Concert Report: Electric Daisy Carnival - Day 1

In Chicago for the first day of Electric Daisy Carnival!

Taking place at the Chicagoland Speedway complex in Joliet.  Come on in!

5 stages in place with DJ's playing from 5pm until 4am.  Checking out local House DJ TKC (USA) which stands for To Kool Chris.

EDC girls!

Part of the early crowd on hand.

Next up DJ Anna Lunoe (AUS).

Playing more House and some Breaks.

With her cute Aussie accent, she was getting into the music.

With highs in the low 60's, the night would get particularly cold for the scantily clad revelers!

More female DJ's: Rebecca & Fiona (S)!

I missed them when they played Orlando last year.  They were quite animated with the crowd.  Mostly House but a surprising amount of Breakbeats out of them too!

Crowd building up as the hour got later.

Go Rebecca!  Go Fiona!

The festival grounds are far larger than Tinker Field in Orlando where our EDC will take place in November.  This is the first EDC for Chicago; it will be the 3rd for O-town.

The Electric Daisy itself. As profits increase, they're able to add amenities. 

Local DJ's Jordan V (left) and Kalendr.

You can never go wrong with Go Go girls!

Local favorite DJ Tony Arzadon (USA) continued this night of House music.
 

Big crowd enjoying the music from this side stage.
 

 House music makes me happy!

Arzadon was a guest DJ at The Groove in CityWalk last year.

 This stage was kept so dark that it was difficult to tell anyone was up there.  But she was: DJ Lady Faith (USA).  Her music was a harder sound but she was including Breakbeats as well.

Fairy princesses everywhere!

 Perhaps the most impressive performance of the night to me came from Gareth Emery (GB).

Very animated with the crowd, his mix of Trance and House lacked no dead sections!

Amid a deluge of lasers, his big hit "Concrete Angel" got a huge roar from the audience.

 The crowd was happy!  Emery plays at Roxy this coming Thursday night.  Tickets here.

Up next on the main stage was a DJ I've not seen play in Orlando, Martin Solveig (F).

He got the biggest crowd roar from his hit "Hello".  You may recall the music video where he played tennis against a far superior DJ Bob Sinclar (F)!

The crowd stretched back as far as the eye could see!

The peeps want techno!
 

 The DJ that I give credit to for helping merge Hip Hop & Dance and thus a major factor in the recent boom of EDM, DJ David Guetta (F).

He told this Chicago-crowd how thrilled he was to be playing in the birthplace of House music!

Lots of lasers for his hit "Titanium"!

 And wrapping it up his 1.5 hour set with hit "She Wolf".  By now I was pretty frozen as the 2am temperature was 43F!

Huge 15-minute fireworks show during Guetta's set.  He was much better than when I had seen him play at the Koolhaus in Toronto a couple years ago.

And a good time was had by all! Chicago Tribune images here.