Lots of news and updates (edited + Calvin Harris at LavoNYC)

Hey Everyone - sorry it's been awhile. I've been busy with exams and my birthday and Halloween.

Let's begin with wrapping up October. Busy-P at Hiro Ballroom (originally supposed to be Club Love) was supposed to be an excellent show. Rumors of Daft Punk making a guest appearance were proven false, but after their surprise performance up in NYC just a few weeks back, I wouldn't have been surprised. Speaking of surprise performances, Tiesto apparently played at LavoNYC a few weeks ago too. The difficult thing with Lavo is that they do not have a fully functional website yet, so attaining information has become very difficult. If anyone has a schedule of events for Lavo, please forward them along to the rest of us. Boys Noize seemed to wrap up the electro scene pretty well for October at Webster Hall, which leads right into the Deadmau5 trilogy at Roseland Ballroom Oct 27-30. As usual, I have heard nothing but awesome things about all of the DJs who opened for Joel, and nothing but "huh? that's it? he only played for an hour and a half?" about the Mau5's performance. At this point I feel like it's become expected, however I can say I'm honestly shocked he made it through all 3 nights without cancelling a show due to exhaustion (must be due to only playing for an hour or two each night ;) ). Among all of the openers for Deadmau5, I heard Kaskade (America's most famous DJ) absolutely tore it up which is refreshing after his Electric Zoo set was pretty mundane. Here is a sample of their remix to SHM's ONE, which is laced with the vocals to his own Fire in Your New shows: click here. Additionally, Avicii was said to have absolutely killed it at Pacha in the 3rd week of October - this 21 year old MixMash DJ has been doing nothing short of blowing minds of househeads across the world under the guidance of Mr. Laidback Luke - a feat which is evident in the 2010 DJ rankings where he ranked #39 (which we will discuss later). It just goes to show that experience is not always among the most necessary things to have, a good ear for music and solid guidance will get you far, along with opportune timing (explosion of all the mixmash artists).

November boasts an AWESOME lineup for househeads in NYC.

Nov 2 - Calvin Harris @ Lavo

Nov 6 - Crookers @ Webster Hall

Nov 12 - Benny Bennassi WITH Congorock - Pacha NYC

Nov 13 - Sebastian Ingrosso - Pacha NYC

Nov 19 - Dirty South - Pacha NYC
Nov 20 - Axwell - Webster Hall

Nov 24 - Sleepy and Boo - Santos Party House

Nov 24 - "Facelift" feat PAUL OAKENFOLD, ROGER SANCHEZ, CHUCKIE, NERVO, SIDNEY SAMSON - ROSELAND BALLROOM

PHEW! That's a lot kids. Choose wisely or you won't make it to December. A quick look ahead shows DAVID GUETTA feat JOHN DAHLBACK at Pacha on December 3rd and Steve Angello at Roseland on NYE. Both of these events will surely sell out, so buy your tickets early!!

While I would love to attend everything, the shows which I will be pushing for will be Dirty South, Axwell, Facelift, Guetta, and Steve Angello (if I'm not broke). I already bought my Guetta and Angello tix. Please note that if you've never been to Pacha when it's sold out, then seriously consider buying these tickets because it is a LOT to deal with. I love Pacha and I love Guetta (and I can't wait to see Dahlback! Awesome choice for an opening - listen to my favorite Dahlback track Autumn), but unless you really love them both and are willing to put up with the crowds, then maybe you should pick another show to go to. The good thing is that it is a 21+ event, so hopefully the amount of highschoolers running around will be limited.

From all of my former posts my readers already know how much I love both Guetta and SHM, so no need to elaborate on why I will be attending those events. However an event I think may be worth going to (which I will not be, because I personally am benassi-ed out) is Benny and Congorock, more for Congorock than Benny. Benny is always awesome no doubt, but Congorock really hasn't been in the US yet so I think it'd be a great opportunity to catch them early - I think they have the potential to blow up, and it's always a treat to catch awesome DJ's before they become too popular.

The Facelift event seems like a really interesting mix of DJs. You have the house with Roger Sanchez, the trance with Oaken fold, and the dirty stuff with Chuckie and Sidney Samson. Ladies and gentlemen Sidney Samson is an absolute animal behind the decks live. To my knowledge this is the first time he's been in the states since WMC 2010. Just as I was getting into Dirty Dutch, we decided to attend the Dirty Dutch vs The World event at Club Cameo in Miami during WMC. Due to circumstances out of our control, we missed the more popular Chuckie and Afrojack and walked in as Sidney Samson was coming on. We thought to each other "Great, we're gonna hear 32425 remixes of Riverside". Well, we were wrong and he absolutely blew my mind. I've seen them all, Afrojack and Chuckie multiple times, and Sidney Samson by far, in my opinion, is the best live.

I will get into a more detailed analysis of the DJ Mag top 100 for 2010 in my next post, simply because I'm running out of time, but basically in a nutshell, not to many surprises or shockers - house music continues to make a huge push higher into the rankings, while trance is definitely taking a back seat. In my next post we'll get more into what this means for the industry as whole. For those of you who haven't seen the rankings yet, here's a link. Until then, save up, buy those tickets, and rave n roll!

** In regards to the calvin harris show @ Lavo, I just found a link from calvin harris's website, not Lavo's and I'm working on getting the details now. Click here to see.