A Very Busy Hush Bar

Our Sunday Lounge session last night went off! We were a bit worried about no one being there for the first two hours (i.e. till 9PM), but then some random people started flooding in from nowhere, and there was no place to sit down (on one side of the bar) by 10.15PM!

Lots of people were dancing and having a good time, and since we got heaps of requests for RnB, we played a few commercial House tunes and bootlegs, just to keep them happy. They did dance to House though, when it was mixed in with more vocal tunes.

A few guys from StellarBar popped in as well, to show some support, and it turned out to be one hell of a night -- probably the best night so far in terms of the number of people, and in terms of how many people were actively having a good time. We ended up closing at 2AM.

1000 Posts on ITM

So I've reached 1000 posts in an online forum called ITM (www.inthemix.com.au) today. Should I be happy? Or should I be dissapointed as to why I have spent so much time on a newsgroup?

Well I think most of my posts have contributed something to the discussions, or at least I've tried to genuinely make a contribution of some sort.

I've also learnt a lot by being a part of the ITM community, and I've made heaps of friends. I've learnt a lot about DJing through other DJs, about the technology (turntables, cartridges, records, mixers, etc.), about events, etc. etc. It's also via ITM that I got DJs for the Tsunami Fundraiser Pool Party that I organised last year, which eventually led to a whole lot of gigs for me afterwards!

ITM is also a reasonable advertising medium for our Sunday Lounge sessions at Hush Bar!

But, no I don't feel any happiness about reaching 1000 posts. What I do feel happy about is what I've managed to get from the ITM community, and what I've (hopefully) managed to give. A post count number attached to my nick really doesn't make any difference.

Capital DJ @ High St. Prahran

Went to Capital DJ for the first time today. Found it by mistake while walking along High Street in search of a shop to get some wedding-invite related stuff.

I found Capital DJ to be a very nice store, although records are a tad more expensive than Rhythm and Soul (by around $1). Their West Coast House collection was good, probably as good as the Rhythm and Soul in the city. The guy at the store was very helpful and chose some real gems for me. I ended up only buying two records though, as I wanted to save some money for a record bag.

Along with records, they had plenty of other useful things -- record covers sold in bulk, a studio that can be hired for recording demos, and plenty of UDG record bags (trolley bags, small soft bags and large soft bags). There was a sale going on and the bags were about $20 cheaper than usual.

The turntables they had for listening were American DJ turntables and a 2 channel American DJ mixer per turntable. They had about 10 turntables around, which is a bit more than the Rhythm and Soul in the city (Lt. Collins St.). They also had some good speakers to play music out loud, which is similar to Rhythm and Soul.

Numark's all-USB DJ console

Another funky and innovative product by Numark! A more professional version of the iPod console, this one allows you to mix music on a flash drive, iPod or portable hard drive! You can even search for music by plugging a keyboard into it. The large LCD display shows both waveforms and playlists.

Looks like a mobile DJs dream come true, and it may even be great for clubs/bars, depending on how robust it is (can it handle many DJs treating it bad, and a few beer spills?). But until it does become standardised, I think I'll stick to buying records.

ParkLife Melbourne!!

Melbourne is well known within Australia for its parks and gardens. The ParkLife event started in Sydney 8 years ago. The parks in Melbourne are better than those in Sydney. Erm, so ParkLife is probably more appropriate for Melbourne? What took them so long to try ParkLife in Melbourne??

/end rant

So finally, ParkLife in Melbourne! Tickets are $79 + bf (which I think means, if you have a boy friend you only have to pay for one person. But if you have a girl friend, I guess you'd have to get a boy friend for the day, or ask your girl friend to buy the ticket?). The date is 23rd September, at the park across Fed. Square, next to the Yarra!

What a spot!

Best of all, Mark Farina is playing!! But what makes Park Life even more special for me is that, I'd most probably be able to record it properly on my digital camera as it's a day event! Which means, yes, you the reader, will be able to come have a look at the video on my blog (if you're not in Melbourne that is, otherwise you'd be attending too, right?).

Awesomeness!

Waking Up to a Delivery

Today I woke up at 7.15AM, to the sound of "Hey your records have arrived".

That was the fastest I've ever woken up. On opening the package I found the records to be in mint condition, with two of them even in the original unopened "cling wrap" type packaging. On top of that, all of them, unlike my last purchase, had record covers!

And to think I only payed an average of $11 each (with one of them being just $5)! Talk about the best purchase ever!

Hmm, plenty of fresh tunes to play at Hush this Sunday. Can't wait!

