DJing with a full suit?

Last weekend Mike Jules was playing at Lustre Lounge on the Saturday night, so I went over at around 1am which is the usual time they close (at least on Fridays) to see how things were going. I was happy to see that Mike was having fun; he was not just DJing but also picking up girls (or rather, the girls picking him up!). The crowd was loving his music too.

Since I was there straight after a wedding, I was in a full suit (although I had loosened the tie), so I felt a bit awkward walking into the bar where I'm usually dressed very casually. Then it turned out that the bar was going to be open until 2am (since there was enough of a crowd), so I decided to DJ for an hour until they closed; putting myself into an even more awkward position! So there I was playing House music with a full suit. At one point the bouncer walked up to me and said he's never seen such a well dressed DJ! (Although I assured him that I'm rarely that well dressed; in fact, I'm rarely even dressed appropriately enough to enter a bar).

I didn't bring any music to the bar as I was not expecting to play, so I had to play someone elses music, using Mike's headphones!

Friday Nights @ Lustre Lounge

DJ Pound and I will be taking on early Friday nights at Lustre Lounge -- 7pm - 10pm from this Friday onwards. From 10pm DJ Temba will take over until closing time.

Friday has currently got some great promotion happening, where you get one round of free drinks on presenting a "corporate card". The offer is applicable for groups of 5 or more people, before 7pm. What better way to start the night! If 7pm is too early, they've also got drink specials on until 9pm, and will start serving complimentary finger food if it gets busy enough.

If anyone's interested in a corporate card, let me know and I'll send it to you. Or you can come over on a Thursday to our "Laidback" night and get a card off me.

Laidback @ Lustre Lounge has taken off!!

We wanted people to come chill out at our new night at Lustre Lounge, and that's exactly what they did. There were people there from start to finish, and the bar tender said it was busy for a Thursday night. Not bad for our opening night!

But I must admit, the people who came were there either there for the good music, or out of coincidence, because we hadn't had the time to do enough promotion to make it a much busier Thursday night than usual. There were 6 people I knew though (including 3 from ITM).

So, overall it was a very good start to our Laidback @ Lustre! With bit more promotion and time, we should be able to make it a full house on Thursdays.

Laidback @ Lustre Lounge ready for take off...

I printed about 30 good quality flyers (10x15cm) for Lustre Lounge to hand out to their patrons, gave Lustre Lounge an A3 flyer to display at their entrance on Centre Place (off Flinders Lane), checked out the DJ equipment, and so now we're all set to start this Thursday! To add to the excitement, they've got a new mixer and new speakers, so can't wait to get my hands and ears on those.

By the looks of it, 5pm seems to be a good time to start -- right in time to tempt some of the corporate crowd to come to Lustre, instead of making their way home. Centre Place is very busy at 5pm with people rushing to get to Flinders Station.

Can't wait...

RMIT Orientation (Bourke St. Campus)

The Bourke St. Orientation was held on the fourth floor of the Bourke St. building, so the location in itself was a unique experience for me! The fourth floor had a 'courtyard', which was like a rooftop area surrounded by buildings, and the food stalls and information stalls were all somehow nicely arranged around the courtyard so that people had enough space to move around. Not a lot of people turned up, but there were enough people for an enjoyable set.

The DJ equipment and the PA system was provided by Tim Nixon, a Future DJ 2003 Victorian finalist from Swinburne Uni, who now runs his own mobile DJing/equipment hiring business. The speakers were Opera Live, and I think they had 300W RMS of power. The rest of the equipment were 2 x Technics turntables, 2 x CDJ200s, and a DJM 500 mixer. The speakers were too powerful for that enclosed space though, so we couldn't put it to full use!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to play at the City Orientation, which I was really looking forward to, because Tim and myself had been double booked to play at the same time by mistake. Anyway, at least I got to play at the Brunswick and Bourke St. Orientations -- the latter being the one I enjoyed most.

And here's the video I promised. I'm the first DJ and the guy you'll see coming up and chatting with me wanted RnB, which I (kindly) rejected. The second DJ is Jeromy, who works with Tim Nixon.

