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!

Top 10 Moments of 2011

2011 was an amazing debut year for Neko Nation, we put 7 shows on and we've met an amazing bunch of people and had an amazing amount of time and experiences.  While the whole trip has been amazing, there were a fair few standout moments of the year and we're going to count them down.

10. Neko Nation launch! (Purrth, February 2011)

Our first show in Perth may have only had 4 DJ's and 2 catgirls but nonetheless it was enjoyable night as the very first Neko Nation took place when it was launched in at Bar 138 in Perth on February 5th 2011.  The turnout was around 100 people, maybe it wasn't as big or amazing as our most recent shows but we had to start from somewhere but there was enough love and demand to put on another show and another one and another one!


9. Cheeseburger Sushi (Purrth, September 2011)
While many people reading this might be in shock at such a creation everyone at Neko Nation Purrth was.  Iku Sushi ended up providing up with cooked cheeseburger sushi and the end result?  It was the most fastest sushi run any of our catgirls had ever done, there was no need for taking laps around the room as this was virtually gone by the time they got from one end of the venue to the other.  This stuff was amazing and those who tried it at Purrth definitely thought so.

8. Neko Nation Upgrades!  (Various shows)

While our launch was special, watching Neko Nation grow was quite an amazing thing to watch throughout the year, Adelaide saw the launch of an 8 catgirl show, 12+ DJ's, stalls and a mini stage.  Things were a massive improvement in Adelaide after our first show in Perth.  Things did get a lot better in Perth soon, once we worked on our next setup in the Bakery which featured a decent sized stage with DJ booth, projectors and dancers as well.  However we definitely saved the best till last in Adelaide which saw the production ramped further with a bigger stage, lazers, snow machine and a speedy music format which featured 14 DJ's which caught the attention of AV-Con and I Got Superpowers.


7. Giddy Kong (Various shows)
Giddy Kong is our most famous, interesting and controversial DJ on our show, touring around to as many shows as possible out of his own pocket, he comes to play extremely bizarre sets that aim to please our fans, make them dance and also possibly mortify them with his insane trolling.  We've seen antics such as his Pedobear outfit, his hacked guitar and DDR mats and his love of random speedcore.


6. Less than 3 but more than 50?! (Adelaide, September 2011)
Saccharine had her first bubblegum pop set in Adelaide and it was an amazing success and the crowd certainly got crazy right into it.  Of particular note was when Saccharine played "Less than Three" which ended up creating a conga line which we estimated got to around 50 people, this was not the last which we saw off it, later on we saw a smaller but still impressive Nyan Cat conga line on the night.


5. Putting the win in twincest! (Perth, Various events)

Saccharine and Kae were the first two catgirls for our first show and they kept coming back for more being well known as our two most famous catgirls on Neko Nation.  Kae and Saccharine didn't know each other before the first show but ended up getting along quite well to routinely pull off their twin act, which may have gone a bit too far at the first Adelaide show which lead to many friends getting the two mixed up!

4. Damage Dollz (Adelaide, May 2011)
This was Neko Nation catgirls at it's sexiest and finest.  Saccharine's go-go dancing group the "Damage Dollz" put on a sexy performance which included 4 of Adelaide sexiest and hottest alt models in some pretty sexy, tiny outfits getting pretty close and wrapped up in string.  It made for one amazing show and in the end it was a once off as the Damage Dollz  went their separate ways later in the year.

3. Pedobear (Perth, September 2011)

Neko Nation's beloved Giddy Kong came up with an epic idea to wear a pedobear outfit for a Neko Nation event.  While he didn't end up playing in it due to the heat and lights on stage he was seen wandering around the entire show with the outfit which created quite a few interesting pictures, especially when the catgirl twins Kae and Saccharine were around!

2. Still Alive Finale (Various Shows)
Giddy Kong accidently started a tradition which ensued at most shows which saw a bizarre celebratory dance for the final song "Still Alive", the first Perth show saw a singalong, Adelaide ended up seeing ballroom dancing to "Still Alive", while the last Perth show ended up seeing a variant of the circle of death, where we saw people running around in a circle only for the circle to collapse at the last minute, Perth certainly had a lot left in them by the end of the show.

1. The Kiss (Adelaide, December 2011)
Adelaide's cosplay scene two well known popular if somewhat controversial figures, Adnan and James ended up pashing on stage at the last show of the year during James' set.  The lead up for this moment was often "joked" about for a very long time and people certainly were pretty shocked, surprised but also very excited to see it happen as well too.  It's certainly one of the highlights that everyone remembered from that show.

2011: The finale

As 2011 comes to a close soon, I'd like to thank everyone on board with Neko Nation from all the cities we've been involved in, no role has been too small and I'd like to think that everyone has played a huge part in helping make Neko Nation what it is today.  What was a small project during my university break pretty much forced me to leave university to carry on doing this and also Tokyo Hardcore as well.

It's been a huge year with ups and downs, thankfully most of the downs were behind the scenes and more or less to do with the workloads but greatly outweighed by all the ups with how this year ended, I'm absolutely over the moon with how things have been gone with Neko Nation in 2011.

The last show in particular with Adelaide was just phenomenal and mind blowing, I pretty much planned for a massive overhaul to the Neko Nation show and my god did it work out spectacularly in the end, with over 30 staff on board I thought it was going to be a nightmare to keep things all under control but I've got a great team who helped out a lot.

We've had a lot of spectacular fun with all our shows but this time around we managed to get some video footage and coverage through both AV-Con TV and I Got Superpowers, which I've put a link too below for both the videos and the article which featured us as well.

http://igotsuperpowers.com/events/pull-anime-themed-party/

Expect a lot more posts in the upcoming weeks in regards to some of the highlights over 2011!