Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Melbourne (Sunday)

Melbourne - Final Finale

I pretty much spent so much of Melbourne sleeping, I don't really have much in the way of interesting tour stories here, sorry!  From a personal point of view, 4 shows was probably way more than I could handle in a row, especially with such a late finish in Sydney.  But the show must go on and it was time to get the final show on the road!

Prelude

Melbourne was the last show on the tour and it was always going to be an interesting one since we rarely do Melbourne shows, so it was always going to be interesting to see how this one shows up, especially being on the Supanova weekend, everyone always says we should do a super epic mega convention con after party but if you look back at most of your con experiences a lot of people do get super tired and while there's definitely some that want to party hard, a lot of people want a chance to finally escape their outfit and have a mega rest.  With that said, generally being on a con weekend doesn't effect us to much.

Show

The show actually went a lot better and more fun than I expected considering the state of mind I was in near the end.  There were a lot of people new to Neko in general and I think the whole idea of a gothic lolita rapper definitely threw people off guard in terms of what to made of MC Melody Doll but people definitely did enjoy it and got into the night which was great.  By this stage the show was really running on autopilot, the management at this venue was awesome and my Melbourne guy absolutely knew everything that needed to be done while I'm pretty sure I somehow used a metal pole as a pillow to get through this show.

And it was over, it was such an amazing tour and one of the most stressful, insanest and craziest experiences of my life but it was fun and an amazing achievement to finally get it all and it was a great time, which I got so much out off in terms of life experience.  Will we see another Neko Planet in the future, most likely but after a tour like that, that's the furtherest thing from your mind and all you just want to do is sleep.  Despite all the craziness, pretty much as soon as I got back, I started booking more upcoming Neko Nation shows, it's time to rest here but not for long!

Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Sydney (Saturday)

Sydney - Wow, Fantastic Baby!

Our flight to Sydney was an epic one, ok, I don't remember anything since I was asleep for it but we had S3RL, SiSeN, GPK, LeLe and Killswitch Engage all on the same flight.  So much musical talent on one flight was pretty epic.  Sydney was where this trip was about to get real, I was pretty much running on adrenaline averaging a few hours of sleep at the hotels and trying to get half an hour or so on the plane, caffeine was turning from a luxury into my oxygen.  Unlike the other shows, I told the major acts to honestly get some sleep before the show and not to bother showing them around Sydney, for me, HAHAHAHAHA, I went straight to the venue to get started to work and a few bits of running around to get started on this one.

Prelude
Despite the lack of sleep, it's good to be back in Sydney though, it was probably one of the shows I was looking forward the most if not probably the most, our ticket sales were the best in Sydney and that city is going through a massive growth and interest of Japanese music having just had Kyary the month before.  So setup for this one was always going to be quite a challenge but Sydney team being awesome had so much completed and sorted when I rocked up and we had one hell of an amazing setup for Sydney, from the kandi tables, gaming rooms to even cats firing lasers and breathing smoke, Sydney's setup is on another level thanks to Herbie and Dorian.


Show
So while it was the show I was most excited about on tour, it was probably the show where I was by far the least active.  You might think that with an Access All Areas pass, sitting behind the merch desk all night probably doesn't sound like the most exciting place to be but on how little sleep I had, I was pretty keen, plus I've never worked a merch desk before and it's pretty important to work as many roles as you can in your event, besides photography and security I've virtually worked almost every role involved in the show!

Even though I was sitting behind the merch desk most of the night, got a pretty awesome view and the Sydney crowd is always epic to hang out with and talk too.  The performances on this night were absolutely incredible, the Sydney crowd is always loaded with energy, while in many other cities it starts to wind down around 2am, Sydney just keeps going harder and faster with a lot of the rave scene making it down to our event and even more this time with S3RL being on board.  Even on the 4th night, all the main acts did an absolutely awesome job and they stayed quite late and decided to party with everyone, as they loved the friendly, colourful and fun vibe that Sydney offered.  Insanis also really boosted our acts too, headed by Mellie and Rachel, aka. Australia's #1 catgirl who's famous for doing our artwork really boosted SiSeN's and S3RL's sets.

