A-Trak in Australia, Sept. 21 - Oct. 6, 2009

A-Trak in Australia, Day 1- 2 (Sept. 21 09)

Back again. Going down under for the 3rd time in 6 months. How crazy is that? I love it, but it looks like I'm going to have to earn this one...

I woke up early enough to finish all my packing and preparation, but just barely. I needed every single minute before I ran down and jumped in my car. Once at the airport, all was good. Had time for a good meal, sit in the lounge for a bit, relax and prepare to fly. So I go down to board at the requested time, get on the plane, I'm ready.

Turns out the plane wasn't. We got off the ground on time, but about an hour in, the pilot made an announcement that there was a problem with the cabin pressure and we had to make an emergency landing in Washington, DC. Great. Better to land than stay in the sky, but definitely inconvenient. When we landed, we were surrounded by fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and emergency service vehicle you could think of that would be at an airport. It was a little surreal and pretty bizarre. They made us stay on the runway for a little while to make sure we were safe before they let us taxi to the gate, and even then, the whole group of vehicles followed us along, and there were more at the gate. Once we pulled up, firefighters got on board to check stuff out. The captain (thankfully) neglected to tell us that the front end of the plane was filling with smoke and that there was a small fire in the cockpit. That would've caused a little panic I think...

So we're at IAD, sitting around, no one can tell us anything for about 2hrs. They actually came out and said "We don't know what to do." I'm pretty worried about making my connection to Sydney now. My 5hr stopover is evaporating before my eyes. When they finally start boarding the new plane they got us, it's a bit of a mess as it's a different model, the seats don't line up, etc... so they start handwriting some new boarding passes because the system won't let them create new passes for a flight that technically already took off. Amazing. I finally got on the plane, commandeered an exit row seat and waited. By the time it was all said and done, we had a 3.5hr delay, and I think I'm screwed for my next flight. At least they gave us free booze and meals on the new flight (not at all normal), so I can try and dull the pain a little… The highlight was the captain announcing on the PA that "Long story short, suffice to say that our first plane wasn't airworthy and it's a good thing we landed when we did. This plane should be fine." Thanks United.

Once in the air I start calculating how I'm going to make my next flight, doesn't look good. The captain confirmed that when he announced we were going to land about 20mins before my next and final flight to Sydney. To top it off, the cabin crew had no info at all about connections. So once we landed, I figured even if my bag doesn't make it, I've got to. I'm not staying at the San Francisco airport overnight. I grab my stuff before anyone else is even out of their seats and I run off the plane and keep running through the whole damn airport to the international terminal. I find the gate, there's nobody there. Except one person holding the door open for me. Incredible. I'm actually making the flight. Turns out they decided to hold it for me and a couple others, and they even waited for our bags! Unreal.

It's all starting to make sense, I get settled beside the screaming baby (which has become a regular flight fixture for me this month), have a drink and do my best to sleep for a bit. I woke up with a couple hours left, everything looked smooth. Then, about 30mins out, captain comes on "Folks, I hate to be the bearer of bad news...". We end up having to divert to Brisbane because of the crazy dust storm that hit Sydney. It was right in the thick of it. So we land in Brisbane, we have to stay on the plane, and we end up sitting there for almost 3 hrs. Could this day get any longer??? They finally let us go to "take a shot" at getting in to Sydney, and when I saw the storm from above, I understood. All the clouds were brown and orange. I've never seen anything like it. We finally made the smoothest landing ever after making the scariest descent ever and I was thrilled to finally get off the plane and go to the hotel.

When we were pulling into the city, everything was a huge cloud of red dust. Couldn't see any of the skyscrapers, traffic lights, nothing. Everything was covered in a layer of dirt. Wild. I checked in to the hotel and pretty much stayed there for most of the afternoon until it started to clear up in the evening. Then I went for coffee and sat in Hyde Park for a bit and chilled out. Eventually walked down Oxford to get some mediocre asian food and slowly went back to the hotel to relax before crashing. So happy the trek is over, but because of all the randomness and inconsistencies, my jet lag seems to be in good shape so far...

