Bootie in Brazil: Tour report!

Yes, it's been nearly a month since we were in Brazil, but we're just now getting around to finally blogging about it! It really was a fantastic trip, even though it felt like we barely scratched the surfaces of São Paulo and Brasília (and no, we didn't make it to Rio ... next time!)

For the full photo gallery of our Brazil trip, click here!

This is what São Paulo looks like from the top floor of our hotel. It's the largest city in Brazil (11 million people!) and it truly is a megalopolis. Shockingly though, there's a surprising dearth of distinctive architecture. What it lacks in cool buildings however, it more than makes for in sheer electric urban energy, which we soon discovered ... by hitting the clubs!

We were really fortunate in São Paulo to have a little posse of "instant friends," whom we met through Fernanda, a super-awesome girl (that's her above, with Iwi peeking in on the left, Richard on the right) who had contacted us a couple years ago to try to bring Bootie to Brazil. We met her in New York last year, and she made us feel right at home in São Paulo, introducing us to her friends Iwi, Goos and Richard, and taking us to three different clubs our first night there!

Our new Brazilian friends kept telling us, "We're going to a house party," so of course, we thought that meant a party at someone's house. As it turned out, we went to a place called Funhouse, which is literally a house that's been converted into a club! (Adrian intends to totally steal this idea someday -- after all, everyone loves house parties!)

We were there for a weekly called FunHell, one of the hippest parties in São Paulo, and the DJs were spinning a fantastic mix of electro, indie, rock, and pop, with lots of sampling, hands in the air, and crowd singing (more on THAT later...)

The next night, after visiting MASP, the modern art museum, and doing some fancy dining at Spot, we met up with Fernanda and her girl Iwi. We went to A Loca, the infamous 13-year-running gay club (with a mixed crowd), where we would be playing a few days later. Here's a poster from inside the club.

There was a drag show at 1 AM, and Adrian got dragged up on stage by the hostess to plug the Bootie set, and then was forced to say something obnoxious and embarrassing in Portuguese! Good times!

The next day, we flew to Brasília to meet up with DJ Faroff, who gave us a whirlwind mini-tour of Brazil's capital by night. This is the new Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge, built just seven years ago, and very cool-looking.

Here's Leo, aka DJ Faroff, the one responsible for bringing us to Brazil. He took us to a late lunch buffet at Oca Da Tribo, a restaurant housed in an immense oca (a traditional native Brazilian dwelling).

Outside the oca with DJ Daniel Black.

Brasília did not exist 50 years ago. Before Brasília, there was nothing. Not even a village or a crossroads. It was, quite simply, willed into existence by the campaign promises of Brazil's president Juscelino Kubitschek, who upon winning the election in 1956, hired urban planner Lúcio Costa and modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer to design the space-age capital from scratch – in THREE YEARS (he wanted it completed before his term was up). The architectural crown jewel is definitely the Catedral Metropolitana (above).

One of the statues outside the Catedral Metropolitana.

Brasília is literally in the middle of nowhere, miles away from the beaches and ocean which so typify Brazilian culture. Lúcio Costa once said, "The sky is the sea of Brasília," and this photo proves it. This is the Congresso Nacional, where Brazil's government meets. Mmmm... modernism!

Brasília is definitely the "capital of the future" -- or at least, the future as envisioned in 1960.

And in Brasília, the future does not change! It remains forever space-age retro, as demonstrated by the Museu Nacional. Built in 2006, it's one of the city's newest buildings, but stays true to the modernist aesthetic established by Oscar Niemeyer, who at 102 years old, is not only still alive, but still designing buildings!

As an aficianado of modern architecture, I wish we had been able to spend more time checking out the buildings in Brasília, if for no other reason than they make awesome backdrops for photo shoots! It was a fascinating city, spread out like a giant space-age office park, with hardly any sidewalks or traffic lights. It was a city designed for cars, not pedestrians, at a time when gas was cheap and plentiful. (And today, an average of 6 pedestrians are killed each week trying to cross roads in Brasília.)

