DJ T.’s tour blog: Week 6 and 10 classics

DJ T.’s tour blog: Week 6 and 10 classics

20 August, 2009 | 9.01AM

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

Sleep deprivation, swine flu, dodgy ski lifts, lost luggage, James Bond, The Cars, a Scottish knees-up, a Russian party, and some classic dance records: just another week in DJ T.’s life.

The Get Physical maestro checks in, now six weeks down the road of a six month world tour, with another entertaining dispatch from the party bus that keeps on moving.

Thursday, 13th of August, Edinburgh/Scotland

I had been looking forward to a second stint at this sweaty vault in laid-back Edinburgh for quite some time. Not only because my last gig at Cabaret Voltaire literally screamed for an instant rematch, but also because Sarah David and Gary Mac are exceptionally likeable hosts and promoters.

In the end, it took a lot longer than either side would have wanted, but that’s the way it is sometimes – both promoters and DJ are up for it, but you simply can’t agree on a date. So, it was with great pleasure that I returned for the fourth ‘birthday’ of their ‘We Are Electric’ nights; it’s always a great honour to be asked to play a club’s anniversary party.

Naturally, Scotland’s capital would also be worth the trek without any official DJ obligations. Its picturesque Old Town (well, whatever I managed to glimpse from the car and my hotel window) is one-of-a-kind and could easily serve as a backdrop for an 18th century period drama. Unfortunately, my tight schedule, yet again, only left time for DJing and sleep.

On my arrival at the Hawke & Hunter hotel, which sounded like a very Scottish name to my Teutonic ears, I was taken to the establishment’s ‘James Bond Suite’. While charming enough, the only nod to its namesake’s suaveness was a ceiling-height mirror in front of bed, a semi-reflective, semi-opaque affair that offered a sneaky peek at the open shower.

The only thing missing? The obligatory Bond girl, engaged in lascivious, slo-mo soaping, for my lounging delectation. Lacking this elementary prop, I started to search the room for drinks, but couldn’t find anything but a bottle of still water, let alone a stirring (not stirred) martini and olives. A James Bond suite without a bar? Booooo.

At the pre-party dinner, Sarah, Gary and I were joined by Nick Crombie and Steve Young of The Fix, two exceptionally nice and remarkably non-neurotic musicians whom I had never met before, despite sharing a booking agency and plenty of friends and acquaintances. Their live appearance gave me a great excuse to get off my arse and into the club an hour early to catch their performance.

They soon had the crowd wrapped around their little finger and passed them to me all energised and raring to go. I started my set with Tim Green’s ‘Kitch In’, an odd house/rave hybrid from the Dirtybird stable, and the rest was more or less a homerun. I finished with – you guessed it – a bunch of well-tempered classics and crowd pleasers - the old Plus 8 hit ‘Loop’ by LFO vs FUSE and ‘Legacy’ by Yousef & Derrick Carter. Scroll down for a list and listen to these and eight other classics that made my last two weekends.

Aside: Sarah - sorry for being such a scatterbrained pain in the ass this time around – I already got my mobile back, thanks again!

Saturday, 15th of August, Anapa/Russia

11am. There I was, yawning incessantly – due to a painful case of sleep deprivation – and queuing at Tegel airport’s Air Berlin check-in. The woman ‘manning’ the desk did a pretty convincing impersonation of a transvestite. When I enquired if she could check my luggage all the way through to the Russian town of Krasnodar, she instinctively shook her carefully coiffed perm. “Can’t imagine that’s possible,” she declared pre-emptively. “Krasnodar? Never heard of the place.”

As the connecting flight from Moscow was handled by a tiny Russian carrier, I had no reason to doubt her statement. So, it came as a medium-sized surprise to me – and even more so to her – when she managed to coax the computer into submission, after a flurry of tippety-tappety nails on the keyboard. A few seconds later, she waved the printed baggage receipt in front of my face and celebrated the moment as if she’d just hacked the Pentagon’s inner sanctum. 

“Witness: a pro at work,” she bristled with pride. A tentative premonition formed all the way in the back of my mind. What if this self-proclaimed mistress of efficiency had really typed her way past some vital regulations with her housewifey nail polish and clickety magic? I quickly waved the thought away, surely everything would be fine. After all, it would save me some major hassle in Moscow. And this is how a day of glitches, mishaps and curiosities took its course.

After touchdown in Moscow, a cheerful flight attendant informed us of the imminent arrival of a team of health officials and epidemiologists – no one was allowed off the plane before they had conducted a thorough swine flu check. Accompanied by indiscriminate groans and hysterical laughter from the rear of the aircraft, we found ourselves subjected to a truly grotesque pantomime.

Equipped with gun-like blue plastic measurement devices, these ‘experts’ stumbled through the rows to press their implements against the temples of randomly selected test subjects, followed by a stream of cryptic, multi-digit numbers on the device displays. While this was going on, the passengers were desperately trying to stifle their laughter. Fortunately for us, no one seemed to be infected.

