Lots of first-timers these weeks: my first ever article in English for all of you, and also my first ever time in life I went to the pioneers of Electronic Dance Music (EDM): the Prodigy. Honestly, I have never been a fan or whatsoever, let alone that I knew their music well. After listening to a couple of their most popular songs (Omen, Smack my B***** Up), and hearing about the fact that one of their former original members had passed away in 2019, I figured I’d go to one of their concerts together with my buddies from Amstelveen. In a nutshell we all agreed that this was one fantastic and slightly disappointing evening for a band of their status.
I didn’t sleep much the day before, but after taking a quick nap I was ready to catch the train to Amstelveen to meet up with my buddies and eventually take a bus to Amsterdam Bijlmer. From there we walked to the Ziggo Dome, and to our surprise, it was not busy at all. This was probably due to the fact that lots of other people didn’t know the support act: a certain “DJ Brutus and Friends”. We didn’t know him (or them) either, but we took our chance to claim a spot somewhere in the middle in front of the stage and tried to enjoy their music as much as we could. Honestly, we didn’t feel their vibe… To put it mildly, the music was “just okay”. It also didn’t help that none of us could find any of their music online: not on Spotify, not on Youtube, not even on Soundcloud; there were lots of other artists with the same name however, which made it even more difficult to look the original one up.
It took another hour after DJ Brutus before The Prodigy started. This was as fun as it was chaotic: while I was still busy filming it all and holding my beer at the same time, the audience already started dancing; this quickly turned it into ONE, GIANT, MOSH PIT. I personally love mosh pits, but I wasn’t prepared for this one… My beer was around half-full, but after some moshing people around me constantly bumped into me, it was around 1/10 full – and if that wasn’t bad enough, the majority of my spilled beer ended up on my face and my T-shirt… Slightly out of anger and slightly out of adrenaline, I threw my cup on the ground, and jumped straight into the pit. Don’t worry, I grabbed another cup from the ground as a way of compensation XD.
While I was incredibly busy moshing in the pit as well as trying to find my buddies – who I obviously lost in the pit –, I was absolutely amazed by the light show on stage. These light shows added an amazing atmosphere to the performance and stage. I mean, their genre is EDM (or Electropunk for the nerds among us), so the least they could add to their performance is one heck of a light show; and so they did. For a glimpse of these light shows, I recommend you to watch the video below here (FLASH WARNING).
In short, there was no shortage of people enjoying their evening: everyone was either moshing or dancing, and so were we. It was also no surprise that we lost sight of each other because of the never-ending mosh pit, but that’s part of the fun. We did not expect, however, that The Prodigy ended their concert 20 minutes early. Literally nobody expected that to happen. I mean, when the lights in the hall are turned on, it’s an obvious call that the show has ended. But for a band like The Prodigy, I would expect a sort of huge encore at least. This was totally not the case, and me and my buddies were therefore extremely disappointed to hear from the security people that we had to leave the hall; we were obviously not ready to leave yet.
Besides the unexpected ending, me and my buddies had an amazing time. Regardless of our slight disappointment, we left Ziggo Dome with great enthusiasm, and I was even fortunate enough to find a random T-shirt in the mosh pit! I did try to give it back to its original owner, but without success. Anyhow, we were privileged to attend a concert of one of the pioneers for EDM; without The Prodigy, genres like Hardcore or Techno wouldn’t exist today. Their legacy of the upcoming dance-music in the 90’s is something we concert- and festival-lovers should never take for granted.
Matibhadraprabha [Matti] Mual (he/him)
