Danny Is My Friend

I just got a new music demo mix put together for the website this weekend. This is the first one that I’ve had time to do in over half a year, so it’s long overdue. This one is also pretty unique. Every other studio mix that I’ve done in the past was recorded using a pair of turntables, with vinyl records, but this is the first mix that I’ve ever done using music on CD’s. For equipment, I used a Pioneer CDJ-200 and a CDJ-1000MK3 for CD players, a Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, and I recorded the audio into Adobe Audition 2.0, with mastering & compression done in Cubase Sx.



The title is kind of random. I went onto the Exploding Dog website to find a graphic to use for the front cover of the CD case, and the very first one that I looked at was called “Danny Is My Friend.” Usually I go through hundreds of files before I find one that I like, but this one had an interesting graphic, and since two of the tracks on the CD are by producers whose first names are Danny, I thought I’d use it. Thanks to Sam Brown for his artistic design – his website has a ton of funny drawings on it.

All music was sourced from the Richmond Records Pool, so it's a mix of tribal and progressive house music, not top-40. In the past, if I made a studio mix, you could count on hearing most of those same tracks if I played at a live show. However, I’m trying to get away from that trend, so my live shows will be a little more interesting for people who have already heard my mixes from the website. Accordingly, this mix is a bit more abstract and less danceable in some places, but great for listening to when you’re going for a drive, working out, cleaning up around the house, or anything like that. I’m going to try to focus on saving the more danceable tracks for sets that I play at clubs and parties. The track listings are below, with a little bit of info about each producer, where I could find it:

Track 01: Matt Cerf, "Clearwater."
Matt originally went to McGill for agricultural engineering, but decided to move into music production instead. Now based in Los Angelos, Matt has had tracks in play on Quebec’s Music Plus network, and has released productions on labels such as Baroque, Armada, Somatic Sense, DeepBlue, and Sirup. More info about Matt can be seen at www.myspace.com/mattcerf. I like this track because of the slow and quiet introduction, which builds pretty slowly with a sporadic breakbeat until a steady 4/4 beat finally comes in with just a couple minutes left in the song. A good track to use as an opener.

Track 02: Chiba Unit vs David Phillips, "Unforgettable Time." [Desert Dwellers Remix].
Chiba Unit is a collaboration between producers David Phillips (www.thedjlist.com/djs/david_phillips) of Germany and Marcel Best (www.thedjlist.com/djs/marcelbest) of Switzerland. This track is very unique due to the vocals and the strange timing syncopations.

Track 03: Alejandro Rado, "The Dream."
Alejandro is a DJ and producer from Argentina with a regular radio show on www.tribalmixes.org. You can check out his MySpace page at www.myspace.com/alerado. This track has some trance influences, and it reminds me of an older tracks from the late 1990's, which I think might have been called "Arms Of Orion" by the Tea Freaks.

Track 04: Christian Duran, "Madreselva" [Roman Lieske 2007 Remix].
Christian is a Spanish producer who has DJ residencies at a number of clubs in Madrid & Valencia. Madreselva was originally released in 2004, and enjoyed quite a bit of chart success at the time, but I enjoyed this 2007 remix by Roman Lieske. MySpace: www.myspace.com/christianduran. Another memorable track due to the vocals. Incidentally, there are a lot of Spanish vocals on this mix, although that was more by accident than design.

Track 05: Javith, Salazar, & Gil, "Kukenan" [Tribal Remix].
Venezuelan producer Eduardo Javith (www.eduardojavith.com) has worked on productions with well-known names such as Chus, Marcello Castelli, and Bob Sinclair. I really don’t know much at all about Salazar & Gil.

Track 06: Zur-Face, "Manhattan Grooves" [Original].
Zur-Face is a pair of guys living in Bogota, Columbia, with a residency at that city’s well-known Theatron club. They’ve worked alongside other producers such as Jose Acosta, Eduardo Perez, and DC Project, and recently had a track, “Cosmopolitan Drink,” appearing on Global Underground’s Paris mix by Nick Warren (GU30). MySpace: www.myspace.com/zurface. I really like the work that Zur-Face has done, both on their own tracks and on remixes of other people tracks. I’ll probably be using their remixes in my sets fairly often.

