Tiesto provides ‘Clarity’ at Sold Out Liacouras Center
On Saturday February 23rd, the #2 DJ in the entire world visited the City of Brotherly Love during his Club Life College Invasion Tour. The packed Liacouras Center on Temple University’s Main Campus was filled with fans ranging from 18 to 40 years old. You may wonder what 40 year olds were doing at a dance music concert that took place on a college campus. Well let me be the first to say, it was very fitting.
Tiesto has been around for quite some time and is considered one of the International pioneers of what we consider today as Electronic Dance Music. He started out his career making trance music; a sub-genre of dance music which originated in the early 1990s. Trance is known to be gently-moving with long buildups and light drops. The dutch producer attracted a large part of his current fan base (the 40 year olds) during the early stages of his career. However, with the mainstream shifting towards dance music, Tiesto also shifted his musical focus. Tiesto’s move towards electro and progressive house signal the long-awaited mass popularity of dance music in America and his concert at the Liacouras Center proved to be symbolic of today’s EDM movement.
Walking through the masses of colorfully-dressed fans in the lower bowl section of the arena, I was able to make it down to the floor. I took this picture of the floor crowd…
Opening DJs included the popular Dutch producer Quintino and the rising Australian electro house superstar Tommy Trash. Quintino seemed to do an average job of keeping the arena on its feet but Tommy Trash was the opener who really got things going with his remix of the infamous Deadmau5 tune, The Veldt.
As a countdown video started to play, the crowd knew what was coming. Tiesto was going to appear at the DJ booth when the video behind him reached zero. When this moment came, the crowd erupted into an ear-piercing cheer. He played for almost 2 hours and not once during his set did I ever feel the need to leave the floor. The crowd was into it. Tiesto was into it. Even the security couldn’t help bopping around a little bit. The Liacouras Center had been transformed from Temple’s center of college basketball to one huge party. As far as I saw, there were no fights, no arguments, no upset faces. The show flowed with the current hippie EDM mentality that has taken this country by storm.
To name a few songs that Tiesto played that really got the crowd jumping…
-Clarity (Tiesto Remix) – Zedd feat. Foxes
-Sweet Nothing (Tiesto Remix) – Calvin Harris feat. Florench Welch
-Spaceman (Carnage Festival Trap Remix) – Hardwell
-Adagio For Strings – Tiesto
After covering Avicii last September, I thought about how this show would compare. I can safely say that I now understand why Tiesto is ranked the second greatest DJ in the world. His set was long enough to understand and appreciate but not too long that I was getting bored. He included his new electro house and progressive tracks as well as mixing in some popular trap records as well as his old trance songs which got him famous. I sincerely hope that he comes back to Philadelphia sometime soon in the near future as myself along with tens of thousands of others in the Greater Philadelphia Area would kill to see him again.
For now, I leave you with this video of the concert in which I filmed the crowd’s reaction to Tiesto as he dropped the bass on the sold out arena…
-Lawrence “DJ Watts” Watling
