DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs 2006

DJ Mag has released the TOP 100 DJs (according to 217,000+ votes from their readers). Like the 2005 results, Mark Farina is nowhere in the top 100 for 2006, although he was no. 100 in 2004, no. 79 in 2003, no. 73 in 2002 and no. 57 in 2001. Is this an indication as to where Underground House music is going? If so, it's truly going underground.

I feel a bit of comfort in seeing a house DJ: DJ Dan as no. 5 this year, although he plays harder electro-ish styles of house compared to the chilled-out Mark Farina. Tiesto has gone down to third place this year, and Paul Van Dyk remains first once more.

Here are the results, taken from this website:

1. PAUL VAN DYK – Non-Mover – Highest Trance DJ
2. ARMIN VAN BUUREN – Up 1
3. TIESTO – Down 1
4. CHRISTOPHER LAWRENCE – Up 10
5. DJ DAN – UP 19 – Highest House DJ
6. FERRY CORSTEN – Down 1
7. SASHA – Down 3 – Highest Prog DJ
8. JOHN DIGWEED – Down 2
9. ABOVE & BEYOND – Up 10
10. DEEP DISH – Down 2


11. CARL COX – Down 1 – Highest Techno DJ
12. INFECTED MUSHROOM – Up 14
13. ATB – Down 4
14. PAUL OAKENFOLD – Down 3
15. HERNAN CATTANEO – Down 8
16. JUDGE JULES – Down 1
17. EDDIE HALLIWELL – Non-Mover
18. MARCO V – Down 2
19. MARKUS SCHULZ – Up 2
20. GABRIEL & DRESDEN – Up 9

21. JAMES ZABIELA – Down 8
22. JOHN ACQUAVIVA – Highest New Entry
23. FLASH BROTHERS – Up 43 – Highest Climbers
24. AMADEUS – New Entry
25. ERICK MORILLO – Down 7
26. BENNY BENASSI – Down 4
27. SANDER KLEINENBERG – Down 7
28. DJ YAHEL – Up 17
29. OFFER NISIM – New Entry
30. ANDY MOOR – Up 16

31. DAVID GUETTA – Up 8
32. SANDER VAN DOORN – New Entry
33. RICHIE HAWTIN – Down 21
34. GARETH EMERY – New Entry
35. PHIL KIERAN – New Entry
36. NICK WARREN – Down 1
37. DJ SKAZI – New Entry
38. STEVE LAWLER – Down 8
39. D-FORMATION – New Entry
40. RICKY STONE – Up 8

41. ASTRIX – Up 34
42. ROGER SANCHEZ – Down 15
43. BAD BOY BILL – Down 1
44. SVEN VATH – Down 21
45. THRILLSEEKERS – Re-Entry
46. DONALD GLAUDE – Up 22
47. DJ VIBE – Down 7
48. KYAU VS ALBERT – New Entry
49. CHRIS LIEBING – Down 16
50. TIGA – Down 6

51. MATT DAREY – Up 40
52. BOB SINCLAR – New Entry
53. JAMES HOLDEN – Down 16
54. LANGE – New Entry
55. WRECKED MACHINES – New Entry
56. DION MAVATH – New Entry
57. PETE TONG – Down 8
58. DANNY TENAGLIA – Down 22
59. GEORGE ACOSTA – New Entry
60. BLANK & JONES – Down 29

61. DJ SAMMY – Up 31
62. JOACHIM GARAUD – New Entry
63. TIMO MAAS – Down 11
64. MATT HARDWICK – Down 6
65. FRANK TRAX – Down 14
66. STEVE ANGELLO – New Entry
67. DANNY HOWELLS – Down 42
68. SIMON POSFORD – New Entry
69. JOHN GRAHAM – New Entry
70. DESYN MASIELLO – Down 16

71. MAURO PICOTTO – Down 43
72. MENNO DE JONG – New Entry
73. BT – Up 9
74. SCOTT K – New Entry
75. TALL PAUL – Down 32
76. M.I.K.E PUSH – Up 1
77. FILO & PERI – New Entry
78. DJ TARKAN – New Entry
79. ANDERSON NOISE – New Entry
80. FATBOY SLIM – Down 17

81. DJ SERGE DEVANT – New Entry
82. DJ UMEK – Down 3
83. VICTOR CALDERONE – Down 28
84. DARUDE – Re-Entry
85. FERGIE – Down 25
86. TALLA 2 XLC – New Entry
87. RONSKI SPEED – Re-Entry
88. LEE BURRIDGE – Down 12
89. MARIO PIU – Down 51
90. AXEL KARAKASIS – New Entry

91. STEVE PORTER – New Entry
92. YOJI BIOMEHANIKA – Down 60
93. AXWELL – New Entry
94. STANTON WARRIORS – Re-Entry
95. DAVE SEAMAN – Down 26
96. ROBBIE RIVERA – New Entry
97. ANDY C – Down 27
98. AGNELLI & NELSON – New Entry
99. LISA LASHES – Down 43
100. DAVE CLARKE – Down 64

Isn't It Ironic?