Track 07: Danny Tuval & Vic, "La Caress" [Zur-Face Enchantement Spagnol Mix].
Danny Tuval is one of Israel’s most well-known DJ’s, having residencies at clubs in Eilat & Tel Aviv, and has shared the decks with notable DJ’s such as Junior Vasquez, Paul Okenfold, Nick Waren, Satoshi Tomiie, and Tarrantella. More info here: www.dannytuval.com/index6.htm.

Track 08: Mentalman, "Sick" [Original].
I can’t find any information about this producer. I like the track though.

Track 09: Danny Teneglia, "Dibiza" [Chus & Ceballos Midnite X-Press Mix].
I don’t even know where to begin. Danny Teneglia is unquestionably the biggest name on this demo. Originally from New York, Danny has held residencies at some of the world best-known nightclubs, and has two Global Underground mixes to his name. If there was one DJ that I could ever see performing live, it would be this man. Go to his website and look at his personal discography, and you’ll be blown away by the work that he’s done over the past two decades. Website: http://www.dannytenaglia.com.

Track 10: Tarot feat Kasey Ryan, "Conscious."
Tarot (Taro Fujita) grew up in Tokyo, but studied audio engineering in New York, before he moved back to Japan. He has collaborated with Kasey Ryan on other works too, such as “Simple Things,” a track he produced with Bob Marbach. MySpace: www.myspace.com/tarotrecords. This is the only track on the mix with any significant amount of vocals in English.

Go here to see the web page where you can download the covers or the mix itself. This is an MP3 mix, 116 megabytes in size, 64 minutes of audio, encoded at 256 kbps. I hope you enjoy it ...

Richmond Record Pool

Being a DJ, one of the things that I am constantly doing is looking for new music to play in my sets and mixes. One of my best sources for new music these days is the Richmond Record Pool. For those of you who aren’t familiar with how record pools work, what essentially happens is that a director for the pool works full-time to collect new tracks from various record labels all over the world. Each pool is targeted to a specific target audience or genre, so for example, the director for a pool specializing in house music wouldn’t be looking for new tracks from rock bands. And this is a two-way operation – the record companies work with the pool directors to distribute the right music to the right people. Anyway, each pool has a group of members (DJ’s) and every month, the director of the pool sends copies of all the new music out to all of the DJ’s in the pool. These DJ’s pay a small monthly service fee for belonging to the pool, to cover pool expenses and a small remuneration for the director. The DJ’s then review all the new music and provide feedback to the record labels about each track. The labels benefit from getting useful feedback about the production on each track, from people who are experts in the field. They also get the benefit of having the DJ’s promote their favorite new tracks in the clubs, which eventually means better sales for some of these tracks once the general public starts hearing the music. The DJ’s benefit too, because it gives them a big advantage in getting new music (at a very low cost), usually long before it is available to the general public. Not everybody is allowed to become a part of these pools. The whole point isn’t to distribute the music to the average Joe-on-the-street; a pool’s goal is to get the music to the most influential people in the industry.

The Richmond Record Pool has about thirty DJ’s as members. All are Canadian, and this particular pool targets “progressive house” and “club house” music (my description), and they're also quickly expanding the amount of "tech house" and "electro" that they service to members. The DJ’s live in various urban centers across Canada (except for myself). Nick Nonsense and I are the only Atlantic Canadians that belong to the pool, and there is at least one DJ from Montreal, but most of the rest are from Ontario and the West Coast. The pool is administered by director Josh Bowman, who usually sends out between 150 and 250 tracks to the DJ’s in each monthly shipment. Here’s a link to the pool website:
http://www.richmondrecords.com

Incidentally, I’m actually a member of the Pool East organization too, which is a Halifax-based pool that distributes music to thirty bars & DJ’s around Atlantic Canada. The music that I get from that pool is more geared to a Top-40 crowd, which is good for the university Pub. There is some overlap between the pools, and I sometimes use music that I’ve learned about from Pool East in my own sets at other venues.