After disembarking, I was met by the guy who had arranged my upcoming gig at the Black Sea coast and who had agreed to accompany me to my final destination. How nice of him. When Levan pointed out that the connecting flight would be at least an hour late, I didn’t pay too much attention. It didn’t even register when he announced yet another delay because I was happy to use the time to get some work done on my laptop.

Only when we made our way to the gate, many hours down the line, and the latest departure time on the monitor was about to become another farce, the severity of the situation started to dawn on me. I did some simple math to show Levan that even with no further delays it would take us another four and a half hours to reach our final destination, including flight, baggage reclaim and transfer by car – i. e. at least 90 minutes after my official midnight slot.

Today, for once, my slot was sacred, well, most of all the curtain call at 3am. Due to the weekend’s exhausting travel schedule I had had my booker inform the promoters that I would not play beyond this time. The next morning’s pick-up was scheduled for a bright and early 9am, so even a regular set would put me below the human/zombie line of minimum rest.

That’s the way it is with me. In terms of resilience to sleep deprivation I have long passed my prime, I am no longer a spring chicken and that’s okay with me. Less than five hours will take me to the brink of collapse the next day and multiply the necessary after-weekend recuperation phase. My travel companion had obviously just read Dale Carnegie’s bestseller ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’ because he simply replied “not to worry, we could always work out the details once we’d arrived in Gelenzhik”, our final destination.

When it rains, it pours. After touchdown in Krasnodar, I was the only passenger at baggage reclaim who, well, had no baggage to reclaim. No sight of my trolley. Two giggling country bumpkins in ill-fitting airport uniforms asked us to wait. After yet another 20 minutes, a mystery door opened and an old, weathered and leathery babushka, the lost-and-found matron of Krasnodar, beckoned us to enter her sullen realm.

Helpless and probably only a quarter conscious, I followed the strained exchange of verbal blows between Levan and the dragon, which built up to a synchronised barking contest. Gradually, even my – up to now – relatively calm and collected travel companion started to lose it. The woman kept insisting we had to give her some obscure piece of paper that we couldn’t conjure up out of thin air. After a generous half hour of heated debate, it transpired that my (in)capable assistant at Tegel airport had had no authority to check my luggage all the way through, the Moscow authorities had confiscated my trolley due to new regulations and might even suspect me of smuggling a rare strain of swine flu pathogens or something.

So, into the car without the checked baggage (I always carry my DJing essentials with me as hand luggage) and off to the venue with the driver who’d already been waiting for a number of hours. On my way out, I spotted something curious in the display cabinet of the airport kiosk (solely open for my convenience, or so it seemed): a bottle of vodka labelled “No Problem – XS Extrasoft.” Somehow, I felt this was addressed at me. “No problem”? What exactly were they trying to say? 

Would all my problems go up in smoke after the content’s ephemeral enjoyment or was it a case of simple maths, i. e. “less alcohol = fewer problems?” Whatever its confusing intent, I was very pleased with my find and almost grabbed the bottle as a pick-me-up for the next leg of my upcoming odyssey. In the end, I left it on the shelf: alcohol is not the solution.

A quick nap en route? Impossible. By the time the driver pulled into the car park, it was already 2.30am. But there was yet another surprise awaiting my overtaxed body and soul – the party was all the way up on a mountain top, a good 600 metres above our current location and only accessible by a rickety ski lift; this retro contraption sent shivers of recognition down my spine, taking me all the way back to those precarious models from my last skiing trips in the 1980s.

I thought I could detect a glimmer of fear in Levan’s eyes – was this to be my untimely end? A deadly tumble on my way to the DJ desk, clutching laptop and CD bag in the face off death to prevent them from sliding off the wobbly seat, right here in the Russian midsummer heat? A true hero’s death.

After a minute or so, the first few sounds reached our ears from the peak – and soon morphed into ‘La Isla Bonita’. “Hm, pretty strange music they’re playing up there,” said Levan, scratching his head in slight confusion. By now, I was past the point of being shocked and simply resigned myself to the inevitable fate. Soon, the last bars of Madonna’s tropical island breeze, my teenage French kissing soundtrack of a long-forgotten class trip, segued into ‘You Might Think’ by The Cars.

Okay, this was really going too far. What the hell was going on up there? An impromptu outbreak of Swine flu-induced madness?

Passing the next girder of the lift, at least the last mystery was resolved. What we heard was the lift attendant’s personal soundtrack, broadcast to all unsuspecting passengers via strategically strung speakers. And so our romantic ride in this shaky two-seater continued to the dulcet tones of Sidney Youngblood’s ‘Sit And Wait’ (I’m not making this up!) and ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You’ by Glenn Medeiros.

Unfortunately, even the very last act of this memorable day was a bit of a disaster: the party itself. Despite the thousand guests announced by my booker, less than 150 people populated the beautifully designed, canopied dancefloor. Ignoring my urgent need to sleep, I decided to do the promoters a favour and stretch my set out until 5am before braving the 1980s ski lift once again for my descent to the hotel – and a generous two hours of much-needed rest.