Laidback @ Lustre Lounge

Myself and DJ Pound will be spinning some laid back House at the posh and intimate venue Lustre Lounge, on Flinders Lane, every Thursday 5pm - 9pm. Lustre Lounge is a nice little bar, with a nice little balcony overlooking Flinders Lane, and they're renowned for their cocktails, and great selection of cigars! The timing of the event will be perfect for the office crowd wanting to cut back and relax after a long day at work.

What better way to sip on quality cocktails on the balcony than by listening to some quality house music!

How stupid can I get?

Apparently the manager of the whole RMIT Village -- who was present at my last week's gig -- was happy with the music, and happy with the fact that I listened to him when he asked me to turn the volume down! As a result, I've scored myself another gig at the Social Bar and Cafe tomorrow, but this time for about 200 students.

OK so how does that make me stupid? Well, my stupidity arises as a result of me, again, needing to carry my two turntables instead of CD players, and two crates of Vinyl with a total about 130 records instead of a CD folder. As if that's wasn't heavy enough, I've got 70kgs worth of speakers to carry -- the same Behringer B300s I rented last week!!

Why am I so stupid you ask? Well, it's complicated. First of all, I haven't had the time to burn all my Vinyl onto CDs, so that I could take my dual-CD players, that would weigh around 10kg, instead of the turntables and records that weigh around 45kg. Second, I had charged them last week for the Behringer B300s, which was the cheapest pair of speakers I could find, so it will be difficult to get (lighter) speakers that cost more from elsewhere, and justify it!

Anyway, I need to get a bit more organised if I do mobile DJing frequently. The first step is to buy some second hand speakers (preferably under 20kgs each), and then I'll have to start the time consuming job of ripping all my records onto CDs. Wait a minute... is that even legal?

An intimate gig at the Social Bar and Cafe

I had a very interesting time at the Social Bar and Cafe, located at the RMIT Village Old Melbourne (RMIT student accomodation).

It was a private function for around 60 foreign exchange students (although more than 100 turned up in the end!), and I had to take my own equipment and speakers. I hired two Behringer B300 speakers for $70, from DGENR8, which was the cheapest place I could find to get the type of speakers I wanted, and I took the rest of the equipment from home (2 x technics, Numark CDN-36 dual CD player and Numark DM3050 mixer). The speakers were unbelievably heavy, but were powerful enough for the 100 or so people. Since the speakers were so heavy, I didn't bother lifting them up to slide them onto the speaker stands -- I had enough trouble taking them out of the car! Leaving the speakers on the ground turned out OK though, as many of the people were at a much lower area of the bar, than the speakers.


While setting up, I needed to borrow a table from the bar to place all the equipment on, and I decided to go with one big round table, rather than two small round tables. It turned out to be a very bad move, as I ended up with barely enough space for the equipment! Instead of bugging the bar staff again, I decided to place everything strategically on the single round table, so that I could at least use the turntables and the mixer. So unfortunately I didn't end up using the CD players (but then again, I have much more fun when I play 100% Vinyl anyway!).

When the bar started getting crowded, people were surrounding the round table, and it felt more like I was a part of the crowd than the DJ. It was nice though, just the way I liked it. I was able to feel the energy of the crowd and judge what music they wanted. Although generally you get more requests when you're very close to the crowd, than when you're separated from them, I didn't get many requests, luckily. The requests I did get were mainly for 'Latin' music, which I didn't have with me. The other requests were for commercial house, which I played for about 30 mins, until people started going back to a more relaxed state, which allowed me to get back to some US house.

A (under 4 min) video of the gig is shown below. My butt is in the way for most of it though!

Orientations, a beach party and a new thursday night!!

A few interesting events happening in the next couple of weeks, and all of which I'll be involved in at some level, either as a DJ or punter.

Tomorrow I've got a private function lined up for the orientation of 60 foreign exchange students at RMIT Village from 7pm to 11pm. I'll be hiring two Behringer B300 speakers for it (200 Watts RMS on each), which I think will be sufficient for 60 people indoors. I'll be taking my turntables and Numark dual CD players as well.