I didn't end up playing at Hush Bar last night because I had a lot of other things to do, and I didn't think anyone would come to see me play, as I didn't send out reminders, and no one gave me any advanced notice (via SMS/Email) that they'll be coming.

But out of all the Sundays that I've played there, my bro. two friends decide to choose last night, to come over and give me a surprise visit! My bro. had come all the way from home by tram, and my friends were in the neighbourhood so they popped in. But since I wasn't there, they had just turned around and left!

It's funny how they picked last night instead of the 16 or so Sundays that I have played there. What are the chances of that happening?!

House Music Production with GarageBand

I tried out GarageBand on the Mac last night. The interface was very intuitive, and it became obvious what the steps needed for making a track were, after messing around with it a bit. There are a lot of samples already provided, ranging from Deep House beats, to 70's Pop beats, to Latin Organs, etc., which provides a good place to start. You can choose a beat and modify it with the drum sounds of your choice, to get, (say) the West Coast House sounds. You can then add the bass, vocals, etc. as layers on top of the beat, to slowly build up your track.

Some of the samples they provide can't be modified though. These have a different icon to the ones that can be modified, so you won't any waste time selecting samples that can't be modified.

I ended up making a basic beat by listening to a House track, and then trying to copy it. It only worked to a certain extent, as it was difficult to reproduce the more subtle instruments. Next on my list is to try and reproduce the Joey Youngman beat!

GarageBand is free, but it comes with the Mac, so if you're not using a Mac I'd suggest another free program MadTracker. Although I haven't personally used it (I did download and play with it, but it was not as easy as GarageBand to get started with), a friend of mine has, and he has made some really nice House tracks with it. Check out his tracks here, and maybe leave some feedback!

Vinyl Recording Machines

Imagine being able to put your own tracks on vinyl records and sell them off to record stores! Well, it's possible if you get yourself one of these vinyl pressing machines/vinyl recorders. They cost around AU$5,300 to buy from Europe, excluding accessories (mixer, amp etc.). Each vinyl record will cost about AU$7 from Europe, if you buy them in lots of 10.

Even if you don't produce, it'll be cool to be able to download a track from www.beatport.com, and press it onto vinyl to take to your gigs! But of course the artist/song names will have to be handwritten, and the covers won't have any art on them, but you'd still be able to play the track on vinyl, instead of a boring old CD. Or maybe even start a small business pressing vinyl for up-n-coming producers?

OK, maybe I'm going a tad overboard here. I may be a vinyl-purist, but I'm not stupid. Anyhow, check out www.vinylrecorder.com for all the details!

House Party @ Stellar Bar

Just got back from the House Party @ Stellar Bar, so here are some pics! The deejays in the pics are Mike Jules (white stripe on black t-shirt), Luke J Sammut (with mic), Dan Sal (light blue t-shirt), Rob Wu (brownish jumper) and Byron Foxx (black jumper on white shirt). Some fine tunes, good vibes and a packed house it was!

Hush Bar Melbourne Central

Being located right inside the busy Melbourne Central, Hush Bar provides a convenient place for relaxing after a meal, having a couple of drinks before a movie, or breathing some fresh air after a busy day of shopping. That's right, fresh air straight from a large third floor balcony, that also provides plenty of space to move around, plenty of seats to have a smoke, and beautiful scenery of some of the city skyline. This summer will see the balcony area being used to host BBQs, while the DJs pump some summery tunes from inside!

The Hush Bar interior is lavish, with red and brown leather seats, comfy couches, fireplaces, TVs, a projector and a very stylish and sophisticated bar, serving every drink in above average-sized glasses! A separate seating area allows people to chat the night away, and the large dancefloor allows the rest to dance the night away. With a good soundsystem and fancy lighting, Hush Bar has got what it takes to give you a nightclub experience.

Latest News From Other House-Heads

Keep an eye on this page -- it contains a summary of the 5 most recent blog posts from other (interesting and blog-updating) Australia-based House-heads! If you want to know what's happening House-wise around Australia, this is the page to be!

