8th December 2009
How are you doing? Firstly, thanks for the numerous emails of support I received following my description of last month's incide...
More...8th December 2009
How are you doing? Firstly, thanks for the numerous emails of support I received following my description of last month's incident in Sunderland. It's great to know that so many of you read this piece (and care!)
The period covered by this instalment started on Thursday 12th Dec with a charity fundraising event for the Fresh2o charity, close to home in central London. Fresh2o fundraises towards a world where everyone around the globe has access to clean water and sanitation. As part of their awareness-raising exercise, leading underwater photographer Candice has photographed a number of people in the public eye underwater, including Kiera Knightley, Lily Cole, Sophie Anderton and (far more unattractively) me.
The event took place in No1 Marylebone, a grandiose former church located close to Radio 1's London HQ. Before my set we were given a venue tour, and it's an awesome clubbing location. The only problem is that they're not chasing the clubbing market, confining themselves to private and corporate events. The Fresh2o fundraiser was a black tie affair. I never know how to dress when playing these type of things, and stuck with regular civvy wear.
During my set I made the fatal mistake of allowing my friend Tristan D to pour non-stop drinks. Normally I keep things a bit weaker on the alcohol front, and I woke up the following morning with a hangover that took about 4 litres of water and half a day to shift. Although club djing is one of those rare jobs that can be performed whilst drinking, moderation is the only realistic way to do the task properly.
On Friday 13th, after finishing my show at Radio 1, I played two separate sets at the Ministry in London for the Gallery. The first was in the bar area, my only house set post-Ibiza. As all djs will testify, we appreciate the occasional opportunity to step outside our regular musical arena. When I play trance I have the luxury of week-in week-out sets to road test tracks, and work out which tunes generate the best club reactions. Without the benefit of having club tested my house tunes, I had to rely on dj's instinct regarding what would ramp up the crowd. They seemed to work a treat. Next up came my regular monthly session in the Ministry's main room, an internationally renowned temple of dancemusic. I recorded my set, which has been posted on the site as the (fully downloadable) ‘Dec mix'. The next occasion at the MoS will be for New Year's Eve, the first time I've been on home soil for NYE in approximately five years.
Over the course of this piece you'll see a number of references to ‘Reunion' weekenders. For the benefit of non-UK readers, these are organised by the big holiday companies as weekend long events rekindling the spirit and memories of Mediterranean summer holidays. Whilst they're not necessarily the most musically challenging of my outings, they are an essential way of connecting with a core audience of clubbers, many of who made it along to Judgement Sundays in Ibiza, BCM in Mallorca, and my other summer gigs.
In the November-December period I played five reunions, three of which were in the coastal town of Skegness. Over the course of my dj career, travelling the length and breadth of the UK, I've seen vast improvements to the British road network. Sadly, none of these are anywhere near to the road to Skegness. The planners must have taken some kind of perverse pleasure in making the road as winding and uncomfortable as possible.
On Saturday 14th I played Paul Morrell's Classique night in Coventry, followed by Skegness. Paul has single-handedly taken Coventry out of the clubbing shadow of its larger neighbour Birmingham, with a series of very well-marketed events, at the moment centring around their current home Carey's. My road manager Pete and I were held back by the front door, as a couple of guys were ejected for fighting, which is very out of character for the Classique crowd. This was soon forgotten, as a very enjoyable night followed.
Afterwards, Pete and I travelled to Skegness for the Twenty's Naughty Reunion. With the state of the roads towards Skegness it's almost impossible to approximate how long it will take to get there, and after the whitest of white knuckle journies we rolled in five minutes after I was due on, and raced straight for the decks.
After spending the day back home in London, on Sunday 15th Nov Pete and I headed to Southport (just north of Liverpool) for the BCM reunion. BCM, in Magaluf Mallorca, is the largest British-orientated club in the Mediterranean, and the only one with a sufficiently giant market share to promote its own reunion weekend, independent of the holiday companies. Whereas the other reunions close their doors and send people packing on the Sunday afternoon, the BCM version stays open an extra day until Monday.
