Queen's Day After Party

Spring 2003, Amsterdam, Holland

Published by Zirk

We started this free gig around 22:00. The public had a heavy Koniginnedag (Queensday) with a big big party under the bridge. Some of them should be drunk and very tired. We had no idea what to expect. Every item was there, only the record players were not there and we ordered Taxi Anders to get the players ASAP. In the mean time Tommy let us listen to very interesting and beautiful ambient sounds. The players arrived at 23:00 so from that moment Tommy started to play some more groovy tunes.

There was no single incident whatsoever and the crowd was really friendly and open. The vibe was top! Fluofairy had a small party tent in the tunnel and Laurent displayed there is fluo art together with a little smart shop. Tina (from@tobee) came with a "bakfiets" bike and was making caiprihina / ice drinks. Our bar was selling cold and warm beer , juices, mixes, Thai red bull and gave water for free.

Satyr followed and made with a Techno/trance set our mood in the right direction. Steven HC, loaded with Brazilian unreleased sounds had the honour to let the people jump around at grow in amount from approx. 500 to 800. Then suddenly at 3 AM there were three police men at the property. Zirk saw them just a second earlier then they saw him and blinded them with the flashlight. They angry ordered to stop the sound in 15 min. and let every body out quietly.

They waited outside in their car and when they saw about 50 people leaving, they left as well. We decided to ask the crowd to move quickly their bikes from the street into the tunnel. This way it would look empty to the police when they check again. Now we started up the music on the old volume. Cyber chick (Lorance) followed with pure psytrance and gave a lot of people joy with kick ass tracks, although mixing was difficult since one record player was broken.

The whole night we had a very strict policy for the area behind the dj booth, because our last tunnel party somebody stole our small change money. this time even Dj's were kindly ask not to stay in the back, so even their luggage and records were safely kept with us.

At six the police made a short phone call about still hearing music. they gave an official warning and said that the next violation would end in confiscation of sound equipment. Nevertheless we decided to continue, the sound equipment is not that important to us. Stella Nutella was basically delayed because of missing / stolen luggage during her trip from Brazil, and Riches took the decks over for so long. With him we are always guaranteed for the right , appropriate type of music for the time of the day. He slowly brought the bpm down to a more morning trance rhythm.

Stella arrived at 7 AM and wanted to start quickly, there were still about 500 people and it seemed they wanted more beats! Quickly the depression lightened up at Stella her face from the tracks she played and that happy feeling seemed to be beamed right to the public; the place was jumping from the nice and happy tunes in the tunnel. at 7:30 a lot of tunnel engineers, constructors and work men suddenly came to take a look and we gave them a VIP treatment. even the owner of the genie-lift gave us another four hours to use it as a DJ booth and would go on their paper work.

At 9 AM suddenly there were policemen and they stopped the music on a rude way. After some talks they let us clean the place in our own tempo, no confiscating took place the police were friendly to us in the end. So were the constructors. The next day they helped us with removing the mobile toilet with their shovel and placing it back exactly on the place where we found it....