Centraal Trance Topic (23): In Concert

quote:

Tiesto is to become the first DJ ever to play an Olympic opening ceremony. The Olympics get going tonight and four billion people worldwide are expected to watch the opening show.

10,000 athletes are going to parade into the stadium in Athens to a set from Tiesto. He told us he can't wait.

"As soon as I walked into the stadium I got goosebumps everywhere."

"My DJ booth is right under the Olympic flame it is an amazing spot to be in. I've remixed a traditional Greek song especially for the ceremony."

"I've been working on my set for nearly a year now, they asked me last October. So I'm already getting used to the idea that there will be four million listeners."

Bjork's also performing and will make a spectacular entrance by being wheeled on in her dress and then emerge through it.

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(08-12) 22:45 PDT ATHENS, Greece (AP) --

While everything else about the Olympic Games is old-school this year, the music will be decidedly contemporary, at least during the opening ceremony, thanks to a Dutch DJ named Tiesto.

Standing beneath the Olympic flame, Tiesto will perform nearly two hours of dance music -- a mix of original songs, electronically reworked classical tunes and Greek favorites -- as the world's athletes enter the Olympic Stadium for the start of the games Friday night.

It will be the first time a disc jockey will have such a role at an Olympics. And it may seem ironic that a purveyor of this kind of music -- which can have a stimulating effect on the people dancing to it, if they're in the proper chemically altered state of mind -- would have such a prominent place at these just-say-no games.

But Tiesto, a 35-year-old Amsterdam resident whose real name is Tijs Verwest, said Thursday: "I don't think my music is really drug-related."

"I know a lot of types of dance music are -- techno, psychedelic trance. The music I play is very easy to listen to for everybody: 12-year-olds, 60-year-olds, everybody in between. I think that's why they picked me," he said.

Tiesto said Olympic organizers asked him to perform after a show he put on in Athens last September.

"The guy who's responsible for the music for the ceremony was at the gig. He heard me play, he bought a CD of mine, he bought my DVD -- that was a show I did for 25,000 people in Holland," he said. "I did some classical music -- he really liked that idea."

But the opening ceremony at the Olympics, Tiesto said, "is going to be the biggest gig of my life -- the highlight so far of my career."

He had to alter his usual set slightly, he said -- all instrumental tracks, for example, and no vocals. He thinks the result will provide the ideal soundtrack for the young people entering the stadium for the biggest moment of their lives.

"The average age of the athletes is 21, 22," Tiesto said. "They don't want to hear a classical music tape. They want to party -- they're having the time of their lives. They want good, quality dance music."