Tuesday, November 25, 2008

IMPOSTER!!

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OK, so this was from Halloween, so she's off the hook... My friend Gin, from Pacific Jungle Promotions in Hawaii dressed up as MEEEE hahah! Good effort! I'm flattered! Wish I could get my hair that white too ;-) Love you guys!

20 Bras in 1 Minute... Hahah!



Randomly found this on youtube... Sure I could beat that ;-)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Nice one Utrecht! (and London!)

Thanks to the Black Sun Empire guys for having me and DJ Fresh over to play their 'Blackout' night in Utrecht on Friday night, and also to the DEF:INITION guys for having me over at Bar Rhumba in London. Both really fun nights indeeed!

Got the whole gang together in London and hit a few bars before the club. Brought back so many memories being back in Bar Rhumba, with Storm playing a Classic Headz set. Mighty! Piglet blew most of her student loan on champagne too haha!

Utrecht was nice and easy, not as stressful travelling as I can sometimes get, quick zip over to Amsterdam, didn't bump into many innovation nutters (meant affectionately!) then a quick dive to Utrect. I think we were lucky though, there were some serious snow & hail things going on. The hotel was so cool they leant me an umbrella to protect my hair on the way to the club! Hah! Stayed at the Court Hotel in Utrecht which has an ACE restaurant, and fabulous espressos the morning after too. You heard it here first...

Here's a few photos from the gig (if you stalk my iPhone photo gallery you've already seen them) ;-)















Got a busy week ahead, a new track to finish ('The Journey') and a couple of remixes to start, and finish (did anyone say the new BLOC PARTY!?), and pile of stuff I've been meaning to eBay for ages so I actually have some space in here...

Just taken a last minute extra gig in Rostov for December 5th so stick that in your diary too...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Siberian expedition...




Thought it merited a mention - my trip 2 weeks ago to Murmansk & Novosibirsk. Honestly I was dreading it. I knew the gigs would be great, but becuase of the location of the cities I was going to, the flight times & durations were always going to be pretty harsh, and meant a fair few on domestic Russian airlines, which don't exactly have a reputation for safety and comfort...

Anyway, it all turned out well, they got me on business class on a few of the internal ones and S7 airlines was actually really nice - they flights I was on had nice new 737s, not those scarey skanky old planes they normally use for domestic flights on Aeroflot etc, that have signs for the 'escape rope' and let people bring a gazillion carry on bags etc...

(Although apparently the last Russian air crash WAS a 737 and the pilots had forged documents to say they were trained to fly 737s when really they weren't - http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1010/42/372073.htm & http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4198399/

Anyway, S7 airlines was really nice, flights totally cool, and the lounge in Moscow was lovely and I actually got some sleep there in a nice big chair! Might make me rethink my current strategy towards gigs in far Russian cities - and accept MORE!

Big thanks got to go to the Radio Records guys for helping set the gigs up, and sending the lovely Irena to be my guide/interpreter. I managed to get her to watch an episode of 'The Wire' on the flight from Novosibirsk to Moscow so hopefully it'll be the start of a viral networking phenomenon out there and I could be responsible for it breaking into Russia! Hah! MCNULTYYYYYYYYY!

Got MAJORY delayed on the way home, so S7 isn't ALL that good. The flight home from Novosibirsk to Moscow was delayed 3 hours, so I missed my BA flight back to London and had to spend the night waiting in Moscow airport waiting for the first flight back to London - think I spent almost 8 hours there, £40 at the cafe on wine and caviar-ish sandiwiches, walked about 2 miles round and round inside, and watched 6 episodes of the Wire. Hah! BA were nice to me - they didn't charge me to change my flight, and the crew recognised me again from last week and brought me a blanket. Oh, wait, they give everyone blankets. DOH! Hah.

Stalactites on the Merc in Siberia



Just before the EPIC journey home from Novosibirsk. COLD.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Gig this Saturday cancelled...

Hey guys! I write u this from my iPhone in the BA lounge at Heathrow Airport...

I'm just about to get on the plane over to Vienna so I can do the gig in Linz tonight - but thought I should let u know that the gig tomorrow, on Saturday got cancelled at the last minute! :-( Not my call at all - my agent tells me the promoter just vanished and hasn't been answering any emails or phone calls - so it's off basically. If u turn up at the gig on Saturday and he's there pretending I'm coming u can tell everyone he's a big fat liar! Hehe

Shame about that - at least now u can maybe come to Linz instead!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Photos from Murmansk on Friday!

Taken from www.john-b.com/site

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Here's a new photoset from the John B gig last weekend in Murmansk, Russia. John had a seriously heavy weekend, flying out of London early on Friday, and not getting to sleep in a proper hotel bed until about 4am on Sunday morning after the 2nd gig the other side of the country in Novosibirsk, Siberia!

