The last and best party of the year, First Night Monterey, celebrates 20 years with a bang.

First Night Monterey is the biggest New Year’s Eve party in the county. Last year it attracted about 22,000 people into its one-day universe of musicians, artists, food vendors, magicians and dancers. This year, its 20th, First Night Monterey is teeming with 301 artists and performers in 24 Oldtown Monterey venues across nine hours of rollicking and rambling art, community and entertainment.


Paulette Lynch gets emotional thinking about the history of First Night Monterey, the family-friendly party she began planning for in 1992. And despite all the subsequent arts activities she’s been involved in, including current duties as Executive Director of the Arts Council for Monterey County, she remembers the first one clearly, starting with the First Night International convention in Boston, from whence she imported the idea.


“Even in those early days, First Night International had a really substantial [start-up] package,” she says. “You had to purchase it and commit to certain standards, budget, timeline. I went to the conference [and] came back with images, buttons, stories.”


One of the stories she brought back to Monterey was about a First Night celebration ramping up in Bethlehem, Penn. A group of unruly teens were pestering the crew. But instead of confronting or admonishing the kids, the First Night folks recruited them; by the time the festivities began, the teens were an earnest part of the production.


She coalesced all she learned at the conference and began typing up the first First Night Monterey proposal on a “funky little typewriter.” She and her husband, Ken Peterson, presented their proposal to the Monterey City Council and won its support, including that of then-mayor Dan Albert and councilman Fred Meuer.


“One of my motivations was to do something concrete for families at a time when families were split apart,” she says. “The adults would go out, the kids would stay home with a babysitter. That’s the way it was when I was a kid.”


Today, First Night has supplanted many-a formal-wear sloshy parties flowing with Champagne in plastic flutes and punctuated by noisemakers and noisier strangers. The first First Night Monterey attracted 5,000 people to the format that’s remained little changed over the years. Back then, the performers, artists and entertainers included poetry by Etha Gray, sculpture by Mike Duffy, music by the Monterey String Quartet and Guillermo Rios and El Grupo Sevillano, a performance piece by dancer Sara Wilbourne, an interactive installation by David Clay in the walking bridge that spans across the Marriott and the Monterey Conference Center. The Greek Village Dancers were part of that menage, and have been every year since. Tickets (in the form of buttons) then were $5, but the $20 adult admission today remains reasonable considering the array of stuff to see. 


Its lineup this year is as stellar as always. It starts with the orchestrated bombast of taiko drummers, an almost-tribal sound that can be heard blocks away and keys up the adrenaline. But the artfulness begins right away, too (3pm) with arts and crafts tables on Pacific Street for facepainting, a bubble stomp, henna tattoos and crazy hat making. All of which also sounds tribal. Communal, if you will. The it’s a cascade of events and performances, sights and sounds, piled on one on top of the other but spaced out for maximum coverage.


Lynch credits First Night Monterey Excecutive Director Ellen Martin, who has marshalled the vast resources of people, sponsors, artists, donations, outreach and regulations for the last seven years. (The two are the only ones who have helmed the event over the years.)


“It’s been my privilege and joy to be part of this wonderful, creative, festive, participatory celebration,” Martin says.


She’s so excited that in describing this year’s party, she breathlessly jumps subjects, from performer to art display to venue (85 percent of them indoors so weather doesn’t rain on, literally, the parade): MC Lars, the Sambahemians, a walking birthday cake, the Carmel High Jazz Trio, public art, Monterey Conference Center headquarters, the Greek Village Dancers. But the dizzying description is understandable. There’s so much going on that it escapes quantification. So it’s a good thing the Weekly inserted in last week’s paper a guide with bios, descriptions and schedules on the whole dang thing – from where to buy the admission buttons to the free continuous bus rides from Del Monte Center to the midnight grand finales at the Monterey Conference Center and Golden State Theatre.


“I think the most memorable moment, every year, is the same thing,” Martin says. “How happy and joyous people are at First Night. What never ceases to amaze me is how happy people are, and what a great time people are having. That, and the little ones.”


The music is most abundant, a mixed-up grab bag of treats, like the Carmel Valley/Los Angeles fly guys of electro-disco-pop band Fire in the Hamptons, the communal percussive noise jams of Junkman, the refined harmonies of I Cantori di Carmel, the world beat of Abdoulaye Diallo & Tam Tam Sacre, the rustic and downhome flavor of the California Cowboys. They all do two to three sets throughout the night and, unlike certain local festivals in which the times get screwy, First Night Monterey, with an army of 178 volunteers, has a tendency to run right on time.


“We manage [the resources] by praying,” Martin says. “And we have a great board. We have people who volunteer every year. I see people who [say], ‘Oh my gosh, I came with my kid when he was a baby and now he’s in college.’”


That’s a tradition founded on having a good ole fun time with family and friends. It doesn’t get much more fundamental, or substantial, than that. 


First Night Monterey runs 3pm-midnight, in 26 locations throughout Oldtown Monterey. $20-$22/adult admission button; $12-$15/youth admission button; free/child 5 and under. www.FirstNightMonterey.org.