Anyway, since I’m reviewing the RRP music every month, and since my main blog (disregarding the Facebook feed) originates from my DJ website, I’m going to try to put a posting up every month with a listing of my favorite new pool tracks from the month. After all, I should talk about music occasionally. Most of the Facebook readers may not be interested in this info, but a lot of my normal blog readers will be. In these posts, I’m basically planning to separate the tracks that I like into three categories:
1. Live Sets – Tracks that I would play in a live set in a club or at a party, to a busy dancefloor. A fair number of them will have vocals, and I’ll usually be playing them at speeds of between 130-134 beats per minute.
2. Warmup Sets – Tracks that I would play earlier in the evening, before the dancefloor gets too crowded. There will be less energy to these songs, and I’ll usually play them around 126-129 bpm. Not many vocals, but interesting music nonetheless, with a consistent back-beat.
3. Studio Mixes – Tracks that I would put into studio recordings that I make to hand out as demos, or to put on my website. Some of these songs might be tracks that could be included in a live show or a warmup set, but I tend to pick more unique songs for my studio mixes nowadays, with more frequent breakdowns in the middle of the tracks, etc. If I’m listening to a studio mix, I’ll usually do it when I’m working out or driving someplace by myself, so I don’t mind the breakdowns. In contrast, I try to avoid playing too many tracks with long breakdowns when I have a crowd on the dancefloor, so they don’t lose their energy.

Since I normally play progressive house tracks in my sets, with a little bit of house if it isn’t too frivilous and bouncy, my monthly favorites will fall into that style of music. There are often songs in the monthly listings that I think would be great house hits in a top-40 oriented club, but I might not pick those for my own sets. Also, sometimes there will be more than one mix for a particular song. For the non-DJ’s, a different “mix” just means a different version of a song. Sometimes, mixes can be very similar to each other, and other times, they can sound like almost entirely different songs. You’ll eventually notice that sometimes, I’ll pick one mix of a particular song for use in a live set (maybe a vocal mix or “vox” mix), whereas I’ll use a different mix of that same song in a warmup set (maybe an instrumental or “dub” mix, which doesn’t have nearly as much for vocals).

Anyway, here are my picks from the August 2007 Richmond Record Pool collection:

Warmup Tracks:
- Avalon Superstar, “So Alive” (Boston Thunder Instrumental)
- Cadatta, “Waiting For T” (Original Mix)
- DJ Chus meets Pete Tha Zouk, “There Is A God” (Original Stereo Productions Mix)
- Jay Cox, “Panda Ear Muffs” (Original Mix)
- Masque, “Cafe Amargo” (Original Mix)
- Masque, “Moon Bathing” (Original Mix)
- Mindskap, “Twist ‘n’ Shout” (Original Tribal Mix)
- Medway, “Trauma” (Chris Micali Mix)
- Mikel Curcio, “Pain” (Nino Anthony Remix)
- Paul Bowen, “Dirty Weekend” (Disclosure Project Mix)
- Squash 84, “Neon” (Original Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (Pacemaker Dub)

Studio Mixes:
- Medway, “Trauma” (Benz & MD Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (Spin Science Remix)
- Ogi Gee Cash & Synchronized, “The Hype” (Original Mix)

Live Sets:
- Avalon Superstar, “So Alive” (Playmaker Dub Mix)
- Karl G, “Crossfire 2007” (Original Mix)
- Levon Yves Eaux & Luke Star, “Fashionized” (Original Mix)
- Nick Fiorucci feat Kelly Malbasa, “Every Time You Move” (Jerome’s Mix)
- Neil Quigley & Nick Muir, “Feedback From The City” (DJ Meri Remix)
- Ogi Gee Cash & Synchronized, “The Hype” (Nicholas Van Orten Remix)

Some Favorite Songs

I guess that a lot of people reading this know that I'm working in northern Alberta right now, on a contract for a pretty large pulp/lumber company (West Fraser Hinton). I worked the same contract last year, and it wasn't a great one at all, so I wasn't completely keen to come back again this year. The prices were low, the weather was poor, the information provided about the blocks was disorganized, and we lived in a world of mud for two months. But I'm back again, and things are going FAR better this year. I didn't think I'd like it here at all, but I swear I'm on the verge.

