Josh Wink’s Awakening in Amsterdam

The Netherlands’ Awakenings festival beckons

Tip of the day for flying: how to obtain a good seat

You can either check out a site online called www.seatguru.com, a wonderful resource where you can see plane configurations for almost every airline, and seat mapping for their whole fleet of planes. Today, I didn’t. So, when at check in, I asked if the flight was full, the response was “Yes, quite full, but I can give you a exit row seat”. 

I accepted with a smile requesting the aisle. Getting on the plane I realized that there were two exit rows and I was assigned the first of the two, which I then realized as I approached the seat that (this is the important part) the row doesn’t recline. No big deal when the flight is only 90 minutes, but it’s important to keep in mind.

Here’s a couple of other Wink tips for seat selection:

1. If you get an exit row, ask if there are two in a row, and if so, request the aisle in the second row. The second row reclines. But the window seat doesn’t always have an armrest on the window side.

2. The row before the exit row doesn’t recline.

3. Bulkhead seats are good for a bit more room, as there are no seats in front to recline into your space. But, sometimes these seats are reserved for families with babies. And babies cry a lot on flights, so aren’t 100% guaranteed nap friendly. Also, these seats have arm rests that usually can’t be raised, in case you get the row to yourself and want to lay out on the seat - you can’t.

I was given this last night at the club in celebration of my new LP

4. The last row of the plane, you should know, doesn’t recline the full amount, and is two inches from the toilet, where you can hear some frightening noises and get some smells that you will unfortunately always remember.

5. Steer clear of seats next the galley (food station). Oh, and flying with US airline companies tends to be noisier than the rest of the world. Sounds weird, but it’s true!

From Milan to Amsterdam

Malpensa airport is one of my least favorite airports to fly out of in the world. On a good day, like today, it was simple - 40 minutes without traffic.

However, the time it usually takes to get out of the city onto the motorway is always crazy! It’s a kind of Italian style of driving and traffic, which I guess is always exciting.

I heard an amusing fact today, that when Italians come to America, they’re one of the most frequently ticketed foreign drivers in the United States. I laughed!

I’ve traveled before from Malpensa to Milano center and it’s taken up to three hours. A good tip then, is to always try and fly in and out of Linate if you’re going to be in Milan.

I may in another blog get into more ‘tips’ and talk about which airports of my favorites and least favorites. We producers and DJs spend most of our time on the road getting to an airport, leaving an airport, in an airport and on airplanes, so we all have our views and stories. Believe me! Usually when DJs meet up, we talk about our travel adventures and horror stories as if it were a competition as to who suffered the most with their daily expeditions.

It’s my last day for pizza in a month, so I forfeited maximum sleep to have lunch on a beautiful day with Remo at a small favorite ristorante of his.

I’m happy to have made the sensible choice of food over sleep today, as I don’t know the next time I will get to eat. See, I’m playing at the Awakenings festival tonight, and with a full day of travel, including close to a two hour drive from Amsterdam to Einhoven, I’m making sure I guarantee myself at least one proper balanced meal today.

Festival food isn’t the best, as most people know. And for me and my diet, forget about it! I tend not to eat it. I am very happy if I can get to a restaurant before the gig, but it’s usually rush-rush before doing festivals.

I feel torn about playing festivals. I love being able to meet with other artists and DJs. It’s a wonderful area to socialize with colleagues and friends amongst multiple arenas of diverse musical stages.

However, I also feel that the set times are usually compromised where DJs are only performing for 60-90 minutes and feel that they need to make the crowd go crazy by playing the biggest records and hits.

There’s nothing wrong with this however, I prefer to play a longer set and tell more of a story, creating a journey with my music rather than getting on, and banging it out. I understand this and realize I’m an entertainer and perform accordingly.

Wonderful visuals and sound along with 7,000 people made the festival a joy. There was a great line-up with Radio Slave, Carl Craig, Cari Lekebusch, Advent & Industrialyzer, A.Paul, Joey Beltram, Robert Hood, Acid Junkies, Wighnomy Brothers, Paul Ritch, Marco Carola and myself!

Marco Carola looks for his champagne and women

I got to check out Carl, Advent, Wighnomy Bros. and Marco, who all killed it, and I had a good festival ‘catch up’ with most of the artists, and tried to catch a bit of each of their sets.

On Friday in Holland, the press/government made an announcement that the country is officially in a recession, but it didn’t seem to affect the crowd at this festival. But, we’ll see how the mentality of the Dutch people throughout the year will cope with the fears and possible reality of the looming economy. I have faith.

I do believe that Holland has the most festivals per year than any other country (at least for electronic music), and it’s crazy. They’re all packed with anywhere from 5,000 to 40,000 people and there’s always top notch concert festival production.

It’s a pleasure to play for Dutch festivals. Usually the only problems at these events is that DJs and artists sometimes have travel issues and therefore the scheduled times have to change.

I indulged in the morning breakfast buffet as I staggered into the hotel at 6:25AM, and now I’m lying in my bed with a gorged stomach, happy about getting seven hours of sleep, yet wondering why I ate so much.

On another note. The reason I don’t attach too many photos to my blog posts is that I don’t have a proper camera. This will change tomorrow as I will purchase one just for this blog!