Tour Diary - Purrth (Part 5 / 5)

 The last stop and I had no idea whether to be excited or dreading this show.  Personal problems had started creeping into my life so this tour was starting to become a huge drain on myself.  This job is stressful but combined with problems, socially, relationship, financially, mentally and health wise, I just struggled to get this show on the road.

Although of all the shows, Perth was one I was happy to finish off with, it's my birthplace, my original hometown, it was the original hometown of Neko Nation before the move to Adelaide in the middle of last year.  Perth is a mindblowing achievement to see where we've come from, we used to put Neko Nation in one of the tiniest bars in the Perth CBD to probably the biggest venue in the Perth CBD (yes, there's bigger venues in Northbridge, but we'd rather not).

Production wise, Perth has got the biggest venue, we've got the biggest dancefloor, the biggest stage, the best DJ equipment, the best lighting and DMX (lighting controllers), we've got an amazingly stocked bar (Rekorderlig anyone?), we've got the Byte Nyte gaming crew with multiple video games for play and the best sushi in Australia by far.

I think Perth managed to get a bit up there with the craziness, we've seen some epic dancing on stage, lightsaber battles, poi twirling and even well rehearsed K-Pop routines, Perth from a professional event promoter's point of view is by far our more well run and polished show.  The crowd can be a bit on the tamer side but once they got a bit of alcohol into them and we played music from Perth's favourite fetish, My Little Pony, they went absolutely bonkers.

Perth was a bit of a tricky show since we had a few staff members pull out but it actually worked out to be quite amusing for me in the end as it turns out that I talked to the catgirl who didn't have a partner and we ended up having the same maid dress, so myself and Tara decided to maid it up and serve sushi together, it was the first time I served sushi all year so it was lots of fun.  I also got to replace a DJ and play my new school Neko Nation set which is seeming to prove quite popular, so I had fun up there, although with Perth, Gigavolt and F-it had some pretty awesome sets that we only see in Perth which went down well.

So with a successful show, how do you celebrate the end of the tour, well I will admit I did party hard at various points of the night but the next day, after some hangover food, there was a lot of sleeping and watching of Eurovision, for once I wasn't craving Iku Sushi the next day because I ate so much of it.  For those outside of Perth, Iku Sushi is the most godlike sushi place in all of Australia.  It's got amazing decor, the hugest variety of non-alcoholic drinks, interesting meals and cheeseburger sushi, the most delicious delicacy I've ever had in Australia.

Back in Adelaide, returning home triumph having had the most amazing time on this tour.  Meeting some many wonderful new people, exploring lots of new places and working hard but the shows in the end have all been worth it.  I can not wait to put on more shows later in the year, Perth and also all the rest of Australia, you all rock, keep supporting our shows and we will make them bigger and better for you.  We're glad that people enjoy our show that we are able to do this for you all because it's truly special to see everyone having lots of fun no matter what they've had during the week, it's those moments where you truly forget about the mundane-ness of your life and just go out and forget it all and truly live.  <3

Tour Diary - Brisbane (Part 4 / 5)

I was mega excited for the Brisbane show, Brisbane is a show I hold very close to my heart, Brisbane was originally a show that nobody wanted to go too when we organised our first show and to make matters worse, we didn't hear from the venue for months, only to find that the venue was shut down.  Frustrated by the setbacks I had a massive comeback to put Brisbane on the map, and thanks to a huge push from a few superstars in Brisbane, Jacqui and Sammi being two of the main two, we had the best and biggest debut show in Neko Nation history in February.

Coming to Brisbane was great, we've been on the back of the small Melbourne show which just didn't feel like a Neko Nation in a sense and we came to Brisbane, a show which had lots of applicants, we had a huge budget for this one, we had so many DVD's and Blu Ray's as prizes from Madman and Siren, we had massive sound and lighting upgrades and we also had Triex and S3RL come out to play for an epic show.

Brisbane never ceases to disappoint, I got to let rip my favourite new style of set, from 8-9pm, an electro, K-Pop set, then a J-Trance, Handzup, Hardstyle set, the tour had forced me to pace myself thanks to some pro J-Core DJ's joining on board, including Riot Angel who made the trip to Adelaide so I gave up my slot at the end for a ridiculous expression set.

Brisbane's crowd never disappoints, we see massive conga lines all over the place, we've seen massive group pile on photos and it's by far our most colourful show, plus the people are amazing in Brisbane, I came to this city knowing no-one at the start of the year and they've kind of adopted me into their world.  I've truly loved them back, they're very drama free and insanely fun loving and they just come to let everything go and party.

On my end, it wasn't the most fun night, I had numerous incidents throughout the night, meaning I missed S3RL's set and a fair of Triex's but I caught Tonium's pony set, which for someone like myself who doesn't get this pony craze, was mindblown by this set, from what I heard from S3RL and Triex they did good, although we've noticed the so called kiss of death effect from Susannah.  Originally an experimental idea to have Susannah play Bubblegum Pop, she's pretty much filled the dance floor got people to go completely crazy and whoever plays after her will just struggle to keep people on the floor due to people being so exhausted from pushing too hard.

