Innercity Details...

Innercity Festival, The Rai, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 

Innercity is 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!"