anabolic frolic

Electronic music back in Bobcaygeon
200-performer festival kicks off tomorrow night
By Ben Rayner
Pop Music Critic

Last year was very nearly the World Electronic Music Festival's last dance, but the long-running three-day party has rebounded from a near-death experience with enthusiastic support from the same town that tried to shut it down.

The eighth WEMF kicks off tomorrow night and runs through Sunday on the same 120-acre rural property in Bobcaygeon where it almost didn't happen last year — a nifty public-relations coup for an event that was besieged with OPP blockades and slapped with a court injunction last summer after local authorities balked at the thought of hosting a massive rave in their cottage-country backyards.

"If it hadn't gone off last year, that would've been the end of it," says Ryan Kruger, who co-founded WEMF as the World Trance Festival in 1995 with his partner in Destiny Productions, Eryk Sands. "No one would have had any trust in us at all anymore."

The problems began when the original festival site in Kayuga fell through a mere two weeks before the event was to begin because the property owners had failed to obtain the necessary permits. Rushing to find a new location, the promoters relocated WEMF to Bobcaygeon — without, Kruger concedes, taking care of all the usual permitting issues — only to spend a week in court battling for the right to use the property.

Things came to a head on the opening Friday, when OPP blockades left 6,000 partygoers sitting outside the gates for three hours wondering if the music would ever start. And start it eventually did, thanks to some quick-thinking legal handiwork from Will Chang, a pro-rave advocate who helped organize the huge iDance events in Nathan Phillips Square in 2000 and 2001 and who also, fortunately for WEMF's promoters, happens to make a living as a corporate lawyer.

"It was a mess, and it was a prime example of what happens when the police and the authorities don't work with promoters," says Chang. "We've been saying for years, with iDance and various other things, that the best way to ensure that an event is safe is to work together."

No one was more surprised than Kruger when Bobcaygeon — pleased with the minor, three-day economic boom it enjoyed with 10,000 ravers in town — offered to let the festival come back this year. "It wasn't the end of the world, these weren't bad people coming to their town, and they realized it was a benefit to the town economically," he says.

Mindful of past experience, Kruger and his partners are trying to make this year's World Electronic Music Festival their most slick and professional yet.

In addition to the nearly 200-strong DJ and live performer line-up — which includes trance jocks Christopher Lawrence, Commander Tom and Chris Liberator, live house ensemble The New Deal, DJ Assault, DJ Hyper and a massive posse of drum 'n' bass DJs from the U.K.'s Knowledge & Wisdom Records crew (see http://www.wemf.com for details) — this year's event features a Warped-style skate park and a water park.

For the first time, too, WEMF has enlisted a corporate sponsor in Coors Light.

"It's no longer an underground thing, so things like insurance, policing and security are a lot more expensive than they used to be. You almost need the sponsorship to meet the requirements of the authorities," says Kruger.

Some residents aren't thrilled about the noise, says Art Truax, mayor of the City of Kawartha Lakes (which includes Bobcaygeon), but local businesses are on board and he's satisfied that WEMF has "met all the requirements of our bylaws. As well, I've spoken with the OPP and the fire people and the emergency medical services people and everybody seems to be satisfied that things are going to proceed in an orderly manner."

Truax, however, will not be attending. "I have no intention of going anywhere near the place unless I'm forced to," he says. "It's not the type of entertainment that turns my crank."