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.
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).
Located on the popular Norton Street in Leichhardt, Vanilla Room is a small, cozy and stylish cocktail bar with a generous sound system and an appropriate selection of DJs.
I had the privilege of playing at Vanilla Room last Sunday when I visited Sydney on the weekend, and it was a pleasant experience. The bar staff and people seemed to welcome the music and the DJ before me: Eva, played some nice funky House music, similar in style to mine. The DJ after me: Connor, played a nice soulful set and kept people relaxed and chilled out. For a Sunday night, the crowd wasn't too bad and kept the bar reasonably busy.
I had a couple of interesting cocktails after my set, all priced at a very tempting $10 each! The first had Vodka and some Coffee in it, and the second was made from freshly crushed lemon and Vodka. I wasn't sure after the first cocktail whether I was high on the Vodka or the Coffee! After sipping on a few more tasty treats like malibu with pineapple, I headed back home, very high and satisfied.
Bad quality and very short, but better than nothing!
Me last year at the DinnerPlain hotel. Played mostly Chicago style US House.
I had an interesting experience at Clemenceau's Bar located at the Holiday Inn Parkview Hotel in Singapore. Holiday Inn is located in the heart of Orchard Road which is one of the main entertainment regions of Singapore.
Clemenceau's Bar has a live performance by a duo every day except Sunday. The bar has a good PA system including (what seemed to be) two Bose 802 Series II speakers. The duo performing their uses quite a bit of equipment including three electronic keyboards and wireless microphones. The drinks menu at the bar is impressive for a bar of that size, and the atmosphere is very layed back, yet with plenty of freedom for people to have a dance.
On Fridays, the bar is open until 1 AM, so my relatives decided to take me their after treating me to a very satisfying late dinner at the Tandoor North Indian Restaurant located at the Holiday Inn. At the bar, the duo were playing tunes ranging from oldies to modern pop music, and they seemed very passionate about their music, getting the crowd involved every few minutes. Soon enough, a dance group of around ten people formed, but what was most surprising was that the dance group was led by the bar manager! It seemed like he was having as much fun as everyone else!
Out of all the hotel bars I have been to, I have never seen one with so much character. Staff at Clemenceau's Bar pay such close attention to detail and put in a lot of hard work to give their customers a very lively experience. For example, the performers are selected after an audition process, they are advertised at the lobby and lifts, the music is changed to suit the crowd, each customer is individually welcomed into the bar, and the performers and bar manager gets the crowd involved very affectively by showing the crowd their passion for music.
And from what I've seen, their Latte is not bad either.
I was in Singapore last week so I strolled into HMV with my uncle to check out some Vinyl prices. I was surprised to find that on average a Vinyl costed only around AU$14, which is around AU$5 cheaper than Melbourne! Unfortunately HMV only had mostly hard house so I ended up buying only three commercial tunes.
A few days later I found another record store called Roxy Music, opposite the popular Funan shopping centre. Roxy Music had much more of the type of music I was after, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to go through their collection. So I ended up returning to Melbourne with just the three records I had purchased from HMV.
Looks like I'll have to add Singapore to my list of record hunting countries! New York was also good (Virgin Megastore on Times Square was the only place I had visited), but I had way too many records in my suitcase on that visit that I didn't have any space left for more records. I'll also have to see if Dubai has cheap records since I tend to go their often. I think record prices in Dubai will be similar to Singapore, but I'll have to wait for a few months to find out!
Had a nice weekend at the Dinner Plain Hotel in Dinner Plain (about 10KM from Mount Hotham). I was invited to play at the Dinner Plain Hotel for the "Feb Fest", but unfortunately the Feb. Fest. was cancelled in the last minute. I still played to the regular Saturday night crowd at the Dinner Plain Hotel.
Dinner Plain and Hotham looked different in Summer, but the scenery was still beautiful. Lots of layers of mountain after mountain, and lots of white trees with shedded leaves along winding roads. Apparently, the Great Alpine Road that takes you to Hotham is one of the most winding roads in the world!
Dinner Plain looked a bit plain without the snow, but the architecture still gave it the look of a fairytale town. Surprisingly a very modern building was being constructed right alongside the Dinner Plain Hotel, which contrasted with the old wooden houses and motels. It will be interesting to see how well this new building blends with the old wooden ones!
US/UK House and moved onto some funky quirky US stuff later on. I played US House for about two and half hours and then slowly moved onto some underground electro-ish stuff (Trentmoller, JT Donaldson) and then smoothly into some old and new Commercial tunes. They (of course) enjoyed the Commercial tunes the most! I had lots of people come up and compliment the music (including the manager -- 
can't harm my chances of future gigs there!), and someone even came up and got into a long conversation with me about Vinyl versus CDs! This person used to play Vinyl back in his days, but asked me why on earth am I playing Vinyl these days, when there are such sophisticated CD players out there! In the end I think I managed to convince him -- thanks to the many ITM forum threads on the Vinyl versus CDs debate!
I finished playing at around 1.15AM after which I had a chat with some of the locals at the bar who were a very friendly bunch. Some of them had been living in Dinner Plain for many years and they loved the town and everything else that came along with it -- Skiing, Mountain Biking and of course their liquor! I headed back home at around 1.30AM (4.5 hr set).
quick breakfast. We then headed back to Melbourne and were back home 6.5 hours later (as opposed to 5) -- thanks to a long lunch, a visit to a berry farm, and a flat tyre! The General Entertainment Centre of Mount Hotham is a great place to unwind during the day and even a better place to party at night. With stunning views of snow covered mountains through large glass windows, a nice bar, and a great sound system, The General attracts top Australian DJs each year such as Mark Dynamix, John Course and Nik Fish, to entertain the Hotham crowd.
