When Avicii announced that Radio City Music Hall would be the host of his New York City tour stop this fall, many fans were understandably skeptical. Radio City is a legendary in the minds of New Yorkers, however it is most famous for hosting it’s annual Rockettes Christmas show and seated events like the NFL Draft and the MTV Video Music Awards. How would several thousand extremely excited young music fans react to being confined to a seat during a full set of electronic dance music?
The answer is about exactly how you would expect. Organized chaos. Young adults decked out in neon filled the nearly 6,000 person capacity theater. Ushers heavily guarded the rows, and for the most part people danced wildly within the confine of their row. It was quite the sight to behold – thousands of being flailing the arms and jumping around, yet unable to move forwards or backwards. For all of the pre-show concerns, once Avicii’s massive stage set up was revealed to the crowd and the lights were dimmed, it seemed that no one seemed to mind the unorthodox seating arrangements.
Before anything else, much credit must be given to Avicii and his visual production team. The stage set up was absolutely massive – earlier this year Avicii debuted a giant head that he would DJ atop of, while a massive array of lights project all sorts of images onto the stage. Words cannot accurately describe it – it truly is a sight to behold and is worth the ticket price alone. While Avicii gets a lot of flak from hardcore electronic fans whom see his productions as too main stream or safe – the producer does deserve a lot of credit for being forward thinking, pushing boundaries, and exceeding expectations with one of the better stage set ups this side of Amon Tobin.
That is all not to say that Avicii musically disappointed. Far from it. His set weaved in between his own classics like ‘Seek Bromance’ , newer hits like ‘Sunshine’ which was co-produced by David Guetta, and some favorites from other artsits that are dominating the airwaves like Swedish House Mafia’s ‘Don’t You Worry Child’. He constantly teased some of the more memorable songs from his repertoire before changing the pace and dropping something else, keeping the capacity crowd on their feet. He even experimented with some progressive dubtep towards the end of his set, much to the delight of the crowd. By the time the familiar opening chords of Zombie Nation’s ‘Kernkraft 400′ blared through the house speakers, it seemed like the crowd had been given everything they expected and more. One word you could not use to describe the set would be safe.
For all the confusion of seeing a DJ in a seated venue, it was really a remarkable feat for an electronic artist to accomplish. Avicii has seemingly lead a charge this year in trailblazing a path for electronic artists to fully enter the mainstream, for better or worse. He brought in the New Year to huge demand at Pier 94, an ‘outside the box’ idea for a venue. In March, he brought Madonna on stage with him at Ultra to huge controversy. Over the summer, he became the first EDM artist to take over the main venue at the Revel in Atlantic City. And now he has christened Radio City Music Hall, one of America’s premiere theaters, as an EDM-friendly venue. It can only be assumed that 2013 will be a similar year for the Swedish superstar as he continues his dominance over the EDM genre.