Day 3, Canberra

I woke up at one of my favourite hotels this morning, the Sheraton-on-the-Park, so already things are off to a good start. I walked down the street to my new favourite coffee spot, which I discovered yesterday, and went across the street to sit in the amazing sunshine for a little while before I had to go. With some sadness, I eventually went back to the hotel to pack quickly and get my ride to the airport. Off to Canberra.

At the airport, I met up with A-Trak as he just flew in from some dates in Japan. We hopped on the little turboprop to Canberra and in no time we were at the hotel. There's not a whole lot to do in this town (all government), so after coming to terms with the reality of that, I went to the gym and did some work in my (lame) room at the Diamant. After the gym I was feeling pretty hungry, took a look at the 4 restaurants in the hotel and just had a mild crisis moment. I can't eat in another restaurant right now. To hell with it. I want normal food. So I go off in search of a grocery store.

The first one I find killed me. I walked around the aisles for a bit, didn't recognize any brands, the wine was shit and I realized that I can't do this while living in a hotel. I had to abort... it was pretty disappointing. I kept walking around and I actually found a bigger and better grocery store. I walked in to scout it a bit and the wine selection was really good, so I walked through the aisles and I found stuff I could recognize. This is good, hopes are rising. I start making some selections, this is going well. I even ended up talking to some random guy about philosophy, religion, Shakespeare, sociology and various contradictory points of view within Darwin's publications. I'm supposed to go read chapter 5 of "The Dissent of Man". I think I actually will.

Anyways, I buy some stuff, including a really solid bottle of wine (d'Arenberg Custodian if you must know), and head back to the hotel to enjoy my little appetizer feast. After a little while, we met up for dinner in the hotel. I ordered the Spatchcock. I highly recommend it. After dinner we called it a night.

Day 4, Canberra

Woke up today with nothing to serious to take care of. Filtered through the emails and we met in the hotel cafe for breakfast. This morning I had the Savoury Pancakes. 3 thick pancakes stacked in the middle of the plate with a pile of back bacon on top. And it was all sitting in a plate full of maple syrup. It was a Canadian heart attack waiting to happen, but it was really good. The macchiato was mediocre. After food, I hit the gym, did a little work and went walking around the bustling downtown core for a little while. Found better coffee, and observed countless government lemmings going about their daily business running the capital.

The rest of the afternoon was mostly computer work, and then meeting a bunch of the festival people for dinner at the hotel. I will be sure to recommend the Spatchcock.

Tonight is also the first show of this run. It's at a university hall with Mstrkrft and Tiga, sort of out of the way, but it's also the only place anybody was out. That has to count for something. Weird crowd though… it was a 15+ show (never heard of that one…), and it was obviously one of the first shows any of these kids had ever gone to. They had no idea what they were doing or how to dance. It was sort of funny. Only downside was that it went pretty late, and we were more than ready to get out when the set was done. We stuck around for a short while, but when we got back to the hotel we crashed pretty quickly.

Day 5, Brisbane

We start getting in the swing of things now. The funny part about touring Australia is that you have to fly to every show. Cities are too far apart and you'd never make it if you were driving. So today, up early and off to the airport to fly to Brisbane. That part was pretty painless. The airport was pretty awful though. It was the equivalent of something you'd find in Gary, Indiana. Or maybe Windsor, ON. Tiny, no food, no lounge. Nasty.

The flight itself was fine, and once we landed we had a fair amount of time to kill before we had to head to the festival site. I took the opportunity to walk around and find some coffee, sat on a cafe patio for a while, talked with the locals, etc… Brisbane is an alright place actually, I don't mind it at all.

Anyways. The festival site was conveniently located across the street from the hotel, so it was no problem getting there. We walked around for a while, checked out some of the other acts, ran in to tonnes of people we knew. Good afternoon. The show went fairly well. Turns out A-Trak is headlining the main stage, so that's kind of cool. What sucked was that during the set we got hit by a dust storm. No good. It left a layer of shit on everything, and we were covered in it, inside and out. We were coughing up dust for hours after. It was really disgusting.

