@3{THE MUSIC SCENE @2}by XLR8 @5 Phewy! Let me catch my breath! I've been so up in arms busy lately (no change there then). Well, where do I start? How about back on the 21st of October. Remember Mark who I was telling y'all about? Well the house party went ahead with an amazing response from both DJs and punters. Mark produced his own professional looking flyers and distributed them well in time for the mega party. I actually played 2 sets, I played Old Skool Hardcore from 9pm till 10pm in the front drum & bass room and from 1am till 2am in the chill out/ skin up room I played intelligent Bukem style drum & bass of which Mark is a big fan (that's how I got the set). The house was massive with loads of rooms, amazingly powerful sound systems (you could hear it all the way down the road) and hired lights, smoke machines and drapes/banners. The crowd was generally a bunch of late teens, early 20s uni people and everyone was up for a good laugh and a good night, a lot of them were regular at the Que Club aswell. @5 "What about the neighbours!" I hear you cry. Well all the neighbours in about half a mile radius where at the party! For the night my sister helped me out and produced a load of funky business cards with "XLR8" written on them and my phone numbers. In fact I did get a lot of people complementing me and even got another offer of a booking to play at the Blueprint bar before Flashback on the 2nd of December.... read on. @5 The only slight turn down of the night was when I was half way into my set playing PFMs "Western" (an absolute classic). I looked up to see two lads battering the shit out of each other! I stopped the music, made sure Lauren was okay but as quickly as it had started Mark pushed them out the front door. Well one good thing about it was we got a rewind of "Western". GET THIS TUNE NOW! It's excellent. Me and Loz left at about half 2. James (Mixmad) told us the next day that he'd played a blinder of a set from 3am till about half 5am with Trevor (Topspin) on the Mic! Sorry I missed it mate. Heres a list of the known artists that played that night... @5 MC Topspin Pimp Holmes Beats & Pieces Maxima Denny Turmoil Nick XLR8 Bint Will Miles Wig Pearce Naylor Source Little Miss Large (I auditioned with her back at the Blue Zone) Not long after that all nighter I was invited to play an Old Skool set at the new, well rated Long Island Bar/Club situated at the new mega multi major complex Star City in Birmingham. I got chatting to James Pestridge who is the promoter of the newly started monthly event called "Afterburn" and I was more than chuffed to play alongside DJs Pace, Tango and Ratty! No Joke! @5 So off I went on the 1st of November after work to the huge complex which I'd never been to before. I arrived at about half 8 and was greeted by about 5 door security staff which showed me the way into the luxurious cavenous club. There were big bubble tubes going from floor to ceiling of the three story arena, impressive lighting systems and even though the sound system had been restricted for this night (for some reason) it sounded crystal clear and quite superb. Passing the large bar and chill out main bar area I started to climb the first winding staircase with my 10 ton box of records. I hadn't got 5 steps before I was greeted with a welcoming hand shake from James P and was showed up the next two flights into the DJ booth. @5 Now I've seen lots of DJ booths in my time, some good, some which left something to be desired but with this one I thought I'd come into the wrong room... I could have sworn I had walked into the bloody space shuttle or something! there were monitors, keyboards (computer and music variety) amps, computer stations, TVs, Speakers, and of course Technics turntables with a massive mixing controller. Oh my GOD! After my senses had calmed down a bit I got accustomed to the area and actually started exploring some of the various gadgets in the place. The MIDI keyboard was actually a lighting controller! Press C and the strobe would come on play a chord and the lights would do some weird psychedelic dance for you... amazing. One of the computers in there controlled the three enormous projection screens and you could choose which image or animation you wanted to display on there. @5 But I hadn't come here to play, I had a job to do, so at 9pm the two talented scratch/hip-hop DJs came off and showed me how to control the barmy mixer... before reminding me that someone had spilled a drink on one of the decks and the pitch control had gone ape! OH GREAT! For the next hour I struggled to put a decent set together and I almost managed as I saw some people dancing 3 floors below me, but the one broken deck made life real hard, I wonder how the DJs after me would cope? A friend of James was on after me and he played some excellent mid 90s drum & bass, but by the looks of things he was struggling with the one deck as much as I was. @5 A short while later as the crowds started to come in and DJ Pace arrived on the scene, I started playing with the remote control camera, mounted on the high ceiling. You could control it with these buttons on this console and then if you liked have it projected out on one or all of the big projection walls. Amazing stuff. DJ Pace was on next playing some banging jump up drum & bass tracks and at this point I decided to explore some more of the venue. Back down on the 1st story I bumped into Jimmy & Mo, promoters of Flashback as well as DJ Nexus and Adam who is one of the guys in our crew at Flashback, he told me that he does promotion for Flashback and that he's working on his own night as well. Best of luck to him. After grabbing a soft drink at the bar (I was driving) I headed back up the many flights and into the DJ box where I was shortly met by a good MC who I hadn't met before and DJs Tango & Ratty! While I had the opportunity I congratulated them on the excellent sets they had done at the last Flashback. I stayed around for both their wicked sets on the wheels but had to leave a shade early at 1:30am as it was a long drive back home and I had work in the morning! Before I went I spoke to James and he told me the next event would be on the 6th of December with Mistress Mo and Nexus, lets hope I get a set there as well eh? @5 The Saturday after that event I went into Birmingham with Loz and checked out James' record shop (Work in Progress) called Suburban Sounds. He hopes to open it at the end of November and he will be specialising in Old Skool, Hardcore and Drum & Bass Vinyl. The shop is situated in the easy to get to Custard Factory in Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham (10 minute walk from City Centre). If that style of music is not your thing then you can always check out the other two record shops in the Custard Factory - "Music First" which specialises in the latest Drum & Bass and "The Import Shop LTD" which is into everything like Soul and Hip Hop. You'd better catch the last one fast though as Denton, the owner of the place is hoping to more to a new shop early in 2001. In fact I did mention to Denton that I had a lot of Soul and Hip Hop records for sale and we planned to meet later that week. @5 After that we popped into the Plastic Factory, situated on Corporation Street right opposite the Que Club. This shop has a wide range of new and rare records with a special interest in breakbeat stylez! After a quick look around I saw a record I hadn't seen since I was about 6! It was Gary Numans "The Live EP" in limited edition Blue Vinyl! Oh my God! I felt my wallet loose about £25 already.... or so I thought. The price on the label was actually only £8! Could that be right? It gets better! So after having a quick nostalgic listen to "Cars" and "Are Friends Electric" I decided to part with my well earned £8.. "That'll be £4 please" "... How much?" I said without thinking, about to hand over a tenner. "£4 please" "That's great, thanks" And £4 it was... Any Gary Numan fans out there jealous yet!!! :-) I mean, it probably cost more than that when it was first released! @5 Before leaving for home we payed a visit to Old Skool Daze in Selly Oak where we met Jimmy who thankfully remembered me from the other day at Star City. I Bought a tape pack of the last Flashback as a Christmas present for my sister and brother in law who had also pissed themselves laughing at me on the Flashback video! (Yes, that's me in the Muzino T-Shirt clutching a bottle of Evian!) Later, after we had got home I got a phonecall from Mark who informed me that he was helping organise an event at the Students Union near where he lived and the one and only Mickey Finn was the main attraction! He was asking all drum & bass DJs to do a tape for him as he was in charge of choosing the other 4 DJs for the night!...... PANIC! In the next few days I managed to knock up two tapes with some toons spanning from Old Skool, right upto the modern drum & bass toons currently doing the rounds. Fingers crossed.... The next day I phoned Denton who planned on coming to look at my records the next day, I went and picked up some records from Jamies I also dropped those tapes off at Marks who told me there was about 14 of us going for 4 slots! Wahay, a bit of competition... @5 Denton came the next day as promised but unfortunately they weren't his cup of tea and seeing as though he was moving soon he wanted to keep his stock count fairly low... fair play. On the 15th of November after an agonising wait I had just got back from an agonising Karate session and was painstakingly working through my pie and chips when Mark phoned to put me out of my misery... I hadn't got a slot. He gave all the positions to DJs who already went to the Uni. Good idea really, they'll do a better job of promoting it in a Uni than I will in a lift company! He did cheer me up a bit by saying that he might sort me out with a set at The Gallery in about two weeks. He planned to hire out both rooms and put on some mad underground party. @5 On the 17th I had a day off and went around Birmingham to get a few jobs done. I met up with James and sold about 6 records to him, hopefully helping him start his new record shop off which was starting to look pretty impressive. I also went to Easy Listening in Shirley and bought two records: "138 Trek" by DJ Zinc on Phaze:One, an excellent bouncy garage dancefloor filler which goes really well with Timo Maas's remix of Dooms Night by Azzido De Bass and that "I Don't Smoke" mayhem. The second tune I picked up was on Dragonfly records. I'm always impressed with their stuff, a brilliant mix of Techno and high energy trance. "Stinking Thinking" by Ticon and "Liar" by Dragon, both excellent tunes. I also went looking in vain for "Basslick" by Second Protocol... Anyone got it and they want to sell it? I'll have it! @5 The next day there was a big record collectors fare at the NEC in Birmingham which Jamie went to but I had to miss. Anyway, a guy by the name of Chris Energy phoned me up saying that he had a stall at the show and had seen my advert in the local paper for records I had to sell. He came round and had about 14 off me giving me some dosh to buy lunch with... before he went he gave me his card. He is a DJ, Proprietor, Producer and owner of a record shop in Camden, London called "Hit 'n' Run Records". I'll have to pop in when I'm next there. The same day I bought two tickets for Flashback on December the 2nd and also got hold of the two Eminem Albums - The Slim Shady LP & The Marshall Mathers LP, both emotionally mixed and an amazing mix of Hip Hop tunes, favourites being "Guilty Conscience", "Stan", "My Fault" and "97' Bonnie & Clyde". Check out the internet for loads of info on this guy, well worth a look. @5 On the 20th of November I finally got through to the Blueprint bar in Birmingham. It's actual name is "Fibber McGees" so no-wonder directory inquiries hadn't heard of it! Anyway I got through to TNT who to which I explained that the entertainments bloke at the Blueprint (Terry? Timmy?), had met me at Marks house party back in October (how vague could I be) and had offered me a set before Flashback on the 2nd to play an Oldskool set. After a short pause he told me that all the DJs had been booked for that night and he shouldn't have booked me at all.... oh well, I was clutching at straws really, that guy was probably one or all of the following: @3 1. Totally pisssed 2. Totally high 3. Totally stoned 4. Totally full of shit @5 As seems to happen lately when I get bad news something vaguely intriguing or interesting happens... this particular happening was an advert in the local paper: @2 --------------------------------------------------------------------- @1DISC JOCKEY REQUIRED To be resident at luxurious hotel complex to the United Arab Emirates. Proven track record essential. Must have knowledge of up to date music styles/trends. WAGE NEGOTIABLE UPON EXPERIENCE @2--------------------------------------------------------------------- @5 EH? The next day I phoned up about the job and got through to Kings Heath jobs centre. The guy I spoke to stated that the hotel was actually IN the United Arab Emirates and explained a few further details before saying that he would get back to me and arrange me an interview... watch this space!