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Thesis: The theme of the night was money, not music
Last night was a mixed bag for me. My first love is the long build ups, intense peaks, and piano / vocal trance that you hear Oakenfold lay down on his better days, or the slamming dark techno / trance PvD puts out regularly. I was hoping for the Tiesto from Space Miami or Cream Amnesia. As it was, I wouldn't have been surprised to hear "Bringing Sexy Back". Much has been said already about the choons that were laid down, and those definitely redeemed the night from being total gash. But we all know there were some hard times to get through in those first two hours.
riskytrader said he came in with low expectations: My problem was that I didn't. I hadn't yet accepted the fact that trance may no longer Tiesto's first love. Is P-Diddy going to play Traffic at his next show? What, as an exercise in negative reciprocity? No, I don't think he will. But Tiesto will start having an even more hip hop / house / radio-friendly sound, and that scares me for what it means for this genre considering the influence Tiesto has.
Hey, if he wants to change, that's his right. Lots of money to be made in the mainstream market. He may well alienate his old fans, but he'll also make plenty of new ones. But I respect Oakenfold for always laying down a classic trance style in his live sets at the risk of alienating his new radio fans who probably turned up to the show without knowing what they were getting into. I was hoping for the same from Tiesto, and that rumours of him going mainstream were just that. Hope has now turned to fear.
OK, on to the venue. I'm personally not into light shows, but for those who were, let me state for the record that Got Lightshow put on a clinic. From where I was standing, he owned his audience of people sitting down on the dance floor. Hey, man, do what you feel. At least it's not bothering anyone else. Not like Dr. Phish (more on that later).
And while it's true that it didn't rain condensed sweat a la Kool Haus, the place was still f'n packed. This led me to conclude that the club owners buy into the belief that these events are more about hero worship than music and dancing, which is a shame in my opinion. If I owned a club, I'd rather let in 500 less people to give some room to move. As such, the order of the day was to jump up and down, wiggle back and forth, and pay homage to the stage. I always manage to find a niche somewhere in the middle of the floor where people are dancing, but add another 1000 people and those will all be gone too.
I thought maybe VIP would be less crowded, so I bought a VIP ticket. No relief to be had there. I wasn't impressed with the Docks business plan to make more $$$ from VIP by monopolizing the entire area with private tables. To get to the balcony and see any of the crowd, you basically had to crash someone's private table. I was not above this tactic: There was a large Versace-clad beautiful people contingent that somehow didn't care that a dude in jeans, docs, and a 10 year old (but still legible!) Fucdup / End Raveism shirt had turned up. There was some Bohemian, dubbed Dr. Phish, at the table next to us banging a bongo drum at random and inopportune moments completely out of rhythm with the music. This clown completely ruined a couple of great blow-ups. A bongo drum in the middle of Traffic is just stupid. Come on, man, respect that we didn't come there to see you. Does anyone know who I'm talking about? If you know this dude, please intervene.
Bongos, hip-hop, and overcrowding aside, there were a few great moments where I got the trance effect I crave and damn near had an out of body experience. Just wish that feeling had lasted all 5 hours instead of 15 minutes! I think there's only one solution to avoid future disappointments from Tijs: Let's use the TA time machine and go back seven years to see him. Up for it?
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