If you're interested in any of the posts, simply click on the title and you'll be taken to the full post.

Latest addition - DJ Pound.

Melbourne

Other States

Joey Youngman, San Simeon, CA [Video]

While I'm on a YouTube video review frenzy, why don't I review this one too. This is another short video, this time of Joey Youngman, one of my favourite producers and DJs, playing some jacking house tunes at some club in California. The video was from earlier this year -- probably some time in Jan. There's another video clip of the same gig here.

He's playing Bryan Jones' Chicago Jack (Sound Republic Remix) (not his own remix!) and mixing into another track towards the end of the video. The setup is 2xTechnics, a DJM 500/1000 and two CD players (probably a Denon/ Numark/ Pioneer). And like in Farina's gig (two posts ago), the monitor speaker is on the left.

Good to see him making his funky moves -- (better than the rest of the dancers in this crowd!) and pitch riding with his right hand, on the left turntable, while his other hand is nowhere to be seen (it's probably on the mixer). Reminds me of his gig at FFour last year when he was pitch riding with both hands!

Exporting Blogger to ITM!

ITM provides a free blog for members, so I decided to do something similar to what I did when I exported www.djluvvy.net to Myspace. Unlike Myspace, the ITM blog template allows JavaScript, Frames and PHP, so the process of integrating www.djluvvy.net into my ITM blog was much easier.

Basically, I found an awesome site called RSS-Info which asks you to type in your RSS feed URL, and it then generates an RSS feed reader in the language of your choice (i.e. JavaScript, PHP or iFrames). You then copy and paste the code to your ITM blog template (or any website), and you get live RSS feeds delivered directly to your website!! So now, my ITM blog gets content directly from www.djluvvy.net. You can even customise the look and feel of your RSS feed so it matches your website/blog. When you click on titles from the ITM blog, you are taken to the corresponding post at www.djluvvy.net (although no one really needs to click on titles in the ITM blog, as the full content of each post will be shown anyway). Here are a few pic of what my ITM blog looks like!

One of the main problems with reading RSS feeds is that, the content is not necessarily shown by the date on which the initial post was made. E.g. I had to re-post some of my older posts (see the 'Dinner Plain Hotel video' in the above pic) last night to include them in an extra category called 'Videos', but the RSS reader thinks that this old post was recent -- i.e. it doesn't look at the actual date of the post in blogger.

Mark Farina @ Ohm Video

Here's a 30 second video clip of Mark Farina @ Ohm Nightclub in Portland U.S.A. (supposed to be the best House club in Portland). The video is of Farina's gig from last Friday. I like this video because it's a close-up, and it shows Farina messing around with the mixer when he's right in the middle of a mix.

The DJ setup is CDJ 1000's, Technics 1200s, and one very complex looking mixer! Looks like it's got 4 channels, and a hell of a lot of buttons! I'm dreading the day I go to a gig and get confronted with a mixer like that!! FFour in Melbourne is the only venue I've been to that has a complex looking mixer like the one in the video (FFour I think has got a Stanton/Vestax).

As usual Farina is moving to the groove! He's playing a track on the right CD player in the beginning, and then introduces a track with vocals from the left CD player, by cutting off the bass in the track on the right, and increasing the volume control on the left channel. And this whole time his left hand is riding the CD player's pitch! It's also interesting to see that his monitoring ear is the right ear and not the left (so the monitor speaker should be on the left -- which I think is pretty standard in the U.S.), and the headphones are firmly stuck to his head the whole time, except for a few quick flicks to the left ear.

Hmmm...it's amazing how much you can learn by watching just 30 seconds of Farina!

Exporting Blogger to Myspace!

So I finally went right ahead and got myself a Myspace account. If you don't know what Myspace is (i.e. you've been living in a cave for the past few months), it is the largest blog-centric networking site (or at least, that's my definition of it), and has over 120 million users worldwide, which means, not a lot of people can compete with it, not Blogger, not Wordpress, not Typepad -- no one.


But the problem is, although it's very popular, Myspace has very primitive support for blogging, video and pictures, compared to (say) Blogger, YouTube and Photobucket. So it's only natural for people to want to integrate their Photobucket, Blogger/Wordpress/Typepad, YouTube etc. accounts into Myspace. For me, it's this blog that needs to be integrated into Myspace.