Latest Purchases from Waxonline.com.au

FREAKED016 - GROOVE ON - $10.99 (Inc. GST)
BF005 - CRUSIN EP - $10.99 (Inc. GST)
UTR011 - WE ROCK & ROLL - JACOB LONDON REMIX - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
BH010 - FAMILY BUSINESS RMX-JASON HODGES & NATURAL RHYTHM - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
EQGREY - EVERYTHING-Joey Youngman Rmx - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
DDR034 - MESSY HEAD - $10.99 (Inc. GST)
DDR033 - Manwhore presents The Chocolate Starfish EP - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
DB001 - SOUTHERN DRAW - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
MICASA012 - Texas Toast - $7.99 (Inc. GST)
FAR0076 - Adventures in Mass Transit - $5.00 (Inc. GST)
AROMA039 - YOU GOT TO - $17.99 (Inc. GST)

Technics ITM 50 DJ Poll

Voting is now open to determine the top 50 DJs in Australia, or rather, the DJs with the largest mailing lists in Australia.

Last year Kid Kenobi, Nik Fish, Mark Dynamix, Bexta and Ajax took the top 5 positions, all from NSW, with Victorian DJs John Course coming 7th and Boogs coming 18th. I'm hoping some Victorians show up in the top 5 this year!

5 Hour Set @ Hush

Played a 5 hour set at Hush Bar last night because Mike Jules was away, so it was mainly me on the decks. We had a visiting DJ -- Corey, from Sydney, but he had a flight to catch the next morning so couldn't play for long.

Corey played a nice vocal, loungy set, but had some trouble with the mixer and with one of the turntables (one of the channels in the mixer didn't kill the sound even when it was all the way down, and the pitch on the turntable was again dropping at random moments!). It was good to have him though, and I hope he found the time he spent at Hush Bar worthwhile! I think we need to warn the guest DJs about the equipment in advance next time!

House Party @ Stellar Bar

I played at the House Party at Stellar Bar last night. T'was heaps fun. The DJs were myself, Rob Wu, Byron Foxx and William -- a visitor from Singapore. Coincidentally, William has played at Hideout where I will be (hopefully) playing at on my next visit to Singapore. Small world!

Here's a short video of the night. Dark again though. Maybe I should buy a proper digital video camera?

Video -- Swindlers Bar Mount Hotham 06

Here's a short video of my gig at Mount Hotham last weekend. My Friday night set was more upbeat and more happening but I couldn't get it recorded (it would have been too dark anyway!). This gig was a layed back set on the Saturday afternoon.

Hotham 06!

Snow was a bit dissapointing this year at Mt. Hotham. There were only a few good dumps and there was a lot of rain that followed, which washed away a lot of the snow. By the time we went on the trip there was only about 55 cms in man-made areas.

But to make up for a bad season, I had a good time spinning some tunes at Swindlers Balcony!



Swindlers Balcony was an awesome bar/club with the most amazing balcony I've ever seen, overlooking a ski run. Although there wasn't much snow at Hotham, there was plenty of snow in the balcony. I got to play at Swindlers on both Friday night and Saturday evening -- a total of close to five hours. I got some good feedback from (I think) the manager who said my set on Friday night was appropriate and that it had a good flow. There wasn't enough people at the bar on Friday, mainly because there wasn't a lot of people at Hotham, but there was a good 75-100 people most of the time, which was a good enough class size for me to educate!



The DJ setup consisted of Ecler Nuo 3 mixer, and two technics 1200's with Ortofon concordes. That was the first time I'd used an Ecler mixer and I found the eq's very accurate (I think they were full-kill eq's where you can kill the low/mid/high range completely on turning the appropriate knob anti-clockwise).

Sunday Lounge with Special Guest

Sunday Lounge @ Hush Bar

Hush Bar II

The new records I bought form Mezabel sounds awesome!! That, and I started getting the hang of the unserviced turntables at Hush Bar, which were causing myself and Mike Jules a lot of trouble on the first Sunday Lounge session. So it turned out to be a very fun night. To add to the fun, some of my friends from RMIT turned up, along with my brother and a couple of his friends!

The problem with the turntables is that the pitch drops suddenly if the pitch control is too close to the centre, but works a bit better the further the pitch control is from the centre. But to be safe, the best way to mix is to beatmatch with headphones, and to do the actual mix without headphones, i.e. by listening to the sound from the speaker.

To add to the difficulties, there is no monitor, so there is a lag between the headphones and the closest speaker, which means that mixing with headphones is really not recommended!

Mike played some really nice jazzy stuff. I think he was actually playing jazz (!!), but added some House beats to it, on and off, which sounded very nice and unique. Each of us played for about 3 hours each.