The Arts in NYC Fall 2012

Last Wednesday I witnessed a landmark for electronic music. Swedish house music producer Tim Berg, or more commonly known as Avicii became the first electronic composer/dj to grace the legendary Radio City Music Hall. It signified a lot for the direction electronic dance music has taken, especially here in the states, and in my eyes seems to have finally become a legitimate musical genre.

If you are unfarmiliar with Radio City Hall, I’ll give you the basics here. Its located near Rockefeller Center around 51^st street. It is one of the most legendary venues for the classic music and performance art scene in not only New York but the entire country. During the 70s, it was named a national landmark and reached its peak of fame and appreciation. And with the art scene and newer generations arriving, the Hall never was truly able to adapt to the 21^st century of performance art/music. So it has always remained a kind of tribute to the old New York and the classics that once graced it. Even looking at its architecture, you can tell it’s simply old school. I never went to Radio City Hall but always had this impression that it was a more ‘conservative’ locale  (mainly from all the Christmas special commercials that air during the season).

When I looked at my twitterfeed and found Avicii announce shows at Radio City Hall, I was ho

nestly not that surprised. I’ve been following and listening electronic music since the beginning of high school so I’ve grown to see how big its gotten in America over time and radio city just seemed to be the next step for a popular producer like Avicii to play. Festivals like Ultra Music Festivals and Electric Daisy Carnival are talked about left and right now, and have attendances around 100,000 people. Pop music has also taken elements and structures from electronic subgenres like house music and sometimes-even dubstep and incorporated it into the modern pop sound. So seeing Avicii sell out two weekdays at radio city hall, or the Swedish House Mafia sell out Madison Square Garden for two days in a row in under three minutes shouldn’t really be a surprise. Nevertheless, seeing mister Tim Berg on his new stage was mind boggling still comparing that to seeing his early releases of Levels and Alcoholic, and seeing where it has come.

Now I went to the Wednesday show on the 26^th of September. It seemed like a bad idea because I had class the next day and I didn’t really deserve to go out on a random Wednesday. But due to professor Eversley always telling the class to ‘just go out’, I said fuck it and bought 45-dollar tickets for my girlfriend and me. She ended up not being able to make it and I ended up going alone. My first impression of the Hall was how classed up it was. It had several full bars, with popcorn and food. They told me I had to leave my water outside and buy their smaller, five-dollar bottle, which was annoying, but in a rush I didn’t quite mind. There are five different floors or Mezzanines and I got front row to the highest one. I planned on doing that so I could observe and ‘see’ instead of really feel (which is somewhat contrary to most types of edm).  At the end of the night I had mixed opinions of the show.

First off, in my opinion I didn’t really like having the separated seating for an electronic music venue. It just seemed to isolate people and there was a definite awkwardness with the dancing and crowd behavior. Another concern I had was something I was afraid of in the beginning and just simply got reinforced that night. I suppose it happens to any old school fan of an art scene. The crowds I saw seemed to be little children or just simply mainstream. I by no stretch of the imagine try to be a hipster, but I couldn’t help notice that a lot of people were probably there because they loved hearing Levels a thousand times on the radio and thought it would be cool to go to a show. So many people were unfamiliar with how an edm concert works, or even just concerts in general. When the opening dj was playing the warm-up set half the people in the beginning started cheering for Avicii when clearly he was the closing act, the other half just got angry and started demanding that Avicii come out. And I am exaggerating because this wasn’t the majority, but was still a sizable group. Most of the people were psyched to be there. I was glad that there was only one opening act because since it was a Wednesday, it promptly finished at 11, which was a perfect time. Avicii’s set was also fantastic, the lighting was some of the most incredible I’ve ever seen and the scope of the performance was incredibly large. His mixes we’re very high energy as he played his usual happy-house along with some electro-house mixes; remixes of Silhouettes and Seek Bromance made an appearance, and so did Levels. And even with the gripes and my own pretentious attitude I found a way to enjoy the night. I went to sleep soundly still with the energy of Radio City Hall, remembering the flashing lasers vibrate along the old Rococo walls: knowing I participated in one of many historic nights for a genre of music that I loved.