There's more to the life of a superstar DJ than traveling the globe via first class planes and bedding supermodels; the truly dedicated ones go to the grassroots and actually experience the places they perform. With his new CD/DVD set Passport USA, Ferry Corsten gives you a firsthand view of his recent US bus tour with a slamming set of music he played and film coverage of life on the road. In addition to going from Punk to Junk, he's also gone high style with his own fashion line. Maybe life as a superstar DJ is everything that it's cracked up to be…
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Love you new Passport USA CD, why did you choose the US this time?
Ferry Corsten: I've been touring the US so extensively the last year
and a half, especially with the bus tour last year, so I think that
was really the reason. As you can see from the DVD, it was really the
only choice.
RS: Why did you do a DVD with the CD?
Ferry Corsten: With mixed CDs, its usually either a CD or a double
CD. People were really interested in this whole bus tour thing that I
did last year and we thought that was a cool little extra. The DVD
shows what goes on on a bus tour, that it's a lot of fun but it's hard
work and that it's sometimes a lot of misery with the bus breaking
down and stuff like that, so it's real life after all. A lot of
people still have that idea that the life of a DJ is just a superstar
and whatever, but there's hard work to it as well.
RS: What did you see on the bus tour that you didn't think you'd
ever see in the US?
Ferry Corsten: The real USA. I was on the road through the deserts
and in the mountains and beautiful places. Then you get to the truck
stops and you really feel like you're in a movie because there's so
many freaky people walking around and it's just surreal. You're in a
place like that and then all of a sudden you're a place of beautiful
surroundings and then you're in a big city. There's so many different
things that are really interesting to see about a country, especially
the US that you may know from movies, but going on a tour like that
you really see the US for what it is.
RS: What did you do on the bus to pass the time? Were you
watching movie or working on our computer?
Ferry Corsten: Watching movies and we had satellite internet onboard
so that really worked. At the same time I was also doing some
promotion stuff and I worked on a remix for Shiny Toy Guns. Doing a
bus tour like that, you can do a lot more with your time than doing
the same tour by plane because you are stuck in airports.
RS: For the Passport USA CD, how did you choose the tracks for it?
Ferry Corsten: These are the tracks that I have been playing on the
tours in the US. Basically it's a summary of what I've been playing
the last few months, what a typical set of Ferry Corsten has sounded
like over the last period.
RS: With the System F track on there, might we expect more music
from you under that guise in the future?
Ferry Corsten: I'm not sure. That is actually a remix that I had
made two years ago just for my sets and I never had the plan of
releasing it, but people started asking for it.
RS: Speaking of remixes, what inspired Junk from Punk?
Ferry Corsten: I was really thinking that Punk had a lot more in it
than what we did with it, so I always wanted to re-release it in a
certain way but not just like we're re-releasing Punk the way it was,
I wanted to do something special with it. I've always played around
with the idea of using a rap artist on it. The guys from Ultra
Records were in touch with Gang Starr and with Guru in particular, and
I grew up listening to those guys back in the day. When they said that
they could arrange Guru possibly, I said let's just give it a try. He
wrote this version and he was talking about a microphone junkie so it
was a small step for the title to go from Punk to Junk.