So I went and searched for ways of achieving this, and after many hours of frustration, came across a website called Nooz. Nooz basically allows you to use the RSS Feed that blog sites provide, and make a widget (i.e. image-like thing) out of it. The widget shows you the latest (top 10) posts from your blog, and on clicking this widget, the reader will be taken to the Nooz website where the full details of the blog posts can be seen.

So I created my widget from Nooz (despite what some websites say about Nooz being user-unfriendly), and added the widget to my Myspace site, and it works like a charm! A screen-shot of my Myspace page is shown below.




Apparently, Rhapsody also provides such a service, but you have to live in the U.S. to be able to use it. Since Nooz seems to do the trick for me, I'll stick to it. But if I want a more user-friendly interface in future (e.g. if I want users to be able to click on links within the widget and see the full details of the post) I'll need to start looking at other options.

Melbourne Intnl. Film Festival @ Hush

Hush Bar was hosting the 'afterparties' for the Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently Saturday was a full-house, but lots of people turned up last night too, right after a movie at Melbourne Central. Most of them were old and mature, so they didn't mind having a chat and a couple of drinks to some groovy House music!

I was on my best behaviour of course, just in case a producer walks up to me and wants me to star in their next movie, as a small town DJ who makes it big. Suprisingly -- no such luck last night.

Quite a few of my friends turned up too in the 5 hours that I played. Here are some pics of myself and a couple of them.

Derrick Carter in Melbourne!

One of the pioneers of House music - Derrick Carter (Chicago), will be heading down to Melbourne on 18th Nov. to play a 4 hour set!! This is the first time I've heard of the venue Atlantic Southwarf, but it looks like an awesome venue next to the yarra. The local DJs supporting Carter will include Clint Hargreaves and Anyo, both of who I'd love to see again. The full supporting DJ line-up is shown below.

Matt Wilko
Anyo
Simon Dugby
Ganz
Clint Hargraves
Apap
Nicky G

Here's a short video of Derrick Carter at the Coachella Music Festival. He starts with an acapella and then quickly cues and plays the next track which blends in well with the acapella. Then he slams in the base.

William from Radiance

A DJ I met at Stellar Bar a couple of months ago (see the video in the Videos section) called William, happens to be a regular at Hideout Bar (pics from their website on the left) in Singapore, where I will (hopefully) be playing on my next visit to Singapore. William randomly happened to walk into Stellar Bar, and after introducing himself to the boys at the Friday night House Party, scored himself a gig on the same night (he used someone elses records).


I had a chat with William that night and found that he comes down to Melbourne every couple of months, and that he plays at Hideout pretty often. Recently on doing a search for Hideout, I found that William belongs to a House group called Radiance in Singapore, and that they play at some of the coolest bars/clubs there. Check out their website, pictures and mixes here.


Small world!

DJ Luvvy @ Swindlers

Hmm, I just came across this advertisement for my July gig @ Swindler's Bar up in Mt. Hotham. The advertisement appeared on ski.com.au. I wonder why I didn't see his earlier -- maybe I just didn't have as much free time on my hands to search for my name on Google, as I do now! Better late than never I guess!

FFour (F4) Melbourne

I've only been there once, and boy was it worth it! FFour in my opinion is one of the best venues for House music in Melbourne. Although known as a cocktail bar, this place has got a killer sound system, a very sophisticated bar, and extremely stylish interior design. The sound system is comparable to some of the best small sized nightclubs such as 161, and there's plenty of room to dance or relax.



FFour has a night running 5 days of the week, and hosts some of the best international House DJs (Joey Youngman, Bryan Jones, Honey Dijon, Roy Davis Jr., etc.) on Sunday nights, and some of the best House DJs in Melbourne on Saturday nights. The crowd knows their music, and they consistently come down to support their internationals.


Being conveniently located on Lt. Collins St. in the City, this venue has got it all!

Stellar Bar Melbourne

StellarBar is a nice little comfy, stylish venue off Bourke Street, with some of the best House DJs from Melbourne playing on Friday nights. The atmosphere on Friday nights is friendly, and inviting, and the music starts with some funk, and moves on to funky House. Despite being a small bar, there's plenty of room to dance, and with the music that's played, it will be difficult not to. The person enjoying himself most on the small dance floor will be the owner, who takes every opportunity to get it moving to the groove!

The bar is small, but well equipped to serve you up a fancy cocktail, or the beer of your choice. The couches are homely but comfortable, and placed near the floor-to-ceiling windows facing Bourke Street. Definitely a great place to head out for after-work drinks on Fridays!

Ranked 7881?!