But the best had yet to come... Even though we were pretty tired after the show, we still had a late one to go. There was an afterparty he was scheduled to play at 1:30am. That hurts. So we eventually dragged ourselves to the club, had a terrible slice of pizza across the street before going in, and spend the rest of the night locked in a tiny hole in the wall with so much bass I couldn't see straight. It was awful. When that show was over, we made the quickest exit of all time to get back to the hotel. Tomorrow's another early one to Perth...

Day 6, Perth

So today we drag ourselves out of bed on no sleep and run to the airport for the 6hr flight to Perrrth. Or Perf. Depends on your interpretation of the accent. Our day was spent trying to fine tune our pronunciation.

When we got in we didn't have much time at all, so it was a pretty quick turnaround and off to the site again. Today we checked out a couple other acts we wanted to see, ran in to a few more friends, and before we knew it, it was showtime. And this was a good one. There were about 15,000 kids who came to check out his set and they were really over the top. It made for a great show, much better than the dustfest that was Brisbane.

We left pretty quickly after so we could get off the site before the kids did, and once back at the hotel, we just stuck around there. There was a perfectly good hotel bar that a lot of the festival folks were hanging out at, so we just joined the party.

Day 7, To Sydney

Today is just a travel day back to Sydney where we'll be for the next 4 days, just chilling. I got up a little early to go get coffee, and I had found the perfect place to check out. It was with much dismay and anger that I awoke only to discover that today is a public holiday and everything is closed! !$#@%#? I actually had time too... I went out and walked around for a while, hoping that I'd come across something but it was all pretty dismal. Back to the hotel, off to the airport and a crappy airport breakfast would have to do it. I'm really starting to hit the breaking point with airports, btw... Too many, too often. Even if I stopped flying today, I'll have averaged a flight every 5 days this year.

So we get to Sydney later in the evening, almost 9pm, and before we even get out of the airport we have plans for dinner. We got our driver to drop us at a place called Toko in Surry Hills and take our bags to the hotel for us. Gold. We ended up spending most of the night there, hanging out with Tiga, Beni, Busy P and a few other friends. Good time, good welcome to Sydney. I'm so happy.

Day 8, Sydney

Today is sort of a day off. No flight, no show, no press. Just have loads of work to catch up on from the last few days and some festival events later on. First though, I had to prioritize. I found a coffee shop not too far away so I went out for a walk, got lost for a bit but eventually found my target, Cherubini's. It was pretty solid, good bean. I sat there for a little while just reading a paper, pretending I was a local and was up date on all the news... After that it was off to the gym, then I finally got down to business.

For dinner that night there was one of many "festival bonding" events, where they just get everyone together and throw around free drinks and food. It was ok. I didn't stick around too long though. These things are always a little awkward and I just wanted to get some sleep.

Day 9, Sydney

So again, as usual, priority was getting coffee. When I was out trying to find the other place yesterday, I walked by a place that I was curious about. It was a bit closer so I decided to at least look in the door today. And it looked good. It was actually amazing, a place called The Bunker. I ended up hanging out there with people for a couple hours, talked local stuff, Canadian bands, all kinds of shit. It was great. So happy I made the decision to go in. After that it was off to the gym again, then I went out to shop a bit but came back empty handed.

For the evening, I was able to make plans with someone I hadn't seen since my first trip down under, definitely looking forward to hanging out with some great non-tour people. We ended up at a cool little wine bar that was impossible to find. I had to wait to get directions because they weren't even sure where it was, and once I somehow found the door, I had to text a password to the manager to get in. That was pretty awesome. There's some sort of prohibition era backroom covert operations going on here... Great dinner, great wine, great time. Afterwards the plan was to check out one of the side shows put on by the festival but ended up just heading back to the hotel. Figured the last thing I needed was to see another show, need a night off from festival stuff...