For modernist architecture, Brasília is a win, but for civic planning, it's kind of a fail. Everything in the city is divided into sectors -- sectors for hotels, banks, malls, embassies, sport clubs, and residential apartments. On paper, it sounds great, but in practice, everything is separated by wide boulevards and giant superquadras (apartment blocks), with a confusing, byzantine address system to go with it, as demonstrated by the above photo. It took 10 minutes for me to decode this address, which is the fourth giant apartment building in the giant apartment block that is one block east of the center axis and 4 blocks south of the main street. Don't try to come home drunk!

Brazil's best hangover cure! Agua de coca, or coconut water, direct from the source! (This is what a coconut looks like before it gets brown and furry.

Bootie Brasília was held in a building in the middle of a big city park, which was a pretty cool spot to throw a party!

DJ Faroff ramped things up with an all-video mashup set, which you unfortunately can't see very well in this crappy photo.

Imagine our surprise when our friend Antonio -- who we had originally met in Hong Kong -- showed up at Bootie Brasília with his boyfriend Kevin! The two of them are traveling around the world, and they JUST HAPPENED to be in Brasília the EXACT SAME time as us! (And in fact, they were even staying at the same hotel! Seriously!!) We love meeting up with friends in random cities and countries (and that means you, Dean!) halfway around the world!

Bootie Brasília in action. Lots of hot, sweaty bodies dancin' up a storm!

I'd always heard that Iron Maiden was pretty huge in Brazil, so after seeing no less than THREE Maiden t-shirts in one day in Brasília, we decided to have some fun with our set, and take some offbeat mashup chances. So we dropped Wax Audio's "Maiden Goes To Hollywood" (mashed up with Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and we had a group of guys absolutely LOSE THEIR SHIT! I've never seen anyone dance to Iron Maiden the way these guys did!

At the end of the party, we had a group of people who just were NOT ready for the night to end. Even after we played a slow-jam last song (Divide & Kreate's still-classic "Always With You"), and they turned the lights on, they were still screaming for more, chanting, "One more song! One more song!" The girl at the front REALLY wanted Madonna's "Like A Prayer," so we played Maxentropy's "Low A Prayer," and led everyone in a good old-fashioned sing-along. Damn, those Brazilians sure love to sing!

Back to São Paulo! After waking up WAY too early for our flight back, we took a nap, and woke up just in time to meet up with Goos, one of Fernanda's friends, and a DJ and former mashup maker. We absolutely loved Goos ... and he not only helped us get the gig at A Loca, but (along with Fernanda) acted as a wonderful host to us while we were there. We also love his taste in t-shirts! This one is a visual pun taken from a Van Halen song title.

Iwi and Fernanda picked us up and we all went to A Loca, where we were doing two Bootie mashup sets at the long-running Sunday club night called Grind.

We were super-excited to play this night, which seemed tailor-made for our eclectic, mixed-up style. Here we are, posing in the front hallway of A Loca.

We started each set with a live mashup sung by Adrian (aka, Smash-Up Derby karaoke). People weren't drunk enough for the 11 PM show (early by Brazilian standards), but the 1 AM performance really killed it!

It was an up-for-it, fun crowd that LOVED singing along! We had made some Brazilian-flavored mashups with CSS and Bonde Do Role, but what they REALLY loved were the Madonna and Britney mashups!

And speaking of Britney ... we had no idea what the "W" of their hand gestures meant, and then one of the girls told us it meant "Womanizer." Who were we to say no? We gave 'em DJ Fox's mashup with The Police.

Can you tell we were having a good time DJing at A Loca? We ended up giving away a bunch of Bootie CDs.

They may not know very much English, but inexplicably, Brazilians seem to know nearly every word to "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)." Even in the gay clubs! We have The Offspring mashed up with the electro of Alter Ego, but we can barely get away with playing it in the U.S. (so not cool) but in Brazil, it brought down the house! So we put it in this month's Bootie Top 10.

Here we are with "Pomba," the DJ and producer/promoter of Grind at A Loca. Love him!

