We caught the end of Ferry, all of Armin, and the beginning of ATB. My main goal honestly was to see Armin and he did not disappoint - he just seemed so within his element, it was sick to watch. He did not drop many of his classics, primarily I believe because he dropped a lot of his forefront stuff on the mainstage on UMF Day 2 and was really going to dig into his knowledge of trance for ASOT #500. I'm glad he did. While I was unfamiliar with many of the tracks, his set literally put me in a trance for his two hour set. It was everything Tiesto's set lacked, AVB stayed true to his genre, and did what he knows, and man did he rock it.
Anyone who has been reading my blog knows what a big David Guetta fan I am. While the past two consecutive times I saw Guetta I had a blast (Pacha 12/6 and last years UMF), the Pacha show had an awkward un-Guettalike vibe and his Ultra performance last year was sickening - I felt like I was watching a slow car accident. SO- after swearing I'd go to FMIF earlier in the year, I swallowed my pride and did NOT buy FMIF tickets for the Saturday night I was in Miami. At this point, however, my subconscious was beginning to take over....how could I go an entire Miami Music Week and not see my favorite DJ in the world? No matter how badly he did the last time or two? And thus, we exited ASOT, headed toward the mainstage, and took a seat and waited for Erick Morillo (who was really friggin good! Perhaps we don't give him enough credit as New Yorkers since he is resident [and part-owner] at Pacha NYC, and we see his name so much?) to finish his set. We parked ourselves on the lawn near a landmark to meet up with our other friends, in the meantime P. Diddy was on the stage doing a small solo set (really weird, but kinda cool I guess) while the stage-hands set up the stage for the Frenchman.
So me and my friend (she had only seen Guetta once before, during his Electic Zoo set in 2009 where he closed the festival and split our minds open mixing the likes of his own classics, introducing us to DirtyDutch, debuting all of One Love, mixing I Need a Miracle vs On-Off, and playing Bonkers and Television Rules the Nation back to back. Seriously one of the best sets I have on my iPod to this day - download it if you don't have it! Case in point, her expectations were high) were chatting about how good that e-zoo set was, how bad his umf set was last year, and I was preaching about various "guettas" in between...and I say to her that if he opens with Gettin Over I'm leaving....sure enough the Frenchie gets up there, starts yapping about peace, love, unity, house, miami, ultra, blah blah blah - i hate it but i love it - and after he stops talking the opening chords to Gettin Over play and my friend and I look at eachother and sigh....before completely abandoning the situation, we said we'd give him one more track before venturing back over to ASOT.
OH MY GOD am I happy we stayed. We started the set sitting on the hill in the back and probably within 25 minutes we were about 35 people back from the stage, a little to the right, dead sober. My baby renewed all my faith and dropped the best Guetta set I've heard him drop since his set at Pacha on that weird Wednesday night at the end of February 2010 (come on househeads, I know you remember what I'm talking about). He delivered ten-fold playing a wide span of tracks from whats popular so some dirty-dutchier beats, to some straight up amazing house tracks that I have never heard of. He sprinkled some of his own classics throughout the set but each of them with a new, UMF-customized flare, and brought Afrojack up for a 10-minute amazing mashup of When Love Takes Over and Moombah. If this set goes up, rip it the second you see it. Just as I was starting to think there are others more talented in the industry, and Guetta's been spreading himself too thin between promoting the industry and all of his production work, he must have taken a week off somewhere to rebuild himself - because everything about this set emulated why David Guetta is the #1 house DJ in the world, why he is the #2 DJ in the world overall, and why there are 7 of the top 20 DJ's in the world are house DJs - all of which - except for that moron - he has helped and promoted. Before anyone heard of Laidback Luke, Afrojack, Chuckie, and Sidney Samson - Luke was on "Delirious", Guetta turned "let the bass kick" into "I'm David Guetta Bitch", he played "pon di floor/how i like it" [alas promoting afrojack] when I saw him for my first time (4/4/2009), he loves riverside. In terms of SHM, he made the introduction between Luke and SHM - the product of which was "Leave the World Behind" and produced "How Soon is Now" with Dirty South and Ingrosso. NOT TO MENTION every one of the aforementioned artists had tracks on David Guetta's FMIF 2009.
Sidney Samson played a short set between Guetta and Chemical Brothers on the mainstage, where he featured his remix of Rihanna's S&M . To be honest, I left before Chemical Brothers because I was petrified of the cab situation and wanted to go see Avicii at Mansion. I ran back to the hotel and changed and got to the club. I spent about 45 minutes exploring Mansion - AWESOME venue. Our clubs have a lot to learn from the clubs down there. Mansion is enormous, tons of balconies, great lighting structure and big LED boards on either side. Unfortunately, it was about 1am when many various things within my body and soul were telling me that my Miami Music Week would be coming to an end very abruptly and probably dangerously if I did not head to my hotel and call it a night. At this point I had slept a few crappy hours in 5 days, spent a ton of time in the sun, danced for probably 100+ hours, and lived on a diet consisting of vodka, gum, and cigarettes. So sorry to disappoint, but I flagged myself for safety reasons before Avicii came on. I was just exhausted and overwhelmed and seeing as how it was after 1 and he hadn't come on, I just didn't have it in me to wait around any longer.
Next Post - How a seemingly boring April/May for NYC turned into what could be the best graduation gift ever for the tri-state - we got a lot coming up!
Sidney Samson played a short set between Guetta and Chemical Brothers on the mainstage, where he featured his remix of Rihanna's S&M . To be honest, I left before Chemical Brothers because I was petrified of the cab situation and wanted to go see Avicii at Mansion. I ran back to the hotel and changed and got to the club. I spent about 45 minutes exploring Mansion - AWESOME venue. Our clubs have a lot to learn from the clubs down there. Mansion is enormous, tons of balconies, great lighting structure and big LED boards on either side. Unfortunately, it was about 1am when many various things within my body and soul were telling me that my Miami Music Week would be coming to an end very abruptly and probably dangerously if I did not head to my hotel and call it a night. At this point I had slept a few crappy hours in 5 days, spent a ton of time in the sun, danced for probably 100+ hours, and lived on a diet consisting of vodka, gum, and cigarettes. So sorry to disappoint, but I flagged myself for safety reasons before Avicii came on. I was just exhausted and overwhelmed and seeing as how it was after 1 and he hadn't come on, I just didn't have it in me to wait around any longer.
Next Post - How a seemingly boring April/May for NYC turned into what could be the best graduation gift ever for the tri-state - we got a lot coming up!
No comments:
Post a Comment