Sydney was also the only show I actually got to play a DJ set, even at 4:45 in the morning, Sydney still partied insanely hard, I barely remembered what I played and it definitely wasn't my best set but my god this crowd was eating it up and really helped pick me up for a bit.  The later finishing time meant I didn't get back to the hotel until around 7:45am, I squeezed in 2 hours of sleep, went crazy on coffee and food till it was off on the plane for the finale in Melbourne.

Neko Planet: Tour Diary - Brisbane (Friday)

Brisbane, things get real

We touch down in Brisbane, it's a nice feeling for all, LeLe is happy that she's in a bit more familiar territory, I'm happy because Brisbane and Perth feel very similar and GPK and SiSeN are excited as Brisbane is set to be one of the bigger shows on tour, although this could be because GPK has started to constantly sing and go on about how amazing the Mortal Kombat theme song is (yes, that terrible song, XD). We feel a bit recharged as being LeLe's home town she shows us around to Sunnybank, a place also known as I can't believe that we're still in Australia! I'm not the biggest fan of Chinese food but we're taken to the most amazing Chinese restaurant and chow down like crazy.

Prelude
So I get onto setup for the event and once again, the curse of Brisbane roads seems to strike me again, for some odd reason I always keep getting lost, stuck in traffic jams and in general, I should never ever drive in Brisbane, at one point, I was pretty certain I should have just abandoned my van and walked to the venue. To make matters worse, at one point I accidentally forgot to put the handbrake on when I was parking for the hotel, it's kind of a big deal on a 30 degree hill! Luckily some quick reflexes got out of that drama. In short, I'm a good driver but I probably deserved every single racist asian driver joke that day. >.>

Show
Brisbane was where we had a lot of support acts and they played a much huger role in the night, since including the DJ's we had 5 in Brisbane and the show went a lot later. I was immensely proud of this show and as much as I want to take credit of it, Matt has really come a long way with pulling out all the stops to put together something mega impressive.

Due to the later finish, all the main acts didn't have to stay till pack up and while they were free to leave around half way in the night they actually really wanted to stay and really had a lot of fun, especially on what was the biggest crowd on tour at that point which they had fun with. For me, I didn't get back to the hotel till 6am and I was also the car dramas didn't end as the parking malfunctioned and the staff had to let me park in the staff parking section, nothing is ever simple and goes to plan! I swear I crashed through the front door and was probably as loud as Neko Planet when coming in but thankfully the person I was a sharing a room with heard nothing, being that out of it and sleeping really hard.

I was very excited for this show and absolutely loved it and had a blast, Matt our Brisbane manager was getting very heavily involved and really want to do something spectacular, he really wanted to show off his event credentials, I was pretty excited with all his ideas that he had come up with but finally everything came together perfectly. This was where things started to get real and amazing, Brisbane had really good ticket sales so we had quite a really good budget for creating an amazing setup and just wow. The stage, especially the screen really took Neko Planet to a whole new level, we looked like a mega expensive and amazing technical show of the future, I can not thank Nate, Anastasia, Matt and many others who were involved with the creation and the setup of what we had in Brisbane and the main acts were truly blown away by what we had.

As soon as I went to sleep, it was only a few hours later that I had to get up and head onto Sydney.

Neko Planet: Tour Blog - Adelaide (Thursday)

Adelaide, Let's get crazy!

It's interesting for me to get back into Adelaide, this was where I used to live and there's always that quaint old country town feeling when you get in but first of all, it was time to claim my free luggage trolley, seriously, Adelaide airport is the best airport in Australia, none of this pay $4 for a luggage trolley and with how much luggage I was carrying it was incredibly a godsend.

