A few weeks ago I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Avicii "perform" live at the TD Garden in Boston. The party was crazy and everything anyone has heard about the new stage setup he has is absolutely true (it was sick-he stands on top of a mannequin head and then, all of a sudden mid show, the top of the head flies off and floats over the stage. Unreal). You may notice that I put quotes around the word perform and that I said party instead of show or something else. I used to be one of the people who defended the art of DJing, asserting that what these guys do during a live set is extremely technical and, in fact, musical. While I still stand by my claims of how difficult manning the turn tables in front of tens of thousands of people must be, I have to withdraw the idea that music is being produced live for the pleasure of the attendees. Music is being blasted, and was created at some point after hours and hours of painstaking effort went into production, but it is not being produced on stage as it would be if someone was playing a guitar or singing. In this sense, I think that the crew manning the light show is every bit as responsible for the awesome show as the guy up top creating the mix. But that is not what the event really got me thinking. One of the biggest songs of the night was In My Mind (Axwell Remix). You may be thinking to yourself, "Hey wait a minute, that song isn't by Avicii." You are correct. Neither is Atom, Greyhound, or Levels (just kidding, that one actually is. I cannot express how pleased I was that he played it only one time at the beginning of the set instead of drilling it into our skulls as so many other people have. Thank you). Over the course of the night, Avicii played many songs that were produced by him, as well as several huge hits that were not. This raises the question, why can't any DJ put on the same show playing the all the biggest hits at the time and get the same result? If the DJ game is about putting together the biggest baddest mix on the planet, the ability to actually create quality tracks doesn't really play into the equation. It would've been cool to see the blond wonder play all his favorite original tracks that he has worked so hard on, emphasizing his favorites and working the crowd accordingly. Instead we got a fair dose of Swedish House Mafia and other superstars. Which was great and made for a killer time and an awesome party, but one wouldn't go to an Eminem concert and expect to hear In Da Club or go to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers and hope to hear Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It would be odd and out of place there, so why is it ok for techno artists? Maybe it is because of the fact that this is a budding genre in terms of mainstream attention and many of the concert goers couldn't care less about who exactly all the songs are by. Maybe, though, it is because these guys are trying to create the best parties they possibly can. And that is alright by me.
