I had to get the last bus into town, which left at like 22:30 or something, so I got into town about 23:00, which is stupidly early when you're going to see some international act that won't play till well after midnight,,, but what are you gonna do? As I stepped off the bus onto a moist K'Rd, I decided I needed to piss, and luckily found some toilets in Beresford Square. The floor was strewn with broken lightbulb, a straw, the cardboard box the lightbulb came in: a regular P-den.
I then strolled down to Galatos. The door staff wouldn't let me, or anyone, keep their tickets, because "they needed to count them at the end of the night",,, I thought that was why they had rip-off tabs on them,, so no souvenir, and no directions, which I sorely needed, having never been to the main part of Galatos before. I took the stairs up, found myself in a small bar, very tasteful, with maybe 50 people in it, and a DJ in the corner who was playing some groovy music. I managed to find a perch underneath a speaker, and sat for maybe ten minutes, saying to myself "this really doesn't look like the right place, there must be something else going on here," before I went downstairs, and went through the big doors into the main room [I know it must seem like I'm kinda stupid, but it really wasn't that obvious to me, especially considering how small the building looks from outside]. The main room is huge, and rather well-decorated, with a large stage at one end, and there were a couple of hundred people in it already.
I believe it was Stinky Jim that was playing,,, whatever, I decided to go and have a smoke, and so I walked around Galatos Street for a while looking for a little alcove or something that would make it all possible, but there were really none, and there were heaps of people sitting in cars and stuff,,, so I decided to head back to the toilets at Beresford Square. I was attempting to smoke and piss at the same time when I noticed that the door had decided to unlock itself, and I quickly pressed the button to relock it, while I cursed Auckland City Council's genius idea of having automatic toilets with an unannounced time-limit.
When I got back to Galatos, Manual Bundy seemed to be DJing [I coulda got him and Stinky Jim mixed up though]. More and more people were flowing in, and there was nothing I could do but dance. I was soon reminded of something a mate of mine said: that everyone at certain gigs these days seems to be like 18 years old or something, a fresh new uni student who's only there cos it was advertised on campus, and I couldn't help but think he might be right as a whole bunch of young looking hooligans spilt their beers on me, came and stood directly in front of me and then didn't dance, taking up all the space I was using to dance, and just generally acted inconsiderate,,,
Anyway, the DJ was playing all sorts of stuff, and I kept dancing, and the VJs were trying to calibrate all their many screens in preparation for the main event, and then the DJ dropped Snoop Dogg's «Beautiful» onto the turntable, and I went "Hang on a minute mate, you're playing pop music, what are you thinking?!",,, and he followed it up with stuff like Blu Cantrall & Sean Paul,,, and I started thinking, "Fuck, what's up with Hip-Hop DJs these days, always playing major label pop music? Damn, I saw some of this shit on Top of the Pops earlier this evening",,,
The Herbaliser DJs, and the emphasis is on DJs, cos it turns out they were here to promote their Solid Steel album coming out soon, and so rather than play Herbaliser stuff, which I have to admit is far from my favourite Ninja Tune music, they just played other people's music. And as they stepped up to their four decks, and the house lights dimmed, and all the visuals kicked in, the crowd roared. God, it wasn't that exciting. The visuals were pretty good in places, kinda lame in others, but it was a pretty good setup, with about 20 TV screens all around the front and sides and back of the stage and one big screen behind the DJs.
Now, when it said they were on four decks, what that seemed to mean was that one of them would play a song and then the other one would, and occasionally the little white guy would do some really weak scratching over something the other guy was playing, and the crowd would cheer like it was cool or something. Mainly they were just standing behind their decks drinking Coke and looking "cool". He finally did some genuine beat juggling leading into, yes, the pop music of Busta Rhymes' «Ante Up», which is a pretty cool song. The audience sure thought it was, and I guess maybe that was their excuse for playing pop music [??],,, I stayed till about 02:00 but I was getting tired of dancing, and the bogus crowd, and they played Sean Paul and then Beyonce's «Crazy in Love» in rapid succession, and I was thinking it was really whack of two international DJs from a supposedly independant label to come all the way to NZ just to play some major label pop music [I mean fuck, did they buy it or did they get given it by the major label PR guys, cos either way is lame]. And so when Justin fucking Timberlake came on, I got the fuck out of there.
Don't get me wrong, I love pop music, but there's a time and a place. When I come home from international DJs and all that's in my head is pop music, that's just wrong.
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5 years ago
