vanguard's friday night crowd

Giant step: Indeed, Giant, perhaps the biggest electronic music promoter in Los Angeles, has announced it's moving from its longtime home of Avalon Hollywood to digs down Hollywood Boulevard at Vanguard. An email sent out by Giant yesterday states that the organizers are taking August off while they prepare to take over Saturdays at Vanguard starting in September. Of course, Avaland nights on Saturdays will continue at Avalon, so it's not as if there's nothing happening there. It's just that Giant won't be a part of it.

Background: It's an interesting move that comes just after a two-year celebration of Avaland nights at Avalon. The in-house Saturday night events supplanted Giant-branded Saturday nights at Avalon, although the Giant crew stayed on as a co-promoter. (When Avalon opened as the city's nicest, newest super-club in 2003, Giant was heralded as the Saturday night promoter). The move also comes after a rough '06 for Giant, which came under fire after its last-minute cancellation of its New Year's Eve party under the dubious excuse that bad weather loomed (ticket sales were even cloudier). Many folks didn't see immediate refunds, if they saw any at all, but Giant went on with plans to try a similar outdoor party downtown last month, taking whatever money it had and, instead of giving back cash to ticket-buyers, doing marketing, paying for DJs and throwing down for major production value for the July event. If this was the case of Avalon kicking Giant to the curb, no one has said much about it. I recently interviewed Avalon co-owner Steve Adelman, who said simply that Giant had taken on a smaller role in Avaland; he didn't hint that the promoter was leaving or being forced out at all.

It's not unusual for promoters to move from venue to venue, and Giant's had a transient history in Los Angeles after bringing proper DJ-driven clubbing to the scene in 2000 at the Circus Disco venue. After being kicked out of Circus and breaking up with onetime partner Spundae, the crew threw one-off-type parties until landing at Avalon. While Vanguard is a newer club-space redux with a solid Funktion One sound system, this seems to us like Giant has been knocked down a peg, as Avalon remains the city's premier big room. Now, Giant goes head-to-head with its former home on Saturdays. Is there bad blood after Giant helped bring major DJs and massive crowds to Avalon? We'll see. Meanwhile, Vanguard has been under-utilized as a DJ-centric venue. Its owners had DJ culture in mind when they remodeled and reopened more than a year ago, but the club seems to have had more success with sceney hip-hop nights than with true-blue electronic dance music. Giant takes over a night that was formerly held down by a consortium of blingy, industry-crazed promoters and, most recently, by Japanese American promoter DMK. Other nights have included Asian American-targeted, upscale affairs. Although a rave promoter helps run the club, core dance music was recently relegated to Sundays (Marques Wyatt's Deep) and Wednesdays (drum 'n' bass). We'll be watching.