Innercity
Festival, The Rai, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Innercity was a huge Dutch Festival held
at The Rai in Amsterdam every year.
Innercity
Dance Festival Review...
"We're having big fun!"
Who doesn't know this legendary lyric from the infamous 80's
group Innercity The theme of the song turned out to be the
foundation for about a gazillion samples used in modern day
house music that would develop in the early 90's. Now more
or less a decade later, Innercity is the theme for the biggest
indoor festival in the world held in the RAI complex in Amsterdam.
Approximately 43,000 party people were to be expected at this
huge event. Each year there's a (sub) theme. Last years theme
was the Soviet Union and this year it was the Brazilian carnival
madness. I have to say that I had some reservations about
this theme at first because I tend to associate Rio de Janeiro
from a music point of view with congas, bongos, sambas and
therefore extremely groovy music. I was wondering what the
effect of this assumption would be on other styles of dance
music such as trance and techno. It turned out to be one hell
of an effect - a wicked euphoric marvellous positive energy-generating
outcome, which makes you see things from the very bright side
of life.
I entered the Rio de Janeiro premises of Amsterdam at about
1 AM after being cut up in a traffic jam for only 2 hours.
There were so many different Brazilian areas where you could
shake your booty, nevertheless the crowd felt more like vertical
dancing moves as almost everyone headed straight to the main
area Apotheose where the recently re-crowned trance king would
appear once again. This specific performance has got to be
very special for Tiësto, as Innercity is somewhat the
foundation of his current success due to his major break-through
back in 1999 when a Dutch camera crew filmed a visitor and
a DJ (the unknown Tiësto) for the back then groundbreaking
enormous festival, and aired their footage prime time on national
television. The Tiësto live at Innercity CD is still
one of the most sought after sets in the trance world.
Warming up for Tiësto was Benjamin Bates, who played
his characteristic tech-house tunes. He was doing an excellent
job by subtle mixes and by slowly approaching the more trancy
sound. At the same time some Brazilian chicks were warming
up the crowd in a slightly different way. As I got up on one
of the side-stages I was completely overwhelmed by the amount
of people I was looking down at. There had got to be at least
10,000 people there who were honouring this year's theme as
a lot of yellow and green shirts sparkled through the crowd.
Everyone was up for the carnival madness, encouraged by the
fantastic authentic decoration everywhere. Even the laser
lights were green. Benjamin Bates finished his set and made
a physical Buddha gesture to the audience. Up went the DJ
Booth and down came the confetti - and loads of it!! Live
percussionists and other Brazilian related acts made the crowd
go wildly insane. Now is this a carnival or what
The DJ Booth came down once again and Tiësto started
his set, simultaneously causing an even more exhilarated crowd.
After a few techno tracks the high energy trance flowed through
the speakers in a very high-quality sound system. Nyana, Another
Sweater, and especially the incredible Montana remix of Traffic
kept those many, many hands up in the air. It is quite a cool
sight to see that many enthusiastic clubbers, I tell ya. Big
fun!
Cristian Varela was showing his back spinning and scratching
skills in the techno area, he played records that were not
too difficult. His set sounded OK but not mind blowing. Maybe
that's why the crowd wasn't super enthusiastic at this area.
At some spots you could hear a slight delay on the music,
but that wasn't annoying at all as it kind of suited the techno.
In the Stadion De Maracana one of Holland's most legendary
DJ's was the closing act, DJ Jean. This man really knows his
stuff and his scratching skills were truly amazing! At some
point he used a vocal of a female (probably Little Louis')
who was about to "get there", and he was "screwing"
her with a record by scratching with the beat each time before
she screamed her naughty little lungs out. How hilarious is
that He also seemed to be doing a stripping act as he took
off his brown shirt and threw the thing into the audience
merely to reveal his yellow and green shirt. After that the
rush came, because of Motorcycle being played by him as well
as the increasing energetic carnival people.
Huge events like this are not appropriate for everyone, either
you like them or you don't. I for one find it always noteworthy
to experience how much organizing and planning results in
extraordinary rave parties like this, especially because of
all the numerous side aspects such as wardrobe, food and beverages,
security, the thousands of cabling and electricity in general.
Those are just the basics, at the Innercity festival 2003
all those elements were extremely well taken care of, which
shows a very skilled organization. The only bad thing was
the floor plan, as it just wasn't very clear. The Brazilian
theme worked out really cool, in the contrary of what I was
associating at first. If I have to make a connection now I'd
say: "Innercity We're having big fun!"
