IT’S ALL GONE PETE TONG AT PACHA
The birthday boy is back where he belongs…
I
t’s not only DJmag that was busy blowing out the 20 candles on top of our birthday cake this year... Tastemaker, Ibiza authority and head of IMS, Pete Tong was also a bit out of puff after he too celebrated the same epic milestone at Radio 1.
“There’s a few anniversaries this year, Cream and Soma turned 20 too. We all started roughly the same time I suppose,” Pete says. Chatting in the sunshine on the lawn of the Gran Hotel, we grabbed a window of opportunity sandwiched between his closing speech at IMS and his set at the Grand Finale party at D’Alt Vila. Before he heads up to the old Spanish fort that overlooks the island to open up for his handpicked line-up of Hercules & Love Affair, Dubfire, Japanese Popstars and 2ManyDJs, we asked him to cast his mind back and tell us what on earth was so damn exciting that happened all those years ago? “There had already been three years of rave, acid house, electronic music and punk rock. I felt like my audience was already there, but nobody was talking to them. So when I arrived on national radio in ‘91, it made a huge impact. By ‘93, we added more dance shows; the Essential Mix, Jules and Danny Rampling. Now the station offers 12 hours of dance music on a Friday night, which is pretty impressive.”
Like a true veteran, his commitment to the station never wanes, despite a busy summer schedule. Broadcasting weekly from the studio above Cafe Mambo, on the island that Radio 1 refers to as “the biggest dancefloor in the world”, it’s a certified fact that he knows a thing or two about his local discotecas. After a successful run of ruling the roost at Eden with Wonderland, he now returns to Pacha for his Friday night, All Gone Pete Tong, fulfilling his residency with help from the likes of Laurent Garnier, Booka Shade, Paul Kalkbrenner, Calvin Harris, Felix Da Housecat, the list goes on... “Now feels like the right time. Back in 2007, my head was going a different direction to Pacha’s. The whole idea of Wonderland and that crazy move to San An was great. But after three years, I couldn’t see how we could easily or cleverly build on that... unless they made some kind of huge investment, like rebuilding the club for me.”
Whilst the venue still holds a place in his heart, it’s the geography of the island that concerns him. “It’s San An, rather than Eden, that I’m disappointed with. It needs the same investment of new ideas that Playa d’en Bossa is seeing, like the arrival of Ushuaia. I couldn’t wait any longer. I did think of going to America for the summer...” Ah yes, ‘the Land of Opportunity’. Pete will be keeping it Balearic all summer, but he’s also signed up to four dates of Pete Tong’s Pool Party at Encore Beach Club in Las Vegas, a city that was a hot topic at IMS. When the audience was given an opportunity to vote on a series of questions, there was one that received a 100% “No” response, “Is Las Vegas the new Ibiza?” “Well, no! It’s in the desert for a start! But it’s a place where people only go to have a good time, so in that sense, it’s similar to Ibiza. Kaskade invited me to play the Labour Day weekend last summer, which is a massive deal there, and he’d created something: 10,000 people in a pool at 1 o’clock in the afternoon going mad. Deadmau5 is a regular, Paul Oakenfold has been there for a few years now. There’s a momentum building. Now people come to Vegas for the music and the parties, and the casinos are catching on. Years ago they booked Frank Sinatra to keep you at your table, now they are booking Tiësto.”
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www.djmag.com
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