Hanging out after our set. That's Fernanda in the green shirt, and some guys who wouldn't look out of place at The Eagle in San Francisco. Did we mention that Grind at A Loca has a great mix of people? It's an excellent party, with a very fun vibe ... highly recommended!

D and her last caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil! With our wonky sleep schedule and nocturnal activities, we barely saw anything in São Paulo during daylight hours. In fact, come to think of it, we barely saw anything outside of the seven block radius of the Consolaçao neighborhood! Still, we can't complain. The Brazilians sure know how to party, and that's what we like to do best!

For more photos of our Brazil trip, click here!

Obrigado, Leo, Fernanda, Goos, and Iwi! And obrigada, Brasil!

A+D go to Brazil! Bootie Brasília and A Loca in São Paulo

Sorry kids, you're gonna have to wait just a little bit longer for a Bootie Top 10. You know we'll make it up to you! At least we have a good excuse this week -- we're going to Brazil!

We've got Bootie Brasília happening with ourselves and DJ Faroff this coming Saturday, 15 August. As a fan of modern architecture, Adrian has always wanted to go to Brasília, so this trip should be a treat! Then the very next night, it's...

We get to play one of the most infamous clubs in São Paulo ... A Loca! We're special guests at the long-running club night Grind.

Adrian will be singing live "Midnight Mashup Shows" at both events ... although knowing how LATE things start in Brazil, they most definitely won't actually be happening at midnight!

Brazil -- especially São Paulo -- has always been a dream trip for the Mysterious D, so we're definitely looking forward to this! We'll post a tour report next week!

Bootie goes to Australia! Brisbane & Sydney tour report

TO SEE ALL THE PHOTOS FROM OUR BRISBANE/SYDNEY TRIP, CLICK HERE!

It's been nearly a week since we've returned to the States, and everyone wants to know: How was Australia? In a word: Fantastic! Summertime Down Under ... such a great time! We are both so excited to have helped launch another Bootie party on another continent! Especially when our new Aussie partners are as awesome as Adam and Guy...

Flying halfway around the world just so you can meet up and launch a Bootie party with people you've never actually met can be a little ... daunting. It's kind of a leap of faith that it's all going to work out -- tempered by a healthy amount of emailed questions, a couple phone conversations, and a bit of sussing each other out. But ultimately in the end, we couldn't have found two better guys to run our first Bootie party in Oz. We got on with them instantly!

This is first photo we took after getting to Australia, with Adam hiding behind several bottles of Pure Blonde ... nothing takes care of jet-lag like some low-carb Aussie beer!

Adam completely picked our brains about Bootie, soaking up everything like a sponge. He first heard about us and our parties through his friend Matt Bland, a mashup producer/DJ from the UK (where Adam is originally from).

So we had to take this picture, with us saying "cheers" to Matt Bland, who unwittingly help put this all together!

That first day we just kind of hung out in Brisbane, drinking beers all day with Adam. He lives in Fortitude Valley, ground zero for Brisbane's nightlife, with tons of bars and clubs all within a three block radius. Brisbane is known in Australia as a big music town, and is proud of all the bands that have come out of there -- like one of Adrian's college favorites, The Go-Betweens, who have a plaque on Brunswick Street (along with The Bee Gees and Powderfinger, the best Australian band you've never heard of).

Later, we met up with Guy for even more drinks, as you can tell by this photo. That's the lovely Story Bridge in the background.

The next day we went to check out the venue and do a sound check. The Beetle Bar is a great space -- it's attached to a backpackers hotel, but their whole ideology is to bring locals and international travelers together in a club, which we thought was perfect for Bootie.

Beetle Bar is relatively new, and they're hungry to build an audience and reputation. They really seemed to "get" the concept of mashed-up Bootie, and they tried to promote it really well. Although, on their posters and ads, they said that we were "direct from Los Angeles!" Hey, whatever gets people to the party!