Day 10, Sydney

After tentative plans for breakfast with a friend fell through, the first thing I deed was head back to the cafe I discovered yesterday. I love it, feels like home - in a coffee shop sort of way. On my way over, I got a random call fro ma radio station in New Zealand that I had been dealing with to set up an A-Trak interview to support our show on Friday. Turns out the dj mis-dialed the phone number he was looking for and all of a sudden I was live on-air in Auckland, live from The Bunker in Kings Cross. Sounds sort of epic in a radio interview sort of way. That didn't last too long, but I finally made my big NZ debut. After that, while sitting down in the coffee shop, a camera crew showed up. Turns out they're filming the Australian version of Beauty and the Geek right outside the front door, and guess who's in the background, drinking coffee? That's right. I'm killing it in the South Pacific today. They disappeared after shooting a few scenes, but I stayed a the shop a little longer, shared a table with some locals, had a couple conversations. All good. One of the staff guys even brought me free samples of an insane green tea they have that costs $250/kg. It was unreal, so full of flavour. It tasted and smelled like fresh cut grass.

And then the work begins. Today we have to run over to a tv station and a radio station to record some stuff for upcoming episodes. It wasn't too painful, actually sort of fun. And we got amazing fruit smoothies across the street. The whole thing only took a couple hours and before long we were back at the hotel for a quick stop before heading out to more "festival bonding" events.

The first one was the Sydney Wildlife Park, which I had been to before. It was ok. Always fun to see kangaroos and koalas. After a terrible guide took us on a quick run through that, we stopped for a drink next door while we waited for a Harbour Cruise. I love the Harbour Cruises. This one was the most elaborate that I'd been on to date, going west of Darling Harbour, not just the standard round-the-opera-house routine. They had really good food onboard also, it was alright. After the cruise was over, there was a party at a place called Cargo. Before heading in there I disappeared to go down the street and meet a friend and a couple others for a quick bite, a quick drink and then we all headed over to the festival party for free drinks.

Well, that didn't last long. Not really the vibe we were looking for. It's been a long time since I've gone to a bar where I've had to elbow people out of the way and fight for position to order drinks. I want my rider back. It was a one drink and out scenario. We made new plans once we got out and ended up at a place called Low Bar in Surry Hills (and I actually surprised my local friends by telling them about it!). We stayed there for the rest of the night in a more normal, really cool and relaxed atmosphere, with various visitors coming in and out while we held court in the corner.

It hurt to get back to the hotel and have to pack to fly to Auckland tomorrow. I could stay here another week, feels like it's just getting started...

Day 11, Auckland, NZ

Pain is waking up at 7am to get a flight to New Zealand. This is not what I want to be doing at 7am, but hey, guess you gotta work sometimes... I sort of get everything together, we meet downstairs and get our ride to the airport. Go through everything, then the flight gets delayed for an hour and a half, but whatever. What're you gonna do? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I was so bored that I let someone from Tourism Australia interview me about my Australian experiences. There was no way I wanted to get in to why I'm here, how I travel, etc... so half my answers were made up. Nothing that would shake up the data too much I don't think... the options for multiple choice questions were fairly limited... The flight got delayed a little longer, so I was able to get some food and what turned out to be great coffee, and then finally we get on board the plane and make our way across the Tasman Sea. I think. I'll have to look a map...

Anyways, we make the fight, it's not too bad, only three hours, and go grab our bags to clear customs, etc... And this is where the fun starts. New Zealand has extremely strict laws to govern the import of food and vegetation, etc... in their country. You can't do things like bring in meat, vegetables, used bicycles, scuba tanks, you know, the obvious stuff. I had a chocolate bar with me. I put it on the counter with my stuff when I walked up to the desk. I was kindly informed that I had to declare it. So, I declared my chocolate bar. So that puts a little red mark on my declaration card which leads me to Lane #1. Lane #1 was being looked after by a gentleman who proceeded to take up the next 30 mins of our lives as we gave up our entire life stories, where we were the last few days (specifics), where we were going, what a dj show is, why dj's play late, why we were leaving after a day, who booked our flights, what led us to this point in our lives, why we both been to NZ before, the whole damn thing. If I ever publish an autobiography, I'll just get a copy of my NZ immigration file and send it to the printers. It was really insane. Fortunately no strip search or anything crazy. Just extra x-rays and swab tests.

