well my adventures in Oz are now over with and i am still recovering in the aftermath, but i am going to try and sum up what i still remember of Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne was a nice all around city. There were clubs everywhere. The downtown area was nice and was packed with people due to the fact that the Australian Open was going on. The casino had nice clothes if you are into designer clothes. China Town had good food, as it would in any major city, but the Thai food wasn't hot enough. I'll take what i can get since the food on the ship is nowhere near as good. Every place i walked into they played house music, except for the restaraunts, where i heard muzak. bleh...it suprised me to hear house everywhere i went. i was expecting to hear trance everywhere since i know on the worldwide scene trance is way more popular. I walked into a shoe store to buy some Doc's and the girl working behind the counter was asking where i was from. i told her detroit, and the first thing she said was "Jeff Mills is from Detroit." then she put in the Lifelike CD. talk about great customer service. I pulled out my list of clubs to goto, and she told me all the good ones to goto that night. There were just too many. The clubs all played music that was great. better stuff then i hear in clubs in the states. the one that stands out in my mind was a small event called Soul'sa. I got there and heard lots of good house including that Martin Circus off of the Juan Atkins WaxTrax CD. then i was bombarded with more and more good house. good solid mixing too. I moved onto the other bar nextdoor that was the other part of the event and heard and awsome techno DJ just hammering out good track after good track. I met up with Ben Sheppard from the list there. Thanks for the Beer, Ben!!! I realised that night that Aussies can out drink americans any night of the week. I had way too many free drinks courtesy of Ben, the bartender girl, and all the other nice people there. I would go there every night if I lived there and it happened every night. I went to revolver the next night and listened to deep house. everything was going good until me and my girl started feeling sick. I think there was something wrong with the food we ate before we got there. too bad. SO SORRY we couldn't meet up there Cyclone. all & all Melbourne is way better and way more happening then most of the cities in the states. loved every minute of it and all the people are friendly. Sydney on the other hand was kind of shady if you ask me. my booking company managed to not tell me that my hotel was in the middle of Kings Cross which is the redlight district. there were used needles all over the ground, I don't think that there are that many diabetics in the world, let alone in sydney. hookers were chasing me around my hotel trying to do something to me, god knows what. dealers where aproaching me with pockets filled with every drug known to man. everything they had was in the form of a big rave. not what i was looking for. one of them was even going to be on TV. Carl Cox was supposed to be there. So i skipped out on him. He's alright, but not what i was looking for. I was kinda mad that i missed Bomb the Bass. I would have gone and seen Kenny "Dope" Gonzoles (spelling??) but that was saturday night, and i didn't want to get p!ssed and miss my curfew at 2am because we were pulling out so early in the morning. I manged to go to a couple of record stores on Oxford street and picked up Jeff Mills Metropolis CD. The only techno night i was able to find was an acid night where they were spinning all DDR and the Liberators and stuff like that. I can only listen to that for an hour. it starts to get to me. So I guess i kinda was disappointed by sydney. i spent more money on alcohol there to make up for the lack of clubs. Melbourne has way more. Although Oxford street was a pretty happening place. So my question to the list is: Am I a Techno Tourist?? I've looked for techno in 5 coutries and many cities...I am ready to fill out an application and put it in my resume.
all & all Australia is great fun, i won't live there, but maybe for vacation some day...next stop, AMSTERDAM... JEFF!
