Where Did the Love Parade Go? 5/20/2005 4:25:43 PM
In 1989 in Berlin, a techno-music lover and aspiring D.J. named Matthias Roeingh gathered about 150 of his fellow techno-fans on a local street, put speakers on top of his van, and German "raves" - wild do-it-yourself dance parties - were born.
Who knew that just a couple of years later Matthias, by now known as DJ Dr. Motte, would run the largest rave on the planet? The annual event, called the Love Parade, grew bigger by the year. Eventually it got so huge that Berlin's authorities officially registered it as a political demonstration. But there was hardly anything political about it. The several hundred thousand people came to Berlin every spring only "in the name of peace and love." Hence the name: The Love Parade.
By the late 1990s, the Parade "developed into a worldwide symbol for peaceful youth culture." And in 1999 - just a few months before the all-time peak in German stocks - the Love Parade drew its biggest crowd ever: 1.5 million participants danced in the streets.
And now? Well, now, sixteen years later, the Parade is canceled - for the second year in a row. "No more neon hairstyles, no dancing in the streets, no bare-chested teenagers." It seems that Germans no longer want to "party like it's 1999." Besides the severe lack of funding and sponsors, Deutsche Welle says that a major reason for the Parade's cancellation was the "decline in popularity of techno music itself. Very popular in the 1990s, techno's driving beats and repetitive rhythms began to lose steam as the new millennium broke." The decline of techno even forced a few of Germany's biggest techno dance clubs to close their doors recently. In fact, the whole rave movement is "near death."
To those familiar with Elliott Wave Principle, this transformation hardly comes as a surprise. The Wave Principle governs more than prices in the financial markets. First and foremost, it defines society's overall mood. In 1999, Germany's rising social mood pushed the DAX sky-high and brought out 1.5 million people to dance in Berlin's streets. But the DAX went on a severe losing streak in 2000, indicating a shift in Germany's mood from positive to negative. A year later, the Love Parade lost its status as a political demonstration, and the number of attendees plunged. In 2002, the event drew around 650,000 fans. And in 2004, after the Parade had already been canceled, only some 7,500 fans showed up to protest.
The shutdown of the Parade and the decline of techno music's popularity are consistent with our observation that in periods of declining social mood, "downbeat, arty" music in "minor keys" dominates. And in a deepening bear market, these traits progress toward "distorted sounds, atonality and dissonance."