturday for my first experience of Downtown’s Nocturnal Festival, now in its 13th year. With the Downtown skyline as the backdrop and bunkered on one side by the 110 freeway, 40,000 rave-minded partiers packed four different stages till 4 am. Yes, with that kind of size traffic was hellacious, and the line to get in Coachellaesque. Speaking of which, the main reason I finally went to Nocturnal was to see The Chemical Brothers, whom I haven’t seen since Coachella ’05 when they rocked the roof off the Sahara tent. To no surprise the crowd at Nocturnal was equally blown away by The Chemical Brothers’ set. Even I, who glaringly stuck out as a glowstick amateur, got caught up in the midst of probably the largest dance party Los Angeles has ever hosted. One of the many international DJs on hand was Paul Van Dyk who had the duty of closing the main stage. Backstage at the end of the night I saw a girl being taken away in an ambulance. She seemed perfectly fine and was talking on her cell phone while laid out on a stretcher. What a way to beat the traffic I thought.