The only snag is that come Sunday, most of the punters aren't in the best state, and literally have to be shovelled out of their accommodation and directed towards the dancefloor. I arrived to a totally empty arena that had only just opened. However, an hour later it was chocka with dayglow wearers- apparently the night had a ‘fluoro' dress code. A rocking time was had by all.
I don't know what it was about November, but every UK gig seemed to be 200 miles or more away. It was ok for me, as I could recline and sleep, but my driver Pete (behind his calm exterior) must have been suffering from Tarmac intolerance. On Tuesday 17th November we headed to Mosaic in Exeter, for a student night that was very busy. In most major UK towns and cities, midweek clubbing is largely student-dominated, and with Exeter University just up the road there was a large captive market. Although the UK's Southwest has always had strong dance culture, it has mainly been centred in Plymouth and Cornwall. I've played a lot more infrequently in Exeter, so it was encouraging playing such a rammed gig on an off-peak night of the week.
After finishing my Radio 1 show at 1am on Friday night (20th), Pete and I set off for Skegness yet again. I won't go into too much detail, as I've covered Skeggy already. Suffice to say, the journey was terrible, but the event good.
On Saturday 21st I played the Twenty's Naughty Reunion in Prestatyn, North Wales, followed by a club gig in the Welsh border town of Buckley, at the Tivoli. At the Prestatyn event I had a bit of a set-to with the sound technician. Most clubs and festivals have a sound engineer overseeing levels etc, periodically nudging down djs' volumes to stop them going into distortion. Left to our own devices, most of us like to play the tunes as loud as we can get away with, which might sound ok in the dj booth (which has separate monitor speakers), but can often sound awful on the dancefloor.
As I played my first track and was mixing into the second, the sound guy came racing over tapping me mid-mix, aggressively telling me to turn the levels down. This is not the way to handle sound engineer-dj relations, and suffice to say I had security escort him away. If it was too loud, it was hardly my fault- I simply put my first cd on at the levels that were set when I arrived. Somebody needed to tell him that a smile conquers everything!
There were plenty of smiles at The Tivoli, 30 miles east in Buckley. It was a much more remote town than I'd usually play on a Saturday night, but a big joy of djing is the variety that any given month holds in store. With increasing numbers of venues closing later at night than they used to, I don't often get the chance to play the closing set of any night, denying me the ‘do you want one more' routine on the mic. I enjoy the pantomime, trying to get the crowd to scream louder and louder for one final tune, with the security looking on disapprovingly in the background. It was a loud and rousing end to Saturday night.
On Sunday 22nd I played the only gig during the period covered by this instalment that wasn't particularly busy, at Pow Wow in Norwich. Sunday nights are always a bit of a lottery, and I had it on reliable authority that there would be a captive market, but that didn't prove to be the case. Nevertheless, doing the occasional quieter gig is a valuable lesson in humility and hard work. If a club is quiet, work even harder to entertain those who have made the effort.
On Wednesday 25th November, Amanda and I set off from Heathrow for five nights on the US West Coast, initially routing via Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Because it's in the middle of the desert in Nevada, approached by plane at night Vegas looks like it's in the middle of the ocean. One flies over miles and miles of nothing, and then suddenly you encounter a city so brightly-lit that it would be easily recognisable from space.
We didn't get into Vegas until nearly 8pm, and thankfully it has the most centrally-located airport of any major US city, so we were in our room at the Hardrock Hotel only 15 minutes later. Just about all the big casinos have their own nightclubs in-situ, and the Hardrock's is called Body English, hosting a Godskitchen night every Wednesday.
This wasn't any ordinary Wednesday night- it was the eve of Thanksgiving, the biggest holiday in the US calendar. It's so dominant, that many Americans are surprised to be told that we don't celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK. Body English was packed, the crowd was loud, and the venue really looked after Amanda and my LA-based friends who'd travelled over for the night out.
