Heaven To Hell

Christ, last time DJing was hell.

At least to start with.  It’s so annoying to start after a hip-hop party.  Originally I was supposed to do the last set but I changed it to the first set so I could go home early and get some sleep before I went to fabric the next night.

Anyway, I turned up, had a beer and headed down to the basement to find it busy with live and loud hip-hop (though for a change they were keeping the levels intact and not distorting the sound), they were videoing a live hip-hop performance.

They had a good thing going on but I wanted to DJ.  We had our night due to start.  But at the same time, I didn’t want to stop 50+ people having a great time just so I could play a repetitive minimal track that not one of them wanted to hear.

I negotiated an extra 20 minutes for them.

But this absolutely should not be happening.

I was a bit flustered, and not happy at all when I finally started – people all around disconnecting things and tidying up and after 20 minutes or so I was wondering why the fuck I was still doing the Purple Turtle nights.

I settled down and played to our headline DJ and the bar staff – all 50 of the hip-hop crowd had left.  Nobody else turned up.

But towards the last 30 minutes there was a steady flow of people – our crowd – people there for our music.  And I switched up towards more of a house beat, playing Desire by Enzo Siragusa – as close to a regular track as I have.

Then this:

And the crowd went wild.  Don’t get me wrong, there was still only 30-40 people in there but I’ve never had a reaction like it.  A proper DJing buzz.

By which time, I knew why I was still DJing at the Turtle.  We aim to be the most underground house/techno night in Reading – we want to give people something different, something that they would normally have to travel for.  I like to think that we achieve it.

The set went from hell to heaven, and I was buzzing so much that I postponed my taxi home (DJ Carz - of course - very friendly with competitive pricing) to stay and enjoy the excellent set from our headliner, Ben Zagorski, who took it into techno territory but not too far, and possibly a bit of Martin’s set but I was too drunk by that point to notice!

I’m not playing in August, and given my move to London, I might end up playing less often – we’ll see how it goes.  I love it but it costs money and money will be tight going forwards.

Instead there is a boat party in August and there are still a reasonable amount of tickets left but thankfully they are selling well.

Apparently despite being the 22,187^th most popular DJ in the world (officially), I am still not popular enough to play the boat party – let’s be frank, I’m sure I would sell a few tickets, maybe as many as 10, but unlikely as many as the other DJs that are booked.  And the boat party costs serious money to put on.  One year it will happen.

I assume that I’ll be playing next on Friday 16^th September.  Another ‘sensible’ one as I will be going to Ibiza the next night.  Wish me luck.