Chris and I arrived in Brisbane and drove through the city to Fortitude Valley. This is where a lot of the bars and clubs are in Brisbane. We were heading for a Sunday session at the bar, Alfred & Constance, where Seth Troxler would be playing.

Seth Troxler is a big House DJ who was doing his Australian tour at the time. I’d seen him once before a few years ago at a festival back home, but seeing a DJ like this in an intimate bar setting would be a completely different experience. And even better, it was free entry. It all felt too good to be true!

We went to the bar late afternoon and it was a pretty cool place. An outdoor terrace with a DJ booth set up, retro decoration, fairy lights, comfy leather couches you sunk right into. The only downside was the food and drink prices, maybe not too backpacker friendly.

In honour of Seth Troxler, they had an expensive but mammoth burger just for the day.

The day went on and the place started to fill up. Chris and I had our fair share of beers and started buying cocktail jugs. The warm up DJs were playing a mixture of funky house, disco, and harder house music, building up the mood. But then time started to get on a bit…. And still no Seth Troxler.

Eventually it was 10pm and still no show. They moved the DJ from the outside terrace to a room upstairs, people were starting to leave, something definitely wasn’t right. So I went over to the DJ to find out what was happening.

“He’s not coming,” he smirked with an English accent. What?! I couldn’t believe it! But at the same time part of me had thought this might happen.

What pissed me off the most was the bar, Alfred & Constance. They hadn’t made any announcements or let on that there was a problem, but they were happy enough to take everyones money for their overpriced beer and cocktails. They were the ones laughing at the end of all this!

Kieron, the DJ I spoke with

I said thanks to the DJ and went to walk off but before I knew it he was talking my ear off and dragging me outside while he had a cigarette. His name was Kieron and he clearly had deep issues with Troxler, calling him a dick among many other things. But the best part was when he claimed that he was a better DJ and seemed to believe it too. Maybe a bit jealous that he was only playing Sunday session gigs around Brisbane while Troxler was living the high life, playing to crowds all over the world.

But he did have a point. Earlier that day Troxler had been playing at Strawberry Fields, a music festival in the bush near Melbourne. Later, he put up an apology on facebook saying he was incredibly sorry to have missed the gig at Alfred and Constance, but that there had been a problem with his flight leaving the bush, something that was out of his control.

Whether this is true or not I have no idea. Maybe he was running around that festival, freaking out about the flight problem and trying to find an alternative, or maybe he just got too messed up and there never was a flight problem…

Either way, after all that, seeing Seth Troxler for free turned out to be too good to be true. And the day was anything but free!