So we get out of that mess, the promoter meets us on the other side after a worried wait, and he gets us to the hotel where we're able to chill out for a bit. An hour later, we meet with people from Serato (a dj software company) who take us to their head offices for A-Trak to check out some new products (he consults for them). To put this in perspective, Serato invented software that has allowed dj's to eliminate vinyl from touring. All music is on laptops now, and they carry vinyl control discs that are encoded to control the music on the laptop, everything goes through a hub connected by USB to the laptop. It completely revolutionized turntablism, so this is big. It's so big that we had to sign non-disclosure forms before we entered the office. We were told that we're the only 2 people that have been allowed to enter their offices since they started working on these projects about a year ago. I have no idea what's going (I'm not a dj - surprise!), but A-Trak was completely blown away by what they're up to, so that's probably a good sign. Afterwards we all went to dinner with the promoter and a couple contest winners, club staff, the usual suspects at a dinner of this nature, then back to the hotel to chill til showtime, which tonight is 2am.

After a couple hours we head to the show, which is at the Coherent bar. Small place, but good vibe, except for the jackass who kept unplugging some speakers. Caught him, got him kicked out, rest of the night was fine. We got out pretty fast after it was done because we have another early flight tomorrow.

Day 12, Melbourne

After some 4hrs of sleep we dragged ourselves out of bed and down to the cab to go to the airport. It hurt. But the flight was alright, got decent food at the airport, whatever. So we land in Melbourne, go through customs, get our bags and proceed to exit the customs area. I hand in my customs card and then I'm asked to go to Lane #1. What is it with these lanes? So I go over, a guy looks at my card and tells me I went the wrong way and to exit, so I go on my way, but then he calls back and tells me to come back. Someone else saw the card and then everything changed. I was sent down another lane where I was asked to wait for a customs agent by the interrogation room. Ok, here we go... So the agent eventually shows up, asks me what I'm doing here, tell the story and I'm brought to an examination area. Awesome. Bags on the counter, opened up, searched through, I'm patted down, touched by swabs all over. Then they ask me to take out all my bank cards and everything similar and they swab each one, so I finally ask what's going on. They tell me that they suspect me as a drug trafficker. Incredible. They swabbed all my cards looking for cocaine residue. So I see this is going down a very bad road so I start talking to them about all the travel I do, point out all the stamps in my passport, etc, etc... They tell me that in my line of work I must have to deal with drugs, which I counter by saying I tour the world, not seedy rock bars and then I explain all the stamps in my passport and how important it is for me to stay clean. After a few minutes they finally buy my story and tell me to pack up and get out. That one was a little too close. I got out, hopped in the car and we were off to the helipad.

Yes, helipad. Today before the show, A-Trak is doing promo with MSTRKRFT from a helicopter. They did a loop around the festival site and came back about 20mins later, then we went to the hotel to chill out before the show. And it's a nice one tonight. I highly recommend the Intercontintental Melbourne. It's really amazing.

Once at the site, the day became normal again. Had dinner, rebooked a couple flights for tomorrow, did the show (after driving to the stage through the crowd) and all was well. We got out really fast as we were beat after two long days in a row. We had to worry about laptop problems, which is why I had to rebook flights to fly to Sydney early tomorrow, and just needed sleep in general.

Day 13, Sydney

Flying to Sydney almost feels like I'm flying home. I've spent more time there this year than any other city but New York. I'm loving it. But there is some work to do. We came in early because we have to get a laptop repaired, it's fairly important. I've got ProCare at the Apple store, so we figure we'll show up, jump the line and be out in a hour, have the afternoon off to meet up with friends, etc... Well, turns out they don't have ProCare in Australia. This day just got really long. We were put on a standby list and it took almost 2hrs before someone saw us. Then we were sitting there for another 2hrs while the guy (who looked exactly like PC from the Mac commercials) looked at it. During this time, I got a call from the promoter who asked if we could swap set times with La Roux today (due to a medical problem). We talked it over, agreed to do it, but that meant I had to have my guy on stage in less than 2hrs. So he went back to the hotel to get his stuff and head to the festival while I waited on the laptop repair. Eventually it got sorted and I bolted to the site where I arrived about 5mins before the start of the show.