Later that evening, we all went to VJ Brewski's house in the suburbs for a traditional Aussie barbeque! Here he is, "throwin' another shrimp on the barbie!" We've known Brewski for many years through GYBO, the bootleg/mashup message board, but of course, we'd never actually met before. He's even made a couple mashup videos for A Plus D tracks, so it was so nice to finally be able to thank him in person!

Brewski's barbeque was pretty much a meet-and-greet, and it was really fantastic to finally meet Hickory Dickory Doc, aka DJ HDD, who was one of the first people we "met" (online) in the bootleg scene. He spun an old-school bootleg set at Brewski's that had us going, "OMG, I remember THAT one! I used to play that all the time at The Cinch!" (The little neighborhood bar we used to DJ at back in 2003.)

Here's the whole gang: Vicki, Guy, Adam, Hickey, Adrian, D, and Alex -- aka DJ BootOX, the resident DJ of Bootie Munich, who is backpacking around the world, and who was crashing at Brewski's house.

Found this in Adam's apartment, and just HAD to take a picture. Yes, it's not just a cliché -- they really DO eat Vegemite in Australia!

The police cars look like Hot Wheels race cars! Cool. It was the little differences like this (and the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road) that made Australia seem like an alternate universe version of the United States. For the most part though, the U.S. and Australia are shockingly similar. After all, both countries started out as British colonies, and were ultimately settled by "outsiders" -- tax evaders in the U.S. and convicts in Australia. Plus, both countries have so much SPACE -- room to move and grow -- and everything feels so "new world" compared to Europe.

It's the United Nations of Bootie! Representatives from each continent that Bootie is on: Brewski (Australia), BootOX (Europe), and Adrian (North America) -- all wearing their "Bootie corporate attire!"

There is definitely a budding mashup scene already happening in Brisbane. Here's Viper Pilot, a mashup producer who got in touch with us after reading about the party on Mashuptown.com!

And here's DJ Cutloose, who we emailed back-and-forth with last year when he was visiting LA . He was supposed to come out to Bootie there, but never made it. We're glad we finally got to meet him at Bootie Brisbane, even though he had to leave early to go DJ across town!

They sure love their surfing in Australia ... here's D, hanging 10 at the Beetle Bar, beer in hand.

Hey, it's A Plus G ! :-) Adam (LolaDJs) and Guy Davy on the decks at the top of the night. They kicked off the Bootie party with a Jimi Hendrix mashup!

DJ BootOX followed them with a kick-ass set that got the dance floor going.

We did the live Midnight Mashup Show pretty much right on time. Although, it might have been a little TOO early -- we like to do the shows right at the peak point in the night. But it really helped make a connection with the crowd, and bring everyone in the room together, which was a really great way to kick off our two-hour set.

So many hands in the air on the dance floor!

Yup, they're getting the bootleg pirate thing already!

Um, did we mention ...

... hands in the air?

Mysterious D surveys the action on the dance floor. Hands in the air? Check. Booties shaking? Check. Big smiles? Check. Alright, our work here is done.

After all the things everyone warned us about Brisbane crowds -- "they want electro," "they want traditional dance music," "they're kinda provincial," "the crowds in Brisbane can react like villagers when you bring out a musical Frankenstein they're unfamiliar with," well ... it was all completely WRONG! Give them clever, mashed-up party music, and people can't help but smile and dance and sing at the top of the their lungs and have an unpretentiously good time!

DJ BootOX pretty much sums up how we felt about the party!

It was hot in Brisbane! See how sweaty we all were at the end of the night? That's Mysterious D, DJ HDD, and Cloudface Von Ruckus, a mashup fan from Brisbane we met on Facebook.

Aw, the Mysterious D all tuckered out after a night at Bootie Brisbane!

TO SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM BOOTIE BRISBANE, CLICK HERE!

We were so pumped up from adrenaline from the Bootie party the night before that somehow, despite our hangovers, we got our asses out of bed the next day in order to do the one "touristy" thing we wanted to do in Brisbane -- go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. After all, we're in Australia, dammit! Thank you, Brewski, for taking us to see some koalas and kangaroos!

