Thursday, October 30, 2008

RIP NT2. Hello SE2200A

So, in my haste nipping in and out of the studio (I move at super-speed when I'm working this hard...) I tripped over my microphone cable last week, which pulled over the mic stand, which had my very expensive Rode NT2 on the top of it, which smashed out of the shockmount, broke the elastic bands in it, and dented the mic, and buggered the condenser or whatever so its basically broken.



 :-( Gonna have to eBay it off to someone who whats to try to fix it. Keep an eye out...

The good news is it meant I had to order a newer mic, and got a neat little desk stand for it too, so I won't be tripping over it anymore, unless I decide to walk on my desk. Got a really cool second mic for when I'm Djing too - it plugs directly into the mixer and has a pointy goose-neck thing, so it looks a bit like a vocoder mic - used it in Budapest last weekend - RoooBotttikk.

And here's an excuse for some studio pr0n with the new mic in place...

Monday, October 27, 2008

Photos from Saturday in Budapest

Just finished uploading most of these to my myspace, facebook & flickr. Will shortly post to the new john-b.com site also...

John B @ Club Diesel, Budapest Oct 2008

John B @ Club Diesel, Budapest Oct 2008

Had a really good weekend in Budapest, promoters were lovely guys - I flew out with Hayley on Friday so we had all day on Saturday to see a bit of the city - I've played in Budapest loads of times but never really had the time there to actually look around... Mate gave us a great sightseeing-by-comfortable-car trip, and then for ALL YOU CAN EAT sushi - which was a BIG mistake on the restaurant's part with me and piglet in town... YUM! Jsut don't eat the white sad zombie bunnies with bleeding eyes (yes they had them as dessert sushi things... UGG).

Went to the Budapest Zoo on Saturday and had a quality time - they animals were all out, not hiding at all, so we saw all sorts of stuff (and filmed it) - camels, lions, tigers, bears, rhinos, lots of goats. In fact the highlight was watching the alpha monkey challenge the alpha goat for monkey nuts being thrown into the enclosure by an old man that was not only playing God to some degree, but literally looked like God. Apart from his green dungarees. I think I got some of this on film - will have to look later on today!



The gig was amazing - I played almost 4 hours - totally drained by the end of it but the set went phenominally - atmosphere in the club was electric, totally rammed, and a really nice system too so it was a pleasure. AND I got to try out my new goose-neck mic and talk like a robot. They recorded the set too, so as long as the levels were OK, I should have a super mega mighty 3.5 hr live set for you in the podcast feed soon...

Just uploaded a vintage video of my trip to Graz with MC Lowqui back in 2005 to my vimeo page this morning as well, I found hi-res versions of a lot of the better, older videos, so will be sprucing them up and gradually uploading behind the scenes in preparation for the grand relaunch of johnbtv.com next month... Watch. This. Space...

Hit the maximum 5000 friends on facebook! Arg!

So it IS true that there's a friend limit on Facebook - makes sense I suppose, but a bit of a pain...

So, if you didn't get in there early - well, regardless - please add my music page - they don't have limits on the 'fan' pages on facebook and I duplicate all my content on there anyway - so you lose anything. You miss out on status updates - but they all get automatically fed through from my twitter account - so I think it all works!

My new sport will be going through my actual facebook friends and purging all the randoms that now just spam me out for all the pseudo guestlist table service booking r&b crap from cities I don't even live in. Why they don't get kicked off I don't know... It'll be a lovely liberating experience though - eventually all 5000 will be the super creme de la creme ;-)

Indian Thriller...

Just had a friend send this link over - HAD to share it with you...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Nice Hillside in Switzerland

Saw this in a blur on the zooooom to the airport last weekend. It is somewhere in Switzerland...

PC errrggggg


I've been looking at this most of the day...

Don't worry, I only have one PC and I don't use it for anything important - just a big badass media server for the house and streaming video to my xbox 360s and stuff - but it annoys me like no other. Thank god for my precious Macs...

I had it lovely and resurrected like a dream so decided to replace one of the HDs with a huuuge 1 TeraByte one. Then realised I didn't have the right cables, then got a new sata cable but it wasn't long enough to reach, then got the right one, but it wouldn't boot properly, then waited 4 hours for it to format and to copy over whatever needed copying etc. Anyway, its fixed now I think, and I can watch episodes of Dexter that aren't out in the UK yet. And Hayley can watch series 99 of America's Next Top model - even though we buy all the DVDs eventually anyway!

Hurrah. 

I could probably pay to fly the actors from the show to come and act it out for me if I spent nearly as much time making tunes as I do being the IT support guy for my house... :-p

Monday, October 20, 2008

Flyers & Info for my gig in Budapest on Saturday

Budapest 2008

Budapest 2008

http://www.pulzar.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7412

Fellépnek: JOHN B (Beta recordings, UK), Jade & Matt-u (Citrus, Black Sun Empire), Danny Darko (Weekandbass), Elf (ImpulseCreator)

2008. október 25., Club Diesel - Budapest, X. kerület, Népliget – a Planetárium mellett

Belépő: 2000 / 2500 Ft

Elővétel: Akt Records /Budapest, IX. kerület, Üllői út 51./

Infoline: 06304604161


Fellépnek:

JOHN B (Beta recordings, UK)
Jade & Matt-u (Citrus, Black Sun Empire)
Danny Darko (Weekandbass) Elf (ImpulseCreator)

kisterem:

Szab (Carbothornic)
Bergi (Monkey6)
Svindler (Monkey6)
Max Factor (Monkey6)


Web:

www.myspace.com/johnbbeta
www.john-b.com

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Last weekend deserves a mention...