So carrying on from SiSeN wanting to eat Australian food, GPK decides to start "blending in with the locals" and starts talking like Steve Irwin and trying to teach SiSeN how to speak old school Australian "G'Day Mate", "Crikey!" was heard from the back seat.  I proceeded to tell them my future plans about how I was going to do a show in Japan, and we'd have kangaroo girls throwing shrimp on the barbie, sausage sizzle, Fosters, Australian cocktails (goon mixed with soft drink) and AC/DC cover bands.  God we were already going crazy and it was only the second day.  XD

So we rock up the hotel we ended up with this incredibly fancy 4 star hotel which funnily enough was the cheapest of the tour (yay, Adelaide), catch up with our Adelaide crew, instead of politely saying hi, we decided to horribly act like fanboys and fangirls and cheer for them as they go through the hotel.  We talk about how the people in Adelaide have a bit of a unique accent compared to the rest of Australia and it was quite noticable, everyone seemed to say cunt a lot.  XD

We had all barely eaten so we found something somewhat Australian that wasn't a pie floater (no meat pie in pea soup, thanks Adelaide).  We scoff down pancakes and stop pretending that we're a Japanese music tour and act as Australian as possible.  Continuing on our trend as being Australian as possible, we visit as many Asian stores as possible.

Prelude

Not surprisingly Adelaide was going to be one of the smaller shows on the tour but it was going to be a fun one since it was a simpler setup, although with that said we had mass amounts of venue drama and miscommunication.  Thankfully Kevin was my awesome Adelaide manager and along with Ken we figured it all out.

Show

By far the most stressful show on my end, with all the last minute venue drama, I had Kevin who was awesome and did an amazing job sorting everything out in the end, it was really one of those shows which appeared easy at first but with so little going to plan and was a nightmare to get it all going right but somehow we got through the night.  It was another awesome performance by everyone and Adelaide's crowd might have been small but were dedicated and it's fun on my end since it's a bit of and old school reunion with people I used to see regularly that I only see when I do shows.  In particular Kevin who's one of my best friends was awesome to hang out with again.

So we had venue dramas in short it was to do with drinks and how much we owe the venue, in short the best way to get even was to get catgirls to serve shots of vodka and tequilla.  Did things go to plan, hell no.  Did everyone end up having fun, oh god yes, it was one of those things that we never would have imagine would have happened at any event let alone one I'd do and no it's never going to happen ever again.  It was a bizarre and interesting night and somehow surviving it was a huge relief, I had no idea how I was going to do the rest of this tour.

So we had dramas at this show behind the scenes, so we decide to have a meeting and sort things out since we had the three big shows coming up and we didn't want a repeat of that night.  We were somewhat satisfied at the end of it all except for one thing.  ROOM SERVICE!  I didn't have winged monkeys I could unleash onto the person who decided onto this, so we went ahead and went through almost $100 junk food combined.  To our credit, normal eating patterns go out the window with the tour.

A few hours of sleep, then it's off to the airport and sleep dep is slowly starting to kick in hard, it might be difficult to sleep on planes but I had no choice but to learn how too.

Neko Planet: Tour Blog - Perth (Wednesday)

Perth, Wednesday - BLAST OFF!

IT BEGINS!
So it begins, if felt like any other tour day, all the last minute checks are done and it's time to head out to the airport!  Energy is high on all ends even SiSeN after his mega draining trip from Berlin.  We head off to the hotel and as we soon learn we're going to start getting a taste of a lot of interesting experiences, crazy adventures and before we hit up the hotel we're getting our minivan through the carpark of doom.  We're playing a tight game of limbo with squeezing this van into this tiny parking lot, with everyone in the car freaking out if we'd take the roof of this van and if I could even park this thing, 9 adjustments later (it was my first time driving a minivan in my life, ok?!), we made it to the hotel fine and I managed to not kill anyone before the tour had officially started, awesome start!

We check out some of the sights of Perth, such as the deformed Goku (pictured) and when we met up with our Neko Perth team, SiSeN suggested he wanted to have something Australian, somehow someone convinced our group that the most Australian thing we could eat was sushi.  I honestly wanted food and just decided to go along with it as for how bad it sounded.  Plus it was the first show, I was going to get sick of sushi by the end of this tour.  XD

With how prepared I was, nothing still ever, ever goes to plan so I'm pretty much running around like crazy, happy I'm in my home town and knowing where all things are and then it's pretty much off to the venue, which is just a few hundred metres away.  Peak hour traffic and roadworks, yeah, I'm still getting the hang of
this touring thing.

Prelude
So setup is happening and to be honest, there's a lot of nerves on my end, Perth was a city I wasn't too excited about, there was a lot of drama about the choice of a Wednesday night, lots of complaints about the price, in short not going because of these reasons is fair enough but constantly whinging is a shit attitude, especially when I didn't even have to do a Perth show in the first place.  It's this attitude that makes promoters not bother with and skip Perth.

