What! not even a thousand???

Jeremy reviews Paul Oakenfold at the Queens Wharf Events Centre - Friday 10 November 2000

11 Nov 2000

An excellent production effort with twin Argon lasers, dual high quality projectors, 9 TV screens and assorted lighting. A bit too much strobe for my liking earlier on (bring on those seizures) and an impressive sound rig. At 100K (or thereabouts) - Mummy I want one!

The sound was good for such a difficult venue and if you stood in the wrong spot you could hear train-crashes all night long due to an echo effect.

I could have been listening to Wellington's very own Clinton Smiley (a last minute addition to the DJ lineup) and in retrospect - I was for the beginning of the night.

It would have been cheaper for JSG (and easily as good) if Clinton Smiley played for the whole night (after a heavy make-up-disguise-session to make him look like Paul).

Paul Oakenfold came on amongst a flurry of Perfecto Logo's flashed before us. Lo & behold - there he was.

A bit of a showman, i couldn't pick any tricky mixing but he was very good at using his whole body to adjust the mixer EQ's.

Numerous close-ups of Paul & the chest of a spunky chick in the front row were for all to see on the big screens.

Being as anal as possible, I managed to pick 2 very slight beat mis-matches which were very professionally corrected within 1 bar.

The people having the most fun (or at least the most wasted) appeared to be the Crew on stage.

The most fun i had all night was creating new and exciting names for Paul in conjuction with my friend Phil from Building Specialists (Check out Studio Plus - Coming Soon to a New Years party near you), eventually settling on Paul Non-Oakleyfoliage-field as the worst and least imaginative.

He played what i assume was an excellent Progressive House Set. Almost bordering on Trance at times but with none of the da-diddily-diddily-da that drives me up the wall.

Inspiring at times and giving me a chance to settle down at others i found myself bored after around 2 hours and left for Bass Frontiers where i found solice with Vodka and some cranking D&B vibes courtesy of B-Lo.

Perhaps not the numbers required to break even on such a large scale event but big ups to JSG Event Management for staging such a party in the first place. I guess that a sell-out in Auckland will easily carry our Wellington Event.

As Paul Oakenfold was a 'test' for Wellington, I guess that we aren't going to get Boy George after all...