TAIWAN!
Taiwan was special. I had been here at Luxy before and the promoters and crew are my friends. They knew we had a day off so I forced them to take me to back alley markets to search for rhino horns. We never found any and I’m not sure why I even asked, but I’m half delirious from no sleep from here on out. We did head out in the morning to a really muddy river that we swam across and then climbed through garbage and turtles to jump of a 40 foot cliff. The water was cold and I’m not sure if there was any actual enjoyment to be had…but in retrospect I’m happy I got to do it. Skeritt beat Capcom vs Marvel and we went to go do some radio and eat broccoli.
can you find the swastika?
alien ratdog
big white snake (no homo)
callin' mom collect
The next morning before the show we had a meeting with Apple Daily--the local Taiwanese news source and graphics company. They work closely with Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. Remember the Tiger Woods piece? Anyway, THIS one if one of my faves. I was here to be the first person to undergo their intense animation machine and make a digital Diplo. You see, Apple Daily is doin the video for the Diplo and Lil Jon collab that we are putting out through Mad Decent this month and it should be as crazy and strange as anything else they do. There’s not really a lot of humor at Apple Daily. I think that all the stuff that gets lost in translation between Turner /Cartoon Network and the Taiwanese studio is where the magic happens--like this recent Al Gore thing was used as news (not comedy). WTF.
Later we went to a Buddhist temple to bless our party and I went to bed for 20 minutes before I had start gulping redbulls. I’m not gonna talk too much about the Taiwan show because it was completely MADD. We got our dancer from Major Lazer back during these last 4 shows and Skerrit was trying some revolutionary new tricks like the 3-way froggy dagger jump off..
One problem was that the power kept goin out but we don't give a WHAT! Major Lazer always rocks it (mad Taiwan pics from the show here). Even though there was a problem with the power, we got past that and kept jamming...
(this video gets poppin about halfway through when Skerrit leapfrogs over a bunch of ladies)
WTF
HONG KONG!
Skeritt is competitive. He became completely obsessed after we showed him some Iggy Pop youtubes. So from now on his life amounts to proving that Iggy Pop is a 2nd rate stage diver. So, now he goes through every show like one quarter Pearl Jam “Alive” video and one quarter GG Allin full on “Pon de Floor” video and a lil bit Vietnamese monk on fire…
The Hong Kong audience was pretty hot. I had played here before but this was nearly all women in the audience…what was it about? I had spent most of our day off looking for rhino horns. I was joking but I made all our dudes take us to the scariest markets in SE Asia, where they had to uncomfortably ask the shopkeepers for rhino horns. No one even knew the translation for rhino, but we got offered walrus penis instead a few times. I gave up on animal contraband and went shopping at like APC and some other spots and got some swag, but that got boring so I looked for more rhino horns and the I-ped (a fake ipad that runs windows) but no luck. Then we played at Volare…lol…here’s the pictures. This show was absolutely mad. Skerrit found a water pipe to hang off of.
Now…off to Japan!
JAPAN!
Skeritt and me dipped from the club, but we knew the flight to Japan was gonna be long and we had to leave the hotel at 5am. This was a rough Friday morning but Japan was madness. We had our Japanese crew here. Our dancers--Hottie Cat, Manamee and her homegirl s from Osaka, and Junko the dancehall queen herself came thru!!!!. Ryo the Skywalker was in the house to do something. Ryo is the original gangster for ragga in Japan--he has old school flow and he is a legend there. Super humble and hugely successful. Once last year I took Simian Mobile Disco to his house and we got so high that we made weird music and watched Wall-e until James Ford passed out. Anyway, he came and ripped this show. We did an extra long set and played some new demos, including the big Elephant Man / Major Lazier joint.. WINE PON!
computer face custom designed by my mom
diplo and hottie cat major lazer japan team!
the crowd is only girls
in the zone, backstage in osaka
In fact our Japanese shows were lots of straight up ragga fans and you can tell by the response. I hadn't played Unit for a few years (since a Ninjatune gig in 2006!) but I was ready to rock. We had a good backstage crew and our host was Roger Yamaha. There were lots of straight up Major Lazer fans there ready to GO HARD. The next night in Osaka was all ragga. The Red Spider crew opened and the crowd was deep and they knew every word of the tracks they played in Japanese. It’s a sort of crazy pop soca Japanese thing with all girl vocals that go hard. I was pulling out my weak lil dubplates just to impress these dudes! but then they gave me a mixture with like Toots & The Maytals on dub!! JEEZ fail!.
no sarz plz kai bai
osaka wasn't taking no mess from us
way too black right now
yaz of turntable labs, tokyo
But anyway that’s the whole tour in like 5 minutes.
Please stay tuned for the next one!
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