25 Minute Mark Farina ParkLife Video

Here's around 20% of Farina's 2 hour set at ParkLife (Melbourne), for those interested in analysing his set ;-D

Pretty much unedited and straight from a digital cam (hence the distortion in the sound). Enjoy!

Busiest HushBar Yet!

So I go over to Hush Bar for the regular Sunday Night session at 7PM, and the bar tender comes running over to me a few minutes later, and asks me if I've got any 'dancy' music. I said I don't, and that I've only got my regular Sunday night house music. Then he goes into panic mode, and asks me whether I can tell Mike to bring some 'dancy' music, but I told him that Mike won't be coming in. Then he goes into exreme-panic mode and tells me that there are three b'day parties scheduled for the night, with 350+ people! At that point I felt the need to search my crate, and to my luck, there was a dusty old CD wallet sitting inside with a lot of cheesy tunes. Suffice to say, that CD wallet saved my life.

The place started getting packed from 7.30, and by 7.45 there were already people on the dance floor. Until 9, people were dancing to (real) house, which I found quite satisfying, but after 9 I had to switch to a combination of House and cheese, and by 9.30 I was playing full on cheese. From then on, requests kept flooding in like a tsunami, and the dance floor just kept getting packed all the way until we closed at 1.45.

I think it's fair to say that last night was the most tiring gig ever -- not because I had to keep standing for 6.5 hours, but mainly because of all the requests, talking and searching through (mostly unknown) cheese that I had to do inbetween. Big ups to Boogs for playing 8 hour sets and Lounge every Saturday!!

On the positive side, I broke my personal world record for the longest set, which previously stood at 6 hours to an all new and improved 6.5 hours (yippee!). Also, last night was the first time I've played to such a large crowd (followed closely by the RMIT CS/IT Orientation a couple of years ago). Here are some pics, taken mostly from around the DJ booth.

ParkLife Melbourne 2006

Here's a 10 minute video clip of ParkLife! The focus is on Mark Farina, and the DJs in the video are in the following order:

Derek K
John Course
Mark Farina
Peter Hook (New Order)
Cut Chemist



p.s. change the size of the video window to make the video smaller and clearer. You can only do this by clicking on the video and viewing the video directly from YouTube.

The Devil Wears Prada Soundtrack

Just watched this movie today at the cinema, and I liked it, mainly because there were two House songs in the soundtrack: Kaskade's "I like the way you move" and "Feeling Hypnotized"! The latter is something I play out regularly, and it was really cool to hear it in a movie -- and in a fitting scene too!

Now I'm more pumped up for tomorrow afternoon, when I'll be heading to the park opposite Federation Square to see Kaskade's friend and partner in crime -- Mark Farina, along with some other huge names such as Mixmaster Mike, Ian Pooley and Krafty Kuts! Bring it on!!

Mixing is Getting Easier

At Hush Bar there are a couple of TVs facing different directions, and also a big projection on the wall. The DJ booth doesn't face the projection, but it faces one of the small TV screens almost directly. During long gigs (i.e. 4+ hours) and when the place is pretty empty, I usually find myself watching TV and mixing at the same time. I've so far watched a full episode of Prehistoric Park, 60 minutes and even Rambo -- First Blood! Documentaries and action movies are fun to watch without sound, but some other shows like CSI can be frustrating!

Considering I'm mixing on a turntable that needs servicing, a mixer that leaks on the CD channels, no monitor (hence a lag between the headphones and the closest speaker), I reckon mixing while watching TV means I find mixing fairly easy. I still need to learn how to pitch ride properly though. The only reason I'm not making much of an effort in learning this is because I can quickly adjust the pitch of a track by touching the spindle, but adjusting the pitch by pitch riding will take longer.

4 Hours @ Hush

I played for 4 hours at Hush last night, but I was playing to an empty bar most of the time so I left immediately afterwards. I was thinking of playing for the full 6.5 hours and breaking my previous record of 6 hours, but it didn't seem busy enough for them to continue until 1.30am, which is when I would have reached my personal world record target.

Hush Bar, just like many other bars, doesn't seem to be doing too well on Sundays. I think the main reason is because it is hidden inside Melbourne Central, which prevents random walk-ins from passers by on the streets. Another reason could be because it is a fairly large bar, and needs quite a few people to make it look busy. So it ends up looking empty most of the time, which deters people from coming in (no one wants to come into an empty bar!).

The management has this neat trick they use when the bar looks empty -- they cover the entrance so people can't see if there's anyone inside or not!! It seems to do the trick most of the time, but the manager wasn't there yesterday to try it out, which resulted in the dj going home early!

F4 Delivering the Goods!

F4 has been consistently bringing in some top international House DJs lately. Recently they featured Honey Dijon and Roy Davis Jnr, and now Bryan Jones coming Sunday!! Unfortunately (for me), most international DJs seem to be playing on Sundays @ F4, and all their sets have been overlapping with our Sunday Lounge gigs at Hush Bar! So despite some free tickets in the past, I couldn't go see any of these DJs.

Keep up the good work F4!!

Technics ITM 50 Results

Just one Victorian (Grant Smilie) in the top 10 this time!

Last year's Victorian who took 9th place (Jason Midro) is nowhere in the top 50. Boogs has climbed 4 places to 14th place and last year's 7th place holder (John Course) is now in 13th place.

1 Ajax NSW
2 Kid Kenobi NSW
3 Nik Fish NSW
4 Baby Gee QLD
5 Amber Savage NSW
6 Stafford Bros QLD
7 Grant Smilie VIC
8 Ben Morris NSW
9 Mark Dynamix NSW
10 Bang Gang DJs NSW
11 Dirty South VIC
12 TyDi QLD
13 John Course VIC
14 Boogs VIC
15 Sarez SA
16 Kenny L WA
17 Archie NSW
18 Illya NSW
19 Bexta NSW
20 Hellraiser VIC

And here's the top 10 DJs by state (taken from the ITM top 50 website).

Selling Old Equipment

I've been thinking about selling off my rack-mount CD players (Numark CDN-36) and old Numark CM100 mixer on eBay. They're both almost 3 years old. The mixer is in very good condition but one of the pitch controls in the CD players is a bit shakey. If I can sell both off for $350 I'll be happy -- maybe I can then buy a second hand CDJ100, which is much more portable. The main thing slowing me from selling them off ASAP is I don't have the original boxes, which means I'll have to go through a lot of hassle to pack them up properly so they can be posted!