On 9 December 2014 I was sitting in a guesthouse on Koh Phangan on a slow internet connection, putting a Facebook page live. "There we go! the Jack Orange page is up!" I wrote with it. "Uploading photos and video takes a while here." Until that moment the name did not exist. I was just Jouke, an Amsterdam hospitality owner who liked to play records.
Three winters on an island
I arrived in November 2014, not as a DJ but on holiday. Back in Amsterdam I was running a tennis club, playing the parties there myself, and perfectly content as a hobby DJ. Then Fubar in Haad Rin asked whether I wanted to play. After that it went fast.
On 16 November I wrote: "Reading a book for a bit, then off to the opening of Adam Duggins' little Britain, and after that playing the sunday sessions at Fubar. What a life.." Eight days later: "Off to Fubar for my first Monday Session." Two fixed nights a week, in a bar on a Thai island, without anyone back home knowing.
I would come back three winters in a row. In December 2015 I posted on arrival: "The view is still as lovely as ever. Back home!" I had not chosen that word deliberately, but it was accurate.
The name
Before that I played as DJ Erwtensoup. On 8 December 2014 the Jack Orange page went online, and a day later I announced it from the island. Why that name exactly, and why then - that is a story I still tell at the bar sometimes. What I do know is that it is the name I am standing on a festival stage in Romania under, almost twelve years later.
The advice that changed everything
Years ago Jos Klaster gave me a tip: record all your sets. "It gets you used to the pressure of getting it right in one take, every time." Without that habit I would have kept nothing from that first Thai winter except a vague feeling. On 4 December 2014 I posted: "First listen of last nights' set @ Fubar from my hammock." Those recordings are still there.
Full moon, four in the morning
On 6 December 2014 there was a full moon. Anyone who has been to Koh Phangan knows what that means: Haad Rin fills up, the beach disappears under people. I played three times that night. What I wrote about it myself that evening:
"First set done at Fubar, now from 4-5 on the beach… back to Fubar for a 6 am wake up session. And after that? God knows. What a night!!!"
One hour on the beach, between four and five in the morning, between a set at Fubar and a wake-up session at six. Eighteen thousand people, was my own estimate that night. No main stage, no headline slot, no press photos. Just an hour in front of a crowd that did not know my name.
Two weeks later, at the Mer Ka Ba party: "When you get ready for the mer ka ba party with more than 100 amazing people you know you're in for a special night! A packed Fubar is a dj's heaven!" A hundred people. I was just as happy with it.
Where I played
In January 2017 the local magazine Phanganist interviewed me, during my third winter. In it I listed what it had grown into by then:
"After I was asked to play in Fubar in Haad Rin, which is a wonderful little place, things went very quick. From there I was asked to play Sandcastle, Lighthouse, Waterfall, Amsterdam Bar, Chill Up and even Slumber Party hostel, pretty much all over here on the island."
The Jungle Experience, The Backyard and Eden were added later. And a weekend in Haad Yuan about which all I could write down was: "best weekend. Ever."
What the island taught me
On Koh Phangan you play one evening for Israelis, Germans, Thais, Brits and Russians all at once. Nobody knows your records. You cannot hide behind a genre. That forces you to unlearn the very thing most DJs try to build: a signature.
What three winters taught me
- A set is not a setlist but a reaction
- Commercial music is not a dirty word, badly timed music is
- A hundred people in a packed bar are harder than a thousand in a field
- Your audience remembers how the night felt, not which track you played
In that same interview I said something I still stand behind, and which by now is the core of how I build every night - whether that is Fubar, a company party or a casino:
"I don't have the sound on full whack when people are coming in. You want them to feel at home, have a drink, have a conversation, look around, make the place their own. Then when it gets busier, when heads start to bob, then I will take it up, not before. Less is more. I am there for them, it is not the other way around."
The easter eggs
The other thing that started there is a habit I have never lost. I began by playing commercial music, so I do not look down on it. But I do go actively looking for that one record everybody knows and nobody has heard in years. Those go into my sets as little easter eggs.
That works on a beach in Thailand. It also works on a Friday night at Holland Casino, and it worked at the RAI. It is not a trick, it is attention.
What is left of it
The page I created that December evening still exists. Two Fubar sets are still up as well, on hearthis.at: part 1 and part 2. And "A day at the Bay", from that weekend in Haad Yuan. I rarely listen back to them. But they are the proof that this is not a story I made prettier after the fact.
And that is exactly why I am writing it down the way it was. No main stage, no fifty thousand people. A bar in the jungle, two fixed nights a week, and an hour on the beach at four in the morning.
Almost twelve years later a festival in Romania books that same name. I still do not entirely know how that happened. But it started there.