Day after (Thursday) I'll be meeting up with Luke (DJ Pound) to organise a new night we're starting at Lustre Lounge! It's like old times for me, since Lustre Lounge was the very first bar I've played at, and I was the resident there for around two years. Lustre will be the perfect venue for some chill-out House music on Thursdays, so we'll be starting that up soon!

Next week on Wed and Thurs I've got the RMIT Orientations where I'll be playing for an hour or two on each day. Wednesday is the main orientation in the city campus (which I've really been looking forward to playing at!!) and Thursday is the RMIT Bourke St. orientation. Although I'm not sure how big the latter is going to be, I'm looking forward to it nonetheless!

Finally, next Saturday, Mike Jules will be doing his beach party again, which promises to be bigger and better than ever!! The last beach party held a couple of weeks ago (which I missed unfortunately) was much bigger than the first, and the third seems to be heading towards the biggest beach party yet!

So yeah, keep an eye on this blog for the next month or so, for some pictures, videos and news!!

RMIT Orientation (Brunswick) Video

There were heaps of people there today (around 150 at peak time I think), and plenty of food, stalls, entertainment, and even a couple of speeches. I played the first set (11am-12pm), but I only played for about 40 mins as we got delayed by about 20 minutes. After that two brothers played the guitar and sang some popular alternative/pop songs for an hour, after which I played for another hour, and finally another guitarist finished it off with a solo performance.

I played some house as usual. Mostly vocal stuff and a few house remixes of popular tunes. At one point I was searching for a 'happy' Kaskade remix ("Gonna make it") which I thought people would enjoy, but unfortunately I had left at home. In the end, no one danced, but I wasn't expecting anyone to either at Orientation! There was quite a crowd towards the end of my first set, but not a lot of people hung around after lunch, which was when I started my second set.

They had a good DJ setup (RCF 300A speakers pumping out 360 Watts RMS, DJM 300, 2xTechnics and two foldbacks). I was told that they'll be hiring two subwoofers for the city orientation, to be used along with the speakers, as a crowd of around 500 is expected!

Here's a short (5 min) video of what happened today. It's mostly the guitarists that I've recorded, with a bit of me messing around with the eq's towards the end of the video.

RMIT Orientations!

After handing over two demos, and waiting for over a month and half, I've finally been asked to play at the RMIT Orientation for the RMIT City campus, Bourke St. campus, Brunswick campus and the Carlton campus! I can't do the Carlton one, but I'll be playing at the others.

Really looking forward to these gigs! I've played at the RMIT CS/IT Orientation twice in the past, but this time it will be at the main orientations, which will definitely have better equipment, more powerful speakers, but most importantly, more people! Hopefully there will be over 500 people at each of the orientations, since 300 was estimated for the first CS/IT orientation I had played at.

Another day-time 'party' I'm going to be able to use my digital(video) camera with, so keep an eye on this blog for a video sometime in the next couple of weeks!

Beach Party Melbourne - Video

I Quit!

Last night was my last set at Hush, as I decided to quit. The owner was a bit too much to handle. So although the rest of the staff (management & bar staff) were pretty cool, there's no point in staying there as I really can't put up with the owner.

Besides deciding to quit an hour or so into my set, the remaining 4 hours of my set wasn't too bad really. There were quite a few people at the bar and most of them were chatting and listening to some good House music. My bro. and quite a few of his friends came over too, so it was a nice vibe. Later I started getting a few RnB and commercial House requests, and since it was my last gig there, I decided to give them what they wanted!! I played some cheese for about 30 mins, and while I was packing up to leave, I played an RnB CD that I saw lying around (which happened to be a non-stop mega-mix).

There was an interesting guy who came up to me and started telling me about how I should play music that suits the crowd. But this time, I gave him a good piece of my mind, which included "you want RnB, someone else wants trance, and someone else wants rock -- how do you expect me to meet satisfy everyone's musical tastes", "this is real House music, what you hear on the radio is not, so learn to appreciate it", "House music is not necessarily about packing up a dance floor -- some people like to have a cocktail and listen to some good music. So an empty dance floor doesn't mean people aren't having fun", and "a part of what I'm doing here is trying to educate people on what House music is all about". Any other day I would have kept quiet, but today I realised that I might as well let it all out!

