Paul Oakenfold Juggles Super Bowl, Vegas and a New Album

Posted on Feb 11th 2010 12:00PM by Eric R. Danton
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Although Miami last week was Super Bowl central, Paul Oakenfold skipped town before the game.

The high-profile English DJ and musician, a U.S. transplant, had flown to South Beach to host a Super Bowl party sponsored by Jose Cuervo and 944 magazine -- the Platino Penthouse party at the Eden Roc Hotel. He performed, he mingled, he had a good time, which was exactly the point, he tells Spinner.

"I knew it was going to be a really good night," Oakenfold says. "That's why I went there. I actually left before the Super Bowl even began. I was only there a couple of days. I went down there exactly to perform for that show."

Even though he's not much of a football fan, he still managed to pick a favorite for the game. "I was really into New Orleans purely on what had gone down with Katrina, and I've got friends there," Oakenfold says.

The trip was one more engagement in a busy schedule: Not only is Oakenfold hard at work on a new album -- "I was just working with the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers," he says -- he's planning to produce a new record by former Spice Girl Mel B. He also has a residency at Club Rain at the Palms casino in Las Vegas, where he performs two or three times a month. Playing there, he says, is a different experience than spinning for the crowd at a party like the one in South Beach.

"I'm there breaking new music, playing new music, and people go there expecting that," he says of Vegas. "When I'm doing more of a party, then I enjoy playing some of the bigger, more commercial tunes because I take those and I do different mixes of them. You won't hear Lady Gaga, but you'll hear something like a Kings of Leon that I've done my own mix on. You'll know the song and it keeps the integrity of the band, it's just got a dance, electronic riff to it. It suits those kinds of parties."