Overall I loved Brisbane, it's got great people, I like the city and it's a nice place which is a mix between the fast paced city life of Melbourne and Sydney but got the laid back elements of Perth and Adelaide.  There's nice Japanese influences in particular Harajuku Gyoza and Mos Burger are absolutely amazing places.  Also got to give massive props to Ben for letting us stay over in a big house which everyone in welcomed us greatly, Brisbane is always such a brilliant, unpredictable and wild party and I hope that never changes.

Tour Diary - Melbourne (Part 3 / 5)

Third Stop, Melbourne.  The decision to go to Melbourne was a last minute one, when we had an interesting idea and offer.  We went with a new rebranded event called "Neko Domination", more focused towards the goth/alt crowd, with a focus on dark EDM and EBM.

While some of you may read that thinking that we've lost our mind, to an extent we have, we're using our Melbourne minds.  Melbourne was by far our lowlight on our 2011 tour, our only 2011 Melbourne show was poorly attended and barely set Melbourne on fire, however we learned some lessons from our last show and we headed into this show having had great shows in Sydney and Brisbane this year.

The end result was quite a decent night, thanks to the help of Alex who managed the "Domination" room we saw a huge interest in the goth/alt scene coming down to support our event, although the colourful cosplayers were nowhere to be found, despite our marketing campaign at Supanova in the weeks leading up to the event.

The show was an interesting one, with Noc.V being a highlight and actually probably one of our best DJ's on tour with an amazing J-Core set and it was generally quite a fun night overall.  The new style of show was interesting, taking me back to the style of events that I used to work with when I was helping others put on events.

The event felt a lot like the very first Neko Nation in a sense, we could count the DJ's on one hand and we only had a small number of people at our event.  Melbourne is by far our most bizarrest city, we advertise Neko Nation as a cosplay event and the number of cosplayers at each of our Melbourne events can be counted on one hand.

Sadly, on our end, we're going to be putting an end to Neko Nation in Melbourne and leave our focus on the other four major cities as we've come away from Melbourne with very little interest for our shows.  :(

Tour diary - Sydney (Part 2 / 5)

 Our second show and our first interstate one on the tour and actually it's the first time that we've ever put on a show in Sydney.  Sydney has been a city which we've struggled to get a show happening in 2011.  However things really started to go our way in 2012, a growing cosplay scene, new sponsors plus massive support from our lead catgirl (Rachel) and also from the venue owner (Herbie), we could make it happen.

Sydney was by far our most nerve wracking show, we've had difficulty attracting hype and interest but in the weeks leading up to the show we've had a lot of love and support from our fans to make this an awesome party.  I rocked up to find myself actually really enjoying Sydney, the arcades, food and the city were absolutely amazing, plus our venue as well too.

Our Sydney show is one of our most uniquest shows on the venue, taking place in an unconventional venue, it makes for an interesting and unique underground feel that really put an interesting twist on our show and for one great atmosphere for the show.  Mixed with an extremely varied Sydney crowd which has an interesting mix of alt, rave, goth, cyber, furry, cosplay and geek cultures.

The show went better than we expected, in particular we noted that the sushi in Sydney went faster than in any other city by far and we had really great fans who really stuck till 4am to party hard, I was suggested to play speedcore near the end and they did dance to it.  Favourite highlight was by far Kuma Drop playing his entire set in a pedobear outfit, plus Shyen's Disney was a popular crowd favourite.

We love this show, it's an amazing venue to deal with, nice massive chill out area and is a popular one for the interstate fans as well too.  Sydney was a blast and after spending another day discovering the massive city and having a blast, we're excited to be back for SMASH to throw a massive after party for all the Sydney fans!

Tour diary - Adelaide (Part 1 / 5)

 First stop Adelaide!  Our tour starts off in Neko Nation's current home of Adelaide.  Adelaide is by far the most exciting show to prepare for as we regularly gets our fans coming into Tokyo Hardcore to buy tickets, we get to see the excitement first hand and actually interact with the community in our own hometown, compared to just talking to people on Facebook with the interstate shows.

We headed into the show completely sold out of pre-sales, the second time we have achieved this feat (the other time being Perth for the unofficial Wai-Con after party).  So we had massive reasons to get very excited for this show, especially since we were going into this show nailing what we believed would be one of the most amazing shows ever as we believed the last show was great but we could finally work on putting on all the finishing touches to get everything the way we wanted it too.

The Adelaide show was pretty much the stuff of dreams, a titanic amount of support came from all over the place, 14 DJ's, 8 catgirls, 10 media (including AVCon), it's by far the biggest show staff wise and well supported by the entire Adelaide cosplay community.  Our numbers hit over 300, taking the attendance title back after temporarily losing it to Brisbane at the last show.

Adelaide is by far the most special show for us in terms of the amount of support, attendance and love we receive and it was massive motivation for the rest of the tour, plus Adelaide certainly knows how to party with absolutely packed dancefloors and crazy antics all over the place.  It's a show like this that shows why Neko Nation has chosen to reside in Adelaide.

Having been satisfied we were ready to pack our bags for our debut show in Sydney!