The early raves that stand out in Bentley’s mind went by names like Aphrodite’s Temple, Mickey’s Magical Mind Arcade and Gilligan’s Island.
“It was a network of flyers and voice mails, and it was just a very underground scene of just kids,” he says, “young people just putting together a sort of new way of experiencing music, and the underground dance music that was really coming from the U.K. and Europe but to a large extent originated years earlier in Chicago and Detroit.”
Rotella’s first party in 1992 was called Unity Groove, and what would follow was Insomniac’s weekly Friday party among others that went by names like Magic Wednesdays and Sunday Service. He has attested that he started the weekly after finding himself longing for the kinds of raves he attended around 1990 before drug culture and disingenuous promoters ravaged the scene. His own parties took place at a warehouse on Crenshaw Blvd. – one of the more violent areas of East L.A. – but attracted an overwhelmingly peaceful crowd.
“He was out there,” recalls Bentley. “That’s the reason why I’m happy for his success is I know that, well, it’s not a rags-to-riches story but very humble beginnings of his particular vision.”
Jason Blakemore A.K.A. DJ Trance was another fixture of the SoCal rave scene who also played a set at the Upside-Down Room this year and speaks with authority on Insomniac’s humble beginnings.
“I was already playing in ‘92 and I met Pasquale when he was just a raver,” he says. “About the end of ‘93 he wanted to do a party called Insomniac and he wanted to book me, so I used to play at his every-Friday gig that he did for five bucks.”
After a year of the Insomniac weeklies, Rotella decided that he wanted to throw his first big rave. In February of 1995, he organized an Alice in Wonderland-inspired concept event called Insomniac Presents Nocturnal Wonderland. The first edition featured local artists like Aldo Bender, X-Pando and Blakemore himself, playing the acid house, hardcore, jungle and trip-hop of the day.
“Nocturnal in ‘95 was kind of his first big show he wanted to do all by himself,” says Blakemore. “The production was so much more minimal back then. The First Nocturnal was two rooms, and the one room hadno production except maybe a laser, and the other room had, like, some mushroom things and maybe people with ears – but we’re talking about such a smaller scale, maybe 1,000 people at the first one.”
Bentley himself – who also performed a DJ set at the first edition of Nocturnal Wonderland – says, “Pasquale always had a very ambitious vision, so he was always pushing production elements and finding creative ways to do things.”
With the first Nocturnal Wonderland under his belt, Rotella would see his reputation in the SoCal scene grow, affording him opportunities to collaborate on events with other promoters. The next year, in addition to bringing back Nocturnal Wonderland for a second edition with Rabbit in the Moon as the headliner, he would take part in the planning of a 1997 revival of the Electric Daisy Carnival party originally organized in 1993 by Stephen Enos and Gary Richards – or Steve Kool Aid and Destucto, as the local ravers knew them.