It all started on September 14th... A new weekend and the last full weekend before Ramadan kicks in. Along with my flat-mates we had to move the next day to a new apartment literally 75 meters away from where we lived. It's one thing to move to a new apartment but it's frustrating as taking a dump after eating KFC to move to a building only a few meters away!
That wasn't before Schiller performed at Peppermint on Thursday the 14th. The band are made-up of 5 keyboards, 2 sets of drums (electronic & a REAL one), Guitars (rhythm & bass) and two vocalists. Some tracks sounded familiar, others sounded great for “first time” listening. However the band never performed “The Dream I Had Of You” or “I Feel You” and the crowd were begging for it. All the Dubai-mixed accents saying out loud “I FEEL You… I FEEL YOU!”
No Reply!
So Afroboogie & myself filled in the last hour (2am-3am) after the band finished.
The next day got up at 9am and started making our move. Forget those details- it was a LONG day.. 9:15pm and I still needed to shower & get music ready as I had to warm-up in 45 min for Ferry Corsten. Somehow managed to shower, shave & get music along with my mixer ready and got to Peppermint by 10:05pm (luckily only 5 min late and the door hadn’t opened yet.
Ferry’s night was huge! Over 2,000 people showed up to one of the most PACKED Peppermint nights to my memory. It was fun warming up for him especially since I got to really pump it (BPM & energy) which we normally don’t get to do before a house DJ gets on. Ferry came up to the booth with the same case-logic as I have and a big smile saying “we got the same one, you might walk out with mine at the end of the night”. Really nice guy & his wife is a cool agent/ manager.
Tracks included his current hits, a few remixes and at 2:30am (30 min before the end of the night) he dropped a few REAL Electro & Techno tracks which worked out perfect especially since the crowd were kinda getting tired on the trancey stuff. I cold best describe Ferry’s sound as “Funky Trance”. Don’t know how else to explain it… and the end of his set Haifa was on stage trying to steal all the attention. I’m not going to get into details but luckily we were saved by the clock at 3:00am. Only thing she got was a few seconds on the microphone, blowing kisses and saying “wawa”. As in wa-tever.
Saturday continued to fix-up my new room, ensuring the studio items placed close-by each other. Then packed my stuff and headed to the airport for my return to Beirut.
I planned out a whole week in Beirut, especially since I haven’t been to Beirut since mid-June (and I usually go back once every 3-6 weeks). I was excited from the moment the plane took off and kept my anticipation level high. Landed in Beirut on the old runway (the planes fly right above Beirut like they did in the 90’s) and to a pretty empty airport (considering it was 12:45am when we touched ground.
My sister picked me up and took me to Crystal. That place always makes me smile. Fun? Of course! Just the shock that this place was shut-down over the summer while the country was at way, yet the club is packed with people still standing around with glasses of Vodka-Red Bull looking at each other and smiling. To my surprise not one large “Magnum” bottle of champagne came down.
Drove around at 5am then had a long talk with my sister when we got home. When the sky got too bright I decided I had to sleep, especially cause it’s the morning of the first ONE BIG SUNDAY since the cease-fire!
Slept about 4 hours then headed with my dad to a traditional Beirut place for foul, fette & kawarma w/eggs: A whole-hearty breakfast for one long day ahead.
One Big Sunday:
Left my family house in Tallet Al-Khayat and took a long detour (in order to get my first glimpse of the southern suburbs) towards Dora. On the way I took notice of most of the billboards that had a “war-marketing” campaign going. Either Lebanese flags with holes in them, bombed out buildings with new furniture in the foreground or the now-infamous Johnny Walker “Keep Walking” across the bridge billboard.
There was a bit of traffic on the way to Tabarja since two bridges were damaged. It didn’t bother me, if anything made me feel more like “yes! I’m here!” while driving by with the window open to smell the damaged concrete.
Palapas Beach:
One of my friends from back in the Strange Fruit days has been managing this place since the beginning of the summer- and even called me back in June to Dubai from Lebanon to tell me all about it.
Driving there a few parts of the road were congested with traffic next to bridges that were damaged in Adma and the Casino Du Liban one.
The place was really nice! One of the biggest “chill-out” pools I’ve ever seen in Lebanon and a modest sized beach-front wood deck (where the stage & DJ booth was set-up for the day’s event). I immediately went down to the water to see if there was any evidence of that “oil spill” that Israel had caused and this is what I saw:
Oil on the coast
They apparently cleaned up most of it, but the oil has by now already settled on the sea-bed killing off most marine life.
Luckily we also carried a link to take the entire afternoon live on the radio. It’s not a normal wire-less microwave link we normally use (high quality audio) rather we had to settle for a telephone link (so audio quality was like 64 K internet radio streaming).
Who cares is the quality on the air was a bit weak? It’s live coverage of people screaming and having a good time from a beach in a country that was devastated by a war that literally ended 4 weeks ago!
Rap-Base in the Mix
Rap-Base did his hip-hop & RnB thing as great as he always does- dropping in a few new tunes including that “Riding Dirty” which the whole crowd of 3,000 people knew the lyrics to.
Crowd
I got on at around 2:50pm dropping some of my fav summer tunes that I haven’t had the chance to play in Beirut (well obviously since there was a war!). Really loved playing to those crowd- smiles all the way!
Mad-mix
Found this pic on trancehits.com
Then Jojo, Dre & Amadeus went on. The energy carried on through the afternoon- one of my highlights was the guy that was holding up a flag of Lebanon (he apparently grabbed it from the marina area).
Jojo
Mix FM OBS DJ Team
Amadeus
Mad & Mix FM’s Rodge
As Amadeus was completing his set I asked “who’s ready for some REAL hip-hop? They begged for one more trance tune from Amadeus first, so they got it!
After Rap-Base & MC Moe finished their last set around 5:45pm there was a little bit of confusion as to who would go on after? Amadeus said “let’s do it back-2-back progressive stuff”. COOL! So from 5:45- the sun fully set at 7:15pm we mixed track by track.
Amadeus & Mad-Jam back-2-back set
We got the chance to play stuff I normally would never get the chance to play on this kind of an event. The crowd took every minute of it with screams and smiles. Until the finale’ Thin White Duke mix of The Killer’s “Mr. Brightside” ended the One Big Sunday looking a bit like this:
Crowd after sunset
Okay maybe the pictures look a bit funny but the picture in our heads was cool. Nice crowd at the end came up to the booth, and said thanks… but we just reflected that thanks right back at them for being in “such excellent spirits”.
Videos:
Mad-Jam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpPriFA2qYw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQhIJGGawSc
Amadeus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ5FTjfasFc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYpYjPf8cM
In the week I stayed in Beirut I hung out with friends & family but also went to as much of the damaged areas & bridges to snap these pictures (that speak for themselves):
Despite all the destruction, everyone remained in "we are alive" mode, so that felt good... Too bad I had to leave after 5 days in Beirut (GearOne needs lots of attention!)
So a full week of Dubai & Beirut in September. Again great to see everyone in Lebanon in awesome spirit despite the “stuff” that happened over the summer.
Keep it up everyone!
