The next day was ridiculous too. First I flew to Gold Coast to play a festival in the daytime. Once we landed we were stuck in traffic for 2 hours. I got to my stage 4 minutes before the start of my set; played and then left right away. The set was actually great, but I almost forgot about it now because of everything around it. We had to go back to another airport, another 2 hour drive. And from there, got on a 5 hour evening flight to Perth to get ready for another drive in the morning. The craziest thing is, when I did get to a bed I couldn’t even sleep well because my body was just too confused. In the morning a driver took us to Busselton, 3 hours away. This was show #5 in city #5 on day #5. That’s rough. I finally went on and quickly realized that this crowd was completely bonkers. A couple friends told me I had a big smile on my face while I was playing. How could I not? These kids were endlessly crowdsurfing to disco house. What a pleasure. 5 minutes before the end of my timeslot, the stage manager came and told me to stop playing, pointing at something in the distance. He was actually pointing to a guy who climbed to the top of the scaffolding that holds up the tent, which was very high, and informed me that I had to talk him down on the mic. When did I sign up for this? I was really worried that the guy would jump or fall, he was dangling all over the place. For some reason I decided to promise him some ice cream. I was on the mic saying things like “You gotta come down dude, don’t worry you’re not gonna get arrested or anything. No one’s upset. Just come down… We’ll give you ice cream.” I guess it worked. He made his way down. As he got closer to the ground the crowd started throwing beer cans at him, so then I had to calm THEM down. And finally he made it. Final song of the night: Cassius “I

After that show I was worried that I’d have a hard time sleeping again because we were staying out in the desert and I heard stories about big hairy spiders at our hotel. But even my arachnophobia couldn’t stop me from snoozing at that point. I had a few much-needed days off, although I had to fly back to Sydney first, which is like an LA to NY flight. The good news was that my brother and I were off in Sydney at the same time. I’d go meet Dave at his hotel, maybe use the sauna a bit, he had a guitar in his room so he’d strum a few tunes for fun and then we’d go meet up with friends in town. On the 2nd day we all went on a boat cruise into Sydney Harbor with Boys Noize, Aeroplane, Beni and the N.E.R.D. guys. Two days off were not enough though, I was just starting to feel recharged.

To finish off the tour, I played two club shows: one in Melbourne and one in Sydney. Those were a ton of fun for me. I played much longer sets than at festivals and I had way more latitude to zigzag into different genres and take the sets wherever I wanted. It was great to see these packed rooms full of kids wearing Fool’s Gold or A-Trak tees, reacting just as much to hip hop as they did to house or old school classics or turntablism for that matter. I love improvising those types of sets, connecting the dots in my head and seeing where it takes me. On the evening of the last show I got an email from the airline saying that my flight home was canceled, although there were no weather problems this time. Luckily we were able to get me on another one despite it being sold out, and I crossed the equator, the international date line and the virtual dancefloor all the way into the U. S. of A.