What an experience!
I finally had the chance to go see Tiesto live. Most of the time these venues fall on a weekday and I just can’t make it, but it just so happened that Tiesto’s North American Tour had him coming to Norcross on a Saturday. A friend of mine told me about it and I just had to go. Tickets started out at $35, but I got mine for $40 – pretty good for a 7-hour show if you ask me.
The website said the doors opened at 10pm so we left at 9pm to grab some dinner beforehand, then headed over to the venue to find a parking spot. What a madhouse too. Firstly, the venue’s website said parking was $10, but when we finally got there it turned out to be $20. Then we circled around for probably 10 minutes trying to find a spot. There were literally thousands of people here already.
Finally we found one and proceeded to eat our Burger King (we couldn’t find any sports bars and nothing else was open at 10pm). We brought a few beers from home in a cooler to save some money on the inside so we washed it all down with one of those. Then we headed for the massive line. Actually there were multiple massive lines so we just headed towards the doors and figured someone would tell us where to go.
Had we not cut line we would’ve easily stood in line for close to two hours. And how we cut, I don’t know, we just kinda blended in with a mob of people until we were behind the gate. The doors didn’t open at 10 either, more like 11, so we still waited in line for a decent amount of time. People started pushing and I swear I had my ass groped a few times.
Finally the line started moving and as we neared the door, this kid in front of me dropped a little vial of liquid in his mouth, I’m assuming it was acid, then followed that with a tab of something, my guess was ecstasy. I looked around and he wasn’t the only one either. But that kind of thing is expected at a show like this. Some would call it a rave and I guess that would be correct.
The bouncers checked our IDs and police patted us down checking for weapons and drugs. Much good that did, haha. And finally we were in! The place was massive! We entered the front of the building but the show had its back to us. A DJ was already on, but I don’t know his name. He was pretty good, had the crowd going nuts, had some really nice beats. There was another really long line for the ATM but we decided we weren’t going to drink a lot since we were driving home afterwards.
We meander through the maze of people, glow stick swingers, and columns to take a place in the crowd. About 5-10 minutes after standing there swaying to the music, a girl comes up and asks, “Are you guys rolling?” We replied with “No” and she asked us if we wanted to and told us the price which was $20 a hit. We declined respectfully.
We then headed to the bar to grab a drink. By this time it was close to midnight and Tiesto still hadn’t come on yet. A vodka tonic was $8. A bottle of water was $3. Once we had our drinks we headed into the crowd to get closer to the stage. The closer to the stage we got the crowd got more dense until we really couldn’t get any further. We were about half way.
People were dancing, jumping, rolling, tripping all around us. But everyone was having a good time. Nobody was angry, nobody was aggravated with the bumping and shoving, everyone was unified – and everyone was waiting for Tiesto. Just after 1am Tiesto appeared. The crowd freaking went nuts. The lights were amazing, the bass was heavy, the mood was just perfect.
He played a kickass show for three hours and at 4am, we figured he was finishing up and so we started to head back to the car to head home. It was an unbelievably amazing time! Just to be there with thousands of people who enjoy the same music is nice. Whether the old rave pasttime “PLUR” (Peace Love Unity Respect) comes from the copious amounts of ecstasy and acid or the sheer fact that music brings people together, the level of unification and oneness in the room was inspiring.