Smirnoff, Be There

Smirnoff Experience – The journey...


	Smirnoff Experience – The journey...

	It's been a long and illustrious list of artists who've come to India to play at Smirnoff Experience. Ferry Corsten, John Digweed, Paul Van Dyk, Sasha, John 00 Fleming, The Filterheadz, Lee Burridge, Tom Stephan, Gordon Edge, Danny Rampling, Smokin' Jo, Scarlet Ettienne, Shiva Sound System and even Bobby Friction…Add to that, the formidable skills of the Indian artists - Pearl, Jalebee Cartel, DJ Ivan, Ma Faiza and others…and you begin to understand how much talent, music and history lies within the Smirnoff Experience. However, not too may people know that Lee Coffee was the very first DJ to play for Smirnoff Experience in India. Pearl and I met up with him,playing the Bar Room at the Ministry of Sound on one of our "dance holidays" to Europe. That night in the Ministry Bar, Lee was demolishing the dance floor with proper big-room house - slapping records down (yes, we ALL played on vinyl records then) on the 3 Technics decks of Bar room console. We don't know who was playing in the Main room or the Box (the 3rd room at the Ministry) and we didn't care. Lee's tricks-in-the-mix were sensational and he gave the ginormous speakers over the Bar (and us, the dancers) a proper workout that night. I still remember that the four MASSIVE tunes that night were "Bango" - a brand new remake of a 1978 Todd Terry Classic, a track called “Reckless Girl, Kid Creme's remix of Shakedown- At Night and Tim Deluxe's "It just won't do" - the last two of which went on to become transatlantic monsters, spawning over a dozen remixes and countless bootlegs. The first two were "White Labels" - another name for promo copies of a fresh tune, still unreleased and still unsigned to any label. Pearl and I hunted tunes like these over the weeks that we spent record shopping in London (eventually returning with over 150 records at a time, paying LOTS for excess baggage). Going back to that night at the Ministry, before leaving the club at 6am, I asked Lee for his contact details and he passed me his business card from behind the console, throwing me a loopy grin and a "cheers mate". I told him how fantastic his set was and he must have imagined I was just another anonymous dance fiend / fan on the floor. Many moons later, a friend who worked with Smirnoff met me for a coffee and explained that Smirnoff wanted to recreate the Global Smirnoff Experience concept in India. They wanted to provide really Original Entertainment in India and asked me to jump on board and help them build the country's best party Experience. I jumped at the opportunity, dug out Lee's card - and Smirnoff Experience began to take shape in India. Lee came down with his wife (who is of Indian origin) and played his first event in Pune to a mammoth crowd of over 2000 people that year and also did events in Mumbai and Bangalore. Pearl and I booked several other DJs that year, including Louis Paris and Gareth Cooke and Smirnoff Experience began to fulfill its worldwide promise, on the shores of this great land for the first time.

USER COMMENTS