Sunday, 16th of August, Munich/Germany

Due to my massive sleep deficit, my protracted travels from Russia to Munich were a lot more exhausting than I had planned. At my hotel, I was picked up in a sports car by two shaded and shady Mafiosi lookalikes, but during our trip to the airport, they turned out to be polite, upstanding citizens.

Anapa airport is a rare, Tarantino-esque gem, frozen in time for the last few decades. At least, yesterday’s solid streak of bad luck seemed to have deserted me to pick another unsuspecting victim.

At check-in, the budding belle of the village must have mistaken me for an alien or an undercover VIP because – for no apparent reason and with a secret wink – she handed me a business ticket and added a voucher for the business lounge. Weakened by my temporary frailty, I almost asked for her hand in marriage.

A business lounge at this feeble airstrip? This was beyond my imagination. And what I discovered behind wooden doors was a touching attempt at high-class hospitality: a tiny, dark chamber, furnished with musty old leather armchairs, yellowing curtains and a miniscule TV. The latter showed an episode of ‘Pauli, The Mole’, surrounded by an extended Russian family, all of whom were glued to the screen.

Also part of the furnishings: a tiny bar, tended by a carefully-coiffed buxom Russian lady who looked ready to ply us with a round of drinks. Just imagine her heart-wrenchingly coy blush when I asked her for a “tea with milk and sugar” – naturally, like everyone else employed at this airport, she didn’t speak a word of English. So, with a bit of pointing and gestures, I managed to make myself understood and even received a huge pile of biscuits for my patience.

On arrival at my Munich hotel, I had another three hours to kill until my set at the Registratur. Those are the moments when you ask yourself: wouldn’t it be better to skip the nap to avoid turning into even more of a zombie? Two hours later, my mobile tore me from a web of weird dreams. I had high expectations for the upcoming party because this was the last anniversary weekend of my favourite Munich venue.

Just like Bar25 in Berlin, this club has been at the mercy of its landlord for the last three years and will finally have to make way for some ambitious project in mid-September. The Registratur’s trio infernale, David B. Walker and his two partners in crime and resident DJs Brane and Tobi, were visibly worse for wear from the last two days of birthday party mayhem, but welcomed me with open arms and plenty of upbeat motivation.

Déjà vu! There in the office with the Regi crew was Martin Buttrich, sporting his trademark mischievous grin, as if he’d never left the club after our last gig together. It turned out to be a pleasant, but not exceptional party – maybe people had already spent all of their energy during the two-day party marathon.

On the other hand, after technical problems at the preceding venues, my Awdio.com live streams were back on track. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my mixing skills had suffered from the fatigue, but sometimes you just end up hearing things, ghosts in the machine, that nobody else but you seems to notice. Well, at least the crowd didn’t share my concerns …

After my set, I stuck around to enjoy Martin Buttrich’s performance. I never get tired of just how different some producers might sound – their recordings and live sets can be miles apart. With Martin, I really appreciate his productions for the musicality and warm atmospheres they add to my sets, but when he plays live, it becomes almost frighteningly and universally functional and focused on the beats and grooves.

Afterwards, I managed to hold out for a bit longer, switching between Brane’s eclectic dancefloor set and the Registratur’s office, until I finally caved to my body’s needs and treated it to some well-deserved rest. So, happy birthday, my dear Regi and all the best for your near future. I hope you’ll find a new venue soon – Munich needs you!

10 classics for the moment part 2

LFO vs FUSE ‘Loop’

Yousef & Derrick Carter ‘Legacy’

Ron Trent ‘Afterlife’

Jimmy Edgar ‘My Beats’

A:xus ‘Callin’ U’ (Mood II Swing Dub)

Abe Duque & Blake Bater ‘Disco Nights’

Justin Martin ‘The Sad Piano’ (Charles Webster Remix)

Martin Buttrich ‘Meeting Dave Dish’

Octave One ‘Blackwater’ (Original Mix)

DJ T. ‘Bite’

DJ T. - The Inner Jukebox Worldtour 2009

August

28.08.09 -Summerspirit Festival (DE)
29.08.09 - Fabric, London (GB)

September

04.09.09 - Dekadance, Ghent (BE)
05.09.09 - Butan, Wuppertal (DE)
06.09.09 - Kaiserwetter, München (DE)
11.09.09 - not available
12.09.09 - not available
16.09.09 - Get Physical@Watergate, Berlin (DE)
18.09.09 - Electrosanne Festival, Lausanne (CH)
19.09.09 - Hive, Zürich (CH)
25.09.09 - Lux, Lissabon (PT)
26.09.09 - Inox, Tolouse (FR)
27.09.09 - Rechenzentrum, Berlin (DE)

October

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)
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

06.11.09 - 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)
27.11.09 - Gallery, Washington (USA)
28.11.09 - Asylum Afterhours, Honululu (USA)

December

04.12.09 - Zouk, Singapore (SG)
05.12.09 - 16.12.09 - Australia
16.12.09 - 31.12.09 - Asia
01.01.10 - 08.01.10 - Australia

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