Firetop

The nightlife in Ibiza takes a bit of getting used to, clubbing doesn’t start properly until around 2am and it finishes well after 6am. Due to the shift in the hours we’re keeping I’ve felt a bit jet-lagged all week, and for the most part seem to require twelve hours sleep each day. We shouldn’t really have bothered to get breakfast included in the accommodation package as we’ve only been up early enough for that once - and even on that occasion we went back to sleep again afterwards. On Tuesday evening we went to the Gatecrasher night at Eden nightclub in San Antonio; a very different clubbing experience to El Divino in Ibiza Town… (more…)

After a few drinks on Saturday night in ‘Ray and May’s English Bar‘ (a Liverpool FC shrine beside our hotel), we headed off to Hed Kandi at El Divino by around 2am. We were tiring a bit after the 5am arrival earlier that morning, but as we´d bought tickets online we thought we best make the effort to use them (30 Euros each). Luckily, in the street, we came across a Mexican couple seeking a taxi to El Divino too, split the cost from San Antonio bay to Ibiza Town with them.

(more…)

Running your own streaming radio station online or ‘SHOUTcasting’ sounds like fun, install SHOUTcast software on your server and away you go? Wrong… like anything popular music related you need a license to broadcast copyrighted materials publicly - or face a fine upwards of $10,000. Just installing SHOUTcast on a server can be tricky with increasing numbers of web hosting companies demanding to see license information before they authorise its use. However, there’s a bigger problem for UK residents and that is the absence of any current licensing agreement. UK residents can however broadcast legally TO the US if they’re willing to fork out the dollars for a license - how helpful! (more…)

This week I discovered the fantastic Drum ‘n’ Bass channel on Digitally Imported - yet another fantastic Internet radio stream from these guys. It might have been available a while; perhaps it’s only my recent ‘Global Gathering‘ trip down memory lane that’s prompted me to go ‘old skool’ and pay attention to it. I was wondering where the domain ending ‘.FM’ came from, since .TV is managed on behalf of the islands of Tuvalu (which incidentally are sinking due to global warming). (more…)

Bagleys nightclub in Kings Cross has transformed itself into a Roller Disco, and not a cheesy one either. On Thursday night £10 gets you entry and skate hire, taking you into the first room to swap your shoes and skate to some funky disco music. The last (and only) time I went Roller Skating was in Welwyn Garden City on a date with Helen Brown… aged 13 - and I had to take my yonger sister along (weird). That place was a bit cheesy, Bagleys Roller Disco however is basically nightclubbing on wheels. The bouncers search you on the way in but ‘checking for food or water’ apparently, I did ask if people taking drugs and skating was a major problem but was told by ‘the big guy’ that ‘it’s just food that is’. (more…)

So the weekend was a bit of a heavy one with VIP tickets to the annual dance festival ‘Global Gathering’ to be enjoyed on Saturday. Now in its sixth year, ‘Global’ takes place annually just outside of Stratford-on-Avon, at an old airfield near the village of Long Marston. As luck would have it, there are some Pesketts in that neck of the woods, so ‘Suzie_Q’ and I had somewhere local to stay (Bidford), and marvellous hosts my Aunt and Uncle were too; even insisting on picking us up from Global at whatever time of the morning we liked - which turned out to be the slightly earlier 2:30am (it rained). Thank god we didn’t choose to walk. (more…)