Electric Highway could have used an exit ramp

GEOFF CARTER

Friday, Sept. 12, 1997 | 10:10 a.m.

Early in the new David Fincher film "The Game," Michael Douglas' character Nicolas Van Orton is subjected to a series of rapid-fire subliminal messages inside a small screening room. He has already spent a few frustrating hours undergoing every kind of psychological test imaginable and feels appropriately, well, testy.

"Does this end?" he yells into the projection booth. No one answers. The booth is empty. The film rolls on, and on, and on...

Despite myself, I got that Van Orton feeling more than once over the course of the BF Goodrich/Spin Magazine-sponsored Electric Highway show at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last night. The fault didn't lie with the performers. Arkarna and Fluke were wonderful (despite the former's glib wish of "Respect to anyone who's wearing our T-shirts out there"). The techno/rave DJs -- including Las Vegas' own Robert Oleysyck -- spun expertly. In particular, Doc Martin worked the turntables like a man possessed.

And it goes without saying that the Crystal Method -- former Las Vegas residents Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan, late of UNLV's community radio station KUNV 91.5-FM -- did their hometown proud. However, their set was a long time coming (the event began at 6 PM; the Method did not take the stage until 11:30 PM), leaving ample time to scrutinize the mostly-juvenile crowd, examine the silly props (all made of tires, in deference to the sponsor) and ask of no one in particular, "Does this end?"

The promoters of the Electric Highway tour are billing it as the crowning achievement of a genre -- techno, electronica, whatever you want to call it -- that, ironically enough, feels no burning need to be crowned. Techno music would play the same if it were playing to 10 people or 10,000. The Prodigy would make the same records whether they were millionaires or not. Big city nightclubs like Vegas' Utopia would offer the same experience if nobody had ever heard of the Chemical Brothers.

In the spirit of classic corporate overkill, Electric Highway denied all these truisms, placed three club bands in the middle of a needlessly sparse concrete-and-asphalt lot and expected the phenomenon to replicate. Instead, the crowd was ambivalent, almost bored.

It didn't have to be that way. The gig could have been held at Utopia, in a park or even a parking lot closer to town. (By holding the event at the Speedway, a venue some 20-odd miles out of town, the promoters shut out half the under-21 crowd that normally attend these underage events.) The venue could have been put to more imaginative use -- whose bright idea was it to throw this party behind the bleachers? And the event was doused in such an impersonal vibe that the proceedings almost felt hostile.

Very little of this mattered when the Crystal Method took the stage. Jordan and Kirkland assayed most of the songs from their Outpost Records debut "Vegas," including the hits "'Trip Like I Do" and "Busy Child." The duo began their set standing more or less upright, noodling with their keyboards and mixers as if unaware they were being watched.

As the evening progressed (and they each took multiple swigs of tequila and beer), they loosened up considerably -- Kirkland rocked his keyboards back and forth, Jordan adopted a split-legged pose. By the time the last number rolled around -- a searing rendition of "Keep Hope Alive" -- the boys were burning, and the crowd along with them.

It just seemed a shame that reaching that plateau was something of a struggle. Then again, to employ an old truism: "All's well that ends well." Regardless of the myriad problems, the Method won over the madness. Game over.