Anyway it turned out to be an interesting conversation in the end. He told me that he knows a bit about House music, and said that he feels that it's all about making the bar your own "house", and treating the bar area like your own kitchen, the fridge like your own fridge, etc., and impressing the people in your "house", with some chilled out music, while they chat to some cocktails on the balcony. A nice thought!

Overall I enjoyed my set. I played a lot of good soulful House (e.g. 'Soul Sympohony' - Chuck Love, 'Gonna make it' - Kaskade, 'Trust me' - JT Donaldson, 'On the line' - Mark Farina remix, 'Baby fever' - Bryan Jones, 'Love could be' - Town and Country) that went well with the vibe and my mood at the time. As far as Sunday Lounge goes, we'll probably start it again at some other bar, sometime soon. Should be fun!!

Beach Party Melbourne!

It's that time once again for the yearly beach party, organised by one of the biggest house-heads in Melbourne, Mr. Jules -- Mike Jules.


The extravaganza will be held on 16th December and has some of Melbourne's finest House DJs lined up, including Matt Promo who recently broke the world record for the longest DJ set (87 hours!). The party will surely be a truly awesome day out in the sun & sand, with some fine House music, right next to the beach!!!

I missed this party last year as it was held on the same day as the Tsunami Fundraiser I had organised, but I'll definitely be going this year. The location is Elwood beach, and a map is shown on the left. The line-up is shown below, more details out soon!!










1-2 little chris
2-3 mike jules + dj luvvy
3-4 cuznmatt
4-5 ben vapid
5-6 matt promo
6-7 ben evans vs blinky
7-8 alex mckenzie
8-9 adrian

If you want to get there by public transport, go to Elsternwick train station, catch bus no. 246 (called "Elsternwick - La Trobe University") from the station, and get off at stop 2. Here's the route map of 246. Stop 2 is right infront of the beach party!

The Weekend

The weekend was a good one, as expected. Stellar Bar saw Clint Hargreaves play a downbeat, funky and groovy House set, that kept everyone's heads bopping the whole time. Sunday Lounge, although quiet, had guest DJ Renee Kuperman, who played an upbeat, vocal, latin-flavoured House set, which was a good change from the layed back tunes that get played usually. Mike played a nice set, finishing it off with some hip-hoppy tracks, and I played mostly new tunes that I bought last week. I also tried out a new track I've been working on (will be available for upload from this website within a week!), and realised that it needs to be mastered properly before it can be played in a big sound system.

Although Clint had told me in the past that he can play a swingy layed back House set if necessary, Friday night was the first time that I actually saw him doing it. Looks like he definitely knew what he was talking about!

Right opposite Hush Bar, during our Sunday Lounge session, there was an under-age party at Barcode. As expected, the pretentious little kids were badly behaved, requiring (at least) 2 bouncers, 3 security guards and 6 police officers to keep them under control. A couple of people were thrown out, and it seemed like the party ended early. No big dramas though, other than a security guard being punched in the face.

House Party + Sunday Lounge = Big Bang

It's a big weekend coming up, with Stellar Bar veteran Clint Hargreaves gracing the decks once more, in what will surely be a tear-jerking set (in a good way of course)! Clint was the first person to start making Stellar Bar the chill-out venue of choice, after which myself (for a short time), Mike Jules and the whole house party crew joined in to make Stellar Bar the house capital of the CBD!

On Sunday, our lounging session at Hush Bar will also be big, with DJ Renee Kuperman coming down all the way from Sydney with a (UDG) bag full of tricks! She'll be playing 8-10, Mike from 6-8 and myself before 6 and possibly after 10.

So if you're into physics and want to know more about the big bang, or just a regular house-head sniffing around for the best tunes, head down to Stellar+Hush bars this weekend! Free entry as always.

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.

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!

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".