Before I forget about it, which I hope I do (well, the bad airport parts anyway)...

If you follow me on Twitter then you would have seen the rough travel stuff I dealt with last weekend - in true John B style of course, but it still got pretty stressful! 

Despite the fact I'm in and out of Heathrow several times a week and how much could potentially go wrong with delays and missed connections these days, things usually run nicely and I rarely miss a flight because of it, and even then usually find a way of getting to the gig on time... When things start messing up that are out of my hands I just do my best to stay calm and use my supertraveller skills to sort it out - quick thinking & the stuff I learned through PUA to do with communication etc all help. Although this weekend it was mostly about doing stuff very quickly, some brisk walking and some out alpha-ing of a very rude French security LADY. 

I never thought I'd end up having to use social dynamics techniques to get past a troll at an airport checkpoint... Thank you Tyler & Eric... ;-)

So for the first time ever I turned up at the airport at the wrong time on Friday, I'd misread my itinerary, the time in bold was the arrival time in Brussels, not the departure time, so I went to the desk to check in but the plane had long since gone - even though I was nice and early. Ticket was non-refundable/non-changable as is pretty standard these days, so I was left having to pay for a new one for £160. Nice. Luckily there was one pretty soon, so I still made it to Brussels in time, but not in a leisurely fashion...

Gig in Belgium was great - lovely promoters & guys at the night - turned out he's going to help me with some php programming if I need it for the new sites I'm working on... (john-b.com/site)

Next day, got to Brussels arport for my 230pm flight, to cut a long story short it transpired BA had cancelled the 530pm flight back to Heathrow, and delayed ours until then, and combined all the passengers onto one flight. Leaving me with not much time at all to get on my next flight to Basel. As it happened I made the flight with minutes to spare, but my suitcase didn't so I didn't have a lot of my stuff when I got to Switzerland! I always have my main CDs with me, and basic make-up etc, so it didn't really affect the show, just my comfort, and choice of stuff to wear... Oh, and my classy improvised DJ bag - the hotel laundry bag...

Next day, they cancelled my return flight form Basel to Heathrow, but I only found out on the way to the airport. Had to zooom there and get in the ticket line, blag a ticket on Air France, via Paris CDG - zoom to the Air France desk, who couldn't see the new reservation becuase the etickets take a while to get through the system - boarding had already started... Managed to sort it eventually, steamed through security and straight onto the plane as soon as I made it to the gate... THEN - get to Paris, in a different terminal, so have to get a bus to the other terminal, then get through the security which was at an absoulute standstill... (You know French + queueing sytems = pain...). People were actually sitting on the floor and just compressing the whole thing if they were actually moving, nothing moving through really, madness - and my flight was already boarding too - if I hadn't done anything I'd have missed it, on a rebooked ticket so Air France wouldn't have been too helpful should I have missed the flight. Anyway, stress. Found a line for Business class passengers, which was working OK, and there was no one waiting in line - put on my most polite voice and explained simply my situation to the lady who just switched on me soooooooo horrifically, shouted at me GO AWAY and turned her back on me and held her arms out, SOOOO RUDE! I started asking loudly 'GET ME YOUR SUPERVISOR - MY FLIGHT  IS BOARDING' and some other woman comes, so then I switched to my special wavering help-me-this-lady-is-evil-and-you-probably-know-it-you-have-to-work-with-her-don't-let-her-take-another-soul voice and the 2nd lady let me through. I can't emphasize enough how pure evil that first lady was. Anyway, zooomed through, got to the gate and walked straight on the plane, last one on again. If she'd got her way I'd probably still be stuck there like Tom Hanks.

Just had to get that off my chest... ;-)

Big up to the promoters from both gigs this weekend though - top guys and excellent gigs! And thanks for the Swiss Chocolate!!!

  


OMG FACEBOOK OVERLOAD LOLZ WTF

Hah! Seems today I hit the facebook limit of 5000 friends! It won't let me approve any more. Boooo!

Guess you'll all just have to go and join up to the fan page instead!

Maybe I'll have a weekly elimination competition to remove bad friends and try out new ones... 

:evilplanz:

Monday, October 13, 2008

Resons not to give your girlfriend the online shopping log in #3

Piglet's Pineapple. My suprise in the grocery shopping this morning... ;-)

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Square Eyes...

Man I'm frazzled. Was up far too early to take Hayley to the station to get into London for Uni lectures etc after a pretty late night out for Styles' birthday with Linus, Smunty & Hayley...

Went staight to work in the Beta Office working on a new john-b.com news/blog site... It's shaping up really well, and should be a nice newsfeedy hub for all my media as it gets posted up - videos etc. Also sorting out any of the new tour videos and uploading them to the many video portals you have to send them to these days...

