As I sit back and nurse the knockout that all these criss-crossing flights served me, I'm starting to remember what took place in the two weeks since I last wrote. I was halfway into my European tour, leaving Paris. I headed back to London, only to go to Brighton for a gig at Digital. Everyone in London was psyching me up about that club, its sound system and the fact that it's right on the beach. "The beach, Jerry!" I think there's a back door that opens to a pier. Might be a bit dangerous for the late night stumblers. Also, London DJs have this way of doing gigs in neighboring cities and driving back the same night after the gig, rather than getting a hotel. I shared a ride with Riva Starr. On the way down he played me his new klezmer-techno album. If you saw this YouTube on my blog a few weeks ago you'll conclude that this is an interesting new trend. On the way back I just tried to sleep, but there's no way around the fact that I got in dangerously late.
The next morning when it was time to fly to Geneva, it was a struggle just to get out of bed. I had a stayed a few nights at this Hoxton hotel and really wanted to film a hotel review, so I did...
It ends with me saying I was probably missing my flight. You can find out exactly what happened in this blog post. Heathrow airport's Terminal 5 is now run by robots and there's no reasoning with robots. But you know how the saying goes: When life deals you lemons... you write a blog about it.
I arrived in Geneva to play the Electron festival and the strange day continued. I never knew Geneva was such a dark city. Walking to a restaurant I saw a guy hit another guy with a chair in the middle of the street! Lots of drunk businessmen asking where the party is at. Apparently it's the city with the most prostitutes per capita in Europe. I was playing that festival with Mehdi, we had the last slot of the night and strangely what should have been an easy gig for an enthusiastic crowd turned into a confusing experience with broken monitors and shortened set times and one of my friends got into a fight.
Moving on, I went to Rotterdam to play the Motel Mozaïque festival and ate some very interesting dim sum, including what may or may not have been chicken neck. My hotel had a confusing room service menu with a section called "Something etnic" [sic] featuring only one item: nachos. The next day I reconvened with Mehdi to play Tivoli club in Utrecht, a great spot that looks like an old theatre. For anyone who follows me on Twitter, that's the hotel that had the infamous "sea wolf" on the room service menu.
After those four consecutive dates I had two days off so I flew to Stockholm to meet up with my boy Sebastian Ingrosso of the Swedish House Mafia. Stockholm is one of my favorite cities, really great for fashion and architecture and the food is on point. Seb and I worked on a new track, ran around town a bit, and I stayed at this uber-trendy hotel:
After that I continued hopping around Scandinavia. I went to Copenhagen for a club gig and then flew to Oslo where my boy DiskJokke was starting a new disco party and I was the invited guest on his first night. I met him after featuring his Metronomy remix on my Fabriclive CD. You should really check out his music. He also took me to a highbrow restaurant with a chandelier made out of mammoth tusks; we ate five courses plus some little extras from the chef including a spoonful of whale.
Right after that gig I had to go catch an early flight to make the long journey over to Coachella. I flew from Oslo to Amsterdam, had a layover for a few hours and then had an 11 hour flight to LA in a middle seat. When I landed at LAX they couldn't find my suitcase for about an hour even though it had been scanned as being in the airport "somewhere." They found it, I linked up with Catchdini and we drove out to the desert, and that same night I played a party. That, my friends, was the knockout punch.
I stayed at Coachella the rest of the weekend and soaked in the good music. No, I didn't see the naked guy get tasered. That's what YouTube is for. But the Etienne De Crecy show was phenomenal, and there was an airplane with my name on it throughout the weekend. Totally unexpected. I stayed in LA for a few days and I can't even express how happy I was not to get on a plane right away. Tuesday was Busy P's birthday. He hosted a get-together at his friend's house in Malibu with a pinata and a hammock and we saw dolphins in the ocean. That night everyone went to Cinespace and we all jumped on the decks for rapid fire sets. I don't know how all these people get on stage at shows like this. I seriously thought the stage floor was going to crack. It was undulating dangerously! Unfortunately the night ended with a dumb fight with security, tainting an otherwise memorable day.
I flew back to New York just in time to catch my own art director Dust La Rock's "Best Of The Beast" art show on Thursday which by all accounts was an overwhelming success. Congratulations are in order! And finally this weekend I started catching up on some rest and went out karaoke-ing with Nick Catchdubs, my brother, our vampire buddy Ezra and respective spouses. Who knew Nick had such an angelic voice? Elvis Costello deserves to hear his rendition.