Greece: Pt. II

Caught a couple of Z's after the Big Fat Greek Breakfast Buffet Debacle then prepared to catch the flight to Athens. We checked out and waited for George, Katherine, Whoo-Kid and Jackson. Risikat the Uber-Manager (who compulsively holds on to my passport, boarding passes, breath mints, weed, sidearm, etc.) hustled about to get our luggage stashed until it was time to leave.

The cars arrive and our driver Marios (who was quite the stonefaced speed demon when he picked us up at the airport the day before at 7am) was all smiles and backslaps and "Opa!"

"Where's my records?"
Risi & George: "They're in the other car."
mumbling to self: "okay."

I'm not supposed to be my usual neurotic self. I'm supposed to surrender that to the people in charge.

We get to the airport and have a little over an hour before boarding.

Risi and I have no luggage. I have no records.

They're still at the hotel.

D'oh!!

Risi looked like she was about to shit herself. But that wouldn't have been possible because we no longer had a bidet available to us. I didn't trip. How could such an aggressively scheduled trip run its course without at least a little bit of drama?

A cab is called to retrieve the baggage. It arrives about 15 minutes before take off. Close call indeed.

A quick hop over the sea and we're back in Athens. Our driver there makes Marios look like a septuagenarian peeking over his dashboard doing 35 in the right lane. Dude is BALLING OUT. He rides bumpers really tight and honks his horn a lot, making aggressive gesticulations. And we're not even in a hurry to get someplace. We scramble for our seat belts and hold on.

Athens looks like a massive war zone. They are NOT going to be done with everything before the Olympics start in August. It won't be pretty.

We check into the hotel then roam around to find some grub, Risi, Jackson and myself. George, Katherine and Whoo-Kid run about town doing last minute promotion on the radio and through their cell-phone SMS network. An old-country nattily dressed O.G. greek cat hawks us down as the lost hungry foreigners we are and shepherds us to a greek family spot off in the cut of the rabbit warren that is downtown Athens.

The proprietor is really hustling for business. He's actually a laff-a-minute, straight out of the most stereotypical aspects of Greek culture, but really sincere and endearing. "Slowly, slowly..." he says often, entreating us to savor the sea bass (which was bangin), lamb and salads that we ordered. After the 'itis began to set in, we headed back to the hotel.

After a quick internet check, I was looking forward to a nap but then one of my "handlers" calls. The traffic is too bad and the venue is too far for me to do soundcheck then return to the hotel. So I was to be picked up early for soundcheck and would stay at the venue. Everyone else would come later. That's cool.

Maria really took her handling job seriously. So seriously that she was determined to carry my record case even if it meant a ruptured hernia. She didn't feel better about herself until I gave her my record bag instead and she could competently carry that. No way was I allowed to carry my own records. We had a conversation in the car about my observations about Greece and how I went about executing my sets. She mentioned frequently how everyone was so impressed with my performance. The tone was akin to a cub reporter interviewing an A-list recording artist. I wanted to tell her that I'm just a web developer who spins records on weekends.

If the Thessaloniki venue was roughly two 9:30 Clubs, the Athens venue was approx. two Nations. A lot of money was spent on these gigs. Islands throughout the room for go-go dancers to boogie atop of. The audio mixing, tattoo and digital graffiti stations. The MASSIVE 2-tiered stage. 1st tier about 6 feet up for dancers. The second tier another 6 feet up for the dj booth. Damn near MCI Center sized speaker stacks. And of course the stilt-walkers, capoeiristas and fire jugglers from Thes. Whoa.

It'll be cooler to play a more intimate space when I return.

The equipment was in way better shape than in Thes, but since the PA was so massive, feedback was unavoidable. The decks had to be put on suspension. Bouncy suspension = uncontrollable record skipping. I would deal with it. I put all the levels at unity gain, found the master sweetspot (a smidge over 1.0, barely a blip on the meters) Since this was such a big event, everyone involved wanted to show and prove that they were on point. The soundman bragged to me, chest puffed out with a heavy Greek accent: "My P.A... is the BEST!! Sound not so good now, no people here. Wait until crowd come. You crank as loud as you want!" He edged the master gain toward 6. I thought armageddon was going to come. Naw cuz, I'll just max out at like 1.2.