If I don't see another LCD display for a few days I can't say I'll be sorry!

Off to the airport in the morning again for the gigs this weekend, first flying out to Brussels to play in Ostend on Friday night, then back in and out of Heathrow on Saturday to get to Switzerland. Gona be a bit heavy, but looking forward to the gigs and playing some of the new tracks that have come in this week... Greg Packer's come out of hibernation with a wikkid new track called 'Space Rock' - and my mate Mr. Mendez send over a Mindless Self indulgence bootleg some of his friends did that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE! Got some hot new Black Sun Empire stuff too. Hurrah!


Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Get well soon Grandma!

Grandma

Grandma B had a fall last week and broke her hip :-(

She had an operation to fix it on Sunday and apparently it went well, so she should get better soon...

She doesn't use the internet, so I'll print this out for her - but wanted to wish her a speedy recovery!

Video from Donoskoy City, Russia!

Yes I HAVE been busy! Need to spend more time in the studio than editing videos right?

Filmed this back in August when I played in Donoskoy City, a cool city about 2-3 hours drive from Moscow. The promoter was a really cool guy, a local Government official, but he had a special nature park place, with a lake and outdoor nightclub all connected in - think they had plans to build a little hotel there too in the future and promote tourism to the area. The idea being people could come and escape from the hustle and bustle of Moscow to see come nice countryside and go fishing etc - but at nighttime it goes all Ibiza, Russian style!

Alas we were VERY unlucky with the weather - one of the biggest thunderstorms I've ever seen (apart from in Texas) decided to come and hassle us, in fact I'm suprised the plane was even allowed to land in Moscow - so what could have been a load of happy Russian ravers dancing to the sounds of John B under the moonlight was more of a mudpit under thunder and lightening and floods... We still had a great time, but it was a shame that the first time they paid to fly out an international DJ the weather scuppered it :-( I'll be back next year though and they promised me it will be sunny then... ;-)

Big thanks to all the guys that helped out, and for the BLINSKI ETLITCHNA!!!!

Oh, and see the vid through till the end - you get a nice bit of a VJ video for my remix of Glamour for Better at the end...

Extremely Cheesy John B Holiday video...

Not sure why I'm sharing this with you - maybe its just so you can see my amazing tennis skills...

Upcoming gig: London October 16th

lowqui's leaving party (London)

Thought I'd post this up here as its for a good cause...

I'll be playing an electrotechno set at this gig so come on down - my friend MC Lowqui is emigrating to Australia so there's a big send off party in Brixton, raising money for charity into the bargain!

Thursday 16th Oct 08
@ Plan B, 418 brixton Road, SW9 7AY (There is parking on side streets near the venue.)

Dress Code:
its fancy dress, hats & wigs, or anything goes. so go stylish in a hat or jokes in a wig or full out fancy dress or be boring...

Tickets £5 plus 95p booking fee:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=xxx&query=schedule&promoter=essenceofchi

See ya there!

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Yes, I DJd in a Russian Waterpark


Saturday was pretty wierd to be honest, but in a good way. It had been a heavy week really - did Cologne on Thursday, then London on Friday night, where much wine was consumed, then flew to Moscow for this gig on Saturday, then home on Sunday. I was actually in Heathrow Terminal 5 for 4 days in a row. They must have thought I was scoping out the duty free to nick some Chanel for Christmas or something...

So yeah, I was a bit daunted at the prospect of playing with electical equipment in a Russian Swimming pool (you've heard about the party where the ravers got blinded by lazers - and seen the photos of the flamethrowers behind me last time in Moscow). But it was worth it - I was literally laughing the whole 2 hours I was playing at just how random the situation was - if I'd known properly in advance I'd have been rocking the speedos too.


Gotta say big thanks to Mary and Max & everyone that took care of me, and Dimitri - good luck with the winemaking in Alsace mate!

So yeah, I was playing 2-4am in a water park, in the middle of a shopping mall, in the middle of Moscow - surrounded by people that would normally be full-on ravers, except they were in bikinis & speedos - but still dancing at full-pelt!



The video is up on the podcast now, and youtube, and facebook, and vKontakte.ru hopefully too.


John's work on display at the Royal College of Art

Well, on the whiteboard in the Office...


Yes. I can draw horses.

Big shouts out to Marcus Lanyon and all the people helping out on Friday night when I played at the Royal College of Art Students' Union in London. The whole gang came down and rockkkked it. Hayley dressed as Lara Croft, for the Superheroes theme thing, and Smunty almost went as Kong but chickened out.

I really enjoyed playing, so much so that I did 3 hours, and really was able to play across the board, lots of DnB of course, but I had so much time that I could really play what I wanted and take it right through some dirty electro & techno too. Only downside of the night was some eager young student boys knocking my wine over all my CDs :-( I'll just consider it performance art and save them in case they become famous so I can sell them and buy a swimming pool... ;-)

Monday, October 06, 2008

Slug in the Bathroom!

Don't know where this little feellah came from but he somehow sneaked into the house and waiting to ambush me when I got home... We released him back into the wild ;-)