9th November 2009
Before continuing further with this instalment, let me express my apologies to everyone who came along to my gig in Sunderland on Saturday 7th November. Only once before in my career (around 15 years ago) have circumstances forced me to stop djing mid-set and abandon the turntables, in protest at treatment received by a promoter or venue.
This happened (for the second time) in Sunderland on Sat 7th.
To set the scene, my dj performance contract with promoters is relatively short and non-demanding (by industry standards), running to a meagre two A4 pages.
It sets out a technical spec of three Pioneer CDJ1000 turntables, a Pioneer DJM800 mixer and monitor speakers. Drinks-wise, there are no rock'n'roll excesses. It requests a bottle of vodka and mixers, plus some water.
None of the above should present a problem for venues. Whilst the technical spec is crucial, the vast majority of venues have the Pioneer stuff mentioned in the contract anyway. However, not having the right equipment makes it very difficult to do my job properly.
As they always do, in the run-up to the event my management phoned the Sunderland promoters on at least four separate occasions to check that the correct equipment was in place. They were assured that everything was fine. However, as soon as I arrived the promoter took me to one side and told me that the Pioneer 800 mixer had ‘broken'. In its place was a vastly inferior model, and the sound quality in the venue was shocking as a result.
Unconvinced, I asked him to get me the ‘broken' mixer, so I could try and fix it. I repeated the request between every record of my (short) set, to be told that it was ‘on its way over from another bar'. It never came.
Under the circumstances, I would have reluctantly carried on, and got my management to give the promoter a dressing down on Monday morning. However, about 5 tracks into my set, I found a hidden high quality mp3 recorder, secretly recording my set without permission.
This is strictly prohibited by the contract, as earlier in my career I had a big problem with promoters secretly recording my sets and selling them.
I can't find a better way to explain things, other than saying that the promoter was totally taking the piss. I immediately stopped my set and left the club.
There no winners when one is forced to act like this. The club was busy and I was letting down everyone who'd paid to see me. In the absence of being able to explain my reasons I ended up looking like a jumped-up diva. But what was I supposed to do? If you were at the night in Sunderland please email me on jules@judgejules.net if you felt let down.
The period covered by this instalment started with a visit to Fever in Northampton, immediately after my Radio 1 show on Friday 16th October. Over the years I've worked for countless UK promoters, but only a fairly small proportion have gone on to own their own venues. There are always bankrupt or failed clubs up for grabs for those promoters who can raise the money to buy-in, and with the promotional know-how to fill a club multiple nights of the week. For a while I fancied opening a club myself, but my life has enough late nights already... Simon and Cheryl from Sweat in Northampton booked me as long as 10 years ago, back in the period when they were renting third party venues for their events. These days their own club has all the hallmarks of a privately owned venue, with far more interesting design than the monolithic leisure chain-owned clubs. As I've mentioned earlier in this column, there is a limited range of locations I can reach after my Friday night Radio 1 show finishes at 1am. Not only is Northampton well within radius, but the night was excellent.
On Saturday evening I flew to Cologne in Germany, and was driven to the Soundtropolis festival in the city of Essen. The buzz of travelling at limit-free autobahn speeds in Germany never wears off, and I've often dreamed of taking my car over to Germany to put it through its paces at 200mph.
The Indoor Soundtropolis event was put together by the same folk behind Mayday and Nature One, who've been very supportive in the past few years. Also on the bill were Markus Schulz, Guiseppe Ottaviani and Alex Morph & Woody Van Eyeden, plus Rank 1 who performed live before my set. Although harbouring a reputation as a haven for minimal and tech house, the German trance market seems to be growing steadily, and Soundtropolis (my first overseas outing in October) was a very good party.
Much of the previous month had been spent playing student orientated gigs, and with student loans still relatively in tact, there were more college outings to be had. On Weds 21st Oct I played Cardiff University, a location I've visited on a fair few occasions. Cardiff has to rank amongst the best UK uni's for clubbing facilities, and the place was packed solid.
On Friday 23rd October I returned to my monthly residency at London's Ministry of Sound for the Gallery, once again recording my set, which has been posted as the "Nov Mix' on this site. Every time I play, I count myself lucky to have a residency in a club with such an open-minded anything goes type of crowd.
On Saturday 24th I had a double-header, taking in Edge in Romford and God's Kitchen in Birmingham. Essex must be the UK's most underrated county. Not only does it have some historic towns and scenic countryside, but there is long established club culture as well. Arriving some time before my set, I chatted with loads of different folk who'd been in Judgement Sundays this summer. Because the place was smaller than some of this month's other venues, I played a slower, more housey set. Occasionally doing something different is always fun.
Next port of call was God's Kitchen in Birmingham. After an 18 month period where I hardly played there at all, GK is now back on my regular list of UK haunts. Naturally I'm pleased, as GK is a trance institution, attracting a crowd from a very wide radius.
I spun after ATB, a dj who I've met on a few occasions but haven't heard djing before. I really liked what he was playing- a kind of percussive take on trance, which worked very well in front of GK's crowd.
