May the Fourth be with you
Today is the day when Star Wars fanatics get to geek all over the internet with the pun 'May the Fourth be with you', and Wales can get in on the act, celebrating the successful film strand.
Cardiff-based DJ Keltech, aka Lloyd Morgan, is spinning round Twitter and Facebook today with his 2006 video Keltech Strikes Back in which, dressed as Darth Vader, he cuts together a scratch mix of the famous Imperial March:
"In 2005 at the Technics World DJ Championships regional final I decided to put together a routine using the John Williams' Imperial March music from the film Empire Strikes Back. Unknown to me this routine would propel me to new heights as a scratch DJ with a sense of humour.
"When I dropped the mix live the crowd blew up with the club going wild. Afterwards people flocked around me congratulating me on one of the best-sounding sets they had heard which was very overwhelming.
"That night a friend suggested to me that I should record the set on video and put it on the net as a viral. This gave me the idea of taking the little routine one step further and dressing up in a Darth Vader outfit and recording the infamous Keltech Strikes Back routine in my bedroom.
"This video was just a laugh but to my utter astonishment was an instant hit on the internet; in fact it was so popular my website nearly crashed. I was getting 25,000 hits a day at one point which is quite hard to believe for a non-commercial website, and viral video host websites were also hosting this video.
"YouTube, Stupidvideos.com, Myspace just to name a few of the major plays started hosting the videos and before we knew it had over one million hits. The video hit new heights when it was on the front page of MSN.com, Yahoo.com and Lycos. it even knocked the Crazy Frog video off the top of the Lycos viral charts.
"This simple bedroom video had totally launched me on an international level. The website racked up two million hits in no time and the direct video downloads and shares were reaching the nine million point.
"Publicity didn't stop there. I was asked to travel to Belgium to perform the Darth Vader routine live on prime time TV show click here to watch the video. A few months later I performed the same routine at a Star Wars game launch party in Trafalgar Square, alongside some official LucasArts Stormtroopers!
"A few weeks after the Star Wars video was out I decided to record another routine I had made using War Of The Worlds music, again a favourite piece of music I grew up listening to as a kid.
"This was met with equal success on the net and led to Jeff Wayne, the legendary producer of the War Of The Worlds musical, contacting me and asking if I would do an official studio remix for the new album which was later released on Sony/BMG Records."
Lloyd quit DJing in 2008 but still produces music. He is now to be found running an arcade game business, but he tells me he still can't quite believe how "crazy" it was when his video went viral.
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