Murmansk is a 2 hour flight North of Moscow, right on the coast, really close to Finland - and used to have the biggest Submarine base over there during the cold war. Its also very cold there in November!

Thanks to the guys on vKontakte.ru who sent the pics over!

If you want to see the whole photo set just head over to John B's flickr page. You can check them out as a slideshow by clicking here.

John B @ Pilot Club, Murmansk Russia

John B @ Pilot Club, Murmansk Russia

John B @ Pilot Club, Murmansk Russia

John B @ Pilot Club, Murmansk Russia

John B @ Pilot Club, Murmansk Russia

Photos from Novosibirsk on Saturday

You see the whole post over at www.john-b.com/site by clicking here.

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Thanks to the guys at nightout.ru for sending these over so quickly!

You can see the whole set on John's Flickr account.

John B in Novosibirsk (Nov 2008)

John B in Novosibirsk (Nov 2008)

John B in Novosibirsk (Nov 2008)

John B in Novosibirsk (Nov 2008)

John B in Novosibirsk (Nov 2008)

Photos from my gig in Donskoy City back in August

Taken from www.john-b.com/site

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Photos taken from the John B gig in Donskoy City, Russia on August 31 2008. Big thanks to the photographers and Julia from Radio Records for getting the CDs over to us! Felt quite spy-like picking them up in Siberia!

We had a great time over there, Donskoy City was a really cool city and the organiser looked after us so well - lots of blinis & caviar!! It was a shame that the weather was so bad - you can see from the photos just how wet it was - the city got hit with a huge rain & thunder storm all day long... ;-(

You can see the whole set on John B's flickr page, or view a full page slideshow by clicking here.

Also we have a video from the gig here.

JohnB_DonoskyCity_20080831_0059

JohnB_DonoskyCity_20080831_0049

JohnB_DonoskyCity_20080831_0120

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Big Rusky Weekend coming up...

Feeling pretty mashed from last night in London - met up with my friends Andy, Candyce & Kirsty Hawkshaw (who I worked with on one of my new tracks 'connected') at the Sanderson Hotel, and had some very posh and VERY expensive Sancerre - then got on a crazy rickshaw cycle over to swerve, well, we got 2 of them and raced down Oxford Street... Video coming later via Kirsty hopefully!

Swerve was fabulous as usual, we arrived at the same time as Bailey so caught all of his set, and Fabio after - both smashed it! Pretty messy night really - my mate Marcus from the RCA was there with his sister, the mighty DAN! was in the place, Paul from Pendulum, MC Stamina - and LOTS of drinks. I virtually carried Hayley up the stairs on the way home...

With Bailey & Hayley at Swerve. Drunkenly...




Anyway, just thought I'd check in and let you guys in Russia know I'm looking forward to the gigs this weekend - I'm playing in Murmansk on Friday night, and then Novosibirsk on Saturday. The flights are HORRIBLE and I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep in a bed until I get to Novosibirsk on Saturday, and then only for a few hours before the show! So, if I look a bit like a ZomBee that's why! 

So, see you guys this weekend! SPASIBAAAAA!!


Monday, November 03, 2008

Officially 129th Best DJ in the World!!! Thanks!

Wow!

DJMagTop100_2008

I'm thrilled to see I made it into the DJ mag top 100 DJs chart (well, the top 150 I suppose!).

John B - officially 129th most popular Dj in the world! (Might have to make me a Tshirt...)

Just check out some of the other artists/legends I came in above too! Dave Clarke, Jeff Mills, Felix Da Housecat. Hurrrah!

Its also pretty cool to note that the only other DnB Djs that came in higher were Andy C, and Hype - so I'm theoretically the 3rd most popular Drum & Bass DJ in the poll - even Pendulum came lower! Double Hurrah!

According to DJ mag there were 350,000 total votes cast from 167 different countries so this really is a big deal - I'm ecstatic to say the least!

So yeah - before I go and crack open a bottle of Tesco's finest Sancerre and do a little dance...

I want to thank every one of you guys & girls that took the time and effort to vote for me in the poll - it really means a lot. And also just thank everyone generally for the support out there in the clubs & tour dates, enthusiasm for my releases & the podcast etc. I work really hard to provide lots of free, engaging content on the web, all the podcasts, mixes and videos etc - and endure some pretty rough flights and sleep deprivation to get to the dark depths of Russia or wherever - so its really great to get some recognition & props. 

We're working on some really cool new things to hit the web soon, and of course the new album(s) and more and more tour dates so lets keep the ball rolling and hopefully break into the top 100 next year! More electrostep! Thanks again!

xxx

John B