Fade’s Tour Diaries™….. part.3 in an intermittent series…

(or musings from across the globe.)

The Adelaide Shuffle

Not only does water run away down plug-holes the other way in the southern Hemisphere, but their dance moves have a distinct funk of their own. The Adelaide-Shuffle (modified from the erstwhile Melbourne-shuffle) is a spectacle to behold. Kind of like the Running Man, mixed-up with what we used to call the X-man in 1990, then sped-up and stripped of any recognisable “dancing” characteristics and replaced with the unsexy frenetic stomp of a wooden-legged man dealing with too-high a treadmill setting. People seem to bust this local move out at any given moment all over the club, for a burst of about 30 seconds of cardio intensity like a mating-ritual for ephedrine-drunk robots. It’s bad enough when the boys do it (and let’s face it, what dance move isn’t?) but some girls get involved too. It’s a wonder any pro-creation gets achieved at all in Southern Australia. This won’t be seen in a club near you soon. [*sauce got some footage tho…]

E-Cup Bolt-ons

The best self-description of a pair enhanced-breasts I’ve ever heard. Brisbanites don’t mince their words. They also party harder than anywhere else we’ve been this year. And look good while doing it. All year-round sunshine does wonders for keeping-up your beach-bod credentials and yet manage to never take yourself (or indeed anything) too seriously. The Monastery, Brisbane, we salute you. You bring the party.

The Return from Oz

22 hours in the air is just wrong. But coming down for one hour break to visit the toilets in Singapore airport is the most unexpected dose of luxury, your long-haul economy traveller can experience. [*pic attached] They are plusher than any of the hotels we’ve stayed in on this tour. They are nicer than my own bathroom at home. They are nicer than my whole flat tbh. Like when u go into a really flash restaurant loo and wished you lived there. (we all do that….right?). There is even an attendant guy actually cleaning- all the time- instead of offering you Chupa Chups and a £5 squirt of Hugo Boss. My parting tip to anyone flying-out East is to save your ablutions for Singapore airport.. and don’t do any home-improvements before you’ve taken notes there.

This week is all about the Bank Holiday of course. Possibly the biggest weekend in every London DJ’s calendar. We are gonna be up at Creamfields on Saturday, which will be ace, but Sunday & Monday are
all about Notting Hill Carnival baby! Yes, the entirety of, well, London descends upon West London for 48 hours of utter mayhem, all the while keeping their fingers crossed that the weather will hold (which
it rarely does to be fair).

This year I’m making no real plans for the day times; just roam around in general, soaking up the atmosphere. I know Major Lazer are playing at some point on the Monday so I’m gonna try to make that, but I suspect only the seriously forward-thinking will get it together to be down at their stage before it gets totally roadblocked so chances are I’ll mess that up! Obviously I will report back in full if we do manage to stumble across it.

Once the sound systems start shutting down on the Monday though it’s ALL about the Mason’s Arms Garden Party (665 Harrow Road, NW10 5NU); our lovely friends from Snowbombing are officially launching their
2010 event at Carnival this year (all rather confusing I know) – expect all manner of deeply incongruous skiing & boarding attire in & around the pub for the duration of the day. Tonnes of cool people
playing: The Whip, Justin Robertson, John Carter, & we’re very honoured to’ve been asked to wrap up proceedings from 11pm-1am. If you’ve ever been to Snowbombing before, you’ll know that it’s
guaranteed to be going all the way OFF in there til the very, very last bass drum. If you’ve not experienced the joys of The Bomb, I wholeheartedly recommend you use this weekend as your initiation…

Full line-ups & info can be found here:

http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?112626

Right, I’m outta here. If you fancy trying to come find us either at Creamfields or Carnival, best place to start is follow us on Twitter.com/TheLooseCannons – we’ll be posting live updates as often as we can all weekend. Get involved, you know you want to.

Full in depth report of any parts I can actually remember right here next week my beautiful babies.

Until then, Sauce out. x

So it’s 1.30am on a Monday night & I find myself one of only a dozen or so people in the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. They’re doing some filming here tonight & the enormous opulence & grandeur of the venue literally dwarfs us all. It’s eerily quiet, I can hear the fan from an arc light, the occasional squeak of a plimsole as a rigger walks across the vast stage but apart from that, almost total silence. I’ve been on quite a few film sets but never one as quiet as this. The crew, when they occasionally do speak, converse in hushed, reverential tones like naughty schoolkids who can’t quite believe they’ve been given free reign in a cathedral. It’s all rather beautiful & rather peculiar…

It’s a very far cry from the other prestigious London landmark we found ourselves in a few weeks ago. The lovely boys from E.T.A. parties asked us to come along & DJ at The Paramount, the amazing new members bar at the top of Centre Point. The place offers spectacular, 360′ views out over Central London from 40 storeys up, & even better, for some strange reason the proprietors have been granted an astonishingly late license so we literally got to rave until the Sun came up, illuminating the capitol’s iconic skyline all around us.

I’d definitely put it squarely in the Top Five messiest gigs we’ve done this year though; there were never fewer than 10 people packed in behind us at any one time in the extremely cramped, makeshift DJ booth the whole way through the set, all of them having long since taken leave of their senses…

Naming no names, *somebody* even managed to spill an entire drink into a CDJ1000 ten minutes before we were due to go on, precipitating a mad cab dash across London in search of a replacement & causing us to go on a full hour late as a consequence! Major props to A.Skillz who kept the party rocking for that extra hour on his Serato.

I managed to lose my jacket in the mellé, spotted (amongst others) a Stanton Warrior & a couple of Scissor Sisters getting their step on & generally got stuck in to all those things you do the night before that we all regret the morning after.

Huge party though, in an insane venue & I tell you what, if I have my way I’ll see to it that the powers that be here at Maxcast let us throw a couple more up there before the end of the year – you guys need to get yourselves involved…

Right, now a bit of hush please – I think they’re about to go for another take in the Opera House. Until the next time my friends.

Sauce x

Check out some more pics of the party on the Maxcast Tumblr

Hey Pepsimaxcasters… It’s been a blinding few weeks indeed. We have had some truly brilliant gigs – Leeds on Monday was mental… we had the Sheffield Wednesday firm in and it went off!!

And the The London Forum last Thurs was totally insane!! It was packed, the crowd knew every single word to every song and  everyone was jumping about and going crazy- at one point I thought the balcony was going to come down! We then went on and partied till the small hours in Camden… I didn’t feel to clever in the morning though!

I also wanna say a big thank you to the Pepsi Max comp winners for coming down and saying  hello – top geezers! Anyway just thought you’d like a sneak peek at one of our soundchecks. This is me doing “The Drugs Don’t Work” by The Verve – one of my favourite bands. Liam, Andy and I like to take it in turns to choose a song to cover to keep sounchecks fun! Enjoy… TC.

 So, I was on the video shoot with N-Dubz last night until the early hours, all over central London. I didn’t get in until 7am, and N-Dubz are still filming their parts!! 

much love,

Ben.