DJ T. tour blog: Week 13 and 14

DJ T. tour blog: Week 13 and 14

13 October, 2009 | 9.53AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: dj t, dj t blog, get physical

With his suitcases packed, Get Physical’s DJ T. boarded a plane destined for South America on September 30th 2009. The Berlin-based DJ will be away from home for over 100 days, as his world DJ tour visits some of the globe’s most remote dance music territories.

Now 13 weeks into a six month tour, Thomas Koch has left Europe, and he is somewhere on the other side of the world, but he still found the time (and a decent internet connection) to send Beatportal this dispatch from Ecaudor, Lima, and Rio.

We hope to bring you his tales each and every week up until January 2010, but don’t be surprised if we encounter a few blogging problems along the way, as DJ T. is now all alone, out there, with only his records to keep him company.

On September 30th, I boarded my flight to South America – with a case of nerves. Cold feet, anyone?

You might think that – after years of DJ trips to other countries and continents – all this has become routine for me, but appearances deceive. I love my everyday rituals: once I have adopted a habit, it costs me substantially more energy than most to break out of it.

Naturally, this also applies to the ritual of stepping away from my desk after the average Berlin workweek, going on a last-minute hunt for my DJ essentials and grabbing a taxi for a flight to one of my European DJ destinations. Depending on my physical and mental state, switching straight to travel and performance mode can be incredibly exhausting … or the perfect way to switch off from the daily grind.

Compared to this particular brand of ‘business as usual,‘ lengthy forays into overseas territories are in a completely different league.

It all starts months before actual take-off: you need to apply for and collect visas at countless embassies, coordinate travel itineraries, flight times and hotel bookings with the respective bookers and travel agencies, hunt for all the right travel paraphernalia – from mundane to exotic – and then pack your bags and DJ essentials for several weeks.

In my case, the preparations were crowned by a generous dose of preventative shots. Ten days before departure, I had three separate rounds of inoculations (packed with a total of seven substances) in one go, including the notorious yellow fever jab, which can sneak up on your immune system and force you to lie low for a few days.

The other ones were more of a ‘bonus’ – I had successfully (and thoroughly) misplaced my vaccination card, ordered a new one and – just in case – started from scratch with all the standard vaccinations I couldn’t remember. For South America, that’s quite a long list. Believe me – the buzz of this particular cocktail is something you can do without …

Let’s move on to the travel itself: half-asleep (well, semi-conscious) and caught up in the most bizarre contortions (no, I’m not a member of the elusive elite completely exempt from tourist class), hours of waiting in transit, farcical immigration comedies, jetlag etc.

And finally – the fun part: new cities, countries and scenes, unknown cultures and mentalities, friendly and professional hosting (well, there’s always hope …) and the eternal, recurring question – how do people party over here? How do they dance?

Well, the answer is usually not that surprising. After all, we share 99.9 % of our DNA, right? So far, I’ve had plenty of overseas stints with multiple visits to most continents (except for Africa, but then again, I don’t know anyone who has toured there yet).

Nevertheless, the sheer length and breadth of this particular tour, three-and-a-half months in total, are a first for me. And I can sense it in my bones, in every single fibre of my physical and mental being.

Not only have I never toured several continents in a row before (or more than four weekends, for that matter), but – in my 40 years – I have never left Germany for more than six weeks and never visited as many countries in one go (my last count puts this tour’s toll at 14).

And there are plenty of countries and cities on the list that I have never been to before, places that conjure up a bunch of clichés and preconceptions, just waiting to be confirmed or rejected, or simply blind spots and grey areas on my patchy map of knowledge.

Take the first stop of my tour, Ecuador. What do I know about this place? What do the locals look like, what about their standard of living, would it be similar to Brazil and Argentina (countries I had played before) or significantly less developed? And what about the political situation?

I don’t usually wear my ignorance on my sleeve, but in this case, I have to admit that my knowledge exhausts itself in a few of the state’s neighbouring countries (Colombia to the north, Peru to the south) and Ecuador’s two largest cities, the capital Quito and Guayaquil.

