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I am very happy this week. I’m heading to Chicago tomorrow night for what should be one of the best club-DJ shows in Chicago this year: Paul Van Dyk, one of the guys who really got the trance scene going in the U.S., is on his world tour celebrating 10 years of Vandit records. He brings with him successful crossover DJ and artist Paul Oakenfold, who has recently released some DJ sample CDs and a Perfecto Las Vegas compilation (which sounds great). Check out the flyer for the show.

I’ve been listening to Paul’s past and current tunes, compilations, and remixes on DJTunes.com to job my memory and hear some of the new stuff so that I’m fully ready to bounce at the concert. I had forgotten about some of these old PvD tunes that I loved! Emma and her friends will be joining me at the show (yay!), and I may even (if I can find them) meet up with the Chicago TranceFormation Meetup group led by Sound Bar and ETN.fm DJ Zita Zie! I look forward to meeting a fellow trance music lover who is also a successful female DJ. I have prior plans and will be cabbing over with friends, so I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to meet the group at 10:00 PM at a bar down the street–but it would be nice to meet some fellow trancers (trancies? trance fanatics?).

I’m really looking forward to this show, after a pretty long hiatus from going out dancing or taking a trip up to Chicago. It should be kick ass. Photos, video, and comments will be posted after I get back.

I will update this post continually as needed….

The “A State of Trance 450″ celebration/tour kicks off today and lasts for three consecutive days and for two more next weekend. Armin van Buuren begins the events with a live broadcast today at 1:00 PM, Central Time from The Guvernment in Toronto, Ontario. Check out Cube Trance’s up-to-the-hour tracklist for the whole five-day event (very sweet–thanks, Guys.)

You can hear a free live broadcast of today’s Toronto show (and also the Wrocław, Poland broadcast on Saturday, April 10, live from the Centennial Center) at alpharadio.bg. Click on the Winamp icon in the upper right corner of the page to stream it, or open the stream directly through your media player at http://188.126.1.9:8000/AlphaRadio. Other famous names (Markus Schulz, Aly & Fila, Sean Tyas, Signum, etc.) will join in with mini-guest preview mixes during the Toronto broadcast today and will have hour-long sets in various locations later tonight, which are to broadcast on some stations, and continuously on astateoftrance.com. The guest mixes will continue for the next several days and will mainly be available only on astateoftrance.com.

Here’s a full list of the events and locations and which stations are broadcasting the ASOT shows live over the next five days. Check out Armin’s Twitter feed for exact start times and additional tidbits of information.

If you miss any of the live sets (Armin’s or others’), you can hear them over the coming days at various times on zebradrive.com.

EVENT LINEUPS (taken from the official site; all times are local to each venue):

Day 1: April 1, 2010 – Toronto, Canada (GMT -5)

• 10pm – 11pm – Arnej
• 11pm – 00am – Blake Jarrell
• 00am – 03am – Armin van Buuren
• 03am – 04am – Aly & Fila
• 04am – 05am – Simon Patterson
• 05am – 06am – Sean Tyas
• 06am – 07am – Signum

Day 2: April 2, 2010, New York, USA (GMT -5)

• 09pm – 10pm – Cerf en Mitiska
• 10pm – 11pm – DJ Eco
• 11pm – 00am – Rank 1
• 00am – 02am – Armin van Buuren
• 02am – 03am – Menno de Jong
• 03am – 04am – Roger Shah
• 04am – 05am – MIKE

Day 3: April 3, 2010, New York, USA (GMT -5)

• 09pm – 10pm – Breakfast
• 10pm – 11pm – Lange
• 11pm – 00am – Giuseppe Ottaviani
• 00am – 02am – Armin van Buuren
• 02am – 03am – John O Callaghan
• 03am – 04am – Filo & Peri
• 04am – 05am – Alex M.O.R.P.H.

Day 4: April 9, 2010, Bratislava, Slovakia (GMT +2)

• 09pm – 10pm – Ashley Wallbridge
• 10pm – 11pm – Myon & Shane 54
• 11pm – 00am – Dash Berlin
• 00am – 01am – Gareth Emery
• 01am – 03am – Armin van Buuren
• 03am – 04am – Daniel Kandi
• 04am – 05am – W&W
• 05am – 06am – Marcus Schossow

Day 5: April 10, 2010, Wrocław, Poland (GMT +2)

• 08pm – 09pm – Mat Zo
• 09pm – 10pm – Jorn van Deynhoven
• 10pm – 11pm – Super 8 and Tab
• 11pm – 00am – Andy Moor
• 00am – 02am – Armin van Buuren
• 02am – 03am – Markus Schulz
• 03am – 04am – Cosmic Gate
• 04am – 05am – Sied van Riel
• 05am – 06am – Nitrous Oxide

You can find the Bratislava, Slovakia broadcast live from the Expo Arena on Friday, April 9, live starting at 7:00 CT on XMRadio.com‘s Area station (channel 80), as well as on astateoftrance.com. astateoftrance.com will also have live video from the final day in Wrocław.

Replays of this show appear around the Net on free streams like the 96-kbps trance stations at DI.fm‘s Trance channel, and DI also will play the Toronto live show on their premium (paid) Trance channel.

Derrick Summers (DJ Derrick) from somewhere in the U.S. won the Bedroom DJ Contest! AlphaRadio cut off the broadcast though, so I switched over to the live stream from astateoftrance.com to listen to it. Very uplifting. I haven’t found any info on DJ Derrick on the Net just yet. This does make me a little sad…the Bedroom DJ winner should’ve been me! But I didn’t enter in time (next time, give us a time zone for that deadline, ASOT publicity people)….

A neighbor who volunteers with Midwest Food Bank sent around this letter about their efforts to help care for Haitians, and how you can contribute. (MFB also has locations in Peoria and Indianapolis.) Besides monetary donations, they are requesting small homemade medical kits (described specifically in the letter), which I thought was a cool way to make a tangible donation that someone is going to be thrilled to open when they receive it thousands of miles away.

You can visit Midwest Food Bank’s website for more info. Funny; I went to school with children of this organization’s founder.

I’ve been really busy for a couple weeks, then I got sick for a couple days this week, and then I’ve just been catching up and getting stuff done…so I apologize for the delinquency of this post.

Thanks to Emma, her boyfriend, online games that allow you to apply points to concert-ticket raffles, and KISS FM, I enjoyed one of five free tickets to see Armin van Buuren last Friday night, October 9th, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. In a word, it was pure joy. I know, that might sound silly for a DJ concert, but it’s the truth. Remember, I was DJ Unia. I had the turntables all the big-time DJs had, at the time, and the headphones (but a cheaper mixer, because that stuff was expensive enough). So I would say that this concert was pretty amazing. I’m pissed because right now, I’m missing ATB at Vision (arrrrrgh!)…but I couldn’t afford to go up there again this weekend, so I’ll just have to miss this one. At least I know I can check out Vision, SoundBar, and the Aragon for future trance shows.

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There was a story on the news, and a story in The Pantagraph, a few days ago about how quickly Clare House is going through their food this year. As a result, they really need donations. If you live in Bloomington-Normal, please read on.

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