Saturday 11th September 2004
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After my diary entry last night it was straight off to a restaurant to meet up with Shuya Okino and his staff from the Room for a meal. Once again I was treated to a great dinner and a few beers before hitting the club at 1am and getting straight onto the decks. I ended up playing about 4 hours of Broken, Hip Hop, Jazz, Deep House and Detroit. The crowd seriously knew their music and I was shocked that the front row of people were singing the words to every song, both the brand new dub plates as well as better known classics.
To be honest the reception was a bit overwhelming… sometimes I couldn't hear my own monitors while in the mix due to the noise coming from the crowd. In fact it took me half an hour of warming up with an older, more accessible selection to realise that they actually wanted the upfront, hardcore selection! So we got into some 'no compromise' deep stuff and the place went crazy. That was a buzz for me, even though I was being brought coffees behind the decks all night by the coolest bar staff in the world.
The 36 hours with no sleep didn't stop me. Soldier! At 4.30am I popped down the road to a party hosted by the Jazzy Sport Crew, as they had sent someone to the club to make sure I went down and checked it out for half an hour or so.
The Breakthrough crew were playing some nice Waajeed, Sa-Ra & SV type beats. At 5.30am it was time to head back to the Room where I had promised to return to the decks with the legendary Shuya, who was still playing to a full dance floor of hardcore heads. We played back to back until the lights were up. Calls for one more tune became about 20 more records so we finally wrapped it up at 7.45am.
The Room is an amazing club with fantastic staff and the right mix of people. It's really intimate, very well designed and feels like the kind of place you'd want to hang out every other night if you lived close by. It's also the kind of place that could get very messy! The drinks were flowing, even at 8 in the morning. I really hope I'll get the chance to play there again because I now know the environment. Small, packed sessions like that are the most enjoyable for me. It's moments like those that I stand behind the decks and remind myself how lucky I am to have such a great job!
Got up about 1pm today, feeling rough, but ready to hit the town. I have to admit I could have slept another 5 hours but I wasn't going to waste the first of my two days off in Tokyo City!
Hooked up with Hiroko and Sato (staff from the Room) who took me for a great lunch and we spent most of the afternoon chatting and drinking coffee. When we realised it was almost 5pm I requested a trip to the Edwin shop to stock up on some Jeans. Spent a good hour surveying the mountains of rare denim selections and within that time my wages from the night before had already disappeared. Not good.
Back at the hotel now and it is quarter to nine which means The Roots are on stage in fifteen minutes. The venue is only a walk away so I'm going to sign off now and check them out. Report later!