As you may perhaps know, when not wearing my Kentishtowner hat, I work on social media campaigns for a range of music clients. Which gives me the perfect excuse to spend a few autumnal days in Amsterdam each year, as October sees the annual Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) dominate this beautiful city’s cultural agenda.
Sure, Ibiza’s got its mega-venues and Miami its seemingly limitless swanky list ‘n bottle clubs, but for shear capacity and creative use of urban/industrial space, there’s nowhere to party on the planet quite like the ‘Dam. And the support the tourist board provide for this week-long fiesta of repetitive beats is phenomenal, particularly when held up against the ‘shut it down’ attitude of authorities in the UK, (or worse still, the US) towards anything resembling an edgy rave-up.
Consequently, increasing numbers of music tourists are making the easy journey over there for the tempting smorgasbord of DJs and events that ADE draws to town.
Despite all the nocturnal diversions, plenty of business genuinely gets done by those who make a living from all this hedonism too. Feverish meetings and panels take place in the imposing Felix Meritis building dating from 1788, on the Keizersgracht, and at satellite locations a short stroll/bike ride along a picturesque canal. Spilling out onto the canal-side street, a whirlwind of post-digital disruption music industry wheeling and dealing takes place, with global stars such as Paul Oakenfold just as likely to be seen hanging out talking shop as the brace of enthusiastic Dutch newcomers clutching promotional USB sticks.
Personally, this year’s ADE was particularly hectic. Back-to-back daytime meetings on day one slipped into 4am social media updates performed from an enormo-rave held inside an old gas holder. As fireworks zipped perilously overhead in the main arena, we squeezed into a studio where DJ Carl Cox was busy presenting his 500th radio show to a live audience of over 10 million, while Official DJ of the London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony™ Fatboy Slim sat on a sofa in the corner working out his set.
Two more days of this punishing-if-amusing schedule followed, before I’d even get to my main work event. This included some unexpected delights, like stumbling into a sitdown meal served by chefs better known for their international DJ careers. Sushi rolled by house music hero Francois K, anyone? Or in our case, delicately spiced savoury pastries rustled up by the bosses of cool music hardware/software specialists Native Instruments, who sponsored the whole cook-off concept… before watching them play an ultra-competitive game of Hungry Hippos, naturally.
By Friday, tired and emotional, the time had come for DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs awards party. The poll, conducted on a global scale, is a phenomenon in the dance music world. For better or worse, it’s been seen as a barometer of DJ popularity (and therefore booking fees) for nearly 20 years.
Of course, things have changed a great deal in that time, including the coming of the internet and its social networks. This means that the results today have become more about canvassing for support on Facebook than on the actual gigging a DJ has done. The old masters of the art, who still pull in the crowds but are not particularly bothered with building a Twitter fan base, are being rapidly side-lined. This causes huge controversy, and much trolling and bile via online comments.
So with this in mind, my task of manning the social media conversations during the countdown, live from another Dutch enormo-dome, my computer screen shuddering with the noise of several thousand baying trance music addicts and basslines that threatened a full renal collapse, was never going to be easy.
I had a good spot up in the gods with the Be@TV crew running the live broadcast. But as the countdown got underway and the ravers got excited, there was drama behind the scenes. My plan to avoid information meltdown and repetitive strain injury on the night involved a risky strategy of timing the results to be tweeted automatically, one a minute, during the show. But I couldn’t make the system recognise that we were running on Central European Time, meaning they were going out late.
Next to me the Be@TV guys were perspiring as the live stream from the venue repeatedly broke under the weight of traffic, and people had to resort to watching the results via a stream from the Top 100 party taking place at London’s Ministry of Sound – where it was on the TV.
Actor Idris Elba, star of ‘The Wire’ and passionate part-time DJ, was due to present New York DJ legend Danny Tenaglia with a special award, but only just made it to the event, having had to hail a taxi when his car didn’t show. Tenaglia then summed up the spirit of the poll and its many ‘unknown’ new faces in 2012 thus.
“I’ve met a lot of exciting young DJs here in Amsterdam who are oblivious to who I am. It’s alright, I’m oblivious to who you are too.”
Local hero Armin van Buuren was then crowned the number 1 DJ in the world, to rapturous scenes. 12 months before at this party, he had lost the spot after a record 4 year stint, to David Guetta. The Armin followers have spent every day since commenting online about the injustice of this, often with some ferocity, so it was a relief that we didn’t have to deal with a flood of negativity from these over enthusiastic fans.
Instead, we had to make sure that Armin, two excited competition winners and some well-oiled magazine staff made it to a private jet straight after his two hour set, off to play again at the Ministry of Sound party. Once the madness had subsided at the rave dome and online, there was time to hit the altogether more gritty musical experience up the road at Trouw. This is a crumbling old newspaper printworks, now one of the most exciting nightclubs in the world.
As a metaphor for the death of analogue media and the process that has transformed everything from local newspapers to international record labels – and magazine popularity contests – Trouw neatly sums it up. Don’t bother mourning the passing of the old ways, the world has moved on, like it or not. Instead, let’s dance on its grave. And so we did.
Words: Tom Kihl