Someone asked me the other day what my favorite songs were. That’s a pretty hard question to answer, since it depends on my mood. When I’m DJ’ing, I usually play progressive house/electronica dance tracks. But if I’m listening to music on my own, I rarely listen to dance music, except as research. If I had to pick my favorite upbeat music to listen to, and I was limited to something like a set of five bands that I had to listen to over and over again for the next twenty years on a deserted island, I’d go with Led Zeppelin (first four albums only), Rush (early albums up to Power Windows), The Tragically Hip (from their second album up until Phantom Power), Neil Young (acoustic and electric both), and Genesis (from the “Foxtrot” to “Abacab” albums only). You’ll notice that those five picks have a tremendous amount of music released, and a huge variety of styles, both individually and as a group.

However, the question wasn’t what my favorite bands are; it was to pick a list of my favorite songs. That list changes all the time, but for today, I’m going to come up with a top ten. These songs are mostly acoustic – it’s not that I like quiet music more, but if I’m going to pick a song by any artist that stands out, I find it is usually the quieter songs that really make an impact. For instance, the Hip and Led Zeppelin have dozens of unforgettable rock hits, but I find it hard to pick a “best track” from either group. So here’s my list. I’ve picked some songs for their specific lyrics, some for their guitar or piano work, and some that aren’t even really outstanding songs, they just happen to be ones I like to listen to over and over:

1. Motorcycle, “Imagination” – the first couple picks are easy, trying to find the songs I love listening to the most right now. This track is actually by Gabriel & Dresden (of dance/electronica fame) with Jes Brieden singing. The acoustic version of this song is has an extremely simple musical backbone, but if you listen closely, the production work behind it is fairly complex, and I absolutely love Jes’ voice. I haven’t actually met her in person, but I’ll never forget her voice. This track is one that I’ve only known for about a year.

2. Blue Rodeo, “Dark Angel” – this one is sung by Greg Keelor, with Sarah McLachlan doing backing vocals. From the “Five Days in July” album. Very moody, very introspective, very free-wheeling timing and chord changes on the piano.

3. Neil Young, “Crime In The City” – there are a ton of quieter Neil Young songs that I could have picked, such as “The Old Laughing Lady,” “Thrasher,” “Needle & The Damage Done,” and “The Campaigner.” The reason I like “Crime In The City” best right now is partly because it is a long song (eight or nine minutes, I think), and partly because of the way he intermixes the acoustic guitar and sax solos (I’m talking about the acoustic version from the “Freedom” album, not the electric version from “Weld”), and mostly because of the sexy drum beat.

4. Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars” – another Gabriel & Dresden tie-in, since they’ve done a dance remix of this (I think it was them) which I’ve heard them play in a few of their sets. I think this was also featured in Gray’s Anatomy. Anyway, it’s a pretty powerful song (although to be honest, I like the G&D remix better than the original).

5. Kansas, “Dust In The Wind” – this is the first “adult” song that I consciously ever remembering hearing on the radio when I was young, if you disregard children’s songs such as “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “The Candyman,” and disregard Christmas music. I remember a friend (Douglas Killam) and I riding in the back of my father’s pickup truck, moving a bed from my grandmother’s house in Tatamagouche to our house in Truro, and the two of us trying to sing this song. Gabriel & Dresden did a dance remix of this one too, but I’ll be honest – I didn’t really like it, and much prefer the original. The lyrics for this song are the type of lyrics that are hard to forget because of their outlook on life. This is the kind of song that I wouldn’t normally pick to listen to anymore, off the top of my head, but when I hear it, I definitely say “that’s going on the top ten list.”

6. Mike Allison, “Leavin’ In The Morning” – yes, I’m including a song by my friend Mike Allison, because I’ve always thought this track should be known internationally. I’ve even thought about trying to buy the rights to the song from him and re-recording and releasing it, but I could never do the vocals justice.

7. Matt Minglewood, “Can’t You See” – this song was originally by Toy Caldwell, I think, and has also been covered by Waylon Jenning, but I like Matt’s version the best. Matt Minglewood is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (not too far from where I grew up), and I’ve heard him perform this song live several times at the local tavern in my town. Someday, I’m going to record an entire album of covers of some of my favorite songs, and with multi-track recording I can play the drums, bass, guitar, and piano on each track (although I will probably ask someone else to do the lead vocals). This song is definitely going to be on that album. This song was originally written as a country/Deep South song, but the way Matt sings it, it seems like it was originally written about “a farm boy from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.”