Thanksgiving itself isn't a big clubbing night, being more of an occasion to eat turkey with your family. With the night off, Amanda and I flew back through a relatively quiet Vegas Airport to LAX, where we rented a car and drove to a bright and airy room at the recently-renovated Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. Alongside a table of 12 Los Angeles-based friends we booked a table at Fogo de Chao Brazilian churrascaria, which offers continuous tableside service of 15 different types of Brazilian barbequed meat. I like to stay abreast of current affairs issues, but it was only during our conversation about meat that I realised the massive creation of greenhouse gases caused by the global cattle rearing industry. A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Quite literally, food for thought. To ease my conscience, whilst I loved the food at Fogo De Chao and would recommend it to anyone, I very rarely eat meat, being much more of a fish head.
Friday 27th in the US was ‘Black Friday', and I've cut and pasted the Wikipedia definition: Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Many retailers open extremely early, often at 5AM or even earlier. Retailers offer outrageious deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores, as the sales begin.
Amanda and I didn't need any further persuasion, and headed to the nearby Beverly Center Mall at 8am. It was already packed solid, and we bagged some fantastic bargains in Macy's and the Custo Store.
After lunch in the Mondrian's superb Asia De Cuba restaurant, we jumped into our rented SUV with local friends Jon and Linda, and drove the 120 miles south to San Diego.
San Diego is America's eighth largest city, and houses a huge naval base, home to the US Navy's pacific fleet. Some giant and imposing aircraft carriers line the shore as you enter the city. Every time I've been to San Diego I can't get (probably) its most famous movie, Anchorman, out of my head. ‘You stay classy San Diego'...
At the club (Spin), the dj before me played percussion at the same time as spinning tunes. It wasn't just a novelty- he did both very well. The crowd were loud, and our friend Linda's brother Wilson was in the club, who's in the US Navy, based in San Diego. He'd just come back from Afghanistan, which I couldn't understand, as it's landlocked. The crowd was very loud, as I played from 1 til 3am.
The following morning we returned our rental car, and flew on United to San Franciso, drinking bloody marys perhaps a little too early in the day. It was an azure clear morning, and as we flew above the Californian coastline the Captain identified landmarks as we overflew them, including Laguna Beach, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, Santa Barbara and Carmel.
Our flight touched down 20 minutes early, resulting in the promoter (Ben) turning up to collect us a little late. Travelling with our friend Jon from San Diego and a mountain of luggage, there was barely enough room in Ben's Prius. The trunk was occupied by the largest magnum of Grey Goose vodka on the global beverage market, plus crate loads of energy drinks.
We stayed in the heart of San Francisco, and went for a Thai lunch overlooking a waterfront plaza, which had an outdoor ice rink. Afterwards we walked towards the shopping district around Union Square. We ended up in Bloomingdales so Amanda could get some pantyhose (tights) for the forthcoming evening, "Give Thanks" at the Regency Center.
Maybe it's because the jetlag of traveling to the United States is so debilitating, but the beds in American hotels seem so much more comfortable than anywhere else in the world. We enjoyed a 4 hour sparked-out disco nap before heading to the gig. We arrived at the Regency Center 90 minutes before my set, as we had lots of friends along for the ride. Our LA-based friend AJ had driven a mini van up from Los Angeles with 8 friends in tow. The six hour drive seems very long by British standards, but Americans are generally more relaxed about long drives than Europeans.
‘Give Thanks' was an all-ages event. Whereas the general drinking and clubbing age in the US is 21, there are plenty of rave-orientated options for under 21s. I played between Mike Koglin and Richard Durand, and there was a lot of stripping off on the dancefloor and in the balcony area of the 2000 capacity venue.
On Sunday 29th we flew back with BA from San Fran to the UK, and in front of us in the check-in queue was soccer legend and pundit Alan Hansen. Arriving back at Heathrow Terminal 5 on Monday morning we bumped into Krafty Kuts, who had just stepped off a flight from Los Angeles.
More next time...
