John Askew

A few days in March 09

I played a Goodgreef gig last night. It was at a really cool venue called The View in a place called Frodsham. Don’t ask me where Frodsham is – I was on autopilot with Satnav in charge. Apparently The View is owned by the guys behind Tall Trees in Yarm. It’s similar in the respect that there’s a complex that includes a hotel and conference facilities along side the venue. The view at night from the terrace at the back of the club is amazing (no guessing where they got their name then). It overlooks a valley with a large expanse of water at the bottom and what looks like some kind of dockland area on the far side (river mouth? Sea? No idea.)

The gig was good. Judge Jules was on before me and I really got into his set. He played some seriously banging stuff. There were several power cuts through the night – cutting out not only the sound but also all the lights – which was nice. According to one of the bar staff it’s because of power surges at a local power station caused by birds flying into power cables.

I ask Jules the name of a killer track he played but couldn’t hear his response over the obscenely loud monitors. I thought I heard “Mac and Taylor remix” but I can’t hear a thing.

I get into my set and the crowd are up for it which is a rarity in the UK.

After the gig I go back to my manager’s room at the hotel and hang out for an hour before I escape to bed. I’ve drunk a few Redbulls tonight and the taste of them keeps coming back to haunt me every time I burp. Hideous.

In bed by 4

Up at 9 – shower, piss (Redbull flavour), remove moss from teeth.

On the road by 10.

Slipknot “All Hope is Gone” on repeat. Loud.

I get home at 1pm with the intention of going to the gym but the weather is just too lush to be inside. The gym can wait. It always does.

9am on a weekday is the best time to go to the gym.

8.30 is too early and 10 am is too late.

There is a small window to get this right and to do that you’re going to need to be going through the doors at exactly 9am. Any earlier and you’ll be walking into a surrounded by too much testosterone and muscle tissue – which unless you’re on that kind of form is going to make you look like the “new boy” (out of shape and feeble essentially). If you arrive too late you’re going to be dealing with hundreds of pre-school kids screaming and rioting in the pool area while their mums laze around on sun loungers talking about George Clooney and the price of eggs. Equally annoying.

If you arrive at exactly 9am however you will find the place inhabited by only old people – which is exactly what you want if your aim is to pretend to yourself that you’re in better shape than you actually are. The muscle has gone to work and the mums haven’t been awake long enough to complete the essential application of makeup and designer gym wear. So here I am – an accepted regular at the daily 9am meeting of the grey and wrinkly brigade. I my friends have joined them and they have welcomed me into the fold with open arms.

There’s a line of ten treadmills and all of them, bar mine, are occupied by old women gassing to each other about possible recipe variations to make the perfect Rhubarb Crumble. Fuck I look good next to you lot. I run for half an hour listening to a blistering drum and bass set from
Andy C.

I get to the studio about 10.30 and crack on with a few special remixes I’m working on - one for Vandit and one for the 50th release on Discover records (Hampshire & Bissen’s “The Vault”). Both of them have been an absolute bitch to get right.. They’re nearly there though and they’re certainly ready to road test this weekend and the make any final changes when I get back to the office next week.

The traffic on the way to The Atomik Weekender on Friday is shit. Stuck for ages in a long line of cars that have come to a halt due to road works. Well, that’s what the signs say, but in truth there’s no work being done anywhere? Don’t you love that – the bastards shut two lanes of the motorway but then can’t be arsed to do anything with the area they’ve sealed off. I suppose they need time to rest after putting out all those traffic cones the poor loves. Maybe they can’t fnd anyone to do the work that needs to be done? Which would be ironic because supposed to be in a recession with high levels of unemployment.

On the final approach to the venue an asshole in a blacked out Range Rover cuts me up and almost forces me to crash into a parked car. He then takes an insane risk by overtaking three cars on a blind corner. He must be doing 110 miles an hour in a 40mph zone and the experience really puts the wind up me, adrenaline pumping like crazy. About 10 minutes later I come round a corner and see the Police have pulled the Range Rover over. Delicious. Hopefully he will be taken off the road for a year or two.

The gig is a sell out and so there is a real buzz around the two arenas. I get time to catch up with Simon Patterson and John O’Callaghan who I haven’t seen for ages and Willie Daniels from Inside Out which is cool. The gig itself is utter horseshit. It had the potential to be quite good, but just as I start playing some officials complain to the promoters about sound levels in our arena so 2 tracks into my set they cut the volume on the main rig to less than 10% of what is was before. The crowd are pissed off and start booing – at me. What a day. I max out all the volume controls on the mixer but it makes no difference – we might as well be huddled round a pair of fucking ipod headphones it’s so damn quiet. I can clearly hear people talking on the far side of the room – about 30 or 40 meters away. I jump down to the front of the crowd barrier n explain to the pissed off clubbers what has happened.

Walking back to my room through the maze of chalets that are all been occupied by ravers for the entire weekend is an experience to say the least. It’s only Friday – the first night in a 3 day weekend long rave and already there are casualties everywhere. This is a proper hard dance crowd and they like to party hard. Going to need ear plugs to sleep through this riot.

5.30am - asleep,

10am - awake.

12.30pm - in the car on the way to Blackpool. I’m playing at Syndicate tonight for Gatecrasher. My set’s not till 3am so lots of time to get to the hotel and hide.

Get to Blackpool at 3pm. Have a great sea view from my room. Order lunch and spend the afternoon downloading new music for my radio show and doing an interview for Urban Bug. Watch a truly bizarre film called “Sir Henry of Rawlinson End” while drinking a few cans of Kopparberg Pear Cider. The film is utter madness. Highly recommended. Kopparberg pear Cider. Where do I begin? This is a new find that can only be described as liquid sex. Christ, I could take a bath in this stuff. You know the juice created in your mouth when you suck a quality Pear flavoured boiled sweet – it’s like that – but cold and alcoholic. If only I’d known about this stuff when I was 13 getting smashed on Mad Dog 20/20 and Thunderbirds.

Go to sleep at 9.30pm. Alarm goes off at 2. Shower. Grab a lift to the club with Jason the promoter. It’s good to see him and we get a chance to catch up before we get to the venue. Watch the end of Signum’s set which is cool. Very uplifting and melodic with massive riffs for the hands in the air moment that the crowd greedily lap up. Really enjoy my set and after last night’s balls up at Atomik it’s nice to finally get a chance to hear my remixes on a quality sound system. They sound ok, but there is definitely a load of work still to do on both of them. Set comes to an end to quickly - wish I had an hour longer!!

Get back to the hotel at 5 and seeing the empty cans I smile as I pen an affectionate email to the Kopparberg brewery in Sweden...