I had several more handlers at this point. They all flitted around to make sure the champagne, brew, snacks, temperature and humidity of the green room were all to my liking. They insisted that I "sit and chill". Naw, I was going to mingle with the locals. This perplexed them. "You are not chilling!". Exactly.

Nikos arrives and we build. His set in Thes was pretty tame and dowdy. He says that even though he's nationally known and respected, if he doesn't throw on some 50 Cent the kids will just stand around and grit on him. His tastes are much more varied than his followers are able to digest. I decide then that Athens would be different. I get a mic and go into hype man mode from 12 feet in the air. Nikos gets cyssed. "You want me throw on a beat? You want to rhyme?" Naw, I'm just hyping you up man, do your thing! He shouts a bunch of stuff in Greek to the crowd, they all cheer. I'm giving my best DJ Kool flavor. Nikos is grinning ear-to-ear. He abandons the lazy cd set and starts to dig in to some raw shit, then he starts cutting up disco breaks. He's obviously having more fun than he usually is entitled to. After his set, we dap each other up cuz he's off to another gig.

I get on and do my thing, playing tighter and less eclectic than the day before. More aggressive. True school b-boy shit. I even drop some Chuck and R.E., making sure I tell the crowd "This is how we do back home". The go-go dancers climb up and do their thing. I start playing sexy stuff just for them instead of playing to the crowd. EWF "Devotion" into "Keep on Moving" into "Electric Relaxation". They're really getting into it.

Biggest wins of the evening:
Omega Rhed - "Shake It Up" (awww D.C.!)
Asheru - "Black Moses" (yessir!)
Rare Essence - "Body Moves"
Mark Ronson feat. Ghostface & Nate Dogg - "Ooh Wee"
DJ Mitsu feat. Dwele - "Right Here" (made the go-go dancers feel really sleek and frisky)

The rest of the crew arrives... in a freakin' limousine. Risi is her usual Risi self but in Athens it sets off much staring, crowd parting and picture taking. I hand the baton off to Whoo-Kid and his bro and bow out gracefully, heading into the crowd to do some more temperature taking amongst the populace. Although Athens is more cosmopolitan than Thes (This W.Ellington lookalike cat sniffed: "...those country bumpkins up in Thessaloniki") I had a similar experience. This one jawn who I could have sworn was a boriqua honey from the Bronx and was doing the chicken-head like she learned it in St. Louis told me that everyone was anticipating my set because they had heard that I play all these sounds and styles that are unfamiliar to them. Folks were studying me hard but yet again were not big on dancing. She assured me that the folks who know what's up were really feeling me. I guess this was proven by how folks mobbed Risi for my posters and snatched up every one.

Before we knew it, it was 3:30am. The Greek Strangé took the stage and performed a stripper routine. Dang.

We had to skate out of the club in a flash, splash some water on the armpits, grab our bags at the hotel and go straight to the airport.

Quite rugged.

I had begun the trip by leaving a Poem-Cees studio session at 3:30 am, grabbing my bags on the run and going straight to Dulles.

Evidently the weather was really bad here while we were gone. We caught the tail-end of it because the plane coming into Dulles was jostling about like Godzilla was trying to bat it out of the sky. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The lady next to me who had been slurping down Bloody Marys and chomping up garlic crackers was about to ralph. I was seeing CNN and washingtonpost.com headlines in my head about BA flight 293 smashing into a field in Northern VA. Risi thought all of this was amusing, even when the plane busted a side wheelie upon landing and almost dragged the wing on our side across the tarmac. We remained intact though.

6 flights
5 pieces of luggage
4 days
3 timezones
2 gigs
1 really tired dj.

Stylus - 2:23 PM
---
4.4.2004