DJ Tiesto, the world's ex-best DJ

November sunset over de Mauritzkade, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

November is never my favourite month as within a couple of weeks of the start of the month, the leaves have fallen off the trees and we are left with greyness. The weather becomes prgressively worse, every week, the average temperatures falling a degree or two. The days get rapidly shorter, the mornings darker and the late afternoons as well. Winter is coming and we have to live with it.... with the prospect of it continuing into March, five months further on.

However, the start of the month sees Amsterdam at some of its most colourful with the trees turning a flush of yellow before the leaves drop, or get blown off in an autumn gale. Funnily enough, we always associate autumn with storms from the west, throwing down rain and blowing off the remaining leaves, but this year we seem to have more of those sorts of storms during the summer than during the real autumn, although they may come yet.

This first weekend of November has been spent very pleasantly. On Friday evening we were out for dinner with friends and yesterday was a quietish day at home and in town, followed by an evening of Strictly Come Dancing and Robin Hood, before I joined Eric at a DJ Tiesto concert in the Heineken Music Hall.

DJ Tiesto, a previous holder of the Best DJ in the World award, now awarded to another Dutchie, Armin van Buren. Hmmmm... well havoing never been to Ibiza and having grown up in the 1970's and been into glam, disco, punk and new wave, and having never been to Ibiza, I am not really of the DJ-cult generation. However, Eric asked if I would like to go and I thought 'why not?', so yesterday it was time to experience the cult of the DJ at first hand.

Maybe going to see DJ Tiesto a week after the fabulous Marc Almond made for a slightly unfair comparison but I mist say that I was slightly disappointed. Not that I wasexpecting too much from someone playing records on a deck in front of 8,000 people in a big music hall, but to me the whole thing fell a bit flat. Sure enough the sound quality was excellent, as was the light, laser and firework show, but the event lacked an atmosphere or any sense of excitement. People stood around in the dark waving their arms up and down in the air every now and then, but there was not excatly an awful lot of dancing going on. And what is the point of being there at a five-hpour long DJ-set if you are not going to dance around and jump up and down and enjoy yourself? The music was unremarkable and although Ithe point s to create different types of atmosphere and sense of anticipation by skillfully mixing bits of music together, I seemed to miss all the ecstatic bits, which surely are what he was supposedly building up to.

I know I am too old really for this sort of thing, the most of the audience being 'normal' Dutch people from their late twenties to late thirties, but I thought I might find more than what I did. Maybe I was missing that magic pill, through which it may all make more sense than to someone who has just drunken a few glasses of beer. Oh well. An experience. The previous ex-best DJ of the World. I don't think I will particularly bother with the other ones...

Today, we went for a walk into town and are back home ready to watch the result of last night's Strictly. I reckon it is John Barnes' turn to leave, not so much that he is the worst, but because he is one of the worst, is not a current TV personality, is a bit overweight and is not exactly white. I see he is a 6-1 chance to be knocked out this week, behind the dreadful Kate Garraway and Kenny Logan ( both of whom will probably be saved by the public vote again).

Tags: DJ, DJ Tiesto, best DJ in the world, Heineken Music Hall