Las Vegas Weekly

April 27, 2009 · 3:45 PM

3400 Destination: House departs Jet Nightclub for good

By Deanna Rilling

Dave Dresden at Jet's 3400 room, 04/06/09

Photo: Mikey McNulty / mikeymcnulty.com

Parties in Vegas have a shelf life. Generally, it’s better to throw something out your own, than be forgotten and become unrecognizable and stinky in the back of the fridge. Or in this case, the back of Jet.

3400 Destination: House has been a Monday night haven for local house heads and industry folk alike (along with tourists who drool over good dance music). “It’s had an amazing run,” says Josh Donaldson, Light Group’s director of marketing for house music events. As co-founder of the 3400 party alongside DJs Faarsheed and Chris Garcia, the trio has regularly helped Vegas get over their case of the Mondays with a welcome reprieve from the same ol’ songs.

The party initially kicked off two years ago with a surprise set by Tiësto in the intimate back room of the club. Since then the roster of acts who’ve performed at 3400 includes MSTRKRFT, Deadmau5, Dave Dresden and Dubfire, among others.

“We’ve had some of the biggest names in house music play that room, and we don’t really have anything more to prove, so we decided that we want to create a new brand and do something new that’s fresh,” says Donaldson.

“Our party is local based, so the people that come to our event have ADD—for lack of a better term,” Donaldson jokes. “Even if it’s a good event, they just get tired of it. All the best house nights in the city are the best local nights in general and end up dying out after a while.”

He explains they preferred to pull the plug and end on a high note before interest in the event waned completely. Donaldson also thanked Light Group partner Andy Masi for his support when many people didn’t think the party was possible.

“We all have so much personally on our plates,” says Faarsheed. “But we’d like to do monthlies and events in different cities, [while keeping] kind of the same style of music and the same style of parties going once and a while.” Faarsheed believes focusing on a monthly event as opposed to weekly will allow 3400 to be succeeded by a bigger and better party.

Though there were rumors 3400 Destination: Hous would be ending, not many people were aware tonight would to be the last night. “It’s going to be kind of a word of mouth thing,” says Donaldson, adding that they didn’t want to promote the evening as a sad ending. “We wanted the night to kind of feel organic and feel natural and not be like everyone’s crying.”

Faarsheed adds, “Tonight’s definitely going to be a fun night. A lot of friends, a lot of people that loved the party.”

“Everyone is going to see each other at different parties,” Donaldson says, “but it’ll be the last time we are all together on a Monday night in the back room at Jet… It’s like our Cheers finale. It’s the last episode of Seinfield for us; we’re all going to branch out and do new things.”

Doors to Jet will open at their usual time of 10:30 p.m. this evening and Donaldson says the party will probably go until 4 a.m. Supporters will likely make a beeline past Jet’s main and hip-hop rooms in search of the familiar sounds of Faarsheed and Garcia. As far as next Monday and the following weeks, it looks like we might be staying home and watching basic cable for a while.

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