8. Jonathan Clark, “When I Grow Old” – I may be cheating to put this particular song on my list, since I wrote it myself. Usually, with songs I’ve written or DJ mixes that I’ve put together, after I’ve recorded them, I never want to hear them again. This song is an exception. I wrote it back in February, and Mike Allison recorded a version for me, and I still can’t forget it or get it out of my head. There are no public recordings of this track available yet, so you won’t be able to listen to it for another two months, but in August I’ll make a version available here from my websites, once we re-record it properly. You’ll probably see more info about this particular song in my blog in a few months, since we’ve already started filming a video for this song, for professional release within Canada and on the Net.

9. Stan Rogers, “Forty-Five Years” – well who doesn’t like Stan Rogers? Stan was from Ontario, but he’s a Maritimer at heart. It seems that if you really want to go down in musical history, you need to die in an airplane crash (think about them all: Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, some members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jim Croce, Ritchie Valens, Patsy Cline, Aaliyah, and John Denver). Stan Rogers died in an airplane accident, although the plane was actually on the ground at the time (I guess most planes eventually are, if they crash). Anyway, his plane caught on fire at the Cincinatti Airport – he was 33 at the time. Stan is also famous for his recording of Barrett’s Privateers, a fine Nova Scotian drinking song (I think I first learned this while heavily intoxicated on a Saturday afternoon at Peddlar’s Pub in Halifax).

10. Eagles, “Wasted Time” – I think Don Henley wrote this after he ended an affair with Lorree Rodkin, if I remember correctly. Anyway, it’s one of my favorite piano tracks of all time, with pretty complex chord changes and progressions, and it’s a song I’ve always loved to play on the piano as an instrumental (I find that I can’t sing the words properly at the same time, for some reason, because my mind wants to go in two different directions with the timing). And it’s a good bit of advice – even experiences that don’t turn out the way you expect can usually teach you something positive, which means that they weren’t really a waste of time.

Well, that’s my “top ten favorite songs” list for today. Some of these tracks will remain on it for years, and others may be replaced next week ...

Seattle and Vancouver

I spent a few days in Seattle last week, and then a couple more in Vancouver.

On Thursday afternoon, I arrived in Seattle. Tim Carstons picked me up at the airport, and got me to a friend's place that I was staying at. Unfortunately, that friend (Robert Walker) was in New Zealand at the time, so I didn't get to see him.

On Thursday evening, I played a full show (three hours) at En, a nice Japanese bar & restaurant that has an outlet in Seattle and another location in Tokyo. I usually play in clubs that don't serve food, so it was an interesting change get a good meal while I was playing. On Friday night, Tim took me sight-seeing for a bit and I got a chance to go to the top of the Seattle Needle, which had a spectacular view. After that, we went back to En, and I played again. However, Friday night was just a short set, and two other DJ's played too, so I actually got to sit down and enjoy someone else playing for a change.

On Saturday, I flew to Vancouver, where I spent the weekend with Shawn Cole. Shawn now owns the Lab Monkey recording studio, and he also teaches a few courses at one of the sound engineering schools in the city. Shawn used to be my roommate quite a few years ago, and was a DJ at the MTA Pub and my Assistant Manager for a while. On Saturday evening, we hit the studio and had a little bit of a party. On Sunday, Shawn had to record a group (Bend Sinister) at the Mushroom Studio, so I spent the afternoon and evening at the studio with him.

I had a flight back to Toronto late Sunday night, but unfortunately, that plane got delayed coming from Mexico, so I missed my connection in Toronto. There was chaos at the Toronto airport. Air Canada had overbooked several flights, and people were getting bumped everywhere. Now I can't fault Air Canada for overbooking a flight slightly, because that's a reasonable business decision since there are usually a couple of no-shows on each flight. However, some of these flights had apparently been over-booked by several dozen people, and a lot of the people in the airport were extremely pissed. Add to that the fact that it was snowing, and the airport was also having problems de-icing enough planes, and it turned into a generally bad day for air travel. Luckily, I am the most patient traveller in the world, so I just bought a couple books and hung out in the corner.