During the day, The General is a great place for some coffee with a view, or for some fast food made as you watch. At night, The General transforms into a restaurant with quite a sophisticated dinner menu and on most nights during the snow season, The General hosts entertainment ranging from darts, giveaways and Karaoke, to DJs playing tunes ranging from 80's and Top 40 to funky and commercial House!
Some pictures taken at The General are shown below.
Went on a Ski trip to Mt. Hotham with a group for the weekend, and stayed at the Snowbird Inn, close to the Ski Lifts for `The Summit'. It was fantastic to wake up each morning to see snow outside the window, and to see people skiing on the slopes!
Had a great time playing at the Dinner Plain Hotel, at Dinner Plain (10 minutes away from Hotham)!! I played a combined set on the Saturday night, with resident DJ Juddy, from 9pm - 1am. I started off, playing some soft US House, and then moved onto more upbeat US House. Juddy took over for a few tracks with some breaks and darker/electro house after which I continued with some of my more banging tunes, and some commercial stuff. From there we kept swapping every three tracks, until 1am.
The bar at the DP Hotel was awesome! Nice PA system (including lighting and a smoke machine), pool tables and nice comfy couches. They were giving away $1000, free drinks and a mountain bike as prizes for those who purchased a $8 raffle ticket. We didn't win the $1000 but my girl friend managed to win 6 shots, so it wasn't a total waste ;-D
There were lots of requests for country music (mainly Kenny Rogers), but we didn't end up playing (or having) any! Anyhow people seemed to be having a great time.
Definitely the best local gig so far!!
Fresh! Grand Rivière North West (near Port Louis.) Freshly refurbished and taken over by young nightlife specialists, the management endeavours in establishing a “Fresh” concept that would attract any kind of people wishing to have fun in a “clean” environment. At the entrance is a semi-open lounge space with a bar where there is either a live animation or lounge music. Then comes the inside arena where people get heated up. The volumes of the building is close to ideal with a high roof and an excellent air-conditioning / ventilation. “The sexiest club in town” which is the motto, revealed to be true on several occasions.
The soundsystem was great, especially the monitor :P They were still fixing the soundsystem while I was playing, so the monitor kept going off an on, but didn't really bother me too much. Seemed like they payed very close attention to the sound and spent a lot of effort in getting the sound levels just right.
The equipment were standard -- Technics 1200s with a DJM500. They had a Denon CD Player as well (an earlier model without the platter) and a fairly generous amount of space to fit about 4 people in their comfortably. They also had Ortofon carts, but looked like they had a problem with one of them, although no dramas while I was playing.
The Nightclub had an open bar outside for people wanting some fresh air, and it looked like they were setting up some equipment for a DJ to play outside. Not sure how they were going to prevent the outside sound from interfering with the sound inside the club -- didn't stick around long enough to find out :-
The staff and DJs were friendly. I was asked to play towards the end if there was time (the DJs were booked for the whole night, and I contacted them in the last minute, so I could only fill in any empty slots) or on Saturday if there was a free slot, but none of these times suited me. Just a bit dissapointed I couldn't stick around and play for longer, but there's a good chance that I'll play there again on my next visit to Mauritius!
I visited the Monterey county located in California for a conference last month. On the way there and on the way back I also managed to find some time to visit the wonderful San Fransisco and the huge New York!
Despite visiting Times Square in New York and a Broadway and Pier 39 (from where you can hop on a tour to Alcatraz!) in San Fransisco, the highlight of my visit to the states was a beach party organised by the conference committee. The party had some nice activities (e.g. table tennis), the scenery was great (I mean the beach), the food was amazing, , the people were very friendly, and the DJ was one of a kind! I spent most of my time at the party chatting with the DJ.
The DJ (I forget his name) was dressed for the occasion (look in the photos below for a guy with a big hat riding the waves!) and always wore a big smile. He had a huge CD collection and boy did he know his music! He didn't beatmatch but it seemed to me like he was experienced enough to remember the tune of any track in his collection. This is probably why he didn't use any headphones! The equipment he used were; a rack-mount (I think American DJ) CD players, a very sophisticated mixer, and what seemed to be 12" horn speakers and a subwoofer.
The venue was right next to the beach, and there were a few open fires outside on the sand with people sitting around them, chatting, eating, drinking and even burning their marshmellows in the fire! A friend told me that Americans always burn marshmellows before eating them, but I find this hard to believe! Anyway it was a fantastic environment for people to, among other things, kick back, relax and breathe in some fresh sea breeze, whilst listening to some good music!
Went around looking for some good clubs/bars/pubs for House music in Cairns. Found a place called "Inbox Cafe" where the DJ (Psytron) was playing some funky, deep house tunes. Stayed there for about an hour. Nice setup consisting of Technics 1210's and a few Yamaha speakers going around the bar. It was an internet cafe + bar + cafe with some friendly staff. The day before I left for Melbourne we went to a nightclub called 1936. The resident DJ was playing a combination of RnB and Commercial House (my my my, push up, four to the floor, like a prayer etc.). The PA system there was amazing!! Some of the lights were controlled by the DJ but the smoke machines kept going on and off -- not sure who controlled those or whether they were timed. Had a drink and headed back to the hotel to leave for Melbourne the next morning :-(
visitors.