With that aside setup goes fine, it's an easier and smaller setup compared to the past although it's still challenging to get all the bands and the new setup, especially platform shoes and ladders never seem to be a great idea but I've gotten the hang off it.

Show
The actual show is a good start, stressful to get everything going right and even though it's not the hugest or most enthusiastic crowd (Wednesday night doesn't help here), it's an enjoyable night and from a personal point of view, three of my most favourite people on a personal level, Sandy, Tahlia and Mark.

Sandy, my girlfriend helped me get through this night and did an amazing job to help me out with all the stress in the lead up to the show and helping on the day with showing the main acts around, I could go on and on about her but will save it for another post.  Tahlia was epicly excited to get involved, one of the few people I look up to in terms of her work ethic and our approaches to our passions, careers and life plus she looked absolutely stunning with her outfit (cyber mech outfit).  Mark was amazing to see, Neko Planet and Neko Nation was heavily inspired by one of his events Mark did 10 years ago, so it was extra special for him to be there to see my twist on what he had done ten years ago and he was quite impressed to see it go nationwide.

Oh and before I forget, yes the show was awesome, the acts all got off to a good start and we slowly started to adjust into tour mode so it's a lovely start and just as it's started we were about to pack up back to the hotel at around 2am, we all get around 5 hours sleep, not much but my god if we had this much sleep on the rest of the tour, we'd be so happy.  The next day, I misjudge the traffic and I'm racing to the airport for dear life but get there with 40 minutes to spare.  I've still got a lot to learn about this whole touring thing as we board the plane for the next day for Adelaide.

Neko Planet, the creation

Neko Planet may have come and gone but I might as well post up why I ended up doing this tour.  Neko Planet was in the planning stage well over two years ago when I started talking to the acts and realising that taking Neko Nation to the next level with live acts and internationals was possible.  For me this was a pretty huge undertaking, I was barely struggling to do Eastern state shows let alone the daunting prospect of 5 shows all in one hit, organising international acts to come here and all the logistics involved.

But the reality was, the idea never went away, it was something that excited for quite a long time and to be honest, after having attended the first show with SiSeN many years ago as a massive fanboy making the trip over to Perth to Adelaide to see him, the prospect of being in charge was a mindblowing one.  With that said, of all my dreams and goals this was a bit of a farfetched one and a hugely difficult one to tackle so I needed a lot more motivation than just doing it because it was cool.

What really got me excited was once I was able to slowly raise up funds and interest, the time slowly appeared to be right, Neko Nation had started growing huger and stronger, it wasn't some shortly lived phase as it was starting to get closer to the three year mark, I decided to dive in and go for it.  For a long time Australia had seen the growth in anime, cosplay, Japanese music, we started seeing cons grow bigger and bigger, the anime and cosplay scenes growing, more interest in Japanese music and yet it was a rarity for Japanese acts to grace our shore, much like how I saw little happening when I first started Neko Nation I felt the same way when it was time to launch Neko Planet.

Ironically enough closer to the event it was far from the case, Dir En Grey and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu came over, not that it honestly interfered with our plans but if anything it worked well for us, we started to see that even though we weren't exactly going to be the first out of the blocks it was nice to see that we weren't alone and we weren't the only ones who saw it.  It got us excited that we were going to be part off and the start of a potential Japanese music revolution in Australia.

10 strange facts about me

A bit of an icebreaker to keep this blog flowing

1. I am actually allergic to cats
2. I've been working in events since 2004 and worked in all sorts of positions and places!
3. I can type upwards of 18,000 ksph
4. My preferred drink of choice is Midori
5. I was ranked in the top 0.5% of students in maths throughout primary school
6. Livejournal was my preferred social media of choice but yeah, not many people are there these days.
7. I used to have a synth dreads business before I launched Neko Nation
8. Favourite games of all time include games from SSX, Wipeout, Saints Row and Final Fantasy
9. I'm able to pass most DDR songs on expert and on doubles mode
10. I like cats, I love every kind of cat, I'm sorry I'm thinking about cats again.