So this blog is ranked 7881 on BlogTopSites, which I initially thought was a disgrace, but then I realised 7881 is still in the top 25%, which is not too bad. The ranking is done by a script (which you get on registering for BlogTopSites), which when copied and pasted onto your blog template (i.e. the main HTML page of a blog), basically counts the number of visitors that come to the site, and compares this number with others that have registered with BlogTopSites. So out of 32,000+ blogs registered, mine is ranked 7881.

If you look at the BlogTopSites button at the bottom left corner of this site, you'll see that there's no number shown inside it. This is because this blog is not ranked in the top 100 (there's only enough space in that button for 2 digits I think!). If you click on the button you'll be taken to the BlogTopSites website, which will show you all the top blogs based on number of visitors. The blog at #1 is currently a fashion blog.

Edit: As of 19th October, this blog is ranked in the top 20%.

Sunday Lounge on HushBar Website

I just noticed that Sunday Lounge has been advertised on the HushBar website, along with the other nights currently running at HushBar. The advertisement uses a simpler design and not the one we used for creating our Sunday Lounge flyers and poster, but it doesn't look too bad! Here's a screenshot of the advertisement.

HushBar Video

Here's a short video clip of last Sunday Lounge @ HushBar. I made the video early before people started coming in, or else they would have wondered what the DJ is doing walking around with a digital camera! I'm the one at the end, trying to sample "We Rock 'N' Roll" vocals on top of "Le Champagne - Trentmoller".

Ortofon Cart Cases Found!

Val was looking for some of her old DVDs, and guess what she bumped into -- my Ortofon Cart cases!! I thought I had lost these and I kept banging my head against the wall now and then to remind myself of what an idiot I was, so now I can finally start patching up the holes in the walls.

The ones I've got are the original cases that come with the separate Ortofon Elektro carts. So they're not as fancy as the one in the left pic, but they're much fancier than the jewellery box I've been carrying my cartridges in. Now I can take my time at gigs, leaving enough time for everyone to have a good glance at my cart cases before I take them out and fix them onto the turntables.

DJing Related Injuries

After a chat with some friends at Hush Bar last Sunday, it got me thinking whether DJing will get me in trouble when I get older. Even right now I've got some trouble with my back and neck, which is always either cracking (I mean, like you know -- cracking your knuckles, that kind of cracking) or hurting. I'm pretty sure this is because of DJing, but could also be due to my bad posture, long hours infront of a PC, and at one point, a bad mattress! Another potential future problem is loss of hearing, but since I don't play at clubs that often this shouldn't become a problem.

Instead of tilting my head while DJing, I'm going to try and keep the headphones fixed on the head, and use my left hand to push the left headphone closer to my ear, or increase the headphone volume instead. But then there's the back pain caused by the constant bending down to browse through records, which I can only fix by either switching to CDs (not an option!), or getting a chair high enough to keep my record case on.

Hmmm...I'm surprised there's not a lot of articles on Google regarding DJing related injuries!

5+ Hours @ Hush, and DJ Lessons!

I played at the first early Sunday Lounge session today, and I quite liked the change! There was barely anyone at the bar the whole time, but I enjoyed not getting any requests, and spending some time with a friend/student of mine working at the bar. Since I had to play a long set, I decided to offer him some DJ lessons to pass the time and it turned out to be quite interesting -- for one thing, I learnt that being able to DJ and being able to teach someone how to DJ are two different things!! He was happy with the crash course though, and he'll be back for more next Sunday.

There was also a girl working at the bar who wanted me to teach her how to DJ next Sunday. Needless to say (being the loyal fiance that I am) -- I'm a tad hesitant about that one. I really don't think me giving one-one DJ lessons to a drunk girl at a bar is what Val would want to write home about.

Anyway, back to why I enjoyed my set. Since I started at 4PM, it was still bright outside, and I could see a bit of the city through the balcony. There was also some nice cool breeze coming through the balcony, and as I had the place all to myself, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable evening. Look forward to next Sunday -- although I'm hoping I don't have to play 5+ hours again, I'm starting to get some serious neck/back pains!

Edit: Damn, how could I forget the good chat I had with dj oldfart from ITM and his friend Lawrence, towards the latter part of the night. That teaches me not to post when I'm tired! Anyway, thanks heaps for the good company guys!

Blogger Beta!!

I've always wanted Blogger to have certain additional features, such as categories, and now Blogger Beta provides all those features, and more!! So I've switched from Blogger to Blogger Beta, despite the risks associated with Beta versions -- the advantages out-weigh the risks by a mile!