It was here, in Guayaquil, that I played my first gig after arrival, hosted by the energetic promoter, DJ and jack-of-all-trades Jose Wated. With his guttural voice and hectic, but heartfelt nature, he would make the perfect (on-screen) mafioso, a cheeky version of the local godfather.

Together with his lovely wife Patricia we started the day with a visit to a tiny weekly indoor market that took place on the hotel’s premises. Compared to the – at first glance – rather empty and hostile streets, patrolled by a surprising number of armed personnel guarding car parks or the entrances to restaurants and hotels, this market felt like a stronghold of culture and civilisation. Here, hippiesque characters hawked handmade jewellery, clothes and works of art, flanked by some excellent veggie cuisine. 

According to Jose, the subsequent party would not take place in a regular club, but in a special ‘house in the woods’. Those are the moments when a DJ’s imagination starts running wild – an offhand remark like this puts you straight into explorer mode.

All of a sudden, you visualise yourself in the jungle, sharing drinks with a flamboyant drug baron and his deranged entourage. Back in reality, the night wasn’t quite such a blockbuster cliché, but still adventurous enough.

The owners of the house must have really loved repetitive beats, as they relinquished their property for a whole night of controlled abandon. A dedicated party crowd of 350 had made their way to the open-air patio and gave their dancing hooves a good workout. Here, I also met Jose’s co-promoters and fellow DJs, George and Vincente Levi, who also run their own label Levitium.

By the way – warm-up slots are chronically underrated. Sometimes they can be a real pain in the arse, especially when you’re dealing with over-motivated resident DJs eager to make a name for themselves by unleashing their minimal big room artillery on the still empty dancefloor.

Those are moments of pure tragedy – it can be really painful to watch them give it all and up their own game, again and again, in the faint hope that some people might finally stumble onto the dancefloor.

Sometimes, it’s almost embarrassing to follow such a set when you – the guest DJ – reset the floor at 123 bpm with the detached cool of two decades of DJ experience … and then watch the crowd stream onto the floor as if someone had just promised them a bucket of free drinks.

But let’s return to Guayaquil – right here, in the wilderness, the opposite was the case. My host Jose turned out to be an excellent warm-up DJ with a great feel for the crowd. Over the following three hours, I did my best to make the clubbers happy and then handed over to George and Vincente. I really hope this wasn’t my last time in Ecuador – I’ll see you on the beach, Jose!

The next day, I travelled to Lima. Here, I was picked up by Arturo Ruiz, Peru’s best-known and most veteran promoter. Ruiz not only runs local staples Superclub and Loop, but also stages the local version of the seminal Creamfields festival once a year.

Arturo had done me the great honour of booking me for the ninth anniversary of Superclub, scheduled to take place in an old theatre. I didn’t know what to expect – and was completely taken by surprise. When Arturo and I slipped in through the rear entrance to make our way to the backstage area, I could already feel almost visceral waves of physical energy lapping our way.

One curtain later and we were on stage – facing the huge, heaving hall of the Teatro Leguia where Peruvian DJ star Rodrigo Lozano did the honours and served up an aural appetizer on par with Jose’s set the night before. It took me a few minutes to digest this energy shock and really grasp what was going on.

Almost 1000 party-sans had followed the call and lure of Superclub, the sound was top-notch and a giant LED screen bathed the hall in a ghostly glow, while the crowd at my feet looked ready for anything. The biggest surprise was their outer appearance – for a moment or two, I thought I had stepped back in time (and across the Atlantic) to one of my gigs in southern Europe.

A mere three tracks into my set, I knew I was right in my element. This was going to be one of those nights when it feels like there’s a direct invisible line, a buzzing wire, connecting me to everyone else in the hall.

This must have rubbed off on the rest of the crowd because before and after the party, I got more great feedback than almost anywhere else in the world. While some events fade over time, others claim their place in your head and heart. So, let’s make some room for my four days in Lima!

Next stop: Rio. Not sure if you noticed, but I definitely have a knack for sniffing out the unglamorous in glamorous places. And Brazil’s legendary capital of culture (if not the country) definitely paved the way for a long stretch of unfortunate antics.