Throughout the day, I managed to get bumped off seven different flights. The last one was a bit of a disappointment - I was actually given the very last seat on the plane, on standby, and I was a couple feet through the gate when the passenger who owned my seat showed up at the last second and I got called back. I was a little annoyed at that, since there were no flights open on Tuesday, which meant that my choices were either to spend another day and a half in the airport, or to take a flight to Saint John and hitch-hike home in the middle of the night (since the bus station would be closed by the time I arrived). I had asked for a seat on the Saint John flight earlier in the afternoon, just to be safe, and my luggage was checked for that flight. However, after I got pulled away from the seventh Moncton flight, the agent said to hold on, because there was one more flight to Moncton that I hadn't known about. When that flight finally got ready to go, once again a bunch of standby people got the first half-dozen empty seats, then my name was once again called for the very last seat. How's that for luck?

Now I just have to wait for my luggage to arrive from Saint John, although I always take my records as a carry-on so I don't have to worry about losing my music or headphones.

Tokyo, Japan

After visiting Osaka, I spent a few days in Tokyo. While I was there, I stayed with Kevin Snedker, a good friend of mine who used to be the Assistant Manager at the MTA Pub while he was at university. Kevin has been teaching English into Tokyo for the past couple of years.

We took the Shinkansen (the bullet train) from Osaka on Monday morning, and ended up having drinks on the train to get the trip started. When we got to Tokyo, we didn’t have anything planned until supper, so we mostly relaxed for the afternoon. After supper, we walked around the city for a while, then we spent several hours having dinner and drinks at The Lockup, and I met several of Kevin and Danielle’s friends. Several of them were Canadians or Australians who are working for a company called Nova, teaching English in Japan, and I also met Danielle’s friend Yuka.

Naturally, I didn’t get to sleep until about 7am, so I got nothing accomplished on Tuesday morning. However, in the afternoon, I walked around Tokyo, and Kevin took me to the Meiji Shrine. This was a large park area in the middle of Tokyo, with a large Shinto shrine in the middle. After Meiji, we spent several hours walking around the Electronics District, then went for dinner on the 49th floor of the fourth tallest building in the city. The view was incredible, and I was lucky enough to get some really good time-exposure photos of Tokyo at night. After dinner, we went to a couple bars, and again, stayed up pretty much all night.

On Wednesday, I slept for most of the morning and afternoon. I played at Velours that night, which was a fashion bar with a very high-class clientele. The venue was gorgeous, with chandeliers and comfortable couches everywhere, and the place was full of fashion models and other notable people. I played from 1:30am to 4:00am, and it was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a show, just because the venue was so different than most of the several dozen other places that I've played in.

Here are some photos from the trip:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_tokyo2007a.html

Unfortunately, on Thursday, I had to get ready to move on. The four-hour trip to the airport in the afternoon was a bit of an adventure, but I made the plane with a little bit of time to spare. The neat thing about the flight was that I left Tokyo on Thursday at supper, and I was booked to DJ in Seattle on Thursday evening. However, flying across the International Date Line moved me backwards by a day, so I arrived in Seattle at lunch on Thursday.

More notes to come shortly about Seattle and Vancouver …

Osaka, Japan

I flew to Osaka (Japan) this past weekend for a show. Although I’ve travelled pretty extensively before, this is my first time in Asia, so it’s been a great adventure so far.

I started by trying to fly to San Francisco for a visit on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I flew through Montreal and then Chicago. I got to Chicago with no problems, but when I arrived there, I found out that there had been a huge snowstorm there the previous day, which had cancelled over a thousand flights. It was really nice outside at the time, with very little snow on the ground, so I didn’t really think that there were going to be any problems. However, when I got onto the plane, the airline eventually said that they couldn’t fly us to San Francisco because there were no pilots left in the airport – the pilots for our flight had been diverted to fly another plane earlier, to help catch up on the backlog of stranded passengers.

This didn’t seem like it would be a problem – they said that they were going to fly in a different crew from New York to take our plane to San Francisco, so the delay would only be a few hours. However, by this time, the storm had moved so it was over New York, which meant that it took a couple hours longer than expected for that crew to get out of LaGuardia. By the time they arrived in Chicago, the airline decided that those pilots couldn’t take our plane to San Francisco, because it would put them over their daily flight time limit. Our entire flight ended up getting cancelled, which was a disaster because that put all of us into the huge pool of people waiting to fly stand-by. I then ended up getting bumped off or passed over for the next four flights to San Francisco, as the airline tried to slowly catch up on the backlog.

