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Part XIII: Festival First Night, Conquering Fears, Shark Week, Tracy Morgan, Australia
Week 2 of the Australian tour. On the plane the other day I saw that episode of "30 Rock" where Tracy Morgan tells the intern dude to "live every week like it's Shark Week." That's funny on TV but in Australia it frightens me to no end. Australia has a lot of sharks. Also giant jelly fish. Enough to keep me out of the waters.
It's summertime right now in the southern hemisphere so there's lots of festivals going on, and this really cool touring company called Fuzzy brought a bunch of us out at the same time, as I was saying last week. Pretty much everyone had a bit of downtime in Sydney in the 2nd week, so last Wednesday they organized a big boat cruise in Sydney Harbour. We sailed off for 4 hours and it was so much fun. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I love hors d'oeuvres. They were also serving champagne with grenadine and there's a picture of me somewhere on Facebook cleaning my shoes after someone let their glass fly in the wind. Once we got pretty far in the water they stopped the boat and told us we could jump in for a dip. So you know I'm afraid of all that wildlife in the water. People started jumping and I told the Bag Raiders that I'm even afraid of plankton. But then I decided to stop being a sissy. Not only did I jump in, I went to the top deck and jumped from there. Granted I held my nose like a schoolgirl, but hey... it's a big nose. None of the Germans went in (Boys Noize, Digitalism), but we French-speaking folk (Mehdi & Busy P, myself, I'll even include Santogold, her French is impressive) were aquatic and loving it. You gotta understand, I only go out into nature about once every 6 months. Then came the buffet. And finally we went back to land and had a little afterparty at a bougie club by the pier.
On Thursday I went to Brisbane for a club gig with my homie Ajax from the Bang Gang. I almost didn't make it on the plane, not because I was late but because someone from the airline decided to weigh my carry-on as I was boarding. Of course it was overweight and I didn't want to check it in. It turned into a whole mess, which I narrated in great detail on my blog. They eventually let me on though, and from there on it was smooth sailing. The weather was boiling hot, and the club was even hotter. I had only played festival so far on the tour, where my sets are on average 75 minutes, so that night I just wanted to keep playing. I played for 2 and a half hours. There was 800 people in that club on a Thursday, you could barely move. The next day I went to Melbourne for my 2nd club gig. The city was plastered with posters of my mug. People keep telling me "your face is all over Melbourne." I think the papers said that crime was down, productivity is up and they're expecting a spike in the birth rate in about 9 months. The Melbourne show was really great, again I played for 2 and a half hours, way longer than planned. We had 850 people and this club was super nice, great sound and I could really see the whole crowd. Before leaving I wanted to grab breakfast with my buddies from Perks And Mini but I just couldn't get myself out of bed. Next time.
On my last day in Sydney I played this thing called Festival First Night. As the name hints it's on the first night of the Sydney Festival, which is a big cultural hoopla that lasts a couple of weeks, with lots of theatre and arts. It's really amazing that they have our kind of music at this festival -- my name was even mentioned in an article in the Qantas in-flight magazine! There was 300,000 people roaming the streets of Sydney that night, between 5 outdoor stages. I have no idea how many people I played for, all I know is I couldn't see the end of the crowd. There was lots of under-18's and some middle-aged roamers too. In front of me stood a big, majestic cathedral. I gave a shout out to Quasimoto in the attic. I don't know if anyone got that. And after that we all went to Bang Gang afterparty for one last bonding moment. Cobrasnake was there!
My flight home is broken up in 2 legs. I flew to Hong Kong yesterday and spent a night at the hotel to rest. Got a massage and went to sleep at a civilized hour. And now I'm about to fly home. During my whole stay in Australia I was at really nice hotels but never got a chance to film any of my reviews because I was always busy working on music. So I filmed one in Hong Kong, and I will leave you with that.