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July
2005
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People often assume that the best UK parties are in London. The reality is that all too often, punters imagine they’re too cool to dance, preferring to strike a pretentious pose at the bar, content in the idea that they’re being seen in a cool, trendy hang-out spot. Any party that bucks this trend is a welcome respite, and on Friday 1st July I found one.
'Oh Bar' The Oh Bar in Camden is hardly the most glamorous spot, but it’s often this type of venue that generates the best possible atmosphere, because people are there specifically for the music. The Pesky Kids have been running their Resonance night there for the past four years, and it’s become a real best-kept-secret. London is surely the only city in Europe where you still get bumper-to-bumper traffic jams at 11.30pm. It was a race to get through these in time for my midnight set, but once into it, I was happy to be able to leave out all the obvious commercial fillers, and bang out some serious hip hop and dancehall burners. If only all London nights were this hot! Saturday 2nd was doom-laden as far as DJ bookings go. My scheduled appearance at Base in Liverpool was cancelled last-minute, and the intended replacement in Newcastle never materialised. As it turned out, I ended up glad that I had the whole day and night free, as Parveen and myself settled down to absorb the entire Live 8 concert on TV. It was a very strange feeling not leaving the house for a minute on a Saturday, but it made a welcome change. My personal opinion on Live 8 was that it was fantastic, and a worthy follow-up to the ’85 event, (which I also watched from start to finish.) But there are a few comments to be made, and there’s more detail in the Chat Forum thread that we’ve just started. Have a look and be sure to have your say! My second Summer hotspot excursion kicked off on Monday 4th. I was playing a one-off in Ibiza on Tuesday night, but set off a day earlier for 24 hours in Majorca. I had to be up at 6am for the long trek to Stansted, which was painful enough. To then find the flight delayed by over an hour added insult to injury, but I can’t say I was overly surprised! After de-camping to my hotel in Playa De Palma, (no relation to Brian?), the evening saw me setting off for Magaluf, (better known to Brits as Shagaluf,) to check out the mighty BCM Planet Dance. I’d first visited the place way back in 1989 on my first holiday to the island. Both BCM and Privilege in Ibiza claim the title of ‘Europe’s biggest discotheque’. Not sure who’s right, but BCM’s mammoth proportions are certainly impressive. On the bill was Judge Jules – not entirely my cup of tea musically. However, as someone who visits a house/ dance night about once every decade, I was taken aback by the huge energy of the crowd, and it was hard not to get caught up in the overblown atmosphere. I shared a ride with Jules on the way back to Palma, and we had a good chat about various things, including my forthcoming book. It was the first time I’d met him, and he’s a very friendly and articulate dude.
'MD with Judge Jules' On Tuesday, I found myself boarding the Iberia flight over to Ibiza with Jules’ sidekick Nick. At only 40 minutes, the flight’s one of the shortest hops in Europe, and at fifty quid one way, is outrageously expensive in proportion! I took in all the classic spots to absorb the intense Ibiza sunset – Café Del Mar, Savannah, etc, before setting off for my gig at Soul City. The location could put you off – it’s slap-bang in the middle of San An’s West End, a sea of beer monsters and slappers. But the venue remains the only one on the island to play R&B and hip hop seven nights a week, so it’s well worth a visit. I played from 2 to 3am, between DJs Nookie, Horse and Jonathan Ulysses. Soul City’s always enjoyable, but this was a tough one, with major musical competition coming from both Trevor Nelson, playing at Pacha in Ibiza Town, and none other than Westwood, just up the road in Eden. That’s where I headed immediately after my set. The club was impressively packed, but I felt that, on the whole, the crowd didn’t quite get what Westwood was all about. Although urban music continues to make headway throughout Ibiza, it’s hardly the place to break musical barriers. Only the same old MTV hits really raise the roof!
'MD with DJ Nookie' After two nights of partying to 5am, and on only two hours’ sleep, I was distinctly unprepared for The Nightmare Day Direct From The Bowels Of Hell that fate had lined up for me on Wednesday. After returning my hire car to the airport in comfortable time for my 10.15am flight home, I was horrified to realise that my hotel back in San An had failed to give me back my passport when I’d checked out. By the time I’d driven back to get it, my flight was long gone, and my options were looking grim. For a while, it looked as if I might grab a place on the 11.55am Thomson flight. The last seat ended up going to Mo Wax founder/ DJ James Lavelle, (a fellow Oxford head,) who’d already missed two flights of his own! The only remaining option was to purchase an Air Berlin ticket, at hideous expense, not leaving until 6.15pm, (and delayed – what else?), and then routing via Palma Majorca. I finally rolled through my front door at 1am, dropped my bags on the spot and headed immediately to bed. Thursday 7th, as ever, was G’s in Bicester, while Saturday 9th saw a return to Atlantas in Northampton. What was more exciting about the weekend was Mrs. D finally moving back into the house after a five-month course in journalism at Harrow College. This had kept her away in the week, leaving only weekends for us to link. And often I’ve been away then, leaving us with very limited time together, which has been difficult. We headed for a day out in Portsmouth on Monday 10th. I thought I’d get into trouble for combining it with a quick business meeting at Bar Blu down, but I seemed to get away with it!
