Robin on stage

Copyrights Luiz & Leena

Yesterday my art-director Luiz Risi opened his exhibition called Heart on Stage. It's a project of visual art combined with poetry that he made together with his girlfriend Leena Yliportimo. I had to play as a DJ at the party afterwards. Now the last time I played a DJ-set was in some club at the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I used to play a lot in Parkhof Alkmaar, a punk/alternative club that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore. These parties were so popular that the manager asked me to change my aggresive music style because too much right-winged scumbags came to the party. My most memorable gig was without doubt the one at the Young Dogs beachparty in Cannes, France.

If there's one thing you learn from DJ'ing, it's that you can never trust anyone who says it's going to be fine with the technique. At Parkhof there was always somebody who did the technique for me. And you have to bring everything yourself. I once came to a club where they had no headphone. I had to mix without it, which resulted in a set where the separate numbers where connected such clumsy transitions that they were almost painful to hear. Since then, I always brought my own headphone.

Yesterday, Luiz hired a place above a pub to have the party. When I came there, the technique was a total disaster. Nothing was installed, cables were missing and the dusty equipment looked like it hasn't been used in ten years. In the end I had to play behind the bar and I had to borrow a bike to get my own mixer from home, because the mixer of the pub didn't work. I hurried back, zigzagging through the traffic on the bridges of Amsterdam, while eating a sandwich because I didn't have time to eat yet. It was a race against the clock, but a race isn't over before the finish.

I rushed upstairs, and connected all the stuff just in time, giving me about 10 minutes to practice and to revive my long neglected turntable skills. The party was a big success. So was the exhibition. In a small space there were around 70 people and that night Luiz already sold some of his work. If you live in Amsterdam, it's definitely worth to see Heart on Stage. Until the 24th of April you can see the work at the ABC Treehouse gallery, Voetboogstraat 11.