For example, Blogger Beta provides categories, links to old posts at the bottom (so the reader can browse through all posts of the blog, from the 11th post onwards -- but this feature doesn't seem to be fully functional as yet), a modular sidebar (each of the sections such as 'profile and contact', 'highlights', 'useful posts' are now all separate modules, which can be modified without needing to make changes to the Blogger Template!), 'Posts (Atom)' at the bottom (which shows the same contents via a different interface), different archive views (e.g. hierarchical, flat), and even a drag-drop interface for making changes to the Blogger Template!! I would have been satisfied with just the introduction of categories, but these guys have outdone themselves!

So now, searching through older posts and browsing the blog should be much easier than before. I'll be adding a search feature sometime soon to add to the convenience!

Requests, Requests, Requests...

Requests are really starting to get on my nerve. Just as I start to enjoy my set, someone decides to come along and ruin it by making a stupid request. I don't mind the requests that are appropriate, but not requests like "can you play something more powerful?", "can you play Ministry of Sound type of music?", "can you play music from Nova FM?", "can you play RnB?", "can you play more upbeat stuff?", "can you play my demo CD?", "can you play my CD if I bring it from my car?" or even "can you scratch?". What the?

I can't remember the last time I got an appropriate request. I guess since not a lot of people listen to real house music I shouldn't expect anything better than cheesy-house requests.

Recently I was offered $20 to play something "more powerful". I asked him to go ahead and find something more powerful in my crate, and that if he did I'd play it. He said "Oh... OK" and put the $20 back in his pocket. Some of my other responses have been "See these records [pointing to my crates]? They're heavy. So I obviously can't bring in all the music in the world", or "Sorry I'm going to lose my job if I play anything other than what I'm playing now", or "OK I'll see if I have that track, and if I do I'll play it", or "I wasn't told there was going to be a function today, so I didn't bring in any commercial music", and my personal favourite "Sorry RnB is on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Today is reserved for real house music".

Sometimes I act busy when I see someone walking towards me and most of the time they get fed up of waiting and leave. At other times I try and cover the entrance into the DJ booth with my record trolley, which cuts down a few requests as they can't get close enough to ask the question. Come to think of it, Republika would have been good for a regular gig -- their DJ booth is elevated and people can't talk to the DJ!

I've also noticed that when people come in groups, they send the best looking girl to make the request, probably thinking they have a better chance of getting me to play their track. Little do they know that I'm one step ahead, and that I'm going to be 30% ruder than usual.
Hmm....I think it's time I got one of those shirts with "I don't do requests" (or similar) printed on them.

Sunday Lounge Update

A couple of new things happening at Sunday Lounge. First, we've changed the starting time to 4PM rather than 7PM so we can try and catch the earlier Sunday crowd, because it's a bit difficult to get a crowd after 7PM, at least in Spring, as its often too cold and people seem to prefer staying at home. Second, we're getting 1000 or so A4 sized flyers done, which will hopefully help with the promotion. We'll probably also get an advertisement on Beat Magazine, depending on the costs involved.

ParkLife 2006 Melbourne

The wait was worth it! ParkLife turned out to be the best event I've been to. Everything was perfectly organised -- the location, the DJs, the date, the time. Val and I got there by 1.30PM, and we went to the 'Water' tent, where Mark Farina would be playing.

Before Farina, I got to see some local talent -- Derek K. and John Course, although their music wasn't really my cup of tea. Derek K. played very hard electro-ish tunes, and John Course played his regular, commercial tracks. The tent started getting very packed when John Course came on, and it stayed packed for Mark Farina.

Mark Farina played a good House set -- the longest set of the event (2 hrs). His mixing was flawless and it looked like he was having a good time. The tent was packed and everyone was dancing to some good (real) house music, which was fantastic!!

After Farina, I went and checked out Peter Hook (New Order) at the 'Air' (open air)stage. Peter Hook turned out to be a bit dissapointing. It's not the fact that he played some cheese that was dissapointing, but the fact that he couldn't mix. He had plenty of audience interaction though, which I think was all he had going for him.

Next I saw Cut Chemist at the 'Earth' tent, which was the largest tent and also where John So (Melbourne Mayor) had given a short speech on the same day (videos of speech are doing well on YouTube!). Cut Chemist was impressive -- at one point he seemed to be scratching a record with his elbow (see the 10 min ParkLife video on this blog)!

I couldn't get to see MixMaster Mike or Krafty Kuts, who I heard were very impressive, but it was still an excellent day out. See the ITM thread on ParkLife for more reviews and pics.