Today was pretty amazing. Even at 6pm there were well over 20,000 people watching the set. Looking out from the stage, the only thing we could see was people, all the way out to the horizon. Insane. It went really well. With the early set that day, we were actually able to hang out and see some other shows that we normally miss because they're at the same time. Checked out Erol Alkan, Tiga, The Rapture and had time leftover to go on an amusement park style ride (which I stayed off of).

After the all that we went back to the hotel to chill for a while before hitting one or two of the afterparties. I managed to squeeze in a drink in Hyde Park during that time. I love drinking in the park, nice, quiet, awesome. Eventually we headed back out, but stopped first at a place called La Campana, so I got a couple friends to come meet up with us there before we went out again. Turned out to be a pretty good time, and we should've stayed there... We went to check out one party at the Metro, which was a little lame, so we left to go to the Oxford Art Factory. There just happened to be a festival shuttle right be the door when we walked out, and I knew the guy who was already riding in it, so he held it for a minute while we got organized. Quick drive over to the Art Factory and it was surrounded by cops.

This is interesting. We get out, look around a bit and find out that a few minutes before we arrived, a cop got hit by a car when he ran across the street to break up a fight. He was still lying on the street when we got there. It was a really bad scene, and it really put a damper on the evening. We tried to get in to the club, not happening, so we decided to call it. So I said a weird goodbye to my friends and went back to the hotel feeling strangely empty and cheated of a night out. I hate leaving Sydney.

Day 14, Adelaide

Not much sleep again, so it was hard to get out and head to the airport. Just a quick flight and then straight to the hotel in Adelaide. It was actually a place I've stayed before, so I was happy that I knew the area and where to go for my coffee fix. I met up with a couple friends and we made the walk over only to find it was closed for the day as it was a public holiday in Australia. Oi. Fortunately there was a perfectly good place right down the street. After sorting that out, I went back to the hotel to work for a bit in my room, which, for some reason, had a crib in it. That's a new one...

So then out to the site. It was pretty relaxed today as it was the last show of the festival. Everyone was hanging out on stage during each other's sets, we watched sets from the crowd, it was a good time. Our set tonight was interesting... The mixer started dying almost as soon as he started, first the crossfader, then the headphone jack, and then, with 5 mins left, the laptop went schizophrenic and he had to pop in a CD to finish the show. Totally bizarre, but he handled it and no one in the crowd had a clue what was up. We got out really fast after that one and went back to the hotel.

There was a huge end of tour party tonight, which was the plan. It started out with a hotel lobby hang, then people slowly started heading over. The plan was one drink and out because of painfully early flights again, but that went south. I got out around 4:30am. It was a good one.

Day 15, 16 Travel home...

Wow. This is painful. 7am wake up call. I really wanted to curl up and die. Get to the airport, I get checked at security which has become the norm, and we go through to the flight. Simple 2hrs to Sydney, then we have to pick up our bags to recheck at a different airline. That was actually the highlight. I've been in a fight with United lately to try and get better compensation for my disastrous flights down, and they've been stonewalling me. One thing I asked for was to switch one of my flights home so I could get in earlier, which they steadfastly refused. I spoke very nicely with the woman at the counter, and less than a minute later, I was on all the flights I wanted, no charge. I guess that's a minor victory, but it was a nice touch. It wiped out a 4hr layover in San Francisco.

So we go to the lounge to kill a couple hours, take advantage of the make-your-own hot dog facilities and make our way to the flight. The 14hr leg went reasonably well, as far 14hr flights go... Once we landed, it was pick up bags, recheck, and run to another terminal. We made the next flight while it was boarding. It was a little tight, but all good. The best part was that thanks to tailwinds it was only 4h33m instead of 6hrs. Gold. Dodged a couple fake cab guys on the way out of the airport and I was in the cab going home. Sweet.

And so another trip to Australia comes to an end. Always hate to leave because it's always such a good time, but that just means I'll have to get back asap...