On Sunday 25th October I flew to Dublin for a gig at The Vaults, on the eve of an Irish bank holiday. I was late for my set, because the guy collecting me from the airport turned up late and then couldn't find the venue. Because I travel with hand luggage only for most trips, I come through immigration from flights very quickly. For this reason, at least half the time the person coming to collect me isn't there when I arrive.
The Vaults was very busy when I got there, and (speaking as one who's half Irish), you can't get much better than an Irish atmosphere. With a 6am flight to catch the following morning (and only two hours' sleep post my set), I played from 11.30 til 1am, but the club was already packed, so the relatively early set wasn't an issue.
I needed to be back at Stansted early on Monday morning (26th), to meet up with Amanda, Jake and Phoebe, to fly to Ibiza for my birthday. The only departure from Dublin enabling me to do this was with Ryanair at 6am. With Ryanair it's a case of ‘needs must'- I only fly with them when there is no other alternative. My Ryanair flight was the first I've taken allowing you to use your mobile phone to make calls whilst in the sky. Ryanair made no reference of how much this cost, but on the airline that plans to charge passengers to use the toilet, I wait with baited breath to receive my mobile phone bill, after calling Amanda at 37,000 feet.
I had a small amount of work to do, but our 2-day trip to Ibiza was mainly to escape the UK on my birthday. Although it was nearly November, it was 25c and we had the roof down on our Ibiza-based car.
After overnighting in London on Weds 28th, and recording a one-off Radio 1 show with Maxi Jazz and Sister Bliss from Faithless, at 8am on Thursday 29th Amanda and I flew to New York for a three day visit to the US and Dominican Republic. There weren't many convenient connections to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. So Amanda and I routed via New York, and did some shopping for 24 hours, most of which we spent in the awesome Century 21 designer outlet mall, opposite Ground Zero in Manhattan's Financial district.
Our American Airlines flight south to the Caribbean took just under four hours, and was full to the last seat with Dominicans going home for the Halloween weekend. The Dominican Republic was the first part of the Americas to be colonised by Christopher Columbus. The old ‘Colonial' quarter of the capital Santo Domingo is over 500 years old, housing our hotel, the imposing Nicolas de Ovando, which had the best hotel restaurant I've eaten in this year.
The gig was outdoors, only 200 metres away from the hotel, allowing me to drop off for a siesta, wake up and hit the decks in one co-ordinated action. I played after Gareth Emery, who'd taken three different flights to come over from Manchester, and was spinning the following night in Guatemala.
On Saturday night (Halloween, 31st Oct) I was playing in the third biggest city in the US, Houston, Texas. The flight connection options from Santo Domingo were pretty awful, with the best choice leaving at 6.45am via Panama City. So, immediately after finishing on the decks I collected Amanda from the hotel, and we headed straight for the airport, using my last few phrases of Spanish with the drivers en route to the airport.
We had a two hour connection in Panama City, and in the business lounge I fumbled around with my laptop, trying to find a web streaming of Arsenal v Tottenham (which had just kicked off back in London), before I noticed that it was being shown on a 50 inch plasma screen directly above my head.
The 3-0 result put me in the best possible mood for our four hour flight to Houston Texas. We touched down around 2pm, and the U.S. Immigration queue was mercifully short. We stayed in the dubiously-named ‘Hotel Derek', which was certainly not dubious in any other respect- an excellent boutique hotel. Later that night Amanda and I ate in the Houston branch of the world famous Brazilian ‘churrascaria' Fogo de Chao, where they serve non-stop meat cuts from a Brazilian barbeque.
My gig took place in an indoor theme park called Fun Plex, with seven soundsystems spread over the site, including a roller disco. Because (unlike other US cities) I didn't know anybody, I spent the hour before my set checking out the different rooms. Although the majority had fairly similar-sounding music, one stage was playing dubstep with an MC, and was rammed solid. I played around 2.30am, my set time being unaffected by the American clocks going back that night (a week later than their European counterparts.)
At 4pm the following day, Amanda and I flew home to London with British Airways, on what must have been the coldest flight I've ever travelled on. Even two separate blankets couldn't help me, added to the fact that my flat bed seat was faulty, ruining my sleep and giving me a disabling dose of sciatica for the rest of the week.
My next gig was on Wednesday night in Lincoln, a city I've only visited on a couple of previous occasions. Anaesthetised by vodka, my back wasn't too troublesome, helped by the fact that the decks were raised fairly high up, meaning that I didn't have to stoop, which would have made my lower back pain even worse. I'd been to the chiropractor earlier in the day, who'd suggested that my best option would have been to avoid djing altogether, but I wasn't about to do a no-show. The crowd were extremely loud, and made the 2 hour car drive more than worthwhile.
The last weekend covered by this piece included the unfortunate events in Sunderland (described earlier) and a post Radio 1 Friday night at Dakota in Cheltenham, which is a consistently good night.
The last gig covered here was Digital Society v Judgement Sundays at Victoria Works in Leeds on Saturday 7th November. The venue is a legal warehouse party, just like the industrial-style events at the beginning of my dj career. It was my favourite post-summer gig- awesome crowd, excellent atmosphere, brilliant venue. Enough said - amongst other UK winter Judgement Sundays parties, we plan a repeat Leeds event before the 2010 Ibiza season kicks off early next summer.
More next time...
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