I should have been warned by my first encounter after arrival, when the airport driver greeted me with the words: “Hello, Mr. Thomas, you are bringing the rain” – heralding three days of martyrdom. You call this rain? To my untutored, European eyes, the storm and flood raging outside looked more like harbingers of the Last Judgement.

There I was, watching the churning sea from my hotel window in the Barra district and – believe it or not – freezing my arse off in the chilled surroundings. True to the proverb ‘it never rains, it pours’, fate truly opened the floodgates as I had incurred Montezuma’s wrath in Lima and brought this ‘souvenir’ to Brazil. Well, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know …

Today, the sun is finally out – a beacon of change in several ways. Still a bit shaky from last night (I’ll come to that and the gig in a minute), I just moved down to the Copacabana. Enough of all this Barra suffering, time for a new beginning and four more days in pleasant surroundings. But weather and virus were not the only oddities of my time in Rio; there were also the curious circumstances of my set at the giant rave Space of Sound.

Looking back, I guess I never really expected to play this event, right until the last minute. Just two weeks before the date, there was absolutely no info on the Internet, just a meagre six-line announcement, and even now I only get my Facebook post when I google “Space of Sound” and my own name.

I was kept in suspense until the last moment: the promoters never got in touch after my arrival in Rio, and even my Brazilian agency’s road manager Guilherme couldn’t reach them for further details on the night’s overall schedule.

At 10.30pm, there was still no word, so I settled for chicken soup from room service. Always the good and trusting soldier, I held out in the prison of my hotel room until – at 4.30am – Guilherme came around to pick me up and drive me to the phantom event. And there it was, in all its glory.

Naturally, we got caught up in several more involuntary slapstick situations before we finally reached my designated backstage cell, but those moments truly defied description.

Well, there was this one instance when Guilherme and me looked at each other, faces distorted in abject terror, at our first glimpse of the huge hall – populated by a mere handful of ravers. What we didn’t know: the real party was further back, hidden behind a giant block, where at least 5000 dancers gave it all.

So, when I finally got to play my set – postponed by an hour, but who’s counting at this time in the morning – it felt pretty special. All of a sudden, the event’s name – Space of Sound – made total sense. And the crew behind the ostensibly scatty promoters turned out to be extremely nice. So, to put a more positive spin on this week’s proverb-laced posting: All’s well that ends well, right?

DJ T. - The Inner Jukebox Worldtour 2009

October
02.10.09 - Glow in the dark, Guayaquil (EC)
03.10.09 - Superclub, Lima (PE)
10.10.09 - Space of Sound, Rio de Janeiro (BR)
16.10.09 - Aura, Monterrey (MX)
17.10.09 - Vertigo, Costa Rica (CR)
22.10.09 - Bar Americas, Guadalajara (MX)
23.10.09 - Fever, Mexico City (MX)
24.10.09 - Hardpop, Juarez (MX)
29.10.09 - Parking, Montreal (CA)
30.10.09 - Smart Bar, Chicago (USA)
31.10.09 - Sullivan Room, New York (USA)

November
03.11.09 - Woody’s, Philadelphia (USA)
06.11.09 - See Sound Lounge, Seattle (USA)
07.11.09 - Avalon, Los Angeles (USA)
10.11.09 - Tapas, Newport Beach (USA)
12.11.09 - Habitat, Calgary (CA)
13.11.09 - Migthy, San Francisco (USA)
14.11.09 - Lotus Sound Lounge, Vancouver (CA)
20.11.09 - Rise, Boston (USA)
25.11.09 - Electric Pickle, Miami (USA)
27.11.09 - Gallery, Washington (USA)
28.11.09 - Asylum Afterhours, Honululu (USA)

December/January
04.12.09 - Zouk, Singapore (SG)
05.12.09 - Stereosonic@F4, Melbourne (AU)
06.12.09 - Sneaker Peeps, Brisbane (AU)
11.12.09 - Ink, Auckland (NZ)
12.12.09 - Ladida, Melbourne (AU)
18.12.09 - Pang, Canberra (AU)
19.12.09 - Chinese Laundry, Sydney (AU)
25.12.09 - Club Heaven, Seoul (SK)
26.12.09 - Warehouse, Tokyo (JP)

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