OutKast Trumps "Ford Focus" Tent at Area:One Fest

What do you do if you're 15 years old, perceptive, intelligent, searching for some way to lay claim to your individuality, some substrata of the underground to cling to, some beautifully obscure and cheerfully offensive tribe to join? How do you shock the elders, shake the system and shout anarchy from the rooftops? Well, you can try your damnedest, kid, but rest assured it will be only a nanosecond before the big-business vultures swoop in for the kill, co-opting any deviation from the norm and using your uniqueness to feed the machine. Corporate vampirism is getting savvier by the minute and there was no better display of this than the fantabulous Area: One festival extravaganza.

Hey, you've got to have bucks to keep a lineup like this trekking across the States. Moby needs his lovely light show and Lord knows I was thankful OutKast had its Stankonia stalagmite "center of the earth" backdrop. I certainly don't blame Mr. M or Big Boi or Dre or New Order or the Roots or any of the others along for the ride. I only blame myself. I should have known what I was getting into when I decided to brave it out to the ragged edges of San Bernardino tract-house sprawl to attend a show at a place graced with the menacing moniker of Blockbuster. Despite the fact that this venue is situated in the exact middle of nowhere, just off the hot tar highway that inches to Vegas and back, the setting is stunning. The pavilion faces a green and sloping hill and is cupped on all sides in the palms of jagged desert mountains, their white rock spines arching through black pine. A hot wind was blowing, but the sun went down slow and soft, leaving pink fire clinging to the edges of everything.

Area One's intention, like most of the wave of free love fests glutting fields this summer, is to bring together the disparate, to gather the electronica DJs, the rappers, the hiphop artists, the scratch masters and the once revolutionary old-timers and put them all together in one package.

This lineup was certainly tantalizing. Paul Oakenfold spinning the discs, Z-trip scratching up the classic rock, Timo Maas and Rinocerose lending a touch of European class. On the main stage, the Roots kicked out the jams with their usual facility and New Order made their big comeback, a surprisingly tight and well-handled set, with little Billy Corgan (moonlighting on guitar) stealing the show out from under them. Corgan admitted, with false modesty, that the only reason the girls were screaming were because they wanted to get down his pants in order to get down New Order's pants. The band smiled at the lie. They didn't care about the girls. They just seemed happy to be up there again. The set was long and loud and superbly played and included all those hits that buoyed your hangdog angst back in high school, back before goth had a retail chain.

Meanwhile, in the "Ford Focus" tent, England's best kept the beat while the kids gathered at the Intel computer station, e-mailing pals and surfin' the net ("Hey man, I'm at Area: One and I'm rollin'!"). Outside the entrance, the vaguely curious flocked to two Ford Focus "Techno" cars (no joke) that featured geometrically arranged scenes of candy raver love airbrushed on each door. What's next? A secret compartment for storing illicit drugs? A built-in cooler stocked with Red Bull and orange juice? A heat massager to work out those pesky mid-trip kinks? A trunk that folds out into a handy, dandy "chill room"?

This, along with the Marrakech market in the center of the venue, really set my teeth on edge. Various hucksters hawked the newest energy drinks and Trojan handed out free rubbers (okay, that didn't bother me so much). But who cares about the $7.50 beers? Who cares about the fascist Blockbuster employees (mostly closeted bulldyke desert gals with a chip on their linebacker shoulders) who refused to let the general admission crowds into an almost empty orchestra section, even when the show was nearly over?

Moby, who'd masterminded the whole affair, was good. He played a mean "masturbatory guitar solo," fulfilling all his adolescent fantasies with tongue firmly in cheek and regaling us with tricky samples and gospel beats as he scurried across the stage with energy and sly humor. But not even Moby could top OutKast. Those boys know how to work a crowd into a frenzy and get that booty shaking. A spectacular stage set (thanks Intel!), towel whippin' dancers, a jammin' band, hilarious stage banter, outrageous costumes and spot-on rappin' through a barrage of infectious hits, OutKast filled the pavilion with Stankonia love and took up the "all are one" groove right where Funkedelic/Parliament left off. A grand tradition indeed.

So screw the corporations. The kids are savvier then they think. They'll come up with something to call their own. In the meantime, let's take all that white-collar cash and hand it over to Big Boi and Dre. Let's let them build that Stankonia dream, where all is free love and hot sex and everyone dancing together to the dirty South beat, feeling so fresh?so clean. With OutKast on the planet, there ain't no need to panic.