If we asked this kangaroo what he was doing, he'd probably say he was "chillaxin'" or something. But we know better.

Aw, Adrian feeds da wittle joey!

After getting our fill of native Australian wildlife, Brewski took us to the top of Mount Coot-Tha for a pretty view of Brisbane.

Seems like every town has a Chinatown, and that's where we had dinner with BootOX and Brewski, talking shop and hanging out. We're gonna see BootOX several times this month, as he and DJ Schmolli are doing a Bootie tour in the States. And Brewski is now a resident DJ of Bootie Brisbane!

The next day, after a meeting over brekkies (that's Aussie slang for breakfast) with Adam and Guy, we flew off to Sydney. No Bootie party there, just a little vacay ... and of course, quite a bit of scouting around. Because, you know... it's not like we wouldn't WANT to have a Bootie party in Sydney (especially since it's SO SIMILAR to San Francisco!)

Bootie's very first international guest DJ was Dsico, a former mashup producer from Sydney, Australia. Luke was one of the first people involved in the bootleg scene way back in 2002-2003, but by the time he played at Bootie in February '04, he was already over it, declaring "bootlegs are dead" ... pretty much before the scene even began! We always loved his dry, cynical sense of humor! Unfortunately, he moved to London a couple years ago, but he sent us a list of all the places to hit up while Sydney. Our first evening there, we had a Coopers Pale Ale in honor of him -- it's his favorite beer!

OMG, we're in Sydney!

Adrian is a bit of an academic when it comes to modern architecture, so of course, one of our first stops HAD to be the Sydney Opera House. Pictures barely do this building justice -- it's gorgeous from every angle.

Everyone told us that we had to take a boat out on the harbour ... so D decided to do this one, which is a jet boat that does 270 degree spin-outs on the water...

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

Kinda hard to get a steady shot of Sydney when you're skipping over waves at 50 mph (80 kph), but here's one.

Went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was doing an exhibition by kooky, OCD-suffering, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. This is a mirrored room installation filled with, um ... lots of soft plushy things.

After the social intensity of being in Brisbane, it was kinda nice to be on our own for a few days. But we were definitely looking forward to having dinner and drinks with Wax Audio, one of our favorite mashup producers. We met Tom last year in New York, and it was so nice to catch up with him in his own backyard, chatting all about mashups and GYBO and traveling and the current drought situation in Australia. Just a lovely night out!

Anyone who knows Adrian knows that he has a tower fetish (goes with the modern architecture thing) so of course we had to go up to the top of the Sydney Tower. But it was all getting to be a little too touristy, so after two days, we heeded the advice of Dsico and HDD, and headed to Newtown, blundering around the shops and pubs on King Street (kinda the Sydney version of Haight Street in SF).

As soon as we got off the train at Newtown, we were both like, "Ah, now THIS is where we should be hanging out!" And because it's a little off the map in our tourist books, we never would have made it had Dsico and HDD not told us to go. Not far from King Street is the Imperial Hotel, made famous from one of the opening scenes of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert! Unfortunately, it was closed.

Seeing as that we were in Sydney from Monday through Wednesday, our nightlife options were unfortunately a bit limited. However, we managed to make it to the Sly Fox for "Queer Central" on Wednesday, a long-running drag (king and queen) night. Ah, a little taste of Trannyshack Down Under!

It was so nice to see drag kings in Sydney ... at least we got a little local culture in for our last night. And then, just for contrast, we went to "Paradise City," a poorly-attended-but-fun old-school rock 'n' roll night at Q-Bar on Oxford Street. Not exactly a representative sampling of all the nightlife options in Sydney, but hey, we took what we could get on a Wednesday night!

Heading back home, nine days later ... but we got one of those days back, since we crossed the international date line! We were a little jet-lagged for Bootie SF two days later, but whatever ... Australia was completely worth it!

TO SEE ALL THE PHOTOS FROM OUR BRISBANE/SYDNEY TRIP, CLICK HERE!