In the end, I did get to San Francisco, but not until after midnight (about twelve hours later than expected). I was a little disappointed by that, because that was the stop on the trip that I was looking forward to the most. However, on a positive note, it was the one night on the trip where I could mostly easily deal with not showing up. Hopefully I’ll be able to reschedule for a visit later this spring, or maybe right after the summer ends.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, and the flights to Vancouver and then Japan were uneventful. We crossed the International Date Line, so it suddenly became Friday afternoon instead of Thursday afternoon. I was a bit nervous getting into the airport because my passport was only valid for two more months and Japan requires a foreigner’s passport to be valid for six months from the time of arrival. However, I had the itinerary to prove that I had a flight already booked to leave the country a week later, so that didn’t turn out to be a problem. Dan Elliot from the Oasis Lounge picked me up at the airport, and took me directly to his club, where I started to orient myself to the Japanese culture. A few hours later, a friend of mine (Ian Warney) showed up. Ian is a DJ and is living in Osaka teaching English. We went out for a night on the town, and I met a bunch of people that evening.

On Saturday, I spent the day touring around Osaka, and taking photos. That evening, I played at Oasis, which turned out to be a very fun night. Ian found me again on Sunday night and we went out for more sightseeing, and then we ate at a nice restaurant in a skyscraper overlooking Osaka.

So far, Japan has been great. There are far fewer foreigners here than I had imagined, but that’s about the only real surprise. The only big challenge so far has been trying to figure out the subway system. I’ve been on subways all around the world (London, New York, Paris, Moscow, and a ton of other smaller cities) but the Osaka subway has been the most confusing that I’ve seen, by far. The fare varies depending on how far you are going, and you have to buy a ticket getting on, then electronic gates scan it as you leave your destination station and don’t let you out if you didn’t pay the right fare. If you didn’t pay enough, you have to go back to another machine and do a “fare adjust” on the ticket. The Osaka (and Toyko) subway systems are not one large system, but instead are a whole bunch of separate lines run by different companies, so transfers can get complicated with ticket changes. Finally, there are very few signs in English, to make things even more confusing. However, after a few days, it was starting to make sense to me. Some of the stations are incredibly busy though – there is one station which has an average of three MILLION people per day passing through it. That’s pretty impressive, considering that the subways shut down at 12:30am and don’t start again until 5:30am.

A few other interesting notes so far:
- The cities are very clean compared to North American cities.
- There is apparently very, very little crime in Japan, and people feel completely safe and comfortable walking around anywhere in the cities.
- I have only seen a few children in the entire time I’ve been here – the Japanese must hide them away somewhere.
- I thought that I might get away with not running into anyone I knew during my visit, but on Sunday night a friend who had gone to university (Kyohei) saw me downtown and luckily had the time to spend an hour or so touring with us. That was an interesting coincidence, considering that Osaka is pretty big (nine million people, I think).
- There are far fewer Western chains than I had expected (lots of Starbucks & MacDonald’s and KFC, but that’s about it).
- A small but noticeable percentage of the population wear face masks in public and while working, either to limit the spread of diseases, or to protect them from smog & allergies.
- The amount of seafood is astounding – it is available everywhere, even as snack food in convenience stores.

Needless to say, I’ve been able to take a ton of interesting photos so far. I’ve got two photo pages up on my website now from the Osaka portion of my trip, and I’ve tried to add many more observations about Japan in the captions to the photos. Here is a link to the Osaka photo pages:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_osaka2007a.html

After I left Osaka on Monday morning, I had three days scheduled in Tokyo, so I’ll write more about that part of the trip in a few days.

Benny Benassi

I went to a Benny Benassi show in Halifax last night, at Club Rain. This wasn't really a DJ-oriented trip; I took a bunch of the Pub staff with me and we went down to enjoy the show. Here are the photos:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_benassi2007.html

I've been pretty slack with blog posts lately, since I've been so busy in the past four weeks. I'm leaving on Wednesday morning for a short tour, and I'll be visiting San Francisco, Osaka, Tokyo, Seattle, and Vancouver. I'll try to get as many photos as I can at each show, and hopefully I'll be able to take the mini-disc and record all of the sets for my website.