Golden Week shenanigans

Bit late I know but...

Had an enjoyable (fully paid up!) Golden Week. I already mentioned the Kemby's 8th anniversary that kicked things off on the Monday. Fast forward to Saturday and we were at Roxis again for the 3rd 3KBreaks there.

Myself and GHB aren't the most prepared of DJs so in an attempt to make things a bit easier for himself in a week in which he ran 70km (nutter), he took the decks and mixer down on Wednesday and got it all set up. Thursday night, Roxis got broken into and the mixer was nicked. Never prepare kids! Hopefully they'll be some insurance money...The night itself was a real success, especially considering it was the end of Golden Week and that is was pissing down outside. CA2 bought along Sugi (pictured) to spin some broken beats at the beginning of the night. Had no idea what broken beats were but they turned out to be housey/breaksy/funky beats. Very nice guy, Sugi and his mates know how to have a good time. He plays every Thursday at Commune if anyone is interested in checking out the broken beat sound.

Rewind (selector) a couple of days and I also spent a few days in Fukuoka and Nagasaki. I've been to Fukuoka before, it's very nice, you should go. Nice people, nice ramen and very cool places to wander about like Daimyo. I went to Nagasaki for the day so completing my Peace Park pair. It's funny how I can live in Hiroshima and yet know so little about Nagasaki. Bomb history aside, it's a very pleasant place, and quite strange for a Japanese city in that they built on the mountain-sides. Felt almost European. Nagasaki is famous (amongst other things) for being the first port opened to foreigners (I'm paraphrasing here, can't be arsed to check the details) some time ago. Mostly Dutch and Portugese it also means there's loads of churches all over the place, which probably influenced the naming of this car park.

So, fun over, it's back to work (not such a bad thing) and wondering how to shift this waist I seem to have developed.

SONGS OF PRAISE (WITH SUBTITLES)

been trying to post this for ages.....better work this time

grrrrrr

Hisashiburi

For various reasons I haven't had much of a heart for blogging recently but I thought I should try and get back in the saddle, if only, to try and convince the 2 of you reading to come down to Roxis next Saturday for the 3rd 3KBreaks. The last one was a lot of fun so hopefully we can build from that.

What else has been going on? Well, a couple of weekends ago DJ Kentaro was in town. One of my acclaimed keitai videos of the man himself can be seen right here. He was ofcourse very very good, and I was amazed to see him keep it up for at least an hour until he started mixing some drum and bass. Having said that, dance music it ain't and it does lead to a crowd made up of mostly head nodders. Very happy to have seen him in the flesh though.

I was amazed that I was the only noticeably foreign punter there. I was talking about this last night with a friend. When I first came to Hiroshima, at events like this there would always be a healthy group of gaijin but recently people seem to have disappeared. It seems most these days are just happy to get pissed up and go to the usual venues. It's a great shame. Tokyo and Osaka Hiroshima ain't but there are some great nights out to be had if you scratch the surface.

Talking of which, last night's Kemby's 8th anniversary turned out to be great fun. I was wondering whether agreeing to DJ there had been a good idea or not - 8 hours for 6 bands and 4 DJs but despite playing tunes whilst bands tuned up it all went really well and hopefully a few new faces might find their way to Roxis because of it. Best of all was the Taiko group whose name I criminally didn't get. Check out some of their antics on my BlipTV site. Is there any better Japanese 'culture'? I don't think so. Kabuki schmabuki. They created a fantastic atmosphere and I was a bit ashamed to hit play when they had finished. I did enjoy triggering samples as Saemi was trying to MC though ;) Again though, the crowd seemed distinctly different to a usual Kemby's crowd and apart from a group of some of the most obnoxious, tragically unfunny foreigners I have come across in a very long time, the crowd seemed to be mostly Japanese. By the end of the night there was a lot of illegal activity going on (dancing) and a lot of very happy very knackered staff.

One special otsukare to Nochi though who had the nightmare task of doing the sound for all those bands and DJs and even found time (and energy) to DJ at the end. And all with a smile on his face, as always.

Finally, I put a mix up on Yousendit which I think can be downloaded 25 times. Lots of MCs, lots of bass, and quite a lot of tunes in 30 minutes. So stick that in your ipod and smoke it.