Indeed it is, but I dunno how much dogigng he did with his low quality download collection of random selections from whoever happened to pass through his house and stick something on youtube...
In fact this guy came to visit us in Lisbon. His visit coincided with a night that Liza and I were doing at a venue called Eka Palace. It's a kinda dodgy place with a sort of squat party vibe, and at that point it was the main carry-on type venue in Lisbon in that every Friday and Saturday it had two nights, the first would be midnight until six and the second was from 6am to 1pm or so. And basically everyone who still wanted to party in the morning in Lisbon would tend to rock up there. It had three rooms; one was a dark space with the turntables and a space for dancing, the second room was the bar, and the third was pretty much used for buying, selling and taking drugs as far as I could tell.
Anyway, we had somehow managed to wangle a night there despite being new in Lisbon, but we had the first night, from midnight until six - and it was really a bit of a waste of time cos people only saw this venue as an after-party venue and, although the latter party was pretty much guaranteed packed out, almost no-one came there during the night. But in another way it was kinda good cos people would start rocking up for the latter party from about four or five am and cos we were still in charge at that point and we took the money from the door until six am it was actually quite lucrative for us.
We only did it a few times but what happened each time was that we would get there about midnight and just sit there putting records on in this pretty big empty club for several hours with almost no-one there at all except the odd friend. From about four am people would start dribbling in and for the last hour or so it would actually be a lot of fun, there were a load of drugged up nutters wanting to party and it was kinda cool to play somewhat left field music to these guys. And also, the place was big enough that we usually ended taking four or five hundred euros on the door.
So it was a strange night that in a way almost made me feel guilty as we did no real work, had fun playing to a crowd that wasn't ours and took a ridiculously high sum (for Portugal) on the door. Of course waiting in the empty club for four hours or so at the start was kinda boring of course, but we always had a few friends there and had a few beers, it was ok.
And then, like I said, our friend came to stay with us for a few days. And we said "Oh, by the way, while you're here we're doing this night at Eka Palace if you wanna come along" and he said "You know what, I just happen to have brought my controller with me, do you reckon I could do the warm up?"
Just happened to bring your controller eh? That is literally the least surprising thing that has ever happened in my entire life. And in fact from this point every single thing is entirely predictable. He wants to do the warm-up, I don't really give a fuck, like I say no-one is there at that time, what does it matter who plays to an empty room? Liza is of courser much more resistant, she thinks he'll still find some way to fuck it up. Whatever, in the end we say "Look mate, you can do the warm-up, you can play from 1200 until 0300, but honestly, there is gonna be no-one there, no-one. That's not an exaggeration or a figure of speech or anything like that, it's just me telling you that there will be no-one there until 4am, so if you want to you can play until three... just keep it chilled and don't piss off the bar-staff. And the thing is right, at the end there will be an hour, maybe ninety minutes when some people come and we're gonna be playing then. Cos it's our night and we wangled this venue and did the posters and whatever, all the work involved has come from us and there is gonna be a small amount of fun to be had at the end of the night. At that point we're gonna be playing so please don't ask to play, no emotional blackmail about how there was no-one there when you played, none of that I've got this one tune that will really kill it now business, just please don't ask me to play at the end."
And so he's like "Yeah, great, I won't let you down guys" - and straight away I knew it was gonna be a problem of course. I'm saying "Honestly mate it's not like that, there will be NO-ONE there while you play, don't think about it too much, it will be a waste of time, please, just relax".
But by now the damage is done, I cannot get any sense into him, in fact for the next few days until the party it's impossible to talk to him cos he's wrapped up in his laptop with his headphones in, meticulously crafting every single beat of his three hour set. I can fucking see it in his head, this one will win the crowd and this one draw them to the dancefloor and then a bit of drum n bass will be a curveball for them... and I keep saying that there is no point doing this, no tune will make the venue magically fill up. The only thing is just keep it chilled out, whatever you do don't play loads of boshing stuff cos it sounds stupid when there is no-one here, please just play three hours of chilled out music, have a few beers and then watch us play and have a dance, I dunno, just please relax. But nothing penetrates now he's totally in the world where he is a superstar dj and he has to make sure this set is perfect or his career could be destroyed. He barely talks to us "Sorry guys, should go to my room and work on my set" - it's really mad that I can't get through to him, he's nodding to say he understands but I know h'es gonna be surprised when there is no-one there and he's gonna be upset when I won't let him play at the end when he inevitably asks despite promising not to...
So, predictably enough he tries to play a boshing dancefloor set which we have to tell him to slow down... several times. Obviously he's both surprised and annoyed that there is no-one there for his set, and when he sees how busy it is for the last hour and a half and how much fun it is to DJ he asks twice if he can play for "just half an hour" which pissed me off for a real in fact.