'MD & Kid Fury'
A couple of nights later, we linked up at a bar
in Oxford with Kid
Fury, a guy I used to work closely with in both the clubs
and on radio. Trying to get enough sleep in the height of a hot Summer is a real challenge for me. If the balmy nightime temperatures don’t keep me awake, the early morning light is pretty much guaranteed to have me waking at dawn, regardless of what ungodly hour I’ve rolled in at. By Friday 15th, I was wrecked as a result, so a concentrated afternoon nap was essential to set me up for the long return drive to Swansea for my introductory session of Milk & Honey at The Crobar club. As you may have seen from the news section, I’m starting a new Friday residency here. For the next few weeks, my dates there are sporadic to fit around the prior bookings I have to honour, then it’s every week from October. Sadly, this night was exceptionally quiet, presumably as a result of it being the middle of the month, (ie two weeks from monthly payday,) and hot as hell, (prompting daytime drinking and outdoor bar culture.) I was expecting a hat trick on Saturday 16th, but Bar OC in Devizes, despite a late start, ended up being respectably busy. For the past year and a quarter, I’ve been using any spare minute I can find to write my first book – yeah, that’s how long it takes! Midway through July, I finally got it finished, which just left proof-reading and general tightening-up. There’ll be more info. on this as the weeks progress, but for now, the working title is ‘Tales From The Flipside’, and it’s a witty expose into the hidden side of being a DJ that the average punter never sees – all the crazy bullshit and day-to-day stuff that happens to the average non-superstar DJ, and all based on personal experience!
'MD@ Atlantas, Northampton'
There are various sections, including ones on requests, haters, life on the road, life overseas, groupies and health risks, and by a deep and twisted sense of irony, I fell victim to the latter one just as I was writing about it. I’d stressed myself out so much in trying to get everything done, I went down with a chest infection, which in turn, led to just about every other add-on symptom in the book – fever, chills, crippling migraines, cough, aching limbs, etc, etc. It ended up knocking me out for well over a week to the point that I could barely move from my bed, and Parveen became my live-in nurse. Despite being convinced I’d actually died, however, I still managed to haul myself out to all my weekend’s gigs. I detest cancelling bookings, and I’ve only had to do it through illness twice in the last fifteen years, so I decided to soldier it. G’s on Thursday was at least local, although manager George decided he wanted to stay open an hour longer, which I could have done without! The wife chauffered me to Atlantas in Northampton on Friday where I thought I was doing an OK job – until The Management said they’d let me go half an hour early. Still not entirely sure if they were taking pity, or if they were trying to imply I was delivering a crap set! The Bridge in Oxford on Saturday was a tough one, involving a three-hour set, but nobody seemed to notice any difference. These were three of the toughest gigs I’ve ever had to play, but I felt good for having come through them, and knowing I’d not had to let people down. And it sure beat staying in bed! This infection really was a bitch, and I was only just starting to feel vaguely human by the following weekend, ready to start all over again. G’s was respectably busy on Thursday for another experimental 2am finish. Being the end of the month, things were boding well for the official relaunch party of Milk N Honey at Crobar in Swansea on Friday 29th, and sure enough, the night was far busier than it had been two weeks earlier, a cool crowd bouncing all the way to 3am. My only criticism of Crobar’s downstairs level is that it houses one of those DJ booths that doesn’t have a door, just a hole cut away in the side. Not great for the back, the knees or the dignity!
'Shelley & Parveen at The Bridge' Parveen joined me for my month-end session at The Bridge the following night, where she came in handy as camera-operator for my interview with techno-overlord Ussherman for the DVD. After this, we both got stuck into playing our respective floors, and as expected, the night was rammed and buzzing. It wasn’t without its dramas, however. Midway through Ussherman’s set, some drunk fool discovered the fuse box powering the DJ booth and decided to pull a lead out, plunging everything into meltdown and causing a chase through the club to detain him. I believe Security took him out into the back alley for a ‘chat’. At about the same time on my level, the left-hand Technics turntable stopped dead in the middle of a record – the first time I’ve ever known this happen. It seems someone had spilt a soft drink in the mechanism, and the dried syrup had clogged up the motor. Kid Fury happened to be passing through, so we installed a replacement deck while the crowd was treated to 45 minutes of my mix CD. The month ended on Sunday 31st with me contributing some comments to the ‘Passion Feedback’ show on Oxford’s Passion 107.9FM, all about the link, if any, between UK gun crime and hip hop lyrics. We’re hoping to get a recording of the interview posted on the News page of the site soon, so you can hear what got said. And that was July! Diary Archive 2007 2006 2005
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